New Beer Sunday (week 572)

My daughter lived in Houston for several years. Whenever I visited her I drank plenty of Shiner beers!

 

Some local barrel aged barleywine action.

I'm a sucker for barrel aged barleywine...

...and also a big fan of Captain Lawrence's Golden Delicious, a tripel aged in apple brandy barrels...

Cold North Wind from Port Jeff Brewing Company

The amount of apple brandy on the nose is impressive...

This was an easy win for me...

Lotsa of gentle caramel amid the apple, higher vapors of alcohol and barrel wood. Sweet, sinuous, and graceful. Apple is the primary fruit impression, naturally, but hints of pear, vanilla, caramel, and alcohol are evident throughout.

The body is medium, the barrel aging thins things out somewhat, but the feel is just right for the ale, albeit perhaps a tad light compared to some barleywines I've had. Some fizz and tingle, of carbonation and alcohol's heat.

Leaves a sweet apple caramel candy and booze aftertaste. Little sting on the palate - crisp, sharp, perhaps a tad bit tart.

A superior ale in my opinion. And only ~ $11 around here.

New beer action from yesterday...

Chocolate River from Trinity Brewing Company...

11% imperial stout, "Brewed with Milk Chocolate then aged on Dagoba Cacao nibs and whole Madagascar vanilla beans."

Delivered as advertised - a solid feel and dark chocolaty base, appropriately smooth and rich. Ample chocolate impressions, carrying some dark roastiness, but leaning toward the sweet side, abetted by some vanilla undertones that melded everything together.

Coupla really good beers - meeting expectations and bringing a really solid product to the fore.

Cheers, NBS...

 

Batting 1.000 today on beers I feel like commenting on. I didn't really like this one (3.26) as I thought the tangerine seemed forced and didn't like its interaction with the pine you mention. But...

I agree with your assessment this isn't true to the "Gose style" - at least how we define it now. But I found this a very enjoyable beer on its own.

Have wither of you tried the Passion Fruit Kicker from Green Flash? I bought it the same time I bought Tangerine Soul Style. I found it to be a nicely tart, saltless version of a Gose.

 

Love the play of the light through the blinds in the glass on this shot!!

 

Happy New Super Beer Bowl Sunday!

You may remember from last week that I commandeered Doctor Who's TARDIS & returned in time to the Fall of 2015. My day was spent (and ended) with Pumpkin Beers, which is where I picked up today:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/35/185705/?ba=woodychandler

and

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/6045/63136/?ba=woodychandler

I am now off to Day 3 of 3 of Spring House B.C. Taproom's 5th Anniversary Party for lunch & then I will be back to CANtinue my adventure. The 5th anniversary gift is wood(y), so I have a red ribbon around my waist as their gift, plus I brought a bouquet of daisies, which are the traditional flower. Utopiajane can tell you all about it, having seen the photographic evidence.

I may feel Horny upon my return, so please stand by for updates.

 

Super Bowl Sunday! I am bummed that the Patriots aren't in it, but am hoping for a good game. If Manning is going to retire, I'd like to see him win his last game. On the other hand, Newton and the Panthers are some football team. My wife, who's not into football but loves the Super Bowl, is working and won't be home until halftime. That will be a good time for dinner so we don't have to watch the dreck that poses for entertainment at the half.
We visited my mother yesterday to celebrate her 91st birthday and stopped at Whole Foods in Portland on the way home. They have a good variety of vegan foods we can't seem to get at home, and an excellent beer selection. I spent too much money on beer, as usual. My beer for NBS is Cultrider, an imperial black India Pale Ale from Hoof Hearted Brewing. This is my first experience with this brewery, and if their other beers are as good as this one, I might need to move to Ohio.
Poured from a can into a snifter the beer is black in color with a small light tan head. There is some pretty lacing going on.
The aroma is mostly coffee and chocolate up front, with a touch of pine in the background.
The taste improves on the nose. Lots of coffee and chocolate, with pine and tobacco also. There is a hint of dark fruit.
This is a great beer. I think I'm drinking a hoppy stout.

 

With all due respect: Why?
I'm assuming the best selling stout is 4.2%

 

I'm going off these "statistics", not actual sales:

• this site, as that is presumably where the term "watery" is being seen and disagreed with
• specifically, the reviews on this site. I don't have access to everyone's opinions who buys a Guinness or local pub regular stout
• the WBAYDN post percentages (as an even more biased statistical sampling, for sure, but I figure it's fairly representative of this site at large)
  
• the offerings in my local stores, percentage of offerings (not actual sales)

So, that is my frame of mind. Even for what it is, it may be incorrect, but I also think was not intending to convey what you may be questioning I was. As a parallel, I don't feel the rating of "beer" as a whole on here uses BMC as the baseline, even though it's the best selling beer out there. I may be wrong on that, too considering the score distributions .

 

Good morning all.

My first NB for this S is a true classic that I've never found locally, so it was an Ohio find.

Weinhenstephaner Korbinian



Nice thick off white head covers a fairly opaque (save for the edges) beer with tinges of ruby.

Nose strikes out with a big bready welcome before plum and fig begin to play a dominant role. A little further study brings out sweet molasses, but not overwhelmingly so.

Lots of fig and molasses in the initial swig that begins to take on caramel along with a touch of banana.

Mouth feel is silky smooth for the most part, and overall it's a very nice beer.

 

Hey what's going on!

Once again another Sunday, and always a new beer! As for our friend the blizzard, all that snow is pretty much long since disappeared, hey what is that outside? OH yeah that's my lawn!

Heh heh. In all seriousness though no complaints. However, rumors abound that Mon and/or Tuesday another 3-4 inches of snow is coming... ah that will be a fun week commute for sure..

Speaking of going to work my new job starts tomorrow! I am supper excited but also pretty anxious. Since then I have been celebrating like crazy, buying lots of new beers, hitting up all my favorite lunch and dinning places for one last run. Took in some excellent ramen, went to one of the most critically acclaimed Thai places, had some excellent West African takeout, sandwiches, sushi... just went nuts.

I am sure I packed on 10 extra pounds last week just because of it.

As you know the Stuperbowl is on today, and while not the biggest football fan it's of course a good distraction. I suddenly got the urge to go buy a big pack of chicken wings and bake'em up.. ya know.. roll in corn flakes with spices and just have a snacky bowl of wings with maybe some ranch dressing or something..

could be fine.... will be messy if it happens (update... it's going to happen just spent a bunch of time chopping wings... tips you all, buy them whole and cut them save yourself some money that way...)

As for now there are many new brews for our hero, as I got a plethora of West coast brewery made IPAs, Wicked Weed stuff, a few foreign things... Some great stuff dropped at my local such and incredible vanilla bean milk stout, some Fifty Fifty's, some other MD brews, in fact so much stuff it can't all fit in my new beer fridge!

Even had to go down to DC Brau and get a 32 growler to get my brau fix of Alpha Domina Mellis!

OH such a great problem to have...

However, my heart is calling for overseas and some wanderlust so I am going to start off my NBS with this first!

What's new for our hero today? Vive la différence!

St. Glinglin Houblon - Brasserie Artésienne


St. Glinglin - Houblon French India Pale Ale by imbibehour, on Flickr

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Poured from the bottle into a Spiegelau IPA glass.

Thick soapy rich foam, with a large bubblebath head appearance, bright white and weak retention. Good staying power but the huge bubbles burst in your face, you can practically hear them snap. Body color is also nice, slightly opaque but for the most part clear with fine middle carbonation rising up quickly.

Man I love this aroma is reminds me much of one of favorite beers. Deep garden green herbality and floral notes come right off. Slight woody balsam and floral like sweetness rips right off the nose, reminds me a lot of Houblon d'Achouffe, but with less sweetness and Belgian character. Great bouquet and aroma stellar!

The palate takes a little bit more simpler route. Wet juiced body with a tea and floral like full mid palate. Washes clean almost getting a bit wet though and some slight mineral to metallic finish though unfortunately. There's a real excellent sweetness to this which comes with some honey character as well, mere touches of floral qualities really pop for sweet garden goodness.

Real nice angle and different than your average ordinary IPA for sure.

look: 4.25 | smell: 4.75 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4 | BA Generated Score: 4.2

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fun times man! Can't complain! Cheers!

 

Good luck in your new job!

 

Happy New Beer Sunday and 11th Anniversary of this thread!
This will be my first time posting in NBS but hopefully not the last.

My choice for today was Trillium's Congress Street IPA bottled 1/27/16.
This turned out to be a perfect brunch beer while I did some work in the kitchen.

4.75 | 4.5 | 4.75 | 4.75 | 4.75 | 4.69 overall | rDev +4.7%

The beer pours a hazy almost fruit juice like color and consistency with a 1/4" head of white foam.
The smell is initially sweet and fruity followed by assertive but not overpowering hops.
Taste of sweetened grapefruit balanced out with floral and only slightly bitter hops.
I thought the beer had a perfect amount of carbonation which gave is a mimosa like mouthfeel.
Without a doubt a great beer and overy drinkable considering the 7.2% ABV.
I'm now kicking myself for only buying one bottle.

Cheers!

 

Greetings, fellow NBSers, and thanks to @cavedave for getting us going on this New Super Bowl Beer Sunday,

It’s about 30 degrees, cloudy and a little bit foggy in places. Yesterday I filled in for someone at work, got off just in time to hit Budge Brothers right before they closed to get a growler fill so I’d have an IPA to sip on during the party I’m going to later today – and discovered I’d left it at home. Fortunately I was told they’ll be opening up this morning so I’ll be hitting them as soon as I finish breakfast and coffee. Budge Bros. is a two man operation (really one-man at the moment; the other brother is recovering from an auto accident) that basically opened up as soon as the aforementioned bros. turned old enough to legally brew. A lot of people had their beers early on and have never stopped judging them for when they were a bit “green.” I happen to think they have showed more improvement since they opened than just about anyone locally.They also have a kind of DIY mad scientist streak, brewing one-offs like an eggnog RIS, an imperial brown with cranberries and a kind of saison/sour crossbreed literally improvised by tossing in tons of frozen fruit with no attempt to keep track of what quantities of individual fruit varieties (it turned out rather drinkable, if unrepeateable).

At some point before I head off to my friend and co-worker Shannon's place to watch the game (Her husband is reportedly a hop head; hence the local IPA that I suspect he might not have had; he's also smoking a turkey and three racks of ribs, so I don't anticipate being hungry), I'll drink a token new beer today. Until then, here's one I had on Friday at one of my favorite locals, Jones Radiator. It's an unassuming little beer called Not The Stoic:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/63/119700/?ba=woemad

Not a visual stunner, but man did the flavors come together!

Back in a bit with something new.

 

Alright, I can't realllly participate today because I'm on a self-imposed "no drinking at home" thing for a while (yeah, the barely wine thread made me atone)... but @cavedave 's comments earlier made me break my rules. I bought two bottles of Smuttynose's Chestnut Saison, had one, and left the other one to sit in the stash. I thought it was a pleasant (but sort of forgettable) saison. Last week, I saw that my old chum commented as such:

... and I thought to myself: "Abomination? I didn't react this way at all, I must consume my second bottle to see what he's talking about... drinking rules be damned!"

Sooo, I had my second bottle today (don't tell anyone!). This bottle was like the first. A perfectly pleasant saison and not much more. Maybe too sweet... and maybe too much alcohol. Not an abomination. Didn't "seriously suck." I'm not attempting to say that cavedave was "wrong." He called it like he saw it that moment. Actually, his review seems pretty spot on for me, but (in my opinion) the beer is better than the negativity suggests. I'll never buy another one though. Price of admission plus "limited" status translates to "no thank you."

The few reviews here are pretty bad. Everyone seems to be annoyed that they can't taste the chestnut. You're not going to taste chestnut. It's not like adding peppermint. The use of chestnut seems to point to Italian brewing. They used chestnuts because they were available. Chestnut honey and chestnut flour were used in brewing. If anybody knows about this, please contribute. There's no info out there on this that I've seen. Personally, I think this is more interesting than the use of peppermint or what-have-you. I have no idea how Smuttlabs used the chestnuts.

Anyway, @cavedave and I had the same beer but different reactions and I'm just adding mine because there's little else out there. His reaction was far more passionate. Cavedave, you are a monster. Your passion caused me to chuck the one ounce of integrity I had left and open a beer. Cheers!

 

Okay, even though it's the afternoon, felt like another breakfast beer. Hell, if McDonalds can offer breakfast all day...


Full disclosure, the GF got this last week at a bar and I had a sip, and enjoyed it. But from a bottle, this is new, so:
Pours near black, and I have trouble getting much light to penetrate even at the edges. the head is not as dark as it looks in the photos, more tan in nature, and ends up with coverage lie the beer in the background on the lower right photo.

Nose early is coffee and sweet bread, but not specifically cinnamon rolls. The cinnamon does start to hit my nose next, though. Eventually is ends up a little more like a cinnamon-spiced coffee.

The taste actually has the cinnamon in the fore with the coffee a bit more than I got from the nose initially, reinforcing the cinnamon-infused coffee characteristic. I get the oat in the taste and feel next, drying my palate (as oat tends to do for me) and culminating in a nutty grain flavor rising as the coffee notes fade. Strength of flavor is nice, hitting points all over my palate, and carbonation is at a nice level.

If it's about impressions, I'm not getting a big cinnamon roll impression with this pour. Granted, the sugar-bomb Cinnabon cinnamon roll I think of probably wouldn't make for a great beer. But I do think of ET's Doughnut and Biscotti breaks and they give me a better impression of the named target flavor than this beer. However, in my mind those beers represent a lofty target where falling short of is not a detraction. This beer is very tasty of itself, and insofar as being a cinnamon coffee oatmeal stout, this does quite well.

 

Happy NBS on a spring like day in S. WI. I have already grilled some ribs and am finishing them in the slow cooker. I can't wait for dinner! Sorry @cavedave I couldn't get a beer like this from my local breweries, but I do like to drink local beer!

This is my first ever Eisbock and it is really good. Malty aroma of caramel, bread, dark fruit, and yeast to keep it on the sweet side. Taste follows with the caramel and bread along with dark fruit notes and some yeast. It is rich and sweet with a hint of alcohol heat. Medium feel and smooth. Reminds me of a nice bock with almost a bit of English barleywine character.

 

This is a new beer Saturday I guess since I had these beers yesterday. At a local bar there were a number of beers on tap I had never had. The bars sell flights 4 5 ounce glasses for $12.00 not a bad price since 1 beer was $10.00 for a 10 ounce pour and another was $9.00 for the same pour. I got 3 new beers and one old favorite
Beer # 1 Stone/ Sierra Nevada NXS IPA (the $10.00 beer) 8.2 % ABV. Wow this is one of the best IPAs I have ever drank. It just explodes in your mouth with so many flavors and tastes it hard to describe. The aroma is very complex also. NXS is a blend 1/4 aged in Gin infused Bourbon Barrels ,1/4 aged in Rye barrels and 1/2 a highly hopped base IPA. An awesome brew to say the least.
Beer # 2 Kane Triple IPA. 10.5 This is another excellent IPA and very different from NXS. A fruity hop bomb is what I will call this beer. All kinds of tropical fruit and citrus flavors hide the high ABV and malt seems almost an after thought. A very drinkable brew. Well done as usual by Kane.
Beer #3 Ommegang Grains of Truth Harvest Ale a Biere De Garde 5.8 ABV.
This is also an excellent brew, Barley, Wheat, Oats and Rye blend together to make a medium bodied but very flavorful beer. Not much hop flavor or bitterness but there is a nice Rye bite in the finish.
5 ounces is not a lot to judge a beer by. It was more than enough to know that these 3 beer are all top shelf. If they last for a few more day I'll have a full pour of all of them if not more.

 

Welcome to NBS! And a fine first post, IMHO.

 

My first NBS beer for today is another DIPA from Rock Art Brewery.



Limited Access

Rock Art Brewery
American Double / Imperial IPA / 7.50% ABV

4.44/5 rDev +7% | Avg: 4.15
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

Canned 01/19/16

L- The beer pours a slightly hazy golden yellow with a 3 finger fluffy white head. The lacing is excellent and lasting.
S-As the can states the nose is primarily citrus with some sweet papaya/mango.
T-The citrusy flavor is well balanced with the tropical papaya flavors. The beer has a minimal bitterness in comparison to other DIPA's.
F- The feels is fairly light with a excellent level of carbonation. The beer is incredibly easy to drink, and mine will be finished before this review is done. About as easy-drinking a DIPA as you will find.
O- Another great DIPA from Rock Art. I may like this one even better than Nawch Hopper which I thought was excellent. Kudos Rock Art.

This is definitely a DIPA for those who want balance. If a you enjoy a hop punch in the nuts than this will seem pretty tame to you.

 

Happy Super Bowl Sunday, everybody! I'm sure we're all hoping for a great game, and that Peyton Manning plays a lot better than the last time. And if you are not interested, here's hoping you are at least having some great beer and eats on this fine day.

I'm starting off with a new one for me, and then later on I'll move to Nugget Nectars, Hi-Res and such. No sense having a new beer during a pig-out .


Behold the Framinghammer!

It's a beautiful beer, big yet supremely balanced. The best thing about Baltic Porters are how they manage not to be 'too much' of anything, and this one is made with the deft hand that the style requires. The overall feel of it is moderately full yet not overly heavy or syrupy; quite quaffable for such a monster (I think once you hit the double digits in abv you pretty much qualify as a 'monster'). The roast malts contribute aromas and flavors of coffee and dark chocolate, but not so much as to overwhelm the toffee-like malt base. Hops are also present but unobtrusive, suggesting dried flowers and a slight sweet spiciness (anise?); the bitterness is snappy enough to go hand in hand with the clean dry finish and doesn't really show itself until the end. A minor quibble is that it comes off a bit too much at that point. The flavors do linger for quite a while after that snap, though, and are focused on the base malt much more than the roast, lots of oatmeal-raisin cookies and dark caramel.

I love that this one is sold in 4-packs rather than the 500ml I was expecting to find. I really look forward to the remaining three. It's a very enjoyable Baltic Porter, perhaps missing that additional complexity and je ne sais quoi that the best ones have, but one I would be happy to grab again in a second. A- (4.25)

______________________

I just heard that Dan Hicks passed away, so I'm listening to some of his wonderfully eccentric take on western swing for the first time in a long time. It's not 'every day' music for me, but when you're in the right mood nothing else will do. RIP Dan, a true one-of.