New Beer Sunday (week 586)

Nice! I forgot what I sent you because of our delay. Cheers!

 

Evening NBSers. Just arriving back from a two day affair that ended with my son graduating from college. Quite an achievement and I have to say not easy - I know I couldn't make it two years - wasn't my bag.
Anyhow checked out some posts and everything looks fantastic as usual. Beers unfortunately were not many last couple days- and today I may just sit this out? W'ell see. For me missing this is like missing a holiday. For all others enjoy your new brews. Peace! PS. Maria knocked me out as usual....

 

Happy New Beer Sunday, all, and thanks to @cavedave for that eloquent opening for today's festivities! Today's new beer is the latest in my "I'm drinking this and you're not" series: En Plein Air, a Belgian-style pale ale from Rockmill Brewery, Lancaster, Ohio. (As central Ohio folks know, that's LANK-uh-ster, not LAN-kass-ter. ) Now, you gotta figure that if a beer has a French name and a label by Claude Monet, it has to be pretty good, right? Well, this one is. Nice POP when the cork came out, but no gusher. However, a very tentative pour yielded a full four fingers of fluffy white head that hung around forever. Beautiful dark yellowish-orange color, almost like a polished carnelian:


Poured cold, there were definite floral notes among the light malt, citrus, and spice in the aroma. The typical Belgian yeast funk was noticeably absent. The characteristics of the aroma carry over to the palate, with the floral notes offering a nice complement to the citrus and spice. The bitterness is quite assertive. Finishes dry and a little astringent. Overall, this is a very good beer and worthy of the label. I'm looking forward to more from this brewery. 4.06/5.

Prost!

 

Onto a Bruery Or Xata. Cheers all.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16866/160820/?ba=cindyjeffsmith#review

 

Congratulations!! Same for me was in Conn! He graduated from HU- your son???

 

Been trying a lot of different Stone beers recently as I've often overlooked them for some reason.

I'm usually not really a fan of session IPAs, and this one didn't change my mind.

The first thing I noticed upon opening the bottle was the smell. The word "dank" gets tossed around quite a bit, but it most certainly describes the initial smell of Stone's Go To IPA. Once the marijuana smell fades it has the classic IPA smells going on.

Taste is hoppy with slight fruit flavors, but the predominant flavor is pine. Slight lingering bitterness on the end. Like many session IPAs the mouthfeel leaves a lot to be desired. No malt presence what so ever. It is extremely thin, which I find takes away from the beer.

Not my favorite style, but it was nice to try something new.

 

New SA Raspberry Berliner Weiss Sunday
Hi again,
Wanted something light to dipped into the SA Longshot. This isn't terrible, mind you. Reminded me a bit of a wine cooler in that the sweetness was more balanced than background, but it's a good looking beer, that would be a nice change of pace in the summer. And it lays on the tongue like a beer. I'd have it again.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/35/206950/?ba=garymuchow#review

This is small enough that I'll have room for another. See ya' all later.

 

Great review, but i want to hear more about that bacon. Man, does that look tasty!

 

New beer for me today...Prairie-Vous Francais. A 3.9% saison that I am really enjoying right now.



Review:
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30356/148836/?ba=champ103#review

 

Jack's Abby House Lager.

I haven't hid my lack of connection with Jack's Abby beer. I keep trying, and keep feeling like I'm not interested in revisiting for whatever reason. Despite this, I grabbed a House Lager because I was interested in it. The can calls it a Helles Landbier. BeerAdvocate has it listed as a Helles rather than a Keller and I would have done the same. It's been subjected to a centrifuge, but it's not filtered nor pasteurized. I really appreciate the love for Franconia, decoction, and the sourcing of materials in this beer. The resulting beer does in fact feel very German. It's golden. There's a corn sweetness to it. The hops feel continental. It works, but I was hoping for a little more. What it's missing is the quality of being süffig that German beers are ridiculously good at. Comparing this 5.2 ABV brew with Hofbrau's 5.1 is crazy. The Hofbrau is gone before you even realize it's got you. It's the art of seduction.

None of the following beers qualify as "new," but it's just some chatter. After the House Lager, I had a fun blind tasting of three pils: Southampton Keller, Stoudt's, and Troegs Sunshine. Three great beers. I've had bad luck with the Stoudt's pils in bottles, but the last time I had it, it was on draught, and it shined far brighter than the Hill Farmstead beers I was having at the same time. Nonetheless, by the end of the three glasses, I knew which pils was which. Once again, Sunshine rose to the tough challenge and proved to be such a great beer in this context. In all fairness, the Southampton beer wasn't too fresh and it showed.

Moral of the story: PA has some really great lagers and I'm still not really keen on the lagers from MA.

EDIT: the lack of head in the pic is a result of me taking some swigs and then topping off.

 

Hey cracked this because I didn't know alot about the beer - figured it was something new since there were at least 5 bottles in the cooler......
Coronado 18th Anniversary Specialty Ale "Crown Series"
Evidently a double ipa f rom info on back. And now I find retired !
Grabbed it thinking this would be my NBS Beer for sons graduation Sunday. One word: screwed.
Not even worth saying much about it except shame on store for leaving it on the shelf for far too long. And shame on Coronado for not dating.
In a few words: top was popped a rude skunky aroma permeated my nostrils along with an acrid hoppy aroma.
Taste follows with a blend of green bottle Heineken and corny AAl and Olde English malt liquor.
Why go on? You sir are going to kiss the drain pipes in my house. Bummer. On to the next one......

 

What do you want to know? I fried it in a small skillet pan for about 15 minutes varying between low to medium temp. Added a bunch of maple syrup (unfortunately only had Log Cabin on me which I know isn't "real" stuff, but I digress) and some KC Single Barrel when I could. Kept adding syrup to balance the intense whiskey aromatics I introduced. When those burned off I added some ground cinnamon and pepper. Cinnamon to enhance the sweetness and pepper to provide some flavor depth to keep it from being pure sugar. Cheers!

 

Booo. JA is still a quality brewer of Lagers.....and and innovator. Try Sunny Ridge Pils - and I'm sure you've had Hoponiuous Union? Of course Framinghammer their Baltic porters and their variations. To me if you put your foot on the gas on just all Lagers you deserve praise. But beyond that I dig their beers. Not to say I don love Sunshine Like- or Stoudts if you can find it fresh here. Then of course the new kid in town Von Trapp.

 

Von Trapp is better at the traditional styles than Jack's Abby is, in my opinion. It seems like zid has a love for very traditional German style stuff and I think VT nails them more often than JA does. Hell, their hefeweizen (the first Von Trapp ale!) was out-of-this-world good... I would never have thought an American based brewery made that from the first few sips.

edit: fun fact! I was the one to change BA's style description of the House Lager to Helles when it was first introduced. I forget what it was but it was very much not correct.

 

I reviewed that beer in 2014. Bottle dating was 8/11/2014(it's etched in the base of the bottle, but hard to see; just FYI if you buy Coronado again) . It was excellent a year and a half ago when I had it. They did have a 19th anniversary last summer, but I never saw it, or else I would have picked it up.

 

Yes I went and read your review and when I saw the date I almost crapped in my pants. I rarely get fooled but this was a hair trigger purchase. Bad on my part. But atrocious on the part of my store. Thanks for the info.

 

I agree they are not traditional - good points

 

Hello all- Sunday is winding down, and I think it's time for a new beer. And that's not the only new thing around here; today was my inaugural run with my new smoker box dealie for the grill. My wife and kids don't like too much smoke, so I'm not about to get into any proper BBQ, but I do love the complexity of even just a touch so I needed a gadget to get me there.

So it worked great in the end. The bottom is a V shape, so it sits under the grates like a charm, and loaded with cherrywood chips gave me about an hour's worth. Not only were there no complaints, my son said that these ribs were the best ones yet.

And now, on to a new beer.

I was thrilled to find this at my local Bottle King. Magnify is one of the newer group of NJ breweries, and is starting to be talked about, so being able to buy their stuff without the trek to the brewery was a very nice surprise.

Unfortunately, I wish that excitement carried through my first experience with them. This is a butter bomb, and I shall not be finishing it after a few sips. Oh well, can't win 'em all...

 

Greetings NBS! I just got back from walking my younger brother walk across the stage in all of his PhD regalia. So proud of him! That means I'm posting here later than usual. The weather in Cleveland started off with snow and hail- appropriate as they said hell would freeze over before one of his labmates (who had been working on his dissertation for TWELVE years!) graduated and sure enough before commencement it sure felt like it.

At first I was thinking what brilliant PhD mind decided to package a 9.5% barrel aged tripel in a 19.2oz royal pint? Then I realized that's actually smaller than the 750ml bottles it often comes in. Still a nice way to unwind after a busy weekend.
The beer itself is good but not great. All of the fig/caramel/yeast you'd expect in a tripel but I feel it's a bit sweeter than it needs to be and I don't get any of the rye whiskey barrel aging it claims to have. Granted I'm about two weeks past the drink by date on the can but that shouldn't make that much of a difference for a barrel aged tripel. Overall a 3.77 rDev -6%.
Cheers!