New Beer Sunday (week 597)

I know!
Who would have thought!

 

Now that's how we start! Boom!

 

Greetings friends,
Thanks again Maria for the newest review and wordsmithing masterpiece.
I've been watering everything often, but the level of heat this past week is very strange. Native weeds thrive, many of which I love, but ornamentals and some vegetables are balking and need extra pampering. My dogs look at me funny as I hitch them up for their afternoon walk. I know that they'd rather stay inside, or they think they would, but once outside, game's on! This really is too hot and I want October now! Even Oktoberfests!
Today's beer is Stone RuinTen. This rascal is a 10.8% Triple IPA. RuinTen pours a brooding, thick-looking sourwood honey amber/gold, presenting a foam rubber strength meringue-like head that wiggles when you move the glass. This is a sturdy beer for sure, at 10.8%, and the slight haze and pure sugar and ripe hop nose rings freely about the glass and nearby. The taste is sweet and bitter at once, like a great piece of dark German chocolate. RuinTen is beautifully knitted together, showcasing vivid hops, big malty caramel, and intense alcohol hiding nicely behind it all, not dominating. This is like a dessert wine, needing to be sipped or gradually tasted over a period of time. Sweet, hoppy, chewy, a big malt presence, almost everything overboard, but it really does work. This beer is a testament to Stone's brewing acumen, but I'll be damned if it's one I'd drink often. It's perfect for late night discussions when politics and religion are evolving clearly in one's thoughts.


This James Brown piece is from a performance in Zaire 1974 (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). As great as JB is, and as well known, he's still underappreciated.

 

A little tip that may be useful that I'll pass on from a friend who once made a suggestion to me (not about beer reviews, but useful nonetheless in writing certain things). It's also highly consistent with what the "publisher" folks have asked you to do.

Literally imagine that you are writing to a few of your friends who will want to hear what you are up to now and what you are thinking. (In a way it's a lot like NBS.)

So while writing, just have a mental picture in your mind that the person sitting in that virtual bar with you is someone like @utopiajane, @cavedave or @TongoRad who've never had the beer and you'd like them to know what you enjoyed and did not enjoy about the beer, and why, so they can use that to information to decide whether they'd enjoy it or not.

 

Yeah, I'm gonna make an effort to not be as "clinical" as I am here, and try to not rely too much on the 5 aspects we use, separately, here. It's gonna be a challenge getting through the first couple. A fun challenge, but still....

 

No sweat. Maybe submit the drafts to some on here and get some constructive feedback.

 

Of course it will be a challenge. But then what's the point of taking on something out of your comfort zone if not to deal successfully with that challenge.

 

Get the gig, words will follow.

 

New Platform for the New Beer Platform Sunday


I have been hearing quite a bit of love for Platform and Market Garden lately from the Cleveland folks, and have confirmed the latter. Now I am trying to work my way through some of the former.


3.93/5 rDev -2.2%
look: 4 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 4

A 12 oz can poured into a stemless wine glass. No date.

It is a peach colored cloudy orange. A pretty thick, soapy off white head settles into a defined ring and leaves some spotty lacing.

The aroma isn't overwhelming by any means, but good. Mainly fruit in the form of cantelope, mango, pithy orange rind, and some yeast with a bite.

The flavors really pop. Crisp, zesty orange, cantelope/melon, papaya, and a resinous pine that slowly builds the bitterness. Decent spiceyness from the hops. There is some wheat and caramel malts along with a fairly biting yeast.

The feel is a bit drying overall with ample amounts of prickley carbonation. The yeast definitely offers some Belgian like qualities.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable beer that has some distinct east coast style things going on. I would have bet that this was a Hoof Hearted beer if blindfolded. I will be purchasing this one again.

 

Good morning NBS, hope everything is going well. Starting with my first of of Big Bad Baptist, great beer at a great price.

4.53/5 rDev +4.9%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.5

22 oz bottle poured into a snifter

A- Black with a two finger mocha head.

S- Roasted coffee, whiskey, vanilla, some dark chocolate, fudge.

T- Cocoa, roasted coffee, some dark chocolate, some whiskey and vanilla, hints of caramel malts, oak.

M- Smooth, full body.

O- A very well done barrel aged stout. Definitely worth picking up

Cheers!

 

New Beer Sunday: An "almost IPA" that is really new in many senses.

Mornin' NBSers with special greetings to the seekers of session IPAs that actually have some flavor.

Well we're firing up the grill here to do some burgers and sausages for lunch and having a pre-lunch beer. (Not quite sure what the women are up to but they sure are getting caught up. :-))

My review, mostly completed and influenced by chatting about this beer with my friend, can be found here:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/29022/242234/?ba=drtth#review

This is not only a new beer for me, it is new for the brewery. How new is it you may ask. Well it's so new it's almost as fresh as it can get after bottling and I'm confident of that since I had to create the listing for the beer and do the first review/rating of it.

The beer is called Evil Genius O'Doyle Rules and is described as an "almost IPA". It's dry hopped with two of my favorites, Simcoe and Amarillo, and the intent of the brewer is to create something that folks who think they don't like hops can enjoy along with those of us who know we do enjoy them.

Its aromas and flavors are citric (mostly tangerine and some almost earthy or woody notes of some other citrus. The bitterness shows up late to the party and doesn't try to steal the show. They've used some malted oats and wheat to improve the mouthfeel and the beer has a lightly dry finish that I typically enjoy.

This won't be a world beater, but hits its target fairly well in my opinion. It's refreshing on a warm day and fairly complex even though it's not particularly challenging. (But then I don't want all my beers to push me, sometimes I just want something to enjoy.)

Now if they'd just start dating their bottles....

Cheers, all!

 

Happy Sunday BA's! It's cloudy and muggy up here in Maine, thankfully not as hot as yesterday though. There are several new beer's in the fridge today as I was hoping to do a tasting with a friend of mine but he won't be able to make it today so I suppose I will have to save those. I do have one new beer that's up for grabs though, Brooklyn Defender IPA. Label says it's a daringly red and explosively juicy IPA, so let's find out.



Well it is definitely well into the red, a nice clear coppery orange color with an antique white head. Lacing is moderate and head remains as a thin film of bubbles.

The aroma leads off with caramel malts, a little bready and a little sweet. Then there is a little bit of orange zest from the hops, almost like there is a slice of grilled toast with orange marmalade on it.

The taste primarily follows suit from the nose with the sweet malts up first and then some citrusy hops. While I wouldn't call it explosively juicy, the hops do have a considerable presence for a beer this heavy on the caramel malts. There is a little resinous bitterness which is moderate and drying. There is also a slight metallic presence showing through in there also, though not offensive.

The body is a little viscous and carbonation a little low for my preferences. It coats the tongue slightly with it malty sweetness and resinous bitterness.

Overall I'd say this IPA has a decent balance between the malty sweetness, the hop flavors, and the bitterness. If it were a little thinner and more carbonated I think it would have helped the overall presence of the beer. If you're a fan of red IPA's I think you'll love this one.

Cheers!

Marc

 

My first offering of the day



No Hero

Evil Twin Brewing
Oatmeal Stout / 7.00% ABV

3.87/5 rDev -2% | Avg: 3.95
look: 4.5 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

L- The beer pours black and viscous. A large mocha head appears made of fine bubbles and 3 fingers in height. This head recedes after fair amount of time to a 2 mm ring with some accompanying islands.
N- On the nose I get mostly chocolate malt and the beer gives the impression that it will be sweet.
T- The nose is misleading here. There is the roasted malt bitterness straight out of the gate and some astringency that I associate with oatmeal in the grain bill. The beer does sweeten a touch once you get through the roast and oatmeal. Hop presence is very mild and earthy in nature and is almost undetectable behind the malts.
F- Mouthfeel is on the lower side of full. Not the thickest stout I've ever had. This may be partially do to a moderate level of carbonation which contributes to a semi-dry finish.
O- This a a good example of the style, which lands on the roasty side of the ledger. I tend to prefer my oatmeal stouts on the sweeter side of things. That combined with Evil Twins price tags will probably lead me to be one and done with this beer.

 

Something like this review: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/173/45936/?ba=beertunes#review
would work most excellently, imho! You CAN do it, Terry!

 

Excuse me while my brain fulminates with a thought...

I just did a re-review (revisit) on Lindeman's Cuvee Rene Geueze. Yesterday, I revisited and actually wrote a review of Tank 7. Personally, I enjoy doing these as I get to see my thoughts over time. Sometimes I find new things, often I find current thoughts are close to my thoughts from the past, but sometimes I find a somewhat different beer.

My question to the NBS crowd: do you think a monthly thread (don't think it could survive weekly; maybe bi-weekly), similar to NBS, along the lines of a revisit would work? I am thinking the theme is you grab a beer you haven't had in a while; buy a beer you tried once and want to retry; or give a beer a mercy... well, a second chance.

The post would be your initial impressions of a beer, and your new ones. The "before" wouldn't have to be reviews, per se; it could be impressions - though the "now" should be encouraged to be more "robust." I am not actually thinking of "enforcing" NBS style reviews, but encouraging something more than "I thought is was meh, but now it's ok."

My thought was to do it on a Thursday - marketing off the Throwback Thursday concept. I guess it could be a sub-WBAYDN concept (maybe to replace the sadly defunct BBB - how many B's were there @LeperJim?). Maybe the last Thursday in a month??

Anyhow, if this crew wouldn't be on board for such a concept - I guess it'd probably have to die. I might do it myself, though it could conflict with my not-so-regular Thursday Throwdowns .

Ok, thanks for reading, and any input you give. Gotta determine if I have a new beer worth popping and letting you know about...

 

Well hell, great news from that Subdued Excitement up there. Congrats Terry! Anything we're likely to be getting any circulation of down here in the big dirty concrete?

Today's beverage is from even further south. Seems a capitol idea. 3 Magnets Brewing is an interesting case study around here. They're on the newer side of things and seem to be generating a decent amount of buzz, though in what I've seen it seems less hype and more respect, if that delineation makes sense. I was going to share one of their higher rated offerings in this arena last week -- even got as far as writing the review and about half of the wild ramblings that surround tend to surround it on my posts -- before succumbing to something approximating crushing self doubt and disgust and deleting the whole shebang, contenting myself to observing from the sidelines. (my verdict: it was thiiiiiiiis close to being realllllly good, but there was just this one note that overpowered everything else to me that made it unenjoyable. Reading other reviews, it seems that this is not so much a case of differing preferences as it is simply something that most other people aren't picking up. Medication messing up the taste buds perhaps?)

Anyway, the other beer of theirs that I bought at the same time is... a bit of an enigma.
Banko Palm Sugar Ale lists itself on the label as coffee blended with ale (note which leads and which supports), while it is listed here as a cream ale. The description on the bottle talks about a palm sugar ale. So how does it actually present?

-The pour brings a dark amber body to the game with a respectably solid finger of light tan head that sticks around for a while. Apparently decent lacing gives way as the glass empties and becomes just specks by the time the beverage is gone.
-The nose is where things start to get interesting. Raw sugar and a sterile-ly clean creaminess intreat you to search for what you want amidst the folds of a maltiness that I've never been great at describing instead of presenting it at the forefront in all it's gaiety to be picked at and forgotten. For a beer that bills itself as coffee with beer added, I was a little surprised the coffee wasn't more aggressively presented. Though it was not laid out at the onset, once I dug in and really stuck my nose in the glass like some wine goober the coffee was undeniable, rich, chocolatey, and smoothe. Sitting in the shade under the tree confidently waiting for your eyes to adjust instead of bounding forth to intercept your approach of its field.
-That same clean synesthetically white creaminess provides the early incline into this one's flavour profile. This time the coffee steps up and steps forth providing the introductory splash to the rest of the retinue. As it sits and warms, the coffee is less pronounced and gives way to a blend of vanilla bean, molasses, and that same unidentifiable maltiness that I feel like I notice more in like... scotch ale/wee heavys? There's a transition next that utilizes the creaminess of the intro, the vanilla, and a lactic bitterness that leads into a finish that I similarly can't quite nail down, but falls into the camp of bittering-ness-itude.

-This is an odd duck. Ultimately, though, it is an odd duck that I enjoy. Moreso than the Little Juice I allude to above, and one I am glad to have had the opportunity to enjoy. If it is not brewed again in the future, well, I trust that other tasty beverages will occupy my time, but I'm glad to have spent the better part of my morning this Sunday in late July with this particular offering.







EDIT: @cjgiant I really like that idea. I know my tastes and perspective have changed and evolved pretty significantly in the near-decade I've been on here, and think it would be interesting to revisit in a more critical sense some of the beers I reviewed as a young'un (for better, for worse, or for similar impressions!). Definitely would be interested in potentially participating if/when it comes to fruition

 

I love this idea! Throwback Thursday, yup, do it. Maybe start it on the first Thursday of the month, then lock it at the end of each month. Those threads that don't have a clear end (like Latest Haul), and thus grow huge, just put me so far off that I don't ever look at them. Start it this week, and I'll certainly contribute to it.

 

Almost certainly. I'm pretty sure stuff from every brewery but Menace and Stone's Throw gets to Seattle. A certain amount of Structures makes it down, and Kulshan, Boundary Bay, Chuckanut, and Aslan should be easy finds down there.

 

Love your enthusiasm, though I am not sure I could market it (on, let's be practically honest, WBAYDN) enough within a week to get people thinking and buying into the concept, if you catch my drift. Thanks for the input!!