New Beer Weekend #4

I spent a good three hours enjoying my last beer, now it's onto another beer recently sent to me by the ever generous @FBarber. This is my first Hop Butcher for the World Beer, and I have to say, it's quite good.

4.19/5 rDev -1.6%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Canned on an unknown date, as the stamp is one big blur. Poured into a tulip. This is a very good looking beer. Hazy, yet glowing yellow with a wonderful head that just doesn't want to go away. Thick & fluffy with lots of lacing. Smell is nice and juicy. Mango, melon etc. Doesn't smell incredibly different than many other well done NEIPAs, but it's on point for what I would hope / expect it to smell like. Taste is citrusy, tropical, and a little bit of pine. Nice soft & full mouthfeel. This is a well done NEIPA.

 

Welcome, and thanks for finally joining in!

 

It's lager time!



Poured from the can into a tall Libbey style pilsner glass.

Quite a neat looking lager. Seems straw colored but gets a bit darker with a real bright lemon and hued green color. Looks slightly hazy, but has this real neat glow. Big rich froth filling bleach white head at three fingers, but with a little staying power, and settling to a good finger height puck and crown. Real nice looking beer. Some nice linear reams of carbonation make it look even better.

Aroma has a light touch of malts, faint hint of adjunct sweetness, slightly flour but also kind of papery like in quality. Clean, a hint of baked light bread just enough to make it more inviting. Solid.

Palate seems to provide no surprises. Light touching malt body, with a hint of popcorn like flavor. Hits slightly a bit wet in the palate but also stays away from sticky and slickly overly sweet flavors as well luckily. Minimal to no hop presence, but not real complaining for this style.

This is about as good as a mass market lager can be, hits the right spots and nothing fancy.

look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 4 | 3.97/5

Cheers!

 

Stone's Ruined Again is another absolutely fantastic imperial IPA by them that I had for the first time this weekend.

look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

Poured out of a 12 oz can into my tulip glass, this beer pours a clear, amber/copper color with a nice, fluffy looking white head that's over an inch thick when first poured. Settles eventually to a thick ring lining the inside of the glass along with a big cluster swirl of surface foam. Decent lacing. Aromas of some bready malts, honey, and piney and citrusy and somewhat dank hop notes. A very similar flavor profile, with some bready malts with some honey notes, followed by big hop flavors of pine and citrus, dank hops bursting with a good amount of hop bitterness. The overall flavor profile does become a bit more balanced as the beer warms up a bit. but this is still a very hop dominated beer overall, and that's a wonderful thing indeed! This beer has a crisp, also smooth and slightly frothy, medium to full bodied mouthfeel with moderate carbonation. Has a clean and dry finish and aftertaste, and the hop flavors really coat the inside of my mouth and linger for a long time in the aftertaste as well. Stone does it again!

Eric

 

Grimm Splish is an 8% DIPA with Galaxy and Motueka (plus Falconer's Flight, but that's not mentioned on the label)... sounds great!



Pours a cloudy yet vibrant orange color with a huge collar of bone-white foam that really looks quite regal sitting in my stein-style glass. Excellent lace and legs here, too, with fantastic surface coverage, to boot. Grimm already has a winner here, now here's to hoping it continues with the high quality throughout my experience!

The nose is interesting... I wouldn't expect Galaxy and Motueka to combine to give off this kinda stone-fruit-like aspect with some peach and plum followed up by bright citrus and nuttiness (for some reason, I'm picking up some almond/almond liqueur?), but I do definitely get some of the key lime Motueka typically provides. The rest is pretty tropical and lightly citrusy (hello Falconer's) with a minor touch of pine/grassiness. Maybe even some chive-like funk/earthiness as well? I actually feel that element is distracting, so I'm hoping it doesn't cause issues on the palate, but this smells pretty intriguing I suppose.

Flavor profile is tangerine and orange peel with some bitter lime and strong resinous character following through to the finish. Somewhat more IBU-driven than I'd expect. Honestly would not really categorize this as an NEIPA (not sure if anyone does, but perhaps the haze could lead people to do so)... reminds me of a less-good version of a great similar beer I had recently from Aslin called Significant Other which also features Motueka pretty prominently.

Feel is structured like a smaller IPA (has a pilsner-like crackery malt body and feels lively and vivacious), but there is some ethanol heat here and there, and the Falconer's hops certainly push resin a bit more prominently than I would like here. I was hoping for an orange/lime bomb, but it just feels a bit off the mark and overly-harsh where it would likely be a bit better as a more supple and reigned-in recipe. Ah well, can't win 'em all. Honestly, I've been pretty harsh on some of Grimm's distributed IPAs (other than Lambo Door, which is just spectacular and crushes most of its competition easily), but there are just some issues I have with them that are tough to over-look. This one is definitely solid for the most part, but I think it could have ended up a lot better if they pushed Galaxy more and removed Falconer's entirely.

 

I've actually had Three Floyds packs in my hands several times over the past month, but something else always seems to grab my attention even more. This one sounds totally up my street, however, and your review is definitely going to lead to my finally pulling the trigger on something. Thanks, and cheers!

 

Hello New Beer Weekend Warriors, surprisingly this is actually my first new beer of the weekend. Well...the first one that I can sit down and pay close attention today. Picked up a new hazy from Resonate yesterday, but was paying attention to my son for "Daddy-Son Day." Today is now "Daddy-Daughter Day," and we're in the middle of assembling a fairly complex robot. Hit a point where we needed a break, so here's my first beer of significance of the weekend...Oktober Fest-Marzen from Ayinger.


500ml bottle served in a nonic pint. I don't see a date, just L0097. Don't have a clue what that means. Bought it at Elizabeth Station about a week ago.

Pours honey-golden with a pretty big head that collapses to a sheet and leaves lacing cover most of the edge of the glass. Smell is barley tea, not much else. If I smell the bottle, I get kind of a barnyard aroma.

Taste is also barley tea, with a little actual tea flavor. Some moderate grassiness coming through.

Mouthfeel is medium, rich, not sticky, maybe a slight filmy texture. Overall, it's a solid drinkable beer, but not loving it.

 

Point of parliamentary procedure: is the 2020 iteration of Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest a “new” beer that sh

Lazer Snake is legit, and so is Alpha King. Zombie Dust gets all the notoriety, but those two are in that league.

And if you come across Dreadnaught or Permanent Funeral, consider taking out a small business loan to secure an adequate supply of both beers, especially if they’re fresh. They are tippity toppity world class, IMHO.

 

Only one newbie beer for me, but it’s a doozie. Transient hops will accompany the Transient imperial stouts to my target in NBW BIF #12, though it won’t be this really nice exotic juice bomb - unless they brew it again in late September/early October. My goal is to ship beers with hop leaves attached.





4.35/5 rDev +4.8%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

The first thing I thought as I poured this was, “This looks like pineapple-orange juice” which my Mom started to get for the family after I went off to college in 1981. And that’s what this beer is, a tropical juice bomb, with an exotic twist

The nose is dominated by orange, pineapple, mango, and papaya aromas (those last two would be the “exotic”), and there’s almost a coconut note as well. Is that you, Sabro?

The taste is an amalgamation of the aromas, and there is definitely a coconut flavor, at least to my palate. The mouthfeel is per the hazy style, soft and pillowy. What I waited for (because of the 10% ABV) and didn’t notice until the beer sat for a bit was a boozy note, which came as a warming in the chest long after finishing a pull.

If you enjoy an exotic juice bomb, this offering from my favorite brewery checks a lot of boxes.

 

Welp, here we are. The big boy of the day. *gulps in an exaggerated manner*



S'more pours a dark, nearly-black color with some dark brown notes around the edges, and the initial head formation is superb indeed, but each subsequent pour brings out less and less foam. By the time I poured enough of this in the lady's glass and decided how much I wanted for myself, it basically built up with nothing at all to speak of. Kinda disappointing. I am a huge fan of Hubbard's Cave's flavored stouts... the Pot de Creme series and their dessert/pastry stouts have all been essentially super-decadent and intense beers with a Southern Tier (ya know, when they were at their prime from 2010-2014 or so) bent to how absolutely immense the adjunct presence is.

The nose here is... well, yeah. They nailed it. Sticky marshmallow and vanilla cream right upfront with some lighter, dusty cocoa notes, charred and roasted malts, some light coffee-like elements, and a hint of graham flour like old school Dinosmores from back in the day. I mean, hell, this is, as I recall, a couple percent stronger than that beer... damn, guys.

Flavor profile is strong vanilla and marshmallows with some "Fluff"-like flavoring in there. Heady ethanol component with dusty chocolate and milk chocolate combining in a pretty satisfying way. I only get a slight hit of the graham element, which makes me think the use of "graham crackers" vs. "graham flour" was a technical error. Graham flour is a lot more simple and could probably assert itself more vs. using the crackers which have other stuff in them. Anyway, this is a pretty good imperial flavored stout. I don't think it's blowing me away, but it's also definitely not bad at all. Maybe a little harsh. I think their French Toast beer got away with what they were doing with it because the maple syrup tamed the ethanol component enough that I didn't notice it as much as I drank. Hmm... yeah, it's good for sure but not really a repeat buy... French Toast, on the other hand... I will buy one can of that whenever I see it.

 

Nice! I've had AK and ZD before, thanks to the BIFs, but would love to revisit them when the time is right. But, yeah, Permanent Funeral would definitely make me drop everything else .

I'm imagining Lazer Snake being in the ballpark of the old Stone German IPA Gotterdamerung. Do you remember that one, and think it's a fair expectation? To @MacMalt as well.

 

Enjoy

 

Next up for me and probably my last new beer this weekend is Victory - Tart Ten from 2016, a Belgian dubbel ale with brettanomyces


I knew I had this beer hanging around for a while and I didn't even realize it was a Belgian dubbel with brett. Dubbels are one of my favorite styles of beer. I don't think I've had a dubbel with brett before though.

10% abv, This beer pours a cloudy hazy dark amber red-orange brown with a minimal dissipating frothy off-white light khaki colored foam head. Smells a bit acetic and vinous, like tart cherry, red fruit, red wine, dried fruits, apricot, toasted bready malts, caramel, dark toffee, chocolate, molasses, spice, red grape, raisin, some funk, hay, straw, with earthy floral hops. Tastes a bit sweet with some brett tartness cutting through the rich malt, notes of caramel, vanilla, toasted bready malts, dark toffee, molasses, chocolate, spice, raisin, prune, red grape, cherry, tart red fruit, dried fruits, apricot, apple, slight funk, hay, straw, and earthy herbal floral hops. Feels medium bodied, thick, creamy with smooth moderate carbonation. Overall a nice and interesting dubbel ale with brettanomyces.

Cheers everyone, and happy NBW!

 

I’ve never had that particular Stone beer. I gotta admit, it’s kinda tickin’ me off.

They brew Dreadnaught more frequently than Permanent Funeral. Don’t sleep on The Dread - when it’s fresh, it’s fire.

You are correct, though, about PF - that beer is worthy of shoving people aside to acquire, IMHO.

 

More lager time!



Poured from the can into a Libbey style pilsner glass.

Soapy quite big bubbled bleach white head. Head stands at just under three fingers and dissolves pretty quickly. Pale brass body color, somewhat clear with lots of slow moving microscopic carbonation.

This is a great aroma. Faint touch of herbal but noticeable spicy like hop note that actually comes with a hint of sweetness. Clean sensing, almost minty herbs as well strangely and still clean sensing. This is very nice.

Palate is a bit jarring. A light and proper mouthfeel, but one that feels almost mineral soda like on the tongue. There's depth, but also a large amount of cutting bubbles it seems and gas flavor, but it does accentuate much of the base character. Tasty hop and malt sweetness that has a bit of rocky cut with almost a border line seltzer like lime quality that finishes with a big herbal bitterness.

Aggressive, but also missing some of the basics and a little off kilter. Enjoyable to drink though.

look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.7 | 3.86/5

Cheers!

 

Second new beer of the day is this NEIPA from Great South Bay. I found this a bit lackluster for the style. But I'll give them a pass; GSB has been solid this year with their limited runs.
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Hey hey hey! Congratulations and best wishes!