New Beer Sunday (Week 674)

Thanks for the tag, you just decided my next beer for me, gonna go grab a 2 and join you. Cheers!

 

Deschutes The Abyss Tequila Barrel-aged, 11.9% ABV, 80 IBU. Pours black with a real nice 1+ finger brown head and incredible lacing. Aroma is tequila, taste is tequila, dark fruit, toffee/caramel, and chocolate, with slight sweetness and slight bitterness. Sure does not seem like 80 IBU, well hidden. Excellent mouthfeel. Overall outstanding, and surprisingly I prefer this over its Rum sibling. I'm surprised, as I'm not a tequila fan since barfing tequila through my nose in college.

 

No worries...

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

 

Thanks for reminding me!

 

One of my first beer-loves (97? 98?), that let me know that I actually liked beer.

 

New Beer Sunday: A New Flanders Oud Bruin

Evenin’ NBSers with an alert to fans of Belgian style ales and a special thanks to @lordofthewiens for the start today.

The weather here was partly sunny with a high temp in the low 50s. Good weather for outside chores.

This evening’s new beer is the Ommegang Brunetta which is a Flanders Out Bruin that is also a reflection of the cooperative influence of two different breweries (Ommegang & Leifman’s) that are both under the same umbrella created by Duvel Moortgat.

As usually my review, subject to change until the beer is finished, can be found here:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/42/281534/?ba=drtth#review

The aromas/flavors in this beer include some dark fruit, e.g., raisins and something that seems like cherry to me, along with a bit of malt sweetness and some light tartness that’s similar to red wine vinegar. There’s no real hop flavor or bitterness but the ending is dry, tart and very clean. Seems like it would be a great beer to served at a party with a charcuterie or cheese plate.

Taking a pass on an original cast recording tonight in favor of watching the Eagles-Vikings game.

Cheers, all!

 

A final entry today and another I picked up yesterday at Binny's Beverage Depot in Oak Brook IL. I'm a big fan of Half Acre IPA's and there is always a sixtel in my kegerator, so trying a new one was a no brainer. A pint can of Plane Wave IPA dated 01/02/18 with an abv. of 6% that I'm pouring in my Half Acre Big Hugs glass from a couple of years ago.

It pours a slightly cloudy dark gold producing a large finger of creamy white foam that slowly settles revealing some heavy lacing. The smell is tangerine, mango, grapefruit, spicy floral, fresh rubber and a little malt. Taste is tangerine, pineapple, floral notes, green melon, rubber and a hint of peppery spice. The feel starts slick and creamy, quickly turning dry and slightly bitter.

Another flavorful easy drinking IPA from Half Acre that I'm hoping finds it's way into kegs sold at the brewery store. My score is 4.19 / rDev+2.4%.

Kicking back with a couple old standbys next for the NFC title game. Have yourselves a great evening. Until next time.......

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18006/286275/?ba=Prager62#review

 

Hello New Beer Sunday!!!

And hello from the only person in the state of Minnesota not watching the Vikings game. Why? I really have no desire to watch. I might pop in a classic move like Spaceballs or Animal House to enjoy tonight.

What else I'm enjoying is my new beer.


Peanut Buster Porter from Montgomery Brewing in Montgomery, MN. 6.3% ABV, 45 IBU, 31 SRM.

So, how is it?

Damn good. The peanut butter hit me hard as I was pouring this beer. I also got a slight chocolate aroma. The taste is the same - peanut butter that hits hard, chocolate on the backside, and a slight bitterness from the hops. The only downside is it is a bit watery. If it were a thicker beer, it would be amazing.

Delicious.

4.11/5 rDev -1.4%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 4

Pours a very dark brown color. 1 finger off white head. Retention is low, and there's no lacing on the glass.
The nose hit me when I was pourin this beer. I got hit hard with peanut butter and chocolate aromas. Up close it is the same.
Taste - Peanut butter all around. Some chocolate notes. Just a slight bitterness on the backside.
A bit watery feeling. Some carbonation, but slight.
This is a delicious peanutbutter porter. The only downside is the watery feel.

467 characters

This is, probably, it for tonight. If so, see you all next Sunday for the next New Beer Sunday!!!

 

#2, these pretzels are making me thirsty (referring to the game)!!!!! Mrs O is eating dinner, I’m looking for someone to hug.



3.96/5 rDev -6.6%
look: 4.25 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Pour is dark brown, verging on black, with a tan head. Aromas are some light char, cocoa, and coffee.

Taste is balanced, with the coffee adding some bitterness at the end of the taste. This is a nice beer from my birth town.

 

Moving right along then:

So many Gose/Berliners in review stock right now. Very nice stuff. Aromas and flavors of big tart/tangy passionfruit, fruit skin, lemon, lime, pear, peach, melon, red/green apple; with some wheat/crackery malts; light herbal/grassy hops and lacto funk. Light-moderate fruity/lactic tartness and fruit/wheat tang in the finish. Medium carbonation, light-medium body, and moderately crisp/clean finishing. Balanced bready/grainy malt, lactic acid, and fruit tang in the mouthfeel. Light-moderate increasing lactic/tangy fruit dryness, no pucker. Very flavorful/refreshing, 3.8%. As with most of these Platform sours I've had, this is spot on style stuff; but not groundbreaking. Great balanced lacto fruitiness and tangy passion fruit flavors; with a nice pils/wheat malt backbone for the ABV. Not overly lactic, but definitely adequate. Very flavorful and not watery feeling. Really delicious. Would not mind having regular access to this brewery, but I love trying the insane amounts of stuff they keep releasing. I have at least 5 more left of various styles from my Ohio family visit. Will keep getting them, they rarely disappoint. 3.9


Outstanding fruit IPA! Aromas and flavors of big juicy ruby red grapefruit, tangerine, pineapple, peach, passionfruit, berry, mango, melon, lemon zest, orange peel, citrus rind, light pepper, and pine hops; with toasted bread, light caramel malt balance; and herbal, floral, grassy hop earthiness. Light-moderate pine, citrus peel, herbal, grassy, spicy bitterness on the finish. Medium carbonation/body, and fairly crisp finishing. Balanced bready/grainy malts and sticky hops in the mouthfeel. Light resins/rinds, increasing bitter dryness, no hop astringency. Refreshingly drinkable, 6.5%. Awesome balanced juicy/dank fruit and hop complexity; nice bready malt backbone, with minimal residual sweetness. Never overly aggressive. Damn, after not having Brewdog in a few years; these recent ones have been killer. They are really nailing it with the OH brewery for sure. Got a couple more. Will seek out others on my next family visit! 4.15


WOW! This was amazing! Really stuck cork, the wine key helped. Great head retention/lacing for the ABV. Aromas and flavors of huge milk/dark chocolate, cocoa, caramel, vanilla, brown sugar, toffee, vanilla, bourbon, toasted oak, dark/brown bread, and nutty malts; with lighter notes of coconut, molasses, licorice, tobacco, smoke, raisin, plum, fig, and cherries. Rich and intense nose, with zero booze as I am used to seeing with most BBA stouts. Perfectly balanced. Light roast bitterness and bourbon/oak tannin spiciness on the finish. Light-medium carbonation and very full body; with a very creamy, silky, velvety, and rich mouthfeel that is amazing. Minimal chalky roast, oak tannins, or dryness. Mildly increasing warmth of 12%, zero barrel booze. Blowing me away. Super rich dark/roast/bready malts, perfect bourbon barrel integration, and complementing vanilla/cocoa spice notes that blend in perfectly. They really nailed this one. 4.37


Cheers, have a good night NBS!

 

Rent vs own? Yeah the privacy, and room for pets and kid(s) was nice. I made extra $ growing plants for side jobs, & my neighbors (to buy) , but.... the other stuff ( Built in '53....1853!, stone foundation, dirt floor, heated with wood,lots of trees ,too close, & let go) , something always happening......... Worrying how national,state, & local politics will impact property & county taxes.. ..?

Then a busybody town supervisor, who thought his daughter's gated HOA in N.C.,was the ideal . (Somebody up the road had to give up raising horses for sale, because it was over the line....but cows weren't. > "Pretty fancy, for a cow town!" - Cindy R. , a longtime neighbor & co-worker) Anyway , renting, down the road from the old place, is a lot less hassle.

BEER!!! Let's just think about beer .
This one? Pretty good. No complaints. Just wouldn't seek it out ,@ ~$3.89/can, given other options.



3.96/5 rDev -4.1%
look: 4.25 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Best by date of 3/27/18

Hazy orange-gold , ample white head and lacing, with a few floaties.

Aroma is light cracker, a bit of bread dough, floral, and faint, unidentifiable, fruitiness.

Flavor is lemon candy , dried orange peel, dried grapefruit, persimmon - but tart , and some pine bitterness as it warms .

Lightly oily, with moderate, fine carbonation on the finish .

Overall , good, not great. I would gladly imbibe any time, though it wouldn't be near the top of the list , if I had any choice. Worth a try.

 

Rec'd last month from my Tree House guy who now works in CT.
This is new to me and new to BA.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30321/323307/



Moderate pour yields a one (plus) inch tan head over a dark brown body with some nice lacing. Nose of roasted malt, chocolate, and rum. Taste of chocolate, malted milk, tiny bit of dark fruit, with the rum definitely standing out, especially as it warms. Very nice feel and overall, a nice rum barrel aged Impy Stout, but I'm thinking this might be a bit stronger than 8.5% abv. Cheers!

 

Happy New Beer Style Sunday

Against the Grain w/ Freigeist - Gegen den Strom - Broyen

This is gonna be one of my typical posts where I talk about style for a bunch of paragraphs and then do a sensory review of the beer in about three words.

This is one in a series of beers executed by Against the Grain as a collaboration with Sebastian Sauer of Freigeist. Sebastian is interested in reviving old forgotten German beer styles... at least it seemed like he was into that until the usual market stuff kicked in (brewing with mango and stuff). Perhaps I judged too soon.

This one is called Broyen, and I have to assume that it's a spelling variation on what one would usually see as "Broyhan." Oddly, Against the Grain has this called Broyhan on their website. They've put this one together as a pale, low-hopped, 100% wheat, 4.7% ABV beer.

I guess it's hard to pin down what Broyhan actually was like. At one point, it was hugely popular throughout northern Germany. Today it's gone. Descriptions vary. It was perhaps top-fermenting, low/no-hopped, dark or pale, possibly had wheat, very low alcohol, possibly sour.

This new beer pours with little head and little carbonation. The picture below is a better representation of its color and clarity. It's a nice butterscotch/gold/amber with fantastic clarity.



This beer is listed here as a Hefeweizen (undoubtedly due to it being a wheat beer done as a "German" style). You'll get nothing resembling a Hefeweizen here. There's none of the trademark heavy fruit, spice notes or haze. Not even a head. I'm not knocking it for any of that however - 'cause it's not a Hefeweizen... and other reviewers would do the same in a perfect world.

To me, this beer feels like a poorly executed lager. There's some lemon tartness and crispness to it. There's little hop impression. An interesting beer but not an outstanding drink.

Do I feel like I'm stepping back in time and drinking like someone in northern Germany once did? Not in the slightest. I have my doubts that this resembles Broyhan of the past... but I guess I'll never know.

Coincidentally, this beer fits perfectly into the conversation that @Premo88 @drtth @TongoRad , myself and some others were having in the British/German thread regarding Schwarzbier, classifying beers, and rating beers. In the case of this beer, I don't think there's any style on the BeerAdvocate list that this one fairly fits in.

Cheers.

 

Happy New S'More Beer Sunday (Week 674)!

I love things here at Chez Woody! Sure, I have a mortgage, but this location here in Lancaster, PA totally suits my lifestyle. I am directly on the North-South lines of several local buses, both on my street & within a block in either direction. I am much closer to our local train station, I have great neighbors, I can walk to those places that are inconvenient on public trans, it is just a good fit for me. I have been here for over nine (9) years after having had my fill of my mother, whose house I had been renting since she (mostly) lives in Chico, CA. She wanted me to both pay rent & do upkeep & maintenance, plus she felt like she could come east whenever she liked. It became untenable & although I had lived other places, this was my childhood home. At first, it was bizarre, but now, I am so happy with my decision to move & own my own home.

My apologies for the late start. I was drinking some non-New Beers on this Sunday (gasp!) & it has taken until now to get in the NBS groove. Groovy!

My first was a Porter:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/99/206755/?ba=woodychandler#review


and boy, was it sweet!

I am a glutton for both beer & punishment, so I turned to a Stout for my next one:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/21396/233835/?ba=woodychandler#review


All right. I give up. Two sweet is too sweet for this guy! See yinz next week.

 

Thanks for the intro @lordofthewiens. Very timely for me. We have been getting renovations done on our house since August. It's been an extremely slow and stressful process for my entire family, but the hope is that it will be worth it when it's all done. Maybe a new beer will make it all ok?!

There was some recent chatter on the forums about Saranac, which led me to buy this one. I love the idea of a brewery having a "house lager" in their lineup and I like the idea of having my fridge stocked with one at all times as well. The Helles style seems to fit that bill perfectly.

Saranac F.X. Matt's Haus Lager



Pours a deep gold with a huge frothy white head. Brilliant clarity let's you see right through it. Good head retention with patchy lacing on the glass.

Grainy malt aroma with light spicy, floral hops. It doesn't really have that rich malt character that a Helles usually does. Nice balance in the flavor but it's a little too generic tasting. The best way I can describe it is it tastes very "beery." Extremely clean and finishes on the dry side. Carbonation is lively and right on the money. I could drink multiple pint cans of this!

Overall, it doesn't scream Helles lager to me. In fact it kind of walks a fine line between Helles and adjunct lager, despite any adjuncts being used in the beer. I'm a fan and I would definitely purchase it again. But it's not going to replace any of my favorite German versions of the style.

3.75/5 rDev +0.8%
look: 4.25 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 4 | overall: 3.75

Cheers, BAs!

 

I think you described it perfectly well, but if you come at it from the point of view as an American all-malt lager you'll appreciate it better. I don't think it's trying to be, or even compete with, the Munich Helles biers.

 

Hijos de Rivera - 1906 Reserva Especial

I couldn't tell you anything about what this beer is supposed to be or its reason for existence, because everything on it is in Spanish. It's classified here as a Vienna lager. The color of the glass of the bottle is oddly light.

I wish I didn't know how it was classified here, 'cause it probably biased me too much. I wanted more character from the malt and hops. If only it was toastier. If only the hops were spicier. If only.

Is it possible to have something that’s too lacking in character, but also too flavorful to be a quick and easy drink? This beer proves it’s possible. There was nothing “just right” about it.

 

Sam Adams chocolate bock,pours completely black with a medium body. Aroma was milk chocolate malt, and some roasted malt. The milk chocolate was very forward followed by the malt. It was far from complex but as a dessert beer it worked. I wouldn't go out of my way for it but it had some good qualitys

 

I guess I exaggerated a little when I said I didn't know anything about this beer. I should add that I would be surprised if this wasn't an adjunct lager.

 

Off Color - Known Gnome

Like the "Broyhan" beer earlier, this beer is trying to tug at a little bit of beer history.

According to the brewer:

Sign me up!

This porter is made with quassia bark and licorice root. The color is black/dark brown. Body is exceptionally thin. I did a spit take when I saw that it was 6.7% ABV. Never would I have guessed.

If I didn't know there were unusual ingredients in this beer, I wouldn't have guessed that either. Rather than picking up on those oddities, I just got burnt coffee. It tasted like chocolate malt overkill.

The thin body of this beer for the ABV is astonishing. If anybody wants a coffee forward porter w/o coffee that's very thin but high in ABV, this is a good choice. Thing is, seems like people here prize the opposite. It's gotta be motor oil. Oh well.