New Beer Sunday (Week 671)

Next up at 2SP, Bronson, a blend of The Russian and an English Barleywine. Tons of roasted malts, some piney hops and dark chocolate, all being balanced with a nice brown sugar/toffee quality from the Barleywine. Tasty and easy to drink, would rate it between a 4.25 and a 4.5, cheers!

 

Other Half J Wakefield Snowbirds

4.48/5 rDev +0.9%
look: 4.75 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.5

A: Beer pours a pitch black body with an almost milk chocolate light brown head. Beer maintains head and lacing well throughout the drinking.

S: Main smells are of almonds and chocolate. Very sweet aromas coming off the beer.

T: Overtly sweet, may not be everyone's thing but was enjoyable. Tastes are almost like a liquid candy bar. Getting mainly almonds and chocolate. Tastes mimic the smells only stronger. I enjoyed the sweet tastes but may be too much for others.

M: Very thick mouthfeel. Sweet flavors hide the double digit ABV. Very easy to drink but super sweet.

O: Likely one of the sweetest stouts I have drank. Lacing and head retention is top notch. Very good for non barrel aged but the bold sweet flavors are likely to bump some reviewer's scores.

 

A-A clear yellow color with a slight head and some lacing.
A-Aroma has fruity citric hints.
T-The taste has mild citric froral and herbal hints with a generous amount of carbonation.
M-A light bodied gentle beer.
O-A well done easy drinking beer.

 

For some reason I really love pepper beers. I’m really glad to see the new movement in Pepper stouts, the one I drain poured was just too heavy into whisky. But I love hot peppery beers

 

It was a very good beer, I can't wait until I hit the other two bombers in the gift pack next week.

 

Greetings, fellow NBSers, and thanks to @cjgiant for getting things rolling this a.m.

19° and clear right now, with two-three inches of snow on the ground. Last couple days featured precipitation above and below freezing. Oh, how I love I-90 with freezing rain...

Last new beers of the year. Better make 'em special, I suppose. Today is also quite probably the end of the season for my Seahawks. They screwed up enough that winning won't be enough today, other people need to lose for them to enter the playoffs. My Huskies ended their season with a mostly lackluster performance against a superior Penn St. team.

No NBS for me last week. It was an uncomfortable Xmas with the parentals in the Tri-Cities. Normally the driest part of Washington, this was the view of the Folks' backyard:

Normally, the family meets up at my brother's place in Olympia, but my Dad's back gave up the ghost a couple weeks ago and he can't travel (or do much else, really) until perhaps he gets surgery, so I went down to their place, where my Dad was gloomy (he's normally an extremely active, very fitness oriented guy, so he's going nuts over the inactivity) and my Mom (the world's worst handler of stress) was in a near-panic. I could've really used a beer but I neglected to bring one

I did manage to sneak into town early for a visit to a new (to me) brewery on the Friday before Xmas-Bombing Range, in Richland, WA-where I had a couple IPAs. Their Mike Drop, a hazy IPA at the lower end of the imperial range, was quite good:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/49497/318843/?ba=woemad#review
I also had another IPA there called Range Finder that was more traditional PNW style hopped, but the maltiness was too assertive and too sweet to make me a fan of it.
On my way out of town I stopped off, as tradition usually has it, at Ice Harbor, the biggest craft brewery in the Tri-Cities. While usually content to rest on their laurels these days, I had a quite nice Black IPA there that seemed both new and new to me:

Like a lot of the style, it came across as a stout that had been aggressively hopped, but was still quite good, as was the bacon patty melt in the foreground.

This week, after working a double shift in the snow, I dispatched a new Imperial IPA from central Washington:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/34028/298431/?ba=woemad#review
Not bad, but more malty than I prefer for the style. Also, no date on this limited release, which bugs me.

All sorts of choices for this New Year's Eve. I'll be back with at least one.

 

2SP Up & Out, a tasty hazy IPA. Great citrusy and slightly tropical IPA. Getting grapefruit, mango, some citrus rind, hints of pine. Not a huge standout compared to other hazy IPAs, but a worthy hazy IPA that would happily buy cans of if they had some, right around a 4.25, cheers!

 

Happy New Year everyone. Nice way to end the year is with New Beer Sunday. My new beer is one that was release for the first time at the end of last summer. I sure wish it was still summer considering New Hampshire is in the midst of a long cold snap. Just got up to 8 degrees today.

So here is Sierra Nevada Pronto IPA. An ale brewed with mango and Hibiscus the label screams. That means a vibrant tropical fruit sensation on the nose. And the flavor has the same thing but then you get a kind of peppery finish, which I found to be interesting. Mild to moderate bitterness. Decent beer.

 

Reading Beer Advocate tipped me of to what ultimately became my highest rated beer of the year. My #1 for 2017 is Clown Shoes Snow on the Maple Tree. Alas, no image.


4.66/5 rDev +12.3%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.75 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.75

Saw this beauty and it was the last one on the shelf at the craft beer cellar in plymouth at $17

Chilled Bomber poured into a chalice

Dark brown liquid, brown pencil thin foam layer quickly settles to a layer of brown foam, scant lacings

Aroma of bourbon, maple syrup, whiff of pipe tobacco, whiff of chocolate / roast malts. Bourbon reminds me of Borkum Riff pipe tobacco that my Dad used to smoke.

First sip is Sweet! Hint of maple syrup , definitely bourbon infused over malts

Here is where they executed this beer the best. Incredibly smooth, alcohol is deceptively well hidden, low sudsing. Could easily sneak up on you.

I had just rated Founders CBS, I like this better

Excellent beer, repeatable

Happy New Year!

 

Well isn't it cool that we get to celebrate yet another momentous occasion right here on NBS. Hope everyone has a terrific last day of 2017 as we all share some"new to you" beers.

My first is this charming ogre from Central Waters / Local Option De Klein Dood



4.21/5 rDev +2.9%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25

Brownish red and opaque with an immediate foamy beige head after a fairly forceful pour, but very little of the head endured past a minute or so, leaving a thin fizzy sheen. Nose is complex in a fairly modest sort of way, as everything blends well without any one overpowering essence. Fig, caramel, banana, oak tannins and molasses; all in blissful harmony. Taste is equally impressive, but where the fragrance was peaceful, the taste has an edge, as mainly the caramel and fig are upended by coffee and alcohol abrasivenes. While the body is overly thin, the heat in the after taste reminds that this is a big beer.

 

Huzzah for the last NBS of the year and cheers to all you fine NBS denizens!
Usually I ramble too much in my posts and so today in the interest of brevity (and nerd-shame since I'm visiting my wife's family) I'll get right to it.

I got a pack of three beers yesterday. Each made with a different NZ hop, a different fruit and NZ yeast off of grapes (at least according to the label). I'm gonna start with Pacific Gem for no reason in particular aside from it being the closest when I opened the fridge.

Pours cloudy golden orange with a very nice creamy white head that sticks like whipped cream. The aroma is fairly fruity and the cassis is definitely present but not in the foreground. The flavor is nice and hoppy with some light general sweetness and a too-oaty finish. Pretty drinkable with a medium body. The beer is nice and drinkable and pretty dry with some spicy hops, a touch of fruity sweetness from the fruit and a dollop of oatmeal. Nice head, too.

Well I was worried that these were mainly made as an attractive gift box and not because they were super motivated to make some single hop IPAs, but I don't think it was completely that. I'm not a huge fan of the fruit addition but thankfully it's not overpowering. If I had noticed that in The store I probably wouldn't have gotten them but I don't regret it. The oats, on the other hand are too present and cost it in my eyes. Nonetheless, I am a sucker for beers like this to try and focus on individual differences across various bottles and so I look forward to the other two bottles. Whether they're bad or not. This one wasn't.

Cheers everybody, and I hope to share many great beers with you all in 2018!

 

Lost Abbey - Ghosts In The Forest

It pours golden and with a minimal head and at first appearance it could fool you to believe it's a pilsner. The aroma, right off the bat, is oaky and tart, with hints of lemon zest, unripe pear and some very faint funk. The taste is intensely tart but not in a unpleasant way. More pear and apple, with the funk coming through again in the aftertaste. The body is fairly light and with a very restrained carbonation level. This is a seriously good example of the American Wild Ale style, which more often than not is a hit or a miss.

 

Good Afternoon NBS
This new beer has been pushed aside for several Sundays now, and it's time has come...

This winter warmer showed up alongside some 6 month old IPAs when Avery began Indiana distribution in November. I passed on the old hops, but glad I picked this up.

The review:
12oz canned 11/7/17 poured into a tulip glass at fridge temp 8.3% ABV. The beer pours bright dark brown with sticky light mocha colored head. The head recedes to a splotchy cap leaving substantial lacing. The aroma is faint caramel, coffee and cocoa. The taste is semisweet cocoa with some berry highlights. Mouthfeel is medium to thin bodied, well carbonated and dry in the finish. There is very little bitterness, yet the beer stays completely balanced. Overall, very good. I vastly prefer a winter warmer to be unspiced as this is. Five specialty malts are used to create the warming layers. Recommended

Cheers to all. I have very much enjoyed joining your festivities each Sunday this year.

 

Excuse the dust on the stool, I took this picture. I'll be cleaning this week.



Bottle from Winooski Bevy.
This was poured into a tulip.
The appearance held a frosty to semi-hazy sort of paper yellow color with a finger's worth of white foamy head that dissolved faithfully at a gentle pace. Some lace ran around the glass fairly nice.
The aroma captured a nice sweet to zesty lemon pulpy/pith-like character that played fairly nice with a smooth sweet honey. Just a whiff of sweet grains balanced with a little bit of grassy to earthy spicy sort of woodiness further in the back.
The flavor was moderately sweet with a nice zesty to semi-tart like quality coming in for a soothing sort of balance. That earthy to spicy sort of woodiness came in pretty nice as it continued to warm. Aftertaste was a nice blend of the honey, spicy wood earthiness and the tartness of some lemon.
The mouthfeel was about medium bodied with a fair sipping quality about it. Due to the tartness starting to overtake slightly in the harshness department running along my tongue, I'm guessing that's why I seemed to want to sip this more. Carbonation felt great. No ABV is on the bottle and I couldn't find that anywhere else, so there's nothing to say here from me.
Overall, pretty nice beer all around, perhaps my personal opinion would say that I'd want this again for me, but it's definitely in the Wunderkammer fashion of "creativity."

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/47666/310965/?ba=Lone_Freighter#review

 

I am pretty sure I left part of that for the gods & damn sure did with crime & punishment
( abominations ).

 

Looks like everyone is getting a head start on the New Year's Eve libations so I might as well join in on the fun! A few years ago on New Year's Eve, I had a Saison Dupont Avec Les Bons Voeux. It was incredible but nobody else I was partying with showed much interest in it, so I took one for the team and killed the bottle myself. Since then, it's been a tradition of mine to open a bottle on New Year's Eve. Well, things have been so hectic lately that I completely dropped the ball and forgot to pick up a bottle. So much for that tradition! Oh well. Luckily, I've got some other goodies stashed away for the night.

My new beer for today is one that I remember having wayyyy back in 2005 or 2006. I believe it was the Brooklyn version of the beer but I'm not positive. It was memorable because of the amount of hop sediment at the bottom of the bottle. We're talking pure bright green hop powder. Weird stuff, man. I still drank it, of course.

Schneider Weisse Tap 5 Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfenweisse



Pours a murky light amber with a small white head. Some yeast sediment at the end of the pour, but nothing like what I experienced years ago.

Big notes of lemon and orange citrus in the aroma mixed with clove-like spice. Flavor follows suit for the most part but with the addition of wheat malt and a little peppery spice. Medium bodied and finishes bitter and spicy, though it's not as heavy as the strong aroma and flavor suggests.

This is definitely not your typical weizenbock. It's bright and juicy with fresh citrus at the forefront. Honestly, I still don't know if I liked it or not. I finished it but I don't think it's something I'll purchase again. Wishing everyone lots of good beer in 2018. Cheers, BA!