New Beer Sunday (Week 665)

Hi, hope everyone is having a nice day. Started off rainy/slushy mix here this am but cleared up a bit this afternoon in my neck of the woods.

Didn’t require much conversion for my family, they all are into craft brews or Budweiser all day. I get to share a ton during the holidays.

Here is a new brew I’m drinking this evening.


Sharing it with the wife, though that may have been a mistake.

Ground State from Bottle Logic.

Pours a big black syrupy light blocking brew that looks like blackstrap molasses with a thin cappuccino cap. Head only on aggressive pour settles fast into thin tan collar.


Aroma burst forth with boozy bourbon barrel, bittersweet cocoa, and sweet maple. Hint of vanilla pushes through as it warms.

Flavor is full of maple, smooth bourbon, flash of sweet vanilla followed by bitter baking cocoa. Booze isn’t hot, but you can tell it comes in pretty high on the ABV scale.

Body is smooth as silk, light carbonation, syrupy and full. Rich boozy dessert.

A great brew, big and bold. Perfect for sipping on a cool evening by the fire (or a vacation day breakfast). Thanks @warrendietrich2001

 

Hello New Beer Sunday!!!

I'll start off on the topic of exposing people to great beer. My family doesn't drink much, though my sister likes her dry red wines, I have exposed friends to good beer. One friend really loves good beer now, though he bitches that he wants to go back to Wisconsin. Well, it's a bit hard for me to do so working 7 days a week. I should get a break in December.

So, now on to the beer:

Magnolia from Beaver Island Brewing.

This is their first beer of their barrel aged Oaklore Series. They only bottled 100 bottles of this, though they do have it on tap for a while. The bottles sold out in 22 minutes.

So, how is the beer? Amazing! I am so damn happy that I bought my 2 bottle allotment. So complex, so many flavors that work so well together, and I will age the second bottle for a while, to see how it changes.

Review:

4.42/5 rDev 0%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.5

Brewer's notes from thier Facebook page
Magnolia started out as a stout and took up residency in four Tennessee whiskey barrels a bit over a year ago. Flavors have been closely monitored and racked from the barrels when our brewers felt it had reached its peak potential. Layers of oak, dark fruit, toasted coconut, raisin and merlot are present. The beer finishes a bit dry and has a bit of funk which adds to the wonderment of barrel aged beers. Enjoy now, or cellar it for a future occasion. Cheers!

This beer pours a thick black color. Head was minimal, but what was there was a dark tan color. The retention was low.
Nose has a boozy aroma up front, and on the backside I get a slight fruity aroma. Maybe Blackberry.
The taste is very complex. I get a mix of the boozy barrel, raisin, a bit of blackberry, coconut. The barrel is up front, then the other flavors hit, then on the far backside I get more barrel.
Slightly lighter feeling, but still has a good heft.
Overall, so glad I decided to get my full allotment of 2 bottles, because this is one damn good BA stout. The best part is it isn't too crazy strong. Sometimes I want crazy strong, but a lower ABV BA stout works well.

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I don't know if I'll have another beer after this one, if not, see you all in the next New Beer Sunday!!!

 

Jolly Pumpkin Bamarillo

Darn these hard to read Jolly Pumpkin labels. I saw the big print that states that this was Bam with Amarillo. I missed the small print that said it also had pineapple in it. I got worried once I noticed this, but I had no reason to worry.

I’ve had some other variants of Bam in the past. This one seemed pale in comparison to others, but I could be misremembering. Head is small.

It has a distinct white wine quality. A little grapefruit pith as well, and lemony sourness. I wouldn’t have guessed pineapple. This one is just OK in my book.

 

The obvious choice would have been a gold embossed brown paper bag.

 

Good evening all. This one comes to me straight from the source. @beertunes sent this to me in a BIF box and I'm finally cracking into it.

Menace Brewing Chili Bravo


Nice amber color with a small cap of foam. The nose has a nice peppery spice to it that I admittedly didn't think was going to work here. I love spicy food, so I knew this would be a strange treat. Most pepper beers that I've had were stouts, so I was still a bit sceptical. The taste is clean and crisp with a solid hit of pepper. Mild enough that this is still really drinkable. Low carb, but that's probably because I've been dragging my feet to open this up. Not something I would drink more than one of in a sitting, but probably wouldn't pass it up if the opportunity presented itself.

 

Late check-in for me today. I'm having some weird phone issues right now. Only way I'm able to get online is by going somewhere with WiFi, so I'm going to keep this fairly short and sweet.

First up today was a ticker beer from Laos that was nothing great, but considerably better than I expected:

More a Vienna Lager than anything else, it's nothing great, but quite drinkable.

Later I hit a sour from @WesMantooth:

This was delicious and complex, a low abv saison brewed with brett, lacto, a German weisse yeast in addition to a Belgian saison one and fermented in oak barrels. It came together quite well.

Now I'm at The Elk Public House, drinking a citra pale ale from Icicle called Kickstand:

Yummy stuff, almost like a fresh hop beer. I could drink this all night.

 

Hey, everybody, my driving duties are done and now I can finally sit back with a beer. I've fallen into this pattern with #2 son lately, where he spends the afternoon and early evening down in Fort Lee, about 15-20 minutes away, and I'm the one picking him up. Due to the George Washington Bridge traffic on a Sunday, it's one place where my wife refuses to drive. It's probably for the best- who really needs to sit on the couch all day watching football and drinking beer?

At least I'll have the games on Thanksgiving . Our usual routine is to get everyone together (my family, brother's family, sister's family and my parents), lounge around, cook, drink, eat, play games, drink some more, etc. etc. There are 7 boys all together, and they range from 11 to 21, so we tend to be pretty active, and you can always get a group together for pool, cards, darts, or whatever. It's my favorite time of the year.

There will be plenty of beer mixed in there among the rest, too. Everyone's into it, even my parents, although I'm the only one who really geeks out about it. This ain't the time for geekery, though- it's just great to be able to share this kind of stuff with the ones you love.

Tonight's brew comes to my by way of @richj1970 and our last BIF. It's a kind of fruity gose type thing:


Avondale Brewing Nightfall Haze from their Barrelworks series.

The aroma starts out with berries, red wine (Beaujolais-ish), and oak. Some sugar cookie dough resides down deep. The palate is lighter on the berries than expected, but a really nice Beaujolais Nouveau quality steps to the forefront. It's got a nice milky body, bone dry finish, and, oh yeah...it's tart as hell, with a noticeably salty kick. That's not a bad thing in my book, and it's also not at the point where there's any harshness to it; very much a polished lactic tartness. The finish is long and woody, with some red wine creeping in.

I don't see what kind of barrels they used, but it's definitely giving me the impression that they were red wine barrels. It's not overdone, in any event. This is, above and beyond, a refreshing quaffer, and it certainly succeeds at that aspect. And despite the appearance, there's a bright clarity to the flavors. I do wish that the blackberries stood out more on the palate, however. A very enjoyable A- (4.15), and thanks again Rich!

 

I had similar feelings of concern about my attack strategy on my bottle of that beer. But then I settled on the strategy of "divide and conquer."

Using my trusted snifter glass and my carefully re-shaped re-sealer cork, taken from a cork and cage bottle, I poured the first half of the beer while it was still asleep and quite cold from the fridge. It was poured into a small snifter. I then quicly broght in my re-sealer cork and returned the bottle to the fridge for the next night.

In that small snifter that six ounce sample looked to be easily controllable and it was. I was indeed in command of its destiny. Then on Monday night I used that well controled 2nd sample to revisit my review, etc. and by that time both the beer and I knew who was in command of the situation.

 

You are indeed fortunate to have a wife who actually understands and cares about your long term welfare. I've a similar situation and over the years I've learned that "Yes, dear" is both the safest and the best way to answer.

 

You've more persistence than I.

After that first 12 oz I knew who was in control and left anything more behind. (I didn't want to push my luck. )

 

When I joined BeerAdvocate back it 2006, I was obsessed with trying every beer in the Top 100. That list changed due to tweaking the requirements and the explosion of new beers/styles. One beer that was in the Top 100 that I wanted to try so badly was Bear Republic Racer X. I finally did tonight. Over a decade later it did not disappoint. It's no New England IPA. It's not juicy. It's not hazy. It's just delicious. Malty and hoppy with piney notes and citrus. Fantastic.

 

Yeah, your situation was different than mine in that I never saw the bomber size and probably wouldn't have tired it at all if I hadn't has the 12 oz bottle.

Although I think breaking off my engagement with a bomber I'd have gone with a wee dram of a particular cask strength single malt to put the thought of that beer well behind me. It was interesting, different than I expected but I've no desire to every try it again.

 

Hey Jack! We were at Wurstfest on the first Sunday - we caught Alex Meixner's band before we left - and I wasn't impressed with the new German girl band that replaced Die Bayrische Seben although some of the band members looked familiar. We usually suck down several pitchers of Warsteiner Dunkel but this year we stuck to Shiner Bock and left early - all the younger family members had their own things to do and their own friends to do them with. I like Hopadillo and the Hopadillo Negra is pretty good too. One of these years when we're both down there we ought to get together!

 

It's my favorite of their "regular" beers. It's one pepper beer I do multiples of. I agree, one per day is enough, but I have had multiples a couple times. Try those sauces yet?

 

It's fun when the one-session-one-glass rule collides with New Beer Sunday:

12 oz. of Odell's Rupture in a 25 oz. mug

I've had too much other beers and yelled too hard at Dez Bryant's swirling-down-the-drain legacy to work up an official review, BUT I can definitely say this new beer reminds me very much of several old beers and in a very good way: grapefruit bomb backed by thick layer of malt. Is this crystal malt? I'll have to do the research, but this is one biscuity-malty grapefruit bomb, full of that bitter-sweet play between the malt-hop factions. In fact, I just drank a pint of Lone Pint's Yellow Rose, then did a full palate cleanse, and this Rupture is tasting almost exactly like the Yellow Rose. It might lack a twinge of the sweetness, like it's got a bit more grapefruit/orange peel than actual grapefruit/orange, but otherwise it's very similar.

That means 4.0-plus ... maybe as high as 4.2-4.3 if you're into numbers. If you're not, it means it's good.

There goes Treebeard Wentz and the Fly, Eagles, Fly ... not sure why I even watch this mess.

Cheers!

 

My 1st foray into NBS

3.74/5 rDev -17.6% | Score: 4.54
look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.75

Have read many reviews of this one here, but it just did not do it for me

Look-fine 4
Smell-Smells decent w a hint of sweetness 3.75
Taste is just average, not picking up any barrel notes
Feel - I think the carbonation is a bit too much for the style-3.5
Overall- 3.75

This just did not do it for me. I think there many far better stouts out there let alone barrel-aged ones. Sorry guys.

 

Welcome Back to Happy New Victorkugel's Beer Sunday (Week 665)!

I had a pretty good day of it, continuing to winnow through my backlog of beer with:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/345/282140/?ba=woodychandler#review


followed closely by:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/345/303464/?ba=woodychandler#review


but that did it for Downingtown, so I headed to Wisco & Leinie Lodge:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/710/273878/?ba=woodychandler#review


^^^ This was originally added as an "Ale", so I took, resized & submitted the approved pic as well as getting it changed to an "American Adjunct Lager". It could have been a "Fruit Beer", but it is clearly delineated on the label as a Lager & the fine print talks of juices & flavor. I am not averse to another change, but it is NOT an Ale.

I closed out with:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/710/279990/?ba=woodychandler#review


That does it for me this week! See you next scary Sunday for the big landmark 666.