New Beer Weekend #14

Only planned beer for New Beer Weekend 14 / New Beer Sunday 818 is this September charity release by Mikerphone, Smells Like A Cancelled Beer Fest.



$10 plus tax and tip for this 16 oz can and glass giveaway, all proceeds benefit the Kenneth Young Center. This is a 10% ABV imperial stout released on 9/30/20, with no can beer notes. Time to dive in after 10 minutes of letting it warm from the refrigerator.

Appearance: Pictured right after first pour, no head with micro thin tan bubbles hugging the edge of the glass and floating on the top, pitch black pour. 3.5

Aroma: Nice sweet but contained aroma, coconut, vanilla, baker's chocolate and fine roast malt. This blend works well. 4.0

Taste: Taste consistent with aroma but much sweeter. Baker's chocolate and maple syrup lead, very sweet. Chocolate fudge, vanilla and lactose follow, light coconut. As this warms further, sweetness recedes to a more balanced offering, very rich and creamy, excellent pastry stout. 4.5

Mouthfeel: Decadently rich and creamy, full body, light fizzy carbonation lingers throughout, sweet but manageable, clean finish, no aftertaste, ABV is felt throughout. 4.75

Overall: This is a very good sweet stout from Mikerphone, but not over the top like some of their offerings. Rich, creamy excellent texture, varied flavors work well but stay within their lane, well done, will pick up more if I can return while it's still available. 4.25

Hope you all enjoy a very good offering before the weekend ends.

 

Skookum's Caverns, a barrel aged strong ale.

16oz can served in a tulip. Dated 06/15/20. If I remember correctly, I bought this at Whidbey Beer Works a few weeks ago.

Pours dark brown with little or no head and little carbonation. Moderate sediment toward the end of the pour. Smell bourbon, oak, dates, booze.

Taste is rich, dates all over the place, with some vanilla and toffee, booze is strong but not burning, oak and earthiness, bourbon is still there.

Mouthfeel is thick, rich, and still. This is a very nice beer.

 

Lets do this NBW!
Feeling like fall finally here today so time to imbibe.
A Collab between Armada and Beer'd.
All My Friends Are Hopheads DIPA.
The beer is double dry hopped with Citra, Mosaic and El Dorado. Sounds tasty. Lets check it out.
Pours a hazy orange-gold with a large sea foamy 3 finger head that has excellent retention and eventually recedes to a 1/4" head leaving rings and lots of sticky lacing. The cap remains throughout the entire drink.
Aroma is wonderful fruity notes of peach, pineapple, mango, crushed pine needles, with dark berry and floral notes. Really fills the nose in a big way.
Taste follows with nice juicy fruit notes- tropical and stonefruit in nature with grace notes of blueberry, grapefruit and pine.
Feel is medium, drinking on the lighter side of what you would expect for 8.5% that doesnt show its strength. A slightly sweet middle with an oily hop coating on the tongue, that dries out with a piney bitter finish. Very balanced.
Armada has been one I havent been wowed by honestly. Upon pour it LOOKS like a few of their beers. Well I may have to try some more. This collab with Beer'd really works. An excellent and well balanced big IPA - I guess there is such a thing. Great brew. Cheers!

 

Amen!

 

That's why I've always preferred Henry Miller and Blaise Cendrars and their autobiographic ventures through a rupturing Europe from the 1900s to WW-2 and beyond. Self explication but real adventure. Cendrars was in the French Foreign Legion and his stories are amazing. Also, Paul Giono (Two Riders of the Storm) and Lawrence Durrell are great reading, particularly Durrell's pre-war Alexandria Quartet. Cendrars and his legionaires fell through the floors of a German tavern under bombardment and landed in a beer cellar. It is hilarious. Sort of....

 

4 Hands Festbier, 5.8% ABV, 3.96 overall

Pours a slightly hazed gold with 3 fingers of pearl colored head. Alright head retention & lacing

S: Breadyness, some grassyness

T: Breadyness, grassyness & a little bit of lime up front. More bready sweetness plus grassy & grainy bitterness as this warms. Finishes a little dry, grassy with lime & bready sweetness

MF: Medium body, slight carbonation, good balance

Solid festbeer, so easy to drink

 

Do they distribute outside of Illinois?

 

Last one for the night... an imperial pastry stout from Branch & Blade called Always, Anyways. According to the label, this is a beer brewed with cold-steeped kilned caramel malt, chocolate spelt, and chocolate malts, with toasted almond coffee, house-made biscotti, vanilla, and lactose added. Sounds fun as hell, and like it'll definitely be a doozy. Let's get into it!



Jet-black pour of unparalleled intensity with a khaki-colored head measuring a finger-and-a-half even with an aggressive pour. Decent legs, not much lace, and solid surface coverage. Looks like a big ol' stout with adjuncts, that's for sure.

I kinda went into this one thinking of Evil Twin's classic Imperial Biscotti Break... I mean, how do you not? Look at the adjuncts! It does definitely have a bit of that, with maybe a bit more dark fruit and slightly more roasty maltiness. Less almond, but there is still nuttiness in here, for sure. I think this is probably gonna be pretty good, all things considered. B&B are typically really talented brewers despite their sometimes questionable recipes, and I do enjoy the inspiration going on here. As it opens up, I get a strong vanilla and caramel/crème brûlée component that feels appropriately decadent. Excited to sip this!

First taste is strong dark roast coffee with a definite "toasted almond" bent to it... nailed it! The lactose and vanilla help in the mid-palate with some sweet creaminess that allows the biscotti flavors to work their magic. Nutty and biscuity with some dense flavors of toffee, marzipan, amandine liqueur, and dark chocolate coming to the fore. Nice complexity here, and, yeah a lot of it is "adjunct driven," for sure, but this does feel well-defined by its cool and complex malt bill as well. Chocolate spelt? I mean, c'mon. That's dope as hell. This is a very well-balanced and well-defined imperial stout with some very on-point flavor additions that still retains its character as a bigger dark beer throughout it all. Feel is rich, thick, and chewy, with a definite ethanol presence that bespeaks its higher ABV. Definitely worthy... Branch & Blade continues to impress.

 

Uninvited, I'll chime in on cold versus warm beer storage and consumption. I generally use the fridge mainly because I like beers with some chill and I've found warming them up to be easier and more controlled than quick chilling them. Also, I do like to see how the beer's quality's change from cold to warm. That said, I wish the "beer fridge" we had was a little warmer on its lowest setting.

If I'm on the ball, I'll pull a beer I know I want to drink at cellar-to-room temp ahead of time. On the weekends, I also use my intros in this thread as a means of doing said warming from fridge. This beer came from the upstairs refrigerator, so you get to read more intro as it's a few degrees colder. Lucky you!

Also, as a corollary to the American vs English barley wine debate, I will be having a beer that has those same two categories, but in another style. I don't see many brown ales around, and Port City does good work with classically styled beers, so getting a brown ale from them would be right up my alley. However, they actually added the term "hoppy" to this beer's moniker, which would make me think it will fall on the American side of things - and I would like to see an English Brown from them.

Either way, here is my review of Port City's Hoppy Brown.


Ok, so the bottle says "golden brown" with some tropical fruit notes. Right away, I am not sure the label is to be trusted; while I'm not sure I'd use the term golden brown too often, I definitely wouldn't use it to describe the color of this beer. I'd go on the darker side of brown, medium at the lightest. Checking out the thinner (sans condensation) bottom of the glass, the clarity of the beer can be discerned - not a surprise. The head was modest, a solid beige, but still covered more of the surface as I get to the end of this sentence.

First sniff, and...
I am hit with a Cascadian dark ale impression. I haven't had the DFH re-branded as IPA Indian Brown Ale in a while, but it comes to mind.

Initial impressions don't hold though, and I do get a medium-plus toastiness and a surprising fruitiness. Berries and tangerines with a little orange zest. Then there's some nutty coffee aromas in deeper whiffs. What the hell is going on? It's interesting, but a bit jumbled - so gaining my interest more like a car wreck than a nuanced painting.

Sip...
Okay, I'm leaning back towards a black IPA vibe, but not quite. There is definitely a dark toast component up front and a strong nuttiness in back - not roast or char. The fruits are there as well (little more citrus than the nose foretells), which is more distracting than enhancing to me. Luckily this fruity aspect seems to come and go fairly quickly, led in by the toast and escorted out by the nuttiness. Also, this aspect of the hops melds a little better as the beer warms.

The "other hoppy" influence returns in the back of the taste in different form - bitterness. It's a woody bitterness - a bit of cedar and maybe a little pine. It's surprisingly strong, and the dryness of the finish accentuates it to the point of giving the impression of licking the cedar plank you grilled dinner on.

Ok, this beer started off on the wrong foot - it was odd and discombobulated. After a couple sips, I was concerned if the GF would like it so we could finish the 6pack. But, as I analyzed and the beer warmed towards cellar temps, I got used to it. It's still not a winner for me, but I think I can help finish the rest. The malt notes of a robust brown that I do get in this beer make me wish even more they had taken more of an English route.


So, to throw cold water on everything I said (pun unintended), the GF actually said, "I get more brown than hoppy. But my beer is still pretty cold."

Hope everyone has a good week!

 

Those were sent to me, so I couldn't say how far they are distributed. But they are definitely not available in our neck of the woods.

 

Greetings fellow NBSers! A seasonal day here in the Fourth Corner, after a windy and chilly day yesterday, and a very rainy, windy, and Novemberish Friday. A big thank you to @FBarber for this nice Dovetail Kolsch. Much cloudier and fuller bodied than most of the style, and the yeast seemed stronger too. Almost Belgian-ish.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/45802/445299/

 

Buenas tardes, bon apres-midi, les copains. This is a WBAYDN X-post.

NBW? Yep. I always like a warm-up for the review beer, so here's my final impressions of...

Outer Range Brewing Good Natured Belgian Stout. 6.8%

Canned October 2020 (they don't date cans, so had to rely on word of mouth)
Note, this is the first/only review of this beer, had it Oct 21, 2020 on tap, and then this review based on can opened 10.25.20

3.87/5 rDev 0%
look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 3.75

L - Dark as night, good head for minutes, and decent lacing all the way down the glass. (From a can October 2020)
S - A strange "sour" roastiness on the nose, almost as if they used a Belgian yeast of some sort; can't quite define it. Bitter, dry chalky chocolate on the nose as it warms.
T - Taste is interesting, tastes like an astringent, roasty, mouth-puckering alkaline stout in the Irish style but at 6.8% I expected just a tad more sweet chocolate/coffee aspect. Nope. Dry, dry, and more dry.
F - Good, but the chalky/alkaline aspect of this beer is hard to appreciate, despite the good carbonation. At a full pint, I can do it, but I would split this in the future. [NBW add note: It's really, really dry, I kept sipping water in between gulps of this beer.].
O - a really interesting attempt at a "Belgian" stout, why it's that, who knows, but it's more like an ultra-dry, slightly higher ABV Irish Stout.

 

Hello NBW friends. I have a couple of beers to share with you on the second day of NBW weekend, a change that I have to admit I enjoy - the more new beer we share, the better for all of us, IMHO.

Like my first beer - I went to my second local on Friday. I have a “5 minutes away” local that I hit regularly because it’s so convenient, but my second local, which is 15 minutes away, is a significantly better option, especially if I have time to dig in and explore, which I did on Friday.

So when I tripped over a brewery (Hi-Wire Brewing out of Asheville NC) that I’ve not seen in these parts, I was pretty pumped - a new beer AND a new brewery. This is a Mosaic-hopped IPA.

They had me at Mosaic.





4.09/5 rDev +4.9%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 4

Pours a slightly hazy burnt orange with a dense off-white head. Great look in my glass. The nose is citrus, primarily tangerine and some grapefruit, and there’s a touch of caramalt sweetness.

The tangerine flavor is the most notable on the taste, and it really comes forward as this warms a bit. The caramalt flavor is subtle and a nice counterpoint to the citrus flavors. The mouthfeel is fairly dry, maybe just a smidge watery.

This is my first beer from these guys, and I’m really enjoying it - a great “fridge IPA,” IMHO.

 

Not on BeerAdvocate. Here the best beer in the world is obtainable if you pay money for a lottery ticket, win that lottery, and then pay $100 for the beer. Or you can skip that bother and just buy one from someone else for a grand.

 

Poured into a 16 oz Snulip glass canned on 10/2/2020. Pours a hazy orange with nearly a 2 finger sticky white head that leaves thick streaks of lace with excellent retention. 4.75

Smell passionfruit, mandarin, pineapple, mango, and apricot. 4.25

Taste follows passionfruit, mango, mandarin, pineapple, and apricot really solid but honestly was expecting more. 4.25

Mouthfeel is bigger than average, a tad sticky but not dry, fairly soft carbonation, and at 8.4% ABV goes down very easy. 4.5

Overall this one is excellent, but I really was expecting more because I thought this would be one of the best from them and it is just really good. 4.25

 

With the Altbier that I had yesterday it seemed like there was sediment in the can so I stopped pouring when I saw it was getting heavy. Obviously the shipping stirred it up to begin with.

I'm going to let my Kolsch settle out this week and then see how clear of a pour I can get after that.

 

Mine had been sitting since Friday, so it should be settled, and there's no sediment in the can or glass. Shrug.