New Beer Sunday (week 560)

8.2% alcohol. 90 IBU. Introduced in 2015. Brewed in California.

4.34/5 rDev +13%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

Anchor Double Liberty IPA has a thin, slightly off-white head, a somewhat hazy, orange-gold appearance, some suspended sediment, a few bubbles, and splotchy lacing left on the glass. The aroma is of apricot and white bread, and the flavor is of sweet, white bread, apricot, tea leaves, gold tobacco, and mild bitterness. Mouthfeel is medium, and Anchor Double Liberty IPA finishes dry, drinkable, and not the least bit boozy.

RJT

 

Good morning, all, and a big "Thank Youi!" to @cavedave and @utopiajane for today's opening collaboration. I've been on a style kick lately, and Gueuze is one of the styles that doesn't seem to be too common in this neck of the woods. About the only ones I've seen around here are Oude Gueuze Tilquin, and this: St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition, from Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck N.V., Belgium. I opted for the latter solely on the basis of price ($7.49 vs $11.99). Poured from 12.7-ounce bottle into scrupulously clean #ProperGlassware, i.e. a Dollar Tree champagne flute. (Photobomb courtesy of Kaito, who looks to be plotting some nefarious scheme involving the neighborhood squirrels.)



L - Poured a slightly hazy light golden copper color with a pure white three-finger head. Head lingers for only a few moments before dissipating, leaving no lacing and a 1-mm white ring. Very appealing.

S - Aroma is quite light: pleasant, not overpowering. There is a little Belgian yeast funk on the nose, with some tart fruit and a hint of cider vinegar. I could have lingered on this aroma all day long, but let's get to the tasting.

T/F - Again, light and pleasant on the palate. Sour apple, a little yeast, a little citrus, a hint of malt sweetness. Nice mouthfeel from the carbonation. Finishes dry, with a lingering tinge of tartness and bitterness.

O - A delicious and very well-crafted beer, as I would expect. (It's Belgian, after all!) Understated, but with some complexity. A nice, light, sour sipper, or would pair well with a variety of foods.

As I was drinking this, I kept thinking of a slightly more intense, sparkling, unoaked chardonnay. This isn't a style that I'll be enjoying very often due to the price and availability, but I'll certainly consider it well worth the occasional splurge.

4.17/5 rDev +7.2%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25

Santé!

 

So purchased this Friday and had to wait all weekend so I could post it here. Canned 10/23/15. Poured slowly into my favorite glass. Pours very dark brown, with a inch and a half sticky kaki head that leaves behind plenty of lace. 4.25

Smell is dominated by coconut, cola, faint chocolate, vanilla, and some molasses. 3.25

Taste follows nose, loads of coconut, more chocolate, and vanilla coke. 3.5

Body is above medium, the right amount of life for the style, not overly dry, and easy going down. 4

Overall if I loved coconut it would be amazing, but coconut isn't my favorite. 3.5

 

I LOVE coconut and this is the only Oskar Blues brew my local distributor can't get!

 

Good morning New BSers and thank you Maria and Dave for starting us off today. I can't believe how beautiful this morning is - sunny, not a cloud in sight, melting the frost away! Makes me want to get outside and DO SOMETHING! Which will probably be cleaning the gutters yet again, now that most of my neighbors' leaves have fallen. Yes, I know - sentence fragments - so sue me. Today's new brew is one from NBS BIF #2, courtesy of @richj1970, that was hiding in a case of Unibroue La Terrible (Space, the final frontier!):



Undated bottle at 42 degrees into hand washed and dried imperial pint
Received in NBS BIF #2 from @richj1970
Aroma oaky, lasts but weakens
Head large (Six cm, aggressive pour), light brown, creamy, diminishing to three mm ring and rocky layer
Lacing - none
Body dark amber, transparent
Flavor begins with moderate bourbon and malt, sweet; no hops, no alcohol, no diacetyl – more typical of any bourbon barrel aged anything than any English ale
Palate medium, creamy/syrupy, soft carbonation

Appearance 4, Aroma 4, Flavor 3.5, Palate 4, Overall 4. Rating 3.8, Avg 3.96, rDev - 4%

Is it bad? No, it's just very much bourbon barrel aged. The aspects of an English ale are swallowed up by the barrel characteristics. Ah well.

 

Waking up to low 30 degree temperatures, slowly it rises to currently 41 in my area of Vermont. I see the sun rising over Camel's Hump and think to myself, it is time for a Sunday morning beer. With that in mind, I wanted to reach for something that has just been put on Beer Advocate this morning.



http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/32783/199612/

 

Left Hand Bittersweet Imperial Coffee Milk Stout

Look: Cola black body, ruby hues barely seep through the edges when held up to a light source. After receding, the head remains as a small patch of wispy bubbles and a thin collar around the glass. Little dots of lacing may be found on the sides of the glass.

Aroma: Roast, roast, and more roast of the coffee bean kind. A beautiful fudge-like lactose induced sweetness intermingles with the coffee leaving thoughts of decadent coffee-and-cake-for-dessert imprinted in the mind.

Taste: Dark roasted malts, charred grains, and freshly roasted espresso beans open up the taste buds. That thick chocolate fudge sweetness comes in soon after to confirm the beers true identity. The finish and aftertaste is all imperial milk stout with lactose sugar and a light peppery heat (8.9% ABV) left on the throat.

Mouthfeel: Decadent and rich, this beer probably feels thicker than it actually is. It looks kind of thin coming out of the bottle but I find it to be a little on the thick side.

Overall: Enjoyable in all ways. The ABV is perfect, almost undetectable. The richness makes this as much of a sipper as the alcohol content. Highly recommended as a dessert beer.

 

Coffee and Hops together!?!

A very generous benefactor bequeathed to me a bottle of Ithaca Java Power. I must confess that this is not the type of beer I would purchase of my own volition so I appreciate this gift on two levels:

· First, it is a free beer and you just gotta love that!!

· Secondly, this is broadening my horizons and that is a good thing.

So, who out there thinks that coffee and hops go together? Will it be like chocolate and peanut butter?

As the wise owl says: Let’s find out!

Served in my Spiegelau IPA Glass:

Appearance:

Slightly hazy golden color with an orange hue. Fluffy off-white head.

Aroma:

The first thing that hits my nose is coffee. I note a bit of citrus in the background.

Taste:

The flavor follows the nose with the coffee flavor being predominant and the citrus flavor playing second fiddle. It is like drinking coffee with some orange juice added.

Mouthfeel

Medium bodied with a dry finish.

Overall

This is a beer with personality. One bottle is sufficient for me. I think this is a bold experiment from Ithaca Brewing Company but this beer is not my cup of tea,

@Kadonny

Cheers to my generous benefactor for providing me with this beer!!

 

good morning, here is an interesting beer my brother picked up for me



pours out dark with a large mocha head like an afro from I'm gonna get you sucka
I get the blueberry and a hint of chocolate, but not bitter!
lite mouthfeel and finish is you guessed it, blueberry.good taste veggie beer, but only one of these is needed as far as taste.


back later, salute!

 

Greetings NBS! It's looking to be a beautiful day in NEOhio which means hopefully I can get a lot of yard work done before the Browns-Steelers game. But first, of course, a new beer! I was pretty stoked to see Maine at retail at my local bottle shop last week. I have tried some of their lineup before when traveling to NY and they certainly makes a welcomed addition to the OH market!

I'm a bit torn with this beer. It's a good beer, don't get me wrong. But Maine had set a certain bar in my mind and this beer didn't quite match some of their beers with fewer letters in the name. That being said, of course it's always interesting to see a beer showcase an individual hop which this does with El Dorado. It makes for an herbal experience, overall very dry on the palate, just a bit of citrus zest versus many hops that are juicier. Bottled 10/27 so plenty fresh. I always enjoy seeing the characteristics an individual hop contributes and the palate education that provides, it just seems sometimes it makes a beer more interesting but sometimes more simplistic compared with the complexity you can get with multiple hops.

 

Wow! Thanks for adding this one to the data base, but more ober, thanks for the eloquent, vivid review. You really painted a holistic portrait of this beer. Please come back to NBS every week.

 

I'll do what I can, Cheers @2beerdogs

 

Had a few options for today, but decided to go with one that's already on page 1 of NBS. Have quite a few more options awaiting me today on what promises to be a lazy Sunday. After this post, I have to get my fantasy teams together, and then put together a beer package or two. Then... it's really only taking an hour getting the wax of my Abyss for the online tasting .

But this beer here is the reason I am here, Oskar Blue Death By Coconut. I am a pretty big coconut fan, although I find it is similar to chocolate with me: I like chocolate, but do not prefer chocolate-flavored things (cake and especially ice cream being the prime examples). I think if coconut is the main taste, I am in. Specifically, most coconut beers I have had I could have enjoyed just as much without the coconut. Let's see how that applies to this beer:


Also a little caveat - I did have a 2oz sample of this before I bought it
Canned 10/23: Pours dark brown and seemingly opaque, even at the edges (as the glass gets lower, the clarity is shown). Head you can see, and a thick rim stays throughout, leaving random lines of lacing. The nose in this is exactly what I recall from the tasting: wonderful aroma of coconut, and it pretty much dominates. Perhaps a little wood and something that reminds me a tad of lactose, but to quote my GF, "It's definitely coconutty!"

Taste actually doesn't disappoint on the coconut side. The initial notes from my first sips I was thinking, "Not again!" However, the front taste (somewhat bland but cola, nutty in nature) gives way to unsweetened coconut, and a decent dose of it. I think the base of the beer might have been intentionally left a little blah to let the coconut shine, however, and I get a weak brown ale impression from the rest of the beer.

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So, I had a little left in the cans after pouring into the Teku (following @SawDog505's lead), and for reasons that are listed in order of relevance:

• they are both in cans
• they cans look similar (especially color)
• I bought them both recently

I did this:

The cocnut still came through in the nose, but the coffee notes from the Maduro enriched the scents coming from the beer. The feel also improved, a little more weight to it. The coconut was still there, but muted and with nothing exciting added. However, I think in all it was a slightly successful experiment .

 

Been ticking toward 1000 beer reviews this week... *finally*

Starting with #996, Tropical Pale Ale, a collab between Boulevard and CCB featuring Citra, Mosaic, Azacca, and Lemondrop hops, and the additions of passionfruit and grapefruit... I really dug it - coming in at 7.2% abv, it was very IPA-like...

SweetWater's Hash Brown, #997, was awesome - not a big drinker of brown ales, but I knew this was gonna be hoppy like their Hop Hash, and I was right - the brown malt body was an excellent accompaniment to the resins and citrus of the hops.

In retrospect, Stone's Depth-Charged Double Bastard, #998, was probably my favorite of the last 10 new beers I've had. Massive coffee aroma and flavor, plus Double Bastard!!! The dark bitter hop and resinous body of the Bastard was a perfect pairing to some of the most coffee-forward flavors I've had in a while - and in an amber-colored ale, no less. Top-flight beer.

Prairie's BOMB! - #999 - was something of a big deal, as I have been aware of it for some time, but had no idea it ever found it's way to Long Island. I asked the guy, "Has this always been here?" And he said, "Yeah." *end story*
An imperial stout (@13% abv) aged on vanilla beans, cacao nibs, coffee beans, and chili peppers, it sounded right up my alley. However, I am a bit persnickety about the feel of my stouts, and this is rather thin-bodied, whereas I prefer something fuller - particularly at 13% abv and not barrel aged. All the flavors advertised came through on the nose and tongue, with the chili heat being very mild (chili-aversive types need not avoid). I liked it, but it was a $13.99 bottle here on LI, and that may have contributed to me being a wee bit underwhelmed...

So here we are at number 1000.

I had to make a call between these guys and the Depth-Charged DB (in the Bastard Box) for #1000...


I went with Velvet Merkin because... It is the priciest overall (though that BOMB! beats it per oz., I think); it eluded me last year (the first year I was aware of it hitting LI); and because FW's 2013 Parabola is one of my all-time favorite beers ever, across all styles... *respect the brewer*

Elegant, with expert craftsmanship and a boxed presentation that I am happy to pay for...

Here it is, right off the pour...

Aromas of wood and whiskey hover over darker roasted malts and oats... Felt a bit thin on the body, but smooth, slickly crossing my tongue with woodsy oak, light vanilla, and tannins. The chocolate aspects slipped in subtly, along with a bit of watery molasses and hints at dark fruits underneath it all. My main detractor is the feel - a little thin for my tastes, but I must say, I don't drink many oatmeal stouts, and most of my favorite stouts are a little more "imperial" in the abv, so I may have some inherent bias. That's not to say I didn't find this to be a very fine ale...

Cheers, NBS - here's to a thousand more!

 

Prost to all of my NBS peeps!

As soon as Liquor Shed, here in Casper opens, I will be picking up a Growler of a new Pale Ale from Odell that I cannot find any info for. I had a taste Friday when I had a Howler filled with Maharaja from Avery. It was delicious! I'll...be...back.