New Beer Sunday (Week 716)

Last week I reviewed a local graham cracker stout which I loved and since stouts are my favorite style I decided to review another this week. This one is brewed by the good folks at Prairie Artisan Ales in Oklahoma.

Beer: Consider Yourself Hugged

Description on bottle: Imperial Stout with peanut butter roasted coffee

Appearance: Jet black with a beige head that lingers. No light passes through the beer. Beautiful lacing after I start drinking it. It is very pretty and I love swirling it in the glass and looking at it.

Smell: Peanuts and coffee, some cocoa, a little bit of booze. The smell is very strong, if you put your nose directly to the glass the aroma hits you like a brick wall.

Taste: I wondered how much peanut flavor their would be and their is tons. I love it. The booziness doesn't come through much; this is an amazingly drinkable beer. After warming a bit some fudge flavors began to become more pronounced but that peanut butter flavor never subsides. When I saw this was brewed with "peanut butter roasted coffee" and not actual peanut butter I worried the peanut taste would be subtle but that absolutely isn't the case. The alcohol comes as as a warmness after drinking it but isn't a serious part of the initial flavor profile. The way the peanut butter and chocolate malts and coffee mix is a perfect union, I wouldn't change a thing about this beer. It is is impossible not to compare this beer to a peanut butter cup candy. Despite reminding me of candy this beer is not particularly sweet.

Mouthfeel: Thick, full-bodied, creamy, and smooth. Carbonation is on the low side of average.

Overall. This is just a beautiful beer. I am not a Prairie fanboy and I think most of their beers are just OK and generally not worth the money however they absolutely knocked it out of the park with this one. This is one of my favorite beers of this year. It is absolutely delicious and I am so happy I decided to buy a bottle. I have had various Prairie beers and this is by far my favorite. If you are looking for a beer with a strong flavor of peanuts/peanut butter I would absolutely recommend grabbing a bottle of this. Since this is a limited one off release I may actually go buy the last couple bottles at my shop to have on hand for the holidays; this would be an awesome Thanksgiving or Christmas beer.

My rating:

4.48/5 rDev +3%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.5

 

First of all I would like to thank @lordofthewiens for starting this thread off at this hour. I’m definitely LNBA4LYFE. Second I’d like to thank @lordofthewiens for starting it off in the spirit of Calvin and Hobbes. I remeber the first books I’d order in grade school through Scholastic were Garfield. Would read them constantly. That lead me to reading the funnies everyday when we got the newspaper. My dad was a college art professor and a walking treasure trove of trivia who consumed information daily through it. One day there was a new strip with a boy in a pith hat talking to his dad about a tiger trap and tuna fish sandwiches. As a whole the first strip made zero sense but I was instantly drawn to it day after day. Would read the strips and save then until one day the first collection was printed and I found it at B. Dalton Booksellers in our local mall. Then another day my mom who worked at Hennesey’s in the same mall called my dad and I had to come in. They had gotten some stuffed animals and while some where tigers the others were snow leopards. Against the grain and for uniqueness sake I guess I chose the snow leopard but still named him Hobbes (currently he’s on the bed of the sleeping 9 year old as we speak amongst a barrage of other creatures). The books were all saved and the ones lost in all the moves from city to city were replaced and he reads them now and are in a stack in the spare bedroom on top of an antique gun box that holds all his superhero costumes. When we finally could afford our current house the first thing we did was get the boy a pup after we lost my last one at 14 when he was 7. They have been Calvin and Hobbes since day one. One day my wife sent a pic and I immediately had to google a strip to send back. Months later another pic was sent to show how ‘tigers’ grow pretty quickly.





This brings me to my choice to make all this relevant and bust out a new offering to share with all of you (glassware to reflect the power of imagination). Picked this one up at Grapevine Wine and liquors in Denver during GABF this year. Bottled 2/20/17. Like a bigger sweeter version of the Founder’s Porter I just had. Nose is candied dark stone fruit, chocolate, smoke and leather with a tinny undertone from being too cold presently that I’m sure will fade as I type more than imbibe. Flavor is more of the same with medium body on mouthfeel and the perfect amount of carbonation at this age. Overall a wonderfully pleasurable experience bouncing between the 4.25-4.5 range. Cheers fellow BA brothers and sisters. Watching Black Panther on Netflix currently to complete the expierence.






*final edit on what is officially Sunday here to include this

 

G.R.O.S.S. meetings were in the treehouse. The cardboard box was a time machine/duplicator/transmogrifier depending on the orientation.

 

Calvin and Hobbes is the best! I learned a valuable lesson from reading Calvin: Never do your best all the time or "they" will expect it. "They" is obviously the proverbial they/them; Calvin was specifically referring to cleaning his room for his parents.

Speaking of not always doing your best, I've a new beer that will not make the beer hall of fame:

Blackwater Draw's Hop Damn No. 2 made with El Dorado hops and ...

MILK SUGAR??? Dammit!!! Should've read the fine print.

It's proof that BWD makes good beer that I didn't read the fine print, because I saw "seasonal IPA" and Blackwater Draw on the front label and figured what the hell? Probably a good beer.

It's not. I imagine it's a bit like pouring an IPA into a bag of sugar, sticking a straw in it and sucking. It's super sweet and has that artificial yucky thick slick sugary taste of the high fructose corn syrup soda variety. There's a little citrusy hop character in the nose and flavor, but it's almost completely overwhelmed by the sugar.

The review:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/43320/380519/?ba=Premo88#review
2.98 (0% rDev — I added the beer to the database)

I feel bad scoring it so low because I like BWD a lot. They're good people making good beer, and I won't hold this beer against them. But this thing ... it's truly terrible, and I'm going to say it's sprung from a truly terrible idea. The "Milk IPA"? Do we really need that? I know we're supposed to be all for pushing the envelope and allowing our brewers to experiment, but this 6-pack is going to test my No Drain-Pour house rule.

OK, I'm done ranting. And almost done with this beer (thank God!).

Hope your new beers this Sunday work out better! Cheers!

 

I loved Calvin and Hobbes. I have been an inveterate reader of comics for as long as I can remember. These days Pearls before Swine and Non Sequitur are working well. I have never left Doonesbury, but rather than the editorial page where it once bellowed, it's only in the Sunday paper, back page. More than one Trudeau has tried to warn us.....,

 

Is it tomorrow already? Sure is!
Short night at work tonight allows me to join in on the midnight fun. Thanks for the intro... C&H has always held a significant place in my life... hell it's how I taught myself to read. I'd read my Calvin and Hobbes books to my own stuffed animal. I think my mom has some pictures stashed away somewhere of me trying to work my way through the words and the like. I remember playing calvinball (amongst other games of imagination) with my neighbour, and even as a young 'un trying to recreate his frankensteinian animation of the Killer Monster Snow Goons... and being imminently disappointed when my own snow creations remained inanimate.
This is the strip released on the day I was born, and I feel like there's something appropriate in that.


Anyway, thanks for that trip down memory lane.

Cold Beer is a brew that is pretty much everywhere down here as a light pils option. Amazingly enough I'd never had one before, but have a couple of cans left in my fridge from when my brother was visiting, so I figured it would make a good entry here. It's brewed up in Mount Vernon, which is a farming town up close to where I grew up, and is somewhere I spent a lot of time as a kid (as we're on the subject thanks to the C&H intro). Appropriately the brewery is named Farmstrong.



First impressions of the pour are favourable as the solid two fingers of fizzy white head lingers for a bit before moseying along leaving a moderate dusting. The body is crisp and clean and clear and much much lighter than that picture gives it credit for. So pale and thin.

Nose brings forth some light creamy biscuit malts layered under some clean and grassy hops. Mildly spicy.

Biscuit and light toast malts are probably the lead actors here, but the hops bring forth a defined earthiness with more spice than the nose. Finish is more bitter and earthy than expected, and carries with it whiffs of honey sweetness. Wrapped into the middle of all this is something I can't quite put my finger on... kind of a shifting chimera that at times evokes vegetal notes or minerality or earthiness or... something that's none of those things. It's not bad, but it's not as enjoyable as the rest of what's going on, and it seems kind of out of place. Like I said, it's not 'bad' in and of itself, but I would rate the beer higher if it weren't there.



This is light and easy for the most part, and at less than 4% abv that's to be expected. This fits the classic category of 'I'd drink it if someone gave it to me, but it's highly unlikely I'll ever get one for myself.'



Cheers y'all, I'm gonna try and convince my body that 8 hours is more than enough awake time.

 

Great start, Doc. Really looking forward to joining y'all today for my second beer since Wednesday (but who's counting haha). A true new beer since the brewery hasn't been added here yet.

Love comics, the characters in them get to express toxic opinions in ways live humans, even edgy comedians, cannot. I was a Pogo fan growing up, greatly loved R. Crumb, Bill Griffith, Gilbert Shelton, and Robert Williams comics efforts. My favorite though was Far Side, def. a Larson fanboy, and absolutely love Pearls Before Swine too.

See y'all in a bit.

 

Infinite Ale Works Into The Dark Roast 9% ABV. Poured into a 12 oz wide mouth glass not sure when it was bottled, but judging by the amazing strong coffee presence very recent. Pours a slick near pitch with a solid finger plus mocha head, that leaves the thinnest streaks of lace as it slowly settles, with excellent retention and I poured about 20 minutes out of the fridge. 4.5

Smell is roasty dry coffee grounds, vanilla bean, deep dark chocolate, and maybe a hint of hazelnut. 4.5

Taste follows really a one dimensional coffee treat, expresso, vanilla, dark chocolate, and one again just the smallest amount of hazelnut, this is a really impressive coffee stout. 4.75

Mouthfeel is a big medium, gentle carbonation, definetly dry, and at 9% ABV it goes down very easy with no hint of alcohol in the flavor. 4.5

Overall this is a really impressive Imperial Stout, I am rather blown away and I had never heard of this beer before I purchased this yesterday. 4.5

 

New Beer Sunday: Bohemian Pilsener

Mornin’ NBSers with an heads up for Saaz hop lovers. Also a special thanks to @lordofthewiens for his early morning start today.

I’ve generally enjoyed and learned from most of the comics mentioned earlier. But there are really two that are at the top of my list. One is Pogo, mentioned above, and the other is Peanuts, which hasn't been mentioned yet. While I didn’t read Pogo as a daily comic strip I’ve managed to find used copies of several of the books that were published as collections of the some of the daily offerings. They often addressed topics that are still relevant to this day. As for Peanuts, I’ve often wished I had a Snoopy in my life.

The weather here today is supposed to be mostly sunny and unseasonably chilly (December like) but at least we will have less wind than yesterday.

This morning’s new beer is the Hip Czech, a Bohemian Pilsener from Victory Brewing.

As usual my review, subject to revision until the beer is finished can be found here.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/345/94907/?ba=drtth#review


The beer pours a crystal clear golden yellow with a 1 1/2” fluffy white head. The aromas/flavors of this beer are all about the subtle and complex interplay between the hops and the malt backbone. The light, earthy herbal spicy bitterness of the Saaz hops plays very nicely with the light bready sweetness of the malt. A fresh, clean, crisp and refreshing beer that I’ll be looking to have again.

Cheers, all!

 

Happy Sunday, NBS crew! Starting out early on this cold, unwelcoming November morn with this one from @thebeers . Part of the “goodie bags” we gave each other at the end of last Saturday’s share.

Galaxy Cutting Tiles - Trillium
DIPA - 8.5% abv
Canned 10/11/18 (31 days ago)
Score: 4.39 (-2.9% rDev)



Review:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/30654/245080/?ba=CanConPhilly#review

Synopsis:
Can’t believe I’ve never had this before. Reminds me a lot of Pineal before Tired Hands cut the hops and increased the sugar. This one isn’t sweet at all, and the honey serves as an accent rather than a central player. Instead it’s the galaxy hops that take center stage. Galaxy is my favorite hop, and here they are used to wonderful effect. Bitter tropical fruits, with just a hint of earthiness. I’ve had a lot of good ipas from Trillium, but this might be my new favorite from them. Thank you so much for sharing these Arthur!

 

Good Morning, NBS!

It looks like Fall but feels like Winter this morning. I’m drinking a New Glarus Strawberry Rhubarb courtesy of @Jason1221



Appearance: The beer pours an opaque ruby red / brownish color with a pink head that disappears, leaving a ring of foam around the edge of the glass and some lacing along the way.

Smell: Strawberry jam, strawberry rhubarb pie, strawberry yogurt, caramel candy apple, and some dark dried fruits including raisins and dates. Juicy, sweet plum.

Taste: Fresh strawberry jam sweetness up front. Sweetness also comes through to me strawberry jolly rancher. A slight fresh berry tartness to the beer that helps it from becoming sweet. Some more intense sweetness on the finish akin to the dark fruits described above.

Mouthfeel: Very low level of carbonation. But freels bright on the palate. Semi dry finish.

Overall: This is a delicious beer that I would gladly drink a lot of. The dark, dried fruit aspect almost makes it too sweet for me, but it never quite goes over the top.

4.26/5 rDev -1.4%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 4.25

 

Thanks to @lordofthewiens for the great start to this weeks NBS. Should be back later on with a new brew.

Cheers!

 

Morning all . . .




Good rich gold color with white cap and lacing.

Muted aroma of spiced ripe yellow fruit, something like ripe Anjou pears baked in a pastry and dusted with cinnamon.

Taste is a remarkably balanced yet controlled burst of flavor with ripe banana, pear, cinnamon and a touch of clove. Underlying grain provides a smooth carrier for the fruit flavors. At 9.6 ABV it's certainly no lightweight but I couldn't detect a trace of alcohol in the taste which tells me this is a well made brew.

Medium full texture with balancing carbonation.

With the muted scent I was expecting another generic Belgian style Tripel but was pleasantly surprised by the balance and complexity of this one. It sings Belgian with a solo baritone voice, strong yet lyrically clear.

 

Happy "Abbey, It's Veterans' Day on Sunday & I'm Lost!" "What's New, GEN Woody? Drink A Beer!" (Week 716)!

For those not in the know, today marks the 100th (!) anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that ended the fighting in Europe for about twenty years. Modern historians now say that they are not World Wars I & II, but the same war with a mere 20-year hiatus. Both of my grandfathers were Army doughboys with PapPap Chandler one of the last mounted calvarymen. Imagine the shot profile of someone on horseback in the trenches! What do Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, e.e. cummings & PapPap Kirsch have in common? They were all ambulance drivers at the front! For those two to have survived, had children & their children to have met & married to create me is very long odds.

Not enough for you? Just glance back over your shoulders and look at everything that has transpired in just these past 100 years. It is awesome, in the correct and literal sense of the word. Awe inspiring.

I am both a U.S. Navy (following in the footsteps of Pops & his brother, Uncle Rick) combat veteran (GWI) & retiree & so I will be spending the day in celebration. My buddy, Chef Monty, comes over from Chester County each year & we have dinner at Texas Roadhouse & supper at Golden Corral with a visit to PapPap Kirsch's grave & a buncha beers in between. Monty is a U.S. Army Military Police (MP) veteran, BTW. As such, I may not be accomplishing much on here today.

As for today's theme, I have read the comics pages since I was a wee lad. I was a precocious reader, beginning at ~ 2 y/o & the comics & road signs were my forte. I have long been a Chet Gould "Dick Tracy" fan, but Uncle Steve was the one who got me to Go Pogo when I inherited (ahem!) his collection. I remember picking up with "C&H" in the Sunday NY Daily News, but I didn't realize that Hobbes was imaginary for a while. My parents say/said (Pops passed in 2001) that I was their Calvin as a child - a daydreamer with little use for school, but plenty of time for comic books and misadventures. I still like reading "Frazz", also set at the Elementary School level & while stationed at NAS Alameda, CA, I routinely took part in the annual Gary Larson Run to the Far Side from one side of Golden Gate Park to the other. People dressed in costume & cows were well-represented. My fave of his depicts a street walking carrot under a street lamp holding out a fruit to a startled stalk of celery in a sailor suit. The caption reads, "Hey, Celery, howzabout a Date?" LOL!

Speaking of strips, did you ever see Arne Frantzell's "Trouble Brewing"? It used to appear online here & in print in the magazine, but it seems to have disappeared. His fave beer personality to skewer is/was Tomme Arthur & one of the classics is Tomme with a party hat, a balloon reading "[NO] Pliny!" while wearing a size (or two) too small t-shirt reading "Hop-15 4 EVAR" as he arrives at a meeting where they have decided to replace Hop-15 with Mongo. The last panel is him on the floor, sobbing, holding a deflating balloon. A follow-up shows him celebrating the release of Mongo with balloon. extending whistle party favor, undersized t-shirt, et al as someone runs in, shouting "The reviews are coming in on Beer Advocate! Mongo has floaties!" If you thought that he was despondent before, he is shattered & bereft in the last panel of this one.

And without further ado, my entries for today:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18149/320982/?ba=woodychandler#review
&
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/18149/36539/?ba=woodychandler#review


And now, if I'm gonna make the Armistice toast at CKW2G at 1100, I gotta make like The Ramones and go go go go goodbye! See yinz inna funny papers, 'n' 'at!

 

I guess some people will do anything just to get some "Likes" on here. You did the same thing last week, but I didn't say anything. You drank Burnt Hickory Graham Cracker Stout on Saturday at 4:32 PM. Then on Sunday morning you posted the same pic. Yesterday, you drank Prairie Consider Yourself Hugged at 3:26 PM. I find it hard to believe that you don't have a new to you beer, that you can drink on a Sunday. I bet you do this all the time.

 

Nothing but new beer in the fridge this Veterans Day...

No way I'm trying 'em all - or is there? I am off tomorrow after all...

Anyway, stout bombers aside, I'm working from left to right, from oldest canning date to most recent, which means I'm starting today's NBS off with This is Bob...

10/23/18 canning of this collaboration with Evil Twin... Coming in at 8.5% abv, it is a double dry-hopped double IPA featuring Citra, Motueka, and Idaho 7 hops... Pours a murky gold color, opaque like dark orange juice under a finger of creamy white head that trailed fine lace motes all down the glass... Aromas of dank orange citrus and cantaloupe, lightly floral with a hint of marmalade and biscuit... Flavors follow, with lots of rich juicy citrus, some danker, herbal undertones, and a jellied sweetness with a moderate bitterness... Plush and smooth, softly carbonated with a tingle of citric tang, and a little bit of pulpiness in the feel... Really enjoyable stuff, and definitely recommended to fans of big-bodied DIPAs...

To our veterans, cheers...

 

I'm rooming with someone who really enjoys coffee beers, and the nice thing is, we both have different perspectives when looking at the shelves. This would have been something my eyes would have glossed over due to the brewery's typical work, but after getting to try a sip, I simply had to pick some up and visit it on NBS. A cold, blue bird morning in November seems appropriate.



Crooked Stave's Coffee Baltic Porter.

Pours black with a pillowy, foamy rise of head that tops out at two fingers in height after a modest pour. Head retention is great, as is lacing. Aroma is a big hit of coffee mashed between notes of roasty, toasty, nutty, earthy malts. It smells dark, with the coffee adding a little to the bitterness. Flavor profile is smooth, medium-roast coffee with hints of chocolate, cocoa, burnt sugar, and dark fruits. Outside of coffee, roasty, toasty, nutty, earthy malts add the firmness and darkness to this porter. Mouth feel is velvety, although the texture breaks apart into a watery texture at the finish. It has a medium-thick consistency to match the 8.5% ABV. Overall, really quality coffee notes in this one matched up well with quality, nuanced malts. Well worth a visit for those seeking a smooth coffee beer for the cold months, or anytime really.

Score: 4.25 | 4.25 | 4.5 | 4.25 | 4.5 | BA Score: 4.4 | rDev: +5.8%

Personal notes: This ticks all the boxes I like to see out of a 6 pack of coffee beer. Coffee itself is delightful, with an approachable, but still complex and dark porter behind it. If the coffee was allowed to age, I could see this beer dropping off pretty fast, as the coffee really firms up the experience alongside the porter. For now, this sub month old brew is a delight.

 

Spaceman Spiff!!!

 

New beer #2. A long time want. Thank you @Jimmy_Kneecaps for noticing this on my wants and sending me one to try!

BDCS 2018 - Ozark
BBA Stout - 10.5% abv
Score: 4.47 (-1.1% rDev)



Review:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/33344/164444/?ba=CanConPhilly#review

Synopsis:
Damn this is a tasty number. Super well balanced, with booze only saying hello without overstaying its welcome. Chocolate, coffee, and vanilla present themselves in equal measure. The body is a tad thin, but otherwise this has everything going for it. Thanks again JT!