New Beer Weekend #11

Oktoberfest
Lager - Märzen / Oktoberfest | 6.2% ABV
Northbound Brewpub Minneapolis, Minnesota

3.85/5 rDev 0% | Average: 3.85
look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 4 | overall: 3.75

Different than last year. Higher ABV at 6.2%, IBU: 22
Tested from a 750ml crowler
Look: transparent medium amber body, fine one inch head that leaves some lacing.
Smell: sweet, malt/bread
taste: a little bread but mostly caramel/toffee. a hint of roasted toffee, maybe a hint of hops or dark fruit. rather sweet, straight line and somewhat simple, But it tastes good.

A standard American marzen Ofest beer. good but doesn't standout. 3.89/5

 

Hi, all . . . I haven't been on BA very much lately, mostly due to having to handle a parental care situation that requires I stay as sober as possible, plus I've cut back on my beer drinking quite a bit anyway. However, this is something I couldn't pass up, Bottle Logic's Gem Condition, which I found super-randomly at a Sacramento bottle shop I'd never visited before. It was released just a few days ago, and it's BL's take on a mint-chip BA stout, so I laid out the $29.99 without thinking twice. I've never had a Bottle Logic stout that was less than excellent, and many that were world-class, so I'm expecting this will fall somewhere in between. Also, #airbnbglassware.

Appearance is a nearly opaque black, with a thin but distinctive head of cocoa brown. Viscous and oily, just a slight swirl leaves wine-like legs that glide slowly down the glass. Aroma is, like many BL stouts, both specific and non-cloying. In other words, yes, it smells like mint-chip, but somehow the Platonic essence of mint-chip, not an actual bowl of mint-chip ice cream. This is what separates BL from some of the over-the-top pastry stout makers (I'm looking at you, Other Half)--BL did this exact same thing with a baklava stout a few years ago, somehow gesturing toward the referent (baklava) without making it taste like a liquified pastry. Taste follows the aroma pretty much exactly, with a lovely balance of mint and chocolate leading to deep, roasty, barreled undertones. Next up, my favorite aspect of BL stouts, the mouthfeel--FO, for example, is the only vanilla stout I've had that truly feels like brownie batter on the tongue, and this matches that super-rich, almost-but-not-quite sticky feel. As it warms, the beer's overall complexity reveals itself: the mint remains present, but somehow steps aside to let the barrel and dark malts roil and evolve. So many pastry stouts end up tasting like a Mars bar or some other one-dimensional thing--this is like a really good French chocolate (Jean-Paul Hevin, anyone?) that unfolds into dark, almost indescribable territory.

What else can I say? This is absolutely in the top tier of BL stouts, and that's saying a lot. I'm going to make an effort to try to track down more while I'm here in CA, but if I can't, this is going to remain burned in my brain for quite a while. The last time I loved a stout anywhere near this much was Prairie Bourbon Paradise, and that was still several notches below this. If I were you, I'd give up a lot to obtain, either trade or cash.

Cheers!

 

You have me salivating!

 

Hope the lil one recovers quick!

 

I mean a lot of it was just me being petulant. I'm sure it doesn't help that we just rolled out a new EHR at work Friday night/Saturday morning and for some reason I signed up to be a part of that transition team, so exhaustion and stress played into it.
I know I can be needlessly verbose a lot of the time, and nobody really needs to hear my rambling thoughts on tenuous relationships or memories or etc. but I was pretty flustered when I was reaching the character limit even just typing out the impressions of the beer, after having trimmed the entirety of the non-review material. And, again, I can be wordy, but I didn't think that particular review was conspicuously long.
And the petulance comes back out at the end... I'm probably not going to leave NBW, I miss y'all too much. But it does give me significant hesitation when considering if I want to log on and join the conversation, because it ends up being just another headache to try and figure out exactly WHERE 1500 (or 15000 maybe?) characters sits, as I have no sense of reference for character count inherently (I've never been a tweeter, so I don't have any ingrained clock for 140 characters to use as a reference, for example.). It's just another frustrating development in another online community I've loved being a part of for so long which pushes me away, and that probably contributed to it as well).

Bah, anyway, to keep to the thread's theme, I had the other Holy Mountain FH tonight. The Hopfen Keller, a FH kellerbier. Intriguing. I liked it, overall. Not as much as the Cone & Cone, and it's probably mid-tier as far as the FH character of the brews I've tried this season, but tasty outside of that context. Clean keller/pils-esque backdrop, with pils malts, and dull earthy/spicy hop character. Looking forward to the other cans, but as stated above prefer the C&C.

 

I was not aware there was a post length limit.

Anyhow, did you consider splitting the post?

First post: Part 1... yadda yadda... continued
Second post: Part 2 ... yadda, yadda