New Beer Sunday (week 572)

New Porter Sunday



Trillium Pot & Kettle

My second NBS offering pours near black with two fingers of tan head that
leave a ring as I sip. Chocolate, plain oatmeal and just a hint of alcohol in the aroma. Creamy and fairly thick bodied for a porter, with strong carbonation. Tastes of roasted malt up front with dark fruit in the background, showing more in the aftertaste -- in fact, showing more in the aroma and taste overall as I sip.

Pretty solid. Enjoy the game, BAs.

 

5th of the New Holland Dragon's Milk variants. Honestly I had low expectations for this one. The chai spices threw me off.
Thin looking pour, smallish head. Thankful the chai spices don't overpower anything else. Lots of chocolate, vanilla, wood and char, light spiciness. Decent body too.
The best of the bunch.
Rooting for the Broncos, have a feeling the Panthers are gonna take it, Cheers for beers!

 

Now trying Great Divide Orabelle. Cheers and happy NBS.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/158/88572/?ba=cindyjeffsmith

 

Sorry about that. I'd only gotten around to photographing the beer. While I was writing the post, I had an adolescent basketball player walking in one door demanding to be taken to the ER to have his knee x-rayed and a spouse returning from the walk-in clinic at a different door with a bag-full of antibiotics and walking pneumonia. I ended up chugging the beer. I remember that it looked really good.

 

Breckenridge Brewery Batch #2
Barleywine - Cabernet Sauvignon Barrel Aged

Second beer of the day honors the Broncos in the Super Bowl with a brew out of Colorado from Breckenridge.



4.34/5 rDev +3.8%
look: 4 | smell: 5 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 4.25

22oz bottle

Poured into a snifter. Pours a slightly murky dark brownish color with a tan colored head with good retention and lacing. The aroma is fantastic, the cabernet barrels used to age this beer creates a really special nose. The taste is sweet up front with dark fruits, plums, and grapes. The finish is surprisingly smooth and complex. The mouthfeel is a little lighter than expected but has a perfect amount of carbonation. Overall, this is a fantastic brew!

 

Poured into 3 16 oz snifters, bottled on October 16, 2015. Pours near black, with a inch of mocha head, that surprisingly leaves gorgeous strips of lace. Smell is dark chocolate, roasted coffee, vanilla, and a big hit of bourbon. 4.75

Taste follows less bourbon than the nose, loads roasty coffee, dark chocolate, vanilla, and a little hint of leather. 5

Mouthfeel is a touch bigger than medium, perfect amount of life (moderate), a little dry, and so drinkable for a sipper. 4.75

Overall this is one of the finest BA stouts to ever touch my lips. Expensive, but really amazing! Better yet my friend purchased it for us to share. 4.75

 

Probably the last new one for myself today is Wulver from Thirsty Dog.



Head started out thick, fuzzy and beige, falling back to a thin layer on top this dark, translucent ruby beer.

Nose is big bourbon with a little sweetness coming through. Beyond that I could swear there's something maple-ish.

First swig carried a slightly tart vinous thing, but after that the taste follows the nose with big bourbon, but more along the line of purely in taste with almost no heat. Beneath bourbon there's sweet dark fruit.

Medium bodied, slick finish on an otherwise dry tongue that battles through a pretty sweet aftertaste.

Yep, it's good.

 

Next is some howler work from Ellison Brewery+Spirits located in my college town, East Lansing Michigan. Tiramisu Stout pour from the howler is not promising. Zero carbonation, zero head. Too bad.
Smell is that of strong coffee, vanilla, mascarpone cheese ( I know, right?). Taste is liquid tiramisu to a point. Coffee grounds, vanilla, custard, cinnamon, cocoa powder. It's everything you would expect from tiramisu. The levels of flavors are just a bit off for me but it's the second best tiramisu stout I've had.

 

Good evening NBSers. I'm late to the game today, but I guess better late than never, eh? It's been one of those days.

Da Beer
Anchor Brewing Co. Flying Cloud
Foreign/Export Stout, 7.4% ABV


Da Re...view
Bottle into a Madtree snifter. Pours a syrupy, dark brown and settles pitch black in th glass. A relatively gentle pour yielded about 1/2 a finger of tan foam, which bubbled down to a spotty lacing after about a minute. Strong notes of sweet, roasty malt are accompanied by caramel, molasses, ginger, and dark chocolate. Upon tasting, the first notation I see is a strong, choclately bitterness followed by notes of roasted malt, molasses, caramel, and light hints of ginger and cinammon. Overall, the taste is quite sweet, and coupled with the overly-carbonated mouthfeel, this nearly reminds me of a cola. In terms of density, this is fairly light for the abv, but is chewy enough to not feel flat or thin.

Overall, decent. I'm not too experienced when it comes to "Foreign/Export Stouts", but this seemed like an overly-sweet, syrupy American Stout. Not bad, but not sure I'd buy it again.

Da Scores
look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 3.75
Weighted Score: 3.77/5 (-6% rDev)

 

Time to roll out another barrel....

Big Barrel Double IPA - Karl Strauss Brewing Company


Karl Strauss Brewing Company - Big Barrel IIPA by imbibehour, on Flickr

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Poured from the bottle into a Spiegelau IPA glass. Some type non obvious batch code on the bottle otherwise no real date.

Beautiful classic looker. Shiny brass orange and supper crystal clear. Mish mash of fast but most slow and fine rising carbonation through the body. Head creation is only a little straightforward three fingers of soapy white, a little bit of retention as it collapses a little flat and does have a big soapy cling. Just a great excellent looking IPA.

Hop forward on the nose with a sticky hop oil sense. Sweet pine and a bit of maple like syrup qualities. Small dank notes slightly with a bit of earthy weed as well. A good hop note but with heavy sweetness a little. Impressive too.

Palate hits with a little more sugar and spice. Tangy front palate on first sip, with lots of sugary grapefruit and large orange interestingly at first sip. Light rich caramel for a taste in the mid palate, with a treacle like sweetness. Finishes dense but with a light hop almost floral aromatic push.

A decent DIPA but a bit in the heavy malt realm, not that much fading either way to make a difference I think, but certainly large.

look: 4.75 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4 | BA Generated Score: 4.11

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Greetings All:

I just turned off the flame on a batch of wheat ale, and now we are settling in here for the Super Bowl game. I don't have a dog in the hunt, just hoping for entertainment. If it goes blow-out early I still have 2 hours of the Madoff mini-series on the DVR to watch.

Gorgeous day here in the Columbia Basin. Sunny and warm. The Super Bowl site has us by about 10 degrees is all. Going to take a while to chill that brew on the back porch this evening.

An IPA kind of a day, so I went with Canopus IPA from Ecliptic Brewing. Obviously these brewers are astronomy buffs.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/33058/183394/

A very good IPA. I'd love to visit the brewery and try it on tap.

So far the game is a battle. Wings and ribs in the dutch oven for half time. So it's all good.

Until next time,

Happy Trails!

 

Happy Super Bowl / New English Barleywine Sunday, and a shout-out to @cavedave for another alliterative kickoff (pun, of course, intended)! I have found myself with a dilemma. I was watching the Phoenix Open while waiting for the Super Bowl to begin, and it got really good with a couple of holes to play. Hideki Matsuyama and Rickie Fowler are in a playoff that is now on the fourth hole, and Fowler drowns one off the tee. Advantage Matsuyama. I've decided to stick with golf to the end. And if you understood one word of this, you need a life as bad as I do. (Edit: $1 to Jim Rome.) Now on to beer: To Øl Mine Is Bigger Than Yours. I found this at the bottle shop a few days ago marked down to $3.99 from $9.99. I couldn't pass up a big English barleywine at that price. Poured from a 12.7-ounce (!) bottle into a crystal wine goblet. This was such an attractive pour that I spent a lot of time just looking at it from various angles before actually tasting it. Pours the color of caramel sauce, with an ivory-colored head that left a ton of nice lacing on my scrupulously-clean goblet. There was a lot of sediment in the bottle that did not make its way into the glass, so the first pour is quite clear in appearance:


Clarity and lacing:


This is on the malty side for the style. The aroma reminds me of a Belgian quad, with its aromas of caramel, dark bread, dark fruit, and a little tinge of yeast. The brewer's (De Proef Brouwerij, Lochristi-Hijfte, Belgium) notes list the ingredients as water, barley malt, flaked oats, light candy sugar, hops (Columbus, Simcoe, Citra), and yeast. Even with the impressive hop bill, there isn't much bitterness at all. In fact, it is quite sweet on the palate, and not unpleasantly so. The 12.5% ABV is masked maybe too well, and the last sip was as smooth and flavorful as the first. A very well made offering, worth seeking out if you like the style (and if you have deep pockets).

4.19/5 rDev +5.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

Matsuyama wins on the fourth hole. Now back to football. Cheers!

 

I think I had this on tap and picked up bottles about two weeks after that bottling date (at their new Barrel Room). I agree. The beer is awesome.

 

Great reading the reviews right now. Don't know about y'all, but the Super Bowl has encouraged me to drink locals (Bosque Simcoe Pils and La Cumbre Elevated), so I am not sure if I'll be back for a second NB. Either way, been a good Sunday.

 

Something I noticed as I drank it much warmer (I'm just finishing the bottle now actually) - there's a much more pronounced apple for me on the finish but it's almost like an artificial apple flavor. I'm a weirdo in that there's something about GBS that just does it for everyone that I think I'm missing - everyone tastes things differently and whatnot? But yeah, I'm still not getting the apple brandy on the nose but that apple has come forward a ton more in the finish as it opened/warmed up. Cheers!

 

My third and Final NBS brew for today, is a BA version of a stout I've had before.



Rum Barrel Aged Fayston Maple Imperial Stout

Lawson's Finest Liquids
American Double / Imperial Stout / 11.00% ABV

4.26/5 rDev -2.1% | Avg: 4.35
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.25

L- Pours a thick viscous black with a 1 cm mocha head. Lacing is spotty.
S-Rum barrel aging is really apparent here. Behind the Rum you can still pick up the rich chocolate.
T- Uhh...Rum, Rum, and then some more Rum. The chocolate outlasts the rum flavor and shows up in the back end.
F-Thick, viscous, and smooth. Carbonation is low and the brew coats and lingers.
O- What can I say. It's a fantastic stout...if you love Rum. I mean really love rum. Those must have been some pretty great barrels the beer was aged in. If your not a rum fan, than you'll be better off sticking with the base beer.

 

Customer gifted this to me this afternoon, (along with a Congress Street.)
L: 1/2 in. head dissipates slowly to a ring.
S: Floral, pine, and citrus. Wow! Perfume-like!
T: Citrus and pepper, very nice!
F: Nice mouthfeel.
O: Man, I'm diggin' on this. Hope to get another bottle, somehow...

 

And a heart felt thanks for keeping this going.
Cheers to you and Maria!

 

Watching the game, so not a big review. I'm glad I have a friend in the San Francisco area who will gladly trade high quality beer from his area for mass quantities of lower quality beers from my area.
Speakeasy Syndicate Series 02, bottled in 14.
It's a little oily but a hell of a lot of flavor. When I opened it, I got huge barrel notes, but it also smelled like I opened a chocolate bar, and man, was I euphoric at that moment. Felt like the little kid and the booze drinker in me met up and hugged.
Obligatory beer **** below. Enjoy the game.

 

OK NBS Friends. I'm in before NBS Late Night, but admittedly I haven't read much due to me fulfilling the role of Grillmeister General. I will, as always, get back to read your fine musings.

But for now...
As @cavedave mentioned a week or two ago...Stone Enjoy By 2/14/16 (Unfiltered) is one JUICY BEAUTY.

Damn @StoneGreg if this is you pulling a West Coast homage to the East Coast, yet still bringing some serious demand for respect...I say to you, "Well done, Sir!!!" (Not that Stone needs to do diddly squat to earn any bona fides).

I find this IPA to be one of the best in the Enjoy By series. Some IPA's hint at what we call juicy, this one defines it. Yes, it's hazy, as labelled. A tad liter, golden straw, than past Enjoy By's. But the aroma starts with a glowing mix of piney subtleness to start, then heads straight into the citrusy, tangy, almost creamy pineapple soda homage bringin' goodness. It quite simple calls out for a year-round distort...I'm just saying'.

So, basically, I need to stock up.