New Beer Sunday (Week 680)

New beer #3. I bought the Left Hand mix pack mainly because it included 3 of this beer.

Hard Wired (Nitro) - Left Hand
Coffee Porter - 6% abv
Score: 4.21 (+4.2% rDev)



L - 2 finger creamy mocha head atop a deep dark brown body.

S - strong, good coffee, chocolate, hazelnut, caramel.

T - smooth coffee to start. Then chocolate and caramel. Moderate sweetness with a bitter edge. No alcohol in the taste.

F - Very creamy, as with all of their nitro bottles.

O - I like this so much more than their nitro milk stout, which I find hella sweet. This is well balanced, smooth, and coffee forward, which makes it super easy to drink. Glad I have 2 more of these to enjoy.

 

Poured ice cold canned on 2/22/18. Pours a hazy darkish yellow with a nice finger of head that leaves loads of lace behind. 4.25

Smell is what you would expect papaya, passion fruit, tangerine, pine resin, and grapefruit rind. 4

Taste follows tropical front to back with some piney grapefruit in the balanced yet slightly bitter finish. 4

Mouthfeel is a big medium, gentle carbonation, not dry but slightly sticky from all the fresh hops, and drinks very easy at 6% ABV. 4.25

Overall a very nice NEIPA, very tasty, and extremely crushable, but it actually drinks bigger than its 6% ABV.

 

Alright, it’s NBS time! Thanks for the intro, @lordofthewiens. It made for some very interesting and entertaining early morning reading

My new beer today is a wild ale from Troegs, Dear Peter. It’s made with nectarines and fermented with brett, pedio and lacto in oak foeders. The nectarines came from a local orchard called Peters, hence the name.

I really liked this one. The nose had subtle hints of sweet nectarine, sounds me vanilla and mustiness. The flavor came on in waves, starting sour, then sweet nectarines, then vanilla followed by more sour and finally a woody tasting finish. It was lighted bodied, very dry and super refreshing.



Cheers all! I hope to back later tonight with 1 or 2 more new ones.

 

New Big Craft Sunday beer #1



Hazy Little Thing IPA

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
American IPA / 6.70% ABV

3.79/5 rDev -4.3% | Score: 3.96
look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 4 | overall: 3.75

pkg'd 01-18-2018

L-the beer pours a light hazy orange with a solid 2 finger off white head. The head recedes to a thin ring. Lacing is scattered over the perimeter of the glass.
S-The nose is a mix of citrus leaning to orange.
T- Up front you get some sweet orange which is quickly balanced out with grapefruit and an mild pithy bitterness.
F- The mouthfeel is on the lighter side of medium. It is a fairly soft mouthfeel, but to thin to be considered creamy. Carbonation is prickly and drinkability is solidly within style tolerances.
O-This beer is solid entry in the IPA field. It's easiness to obtain and reasonable pricing make it a solid if unspectacular choice for budget conscious IPA fans.

 

Sierra Nevada Trip in the Woods BBA Narwhal with Red & Black Currants

Afternoon, BAs. There seems to be something in the water on this site this weekend. Think I'll just leave it at that.

This lovely new beer comes courtesy of @2beerdogs in NBS BIF #6. Anyone who knows me knows I love the red and black. Will it carry over to currant-flavored stouts? Let's see.

This one pours a creamy, chocolatey dark brown color with a fat finger of soupy, khaki-colored head that leaves thin, but lasting sheets of lacing.

There are definitely currants in the nose -- whether red and/or black I really couldn't say. The aroma also has clear wood, with hints of bourbon, vanilla and milk chocolate ganache.

Light currant tartness and juiciness stands out in the taste. Woody flavors couple with milk chocolate and light coffee malts and just the slightest hint of vanilla-forward bourbon. It has a light, tart, fruity aftertaste with just enough chocolate to prevent it from being too sweet.

There's a certain heft to the feel, but I'd put it on the light side for BBA stouts these days. A touch of carbonation prevents it from feeling flat.

There's a great tartness to the beer, but I'd prefer a darker chocolate and tobacco malt character to balance it out as opposed to milk chocolate. The barrel here is also so slight that I'm not sure it adds much to the taste; the wood definitely comes through. All-in-all, it's still plenty fun overall. Glad for the opportunity to try it.

 

New beer #4. Thanks @larryi86 ! You found me another meaty ipa

AK - Adroit Theory
IIPA - 8.3% abv
Bottled 1/31/18 (32 days ago)
Score: 4.04 (0% rDev)



L - 2-finger fluffy white head atop a foreboding, dark yellow body.

S - super citrus. Grapefruit, blood orange, melon, candy.

T - very sweet. Lots of citrus here, backed by some dank hops. I get some meatiness from this one as well (similar to Foley Brothers’ Prospect).

F - medium-full creamy body with medium carb.

O - Very unusual. I dig the meatiness though. Very hard to find in an ipa.

 

Working up a buzz before you get to the pizza beer?

 

Fighting off the sleep deprivation/jet lag with this local one.
A little lager like but with a full feel. Definitely has the Fuller’s taste markings but with a light touch. Don’t know if they used honey but I may be tasting an earthy sweetness. Easy drinker that would be great during the summer.

 

Absolutely! 4-packs of Schlenkerla would fit so nicely in my fridge.

@JackHorzempa —> Great review! And thanks for the note on their born-on dating. I think I've run into a pint or two of "aged" Schlenkerla. It seems likely based on @TongoRad's advice that aged rauchbier can get over-smokey.

 

Damn, I guess so. Where is @larryi86 ? He was supposed to try this with me. @TheIPAHunter has me leery of opening it.

 

New beer number two of three for the day...

Secure the Bag

Barrier's IPA collab with Other Half featuring Columbus and Mosaic hops and dry hopping with Motueka, Mosaic, and Citra lupulin powder; 7.4% abv, 2/20 canning... Pale-medium gold and thoroughly hazed; coupla fingers of white foam trailed lace lines behind... Plenty of bright citrus on the nose and palate, accompanying some softer fruit and airy pine elements... Bitterness stays ahead of any sweetness, so it's no fruit smoothie despite some NEIPA trappings... Soft and airy, with a clean freshness and light, slightly drying finish...

Cheers...

 

I have heard/read where folks opine that an aged Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen will exhibit ‘meaty’ qualities. I can certainly attest to perceiving flavors that I would describe as being ‘meaty’ in bottles of Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen.

FWIW I have decided to no longer buy bottled Schlenkerla beers since they refuse to put bottle dates on them.

While it is beneficial that there are canned on dates for the Schlenkerla Helles beers that solely tells us when that beer was placed in the can. We still do not know when that beer was genuinely packaged (i.e., put into the BIG tank).

Cheers!

 

Yeah- they get kind of coarse after a while. The meaty aspect come on in really old bottles.

Keep an eye out for the draught version; kegs seem to be showing up more frequently around here over the past few years. I've been fortunate to have had them all that way at one time or another, and there's a kind of polished refinement that the bottles just can't capture. Just imagine an A++ beer compared to an A+ beer .

 

Your point here and earlier about the date of the beer going into the tanker is a very good one. Regarding the bottles, the Fastenbier has roman numerals on the neck label that correspond to the year... but I just learned from B United that this is the year the labels were made, not the year of bottling. In other words, they’ll continue to bottle the beer with the 2016 label until they’ve used them up. Given that, I have no idea why they bothered to put this info on the label at all. (I’ll also venture an opinion that if you were a bigger Rauchbier fan, you’d be more inclined to roll the dice on these beers occasionally.)

 

Happy Sunday! I have a cold, so my palate is all fucked up - and thought it'd be a great idea to try something I've never had before. Obviously a great time for it! Here goes: Revision Brewing's Glitter Moon.

No, it's not one of those fancy new glitter beers you keep reading about. Sorry to disappoint. It's a NE style IPA which tends a bit more towards the bitter side. I'm perfectly okay with that, actually - it's very complementary to the sweetness of the beer. There's a fair amount of grapefruity citrus as well. I'm enjoying it.

While it's not Treehouse or Trillium, Glitter Moon does have some decent chops to it - it's quite opaque/very hazy and it boasts a lot of juicy character. I'd prefer to be drinking this while healthy, but - citrusy juice is supposed to help a cold, right? Cheers.

 

Let me add that the date sticker on the Helles would be even better if they had them on the cans themselves. I’ve only seen this beer at stores that only sell them as singles. I never had a option to check the sticker.

 

Well, to be honest the prices that my local beer retailers charge for Schlenkerla bottled beer is not to my liking - the prices are too damn high!

Schlenkerla bottled beers are 0-2 as far as I am concerned.

I did enjoy drinking the bottled Fastenbier when it was introduced in 2015. I discussed it in a NBS thread:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-sunday-week-526.271134/#post-3442852

Non-cheers to undated and expensive bottled beers!!

 

Yup, dates on the individual cans would indeed be better.

Cheers!