New Beer Sunday (week 515)

Another crappy day here in SE CT. Spent the dayaying around wTching the snow melt. At least I got a butt load of tv watching in today. O well beer time. The beer I decided to start off with is 2 part. It's a new beer and its a clue for the nbs bif going on. Here it is. A little lacking in the heavy hops, a little thin in the mouthfeel but overall tasty. Almost sessionable

 

Greetings and Happy New Year, fellow NBSers! It seems like I spent my whole week, shoveling snow, as we got about 4-6 inches on Monday, Thursday and again yesterday/last night. I'm not complaining as I love the snow, and don't mind shoveling it either- it's great exercise and the air is so crisp and clean. Things have finally settled down after the hustle and bustle of the holidays- the boys have all gone back to work/school. Dammit, I have to go back toward tomorrow too .

This week's new beer is Ninkasi's Tricerahops, reviewed as follows:

Poured a clear brownish copper color, with one finger of creamy off-white head, good retention, and nice lacing. The aroma was piney and citrus, with just a slight hint of malt. The taste was grapefruit, grapefruit and more grapefruit. I did get some nice pine and bready sweetness in the finish. The mouthfeel was nice and crisp, with a bit of carbonation bite on the back of my tongue. Overall, pretty nice beer, but a bit short of the better DIPA/IIPAs.

Gratuitos puppy picture......

Prost BAs!

 

New American Black Ale Sunday

Whew! What a day this has already been. No detail, but just trust me having adult children is not guarantee of a life of quiet contentment or boredom, they can offer just as much work as when they are younger.
Anyways, before I get to the focus of NBS, let me just offer a word of praise for the old work horses of American Craft brewing. This week I purchase a 6er of Bell's Expedition Stout (which I haven't done for several years) and what a nice beer that is and it is about as good of a value as is to be gotten for a RIS.

Anyway, on to the main event. Sometimes the line between styles can be a bit fuzzy and today as I drink my entry my mind keeps going to thinking "a small RIS". There is a rich maltiness with a fruit and near roast quality. There is also a bold hopping that also adds a nice fruitiness and long hop flavors up and beyond the bitterness. I do enjoy the hop flavors. This is a nice beer.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1199/127483/?ba=garymuchow
Best Week to all and Happy New Year.

 

New...oh who am I kidding, I've had this Beer a few times before (but never aged!) Sunday



I've had SN Bigfoot quite a few times before, but never with a year on it. Until now! It's good, but I get the sense it could develop even better with another year or two of age on it.

 

HOPSOMNIAC vs my TOP IPAs for 2014

My new beer this Sunday - I loved - Hopsomniac - and I recommend it be tasted against any beer with coffee.
I wish every brewer would blend coffee with more than Stout. Well done. Must Try.
So good that it revved me up to include comparison reviews of some of my top IPAs of 2014:

Hopsomniac 4.1/5
Captain Lawrence Brewing Co.
look: 3.75 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4
I love coffee, I love coffee in my beer, and been blending coffee w beer for 40 years. When I was an actor in a long run in NYC I used to drink coffee and 1 beer per performance per night. It was a great balance.
I like Capn Laurence as a great local brewer. Found this at WFM. Try it. Original.
A; Hazed, murky unfiltered amber body, with a modest lasting and lacing head.
S: MUST LET IT WARM. Nose is nutty w caramel coffee, kind of a sweet caramel machiato, with a piney, resinous finish.
T: Excellent! Abundant milky coffee flavors, following the smell: nutty, caramel and toffee, with a light roast bean. Citrus, and herbal/piney/ floral hops persist in finish. Great balance. Very interesting, but there's coffee from start to finish.
F: Good amount of hop spice tickle the tongue with a smooth, medium body taking you to a dry, bitter finish. Not cloying at all.
Must try with any other coffee beer.

Sculpin
4.78/5 rDev +8.4%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.75 | taste: 5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5
Oh! Tomorrow I will taste this off against my #1 IPA Great Divide Titan and I have a feeling this one may win. It's just more jammed with radiant flavors.
Appearance - The pour is perfectly clear, a deep orange amber, very orange, almost shiny. Much carbonation forms a three-finger head of white active foam, and it lasts and laces.
Into a .5l glass.
Smell - As others wrote, I could just sit here and sniff. I get more orange rind, more brightness than grapefruit, but certainly lots of fresh citrus and hops with lots of variation. Very fresh and inviting, great with food: in this case, garden tomatoes, 3 cheeses, rosemary bread, lemon olive oil, balsamic.
Taste - The flavor follows the aromas, and leads with very sharp, fresh, crisp, again orangey in the best sense of the word - flowers of hops, fireworks of hops, powerful leaps of hops.
As one reviewer wrote " the floral taste being almost bigger then the beer itself." Pine, hay, grass, open sunny herbal slopes of the California coast. The finish was large, dry, and bitter. Very complete.
Mouthfeel - great finish. makes you want another. clean and sharp and leaves you in such a good place. Totally worth a premium price.
O - My top IPA.

Stone Ruination
4.48/5 rDev +4.2%
look: 4 | smell: 5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5
Stone - becoming a favorite brewer for balanced IPAs in many styles, humor, and thrilling experiences.
If I were a PE fund, I would buy them and scale them up without ruining them, which brings us to the subject of...
RUINATION.... It's the best DIPA I have tried. Most are so alcoholic that they pale compared with their little 6% brothers. in this case, I like Ruination equally to Stone IPA and Arrogant Bastard. Wow!
A: Poured from 22oz into .5l cylinder. Beautiful 3 finger head, that leaves behind rings of sticky lacing, and returns with a swirl. Almost clear, lighter than expected pale honey amber color. Nice.
S: Heavenly, original, floral, fruity, and piney hops. The nose is big, you can just sniff this over and over. It's perfection. It's ruined me. Big nose beer 5.0.
T: As with the aroma the flavor is massive hops, a California wave, but smooth. Hoppy through out with a cracker malt background. Good bread, communion wafer. Flavors of grapefruit, lemon, orange jam, and pine scents floating on out of the oven italian bread like grandma made.
Not bitter, despite the big, big hops.
F: Is full, rich, drying, and silky smooth and creamy weight. Warming, but the alcohol doesnt mask or take anything away as it does in most DIPAs.
Ruination is stronger, more hoppy, flowery, and distinct that their IPA so it just depends on your mood and food which to go with. Among the greatest american IPAs.
2nd and 3rd time around, - just as lovely!

Founders Centennial IPA
4.38/5 rDev +5.8%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.5
A: Bottle poured crystal clear, copper the way I like them, with rich, lasting cream colored head, that laces all the way down the .5l tall cylinder. Close to perfect look and behavior.
Smell: Ample. Fresh hops, a field full. Woody, outdoorsy, pine forest, some grass. A coastal trail.
Taste: Ample, lots of hops bitter to start, but then sweetens and fattens out into a garden of flowers, citrus rind rings, and Zito's bread bakery. A dream of Greenwich village spring nights when blossoms are out, and bread is coming out of the oven.
Mouthfeel: Medium with good weight on the tongue, lovely finish. Feels stronger than the green flash, a bit more esters, a bit more nose and alcohol.
Drinkability: Close win in taste test with Green Flash West Coast IPA. Rated higher on looks and aroma, but not as inviting to have another as GF. Both are top IPAs and must tries!
REVISITED - 10-1-13 - Clear, deep, woodsy, very satisfying. Must try. One of the best.
AGAIN on 1-3-15 - In taste off with Stone Ruination & DirtWolf - this just wins.

Dirt Wolf
4.25/5 rDev -0.9%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25
One of the top DIPAs in the world. Almost mentholated pot. I dont quite get past the menthol, herbal, potty vibe to the core. So it's in the 2nd tier of great IPAs for me.
Say as compared with Sculpin, Founder Centennial, Stone Ruination.
A: Hazy gold, creamy thick head, with retention and sticky lacing.
S: A lot going on with these 4 featured hops: grass, herbs, fruit, red grapefruit, coastal hills, salt hay. Dripping with honey.
T: follows the smell, very satisfying complexity, wine like. Finishes bitter and pot-like.
MF: Nice transition from creamy honey to drying bitterness, almost menthol, in a long finish.
Up there with the others... Stone, Ballast Pt, Founders... Complex and wine like, Must try, meditate over it. See what's right for you.
Almost menthol pot.

And of course, Carton 077xx or 077(anything) which is consistently a 4.25-to-4.5.

 

2xPresso...

I've gotta confess, I know ST's Choklat and Mokah and the rest are very popular, but I have never been a fan of their Imperial stout line - always came off too sweet (cloying for my tastes) - and I do enjoy some sweet ales (like Pumking) - but their stouts just never quite clicked with my tastes - not so here...

The espresso and lemon are up-front and bright - and I like espresso with lemon peel, so I may be partial - lotsa chocolate underneath, and hints of something herbal (hops?) really round it off. As you would expect from a milk stout, super-smooth and creamy, slides right down... roasty after-notes close out the experience nicely...

Cheers

 

Yeah, it sems a little idiotic (sorry but it really worked) to sue over the word idiot.

 

FWIW, Bigfoot doesn't even start to get good until it has 3 years of rest.

 

I picked that one up as well expecting great things. It was good but overhyped imo

 

A rainy weekend in the Deep South and not looking forward to a full work week coming up. Working one some homemade chicken soup, and figured it was time Tocrack open a new beer.

This one from Central Waters comes to me courtesy of @egrace84 - their Rye BA Imperial Chocolate Porter.

Aroma has tons of rich dark chocolate and sweet bourbon. Flavor wise it reminded me of hot chocolate covered in marshmallows. Nice creamy texture and a slightly sweet finish. This beer is very well done. Looking forward to trying more from Central Waters.



http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/652/119725/?ba=richj1970

 

New Belgian Style Farmhouse Ale Sunday

Hello NBSers! It started off as a coolish day morning in Central Ohio, with temperatures in the mid 50's. Now it's eveningtime and it's now in the mid 30's. And the temperature is just supposed to keep falling until tomorrow afternoon when it will be under 20. Oh well, it's called winter. Spent my day watching some FA Cup soccer this morning, and then watched my Bengals (as expected) lose to the Colts in the NFL playoffs. On the bright side, I don't have to go back to work until Wednesday so it's beer time! Just finished a bottle of Goose Island's Gillian: http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1146/71994/?ba=bluejacket74






I liked this brew, but for me it's overpriced so I won't be buying it again anytime soon. Unfortunately it wasn't cheap in Ohio. I'll have another new beer review on here in a little while. Cheers everyone!

 

Hello my NBS friends! It's been a couple weeks of over indulging around here that I'm glad are coming to an end. Giving this pint can of Brewery Vivant Wizard Burial Ground that I purchased a few weeks ago a whirl.

Pours a reddish brown with an off white head that disappears rather quickly. Tiny carbonation bubbles gently float to the top.

The aroma is predominantly dark fruit forward with figs and raisins. There is a burnt candy sugar aroma in the background, along with a bit of bourbon.

Flavor is sweet dark fruit in the form of figs, raisins, and some plum. The barrel characteristics are last to the party hidden well by the sweet nature of this beer. It's difficult to believe that this beer sat in a bourbon barrel for a year and weighs in at 10.4 abv.

Mouthfeel is slightly flat, lacking that effervescence that I get from many quads, but doesn't diminish the experience in any way.

My overall experience with this beer is very satisfactory. There are the characteristics of a quad with just the right compliment of barrel so as not to destroy the base beer. People looking for big bourbon flavor will probably be disappointed because of the delicate balance of flavors. This beer is a pleasant change of pace from that.

With that said, my rating was a 4.21. Cheers to new beer!

 

New Tmavy Sunday

Hey NBSers,

This Sunday finds the High Desert wetter than usual as the snow melts. The white stuff can hold out under the sun as long as it's a solid snowy blanket, but once the black pavement starts showing through, it's game over.

For New Year's Eve, I had planned to share a couple Baltic Porter with my COBW partners, which turned into a bigger share and gave me the opportunity to try some great new beers like the Wander Global Mutt from @beertunes and Fremont's amazing "Bbomb" or Bourbon Abominable old ale.




But on to today's new beer. @milesmayhem was kind enough to share some beer on NYE that we didn't get to, so I decided to save it for NBS. He took a trip to Eastern Europe last year and brought back some souvenirs. Having a passing familiarity with Czech lagers, I didn't research it before opening, and then I come to find out it is classified as a Baltic Porter here on BA. I had no idea he'd managed to find a Czech Baltic Porter to match the NYE theme; Miles has some skills.

Master Tmavy 18° by Plzensky Prazdroj of Plzen, Czech Republic



Pouring into my glass, the Tmavy rolls in looking heavy and viscous with a bit of delay on the carbonation such that I end up foaming out of the glass a little. The head lingers appropriately before subduing to a thin dusting not unlike the patchy snow outside. The legs reveal a healthy dose of residual sugars. The aroma leads with brown sugar, dates, and other dark fruits. The first taste is malty sweetness followed by that quad-like fruitiness I describe as the "baltic" character. Roast is kept to a bare minimum, and the finish is sweet. This beer is not boozy, but it has a mouthfeel bigger than 7% ABV would suggest.

After reading a bit more about this style, it seems a fair bit of leeway is allowed, such that another Tmavy won't necessarily have that same baltic character. I think Baltic Porter is the right style to put this beer for its flavor profile, but it doesn't have many of the characteristics of a run of the mill porter as far as flavors on the darker end of the spectrum. A little more bitterness would have helped, but the sweetness stays well below cloying levels. 3.5/5

 

Blithering Idiots, all of them.

 

Greetings NBS!!!

Thanks for a great jump into it today, Maria. Always like when the regular contributors, like @Greywulfken , get a shout out.

Weather here is sunny, partly cloudy, but chilly. It's been beautiful. Driving around we're constantly bumbing into people from the Miswest, Northwest (especially Oregon Fans here for the Rose Bowl--Go Ducks!!!), and the random Canucks. Most of whom are enjoying the "warm weather."

I got this lovely Jack's Abby gem from @Jlabs and I'm very grateful. What these guys do with lagering blows the mind.

Jack's Abby Bride Maker Wine Lager

4.23/5 rDev -4.1%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25

First Off, Big Thanks and Maximum Respect @Jlabs for this solid gem.

What kind of wizadry are these guys up to at Jack's Abbey? Lager Wine? 13%? Amazing what these guys are coming up with....with LAGERING?!?

Pour is a crimson, amber hue. Frothy head arises, then tapers back to a slowly diminishing finger. Smell graces my nostrils with a smooth sweet Bourbon, caramel, toffee, and I think a hint of dark fruit. Reminds me of a less boozy Mother of All Storms (one of my favs).
Taste is sublime. Sweet Bourbon is a constant, but without any heat. It stays perfectly in the realm of Bourbon in a gentle way. Subsequent contributions include the toffee and caramel again coupled by a back and forth between raisin and fig, and perhaps Medjool dates. This is amazing, such complexity, just like a world class English Barleywine.
Mouthfeel is only slightly liter than said barleywines yet still retains a minor oily, sweet finish. Wow!
Overall I'm am blown away by this. What a category destroyer! While not my favorite "barleywine", it definitely can hang with the big boys. Jack's Abby really knocked this outta da Paaaak!


Seek it out!!!

 

Hoping everyone is having a great Sunday! It's my last day of break so why not try something new I have been forgetting to drink, Evin Twin Classique Imperial, their remix of Stillwater Classique. Stillwater version is better, but this is good too!

4.04/5 rDev +2.8%
look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 4

22 oz bottle poured into a tulip

A- A clear golden color with a two finger white head.

S- Light fruits, pears, biscuity malts, slightly floral.

T- Sweet, light fruits, hint of pears, sweet bread, peppercorns, floral notes, slightly piney finish.

M- Smooth, medium body, slightly sticky.

O- An interesting twist on Classique, but I like the Stillwater version better, doubling the alcohol made it sweet and slightly sticky.

Cheers!

 

Made the trip to Portland Me. yesterday for the Swish release at Bissell Bros. but on the way back swung through Biddeford and found Banded Horn Brewing. Drinking there 2013 BA Mountain RIS right now a great start for a small brewery. There was a 4 bottle limit wishing now I could have gotten more. And there Veridian IPA isn't to shabby either. In spite of the snow and freezing rain here in NH another great new beer Sunday!

 

Well? I've been waiting to hear what ya thought of the Global Mutt, and now ya leave me hangin'? FWIW, at less than 1 year old, the argument can be made that Wander is the best brewery North of Seattle. They've got some barrel stuff waiting around, and they're starting to play with some sours. For NYE, they had a Firkin of a blend of an as-yet-unreleased sour and Barley Humbug, their winter ale. Very nice, not tart enough for me, nut I suspect they were just guessing at the percentages, and it came out a bit sweeter than they were hoping. Those were my last 2 pints of the year, BTW.

 

New Belgian IPA Sunday

I return with a rare 2nd appearance on a NBS. I think I earned a 2nd beer today.
So, this entry is fun, but suffers from sitting on the shelf too long, and lacking a dating and not being monitored well by the store or the distributor. Anyway, here is the review.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/27942/77331/?ba=garymuchow

The photo

And the addition of the intro from a classic 80's comedy show - Best to all!

 

Good Post Meridian New BSers! Earlier it was 55 degrees here in NW PA - according to my wife it's supposed to drop 30 degrees overnight. The wind blew me all over the road on this afternoon's beer run - ended up about half sea sick. Today's newbie is Jester King's Colour Five - a wild ale slammed with blueberries and Brett. I'm not a fan of berries in beer but this is passable - actually has some blueberry aroma and flavor and the Brett doesn't make it too funky. Seems I rated it a little lower than average (4.11, -4.4%) but then I do like a little head and lacing on my beer.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/24018/143449/?ba=Ozzylizard