Pete's Wicked Red Rush

Beer score: 5.5
Web site: Pete's Wicked
The bottle calls this an "American Red Ale." It kind of surprises me that Pete's Wicked has stooped to making a red beer; not that there's anything really wrong with red beers, but during the 1990s red beers were usually a gimmick beer that cheap beer makers used to try and make people think their beer was something special (which it usually wasn't; normally it was just another cheap beer with a red label of some kind and non-beer snobs usually thought they were getting something special). Anyway, this brew is definitely stronger than the average red beers sold in the U.S. This brew has a sweet, burnt maple flavor and a hint of spices that almost makes it taste like one of those obnoxious Christmas beers. It goes down a little smoother the more you drink, and by the third or fourth swallow it has lost some of its sweetness and gained a little more burnt maple bitterness. Worth tasting, but I wouldn't recommend it as a regular drinking beer. Update: As of the summer of 2010, apparently this brew is no longer on the market.