New Beer Sunday (Week 718)

Haha! I like my IPAs old skool. Chewy, hoppy and bitter as hell, triple extra piney. This was damn near perfect. I apologise for it being wasted on me.

 

NBS #2. Sticking with NEIPAs. This is Dorks of Hazard from Half Hearted Brewing in Ohio but it was apparently contract-brewed on Long Island. I looked at the brewery's website and Facebook page but couldn't find much information about this ale. I've seen BAs drinking it on WBAYDN and the can art alone was worth a try. It's a fairly tart/bitter ale with hints of sweet fruit, oats, and lactose. It's quite flavorful and the mouth feel is excellent. Here's my full review:

4.19/5 rDev -0.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

Poured from undated 16 oz. can into a Spiegelau IPA glass. It was added to the BA database on 9/13/2018 so it is probably a little over two months old. It looks like it was contract brewed on Long Island. It pours a murky, slightly muddy, golden color with two fingers of foamy, bright white head and thick, soapy lacing. Initially, the nose is subdued but it opens up as the glass warms. There's grapefruit, pine needles, whiffs of sweeter tropical fruit, and fragrant hops. The taste pops with tart lemon and grapefruit. As the glass warms I'm picking up some tangerine and perhaps pineapple. The hops are very flavorful and moderately bitter. There is also some subtle oat or lactose at the finish, which nicely balances the bitterness. This ale has a nice, full mouth feel with pleasant carbonation, and the 7% ABV easily allows for a second pour. Overall, this is a tasty, and fun NEIPA. I wish I could have found more information about the hop bill on can or website.

 

Great review, I love that beer!

 

I may have said it before but that is one great retro beer glass!

 

And thank you! You'll be receiving some love soon!

 

Today I have More Cowbell Eric from Singlecut. I love the SNL bit and I think SInglecut makes great beer, but I've avoided this for some time because I just don't like sweet beers. Well a four pack was left in my fridge after Thanksgiving so I didn't have to pay SInglecut prices.

3.72/5 rDev -6.5%
look: 3.5 | smell: 3.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 3.75

Poured from an undated 16oz can to a diagonal cut tumbler.
Pours dark, slight red in the pour stream, black in the glass. Mild 1/4" tan head the fades quickly.
Close your eyes and you swear you are drinking fat free chocolate milk with a small dash of bourbon.
Despite the thin up front mouthfeel there is a tongue coating the lasts quite a while.
This is a well done beer for what it is. However, like a lot of stouts, its slightly too sweet for me to really enjoy.

 

Narragansett Autocrat Coffee Milk Stout.
Pours a medium brown with a one inch tan head that left a few spots of lacing. Smells of coffee, roasted malts and chocolate. Tastes of medium roast coffee, bittersweet chocolate, roasted malts, vanilla and a bit of lactose sweetness. Light bodied for the style, medium carbonation, mouth feel is on the watery side, slightly dry and bitter finish. In terms of the feel it really is more like a brown ale IMO.

 

So while I am waiting for a beer I have in the french press to finish I cracked this new Pick'n Series offering from Heist made with Strawberries and Blood Orange, clocking in at 4.1% it is very flavorful and really easy drinking. One of the better Pick'n beers I have had.




Appearance 4 - Pours cloudy bright pink mixed with orange. Head recedes quickly to a sporadic ring around the glass.

Aroma 4.25 - Big ripe strawberry aroma, tart almost raspberry aroma. The smell is pretty sweet with light tart undertones, getting a little vanilla as well.

Taste 4.5 - Really well balanced sweetness and tart acidity The blood orange/raspberry flavors come out first quickly followed by the sweet strawberry. There is again a hint of vanilla, really impressed at how well the flavors standout in this one.

Feel 4 - Light bodied sort of puckering initially, finish is somewhat syrupy.

Overall 4.31 - Really well done, the flavors really stand out very well balanced.

 

Hah! No, no pressure. Maybe I should have said I already did that, as in a couple of days ago. I showed the photo as a way of saying you know me all too well...

Nope, no beer for me this morning, because I was busy driving #1 Son back to school. It's his last year, so hopefully that'll be the last one of these whirlwind Thanksgiving weekends. This one had us picking him up on Thursday morning and then making it up to Bethlehem, PA where my sister was hosting dinner this year; an event which, naturally, turned into an all-night affair. And the other nights sort of went the same way, squeezing all the life out of them that we could .

So that brings me to home again this late afternoon, with some weekend work left undone, but still in the mood for a beer or two. Thankfully @Harrison8 sent me just the right thing for this situation:

And English Dark Mild from Apex Aleworks, clocking in at a hefty 3.8%

The color is beautiful, and I don't think that shot captures it properly. Here's another:

Crystal clear walnut brown with red highlights.

And even more pleasing is that it's the real deal. Such full flavored dark toasted bread-like malt for the gravity, woven perfectly with toffee, caramel (although you have to imagine what dark caramel would taste like without the sweetness), baked apple, earthy hops, and a dusting of cocoa powder. It's dry as a bone, yet miraculously doesn't come off at all as being overattenuated. Mouthfeel is milky smooth, and the bitterness is just sufficient enough to kick off a long toasty finish. It's delicious, and amazingly easy drinking- and at the bottom of the glass it feels like an A (4.4) to me.

This is the second of many delectable and unusual offerings that Harrison has sent me from an LIF during the amazingly ongoing NBS BIF #8 thread. I also had a Berliner Weiss with beets (!) last night, if you can believe it. It was also a pretty stellar beer- and you can see for yourself here . Thanks again, Harrison, I'm loving these beers!

 

I was on the fence about picking up this beer. However, when I saw it on the shelf today I had your review in the back of my mind and picked up a four pack.

 

Manayunk coffee porter
...almost solid black
....about a medium body with just below average carbonation. Overall the feel was a bit weak
..aroma was mostly roasted malt,black coffee, some roasted coffee beans
..taste was similar to nose, just not overwhelming or complex
...overall it was okay but just falling short. I do t mind a beer not being complex but I think it can still be rich or deep and this just wasnt

 

On to something a little different.





Lawson's Maple Nipple.

Pours a dark, but translucent, plum-brown with a finger of khaki foam that retains okay. Aroma is maple syrup and dry earthy, toasty, woody malts. It's short and staccato, not lingering long. Flavor profile is toasty, earthy, bready malts with hints of maple syrup at the end. Herbal, resiny hops add a light sweetness that turns slightly medicinal. Mouth feel is still, with a medium-thick consistency. Overall, big maple syrup notes, but overall it's earthy and lightly bitter.

Score: 4.25 | 3.75 | 3.75 | 4 | 3.75 | BA Score: 3.81 | rDev: +1.6%

 

Aye! Really glad you enjoy that one. It's not for everyone, and while I find myself craving IPAs more, I think that's one of the better brews on tap in the city right now. It's not hyped. It's not barrel aged. It's not double-dry hopped. It's not in a 'hip' part of town. It is a damn good beer though. If the price were a little lower, I'd session the hell out of that.

Glad you enjoyed it. Glad you had safe travels this past week.

Thanks for your review!

Cheers.

 

Here we go! Mosaic/Nelson IPA (6.2%) from Toppling Goliath! This sounds like a trip and a half, for sure... a couple of my favorite hops working in concert in a way I don't remember seeing before (recently, anyway). Was excited to see this at the local liquor store when I went out to grocery shop earlier, so I grabbed it to sneak it into this week's NBS.

I'm fairly new to Toppling Goliath. Of course I've had PseudoSue and a few others, but the fact that most of their IPAs come in crappy-format bomber bottles tends to turn me off, and they also don't list ABV on the bottles (and sometimes even the dates are pretty difficult to make out). I know they're really highly-rated but I just don't bother a lot of the time. Call me cynical, but New England has some of the very best hazy, juicy, insane IPAs around, so I'm kind of all set when it comes to that thing. Maybe that would change if I were to get some of the more well-liked examples of the regional NEIPA style-aping in my distro area, but I digress.

Anyway, this definitely intrigued me. Superb pour... turbid orange/yellow-ish color with a thin head that retains well. Super nice lace and alright legs. Kind of soapy but very consistent. Very chewy looking body. Maybe this will give me some extra protein for the day?

Nose is insaaaanely dank and catty with striking honeydew melon, guava and mango right upfront. Holy hell, this is just off-the-charts powerful with Nelson! I'm sure Mosaic does some heavy lifting here, especially with the amount of resin and unusual tropical stuff happening that NS doesn't typically touch upon... but I'm just absolutely blindsided by how utterly powerful this hop profile is. Like... god damn. I haven't had anything lately that's even come close to how potent this fucking beer is. Do you want to get absolutely smacked in the face by hops?! This is your boy.

It's no slouch on the tongue, either... by any means! The intense lychee/gooseberry/mango elements from this insane hop combo utterly shock the palate immediately. There's no recourse... it's just pure tasty, concentrated hop goodness right off the bat. I'm insanely impressed. I mean, I knew this was gonna be a great one, but... fuck! I'm so glad it's a lower ABV, too, as Mosaic can really start to get weird and unwieldy in bigger IPAs (esp. when the grain bill gets strange). The feel is straight juicy and almost pulpy, but it stops short of being protein-shake-like by a few paces. Still very lithe and enjoyable. No real complaints about this beer. I need this to come to my area in a better format soon. $12 bombers of this are not AWFUL, but I would even accept it as a 4x16 oz for $20 like Fire, Skulls & Money. Please, Toppling Goliath... do me this one favor!

SUPER HIGH MARKS!! Please, if you love hoppy beer, get a bottle of this and support Toppling Goliath! This is superb!



I discovered this recently... somehow missed it when it came out. It's like a crazy combination of synth-laden metalcore and intense grindy metal with surprisingly atmospheric parts. Way better than I thought it would be given the... uh... stupid band name.



Also, just got this album on double LP recently. One of the best vocalists in metal (Björn "Speed" Strid of Soilwork) and his compatriot, guitarist David Andersson, formed a classic rock-focused band with other likeminded Swedish metal personnel... this is their crowning achievement, IMO. A love letter to 70s and 80s rock. I love it, in all its cheesy glory!

Oh yeah... speaking of cheese:



Chipotle chicken enchiladas w/ bacon garlic beans! These came out awesome... gonna make 'em again soon!

 

Last one today, and I'm really excited here. Electric Lettuce by Moonraker Brewing. At two hours away from my house, Moonraker is close enough to feel sort of local but far enough to where I've still never been there in person. As far as this beer, it's an 8.5% Double IPA hopped with Mosaic and Citra. Somehow this clocks in at 80 IBU, which seems kind of a lot for this hop profile. This beer was canned on 11.13.18.





This beer pours with a murky deep orange body and produces 2/3 fingers of head on a non-aggressive pour. The head here is quite uniform in terms of bubble size and exhibits incredible retention and leaves some epic lacing on the glass.

Smell is first of all very tropical with all of your typical Mosaic notes. Citrus is barely apparent. Not the most pungent or best smelling NEIPA, if I'm honest.

The taste is incredible though. Mosaic and Citra hops produce a spectacular mix of bright, almost-sweet tropical as well as lingering citrusy bitter tones. Hops are balanced by a strong malt backbone. The taste is actually quite complex, and it's really hard to describe it by referencing the standard fruit notes. As weird as it may sound, this feels balanced both balanced and hop-drenched depending on what flavors you try to pick out.

Feel is a good standard NEIPA, though with perhaps an above-average carbonation. No alcohol is apparent.

I'm glad that this didn't disappoint. Although the smell could be improved, the most important aspect — taste — is world-class. Moonraker rightfully holds its reputation as one of the best IPA producers from California.

4.5 | 4 | 4.75 | 4.25 | 4.5
Final Rating: 4.46 (rDev: +3.7%)

 

I dont know Philly is right up there. Treacherous.

 

I guess I've tweaked the recipe over the past year ...I use all Maris Otter for base malt and exchanged flaked oats for the flaked wheat (except this recipe..). Yes on the other ingredients. I go 180 CL to 90 SO ppm w/my RO water and tweak mash Ph to 5.1 w/lactic acid. Hops at flame out -- twice in the fermenter and then usually in the keg. I used mosaic lupulin power in the keg for the last couple of attempts w/very good luck. super intense nose w/the lupulin. Cheers Jack

 

Getting back into @CanConPhilly BIF box with this Tire Hands Invasive 6:Human

Pours a hazy golden orange with a finger of super dense white head. Sheets of lacing left behind.
Smells sweet, citrus, honey, ripe melon.
The taste follows with sweet oranges, melons, sweet grains, and a sweet honey like taste. A tad sweet for me.
Medium bodied with good carb level, a bit of alcohol presence.
Overall a tasty TH beer, just a bit too sweet.