New Beer Sunday (week 450)

***New American IPA Sunday!!!

Cheers to you, Matt, and the rest of the growing NBS faithful!

It's cold. Lots of snow on the ground but it IS melting.

New beer number 1, a fresh hop IPA from Deschutes, and here is my review:

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/63/73287/?ba=Bitterbill

I'm not a big fan of Amarillo hops but to those who enjoy it, I say..Cheers!

 

Thanks Matt and Happy New Beer Sunday everyone.

This week has been like summer here except for some rain. I have a terrific stout today from Dogfish Head. Miles Davis' Bitches Brew.


http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/10099/59151/?ba=utopiajane

I was amazed that this beer managed a subtle and almost fruity honey character that was hard to discern at first. And also that it captured the sweetness of the vanilla bean in such a way that it translated a sweet smoothness to the drink. Vanilla is so fragrant, as is honey but in this they were both demure. In contrast the roasted flavors are big and bold and the faint sweetness is almost shyly in gratitude for the fearless and bitter roast. I loved this stout.

Cheers!

 

Good morning all my NBS friends! It is a gorgeous Autumn morning in Southern WI! Cool and crisp after a warm and rainy Saturday. I am imbibing a wonderful RIS with bold bitter chocolate, dark fruit, sweet notes of caramel, and a nice hoppy finish. I highly recommend it. I hope all of you find a day of great fun and terrific beer!

 

Greetings NBSers from a warm and sunny Yakima Washington, where I hit up the annual Fresh Hop Festival yesterday. Lots of new, and one-off, brews were tasted but no review notes taken. We're hoping to stop on the way home today and I should be back with a couple new entries later. Cheers and happy NBS all!

 

Hello, all.

Got beer review #500(!) here (lol). Wanted it to be something of note, and it just so happens that Rodenbach's Caractere Rouge hit my local bottle shop this past week.

I'm not a big sour drinker, in fact I have had fewer than ten. Moreover, my initial experiences with sours were disappointing, resulting in 2 drain-pours, (brace yourselves) Petrus Aged Pale and Aphrodite. The former tasted like apple cider vinegar and the latter was pink (pink, I tell you!). I was ready for neither experience .

But, thanks to the miracle of palate evolution , I have really enjoyed sour/tart ales in 2013, from the obscure Vlad the Inhaler "grodziskie" to Westbrook's Gose to the highly regarded Rosse e Marrone Flanders Oud Bruin.

So, today, from a high-class brewer, a high-class beer - limited edition and all that...

Caractere Rouge

Oh, can I just say, mostly all of my pictures sucked today. the four you see, that I picked, were out of like over 30. Pour pics failed entirely, and a lot of the pics look hazy/washed-out and slightly off-color. Maybe it was the weird ambient lighting, owing to hazy and grey weather - super humid, the a/c is just a glorified humidifier today.

Whatevs . The beer was fantastic.

Exactly as the label describes - sour raspberry and cranberry, cherries and oak. Elegant, tart, refreshing, and very classy.

My NFL teams are all awful this year (NYJ, NYG, and Pitt), but I'm really enjoying the NFL Redzone channel and watching all the games at once, as such. So, got that to look forward to; plus, good eats and treats, another new beer (Stone's Vertical Epic 10.10.10), and of course, NBS .



Cheers, all!

 

I think of 500 as a goal I want to achieve. Congrats Greywulfken.

 

I will honor this worthy event with my very first Rodenbach Grand Cru this evening.
My palette has finally been truly enjoying the greatness of these ales just in the last year as well.
Praise the Lowered.

 

I've always taken a liking to strong Belgian pale ales, such as tripels.
This here brew from Stone, part of their Vertical epic series, was no hard sell.

Stone 10.10.10 Vertical Epic

My review was way over the rAvg - even for people who, like me, have had it with some age on it - but I gotta tell ya, I don't know why. This was a great tripel in my tripel/Belgian strong pale ale-drinking experience. Don't know that it'd have wowed me three years ago, but it certainly impressed me today.

With lunch here...

Cheers to new beers!

 

Lone Rider Sweet Josie Brown.

 

My Milk Chocolate brings all the boys to the yard (not really) sunday

Chocolate Milk Stout by 4 Hands Brewing

Today is my kind of fall day. It's bright and sunny out, but chilly with a little breeze in the air to kick up the dead tree bits on the ground. Love it. I had to get up early this morning (7AM on a sunday!! SHOCK AND HORROR) to go man a flu vaccine info session for my public health class. I even shaved (for the first time in months) to get all spiffy looking and fancy as we were working with a parish nurse at her church. We were supposed to make a teaching project out of it, giving a presentation and answering questions, even administering a post-test... the only question I got was whether their insurance would cover it. Mostly it was elderly folks cooing over the students who came to see them (and one guy super excited about Paris). Don't get me wrong, it was cool and all, but I felt way over prepared and now I don't know how the teacher is going to evaluate our project...
Oh well.
As I said, beautiful day outside. Turns out the bar I found a couple weeks ago that had amazing options on tap, good atmosphere, good people, that I was excited to go watch all my Seahawks games at... doesn't open until 4 on sundays. And we're one of the early games today. Who does that, seriously? Oh well. I suppose I'll clean this afternoon. Might go see Gravity (in not two, not four, but THREE glorious dimensions!) later.

I had been looking forward to this local (chocolate) milk stout for a while, and it was finally released. When I splurged at the liquor store this week (my sister's coming into town soon so I wanted to stock up for her), i picked a bottle up, and finally cracked it today. Excitedly I poured it and sat down to soak it in. Quite disappointed. Thin and kind of halfhearted, my visions of it becoming a go-to are immediately dashed.

We got a blocked punt for a safety, but they got a blocked FG for a TD, so hopefully that doesn't come back to haunt us.

Cheers everyone, hope your sundays continue to be minimal stress, maximal suds, and whatever else it needs to be!!

 

Howdy all! I'm joining in a little early this week due to the play of the Bears today. After watching N'western last night and the Bears today, I'm going to go ahead and find a new source of entertainment. At least it is gorgeous here in Chicagoland after quite a group of storms yesterday, which I can appreciate as this was the first of many weeks in a row where I will be working 6 days a week.

Last week was my first week joining in on this great tradition, and I was disappointed with the brew I chose to come out with. That will not be the case today, seeing as I just completed a great trade with corysmith01 with some real treats. This was the superstar of the trade...

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/27039/16814/?ba=offthelevel_bytheplumb

... but I will be back later today with some New York beers, hopefully as exciting as this one!

 

NEW RAUCH DOPPELBOCK SUNDAY

Hello NBSers, I hope this unseasonably warm sunday finds you well. Today is a day to work through some pent up laziness. I've been busy of late and I need to catch up on my doing nothing. Good for the soul I think. No agenda, no chores, just fun and relaxtion with the family.

I picked a nice beer for today, but I was hoping for a bit more. Does anyone know of another smoked doppelbock I should try?

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/263/54731/?ba=DIM



Thanks Matt, for keeping the best thread on BA fun and fresh as always. I hope you all have a great day today. Cheers!

 

Well, this is actually my first post on here! Hooray! As I am trying to gain traction with my blog, most of my beers are new right now, doing lots of reviews. Today I am drinking Lakefront Brewing Company's 25 year anniversary imperial pumpkin lager.

I think it was a pretty solid beer overall, but wound up being too sweet. The body is nice and thick, but syrupy and in ways, sort of like drinking a juice concentrate before adding water. It has a great aroma though, complex with the brandy aged qulaity coming through alongside pumkin sweetness and nutmeg/cinnamon spiciness.

Check out my blog here for the full review! http://thebeercyclist.com/2013/10/25-year-anniversary-imperial-pumpkin-lager/

 

Back again for a second time. Although I've heard great things about this one, it's just an average beer in my opinion.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/651/6076/?ba=offthelevel_bytheplumb

 

Peruvian Morning on the left, Sucaba on the right. Peruvian morning was great, creamy espresso and chocolate. I wasn't a big fan of sucaba, a bit too roasty for me for a barleywine and wasn't big on the flavor.

 

Super warm day in SoCal so I am inside with my son switching the tv channel back and forth between Nascar and Football. My son loves cars, and racing.

Got this as an extra from saaanch, so big props to him. It's the ideal extra because I am not a sour guy so I wouldn't have bought this. However, I was stoked to drink it because its lights out good.

Odio Equum by Avery, bottled sept 2012

A- dark ruby red and unable to see through the center. Thin off white head and settled around the rim of the glass with mostly large bubbles.

S- big tart Cabernet aromas, with sweet cherry and stone fruit. Hint of sweet raspberries hidden in the back along with some sugary sweetness.

T- wow, mouth watering tartness. My mouth begins to salivate after the first sip. Tart cherry and sweet stone fruit. As it warms I pickup just a slight barrel/oak note.

M- effervescence and bubbly on the tongue. Medium body.

O- I was really impressed with this sour and I don't drink too many of this style. Loved the tartness with just enough sweet fruit to balance it out.

 

New Pumpkin Ale Sunday

Greetings NBSer's,

It finally feels like autumn this weekend with wet cool weather knocking down the many colorful leaves. Early evenings portend for the winter solstice just a couple of months away. I tend to need an adjustment time to get used to running errands in the evening after work and it's dark out. I'm trying hard to not have it depress me. This is one the dark side, so to speak, of having dramatic seasons.
So with those happy thoughts I submit a true autumnal beer. This from a major brewery who took the approach of making an ale with pumpkin as an ingredient, as opposed to the currently more popular method of making a beer that tastes like pumpkin amplified. I am fond of either approach and this is just a nice drinking ale that fits the tradition of this brewery. Hitting the mark on style without excess or extravagance. I approve.
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/45/74/?ba=garymuchow

Best to all this week.

 

Enjoyed my fist Heady & DC Brau on this hot muggy Florida day. Dolphins still lost but at least I got to try some good beers thanks to DJRE4ORM.