New Beer Weekend #192

Jack's Abby Coffee House Lager — another Wegman's exclusive. I had no expectations and only bought it out of curiosity. The smell is sweet coffee, the taste is also mostly coffee. It is surprisingly tasty and not overwhelming. Easily one of the best coffee beers I ever had.

 

Good review, like the hop descriptors.

 

I'm sorry, to whoever hates seeing my garbage handwriting. I know you're out there.

 

This beer is in the running for the best beer name award!

Cheers!

 

Gnarly Barley Skater Aid Lager



Light golden color with good white cap.

Aroma of sweet malt and spicy floral hops.

Good, crisp, clean taste of sweet malt well balanced with spicy/floral hops.

Light texture with balancing carbonation.

Brewer calls this an "Italian-style Pilsner" and I franklh don't know what that is. What I do know is this beer tastes good in a clean crisp sort of way.

 

My friend from Ottawa was bring8ng me some beers, I selected this one specifically for the name …

 

I had an Orval earlier today, and now opening a somewhat similar offering...

Vista Brewing, Laissez Faire Brett Ale, aged in wine barrels. 7% ABV.



Pours a dark orange color. A small white head forms and recedes to a ring that lasts throughout. Light lace is left behind as well.
Aroma...There is a bit of a plastic, phenolic aroma up front. Which goes to a funky note, lightly fruity, and some wood/vanilla tannin like quality.
Taste wise, like the nose, phenolic and funky up front. The Brett is really working overtime here. Lightly fruity, vinous, wood, even a touch of acidity lingers.
A medium body and moderate carbonation. Soft and smooth, but would like a bit more effervescent bite. A tannin like dryness. Interesting to drink, for sure.

This is interesting and enjoyable, though could be a bit more refined for me. The Brett character leans more on the plastic/phenolic side than I would like. Overall, I appreciate the attempt here, and it is a nice one to try, even if it doesn't hit on everything for me.

Overall score is 3.62, which is a solid but not exceptional for me.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/52538/381866/?ba=champ103#lists

 

Why not!?!

Cheers!

 

Whomever

the captain , Jeff, of my college soccer team my sophomore year was an English major

the asst coach would yell “ to who?” On any errant pass

jeff would reply “ to whom”…

 

I've been holding on to this one for about four months waiting for the mood to hit me for a sweet breakfast/dessert beer at 9%. Today's unexpectedly nasty winterish weather did the trick.

Having grown up next to two maple houses, I'm a sucker for anything maple-syrup related, but I don't really like sweet beers. So a maple beer needs to be quite well done for me to like it. @jonphisher and I have rhapsodied on these pages about Long Trail's maple brown ale, but I think today's beer is an even better integration of the ingredient.

Jack's Abby French Toast Framinghammer
9% Baltic Porter



Pours black with a thin, tan head that quickly dissipates.

Straight off the pour the aroma is intense. There's a big hit of maple with a stiff cinnamon and alcohol backbone. Giving it a few minutes to breathe brings forth a much more balanced profile that is spot-on for French toast with maple syrup, and thay doesn't risk knocking you over. The maple, vanilla, and cinnamon from the variant blend nicely with the brown sugar and molasses of the base, leading to imitation or golden grade syrup aromas.

The taste is even better. The Framinghammer base asserts itself more here, bringing the maple profile down into the amber grade and giving some roast bitterness as well. This is like that semi-burnt piece of French toast that you douse in syrup and cinnamon. As the sip progresses, I get more brown sugar, molasses, and dark chocolate and then a hit of vanilla when adding air. Finishes with a slight hop bitterness that turns into a lingering sticky, alcohol-laden sweetness through the aftertaste.

It has the usual lovely soft carb that Jack's Abby is known for. Medium-bodied and as soon as you agitate it froths and gives a much fuller feel.

Overall, this is a remarkably well done sweet beer. They've nailed the flavor profile for the stated variant and have kept it from being too sweet. There's a lot of nuance and some depth of flavor here as well.

 

Enjoying some coffee while waiting for my brother and nieces to arrive for their week-long visit..





Cheers!

 

Sorry for the delay but my compliments for serving this beer in an ass-centric beer glass:



Cheers to you for this thoughtful consideration!!

 

So while at the brewery, I tried another new one: Controlled Fury. A black IPA. I mean, the name alone begs one to at least try it.
Perrin Brewing holds the top spot locally for black IPAs so that is the measure that others are compared with.

Poured looking like black coffee with a short beige head that leaves sparse sheets of lacing.
The taste is more hoppy than most black IPAs, which isn’t a bad thing, just different than most.
The feel is light and easy on the palate, this can be quaffed easily and quickly if you want.
Not one I’d buy a 6 pack of but it was nice to try.
Back later with something that @WunderLlama smashed my poor porch with.

 

By my reckoning there has been 2.5 Jack’s Abby beers discussed so far:

· Jack's Abby Coffee House Lager

· Jack's Abby French Toast Framinghammer

· Jack’s Abby and Human Robot: SLO Lager

I wonder if there will be more beers from Jack’s Abby?

Cheers!

 

Equilibrium Rho Imperial Stout, 10.5% ABV. Pours thick and black, with a half-finger medium-brown head that left some lacing. Aroma is coffee. lactose, leather, and chocolate. Tastes just like a strong coffee with an equal amount of chocolate creamer, moderately sweet, slightly bitter. Outstanding creamy mouthfeel, overall outstanding. Usually, when I have an outstanding non-BBA beer, I get wondering what a BBA version would be like. I see they make one but this works so well as is, BBA could ruin a good thing. Maybe RBA though.

4.43/5 rDev +2.3%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

 

Good afternoon, NBW folks. Had some lunch and then stopped by our favorite watering hole to try some beer. One beer stood out at each location, though I only had one beer with lunch.

Lunch was at a Korean BBQ restaurant with a friend of the GF's. I ordered a Kloud Original Gravity, which indicated is was an all malt beverage (perhaps why German Pilsner was selected as its style here) and oddly suggested the imbiber should "enjoy the smooth foam." The marketing speak on it is interesting, including the use of fermented concentrate without the dilution from water.

I wasn't buying it for adherence with the German purity laws, despite the BA style, just to enjoy with lunch. I didn't write up a review, but I actually found the beer to be quite refreshing and it did avoid the sweetness associated with a typical adjunct lagers. As expected, there wasn't a whole lot going on, but there was some form of a grain-like backbone and a small amount of dry grass and a mildly bitter lean in the finish. Definitely could do worse in the general lager category, in my mind.


Afterwards, at the beer store / bar, we grabbed a couple 4 packs and some sample-size pours of a variety of beer. The beer that stood out was Parish Brewing' Rêve - a coffee milk stout that sits in the medium ABV range. I added some notes to the site, which included impressions of roasted coffee and malt, sweet and tangy notes, and the illusion of coffee ice cream.

Having both enjoyed it, we grabbed a howler to review more closely at home and to see if I find anything beyond what I found in the small pour.


First thing of note, the larger vessel turns the beer more towards black, though it doesn't quite get there in decent sunlight. The head seems slightly lighter until I bring a little more volume to it with a swirl.

The nose still gives the impression of coffee ice cream at times - though maybe coffee ice cream that has been dropped into a medium roast coffee. There is more tang coming from this glass than I noted in the small glass at the bar, but otherwise it is quite similar.

As I mentioned in my review, this reminds me of the regular coffee beers that were available about 10 years ago like Monocacy's Brewtus and Rise Up Stout from Evolution. I can't say as though I think this truly resembles those in make up, since it's been a while since I've had either, but it does evoke the memories.

This is a fairly creamy beer, with soft edges. The carbonation is maybe a bit light, or it is just enveloped in lactose - which I assume is responsible for the tang I get in the taste. Coffee with cream up front.

Then there is a mix of sweet and tangy - more or less int hat order. It's interesting to me that, if I focus on judging sweetness, the beer seems a little on the sweet side (balanced by the tang). If I just take a sip without thinking, it doesn't seem like a sweet beer.

The finish brings back the coffee, but also what I perceive as more of the roasted malt, with a tinge of char-like bitterness.

This beer pushed most of the right buttons for me, putting me above average in score. However, I am not much above the average, and Rêve has a good number of ratings in the eight years it's been on this site.

 

I've got another 4 or 5 new ones in the fridge. I might break out another tomorrow if I have the time for a proper review.

 

I'm not an English major and I could be wrong, but:

Although "whoever" follows "to" in the sentence, since they are performing the actions described by the verb (hating), "whoever" is correct.

One may generally substitute "They" for whoever and "Them" for whomever and see which works (e.g. "They hate seeing" vs. "Them hate seeing") which further indicates that "whoever" is the correct usage in this case.