New Beer Sunday (week 552)

Greeting All:

Checking in from the Great Northwest at half of the Seahawk @ Packers game.

Today it's Long Table from New Belgium.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/192/172124/?ba=RJLarse

A tasty and seasonal brew. I'll have more of this before winter sets in.

Blustery here in the Columbia Basin with intermittent dust squalls.

Seahawks down 10. Go Hawks!

Happy Trails!

 

That is some great customer service right there! I've only had Juice Machine and Double Shot from Tree House and they were delicious!

 

ballast point big eye, holy malt bomb batman! me no like to much.

 

The evening started off with a beer downer. Another glass broken. I'm on a streak. Never broke a glass, and then about 3 or 4 so far broken this year. I hate to say it, but I'm not the only person who handles my glasses these days, and that's pretty much the issue. @TongoRad might recall the glass below when it looked a bit better:



Today, I had Midnight Sun Bar Fly for the first time.



Yesterday, I had Midnight Sun Berserker for the second time. The current incarnation of Bar Fly is a very similar beer. They are both big bourbon barrel aged stouts that are brewed with molasses. Each beer very nicely satisfies one's appetite and expectations according to style. Whereas most people get vanilla from bourbon and oak treatments, I get sweet nuttiness... and I get that in these beers. The bourbon element is not overpowering here. It is kept in check. The two felt different to me, but not in the way I was expecting. Bar Fly is brewed with smoked malts, and the label description plays up the smoke aspect. I did not get any identifiable smoke in this beer. Perhaps the smoke element is integrated to the point of not noticing it. What I did get was a slight tartness and vinous quality. I did not get this in Berserker. I can like those qualities in a RIS, but I think I might not be a fan in the context of bourbon barrel aging... at least I wasn't a fan here. It's worth noting that I tried Midnight Sun Second Hand Smoke (a not-quite-as-big stout with smoked malt) a while ago and I recall that I found it to be unappealing. Despite being a sucker for smoked malts, Berserker was certainly my favorite of the three. I'm surprised by the low number of reviews for Bar Fly here. It's a perfect match for certain beer-geek interests. This might have something to do with the price of the beer. I bought this in a moment of "why did I go there" weakness. It was more expensive than my usual cutoff.

Bar Fly had an eye-catching dark head:

 

Had a long sunday of beer drinking and football watching

Held out until temps cooled down a bit to buy this hefty porter. Getting a lot of roasty coffee and dark chocolate, some vanilla on the backend too. A bit thin but still tasty...glad I have more

 

I'm back at the lodge for another as I wanted to taste it as fresh as possible. I was lucky enough to stumble across a shipment at a Hy Vee grocery store in Iowa. Let's see how Toppling Goliath Pompeii IPA measures up? Poured from a bomber into my fancy vessel. The bottle date is smudged and illegible but the clerk said it was delivered that day. There is no abv. printed on the label.

Pours a brilliant gold color with a generous finger of frothy white foam. The aroma is juicy passion fruit, pineapple, and rubber. Flavor consists of passion fruit, pineapple, a bit of guava. There is a hint of butyl in the finish. Feel is on the thin side, but juicy in nature.




Overall a great tropical juice bomb that features Mosaic hops. I'm so glad my timing was right and that I got to buy it. This is something I'd buy again! My score was 4.54 - rDev +5.8%.

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

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/23222/89586/?ba=Prager62

 

Well Hello All.
Thanks to Maria for the wonderful start to this beautiful little corner of BA.
We're still in the midst of our painful drout here in the west, but alas we had some rain. (Understatement!!! We got a few inches in one day. Sadly lots of that just runs out to sea, but it provided some very arid soil with a nice drink. Our trees and wildlife sure need it. Oh...I forgot to mention it's hotter than Hades again, over 100, and humidity's rising. We might get a little rain tomorrow.

So, I have been enjoying a few Fest Biers recently. The wife really likes her Marzens. She looks forward to Sam Adam's Oktoberfest each year. But this year we had a few more to throw at her in a blind tasting. She quite enjoyed the Sierra Nevada collab, but still prefers the more malt forward examples of the style. Which brought us to Goose Island's Oktoberfest, and Left Hand's version. Both quite solid.

Currently, I'm tossing back a very rich burnished copper colored Left Hand Oktoberfest. Smell is a bready sweet that hints at caramel. Taste is rich, slight caramel, a tad nutty. Goes down clean and leaves one with a pleasing aftertaste that's dominated by the sweeter components but hops come in and kind of dry it out a little-in a good way.

 

I was hoping for Succubi this week!!!

 

I FINALLY got around to Calm Before the Storm!!!

Aroma: Roasted coffee, vanilla, and a creamy grainy bit at the end
Taste: Like its counterpart, Victory at Sea, the fresh roasted coffee and vanilla take the helm but in a slightly different way. They're not as bold with this one and obviously the finish is much different since it's not the same style. You definitely know by the mouthfeel and finish that it's a cream ale with flavors added
Overall: I enjoyed this but not as much as Victory. As a cream ale it is pretty good and easy to drink

 

Well, the Browns actually won their home opener game for the first time in many years, so I figured it was good to celebrate with a brown ale I've never had before. A pretty good offering from Wile Heaven craft beers!

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/23651/61835/?ba=neenerzig

Eric

 

This still remains one of my favourites I had when I lived in the middle and is way up there in general. So good.

 

Hope to get this in under the wire this evening because it is so good...Hallertau Brewing's "Funkonnay 2013", a wild ale sour at 6.7%







Deep Amber/coppery red with off white head; no retention or lace. Strong funky yeast and sour nose; barnyard aroma - stinky goat cheese is what I thought of...; More tart than sour funky fruit, white wine and oak flavors; I'm tasting sour green apples and sour grapefruit; dry fruity finish. Light mouthfeel, medium light carbonation; dry tart tongue coating. Bright fruit, like drinking a sweet-tart, or maybe liquid pixie-dust; I really liked this a lot! Cheers!

 

Better late than never, right? Tonight's offering is Freckle, from The Bruery. This was sent along as part of a fantasy football pre-draft box from @Domvan, and man was it a box.
The pour offers a velvety black body with a massive richly brown head. Medium lacing. Nose stats out with some char, but that fades to nothing but a memory as it warms, and cocoa powder takes over.
Flavour offers much of the same cocoa dominance, and pairs myriad miniscule pinpricks of carbonation with a startling heat (at least to this fool who didn't read the back label and only saw 'aged on cocoa nibs') that work together very nicely to balance an otherwise smoothe smoothe body.
This hits a lot of positive notes for me. I really enoyed it. Thanks for sending it along!


My brother's in town for his birthday weekend, so we made enchiladas and pad thai last night to celebrate. What? Of course they go together! You're just jealous... But seriously, they were both really really good. I'm a little jealous of his friend who hosted, because I'm pretty sure the leftovers are in her fridge...
Today was windy windy, but nice for the most part. I didn't get a chance to watch my Seahawks stumble for the second week in a row (gotta bring Kam back!) because I was immersed in board games all afternoon -- in fact I only just returned. Got wiped up playing Euphoria, but was in the lead, with a bead on victory on the upcoming turn as Lannister had we not had to abandon our Game of Thrones early because the bar was closing. Baratheon was tied at the time the game ended, but they were allies, and I had sites set on Greyjoy castles with my next move. Oh well

Cheers all!!


EDIT: Along with @DoctorZombies it looks like the veil of sunday has been rent asunder to be replaced with the cold steel of Monday's grim visage. These things happen. The beer's still good though!

 

Total bummer- that was a real beaut, too. Here's hoping that one ends the streak of bad luck.

 

Haha you must be a Bigggg Tipppaaahhhhh

 

Great job y'all, and great job Maria overseeing it all. Some tasty beers for sure portrayed, panned/recommended. Hopefully mine next week will be better than the one this week I managed to sneak in here. Since I am feverishly working to finish lyrics for song 6 (great title, yes?) don't be surprised if next week's opening contains rhymes of an internal design that at times may be fine, at times infernal. See ya then. Cheers!

 

What is that... a song for ANTS???!?!!!?!? The song has to be at least... THREE TIMES BIGGER THAN THIS!