New Beer Sunday (week 551)

Good evening NBS, hope everyone is enjoying the end of the weekend once again. Thanks to @cavedave for getting us rolling today. I have an Equinox/Zythos IPA ready for transfer for my dry hops soon. Will probably do it during the week so I can keg it on the weekend. I only dry hop 3-5 days. Which also means I need to go buy another keg. Need to get that figured out asap. After being fed up with this mornings thread fiasco, I drove out to Livonia and stocked up the new beer cellar to a better standing(singles were out). Getting down to the desperate stage after 3500+ beers, a good handful of less than favorable offerings according to this site, but things usually turn out better on my view. Anyways here are today's new beers!

A really damn good pale ale! The appearance was just fantastic. Head lasted forever, good clarity against a solid gold color. Lots of dense lacing on the glass. Aromas and flavors of grapefruit, lemon zest, orange peel, pine, honey, light caramel, biscuit, and floral/grassy hop earthiness. Good amount of pine/grassy bitterness on the finish; with well balanced malt/bitterness; and a smooth and moderately sticky hop mouthfeel with some light bready creaminess as well. Very smooth and drinkable. My only minor complaint was the aromas were a bit muted, but well balanced otherwise. I never had this before because I always had trouble finding fresh singles. I stumbled upon a 1/28/15 fridged bottle which I thought was fine, so I took a chance. Glad I did. A very delicious and classic tasting cascade pale ale. I know it's advertised as an IPA on this site, but it kind of straddles the line between them on the amount of bitterness and malt character balance present. So, I'd be more inclined to call it an APA. 3.94


This was a pretty good English strong ale. Aromas and flavors of caramel, toffee, brown sugar, toasted biscuit, light nuttiness, plum, pear, apple, and herbal/floral/light peppery hops. Light-moderate herbal/spicy bitterness on the finish. Well balanced malt, yeast ester, and earthy hop flavors. Body was thin; had some light buttery silky creaminess in the mouthfeel as expected from the yeast. Light-medium carbonated and very smooth drinking. It was definitely tasty and enjoyable overall. It lacks the body that I expect from an English style of this ABV, and the flavors are genuinely not all that bold as I would expect either. It had a real nice amount of overall complexity though, which matched exactly what I expected out of the flavor profile for the style. 3.48


First time I've had a Stone C&C bottle I believe. I figured I'd try now, and then try one after their date whenever I procure another one. This is all around excellent, after having all the Evil Twin Fatale series, it runs right along that character profile completely. Aromas and flavors bright lemon zest, peach, pineapple, orange peel, pear, apple, pepper, pine, hay, straw, grass, light musty funk, and light crackery malts. Nice sized pine bitter and peppery brett spicy finish; with medium-high carbonation and moderately crisp/prickly mouthfeel with some moderate hop sticky/resin lingering after the finish. Super drinkable with all around great brett and hop complexity. Delicious! 4.1


Cheers! Have a good night NBS

This was a fucking great discovery today. A progressive folk metal band out of Boston, I need to get their albums ASAP. Mixed vocals. It's like a mix of Opeth, Ensiferum, and Amorphis or something.

 

Tahoe Mountain Apricot Saison. Beautiful color and bushels of apricot on the nose along with some funk. The taste follows the nose with a bit of the wine barrel, and I quite like the relatively rich mouth feel with a dry finish. Cheers NBSers!

 

I'm a Kings fan...Speaking of the wrong climate for hockey.. Hey Yooooh

 

I'm sure those Ducks were more intesting than my local Ducks.

 

Good review. But you gotta read the one before yours...pretty funny.

 

Needed something malty to act as my NBS dessert. I was planning on a Rochestafarian (scotch ale from 3 Heads Brewing) but considering what happened earlier, the lion on label wearing a crown just didn't feel right. So, I snuck in a Two Hearted over on WBAYDN and decided to end with this one:


Something was off on the aroma, almost metallic, but it had enough toasted malt earthy hops in there to make me want to take that first drink. It sure did look good in the glass, though. The flavor is rather subtle, but it hits all the notes I hope for in a brown ale. Not too sweet, and the earthy hop flavor keeps me coming back for another sip. Not something I will get again, but I am glad to have tried it. 3.73/5

 

Happy New Beer NFL Sunday NBSers
Got to try a new beer from Singlecut Beersmiths while I watch the Giants play one of the oddest games I have seen in a while
"Does Anybody Remember Laughter IPA"

If you like your IPAs bitter, this one is for you
Here's my review http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30452/167602/?ba=SammyJaxxxx

For those BAs old enough, I obviously paired this with Stairway from The Song Remains The Same.
That lead to this Led Zeppelin cover by Chris Cornell

Hope your team won today
Unless your team is the Cowboys.

 

"Unless your team is the Cowboys" Classic!!! I concur.

 

well... here we are again and words are relied upon, for one I'm glad football is back but at the end of the day but not so happy I have $ on the line in a couple different directions... it's bad enough I have a 'favorite team'... just dropped another of my all time favorite beers Big Bad Baptist over on WBAYDN in real time today other than a lazy attempt on the morning after which garners approximately 4x the likes which denotes my 'status' here or I really would pay absolutely no attention to such a matter but beer reviews just aren't my forte... that all being said I had to drive 140 miles to find this one so what the hell... and... away... we... go...

this is what Budweiser should be in my perfect world, only thing I can take away from it is the seasonal creep, if it actually was October when it was first available, the wind was chilly with piles of every earth tone of brown dead leaves blanketing the planet in every visible direction it's beer Nirvana... the clear color is the real kicker because the taste is four steps beyond, did not try another Okto this year before I got my grubby mitts on this one, definitely worth the 'wait' in this instant gratification state of living we are all immersed in present day

cheers NBSers!

 

Well, today's been a pretty great day for me. My feet are slightly tired as I was at my new job training for around 9 or 10 hours (a little over 10 including two short breaks for meals and one 45ish minute one between the two training sessions), but I'm liking the job pretty well so far and toward the end of the day was sorta-kinda starting to get to know some of the people there -- at least on a "coworker that I'm okay with" level, though there was a bit of a conversation toward the end that leaned a bit in the "hey, I could actually be friends with this person" direction.

And even though technically it's a week early for Oktoberfest, the weather was definitely feeling pretty October-y here today, so I figure this is appropriate for my new beer of the day (and also my 100th beer tried since this time last year... or 101st if a tiny sample counts):


Yep, it's the only Oktoberfest beer I can get for under $8 a six-pack: Yuengling Oktoberfest!

First impressions are mostly good -- nice dark-coppery color, lots of bubbles rising up, pretty nice-looking packaging that seems to be in line with Summer Wheat's but with a more fall-themed brown and orange color scheme replacing the "sunny day at the beach" yellow and blue. Smell has a bit of that "hair salon" thing to it, especially at first, but it's not all that strong in this one and gives way to a much nicer toasted malt sort of smell toward the end of each sniff. Also has a pretty decent-sized layer of foam on top, especially for a Yuengling beer (comparing to their standard Lager which usually tends to have barely any head no matter how I pour it) -- and on top of that, it's not vanishing away quickly at all. More like the opposite--even after I've gotten a picture uploaded and typed all this up, it's still a pretty thick layer on top of the beer, hasn't even shrunk to "very thin coating" levels yet.

Taste is pretty nice right off, caramely and malty, but then a bit of that weird slightly-bitterish "hair salon smell" thing comes in toward the end before fading pretty quickly and leaving a more bready sort of aftertaste. I know this was attributed to hops in another thread a while back, so I wonder if maybe Yuengling just uses some oddball hop in most of their beers (but not Summer Wheat as far as I can tell, as that weird smell/flavor is absolutely nonexistent in that one.)

On the second sip... okay, now that "hair salon smell" thing has all but vanished from the flavor and the smell, and what's left comes across as something more recognizable as a hoppy element. Actually coming across as something resembling the odd flowery sort of hop thing that the session IPA from that Newcastle variety pack had going on, now that I think about it, though it's not as strong here as there and the other flavors around it are different so it still comes across as a pretty different beer. The caramely/toasty malt flavors are still the strongest, but that weird hop flavor is present too, and actually not coming across as an unpleasant thing now that it's blending in with the rest a bit better. It pops in for just a bit after the initial rush of sweetish caramel/toasty flavors, then just as quickly vanishes into the bready aftertaste. Around the halfway point of the glass, I'm actually starting to get just a hint of a European hop spiciness near the end right before the bready aftertaste comes in. That's pretty interesting (and probably an appropriate thing to find in an Oktoberfest beer, I'd imagine.) There's a sort of almost-buttery/caramely thing in the smell and taste both that kinda reminds me of those two older bottles of Samuel Adams Oktoberfest that I stumbled across (and bought, and drank) back in January. This may not be quite as flavorful on the malt end of things as the Samuel Adams, but I do think I'm getting a little more of the hops in this one -- though the Sam Adams bottles being right at the end of their best-by date may have muted any hops that would've been more noticeable in a fresh one. Will have to pick up a pack of that one again this year to compare. Yeah, I think I'll be having a lot of Oktoberfest beers this year. XD

Feel is a bit of a weak point here -- it's nice when the foam on top is still present, but as I'm getting closer to the 1/3 mark of the glass the foam is starting to fade away in some places and the feel seems to become thinner and fizzier when this happens. Still, it's not a bad mouthfeel, just definitely weaker than the flavor. Interestingly, I just swirled the remaining beer in my glass around to stir up the foam on top a bit and that actually has "revived" a bit of the original "more-foam-on-top" feel. I'll have to remember that trick in the future when I run into other beers with that same "feel is good at first, but drops off when the foam does" issue.

Overall, while it doesn't quite leave me wishing for a giant stein full of the stuff like the Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest I had toward the end of August (seriously, that was a great beer and I might just end up with a 12-pack of it in my fridge depending on what my first paycheck from the new job looks like), this is still pretty nice -- especially considering that it's only $7.40ish for a six-pack where I am, and probably even cheaper in areas where Yuengling beers outside of the basic Lager/Light Lager/Black & Tan lineup are easier to find. Between this, the Summer Wheat, and the sadly extinct Bock, I'm definitely a fan of Yuengling's seasonal beers -- here's hoping the upcoming winter seasonal IPL keeps up the trend!

 

New Belgium Lips of Faith Series "2013 La Folie" Sour Brown Ale.

 

What an awesome thread today kicked off in great style and just stayed at a high level. I'll pull that down with a hasty last minute addition...

It's been a weird weather day here at the Rose Palace. Cloudy and cool at church time through about noonish. Good thing...the missus needed to restock her aquarium at the high school and all inhabitants arrived safely...wait...fish...water yeah but we had to carry them inside... Then got home and picked my Serrano peppers knowing I am making hot sauce today. Just as I finished and stepped inside a twenty minute monsoon. And get to cooking, right? Yep...sucked right in to reading NBS and WBAYDN and football...so at seven p.m. I'm firing up the stove. I'm popular right now...NOT! So the recipe says cool, add salt to taste...hmmm...this must be like figuring out if Ruination has enough hops...all I can taste is the vinegar and heat of the raw hots and I'm supposed to figure out salt to taste? Well, just shut the canner down and ten pints cooling on the counter. Jalapeño and habanero are next...but not today.

Beer accompanying the mayhem, you ask? Anderson Valley Kimmie, Yink, Holy Gose. Or however it Gose... Poured with a frothy white head that lingered for a while...more than I expected it to. The aroma was somewhat uninspiring, but I probably have no nostrils. Faintly lemony, somewhat floral, a little mineral, not much on the wheat. A slight whiff of minerals. The taste was very light and it went down way too fast. Very slight acidity, some sweetness, citrusy, and very faint coriander on the back. Not much bitterness. Lively carbonation, super dry on the finish. I'm not quite sure what to think...way too easy to just suck this beer down which is something I generally don't do. I think I will hold off on a real review until I try another session and slow down a bit. But I'd say it's coming in around 3.6 or so. I thought Rising Tide Gose was much better, but that is another NBS.

Cheers!

 

Ditto. It is one of my favorite beers but I never seem to have any around the house. First beer I had that was an OMG moment, as the kids say.

 

Southern Tier: Pumking


3.93/5 rDev -2%
look: 3.75 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Transparent orangish yellow liquid with very little extremely short lived head.
Smells of nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon and pumpkin.
Tastes of sweet spices and pumpkin that reminds me of canned uncooked pumpkin pie filling.
Feel is low to no carbonation and a medium lived spicy aftertaste.
Overall I kind of like it, Not my favorite pumpkin beer but certainly not a bad one either. I would love to try the rum barrel version.

 

Greetings, fellow NBSers,

Fairly warm today, as has been the entire week, but it seemed a little colder as things got blustery, with 20-odd mph winds. Seems like the last gasp of summer.

Had a lot of things to do, plus I got sucked into football watching this afternoon, so I didn’t get around to having a new beer until this evening after dinner. I went with an imperial stout that hails from Montana:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/751/81543/?ba=woemad

Not as good as I hoped for. The various elements were there, but they didn’t meld too well with one another, plus there was a bit too much heat to it.

 

Your friend Roseanne is quite talented. Thanks for sharing Dave.

 

Looks like most any ale other than Romulan Ale can have it's color identified by that chart- looks good to me!

 

One of the youth leagues around Raleigh is getting help from Aaron Ward, former 'cane as well. They have several strong youth leagues in that whole triangle area and to be honest they really put us in the RIC to shame when it comes to ice, opportunity and promotion. Checkers are still playing in the A or ECHL, but they have a decent enough following.