New Beer Sunday (Week 661)

Greetings, fellow NBSers on this blustery fall day,

Did I say blustery? Maybe the right word is downright WINDY, although the sky is clear after the rain of the last couple days. 53° when I last checked. Getting a late start as I slept in later than usual, perhaps because I had quite a lot of beer yesterday after getting off work.

Lots of new beers this week, between beers from @WesMantooth and the bounty of my own area's breweries and drinking arenas.
This came from Wes, and was an awfully good IIPA:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/31995/271506/?ba=woemad#review
Also, from the same source:

quick picture upload
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/341/55894/?ba=woemad#review

Had a few new beers while out and about yesterday as well. I made a last pilgrimage to a favorite food truck in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, yesterday, that is closing due to it's operator deciding to retire.

upload photo to internet free That's a fried Bacon and Mac & Cheese ball with a honey-balsamic sauce. It's fellow balls were already devoured by this point. A bleu cheese bacon burger was also consumed.

Afterwards, a stop at Selkirk Abbey was in order, where I had a beer that hasn't found it's way onto BA yet, a Belgian Strong Dark Ale called Mercy:
Reminded me of banana bread in the best possible way.

Back in Spokane, I hit Community Pint and, among other beers such as Founders Breakfast Stout, I finally had Transatlantique Kriek:
I've always been suspicious of a beer this style coming from the Fat Tire folks, but this was outstanding. Tart and flavorful, I'd hit this again in a heartbeat.

Back with some new beers as I watch the Seahawks take on the Giants.

 

Good afternoon NBS!

Mid-70's here but it's forecast to be the last day to break 70F so looks like fall may finally be coming. With that is BA stout season. I've been meaning to check out Redbeard Brewing of Staunton, Virginia, and the reviews on Moriarty, their BA stout, was the final nudge I needed. Early reviews on the place, small but cozy, friendly staff for the most part, varied tap offerings, and solid beer. The Moriarty came in three varieties, one aged in a Buffalo Trace barrel, one in a John J. Bowman barrel, one in an Eagle Rare 10yr, and one in an Eagle Rare 10yr with coffee.

So this weeks entry into the NBS files is Redbeard's Moriarty aged for six months on a Buffalo Trace 7 year, Mash Bill #2 barrel (thought to be a barrel for Blanton's).

Pours a deep black color with a very slight head that fades away quickly. Smell is dark chocolate, with bourbon, vanilla, and a little roasted malt, some notes of booze. Taste follows, chocolate, bourbon, vanilla, a hint of booze but certainly not overpowering. Body is lighter for a BA imperial stout, almost a little oily, goes down very easily. Leaves a little alcohol and chocolate aftertaste, kinda like Godiva dark chocolate liquor. Overall, very nice BA stout and a great way to kick off the stout season. I'll be picking up some next year.

 

Nice day for a new beer. Hope you're having a good one. (Day & beer.)
New brewery up the road is introducing some new stuff today, but looks like it's a lonnnggg wait to get any. Nope! I'll go with this, that's been waiting it's turn for a few weeks :

Pours a hazy, slightly redddish, cider-brown. Long-lasting light brown head & lacing. It's been ~ 20 min, while I let it warm up, & got interrupted. Still ~3/8" head left.

I could smell the red wine barrel as soon as the cork was out, before pouring. A very jammy red wine + woody aroma. After pouring, it became more sour cherry, a la a kriek. Also some "fresh" yeast+malt , similar to a gose.

As it has warmed it added some "old carpet" funk (being torn up). It has become completely the proverbial "horse blanket", though a comparatively mild version, compared to most of those I've encountered.

On to taste : .......starts off with the funk, quickly followed by something fruity/grapey(red) , plus wet oak (as in sawdust, from cutting green wood) , and a slight brown bread flavor - the base bread of ginger bread, etc.

Labeled as a sour, but I really have to strain to get any glimpse of "sour". More on the nose, when cold, than on the palate. At most, like the "sour" of a semi-sweet wine.

Medium creamy feel, with very fine tingle on the tip of the tongue, on the finish.

Overall, I like it . Nothing off, and well-balanced. I'll look for more, especially as it was only $5. Not sure of vintage (no dating that I can find), but as the bottle shop put it in clearance, I'm guessing at least 1yr+.

Btw, fwiw, the bottle weighs ~= 1 1/2 bricks. It feels like you're getting your money's worth, even before opening.

 

With another busy weekend winding down, it's time to finally find the couch in the cave for some football and a new beer. The weather continues to be very summer-like which was great for yesterday's garage sale that rid me of a lot of unnecessary 'stuff'. Let's rid the fridge of this beer I brought home from Colorado a few weeks ago.

A bomber of La Cumbre Project Dank IPA with a sticker on the cap that reads packed on 09/21/17. The abv. is 7.5% and I'm pouring it in a 12oz. tulip for the review.

It pours a slightly cloudy pale yellow producing a small finger of creamy white foam that slowly settles to a ring around the glass. Tiny carbonation bubbles can be seen surfacing. It has the appearance of a wheat beer. The smell is dank weed, passionfruit, floral notes and spice. A hint of pineapple and grapefruit emerge next. The taste is dank weed, fresh cut flowers, passionfruit, grapefruit and some peppery spice in the finish. It's feel is pillowy soft and creamy with a slightly bitter dry finish.

I'm a fan of Elevated IPA and have liked a couple other ones I've had from La Cumbre so this was a must try. A very appropriately named beer as it is very dank, floral and slightly spicy in nature. It did not disappoint and my score reflected that with a 4.49 / rDev+1.6%.

It's time to finish this wonderful beer and see what game to watch next. The Bears pulled off their second win in a row for the first time in nearly two years if I'm not mistaken. The defense is looking pretty good and carrying the load for the offense which consists primarily of Jordan Howard eating up yards and clock. Old school football that is working for now. Have yourselves a great Sunday of new beer adventures! I leave you with the official scorecard......

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/24659/110259/?ba=Prager62#review

 

I love WWS with some years on it, and truthfully it has been a good number of years since I had it fresh, so it's hard to remember if I like this better. I do think this vanilla variant could use some more oak notes as they were very faint, and that the roast was on the verge of being acrid. OTOH the roast hid the high ABV really well, and even though the roast was strong it didn't build up like that feature can do on the palate, it stayed clean and sharp. Hard to compare it to the few others I have tried, it seems this is so much more roasty, higher alcohol, and somewhat less sweet. Definitely gonna get another to try with a fresh palate and some to cellar.

 

Brouwerij West Falling Water IPA

Afternoon, BAs. Raking is over. No Eagles on today, but it's still time for a beer. This one comes courtesy of @2beerdogs in the NBS BIF.

It pours a very hazy peachy orange color with two fingers of near-white head that last a good while and leave heavy lacing.

Biscuity malt and sweet tangerine, peach and pine in the aroma. Somewhat creamy smelling.

Taste follows the nose. Very sweet, creamy, juicy with tangerine, peach up front and a slightly bitter, piney, peppery note on the backend.

Very creamy feel with a nice peppery, carbonated bite cutting through.

This is some of the coolest can art I've seen. Didn't expect the beer to live up, but it's very good. Worth seeking out. Thanks, Derek!

 

Happy Sunday, fellow New Beer Samplers. It's simply a gorgeous Indian Summer afternoon here in North Jersey. Today, I'm taking a brief break from the goodies in @FFFjunkie's fabulous box to review Equilibrium's latest Wild Ale, There and Back Again Raspberry, which was released last week. @cavedave reviewed this last week and he's a tough act to follow when it comes to insightful reviews but mine is below. I'll also say that while I used to avoid sours, the ones from Wicked Weed that my kids bring up from North Carolina, and the last few from Equilibrium, have made me reassess my prejudice against this style TABA Raspberry is really good!

4.25/5 rDev 0%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

Reviewed one week after release. Poured from 750 ML bottle into Equilibrium teku glass. It pours a semi-clear raspberry color with a full finger of foamy pink head and lacing, most - but not all - of which dissipated quickly. It has a delightful appearance. The nose features sweet raspberry and telltale sour yeast. Initially, it's about as tart as imaginable but in the background there is a hint of sweet raspberry particularly in the aftertaste, which grows as the glass warms. There is also a subtle pepper at the finish. It features lively carbonation and its moderate 6% ABV allows for easy drinking. Overall, while I've not been a big fan of sours, TABA Raspberry and Casey Apricot have really led me to reconsider the style. This is a wonderful beer to sip outside on an Indian Summer afternoon.

 

Hey Craig, it could be worse. I'm a Tar Heel fan!

 

Good afternoon to all the NBS followers and many thanks to @cjgaint for the wonderful send off this morning. Having once again missed last Sunday with other commitments I'll try to get in a couple of posts this afternoon.
The weather here in central NH has been to say the least wonderful with the temperature still in the mid 70's for most of the week. I spent most of yesterday chasing a few beers in Maine.
My first beer for today will be from the Ninja box I received from @2beerdogs and this would be Stealth Mode from Bottle Logic Brewing. A tart ale brewed with blueberries.

This beer poured a reddish purple color into my tulip glass with little to no head.
The nose is all about tart blueberries with a hint of sweetness.
The taste is once again all about the crisp tart flavor from the blueberries. The beer is tart but there is that overlying sweetness that is present from the blueberries.
The mouthfeel is crisp and pleasant.
This is a very well done fruit beer IMO and I would enjoy drinking it again. I would have to say it will end up in the 4 to 4.25 range when I get around to rate this beer.
Thanks Derek for letting me enjoy this beer!
I'll try to get back a little later with a beer I picked up yesterday in Saco Me.

 

Haha! It's rare that I can say "true" to that. I think you guys to date have gone to the opposite end of the surprise spectrum this season. This loss sucks for us in getting a bowl game, as I think we likely need 7 wins to get even a low-level one, though we might sneak into a close-to-home one if we only get to 6 wins (debatable how big that IF is). UVa does not tend to "travel well" as a school to really attract bids.

Though after yesterday, this talk of actual bowls is pretty premature. Still, it would've been nice to get eligible sooner than later, though.

 

As a lifelong Yankee fan, I have no problem with a beer named after Big Papi so long as he stays retired

 

I've always like UVA and I root for all the ACC teams to do well (except Duke, of course).

 

Fred, you and I both rated Knowledge @ 4.13. It looks like great minds really do drink alike. Cheers!

 

Catler Brewing's Bacchus, a Flemish Old Brown, not the best example by any means; 3.44 overall.

Pours an effervescent brown/scarlet with a pinky of sandy colored head. Slightly better than average head retention& lacing

S: Musty grain, & a little cherry too once warm

T: Hints of red grape, cherry, dryness & slight sourness up front, aged weedy hops as well. More cherry, a little bit of leafy hops, a touch of red grape & faint tartness as this warms. Finishes tart, with a little cherry & leafy hops

MF: Light body, negligible carbonation

A very muted take on the style, not that impressed. Perhaps I should've drank it sooner? Was expecting it to be more assertive

 

Howdy NBSers! If you remember, I posted last week about a cat I had just adopted earlier that day. Glad to say she finally came around to me and my apartment over the past few days. It was definitely rough for the first couple days, but I'm glad she's mostly settled in now. She's still very rambunctious and can be prone to trying to scratch me if I pet her too much, but at least she lets me get close to her now. She's been fun to play with, too, and she's downright adorable... so I'm satisfied. She's laying on a pile of clothes in my room right now!



Anyway, on to my first (of two) new beers for this NBS... I guess it's not quite fair to say this is an entirely new beer, but it's a variant of a great beer so let's give it a pass, eh?

Down the Road has done some very spectacular, unique hoppy ales lately (their three NEIPAs were incredibly distinct from one another and also wholly different from any other beers I've had in the style), so to see them return to one of their first released beers, Pukwudgie Pale Ale, with a Citra addition on top of the Mosaic/Cascade combo they use in the base excited me. For the record, Citra Pukwudgie clocks in at 4.5% ABV.



Pours a vibrant orange color with a chunky, foamy white head that leaves behind excellent cobwebbed lace as it sinks to about a half-finger. The surface seems mostly clear with only a slight haze, but the body retains a lot of chunky yeast/hop matter if held up to light. It's not a perfectly hazy milkshake of a beer, but it's well within that general wheelhouse for the most part.

Nose is grassy, dank and chock full of grapefruit/orange citrus-y notes. Some slight sticky pine and spruce pop out here, too, no doubt a result of the Mosaic hops. The original Pukwudgie is a really good beer in its own right, but it never really stuck out to me aromatically. Citra definitely seems to help push some intense citrus and even spice notes in this version.

Flavor is a great balance between juicy fruit flavors from the hops with a heavy and chewy malt base for a 4.5% beer. There's nothing really complex about the grain character itself, but the way it contrasts the bright, piney and citrus-like hops stands out to me, especially towards the finish as I still get a good punch of bitterness with a soft, almost wheat/oat-like element. Orange, tangerine, grapefruit, papaya, slight melon/cantaloupe and pine resin are the biggest flavor notes I can pick out.

Feel is heavier than expected for a small beer, as mentioned, but DTR does a good job keeping things lively and drinkable with a bubbly, detailed carbonation. Very glad to have more of these in the fridge!



Randomly picked up this CD at Newbury Comics the other night and have been pleasantly surprised by this Boston-area band's approach to classic American sludge/doom w/ hardcore elements. Has similarities to classics like Neurosis and ISIS, but with some gruffer vocals and a more dismal, atmospheric atmosphere. I dig it!

 

That is one citra bomb and a 1/2 right there! Great beer!

 

Well, it's been quite a while. I'm not sure the last time I sat down on a Sunday to write a review and join the NBS crowd. Living in NYC has kept me far busier than when I first joined BeerAdvocate, living with my parents in Florida after a once-in-a-lifetime trip around the world. I had a bit more time for beer then; well, I had more time to sit down and join the crowd.

That said, I had a great time at @Sixpoint's release yesterday, spending the afternoon talking and drinking beer with him and @jrnyc and I realized that this is a pretty awesome community we have here. I woke up this morning to brew and spent my down time catching up on the atmosphere in this thread that I've missed out on for some time, remembering what NBS meant before I decided that I just had to join the fray again.

To keep things linked, I present my first review in over two months, the appropriately named Smoothie:


Rating -- 4.29

L -- 4.25
Opaque orange, with the slightest amber hue to it. Large frothy white head poured into a Hi-Res glass (shape of a stange, but larger). Strong lace game.

S -- 4
Mango, dank, some pineapple, a little yeastiness. It's a complex scent, as none of the individual aromas dominate -- it plays back and forth between mango and dankness mostly; the yeast comes as if it's riding on the back of the carbon dioxide it created -- an intense burst that quickly yields to the prime players.

T -- 4.5
Follows aroma closely, with the dankness taking the lead. Get a little peach ester towards the back of the tongue. The flavor is similarly complex as the smell -- the flavors meld together very well without fighting against each other. The peach at the end of the sip is a very nice surprise, and I imagine is connected to the yeast note in the aroma.

F -- 4.25
Very smooth while maintaining a medium body. Nice carbonation, leaves a slight coating on the tongue. Dangerously easy to drink, and I should have gotten more than a sixer.

O -- 4.25
Damn fine beer. I appreciate when brewers take hyped styles (in this case, NEIPA) and, instead of trying to do something crazy with it, just do it well and make a delicious beer. This is the case here: it's not something that's pushing the boundary, or adding a new wrinkle to a nascent style, it's just a great brewer making a great beer. At the $16 six pack price, I would pick this up on a regular basis. I hope this becomes a regular beer in their arsenal, and hopefully makes it to a wider crowd.

 

Cheers Arthur!!!