New Beer Sunday (Week 673)

Good morning Craig! Thank you for the lovely start to my favorite Sunday pastime. I am a bit slow getting out of the gate this morning but I will be back. Happy new Beer Sunday you all!

 

Good morning NBS, hope everyone is enjoying the weekend so far. I have a 3 day weekend this time with the holiday tomorrow. Thanks to @cjgiant for the introduction this week. Will be a busy review day, have one for the morning. Review 6200 will be this week. Have tons of new beer stock right now thanks to my recent family travels and things.

Morning review:

This is amazing! Fantastic lasting head retention and thick soapy lacing on the glass. Flavors of big milk/dark chocolate, cocoa, coffee, caramel, brown sugar, toffee, molasses, vanilla, cream, rum, toasted oak, dark bread, and wood smoke; with lighter notes of licorice, charcoal, cherry, raisin, prune, fig, date, red wine, leather, tobacco, and nuttiness. Bit of booze in the aromas as it warms, but not overwhelming. Light roast/char bitterness and rum/oak tannin spiciness on the finish. Light-medium carbonation and very full body; with a very smooth, rich, creamy/silky/velvety; and lightly sticky/chalky/tannic mouthfeel that is fantastic. Slightly increasing dryness from roast bitterness and rum/oak tannin spiciness. No acrid/astringent flavors. Mildly increasing warmth of 13.9%, no barrel booze. Dangerously smooth sipper. Not quite matching last year's Brandy/Scotch versions, but nearly as impressive. On the smokey side for whatever reason, almost peaty. Perfect integration of rum barrels and the base stout as expected. Look forward to the Tequila soon. 4.38


Cheers! Be back later on NBS.

 

New Bock Sunday:

Back Pew Brewing's Satyr's Swill

Opened after the late shift Saturday, which means on Sunday (about 1:30 a.m. if you're scoring at home).

"Medicinal" unfortunately comes to mind too often with this one, though it has a fantastic nose — toasted malt aromas of fruitcake, plums, toasted/roasted peaches ... it's sweet and bready and nice. The flavor is super earthy, dirt, bitter and almost medicinal. The sweeter notes from the nose dip down into the flavor at times and give it a bit of molasses or burnt sugar, but the flavor never approaches the good toasted malt of the nose.

The review:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/43230/206796/?ba=Premo88#review
3.65 (+1.1% rDev)

My chores included cooking a new-to-me tomato and basil soup recipe, so I just finished turning these:

... into this:

There's fresh basil in there:

But I cheated, too :

Cheers, NBSers!

 

That looks darn good. I am cooking today too which is why i am a little slow. A facebook friend asked me to make buffalo chicken wonotns. we shall see how those come out. I need a catchy name. Winged wontons? Wontons with wings?

 

Buffalo chicken wontons?!? Yes for me! Makes me think of the "Angry Udon" dish at Jennie's Noodle House on 20th Street in Houston. Both of those names are great, btw ... I keep going back and forth between which is better. "Flying Wontons" is all I can come up with for now.

 

That looks so good!

 

I know CBS has been done many times on this thread, but here is my two cents. I shared this with a friend after midnight so it qualifies for NBS. Pours pitch black with a well retained inch and a half tan head that left excellent lacing. Smells of dark roast coffee, dark chocolate, roasted malts, maple syrup and a hint of bourbon. Taste follows the nose with dark chocolate up front followed by dark roast coffee, toffee, vanilla, dark fruits, bourbon and maple syrup. We were expecting far more of the barrel and maple flavors and we were both disappointed by their modest presence. Medium to heavy bodied, light carbonation, thick and creamy mouth feel. Overall an outstanding beer, however it did fall a bit short of the hype IMO.

 

After a bit of reflection yes, I'm gonna make a resolution. I hereby resolve to enjoy this beer . . .



Score 4.03
look: 3.75 | aroma: 3.75 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Beautiful clear gold color with white cap and good lacing.

Aroma of fresh yeast rolls, honey, flowers and spices.

Taste on entry is a complex array of sweet, bready malt with floral, spicy hops weaving in and around the central malt core. Very complex, very sophisticated, very, very good.

Medium texture with balancing carbonation.

This is World Class from start to finish. It just has a sense of being that makes the American copies seem rustic in comparison.

 

It turned out well. A tad sweet, but that's from natural ingredients, no added sugar. The recipe author said roasting the tomatoes gets them a bit sweet, so I'm leaving it alone.

Hahahahaha ... they will start up at some point. At least @cavedave will like your last attempt.

So the "late shift" just turned into "what the hell? Why wouldn't I drink another new beer before 8 a.m.?"

Firestone Luponic Distortion No. 008

The review:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/2210/313881/?ba=Premo88#review
4.07 (+4.4% rDev)

The website says this brew has eight different hops in it. Woah! Grapefruit, pineapple, orange are the most pronounced notes in the aroma with some pine in there at times. The flavor follows the nose almost 1:1 but the bready biscuity malt layer is more consistent and pronounced in the flavor than the nose. In fact, that malt layer gets thick enough at times to make this beer start reminding me of Lone Pine's Yellow Rose. *Double in fact*, I'm not sure why I only rated this beer 4.07. I might adjust it as I work through the six-pack that I'm super glad I bought ... this is one tasty beer.

Want to see who helped me cook and clean and do chores this morning? Here's Huevos the Puppy Dog helping:




Hope you get something good in your glasses today!

Cheers!

 

Wanton Wontons, is my suggestion. Edit: looks like Craig beat me to the punch(line)

 

Good morning New BSers! Resolutions? Naw. I learned years ago that the best laid plans, etc. I am, however, waiting another week or two for all those resolution-makers to stop going to the YMCA in the morning, before I return and start getting in shape for this year's Bamberg beer drinking. I usually hit the Y for about three months every Spring to start getting ready for warmer weather's scooting up and down the local hills. Mrs. Lizard can't get up early enough to go with me - I'm usually back home by 0730 and hitting the shower.

Today's New Breakfast Beer:



$ 15.61 (Including shipping)/12 oz bottle ($ 1.302/oz) from Blackwell’s, San Francisco.
2017 vintage, run 005, marked 08/21/2017 on bottle shoulder in black ink. Stored in a 42 degree reefer and served at 55 degrees in a hand washed and dried Jester King snifter.
Appearance – 4.5.
Body – Dark brown/black, opaque, slight effervescence.
Head – Large (Maximum 4.6 cm, aggressive pour), tan, medium density with average retention time, diminishing to a three to five mm ring fed by effervescence and a thin complete layer with some rocks. Head retraction leaves some thin partial rings of tight lacing.
Lacing – Excellent. One continuous sheet of tiny to small bubbles.
Pour – Light brown, clear.
Aroma – 3.75 - Initially cocoa and weak coffee, followed by some ghosts of bourbon past.
Flavor – 3.75 - Fairly weak. A little cocoa, some expresso. Just a touch of alcohol heat on the aftertaste. Allowing it to warm in my mouth fails to release either bourbon or oak. No hops, no diacetyl.
Palate – 4.5 - Moves smoothly across my tongue like an amoeba across a food plate. Medium, almost creamy, soft carbonation.

Impression and summation – 3.75 - I’m somewhat disappointed. Based on the hype and the price point, I was expecting to be carried aloft on vapors of bourbon with cocoa and expresso lovingly stroking my taste buds all the while. While this brew certainly looks good and feels exceptional, the most important component, taste, is but a shadowy figure lurking in the background, skulking behind the lessor actors of appearance and palate.
Rating 3.87, rDev -9.6%.

 

Cheers you all and Happy New Twice on Sunday!

Today I have Brooklyn's Winter Lager. I was a big fan of their Insulated Dark lager and was very excited when I saw this beer. I think the two beers are very similar. It pours clear and dark brown with hues in it that speak to it's clarity. From orange and rusts to honey. It does not show me any ruby though. I checked and double checked. The head is beige and creamy, fat enough to fall slowly and leave a ring while clinging in soapy spots as you drink. The nose is bitter chocolate and a brief glimpse at a spicy hop herbal. No citrus , no fruity scents. The light touch from some soft caramel gives an impression of sweetness and then the bold scent of bitter chocolate. it does not smell especially roasty. Drinks so smoothly. Soft generous malt just tempered by caramel envelops the palate and brings a silken moment of bitter or bakers chocolate toward the finish. No hop presence to speak of on the palate except for a light whisper form the herbal. No bitterness to remark on either but it is in there. That is where you glimpse that hop herbal. Right at the finish. Exceptionally smooth. Light prickly bubbles that are a bit softer than in the average lager leave a little of that malt to reside in the aftertaste. Outstanding.

I think this beer will pair with my buffalo chicken theme today because the buffalo sauce is spicy and vinegary. The munich like intensity should compliment that perfectly and allow the palate to accept all it's spicy heat while cooling it slightly with graceful caramel and that bitter chocolate I love so much. This was a softer more palatable version of their insulated dark lager in my opinion. It has a lighter roasted flavor than the insulated and less of the chocolate in the finish if I remember right.

Cheers you all!



The Black Crows

Wanton Wontons? I like it!

 

That's a good one!

 

Wanton wontons

 

Happens to me all the time. Pretty much every time I make it back to the states in fact. And then I can usually only remember the avatar of whoever had it so it makes it hard to properly thank them. Admittedly this seems to be more of a WBAYDN problem for me as this thread is quite a bit smaller and has mostly the same people week after week.

I haven't had mine yet and am trying my best to be unaffected by any/everything I hear about it, but I think it would be hard-pressed to possibly live up to the hype surrounding it. Like at a certain point it becomes impossible.

 

As is often the case with your impressions, they have not let you down here! Insulated Dark Lager has been renamed Winter Lager for the US. This means you owe us another beer post for NEW beer Sunday.

 

Still on the shelves here, that pricetag ( $25+ ) the main factor. 2 was my limit