New Beer Sunday (week 518)

2 New Places: Atlantic Highlands, NJ & Eureka, CA. 2 New beers: Regular Coffee a 4.4! and Indica IPA 3.8

Place: Carton Brewing.
5/5 rDev +11.4%
vibe: 5 | quality: 5 | service: 5 | selection: 5
Carton Brewing, a great, busy hang in Jan, best beer pub atmosphere and crowd in Monmouth County.
Great blends of local and visitors. Small enough to create a real tight standup atmosphere. Every one is great spirits, friendly, eager to talk.
Expanding into a much larger space soon, so come visit the original tasting room.

Beer: Carton Regular Coffee - a cream ale.
4.36/5 rDev 0% Regular Coffee, a cream ale at 12% ABV
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.25

A: Hazy pale amber, mostly clear, with cream ale look. Surprisingly light. Faint head but leaves sticky lacing.
S: Regular coffee nose (lotsa milk and 2 sugars). As reliable a nose as regular gasoline.
T: I love beer in coffee and coffee with beer. The yin-yang. While it's like a regular coffee with cream and sugar, it's also beer with hops, malt, grass. Alcohol well hidden.
M: Great body. Smooth, creamy, felt like coffee, minimal carbonation.
O: Another great, original beer experience. A must try. Can become a classic.

Place: Lost Coast Brewery & Cafe Eureka CA
3.68/5 rDev -0.5%
vibe: 3.5 | quality: 3.5 | service: 4 | selection: 3.5 | food: 4
Visited 3 breweries rated in this order: Mad River, Eel River & Lost Coast.
All good. Lost Coast mostly a university / young crowd. Order the roast oysters with pesto! (with garlic is over kill). Their beers a bit watery and uninspired, but liked the IPA well enough to buy a well priced 6. Our waitress was great. Pretty typical restaurant rather than a tasting room.

Beer: Lost Coast Indica IPA
3.83/5 rDev +1.6%
look: 3.5 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.75
Enjoyed this at the brewer enough to buy a 6. Great restaurant & Oysters on tap here.
A - Caramel cloudy and dark with 1 finger head and lacing; good stickiness, unfiltered.
S - Fruity hops first followed by sweet caramel jammy malts.
T - Again starts fruity with sweetness that nicely blends into bitter hoppiness, nicely balanced. Sessionable.
F - A little thin, but crisp and makes you want another.
O - well hopped. Must try. California North Coast classic.

 

Back again with entry #2 for today!!



Pours a dark ruddy brown with a thin amount of tan colored head.
Dark chocolate, roasted coffee beans and malt.
Mmmm...bittersweet chocolate, coffee with milk, and a bit of smoke.
Full of flavor! A nice round smokiness with a decent amount of carbonation. Great amount of lingering flavor.
Overall a terrific tasting porter! Nice amount of chocolate and coffee and roasted smokiness!



Cheers everyone!

 

More people with Carton's Regular Coffee. Next BIF I do, can I get someone from Jersey?

 

(Ignore that glass: I drank it from the can!)
I've been sampling the contents of @Roguer 's Pequod-by-mail (or something like that) over the past couple of days (got to get all them NE brews consumed before I'm betraying my team at 'the big game' this weekend!), and man oh man it's made these last couple of long long nights at work a little more manageable.
First up was Lunch, then was The Artist Soon-to-be-Formerly-Known-as-Gandhi-Bot. Both were fantastic. I decided that today would be the crown jewel (you know, the one that goes on the... TOP... of the HEAD... FORESHADOWING!): Heady Topper (OK, it wasn't so much foreshadowing as just playing with words). My take? It's bloody delicious. This stuff is amazing. Now, the real question... Is it unquestionably the greatest beer I've ever tasted? No. It's not unquestionably NOT the greatest I've ever had, either; it's definitely in the discussion, but I can't crown an uncontested best. Is Michael Jordan unquestionably the best player to have ever touched a basketball? Plenty of people will say yes. I say no. Is he unquestionably in the discussion, and certainly in the top... choose a number? Yeah, even as an avowed Jordan-hater (Payton/Kemp should have won a ring together!) I can't deny that. Bottom line: Heady is fantastic stuff, and I am eternally grateful to Roger for having allowed me to see (taste. Whatever) firsthand what that operation in Waterbury has to offer. It's a masterfully blended combination of flavours that manage to get more complex and nuanced as I drink (from the can! What kind of monster do you take me for?). Floral and spicey and tropical and piney... like an all-star team of hop profiles. Love it.

Anyway, went camping with my brother for a couple of days when I had some time off from work, and aside from freezing my toes off at several thousand feet (someone grabbed the wrong sleeping bag when coming down from the parents house...) had a great couple of days of brotherly bonding and appreciating the wonder that the sometimes-forgotten (I refuse to acknowledge the fame a certain series about a town named after a utensil brought the region) peninsula of our fair state. We hiked up to Boulder Creek, home to hot springs and freezing mid-january temperatures, and spent a night out on Shi Shi beach, near Point of the Arches out on the coast. Beautiful. Looking out the flap of the tent at a string of sea stacks stretching out into the Pacific was a great sight to wake up to after realizing we'd overslept by like... a couple of hours. Oops!! I guess staying up writing @rgordon 's explanatory letter DID have consequences after all
Returned to start my first shifts off of orientation as my own completely independent nurse, and each of the last three nights has... presented some unique experiences and challenges, as each night has brought at least a couple of things I'd never experienced before, all throughout school, orientation, and everything else. That epidural probably wasn't ACTUALLY needed anyway...
Found out my godfather is in town super randomly, so we grabbed breakfast(them)/dinner(me). GREAT to see him, but it means I will be going into shift 4 out of 7 in 8 days with very little sleep. The price we pay for those we love.

OK. Some pictures of beers.


And I'll sneak in a couple from the trip.


The songs that were cycling through my head the last three nights at work

HTML:

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/112496205" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]

And the thematically appropriate song for this NBS entry:

(Get it? It's an ALCHEMIST production!!!)

Cheers all! Glad to see the BIF entries that have gone in so far and look forward to reading the rest when I wake up
BIG thanks again to @beertunes and @LehighAce06 for the administrative side of things, to @Roguer for a mindblowing collection of northeastern whalezbro, and to everyone who participated for making it WILDLY successful and incredibly fun!

 

New Jalapeno IPA Sunday



Jailbreak's Welcome to Scoville. This is a pepper beer for those who hate pepper beers: the jalapenos add a dimension of flavor without a lick of heat. It isn't great (the base IPA has too much crystal malt and too little hoppiness), but I wouldn't mind this becoming Jailbreak's flagship brew either.

---

12 oz can into a teku.

Appearance: Pours a clear copper color. The head is two fingers high, and off-white in shade. Both the texture and retention are top-notch, even for the style. Webs of lacing are left on the glass. A nice looking brew, period. (4.25)

Smell: Wow, jalapeno is coming through nicely. Just as advertised, it doesn't seem to feature much heat, rather just jalapeno skin/flesh. Beneath that, it's a pretty average IPA, with caramel, toffee, and hint of citrus. Still, the chilies do enough to raise it well beyond 'average'. (3.5)

Taste: Jailbreak was definitely going for a "subtle and heatless, yet still evident" approach to the jalapenos here - and they pulled it off. I get a little pepper on the front and back ends respectively, book-ending a standard-issue IPA. This does bring malt notes of caramel, as well as a faint touch of citrus from the hops. It seems to taste a bit fresher than Big Punisher did, too. Only thing I seem to miss are some cilantro notes here and there. The jalapeno presence is quite pleasant, helping to redeem an otherwise average IPA. (3.25)

Mouthfeel: Despite the initial crispness, the malts make themselves known thoroughly here. It's full-bodied, and not entirely dry finishing. Carbonation is fairly easygoing, resulting in a beer that isn't eminently drinkable. The creamy feel, though, is quite satisfying. (3.5)

Overall: Big Punisher was hugely disappointing - a Citra-brewed DIPA in cans, that managed to taste several months old even nigh-on brewery fresh. This is the opposite - it sounds like a gimmick that could go awry, but it genuinely works to an extent. Still, I can't help but shake the fact that this could have been fantastic if the base IPA had been leaner and slightly hoppier. This is still a worthy offering, though, and something that will make a fantastic cooking adjunct. (3.5)

3.43/5: A chili beer done right?

 

New Hampshire seems to be in the middle of a craft beer Renaissance. Nano-breweries are opening almost on a monthly basis. Today, I got my hands on the BearA Irish O'Sullivan Stout from Portsmouth, NH. BearA Irish opened in early 2014 and all of their beers are brewed in the Irish tradition using imported Irish ingredients whenever possible. They have 7-8 beers in the BA database, at least one that I have added. I might have actually added the brewery to the database, I can't recall.

So this O'Sullivan is brand new. Just came out for the first time a few weeks ago. Deep dark brown to nearly black pour. Humongous tan, fluffy head that never really settles entirely. I happen to love heady beers. Some BA members hate them. The aroma is alive with smoky malts and coffee grinds. Hops are minimal. Only 5.3% ABV so no alcohol. The body might have been its weakest link coming in around medium. I prefer heavy-bodied stouts. But the taste wiped that misstep away quite nicely with a solid dark malt, smoky, coffee, and light chocolate character. Mild bitterness at the end but only to balance it all out.

You can only buy this in New Hampshire in about a dozen or so locations.

 

Holy Shit and whew! UVa pulled it out. I know most/none of you care, but imagine your team being good (#2 in nation), undefeated for 18 games, and having their first loss of the season coming against their hated and "not that good" rival. I started drinking Aphasia around the highlighted area:


So maybe the beer DID help! Taking a sip as the last second Va Tech shot up and almost went down "confirms" it.

 

Saison Dupont Cuvee Dry Hopping 2013

Served in St. Bernardus Chalice Glass

I purchased the beer in order to drink it with dinner tonight, but wanted to give it a little taste by itself first. So glad that I did.

When opening, the cork came right out without much effort and then the beer shot out of the bottle like a geyser. Once poured into the glass, a big head quickly appeared, but most of the head dissipated quickly. a small coating of bubbles remained for the rest of the glass.

The beer has a wonderful smell, with lemon, flower, and with the typical saison peppery smell.

I am unable to see through the beer, it has a gorgeous golden orange color.

A nice sweetish malty flavor upfront and It has a tart and fruity/citrus finish. Mouthfeel is perfect.

I cannot wait to drink this with dinner, lemon, herb chicken and some kale risotto.

This poor thing has been sitting on the shelf forever and I just kept walking by it. I wish it was not 8.99 a bottle. I might drink one every week...

 

Good afternoon all you NBSers, back home from a full weeks travel and work.
Readying for the Monday weather event, whatever it may be. Todays NBS is a rye
porter from Brewmaster Jack here in WMass. The young fella continues to make
some fine offerings. This porter with a big grain bill and lactose is complex, and quite nice.
I enjoy the flavors and the fell quite a bit.
Cheers all

Total Eclipse
Brewmaster Jack
American Porter / 6.00% ABV

3.75/5 rDev 0% | rAvg: 3.75
look: 3.75 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 3.75

Poured from a 12 oz. bottle with label notched date code 12-14 into a modified tulip glass.
A - Pours like a total eclipse, deep dark in color, finely structured mocha carbonation tops out into a rich Crème Brule colored, densely packed, rich froth. Lacing clings lovingly to the glass.
S - Dark cocoa, husky grains, hints of black pepper, blackberry, light roast coffee and a big presence of roasted malts, flanked by molasses and dark fruits.
T - Dark cocoa and molasses lead the way, A nicely balance grain bill chase that out, dark roast malts, oats and the rye all play well together, the black pepper visit's and leaves quickly, no hop bitterness but plenty of spice to offset that. The lactose does indeed leave a slight sweetness to round out the flavors.
F - Slick to start, full in body. Round on the palate, leaves a long coating of cocoa (hot chocolate anyone!). With some time passed the rye spiciness cleans up leaving a semi sweet, semi chocolate calling card.
O - A very nice, approachable porter, intriguing flavors and fine mouth feel. There is potential for greatness here. A fine offering from Brewmaster Jack.
Worth seeking out.

Cheers

 

Happy NBS Everyone,

And happy "Official NBS BIF Day" to all those involved!

Getting ready for some serious snow on Tuesday by doing.....absolutely nothing. Got plenty of bread and milk, and of course beer, so bring it on!!!

Today's first new beer is from the BIF (of course), and is in my possession thanks to @cjgiant .

Adroit Theory Black As Your Soul Imperial Stout ( ghost 111-imperial stout aged in cognac barrels).

First impression is that I love the bottle presentation. Unique shape, great label with hidden graphics, just a fun bottle to inspect and pop the cork out.

A: Dark black, one finger of caramel colored head that dissipates slowly to leave a thin ring that wraps around the glass.

S: This is where this beer gets crazy. I'm not a cognac drinker, so I can't speak to the quality of what I'm smelling, but it is immensely powerful. Very alcohol forward and very sweet with a prominent oak/wood background. One sniff and you are already aware of what this beer is all about.

T: Again, I wish I knew more about cognac so I could judge this a little better, but wow, this is out there. It starts much like the nose with a slightly odd sweet alcohol note, but quickly subsidies to a much more enjoyable smokey, dried fig and malt middle, and a sweet (but not overpowering) finish. There is a smooth, refined complexity to how these flavors work together, it's surprisingly good, considering the nose put me off a little.

F: Nothing too odd here, a creamy stout with heavy body and light carbonation.

O: This one has me slightly at odds. I'm not a huge fan of the nose, but the way it develops on the tongue is impressive. I'm not sure I would seek this out, but I'm very glad to have tried it, as it's unlike anything else I've ever had.



Cheers!!!!!

 

Greetings all,
Beautiful day here after a frosty start. The dogs take it easy on me while things settle back to a normal routine. I saw an unusual amount of different raptor species today....four different hawks and falcons. My wife is recuperating from her surgery nicely. Back and neck surgery is scary stuff! Damn, I do love these woods!
Here are some of the jewels sent by @kemoarps as part of the BIF fun.
Bale Breaker Top Cutter IPA is a beautifully golden with a rich white meringue head. Almost a menthol nose that follows in flavor. A balanced IPA with hop additions that are unique to me This is an extremely drinkable and tasty IPA that I would keep on hand regularly if I could. Nice!



This is the Bale Breaker Field 41 Pale Ale. Delicate, soft mouth feel with surprisingly vibrant hop aromatics. This is a deeply pleasing beer that I would love to share with my best friends often. Perfectly hits the mark of flavor and drinkiness. This is a fun and excellent beer!




Fremont Interurban IPA has a deep golden glow, rich white head, and great aromatics. The tiny bead of carbonation allows the nose to evolve from fresh citrus to a strong range of west coast hops. Another Washington brew that would be an everyday choice for me. I really love these highly drinkable Washington ales!





Let's Active and Chris Stamey, Dbs) are local musicians (Winston-Salem) from back in the 70s and 80s. Mitch Easter, Chris Stamey, Don Dixon, and Peter Holsapple were all active in the formative sound of an era that persists. Mitch Easter produced much of REM's work. I saw these folks many times and the memories are strong. Cheers!

 

Well hello everyone! I'll just get this out there right now - here's what I am enjoying thanks to @cavedave






And as a thanks to him, here's a some music that based on his avatar, I think he'd enjoy!




So today is a piss por sports day, as all we have to choose from are two all start games. Not my kind of viewing. Sounds like a day to clean house, and listen to great tunes. For instance,



Now then, let's just hope that those two clips uploaded because if not, well, I give up!!

 

So for my first post in NBS today, I'm reaching into my BIF box from @JNForsyth!

So I love stouts, and coffee stouts in particular, so it's only appropriate to begin with Sunny Side UP from pizza boy (In the coffee mug of course).



And the review:

Pours a dark black (like coffee haha), and a nice thin tan head that dissipates quickly.

The smell, oh boy, fresh roasted coffee beans. Some vanilla intermingles, with a nice raostiness. Slight bitter chocolate. Basically everything that I want in a good stout.

Taste follows the nose fairly closely. Great coffee flavor with a slight bitterness on the front. Mellows into a nice rich chocolatey, creamy taste (think coffee with some cream), also a nice surprising bitter bakers chocolate on the finish with a good roasty quality.

Mouthfeel is fairly heavy, but not over the top. Nice, rich, and creamy.

Overall this is a great stout. Nothing over the top, but just extremely well made. Easily a top three coffee stout for me (FBS, and four fathers Wheelhouse are the others).

Looking forward to more from the box! I drank the Double Duckpin already (whoops, it was fresh and I was weak) and also one of the nugget nectars...( I was bad) but I do have another Nugget Nectar, so it will make an appearance. Also, I broke out the crowler (So excited by that).

Here is the pic and review of that:


Pizza Boy Grapefruit In Ur IPA

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18316/97371/?ba=BigRedDog

 

Keeping with the NBS BIF theme with my second beer from Bent Paddle. Really enjoying their Venture Pils, second solid beer from them in an underrated and I feel under represented style.

4.04/5 rDev +5.2%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4

Big thanks to Stillyman11
12 oz can poured into a slender pint glass

A- A clear golden color with a two finger white head.

S- Grainy, light fruits, slightly spicy, floral hops.

T- Follows the nose, grainy, light fruits, floral hops, slightly spicy, good balance.

M- Smooth, crisp, light body.

O- A nice Pilsner with good balance. An enjoyable, easy to drink beer. Worth trying if you enjoy Pilsners.


Have to again give a big thanks to @Stillyman11 for these great beers, cheers!

 

Yeah, I wish they had more of a selection in bottles, but this was the closest they had to one of their "flagships". When I had it at the brewery, the cognac came through pretty strong initially with a strength and fruitiness I wasn't expecting, but grew a tad on me. The Alewerks from last week was definitely the better of the stouts, but I wanted to give a representation of the area, as well.

 

What a Haul from MN !!

 

Wow, I must've either missed you by a matter of minutes, or seen you there. I was there around 1 to grab a bottle of Radio Action. Got a small pour as well.

 

It's better now that it's warmed up a bit, I'm enjoying it as I sip slowly.

This is a perfect beer for our BIF, though, as this is new to me on so many levels. It basically has me at a loss for words.

And for once I'm saving an empty bottle, something I never do. This one's just too cool to toss.

 

I was definitely there sitting at the window at one o'clock. We'll have to meet up sometime. Cheers!

 

If you enjoyed the book, the movie is worth the time even though not an outstanding movie. Robert Duval plays Fred.

The opera is on CD and if interested you might be able to find a copy on ebay.