New Beer Sunday (Week 724)

Speaking on New Years resolutions, I usually find them useless. But given the fact I was hit with Gout last week, I have resolved to moderate my beer consumption& based on information gathered I will attempt to reduce the amount of red meat I eat. I plan on doing that by reducing the amount of animal based protiens I eat. Not going all crazy, but just trying to learn from what happened & turn it into a postive healthy habbit. We'll see how that goes...

One beer for NBS. Hi-Wire Brewing's gimme the brut,a Brut DIPA weighing in at 8.0% ABV. 4.04 overall

Pours a very effervescent gold with 2 fingers of rocky ivory colored head. Hazes a bit as the can is drained, pretty good head retention & average lacing

S: Grassy, bready

T: Peach, mango, grassyness & dryness up front, plus a little lime. Dryness & leafy hops dominate as this warms, a little pears as well. Finishes dry with leafy hops & white grape

MF: Medium body,lively carbonation, decent balance

Probably the best example of what this style aspires to I've had. Not totally in my wheelhouse, but pretty drinkable

 

Small world - I went to high school with the second to last name on that sheet!

 

Another from Stillwater Artisanal, this time brewed and canned at Two Roads in Stratford, CT.



16 oz can.
Canned 07AUG18.
Moderate pour yields a one inch tan head over a black body with some sticky lacing. Dissipates down to a ring in more than a few minutes. Nose of roasted malt, chocolate, and black cherry. Taste mirrors nose nicely (black cherry!) and as it warms a bit some slight smokiness comes forward. Very nice feel and overall, a beer I will definitely have again.
Cheers!

4.19/5 rDev +1.2%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

 

Sorry for my late entrance into this weeks NBS but it’s been a hectic day up till now.

A huge thank you to @jhavs for today’s new to me beer. I was incredibly lucky to be his target in the last BIF and he sent some incredible beer. This one is a prime example.



This beer is very complex and very hard for me to pin down exact flavors, but I’ll try.

Nose is slightly acidic, slightly funky, and fruit overload. Apples and grapes are the stars with a medley behind them.

Taste follows nose. Slightly tart upfront , slightly funky as well and then a rush of mixed fruits. Apples, grape skins, maybe peach, kiwi and cranberry. Im really struggling to put it into words that it deserves and I do apologize.

Cheers all and hopefully I’ll be able to make a couple of posts next week.

Thank you again Jon!

 

I fall along the same lines it sounds like as most here when it comes to resolutions: I'll resolve to make adjustments constantly and as necessary, not relying on an arbitrary series of 1s and slashes to try and kickstart.
This is the first consecutive days off I've had since early(ish) December (I've never seen it so busy during the christmas season at work as it was this year ), and I randomly enough spent almost all of it on the phone. Either one of those reasons alone would make tonight's beer seem thematically appropriate, but given the two together and it was almost a no brainer.

Blither Idiot - Weyerbacher
I think this one came from @Dragginballs76 as part of his awesome NBS BIF #8 box (black electric tape), but I was wrong once before in my life, so I suppose it's possible for it to happen again.



An aggressive pour yields a deep mahogany body with a small balsa coloured head that recedes to the edges of the glass pretty readily.

Nose is rich and has a decent amount of complexity. Initial notes of boozy raisins with some fig and a spicy tobacco character appeal to me. There's some toffee sweet but not as much as other reviewers suggested.
This could be due to age as I think this is a 2015 bottle, as my understanding is that sweetness is one of the characteristics that tends to mellow with age, but again, I could be wrong.



Anyway, taking a sip, there's definitely some sweetness there, but it's far from overwhelming (ESPECIALLY compared to this current era of diabetes adjacent beers masquerading as various other foodstuffs). Almost has a vanilla note to the sweet part anyway. Back to more of those dark fruit influences with raisins and fig and more pronounced leather and tobacco that I rather enjoy. Rich malts and any bitterness is heavily subdued and dull.
11%+ is pretty well subdued as well (again a potential influence of the age), and while I would never confuse this with a session beer, it is far from boozy.
Overall I enjoyed it (considerably more than most, judging by the ratings) and am glad to have gotten to try it. Thanks Mike*!



I accidentally bought a shit load more chickpeas than I needed for the recipe I was making, so I decided to try and make some hummus with the extras. I've got enough I'm going to experiment with a couple of different ideas there, but I would consider this first foray a success.



Cheers everyone!

 

As a fellow gout sufferor: welcome and I'm sorry.
Diet control runs so contrary to my very core, but it's been the most effective tool in avoiding the dreaded purines and uric acid crystallization (I'm not one to take pills every day).
I thought I had my triggers narrowed down (aged cheeses for me are/were the worst. Sad day, but could be worse... it could be beer!) based on some elimination experimentation, but the last two months or so have challenged that notion (much to my chagrin) and so I'm kind of filtering back through and trying to figure out what may have popped off the couple of flares that wiped out most of my December.
I hope you are able to manage it well and that it does not prove to be a pervasive affliction!

 

Since this is the first attack, I am sure there is much to learn. Between a weekend in Memphis with way too much beer & BBQ, I am sure I set my self up. Banging a big toe ( hard ) a couple of times I had broken nigh on 40 years ago; I presume was the catalyst. Sadly all of my favorites are on that list. I will try to figure some things out; but pretty much lived my life thinking I was bulletproof up until a few years ago. I just know that I have pretty high tolerance for pain & that pain gave me pause. I usually have to walk a ton at work plus other laborious tasks; climbing up & down ladders was a treat, so I will have to get smart quickly

 

I was bullet proof once. Good luck !!

 

Finally got to a beer around 11:00 PM my time. I accomplished very little today, but was running around all the same... I was happy to see about 10 minutes of the Chargers victory while waiting to get my hairs cut and beard trimmed. I’ve been a fan of the team since my early teens. How does a kid growing up in Montreal end up a Chargers fan? I’m not sure I remember exactly, but it had something to do with a game I saw as an 11 or 12 year old in which Dan Fouts tore up an opposing defence.

Tonight’s late beer turned out to be a very good one. Dominion City Between Two Evils Bourbon Barrel aged stout. Dominion City is arguably the best brewery in Ottawa. I’ve enjoyed many of their offerings over the past few years. I can’t aay I remember having a BBA Stout from them before though.



Thick darkest brown with a lovely cappuccino head that dissipates fairly slowly.

Slightly boozy on the nose with nods to macerated plum or fig or date.

Light bourbon taste. A broad spectrum of dehydrated baking fruit; dates, raisins, prunes. A hint of dark rye bread too.

Moderate body. Thinner than I usually expect in the style, but not in a problematic way.

Overall, I really enjoyed this. Not over the top, not too boozy. I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for future BBA releases from Dominion City. Bonus marks for the reasonable 355ml serving size.

Cheers!

 

Foreign Objects Sonnenaufgang

This is the probably the third "Ungespundet Lagerbier" from them that I've tried. If you translated the German on this pretentious can, it would reveal that it was a dry-hopped Pilsner with Galaxy and Simcoe. Looking it up, it is also brewed with a lot of wheat and Loral hops. I really liked one of the other beers in this series.

Gosh darn, this is a NEIPA in German lager clothes. The head is thin and runs away to the nonexistent. The color is opaque grapefruit juice. The smell is minerals and chalk. The taste is grapefruit, and overripe papaya, with chalk, and with a bitter aftertaste in a prickly package. There's some breadiness buried way under the fruit.

Apparently, some sort of "London ale yeast" isn't nearly as critical to a NEIPA as some people think. While there is some lager-like cleanliness to this relative to a NEIPA, it can pass itself off as a low-ABV NEIPA without a significant problem. There is nothing about this that would make me respect the brewer's choice in calling it a pilsner.

 

Very same. I hope you're able to find some relief. Shit's a bitch ennit?

 

Glad you enjoyed it, I really like that beer and usually buy a 4 pack and drink one fresh and age the others.

 

You are welcome. Enjoy!