New Beer Sunday (week 550)

Good evening NBS, hope everyone is enjoying the middle of the weekend this time. Thanks to @utopiajane for getting us rolling along today. I brewed a rye IPA early this morning, but my post was merged with the old thread so a lot of people never saw it, so here it is again: Equinox/Zythos with Warrior for bittering. Nothing but Briess pale and rye with a teeny bit of crystal. This will finally be my 4th keg to make my kegerator fully loaded. Fun fact: I use 50% RO water and I needed 5ml lactic acid to get my pH in range. Michigan ground water is pretty bad. lol. I am using 4g gypsum to get my sulfates just over double ppm of chloride ions as usual for my IPAs. Odd thing is that I had a choice between Weyermann and Briess rye, and they are vastly different in character. Maybe they kiln it differently. Not sure. Also cool thing I learned today was I rehydrated my yeast wrong forever(I rarely use dry though). I knew about the 86F rest in water, but I was using too much. Only supposed to use 10x it's weight in liquit: 115g = about four ounces. So I did that and let it sit and I was left with a super creamy slurry in the bottom of my sanitized pickle jar where I did it. I started getting a little bit of activity faster than I expected so I had to cold crash it harder. I used English ale yeast for the first time in an IPA, as I have always been loving Laguntas and they do the same thing.

https://www.brewtoad.com/recipes/equinox-zythos-rye-ipa



Here are today's new beers!

This was a nice Belgian dark ale. This had good clarity, a very deep reddish brown color, almost noticable in the photo. Aromas and flavors of plum, cherry, pear, apple, caramel, honey, brown sugar, toasted biscuit, nuttiness, peppercorn, light chocolate, herbal, and yeast earthiness. Moderate amount of earthy/peppery yeast spice on the finish; with a smooth and fairly crisp mouthfeel with light creaminess. Light-moderate dryness after the finish. Aromas were pretty bold on complexity and strength of both malt and yeast notes with the honey/pear additions to the beer. The taste was not as robust and felt a touch watered down, but still very tasty. Not idea on the age of the bottle, but increased melanoidin notes were definitely all there. Finely packed cake on the bottom of the bottle too. 3.7


This is a very nice smoked red ale! Aromas and flavors of wood smoke, bacon, caramel, toffee, brown sugar, toasted biscuit, nuttiness, light chocolate, and herbal/light peppery hops. Light-moderate herbal/spicy balancing bitterness on the finish. Very smooth with moderate bready creaminess and light hop stickiness in the mouth feel. A bit of English house yeast earthiness is in there as well, but it is restrained and non-interfering with the base character of the beer. Aromas were a bit muted, but the flavors were just so robust. This is was just plain delicious. Great malty red ale base beer with nice balanced wood smoke/bacon character that's not overdone at all. The red ale flavor is the definitely the main showcase. I wasn't sure what to expect from the level of smoke/bacon, but I am glad how it turned out. Very enjoyable! 3.88


This was all around excellence. Aromas and flavors of big grapefruit, tangerine, peach, pineapple, mango, melon, berry, lemon zest, orange peel, citrus rind, pine, light caramel, toasted bread, light roast, and herbal/floral/grassy hop earthiness. Large sized pine/citrus rind bitter finish; with a great sticky/resin mouthfeel with no hop astringency after the finish. Very juicy and piney hops with nice malt support without too much actual sweetness or increased body. Honestly the color confused me a bit at first, but after seeing it was roasted barley, it all made sense. Completely delicious. 4.1


Cheers! Have a good night NBS!

 

Thanks! NBS is a lot of fun with the beer reviews and the little slices of BA's lives. Always insightful.

I watched this thread for years before jumping in and I guess I'll be here as long as I have a new beer handy. No promises on the quality of the post though. Pretty much depends on whatever silliness is knocking around in my head. It's a daily crap shoot.

 

Love her illustration!!

 

Back for one last beer as I bought these on Friday as a new arrival and wanted to drink them fresh. Truth be told I had one on Friday and another now for the review. It's Hesperidium IPA from regional brewery St. John Malt Brothers. There is no date on the can or abv. on the label. The clerk said it was new and selling briskly. At under 10 bucks a four pack for tall boys, why not? Let's give it a try!

It pours a really flat uninteresting dark orange with little foam or apparent carbonation. The aroma is pine, orange zest and caramel malt. It's flavor is mild grapefruit and lime with a caramel malt finish. The feel is super flat and a bit acidic.



My two cents? The label states it's a killer Citra IPA and dares me to find better. That's a pretty bold statement. This beer fails on all levels to back that up. Not quite a drain pour, but it reminds me of mediocre home brew at best. There are many better in the region that I'll stick to. I'll pass my remaining cans on to friends for their opinion. Final score 3.35.

Have a great week gang, let's do it again next week. Link to review below.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/40933/186733/?ba=Prager62

 

just got back from the distributor with

 

and my buddy got me this from Chi town

 

Good evening NBSers, I hope everyone is enjoying this weekend more than I. It's been a stressful, prolonged test of my patience. Fortunately, tomorrow I get to go back to work. Yeah, it's been one of those. On the up side, I have a new brew to test run on this Sunday - a pumpkin beer of sorts. I've heard good things about this one, but upon looking at its rating I'm not so sure. Only one way to find out, right?

New Belgium Pumpkick


Originally containted in a 12 oz. bottle. Served at 48 degrees F in a 3 Floyds pint glass. Pours a moderate/deep amber and settles a very clear, deep orange-red in the glass. Outstanding carbonation. Initially 1/2 a finger of white foam; this dwindled down into a dense lacing after about a minute. Pumpkin spice, vanilla, ginger, hazlenut, and cream on the nose. Reminds me of pumpkin pie batter prior to baking. Not strong, but definitely present. I would've liked to've seen a huge, engulfing pumpkin aroma on this beer. Still plesasnt as-is, albeit a bit weak. Medium weight with a carbonated, yet relatively creamy mouthfeel. Pumpkin and baking spices up front with a type of pie crust middle. I got a decent amount of wheat on the back end in addition to the pumpkin flavoring, which at this point, takes a turn for the organic. What I mean by that is, the taste retrogrades from 'semi-baked pumpkin pie' to, 'raw pumpkin squash'. Upon experiencing a carbonated, bubbly finish, I'm left with a watered-down raw pumpkin aftertaste. Not...bad..but not really good, either.

This is the first pumpkin beer I've had, so take it with a grain of salt if you must. But for me, the initial taste was the best part of this beer. Sweet pumpkin pie & crust. But unfortunately, if was downhill from there. This beer went from Thanksgiving dinner desert to Halloween carvings' remnants real quick.

look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3.5 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.5

3.59/5 (+3.5% rDev)

Turns out this one is meh. I think I'm on the positive side of the pumpkin beer debate, though. It has potential, just falls a bit short where it counts. Oh well, on to the next one.

 

Friends,

So this is a bit later than usual but what the hey, that's not a reason to not post . So in the spirit of my last two posts here Oliver the puppy is growing fast. I joke with everyone that's ask how he is and simply say "He's a wild man. He pretty much does what he wants, when he wants, including biting my ankles."

Here he is (the other day) testing the durability of my beer bucket.



This is him just a few hours ago after spending the day wrestling with his cousins...just being himself.



He's the best looking puppy ever.

He's definitely kept me busy. He's started chewing on everything he shouldn't be, but has been not peeing on the floors so much. So it s a bit of a trade off for sure. He's napping now so it's definitely time for a beer.



I received this as an extra in a trade this week and was pumped to give it a whirl. Needless to say its awesome!

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/29021/133560/?ba=zoober911

Until next Sunday everyone! Take care, and be wild!

 

A beautiful pup indeed. Cheers!

 

Yes, Oro de Calabaza definitely has a lot of Belgian saison flavor ... in fact, if they called it a farmhouse ale, I'd buy it. It's quite tart and earthy/musty. Really good but maybe not an authentic bier de garde, huh? I'll keep studying.

Fantastic pic! Simple but cool ...

My turkey tacos are indeed epic ... and so was my session early this morning after getting off work:


5 empty bottles of beer is 1 over my limit but cooking tacos can be hard work, and a thirst should be quenched, no?

Love seeing some of the different Octoberfests along with the varying opinions about Sierra Nevada's version this year. The style is growing on me this season ... but enough rambling ... back to checking out y'all's good work.

 

@WesMantooth and @jzellinger immortalized on BA...again. But this has got to be the most worthy (funny) and creatively inspired honor. My wife is cracking up too.

 

What a great album! Haven't listened to it for a couple of weeks.

 

Another great post, sketch, story, and review! Cheers Jim!

 

Man, Tony Stewart just flat-out sucks

This doesn't:

Jolly Pumpkin's farmhouse wheat beer is classic musty barn sour with some of the fruitiest sweetest back-end flavors I've run across. I don't know if its the wheat or what, but I can taste orange, peach and green grapes after getting through that big sour taste up front. Really good with perhaps more sour and less farmhouse barn/earth flavor compared to a standard Jester King offering. But there's a lot of musty barn/oak in the nose and on the palate.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/9897/44048/?ba=Premo88
4.36
(+7.7% rDev)

Cheers!

 

Wasatch: Raspberry Wheat


3.08/5 rDev -6.1%
look: 3.25 | smell: 3.25 | taste: 3 | feel: 3 | overall: 3

Not allot to say, this is pretty straight forward a wheat base with raspberry flavoring. Not much to look at, smell, or taste. The raspberry is about all that saves this beer from completely falling off a cliff.

 

Nice review man. Thanks!

 

Randomly felt like having another beer -- so here goes the last new-to-me beer from what's left of the fall New Belgium variety pack:


I've seen this one around many times before, but for some odd reason I've never actually tried it before now. That's one of the great things about variety packs, being able to try a bunch of new beers without buying a six-pack of each (especially helpful in the case of beers that don't get distributed to where you are on their own, or ones that don't come in six-packs at all.)

It's a nice shiny golden color, seems to be at least mostly clear, with lots of tiny little bubbles rising up from the bottom of the glass constantly. A pretty nice layer of fluffy white foam on top, though at this point it's shrunken down a bit (still a decent coating over the surface of the beer with a thicker ring around the sides, though.) Seems like this one's going to be leaving a lot of trails behind along the outside of the glass as it goes, as I've already got a layer of foam sticking to the glass almost up to where the head was when I first poured.

Smell is very yeasty, bready, maybe a little bit of a banana-like thing in there. Taste is similar -- sweet and banana-y right away on the first sip, and then the sweetness fades and is replaced with a dry breadiness. Doesn't seem to have hardly any lingering aftertaste at all, maybe the faintest bit of breadiness. Burps are already really banana-y after just one sip, though. On the second drink, I'm getting a bit more sweetness, shifting toward sort of a bubblegum/candy-like thing almost rather than more banana-like. Still fades pretty quickly to the dry bready flavor after the initial burst of sweet and almost-fruity flavors, though. Third sip is where another flavor that I suspect may be the coriander has decided to make its presence known -- there was a definite little bit of spice in there that stood out among the sweeter flavors this time. Similar to the spicy flavors I've gotten from Blue Moon in the past, which is why I'm figuring that was probably coriander... I don't think I've ever had coriander on its own before as far as I'm aware, so it'd be difficult to identify for sure, but a similar spice flavor popping up in two beers that say right on the label that they're brewed with coriander makes me think that's probably what it is. Yeah, at the halfway point of the glass now and the order the flavors seem to be coming in is yeasty banana and sweetness the moment the beer reaches my tongue --> coriander/spice --> more sweetness and bubblegum --> dry bread that makes the others vanish the moment I swallow it. Really interesting combination of flavors going on there. There's some similarities to their Abbey dubbel, but also a lot different -- that one had more of a dark bread kind of thing going on vs. just the dry breadiness at the end in the Trippel, I didn't pick up any of the spiciness in that one, and the bubblegum-like flavor was more of an occasional thing and came across as tropical-fruit-flavored gum more than the sweet "pink flavored" gum that I'm getting in this one. And -- well, that's an interesting development; at around 2/3 down the glass, I'm starting to pick up just a little of the spice flavor on the end along with the dry breadiness now.

Mouthfeel is very nice, too. Soft and bubbly to start off and then a little sweet and sticky in the middle and then dry at the end. Goes along very well with the flavors, and makes it easy to drink while also being easy to slow down on a little if you want it to last a little longer. The soft-and-bubbly feel gives way to just a tiny bit of prickliness as the layer of foam on top finally starts to shrink away entirely, but that doesn't happen until the glass is almost empty. On top of that, this is pushing 8% ABV but there's no sign of alcohol warming or any flavor I would associate with an "alcohol taste" whatsoever (going by the one I've had prior to this and comments I've seen posted about others I haven't tried, I'm guessing that's a common trait of tripels as a style -- high alcohol, but you wouldn't be able to guess it.)

Overall: this is a great beer, and definitely makes up for the disappointment of the other new beer I had today. Does not quite make up for the extra $4.96 plus tax that I was charged by Wal-Mart when the cashier accidentally rung up two boxes of frozen fish fillets when I only actually bought one, but it does make it a lot easier to forget about that for the night and worry about it tomorrow when I'll be heading back over there to get my money back (...I certainly can't drive back over there now, right after drinking a 7.8% ABV beer, after all. XD) Yeah, I am definitely feeling a lot better now than when I first got home and thought of having another beer. Seems like that happens just about every time I have anything Belgian-style... or doppelbocks. Well, now I know what sorts of beer to look for as a celebration thing when I end up finding another job. XD

 

Post of the YEAR right there in classic M J style!!! I so would have loved to be a fly on the wall right then and there as you BS'd your way through that string of questions!! L-M-B-O!!!!!!!!

 

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