New Beer Sunday (week 538)

Nice. A few lines that tell a story is all you need do man, welcome to NBS. I sooooooooooooo love that beer, your description brought it all back. It isn't exactly underrated or under the radar, but for the quality it has it gets less respect than it deserves. Cheers!

 

Deschutes Pine Mountain Pilsner -- nice hoppy pils.

 

Mmmm...Drake's.

 

Jever Pilsner on tap
This is a real nice Pilsner beautiful golden color , thick head ,grassy aroma, good body and a great hoppy dry finish.

 

Allagash Midnight Brett
Bottled: 6/16/14, Drinking this with a year on it.
Continuing on with my Brett theme for sundays this summer, i got one i've been waiting for awhile to dig into.
Allagash Midnight Brett, im not anywhere near the most experienced person when it comes to wild ales, so im
just trying to expand my horizons.
Appearance- Looks like midnight (duh), deep purple black with ruby-brown hues when held to light. Nice medium khaki
colored head, bout finger thick w/ decent head retention.
Aroma- Tart, sour berries, little bit of that acidic vinegar aroma, more mild sour apples. Real grapy smelling, like
sweet grape jelly-like.
Taste- Really beautiful sour fruits, berries, cherries, just a real pleasent tartness, nothing over bearing. I was
very skeptical of the proclaimed "roastiness" in this beer, but i do get it on the back end. Its just nice and mild
w/ a little bit of a chocolatey aspect there too. Wonderful sweet grape kind of balances the tartness for me. A
little bit of earthy yeast like flavors throughout, fruity esters.
Mouthfeel- Pretty effervescent, but also rather smooth and slightly creamy like. Id say its a medium type mouthfeel.
Overall- Blown away at how balanced, flavorful, and just generally awesome this is. These 375ml special bottles
from Allagash are pretty pricey (~13-14 for 12.7oz), but for me its worth it if its THIS good. The tart fruits and
mild sweetness are in perfect balance, and then the slight roastiness just adds more to the beer. Sometimes i just get swamped in the acidic vinegar like sour stuff, but this is just perfectly balanced for me.
I bought Mattina Rossa the other day, again, hefty price tag....but now am i so glad i did. Lets just say i wont
have the patience to age that one.
Well done Allagash.
Cheers everyone and have a great day.

 

I'm thinking that needs to go into my "Wants."

 

A local liquor store had five cases out in the open collecting dust last time I shopped there. I bought what I could afford at the time, but man ... I REALLY wanted to grab a full case.

Work got a bit silly at the end late last night/early this morning, so I missed out trying to get WBAYDN #966 to 20 pages. Dammit!

But I'm here now and with a new beer:



Real Ale's Red King is part of new three-beer line of bigger bomber-only brews they started selling this spring (wee heavy, Russian imperial stout, imperial red ale). The wee heavy was nice -- nice enough that I'll buy another bomber here soon. I've yet to try to the Russian imperial stout, but the grocery store that has it is doing an excellent job of storing and aging it for me, so I'll try it soon enough.

Today is my first time with the "imperial" red ale, and it's about what I expected, which is to say it's a decent Arrogant Bastard knockoff. Lots of bitter pine with some caramel sweetness for balancing. There's hints of other flavors, including mango, orange, grapefruit and perhaps even molasses. But the pine and caramel dominate.

I liked the wee heavy much more, but Red King is worth the $5.99 for one go around anyway.

The review:
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/458/164293/?ba=Premo88
3.82 (+1.3% rDev)

I wouldn't mind trying Red King side-by-side with Arrogant Bastard just for fun. Memory tells me I prefer Arrogant Bastard and it's bigger pine bite, but vacation is on the horizon and there will be time for a couple three side-by-sides.

When I did finally get home early this morning, check out who was waiting to greet me on my porch:




Poor little birdie ... he wouldn't move, just watched me closely. I was worried the bougainvillea's thorns had got him, but he was gone this morning, so hopefully he made it home.

Cheers!

 

I saw the great and powerful Floyd the same tour (Division Bell ?)you did. Death Valley stadium, Clemson, SC 1994. Fifth row, dead center. We had no idea how good our seats were until we got there. Both I and my three friends were both amazed and giddy as schoolboys when the ushers kept walking us closer and closer to the stage. They opened with Astronomy Domine, and to hear 80,000+ people cheer and scream all at once was both terrifying and fantastic. An epic show by a truly epic band.

 

I was at B.C. Place (I think it has a corporate name now), Vancouver, Canuckia. Massive shitshow crossing the border at Blaine - the border guards were pretty much overwhelmed. My friends and I could have been smuggling just about anything Canadians could want, and no one would have checked. I had a partially obstructed view on one side of the stage. We could only see portions of the video screen, but it was actually a good vantage point to watch Gilmour play.

 

OOOO KAYYYY, here we go, 1st post on NBS!

One caveat before we begin:

I don't have a camera OR camera phone. As much as I'd love to post some sexy beer **** on here, I just can't. Someday...

Alrighty, trying Victory Sour Monkey for the first time today. After a few eye-opening Berliner Weiss evenings & a helpful share of Bruery Sour In The Rye, I think I've made up my mind that sours are a good thing :-)

I've been enjoying this brew since about 1:30ish & feel like I've reached as much of a final conclusion as I can for the time being. I like it OK.

Some BA review stuff:

A: 3.5, S: 3.75, T: 4, M: 4, O: 4, BA Says: 3.91

750ml into a wine glass.

A: Underwhelming, clear straw-gold with 1/2" of bone-white head that sits down quickly. Retention is OK, lacing actually isn't bad.

S: Mostly brett-funk & some lactic sourness. A skootch of candied fruit. I do get some Belgian-style yeastiness underneath everything, but the brute-force tang kind of owns the nose.

T: Pleasantly tart, with apple & pear notes. Citrus, mostly lemon/lime come through toward the back-end of the palate, which I like. Less of a yeasty quality here, more of a cereal note defines the non-tangy aspects. Cedar is in there somewhere. ABV is very well-hidden. Overall sourness is maybe just a bit underwhelming.

M: Bigger (maltier) than the sours that I'm used to. This is, for me, the most 'Belgian' aspect of this brew.

O: The brett really does the heavy-lifting here to keep me on board. This reads as basically a mild but pure sour, I barely get any trace of its tripel roots & that's OK. I'd like more tang through the finish, honestly I'd take more tang throughout. Victory was clearly going for a hybrid here, but I'm not sure Golden Monkey was the best base for them to try & sour-ize.

OK:

Basically the more I drink this brew, the less like a sour it seems to be. But also, It almost never reads like a tripel. I'm at a bit of a loss to really lump it into one category or the other.

Having said that, I really kinda like it. As much as I apparently like burly sours, I can respect how tapered-back this is. In fact, if I wanted to describe this brew in a word, 'mellow' comes to mind.

So, for fun:

I've been listening to Blind Melons 'Soup' (Galaxie, Skinned & St. Andrew's Fall are three of the best songs I can think of period), followed by '1984' by Van Halen (it's just a living classic).

Well, so concludes my inaugural NBS post! Drink on BA's! Have a great Sunday & Flag Day!

 

Sorry to be tardy to the party, adorers of Alt and proponents of pilsners, but I’m on West Coast time, and on a much undeserved vacation and change of scenery here in Tacoma, WA. It’s a crisp, clear 69 degrees over here, and sunny. I’m nestled in my king suite with the A/C cranked but the shades open. I just returned from Tacoma Boys with 10 single bottles of offerings up and down the coast, plus from the near east and far east, not to mention Africa. Next trip might focus on truly local brews, but until then… on with the show from your favorite NWNJ Cicerone-to-be…

On the docket: Harmon Brewing’s Stryker Stout (22 oz.)

Poured into a hotel bar’s pint glass

Sight: Opaque black with a touch of red highlights. A big, thick, tan head sits on top, reminding me of an iced-coffee frappe. The head recedes to a thin cap, and the lacing it leaves behind is erratic- I’ll chalk it up to the glass, and not the beer.

Aroma: Chocolate, coffee, roasted barley, malt sweetness. There’s a distinct but subtle brightness from the hops. Citrus?

Taste: The taste follows the aroma closely. Roasted coffee and chocolate notes, a bit of malty sweetness. The middle boasts bitterness, with more roasted barley. It finishes with the hops, still subtle and citrusy.

Feel: Gentle carbonation, silky smooth, plus a medium thickness. Some might say this is a little thin for the style, but it’s easy to drink.

Overall: This hides the 7.5 abv quite well, and Harmon provides a good offering with their stout. Can’t wait to see what else Tacoma has to offer, but I’m off to a good start. The price might have helped my choice.

Music pairing: Considering I’m only a few miles from here it all began and the task I have of trying as much new beer in WA as I can…

Soundgarden: Burden In My Hand

 

Don't joke- I'll report back to you on the beer situation in the hospitality tent (my wife works for the USGA supporting Mike Davis). As for seeing me? Blond, blues eyes, pale skin, dashing goatee. Most likely in gold shirts and green sunglasses, and a beer in my hand. I hope that's enough description for all you stalkers out there. Maybe I like the attention.

 

Hola, New Beer Sunday! I was super shocked and excited to see some de Garde at my local grocery store today! So my new beer this Sunday is de Garde Bu Weisse.

I like a good Berliner weisse and this beer is no disappointment. The aroma is mild but just hints at the massive tartness to come. There's nothing off or anything about this beer -- it's amazingly refreshing and delightful. I can't wait to see what other varieties get distributed up here.

I gave this beer a 4.15, which is spot-on average.

 

Hello, NBS people. I have reached the portion of my Sunday where I can relax and try a new beer. Today' s new beer is Spank, from Smuttynose, called such because they claim it is a "butt-smackingly delicious hoppy saison ale." Bold words, but I think they at least got close. Ok, so it pours nicely into my Carton Teku glass. Orange color, carbonated, medium head. The aroma is somewhat yeasty with that farmhouse funk, but also a bit of a whiff of oranges. The taste is a pretty nice balance of the same. I get the Belgian yeast but subdued, and this is a little, not a lot, hoppy and fruity, mostly orange or tangerine. It's kind of a saison/IPA hybrid and a good one. Very refreshing, not too thin and for 7.8% it goes down easy on this hot Sunday in NJ. I wouldn't mind this one in 12oz cans. Hope you're all having a relaxing Sunday!

 

ROFL on the YMCA picture.

 

Are you sure they shouldn't have called it Spunk? I mean... the Homunculus picture... well, you know what I'm driving at.

 

One of my favorite saisons. Thanks for reminding me that I should get some now that it's hot again.

 

I contemplated buying their FF Peche, but I passed. I might have to go back.