New Beer Sunday (week 522)

Well Greeting NBSer's (and still "Happy Anniversary!?!) < me thinks.

Thanks to @cavedave for firing up the old (has it really been 10 years?) thread.

It's a bit chilly here in So Cal. (By our wimpy standards) If we get a sprinkle today, they might even blare out, "Storm Watch!" on the local news.
Spent most of Saturday in the classroom getting caught up on cleaning, grading, paperwork, etc. My poor kids had to come along, but they were troopers. And my wife was so awesome to help/wrangle the chllun. So, today I am doing a whole lot of NOTHING! Except I'll start with a beer...

Maximum Respect & Gratitude to @WesMantooth again!!!
I'm still milking his generosity from our first NBS BIF.

Dark Apparition RIS from Jackie O’s of Athens, OHIO.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1432/45764/

Pours a deep mahogany, deep and dark. Apt name. Foam builds to 2 fingers, dense and tan. Dissipates to an even loosely packed thin froth after a few minutes.

Smell starts with hints of roast, cocoa powder, earthiness, and maybe dried fruit.

Initially the taste brings forth a subtle roast, earthy peat, dried cocoa powder, and a hint of boozy warmth. Reminds me of many of the RIS’s I had years ago before breweries started getting creative with barrel aging. Straight ahead with roast, peat, and sweet taking a back seat. But this one is complex. There is a creaminess to this one.

So this brings me to mouthfeel. Slightly slick, and like I said, creamy. The finish is much the same, being very consistent. Quite good, through and through.

Cheers All. Hopefully I'll be back later.

 

Synchronicity in action.

I just listened to an interview on NPR with that author on Thursday and was interested enough that I'll be checking him out next time I'm at the library and need a new book to read. Right now I'm working on a book from the Thursday Next series (a totally different kind of read from, well, most things) but I'll soon be ready for something new.

Oh, and to keep it beer related, I'm really getting interested in all this talk of Pseudo Sue. It doesn't come within miles, or even time zones of me, so no chance of actually trying it anytime soon, but at some point I suppose I'll do a trade for it.

 

Others and I have described it as a Smuttynose Durty light. It's a very light porter with more hops than usual.

 

New Berliner Weiss (mit fruit) Sunday
Greetings NBSer's,
From the frigid upper midwest. Currently -6 in my fair burg in SCMN, but a beautifully sunny day and the longer days, the bird activity and start of state HS state championships on the weekends (girls hockey finished yesterday) let me know we are pushing towards the end of winter. Nonetheless, I get a mood drop annually this time of year, but I do have this to look forward to - and I do. So thanks the @cavedave and @utopiajane for keeping the mojo going.
I forgot my camera at work so no photo's. Today I imbibe in a nice tart beer with a little funk aged on some cherries, which have mostly, but not completely faded. I like it.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/417/130087/?ba=garymuchow
Now for another one hit wonder but this time attached to some of the horrible animation that was subjected on the youth of my era. My gawd we've come a long way, and in this case, for the better.

Best to all this week and every week.

 

Personally, I blame @Roguer .

A heatwave has hit here in DC area! I am glad I shoveled about midway through the day yesterday so my snow this AM wasn't quite as heavy - mine only had about 3 Y's in it. Watching Caps try to come back on one of those damn teams from PA (and AS I typed this, Ward ties it up!!). Enjoying two "local" beers this afternoon (sharing them with my girlfriend as always). On the left is the last BIF beer from @strohme2 (thanks again for a lovely box of Michigan beer!!), Shorts Lil' Weezy; the other is from Lost Rhino, a sour beer made from local ingredients (their Genius Loci series), called Exesus Sanctum.



The Lost Rhino is a sour peach beer (no Virginia pumpkins, it appears), and I am actually mildly impressed with this attempt. The beer has a decent amount of tartness, little on the lemon versus sour milk side. The peaches don't come through with a lot of strength, but can be detected.

Apparently both these beers are bottle conditioned, as the remaining pours have significant additional cloudiness:


The Lil' Wheezy is a "heavily hopped amber ale". I must admit I misread this one, I was thinking it was a Wee Heavy. I smelled the hops as it got halfway to my nose, so I was still thinking like an Arrogant Bastard type of beer. Truthfully, it's a LOT more like an IPA, even moreso than Nugget Nectar. I recently had a Starr Hill Reviver that this also reminds me of, although I believe this might be better. It's west coast in nature, piney hops dominating the malts. Pleasant surprise, to be sure.

Okay, done name-dropping other beers. time to enjoy and prepare for the third period. Cheers!

 

Well fellow NBSers here is my attempt to review one of the more complex beers that I have had. Thanks goes to Greg yet again for this one...my liver didn't appreciate the 3 BIF boxes from you, but I sure as hell did!


This one pours a murky dark red color with about a finger head. The head fades away pretty quickly and leaves a nice lacing around the glass. The smell is really hard to describe. It doesn't quite smell like any beer I've had before. It definitely smells like a barleywine, but just slightly different. I get hints of bourbon, malt, and a sour grape type of smell. As far as the taste, I get bourbon, oak, grapes, spicy malt, vanilla, caramel, and dark fruit flavors. When I first tasted this I had no idea what was going on in this beer, but now that I've drank half of it I'm really getting used to the taste and liking it more and more. The feel of this beer to me is a fairly easy drinking yet quite sweet and complex beer. The alcohol is hidden pretty well, but this is definitely one of the bigger barleywines that I have tried. Overall I really like this beer but I would have to be in a certain type of mood to drink it. This is certainly not for the faint of heart!

4.27/5 rDev +2.9%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

Cheers!

 

So I thought I'd try this one for a New Beer Sunday. Lazy day ahead of me after some bogus crusty snow shoveling.

Well, I love Stone's barley wines and I was psyched that the odd release was Extra Hoppy this year. Starts promising with a big fluffy head and a lovely amber color. Right away I have some trouble with the aroma. Not much I can identify but it's pleasing just the same. Definitely get some citrus hops with a slight alcohol burn. Real clean taste but not that complex. Overall I like it just like I normally do with Stone beers. Not my favorite but not bad.

 

I'm a huge fan of tripels, so I love coming across new ones to try. This bad boy is Sterkens St. Sebastiaan Golden, which comes in a boss stoneware pint jug with a resealable flip-top. Practical? Maybe not, but awesome.

I feel like tripels typically fall into one of two categories: fruity with notes of pear and apple, and malty with tons of sweetness and maybe some candy character. This one definitely falls into the latter, with lots of butterscotch in the aroma (don't get that one too often) and a more traditional malty sweetness in the body.

Frankly, I think it would benefit from a little more complexity, but in general I quite like it. There are better tripels out there, but I'm glad I've tried this one. My overall score was 3.77, a little below average for this beer.

 

Initially didn't plan drinking this tonight but oh well. Here goes, St. Louis Peche by Castle Brewery van Honsebrouck.



Pours a slightly dark, quite clear orange with a quickly dissipating ~2 finger head (the pictures is already after a few sips). The smell is very sweet with a backbone of fruity tartness and a slight hint of sourness. As for the taste, the sweetness is much less pronounced (or at least, very well balanced), the fruit becomes more pronounced (with 30% peaches in this) and towards the end you get the sourness which is more strongly pronounced than you'd expect from the smell. The mouthfeel is definitely very light, as you'd expect from a beer of this type with 2,6% ABV.

Overall, I'd say I dig it. I honestly don't know whether I think this is an adequate entry into the realm of lambic, it may or may not be depending on how well someone handles sourness. I'd say this would be a really good refresher to let a summer end on a good note and it would be easy to drink some higher quantities without issue with an ABV that low.

 

You are most welcome! And thanks for all of the feedback- I really enjoyed reading your takes on these beers. Cheers!

 

Good afternoon BAs! Just got off the phone with my brother in Anchorage, AK. The Iditarod was moved to Fairbanks and they had to bring in snow for the Iron dog race yesterday. Those of us here in the NE have some they could have, cheap.

Todays brew is another from my last trip to TX - Vintage Monks 2013 from Adelbert's, a red wine barrel aged Belgium dubbel. http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/27934/104926/?ba=Ozzylizard



Can't say that I'm a fan of using red wine barrels to age beer.

 

I too have rather mixed feelings about that, and it's more negative than positive.

 

Upland - Teddy Bear Kisses
RIS aged on cacao nibs, 10% abv, 80 ibu



A- Pours nearly black, a little brown around the edges, from a pretty solid pour you can see it produced almost no head. Looked a bit runny coming out of the bottle as well. 3.75

S- Rich chocolate up front. Perhaps a little roasty coffee smell, not much. No trace of the 10% in the nose. 4

T- Surprisingly hoppy/bitter for a stout of this nature. I do get chocolate, but not nearly as much as in the nose. Roasted malts. I'm finding it hard to get over the hop bitterness/spiciness. It's not an alcohol spiciness, though. That 10% is still nowhere to be found. 3.75

M- My least favorite part of this beer, no thickness at all. Has the same consistency as Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Stout. (yuck) It has a little more carbonation than the pour would lead on, but still not much. Though it is a very thin mouthfeel, it is still rather sticky. 3.5

O- 3.75

I'm a little disappointed, I had hoped for this beer to be much better when i picked it up, glad I only bought a single. I'm not too suprised though, i haven't really liked any of the Upland brews i have tried, but i'm always down to support something local. This is still an improvement on the Uplands i've had in the past, so hopefully they can continue to improve.

 

Ballast Point Habanero Sculpin
For the most part I don't like beers with added flavors but picked up a single bottle for $3.00 anyway. This seems like a nice IPA until you get to the aftertaste. There s a Habanero burn of an aftertaste that stays in your mouth for a long time. Way to long IMO. A hint of Habanero could be nice in an IPA I guess but here it overpowers the beer. That is the problem I have with most flavored beers. The added flavors don't enhance the beer. They overpower it. Anyway I'm going to have a Nooner and kill this burn in my mouth.

 

Hello to you all. Cold, overcast day here in central OK. Had a little dusting of snow/sleet overnight, nothing major. My new beer is called Count Pedro, from the Anthem Brewing Co, located here in Oklahoma City. It is a Belgian-style Strong Dark Ale, 8.2% abv, aged for 10 months in tequila barrels with Habanero peppers. Poured into a tulip, the color is beige with a nice head that settles down pretty thin. Aroma is lemony. First taste is peppers! In a good way, hot but not unbearable. Lots of good lacing. Getting just a little nice tequila flavor, reminds me of my Two Fingers with lemon and salt days... Very well-made. I'm getting more tequila and habanero as it warms. I think I like this beer.

 

No, usually I just exchange all my money for coins, put them into a treasure box, get my Jack Sparrow on, open the treasure box and start throwing coins towards the direction of whomever I'm paying while spouting pirate slang!

 

Happy NBS to all! I'm enjoying my last NBS BIF beer today from @cavedave

Idletyme India Pale Ale!

Very tasty. First off, appearance was spot on with a nice frothy bone white head atop a slightly hazy amber. Nose piney and a touch floral with a taste that closely followed save for a touch of tartness.

What a way to wrap up the BIF beers - everything was excellent and very much appreciated!

 

When I'm feeling edgy I may also go off on tangent and explain to whomever I just threw money at that pirates pay in an asymptotic fashion.

Okay, I'll stop - wouldn't want to deviate from this thread too much. Back to the origin.