New Beer Sunday (Week 691)

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a nice weekend and that your New Beer Sunday has been fun. Started off pretty rainy today but cleared off this afternoon allowing me to finish off some much needed yard work and garage cleaning.

Figured I'd break open a big tart brew from Upland. I received this in the most recent NBS BIF from @FFFjunkie . It looks like he had a nice weekend at DLD, posted a ton of awesome brews. Jealous.



Split this brew into two glasses, sharing with my wife. One glass I received in round 2 or 3 of the NBS BIF and the other in the round 4. Appearance is ruby red with a bubbly and active pink head. The head settles into nothing pretty quickly leaving a glass that appears like a lighter red wine.

The aroma is sweet raspberry jam and fresh tart fruity berries right off the bush. Can tell its going to be tart just from the aroma.

Flavor smacks you in the mouth with tartness at first but settles down a bit as my taste buds adjust. Fresh berry, both ripe and just underripe add to the tartness but a smoothed a bit by an underlying raspberry jam that add sweetness and depth. The barrel further smooths things out and brings in an earthy aspect.

Moderate carbonation, tiny bit syrupy medium body.

Overall a very tasty fruited sour. Upland seems to have this type of thing down and never disappoint. Fresh, sweet and loaded with a depth of flavors.

Thanks Dan!

 

Today on NBS I'll be featuring two newly-distributed beers by two very small breweries who have gotten a bit more attention over the past few years. The first one in my glass today is a sour by Four Quarters Brewing out of Winooski, VT. This operation was super small in 2004-2005; basically a tiny little garage with a bunch of barrels. They were doing some pretty wacky, wild stuff even back then, so it's not surprising to see them doing more bizarre stuff, like... say, cocktail-inspired sours?... oh yeah!



So, I actually did a review for a Four Quarters sour a few weeks back, but I wasn't a huge fan of that one (Schmilsson, for the record, which was a coconut/lime infused sour). I'm not even a big mojito fan, but the idea behind this one, 4 Quarterez, intrigued me. Spearmint + orange zest + orange juice? "How the heck are they gonna pull this one off?," I thought, standing in front of this beer at my local Craft Beer Cellar. Psyched to finally find out!

Pours a light orange color with some straw-yellow highlights and a rather retentive head of bone-white, shimmering foam that initially billows out of the can and into my glass with much aplomb before sinking down to about a quarter-finger after a few minutes, as lacto beers tend to do. Opaque and inviting with a nice color, 4 Quarterez seems to beckon me to sip at it. First, however, it has to pass the smell test...

The nose here is very intriguing, indeed... I get the spearmint right up front, but it kind of fades back to a grapefruit, orange and tangerine like aspect that pops out in a pushy manner. Very cool balancing act going on here... I don't like spearmint, but it does seem to work pretty well here. It feels vibrant, refreshing and unique.

The flavor profile is solidly sour, but also very juicy and tart with extremely forward orange and grapefruit/candied citrus notes before a light mintiness enters the ring in the mid-palate. A thirst-quenching session sour ale with an amazing balance between the base (which I assume is a somewhat generic Berliner-ish wheat beer recipe) and the adjuncts. It's not bracingly sour, but there's a nice pucker here that works well with the sweet juiciness and the invigorating mint. Low-medium carbonation with high drinkability... I love this one! Wish I had more... absolutely going to have to be on regular warm weather rotation if I can get some!

 

Good evening NBS, hope everyone is enjoying the end of the weekend once again. Thanks to @cjgiant for getting us started off this week. Another normal weekend with not much going on. Another busy work week coming up. Made another beer haul yesterday and got a bunch of new stuff I was wanting to try. My 6800th review will be some time at the end of the week. Finished up the laundry for the week and got my bottle returns cashed in earlier.

New Beer:

Excellent IPA. Fantastic head retention and thick soapy lacing on the glass. Aromas and flavors of big grapefruit, tangerine, lemon, peach, pineapple, apricot, mango, melon, citrus peel/rind, light pepper, and pine hops; with moderate toasted bread, light honey/caramel malts; and herbal, floral, grassy hop earthiness. Moderate pine, citrus peel/rind, herbal, grassy, peppery bitterness on the finish. Medium carbonation/body; balanced bready/grainy malts and sticky hops in the mouthfeel. Some resin/rind bitter dryness, no hop astringency. Refreshingly drinkable, never aggressive, 7.2%. Super classic midwest IPA. Feels like Columbus, Centennial, and Amarillo hops. Very vibrant, dank, and earthy hop complexity; nice malt backbone, with mild lingering sweetness. Would definitely buy again! 4.03


Delicious English IPA. Great head retention/lacing on the glass. A bit murky looking. Aromas and flavors of big grapefruit, lemon, orange, peach, pear, apricot, mango, cedar, citrus peel/rind, pepper, and pine hops; with moderate caramel, brown sugar, toasted biscuit, light nutty malt balance; herbal, floral, grassy hop, and yeast earthiness. Light-moderate pine, citrus peel, herbal, grassy, spicy bitterness on the finish. Medium carbonation/body; creamy/bready malts, some sticky hops, and light wood tannin in the mouthfeel. Light-moderate increasing lingering bitter dryness. Very drinkable, 7%. Really spot on stuff. Balanced citrus/earthy hops, English malts/yeast, and nice cedar presence that isn't overwhelming. 3.9


Cheers, be back a bit later on.

 

Good afternoon NBSers. I finally get a break from a hectic weekend, so I'm putting some meat on the grill and cracking open a Pilsner sent to me by @akatz821 :



Crickets, by Other Half. I think this is the first non-IPA I've had from these guys.

Crystal clear, with a fluffy white head that demonstrates solid retention. Nose gives familiar lager yeast and pilsner malt, which for me plays something like sweet corn and wheat cracker. The nose delivers through to the palate. Finish is crisp and clean. Overall, a very nice representation of a style I appreciate more and more. I'm happy to have tried it and could probably put away several more... this is disappearing quickly.

Thanks Azi!

 

This will more than likely be my final beer for the evening. It carries a name I'm fond of (Beer Geek) as it was one of the first beers I tried that I truly enjoyed as an experience. This one is a bit pricey, but I decided to bite the bullet and go for it. It smells strong from the moment the can top has been popped.



Mikkeller's Beer Geek.

Pours absolute black with half a finger of caramel-colored fizz rising up rapidly and bubbly away just as quickly. Aroma is heavy cocoa and roasted malts from the moment the can is cracked open. Vanilla, maple syrup, coffee, cocoa and dark chocolate all mingle over heavy notes of roasted and toasted malts. The cocoa notes seem a bit out of balance, and come off a little artificial. It has a hearty aroma, but manages to mask the 13% ABV from the nose. Flavor profile is a stark and dark punch of dark chocolate, cocoa, medium-roast coffee, maple syrup and vanilla bean in descending order. Roasted and toasted malts are present throughout. It's a hearty stout, with a flavor profile and feel to support that. Mouth feel is thick, with a velvety, almost-grainy texture that emphasizes the weight this stout carries. Overall, a hefty 13% stout with lots of delightful, but not delicate, flavor additions added to the mix. It never stops delivering hearty, thorough notes until the last drop has been drank.

Score: 4.25 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.75 | 4.5 | BA Score: 4.51 | rDev: +1.1%

Personal notes: Perhaps I'm being a bit biased in this review. I think it's a great beer, and I am partial to the name/brewery for sentimental reasons; however, if I had the opportunity to pick up this beer again for myself - I would not. It's close to being the most expensive beer I've ever bought (only beer that comes to mind more pricey is a Biere de Champagne I had from Mikkeller's), and while it's good, I'd opt for a BA Ten Fidy over this. Yes - they are very different beers, but both are hearty stouts, and the BA Ten Fidy is a bit easier to justify at the register or when flipping through old recipes. In fact, it's more hearty beer for less money than I spent on this. Still, this is a beer to be tried. Excited I finally got to try something new from the Beer Geek line-up.

 

Poured into a Nordic style pint glass canned on 4/24/18. Poured down the middle and got a solid finger sticky white head that leaves a nice wall of lace behind as it slowly settles. 4.25

Smell is pine resin, herbal, tangerine, peppery spice, and grapefruit rind. 3.75

Taste follows but I am digging it more, nice pine and grapefruit with some spicy hops and tangerine old school IPA. 4

Mouthfeel is medium, plenty of life but a tad dry, and very drinkable at 7.0% ABV. 4

Overall a very nice IPA, 6 years ago I would have really loved it, but sadly I am caught up in the Haze Craze like many. 4

 

Here's another from @Premo88

I'm enjoying this one out of the can right now, because I have to babysit these wings. Last time I walked away for a few minutes and there were flare ups and the whole lot sort of caught on fire. Live and learn. So this will have to be a more casual review.

Perfectly suited to the beer, though. It's a perfectly balanced casual easy drinker. The fruit has a fresh quality, it's not totally dry but has just right amount of residual sugar, there's a slight natural tartness, and some yeast spice is showing through from the base beer for a nice bit of complexity. Very tasty, and I'm loving it at the moment . A- (4.25).

 

Another Dragon’s Milk from @FlintB, this one is S’Mores, really good stuff!

4.31/5 rDev +1.4%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25

Thank you FlintB for this
12 oz bottle, dated 6/2/17, poured into a tulip

A- Black with a small mocha head

S- Chocolate, marshmallow, bourbon, some vanilla, touch of graham cracker.

T- Chocolate, bourbon, vanilla/marshmallow, charred oak, some roasted malts, hints of graham crackers.

M- Smooth, medium to full body.

O- Less sweet and more balanced than Salted Caramel. Easy to drink and enjoyable.

Cheers!

 

Happy New American IPA Sunday!

Went on a hike, trailhead, was around 72, dark clouds, some thunder/lightning. Having a pretty tasty IPA, my first from this brewery, will search for other's from them. Picked up some chicken tacos, watching some Next Generation reruns, almost done with season 4. One more team left for the Cup.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/22843/67268/?ba=Wasatch#review

Cheers!

 

Alright, here's my second and final new beer for this week. Then I have to catch up with previous posts and get my life ready for the upcoming week of work. Shouldn't be a bad week, actually, so that's cool.

This brewery is another I have touched on in a previous NBS thread: Bunker Brewing Company. When I first visited this place a few years back they were super-tiny and only had two beers... a pilsner and an Oktoberfest. They've come pretty far since then, and are now distributing some surprisingly forward-thinking beers including experiments in hoppiness such as this hazy IPA, Terrarium!



The Facebook post by the brewery indicates that this is an IPA hopped with Cascade and a new hop called Grüngeist (German for "green ghost"), along with Citra and more Grüngeist in the dry-hop. It clocks in at 6% ABV and was released on 5/10, making the can ten days old! It pours a very cloudy, essentially opaque pale orange color with an awesome collar of milky, frothy white head. Insane legs on this one with spotty lace and a very obscured surface. Dense, chalky suds really crowd my glass here... along with the surprisingly light color, I'm very interested to see where this one is going to go.

Grüngeist is, as I mentioned, a very new hop. I believe it was first released some time in the later part of last year, and is considered to be the American trademark name of the German Callista hop which apparently sprung from the same hop-breeding program in Hüll, Germany that brought us such interesting varietals as Mandarina and Hallertau Blanc. Bunker has previously utilized Blanc in an eponymous IPA, so I have no doubt about their deft treatment of Grüngeist in this beer! The nose here is very peach and apricot-forward with some light floral notes, melon and a little bit of overripe mango. There's a very slight sticky grassiness here as well. Not much character from the malt, which I would bet is mostly pilsner-focused. This beer seems to let the unique hop profile do the talking, which is fine by me!

On the tongue, this is very rounded and pillowy, with a dense hop-load upfront. Combining with the chalky-leaning yeast in the mid-palate, I get flavors of apricot, melon, strawberry and tropical fruit alongside some dank herbal/green notes as well. Probably the Citra in the dry-hop throwing those aspects out, honestly, but this does seem rather focused on Grüngeist overall. A bit of passion fruit here, but it's not as intense as the stone fruit-like peachy flavors. Very cool!

Medium-bodied with a long-lasting finish and low-medium carbonation, Terrarium is a very tasty and drinkable beer, and probably the IPA from Bunker that I'd be most likely to revisit somewhat-more-regularly. I like the structure on this one; though it kinda leans toward being chalky and overly-yeasty, the overall recipe feels pretty balanced while still showing off this new, interesting hop varietal. Cheers!

 

@jhavs glad you enjoyed! I really like upland’s fruited sours. And yes had an unbelievable time yesterday!

Which brings me to my next point. @thebeers , I had a few of your beers set aside for today. Unfortunately I will be saving them for next weeks NBS as there is no way I’m going to get to any beer today.

I will wish the rest of you ba’s a happy new beer Sunday! Cheers!

 

Delicious Kolsch! Fantastic head retention and lasting thick soapy lacing on the glass. Aromas and flavors of cracker, white bread dough, toasted biscuit, and light honeyed malts; with some herbal, grassy, peppery hops; and light notes of lemon, pear, apple yeast fruity/earthy notes. Light-moderate herbal, grassy, peppery bitterness on the finish. Medium-high carbonation, medium body, and moderately crisp/clean finishing. Balanced bready/grainy malt and sticky hops in the mouthfeel. Light-moderate increasing bitter/carbonated dryness. Very flavorful/refreshing. 5%. A tad on the hoppy side for the style, but I was a big fan. Clean pale malts, balanced earthy hops, and well restrained fruity yeast character. Pretty spot on and impressive for the style expectations. 3.93


Excellent sour. Great head retention/lacing for the style. Aromas and flavors of tart/tangy elderberry, plum, currant, cherry, lemon, red/green apple, red grape, hay, straw, grass, and pepper; with moderate wheat, crackery malts; light musty/lacto funk and yeast earthiness. Light-moderate fruity/lactic tartness, fruit tang, and yeast spiciness on the finish. High carbonation, light-medium body, and moderately crisp/clean finishing. Balanced bready/grainy wheat, lactic acid, and fruit tang/tannins in the mouthfeel. Moderate increasing acidic, tangy fruit, and carbonated dryness; zero puckering sourness. Super refreshing for 7%, not overly lactic. Just a really spot on fruited American wild ale. Great well rounded Brett/Lacto complexity, balanced fruit, and solid pale/wheat malt backbone against acidity. Would definitely buy again. There has been a ton of outstanding sours being released in cans this year. The ones from To Øl are my top buys at the moment. 4.05


Cheers, be back for round 3

 

The only problem with having great IPAs in the house is that if I crack them before the wife goes to bed I have to share.

Today with dinner (Mexican) we are having I Citra U Not, a single hop DIPA from Ellipsis Brewing in Orlando, FL.



This was sent to me by @Yabey in the current Can Can BIF and is an absolute showcase for the Citra hop. It pours turbid with almost no head to speak of. At the risk of being cliche, it's orange juice. The nose is citrus and just a hint of pine. Creamy mouthfeel, massive citrus. Not much malt here to distract from the hops. Finish is long and a touch bitter.

Very nice haze, thank you Alejandro! More importantly, the wife loves it too!

 

Happy Sunday, New Beer Samplers and commentators. After a seemingly endless succession of cool, damp, overcast Sundays and almost a week of rain, it's finally a warm, humid, summer-like afternoon. This is my last NBS in the house we've lived in for the past 30 years and I wanted to review a special beer. When we moved into this house in April 1988 the first beer I had on the deck was Corona. I'm really finishing on a much higher note thanks to @Bum4ever's LIF box. Saison Bernice is extraordinary and merits its World Class rating. It features the perfect balance of tart, sour fruit, sweet banana and apple, and funky Belgian spice. The mouth feel is just amazing - despite the carbonation it's super creamy and rich. Thanks, Josh, for the chance to review this fabulous beer. Here's my full review:

4.53/5 rDev +0.4%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.5

I received this from @Bum4ever in an LIF box. Poured from 750 ml bottle into tulip glass. It pours a cloudy, golden-honey color with nearly a finger of foamy, eggshell-colored head and creamy lacing with long retention. The tiny bubbles ascend continuously. It's a lovely pour. It has a fragrant, sour aroma with lemon peel, banana, coriander, clove, and funky yeast. It's absolutely delicious with the sour fruit complimented by a touch of sweet banana and apple as the glass warms. The balance of sour, sweet, and spice is terrific and there is a touch of pepper at the finish. The mouth feel is wonderful: despite the lively carbonation it's remarkably creamy and viscous. Overall, this may be the best Saison I've had the pleasure to drink. The flavors are bold and the feel is as good as it gets. What a privilege to drink this wonderful beer!

I hope you're all enjoying your new beers today!

 

Bunker Brewing Co. - Bunker’s Brown Ale

With it’s packaging recalling old-school British labels like the brown ales below, I couldn’t resist this one. I’m a sucker, but it also indicates a brewer’s affinity to days past, and the beer might just follow along.




This beer is a heavy dark walnut color. The head is great. The feel is smooth and sticky. The taste packs a wallop. Flavor-wise, this is a heavy 6% ABV beer, but it's never boozy. It’s very ashy and bitter. There’s a very slight tartness that lurks deep in the back to keep it even more interesting. Flavors of burnt coffee, nuts and cocoa powder.

At first sip, I thought this beer would be too aggressive, but once I was drinking it, I realized it was just plain delicious. A winner. Besides this beer, I'm only familiar with this brewer's nice Czech Pils. I think I'm gonna automatically buy anything else from them now.

 

Hello, NBS party patrol, and thanks to @cjgiant for the opening salvo. I also visited a brewery yesterday, but it wasn’t new - Three Floyd’s.

For Dark Lord Day.

My first Dark Lord Day.

I went with a best buddy I grew up with. We’ve been friends for 50 years, so it was fitting our first DLD (that’s what is vets call it) was together. It was everything we expected and more, but it was a long day. A LOOOOOOOOONG day.

We’ve both done beer fests, but this surpassed anything we’d seen. There were heap loads of people everywhere .....



..... and they were drinking lots of beer. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of beer. The bottle share ..... was an orgy of big, huge, WHALEZBRO beers. It was overwhelming - I saw bombers of TG Assassin, the neck broken off, with a third of the beer remaining. If you had a cup in your hand, someone was trying to pour something into it. My buddy and I declined - we saw too many people ..... overindulge and get hurt.

So we drank the Floyd’s beers (including a couple of variants that we stood in line for WAAAAY too long), plus some “regular” Floyd’s beers (Quaanto, a triple IPA, was the best beer I had yesterday), stayed hydrated (we were both chugging water), got some sun, drank some phenomenal beers, and had the time of our lives - and decided that DLD is an “every other year” kinda thing.

This is your NBS friend at the end of the day (I’m very glad my face color matches my shirt) .....



..... and this is the haul .....



I have enough Dark Lord for a generation of ovaltines. Onto today’s beers. First up, some juice.



4.49/5 rDev +0.7%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

Pours to the lighter side of the NE IPA-style, very hazy but not milkshake consistency, and looks like the glass of grapefruit juice I had this morning, except this has a thick, tan head. The nose is full of grapefruit notes and some spicy citrus aromas, but there’s an earthy note that’s intriguing.

The grapefruit is right in your face on the taste, but that earthy flavor adds a different texture to this, and there’s also some lemon lime notes that are really fantastic. Most excellent job by Trillium, IMHO.

 

Happy NBS y'all.
Today I continue through the endless list of wonderful Michigan brews sent my way by @FlintB during the recent (is it still 'recent?' I mean I've probably got enough stuff left over from it that I"ll be drinking to it for the next year, but is it 'recent?') NBS BIF #007.



Biomimicry is listed as a "Wild India Pale Ale" from Speciation, and is the first I've had from that brewery (side note: I really like their whole... thing. Aesthetic as well as names etc).

The beer pours a pale pale yellow body that... you cannot see through. Nice white head that settles in to a decent growth of fuzz after a time and leaves wonderful lacing to give reminiscence of what was there before.

The nose is inviting. Sweet citrus right on the pour and some undeniable wild funk. Bright lemon acidity and the somehow not unpleasant hint of compost. Yeah, I know. But I don't know how else to describe it. And I promise it isn't actually gross in this context.

I had expected some strong thrusts into at least one or two directions on the tongue here, but it's much more restrained and nuanced, which I appreciate. Light crisp lemon starts things off, before a small wave of sweet fruits led by bruised pineapple. The fruits are faint though, even as it warms. Definitely more of the wild than the IPA though for me.

Soft and clean, the carbonation is less pronounced than many similar, and serves primarily to boost the tart notes.



This is a really tasty beer whose easiest improvement I can imagine would be if I had drank it while the weather was hotter like it was last week. Another fantastic Michigan offering from Brian, as I watch my Mariners come back to tie the game (and hopefully go on to win it in sextras!) against the Tigers. I feel like I shouldn't have cracked a Michigan beer during the game, but oh well!! Goms!!



Cheers y'all

 

Happy Sunday, everybody!
It is another late-starting NBS for me this week. I assume it'll be this way the rest of the summer, but I can't really complain. I have work "in the industry" that involves talking about beer and walking around in the beautiful weather with random people from all over the place. I am starting to doubt that I'll ever not work at least a little on weekends, but maybe someday. Either way, it could be way worse and since it's still light in the evenings now I can still chill outside with a beer with you folks. So I'll just shut up and get started with my new beer.
This week I'm having an IPA from the fine folks at Brasserie Dunham. They do a rotating series of single-/dual-hop IPAs with new/experimental/hip hops, each of which is named after a Greek letter. They are at best delicious and at worst a good representation of a given hop profile and an excuse to learn and develop my tastes.

This one in particular is called Xi, made with Topaz and Idaho 7 hops. I've only had one Topaz beer before but it was excellent and have found Idaho 7 to be hit or miss. Hopefully here it's a hit.
It pours nice with a billowing, creamy white head on a hazy straw body. It smells nice with tart citrus and sweet tropical fruits. As it warms it gets more herbal/piney. It is drinkable if a little chalking bitter and pinesoly.

If you wanna see my real review it is here.

Cheers and have a nice week everybody!