New Beer Sunday (Week 692)

Possibly the coolest beer name ever.

 

Final one of the night.


Minnesconsin from Hop & Barrel Brewing in Hudson, Wisconsin. Helles Lager at 5.2% ABV.

Easy drinking, and lighter flavored. For what it is, it's good.

3.62/5 rDev 0%
look: 3.75 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.5

Pours a fairly clear golden color. The head is white, 1 finger, but not long lasting, at all.
The nose is mild. There's a slight malt to it, but not much else.
Taste - lighter flavored. Slight malt, slightly sweet.
Light bodied, but crisp feeling.
It is what it is, but it is good for the style. Fairly easy drinking.

Ok, see you all next week in the next NBS. I'll be later, because I'll have family stuff going on. See you all then.

 

Danksta!



12 ounce bottle.
Moderate to vigorous pour yields a 7/8 inch light tan head over a mahogany body with some sticky lacing. Hmm, intriguing. Nose of tropical fruit, citrus, caramel, vanilla, and oak. Taste mirrors nose with some dank hop flavors and a very nice mouthfeel.
Overall, for me, another Founders winner.
Cheers!

4.14/5 rDev +1%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

 

Reuben's Brews Imperial Oatmeal Stout. Clocking in at 8.4abv.

Look: 4.00-Pours like black coffee, with little head. Slight ring retention, with nice glass lacing.
Smell: 3.75-Sweet roasty malts with some chocolate. Slight pecan-like smell, with a tad of coffee.
Taste: 3.50-Nutty/roasty malt flavor, with some chocolate. Some coffee on the finish, but minimal. Pretty linear tasting, but not necessarily bad.
Feel: 3.00- Light in body and weight. Carbonation higher than I prefer for the style.
Overall: 3.50- An easy drinking oatmeal stout for the most part, but the flavor and especially the feel have me desiring more.
Final BA Score: 3.54

 

Barrier - O-Ren Rishi

This IPA is brewed with peach blossom white tea. I might have had peach blossom white tea before, or at least something similar to it in the past. I don’t know how much peach flavor is carried by the blossoms, but this beer tastes a lot like a mellowed out Haribo Peach Gummi. That’s not to say that this beer really tastes like sweet candy though. It has a dry and bitter quality as well. The beer is a dull, waxy, honey color. It’s actually quite nice because it feels refined and delicate… especially considering that it’s an IPA with added flavors. The result is that it invites big swigs rather than sips. A winner. I've got one more Barrier IPA coming up.

 

Optical illusion on the glass?

 

It kind of does look like it. Now that you mention it, it can't be unseen.

 

Some evenings just come together perfectly. This night is one of them.

Earlier today we picked up a new puppy.

So right now Billy Bob is sleeping on my lap right now.

I am enjoying a near perfect beer from Suarez Family Brewing 100 Ft North

Here is my review:
100 Feet North

Suarez Family Brewery
Saison / Farmhouse Ale / 4.30% ABV

4.79/5 rDev +10.6% | Score: 4.33
look: 5 | smell: 4.75 | taste: 4.75 | feel: 5 | overall: 4.75

Poured from a bottle purchased at Suarez a week ago.

A: Slightly hazy goldenrod with two fingers of fluffy white head. The head subsides to a solid collar and leaves tons of lacing.
S: Meyer lemons, grass, horseblanket, apple tree
T: An upfront tartness of lemon, key lime, blood orange that is not puckeringly sour. There is a fruity sweetness that has hints of plum and kumquat. Throughout it all there is a layer of Funk and wet grass. Again it never overpowers and serves and serves as the glue that holds everything together.
MF: Appropriate carbonation. Slight lingering tartness,
O: This beer is beyond reproach. A perfectly made Farmhouse Beer that hits all of its marks with class and dignity. I cannot say enough good things about this beer.

I'm listening to Van Morrison's It's Too Late To Stop Now


If anyone's evening is half as good as mine is right now, you are having a great night.

 

Barrier & Sand City - Watch The Throne

This is my last of four new Barrier IPAs today. When it comes to Long Island NY breweries east of Brooklyn and Queens, Sand City has become the king of new-school brewery released 16 oz canned IPAs. I'm thinking the name of the beer must be a reference to the collaboration album from Jay-Z and Kanye. Do these breweries see themselves as the Jay-Z and Kanye of beer?

With this beer, the two breweries have decided to forgo the need for producing an opaque IPA… or at least I thought so. The first pour was definitely not opaque, and I was initially intrigued by the idea that we are slowing getting to the point where this isn’t as much of a consumer need… but when I poured the other half of the can, I realized that this is indeed an opaque IPA. I don’t roll my cans prior to opening. I actually let this second pour settle in for a long time until I had a big layer of sediment paste on the bottom of my glass.

I miss O-Ren Rishi compared to this. If that beer had refinement, this one is a case of letting the fruit in the fruit bowl sit there until they start to rot a little in order to become pungent. This beer has some papaya flavor, but there's something a bit sickly about it.

 

First time NBS poster so please forgive if my post isn't quite up to snuff. I've been meaning to post some beers from the BIF but volunteered helping open a new brewery, worked way too much, eventually got brought on as taproom manager and now I'm working even more. I've been completely remiss in not letting folks know how much I enjoyed their thoughtfully chosen beers so here goes:



@LehighAce06 hit me with a massive dose of Tired Hands goodness. Hophands was one of my favorites. Pretty lacing, nice aromas of grass and citrus. Pineapple and grapefruit juiciness, an extremely easy-drinking pale ale.



He also sent me this crowler of Good Lava. Citra is my favorite hop so obviously this was a hit and Idaho 7 dry hopping added interesting complexity. Notes of melon and the oats gave it an amazing creamy mouthfeel. Very enjoyable!



@FlintB absolutely destroyed my porch with an insanely generous cornucopia of brews, one of which was this collab from Transient and Blis, called Friends Forever. It's an NEIPA DDH with Citra, El Dorado, Amarillo, Mandarina, and Motueka. Darker orange color for the style. Smells like tropical fruits and a touch of pine. Tastes of grapefruit and resin. Very well carbed. I'd only had one beer from Transient before so this was a real treat!



He also bombarded me with bombers from Speciation, another brewery I have very limited experience with. Biomimicry is a wild ale that was dry hopped with tons of citra and azzaca, creating a really interesting style that you don't find too often. Smells like lemon zest and hay. Tastes of grapefruit, lemon, and loads of earthy funk. Absolute greatness, I can't wait to open the others.

Thanks so much to @FlintB, @LehighAce06, and everyone else in the BIF for their extreme generosity and for being such cool, friendly people. I have had an absolute blast keeping up with the H&H thread, what a fun group of folks! Thanks for letting me be a part of the insanity!

 

You nailed it on your first post

 

I mentioned on the other thread, but best wishes on the new addition to the family. Great pics!

But without taking it too far OT, that whole VM package slays me- especially Vol III. That's pretty rarefied air right there, just how that whole set unfolds.

 

When Van is in the zone, his live shows are magical spiritual experiences. Of course there are also nights when he mails it in. Those shows captured some of the really special nights.

If I may be so bold as to suggest a book, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan Walsh. It covers the Boston scene in 1968 where Van worked out a lot of the Astral Weeks material before recording it. It also covers the "Boston Scene" at the time.

 

Good evening, NBS - I'm cutting it awfully close here, I know, but things have been slightly tumultuous and chaotic here. I missed last week, and for that, I apologize! I spent the majority of the day driving, so a post to NBS just was not in the cards.

Things have been a little wild here. I spent last weekend in Illinois and Indiana, visiting with FIBs @FFFjunkie and @Dragginballs76 - with guest appearances and a cool introduction to @Buck89 and @mattflippin - the five of us of course paying tribute to the Dark Lord. @FFFjunkie generously hosted a share, bought us pizza, and welcomed us to stay in his home - aside from a legendary smasher of porches, Dan is a hell of a nice guy and a very good friend. Cheers to this man. We had a fantastic little whale share the evening before Dark Lord Day, and then went to the fest together.

The fest was a bit of a blur, but a chaotic sort of amazing time - we tried many variants, purchased lots of goodies at Dark Matter, shared incredible beers with cool and friendly strangers, and generally just made the most of it. I've not been posting much on Beer Advocate lately though very much due to what happened at Dark Lord Day - as my bottles and tote were stolen that day. While the fest experience was everything that I'd hoped and more, I left feeling quite bitter and depressed - this was my first Dark Lord Day, and nothing like this has ever happened to me before at a fest. I couldn't believe it - though I wasn't excited about the variant bottle I'd received (Brozerker), I was so furious that I just didn't know what to say. I was tempted to walk away from beer - because, why continue? At that point, I'd spent nearly two hundred dollars to have some thief walk away with my bottles, just so I could share bottles with folks and buy variant pours at the fest. Two hundred dollars, just to share my own beer and buy more beer on tap. It was a very bitter feeling. The cloud followed me for a few days, until I wrote about it in the Cans Cans BIF and worked through some of my thoughts and feelings.

The beer community is generally a good one, and I am proud to be a part of it - though I have no doubt now that there are some terrible, predatory people out there. It's really unfortunate, NBS fam - it really sucks, actually. I hope that if you are one of those people, or if you know someone like that personally - that you punch them in the dick. Or yourself, for that matter, if you're one of those - because that's bullshit. Don't fuck over your fellow beer lovers. The community isn't very big, and we can't afford to be living in suspicion of each other. That's not the beer spirit.

Anyway. I spent a few days living through a bit of depression and malaise over the whole thing. I've been working a bit more than usual as well, so some distance from beer probably helped. A few friends also put together a share to "make things right" - they had tracked down several beers that I really wanted to try, including a Space Trace, a Pirate Paradise, and a DDH All Citra Everything. I won't detail my reviews of those beers here, as I didn't drink those beers today.

But, I will take a moment to thank my friend @Dragginballs76 for yet another fantastic beer - Mike drove all the way up to Chicago with a gigantic box of beer for me, once again crushing me by surprise, hitting me with quite a few beers that I love or have wanted. I enjoyed once of those last night, and I'm enjoying another right now - this one being Resident Culture's Artists Only.



This is my favorite of the Resident Culture beers that Mike bombed me with - it's loaded with citrus notes, with a light yeasty, bitter backbone. It's clean and pleasantly carbonated on the palate and doesn't feel heavy or too thick. I'm not immediately reaching for the Tums, which has been a battle lately.

I'd drink many of these, I think, and enjoy them immensely. Thanks again, Mike - I appreciate this one, and recommend others seek it out!


I will close with this: my experiences with beer and the community have been very mixed lately... but, tending far more towards the positive. I've been constantly reminded that I have some very good friends in beer - I'd just like to mention that my friends are the reason I'm still doing this. I don't care about those Dark Lord bottles. My friends are the ones that make beer "worth it" to me - I enjoy the community, the conversations, and the camaraderie far more than I do about some soy sauce and overvalued variant bottles.

Cheers, friends, and cheers, NBS - don't be a dick to your fellow beer nerds, and don't tolerate dickery from other beer nerds!

 

Whoa! Almost didn't get around to NBS this week after not taking part due to health reasons last week (massive allergic clobbering made me unable to taste much). This last week, much like the week before and for the foreseeable future, I'm working a couple extra shifts per week due to staffing issues.

This weekend I've been working on some projects, but I did manage to hit a new beer today, my first from Singlecut, thanks to @beerloserLI:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30452/176075/?ba=woemad#review

The look and smell of this was world class. The taste wasn't quite that, but still very good stuff!

I also hit three tasty IPAs during the week, also courtesy of @beerloserLI, but I gotta get to bed for a long day tomorrow, so if you gotta know about them, feel free to peruse my reviews.

Have a great week!

 

Happy CANclusion of New CANned Evil Twin Sunday (Week 692)!

Oh, what a day it really was! I followed up my opener with another Berliner Weisse:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/24300/297237/?ba=woodychandler#review


but I was left itching for an AIPA, so I went with:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/24300/329051/?ba=woodychandler#review


but it barely looked like a beer & tasted like fruit punch! I needed the ade of some coffee:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/24300/310845/?ba=woodychandler#review


Well, this had this self-avowed, self-described hophead jonesing hard for a fix, so next came:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/24300/272857/?ba=woodychandler#review


An NE IPA!?! It was not marked as such! My soul was bereft as a result. I crossed my fingers & hoped for the best as I Crack!ed open:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/24300/295636/?ba=woodychandler#review


Eureka! Success! Happy happy joy joy! I still have a couple of CANs, but the sun is rising above the yardarm & I want to post this before the thread closes. Until next week ...

 

You’re in luck. It is a year round brew. It still looks funny to me as 6 packs of cans when all of their beers used to be single 375 bottles. Sage can be easily overbearing, but I really thought that was excellent too

 

J

Sounds good, I'll be on the lookout for it.

 

Those are great names for beer!