New Beer Sunday (Week 684)

There seem to be a couple threads going on about Easter on BA but I decided to post my new beer in this one rather than the Easter one. I have a small turkey ham simmering away in the crock pot. Ham is one of those simple crock pot recipes that can make people think you slaved over a hot stove to prepare. Nope, three ingredients and into the crock pot for 6 hours. Boiling potatoes for the last half hour and steam-microwaving some broccoli.

Anyway, this is the Winter Hill Russian Ending from Somerville, Massachusetts . It is 9.2% ABV and it is an Imperial Russian Stout in a can. Those roasted caramel and chocolate character play up big in this one and the booze is buried. I like it when Imperial Stouts can play down the alcohol so that we can enjoy those roasted notes unimpeded. But the chocolate was a bit rich for my tastes. I may not have it again but I'm enjoying it now.

 

New beer #4. From @LloydDobler ’s ninja NBS BIF box. This is my favorite beer of the day! Right in my wheelhouse.

Devil’s Conclave - 18th Street
Double Milk Stout - 7% abv
Canned 12/14/17
Score: 4.46 (+4.2% rDev)



L - 1-finger dense mocha head atop an
opaque black body.

S - cinnamon, brown sugar, chocolate, coffee, maybe a little spice? Smells wonderful.

T - cinnamon-crusted chocolate, followed by vanilla and some spice (pepper?). Also getting some coffee, roast, and milk. Lots going on here! No detectable booze, mild bitterness, low sweetness.

F - medium-full body with medium carb.

O - I generally find milk stouts too sweet, but this is just perfect. Love the interplay of balanced flavors they achieved here.

 

Good Afternoon BAs had some chores to get done this morning (said the wife) so getting a little late start. My first beer of the day came from @Harrison8 as well as the snifter I am drinking it from. I received these along with many other beers you will be seeing over the next few weeks as part of NBS BIF The Spy who Beered Me. This one is from Martin City and is called Imperial Alchemy brewed with coffee and vanilla beans. The coffee comes through well, the vanilla adds a great flavor and a slight sweetness. This is a nitro stout so the feel is velvety smooth, thanks Harrison I am loving this one!!

Appearance 4.5 - pours black like used motor oil nice tight tan head. With this being a nitro beer that head will not go away. Spotty strings of lacing around the glass.

Aroma 4 - Great coffee and roasted malt aromas hit my nose first followed by a rich chocolate and very faint vanilla.

Taste 4.5 - Taste is very similar to the nose coffee and roasted malts dominate followed by a almost bakers chocolate flavor. The vanilla is more noticeable in the taste and hits me near the beginning right as the coffee fades.

Feel 4.75 - Full creamy smooth almost velvet feel. It coats your mouth completely and ends in a slightly dry bitter finish.

Overall 4.41 - A very well done coffee stout, might be the first nitro coffee stout I have had. The favors are really well done and work well together.

 

My first beer today comes to me thanks to @jdell15 and our latest BIF round:


Great Raft Brewing Commotion APA, out of Shreveport, LA

Right off the bat I really like the aroma- gently fruity with peach/mango leading the way, but nicely balanced with a good dollop of orangey citrus. After a bit of swirling I'm also getting some sprucey evergreen and a hint spiciness, which lends the whole thing a more earthy and grounded vibe. On the palate it's drier than the nose lets on (a good thing in my eyes), with a really solid snap of bitterness. The flavor is dominated by the peach/mango as well as that spiciness, which jumps right to the forefront; lingering in the finish is a long drawn-out citrus peel quality. It's all so complementary, and just when you think one thing is taking over, something else steps up to keep it in line. As to the feel, there's a satiny quality to it, with the fullness of whole milk.

By the end of the glass it's settling into a citrus peel groove, with the stone fruits waning. I'm really enjoying it now- it's almost like they figured out where the saturation points are with these flavors and then backed off of them a step or two. It makes for an interesting yet quite drinkable experience. And I find myself in total agreement with the back of the can: I love the balance, and how it coexists with the substantial bitterness and hop flavors. A quite nice A- (4.15), and thanks again @jdell15 !

 

You have quite the view there!

 

Hey NBSers! Two new ones for this April Fools Day/Easter Sunday combo week.

My first is a new double dry-hopped DIPA from Evil Twin. Jeppe of ET is well-known for his silly and often unusual beer names. Even More Jesus, Christmas Eve At A New York City Hotel Room and Ron And The Beast Ryan are just a few of those off the top of my head, but a lot of his beer's names give me the impression that they involve a joke I'm not aware of...

Can't say the same about this one, however! Finally, I feel like I'm in on one of these jokes: today I present to you "Ceci n'est pas a NE Style IPA," which is named after a famous line written on the Magritte painting "The Treachery of Images." As a surrealist, Magritte loved playing with meanings and context within visual media. You probably know this painting or have seen it somewhere before:



So, this beer's name translates to "This is not a New England Style IPA," which, when taken in stride with the above painting and its subtext, means it will almost definitely be a New England IPA. I mean, the can itself won't be, but the liquid in the can likely will be... Hmm, perfect for April Fools, right?



Pours a beautiful orange color with the requisite haze and some slightly lighter golden-yellow undertones when held to light. Crowned by several fingers of head that eventually sink down to a solid, consistent finger, this beer looks really nice in my glass. Incredible lace here as well. One thing I find interesting about the body itself is that, despite being almost uniformly-hazy, it also has some flecks of what I assume are remnants of the DDH phase going on here. Not a bad thing, but you don't often see suspended particulate matter in opaque beers like this these days.

The nose is very forward with guava, lychee, dank greenery, passion fruit and light apricot. Somewhat herbal tone here too, but it's buried beneath prominent tropical fruit. I've had some other hazy IPAs from ET recently, but this is the most exotic smelling one by quite a bit. Lost Souls was quite a bit more citrus-biased, for instance, while this one's insistence on juiciness is quite apparent from my very first brush with it when pouring it into my glass. High marks!

On the tongue, this has some of the dusty and chalky yeast presence which I find typical of NE IPAs, but it's quickly lost among a blanket of juicy tropical fruit, pine sap stickiness and light stone fruit. The feel is a little lighter bodied than most other 8+% NEIPAs (such as Mettle or Doppelganger et al), and it lacks a little bit of the chewiness I look for in the sub-style, but the fruit flavors and overall intense hoppiness (without noticeable, astringent bitterness, I might add) are quite impressive in the end. I would gladly drink more of this, and that's no joke...

One more coming up soon!

 

Happy Easter Sunday NBS players. A pretty nice spring weekend here on the island. Spending the afternoon watching the mets and then heading out to dinner.

My new beer today is Naturally Juiced, a pale ale, from Greenport Harbor. Brewed for the opening of the baseball season and the can art features either the mets or yanks colors. This of course is the mets one. The brew checks in at 6.3% abv, has a 3/21/18 canning date and features hallertau blanc, mosaic, and Simcoe hops.

A murky yellow color on the pour with a fast white head. A mix of citrus fruit on the nose. A tangy and smooth start on the drinking. Smooth flowing with a slightly bitter finish. The hops pop just enough but do not dominate. Enough malt backing to provide some balance. Nice fruit notes of orange, mango, and lemon. Slight white wine notes too. The mouth feel is on the lighter side but holds up well. Crisp, refreshing, and yes juicy.

Overall a nice beer. It would be cool to be able to drink this at an actual mets game. I’m right around a 4 here players,

 

Thank you! It’s the main reason I chose this rowhouse. On the north side of Center City, facing south...hard to beat.

 

Good afternoon, and happy Sunday, NBSers! I'm recovering a bit of shoveling in what remains a snowy wasteland here in MN - this was something of an unpleasant surprise when I came home from Decorah yesterday and found my driveway a mess of glazed ice and snow. Today has been all shoveling... and just a bit of beer.



Also - happy April Fool's Day. Just fuckin' around - but while we're on the subject, cheers again to my buddies @FFFjunkie and @Beer_Economicus who did a ton of bottle-sharing with me and Minnesota friends on Assassin Day Eve. Hell of a day, and great to finally meet you both in person.

On to business and my first beer of the day...



I've been noticing that many of you have meticulously-staged photo areas for your beer... and, while I wish I were that driven, I'm just going to start using my nerd shelves. I know some of you are comic book fans as well (@Dragginballs76 who refuses to tell me what comics are on his wish list!) - cheers to that.

This particular beer and PGW combo come by way of Georgia and a stellar resident by the name of @JBowenGeorgia. John sent me these as part of NBS #7, and I am quite excited to do some work on those beers, let me tell you. Cellarman's Spirit, today's beer, feels like a bit of a throwback to my introductory days to IPA, when the style tended more towards the traditional style - a more pronounced bitterness... but Cellarman's has also evolved a bit, boasting a bit of a fruity nose (I could have sworn that I picked up pear on my first taste). I do have to say, I'm a big fan of the bitterness in this particular beer - in some IPAs it might come off as unbalanced, but it works well here.

This is only my second beer from Creature Comforts (my sister mailed me a can of Athena for my birthday just after she graduated from basic training in South Carolina), and my first beer featuring Medusa hops. Great choice, John - and thank you again for the beer!

 

Yeah for sure, great choice! I've been eyeing up some city/CC real estate also, time will tell...

 

Good afternoon NBS, happy Easter/Passover or whatever you are celebrating! Starting with some beer thanks to @y2kawakami, Knee Deep Tahoe Deep.

3.92/5 rDev +0.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Thank you y2kawakami for this
16 oz can, dated 12/29/17, poured into a teku

A- A clear golden amber with a three finger white head.

S- Floral, some resin, piney, some citrus/orange peel, some caramel malts.

T- Pine, some resin, caramel malts, some orange peel.

M- Smooth, medium body.

O- A solid old school bitter IIPA.

Cheers!

 

Glad you enjoyed it, maybe you'll bring a bit of luck to Arbor tomorrow night! Cheers Jeff

 

Nice to have a new beer for my favorite thread.

Decadent Citra Citra. DIPA double dry hopped with obviously a large amount of Citra, at 8.4 Abv, 16 oz can , I don’t see a canning date.

Tons of fruit upfront on the nose and the taste definitely follows. I’m leery sometimes on bigger beers that the malt sometimes swallows up and hops and it’s a tad overly sweet. Not with this one though big but with great balance , I’d say it borders on chewy, fairly viscous, nicely bitter but not overly so. But with a fairly big double I wasn’t expecting a bitter bomb. So I paid about $6 for the can and... I’d do so again , really liking this beer a very well done Citra beer. I don’t rate stuff very often but I’d say 4.3 / 4.4 or so. I wish it was dated I don’t think this beer would age well being so heavily dry hopped and with Citra hops that imo fade a bit quicker than some others. If you see it I’d say buy it.

 

New Glory Brewing - Psyched IPA. No proper glassware so drank from my Green Cheek glass. The can is, unfortunately, not dated. New Glory is semi-local to me, and I know with certainty that this is very fresh and always-refrigerated, but would be a problem for others.



Look: Pours (almost) clear, bright yellow, with (originally) 3 fingers of head on an aggressive pour. The head is bright white, with small bubbles; the head retention is medium for style. (4)

Smell: Very floral dominated, kind of sweet. Overall, not very atypical for a standard WC IPA.
Taste: Follows the nose really well. I'm not exactly sure what hops were used in this beer, but this is the taste that I'm used to with Simcoe-dominated IPAs. Not really getting any pine or citrus in the taste. (4.25)

Feel: Slightly better than typical for the style. Carbonation is medium to high. The beer feels very well made, and balanced though. (4.25)

Overall: Very pleasant West Coast IPA. I payed $3 for this can, which for California is practically zero. I love New Glory releases, especially at the current price points. Would drink again. (4.25)

BA Aggregated Score: 4.24

Cheers everybody!

 

Surly Xtra-Citra Pale Ale
American Pale Ale - 4.5% ABV



4.23/5 rDev +5.8%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25

12oz can poured into a snifter. I am on a citra hop kick right now and have drank a lot of Cigar City Guayabera Pale Ale (that has been my go-to as of late in the kegerator).

Canning date of 01/12/18 listed on the bottom of the can. Bright, crisp, citrusy citra hop notes on the nose and taste. Light bodied, low alcohol, with a nice bite in the finish. Xtra-Citra Pale Ale is a winner especially with the long hot Florida summers approaching. This is a flavorful beer that is very sessionable at only 4.5% ABV.

 

Up again with another from @bl00 . Maybe Vic Secret is not the hop I'm looking for, but I didn't enjoy this brew very much. Nothing wrong with it mind you, just didn't work for me: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/25811/332065/

 

Happy New Triple IPA beer Sunday

Todays new beer is a collaboration between Evil Twin and Equilibrium.

Even More Unbalanced - 10% abv

This one pours a very deep opaque dark orange color with an impressive frothy and creamy head for it's ABV.

Aroma is straight up Fruit Smoothie! But theres a depthness to it that you can just tell has layers to it. Slight note of ethonal but nothing to crazy.

Taste is creamy smooth, fruity, lush, but with a bitterness that resides behind that smoothie like character along with some bozy notes.

Body is full without a doubt. Abv is notable but not a major factor in the taste.

This is a great collaboration between Evil Twin and Equilibrium.

I just wish it wasnt 10% abv so I can drink much more of it. Very Good brew.


#properglassware
#CHEERS

 

Seeming a little like old times with some matching reviews recently... (take the emoji as nostalgia joy)

Good reviews, all. Still have some catching up. Give me some leeway for a second, but I have my dad some Colossal Seven, from Port City (their 7th anniversary beer). I had a feeling he liked it, given his enjoyment of malty ales, especially Scotch ales. But at this point he’s mentioned a few times how much.

Also tried an English brown I like, Three Notch’d No Veto. (Stupid iPhone won’t let me link easily with this site’s UI: https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/32952/106903/). He enjoyed it as well and was happy he picked up toffee and caramel notes listed on the bottle. But in his enjoyment he mentioned the Port City again

My dad’s “first NBS,” sorta-kinda-not really. Cheers to all spending time with family.

 

I see you have a few graphic novels, well I just recently gave up buying new comics. I have been for a few years searching out my favorite comic covers and buying the graded books. The only one I have not pulled the trigger on is a graded number one that will be shown in my next NBS post shortly.