New Beer Weekend #21

Good evening NBS/NBW, and thanks to our originator this week, So two 8 hr days of Zoom classes are now behind me. Cert training requirement. Like so much this year a real change. I enjoy the class enviroment, learning and interacting with peers as well as competitors, in the same room. Alas this year at least its done.
Todays offering is from Brasserie Blaguies, the holiday version of La Moneuse. I really appreciate the craft these folks put forward. I feel this bottle is well past its target date.

Do good
Be well

La Moneuse Spéciale Noël

Farmhouse Ale - Saison | 8% ABV

Brasserie de Blaugies
Blaugies, Belgium

3.89/5 rDev +0.5% | Average: 3.87
look: 3.75 | smell: 4 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Poured from an undated 500 ml cage and cork bottle into the test glass.
A - Dark copper color, with no sign of carbonation. Bottle opened with a zephyr of evidence. No cap, no ring.
S - Young cherry, some oak tannin, clove, grape skin, hint of green apple. add some nutmeg to the mix.
T - A bit of fruit cake as the overarching descriptor, in a good way. A very delicate earthy grain mix is the back stop to the cherry, and nutmeg.
M - Medium in body, almost still. Semi sweet start, then a pleasant tartness stops by to say hello. The finish is strong, in a Belgian strong catagory but lighter.
O - I like the offering quite a bit, I will look for another bottle to compare notes, I feel this one is old a bit flabby, but I do trust the brewers, and will try again

 

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I've always taken the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show approach to rating beers. I try to rate a beer of a particular style against the "ideal" version of the style. It's easy to do that when it's a style I like but a lot more difficult when it's an obscure style. I usually read BA's style description before reviewing. I just did that with an Altbier. It wasn't a beer I'd go out of my way to drink again but it seemed to check all the right boxes so I gave it a decent rating.

Regarding Gunner's Daughter, I agree with @Roguer that you may have gotten a bad can. It may be one of those styles one either likes or dislikes but I think it's generally well-crafted.

 

Well, that’s the thing, I generally dislike both low abv milk stouts and peanut butter and I had absolutely no business whatsoever opening that can and putting it in my mouth. But, having done so, and found it to be objectively nasty, is there some sort of Beer Advocate code of ethics that prevents me from deleting my review and pretending it never happened? Or do I have to force myself to drink another one and hope for a better result? I’m only partially joking. I really have a lot of respect for the brewer and hate like hell leaving a bad review.

 

Definitely more keller than helles. This is a full bodied beer, you'll drink one after another, but not quickly.

 

Alright... so in my glass right now is a collaboration between Wandering Soul and Old Planters Brewing called Old Soul. I guess it's a better name than Wandering Planters...



This beer pours as a fairly typical but decent-looking NEIPA into my pint glass, topping off with a retentive but unusually-small head. The color is between a pallid yellow and golden-orange with stable haze throughout. Great lace as I sip, and very nice legs as well. Alright, seems good. What's in store here, I wonder?

Continue to wonder for a moment, though, if you would, because I feel the need to make an aside/note before getting into the beer proper. As the label states, this IPA features a brand-new hop varietal, which is always something super exciting to me. Nectaron is a full sister to another NZ hop, Waimea, and it's been in R&D for over 17 years, which seems pretty nuts (though it's not like that's all the researchers were working on during that time, therefore it's probably not that weird), although its sister varietal was released in 2012 so maybe hops just take for-freaking-ever to get real names and hit the market. I'm honestly not really sure about this, but I would like to learn more so if anyone else is nerdy about stuff like this, I'd like to do some specific horticultural research in my free time. Anyway, Nectaron... official press for this hop mentions a "huge aroma of pineapple, peach, grapefruit, and passionfruit" and puts the alpha acid level at 10-12% on average, and it has myrcene content in a similar range to both classic and new-school varietals alike including Cascade, Mosaic, Centennial, and Brewer's Gold. Okay, enough of that. Back to the beer!

The nose here is spectacular. Huge aromas of cannabis, pineapple, tangelo/grapefruit rind, mango, and guava with some lighter notes of fresh-cut grass and chive/green onion. I somehow don't get as much passion fruit as expected, especially not when compared to certain other varietals (looking at you, Vic Secret), but the intense greenness and dank aromatics are hard to understate here. So much sticky resinous goodness... let's hope the flavor profile is just as good, if not better!

Yeah, definitely very nice. Well-built malt backbone that feels distinctly wheat/oat heavy with a protein-rich body that lays out a great groundwork on which Nectaron can do its hoppy thing. Super powerful flavors of mango, passion fruit (there it is!), pineapple, ruby-red grapefruit, and tangelo with some of that superb dankness from the nose making its way into the finish here. Light stone fruit as well; some touches of apricot jam here as it warms, especially. This is maybe a bit more bitter than some other modern NEIPAs, and I appreciate that. Has a very balanced approach to it that nevertheless feels as though the collaborating brewers really coaxed an intense amount of the goodness that this varietal has to offer.

I'll definitely be on the lookout for more beers featuring Nectaron in the near future, especially if I see this varietal paired with some others that it might work well with. Off the top of my head, I could see this being fun with Azacca (might actually make some Azacca beers good for once; sorry, don't mean to be a hater), Galaxy/VS, Amarillo, Strata, and maybe even Ella.

One more coming up... a MA-based brewery with their version of a Bière de Coupage (aka blended beer). Pretty interested to see how it comes out. See you soon, new beer drinkers.

 

Yeah, that's a fantastic beer and probably their best pale lager. Occupiers a nice niche right in between a Helles and a Maibock, so fairly unique in that regard.

 

I went to look at the number of reviews and found out I had tried that beer, and apparently enjoyed it more than you (which I guess isn't much of a feat ).

Anyhow, with 295 ratings, I wouldn't worry about the bad review as it relates to your tastes. Perhaps if you were only the third person to review a beer in a style you don't appreciate, you might consider some restraint.

That's just my opinion, but I being honesty in a review is the best you can do in most cases. Oh, and I definitely wouldn't expect you to buy a beer you detest again just to "make us/BA happy."

 

Probably the only hoppy RR beer I haven’t had. Labeled as a hazy ipa. I would call it a hazy West Coast IPA. Bright tropical, white grape and citrus aroma and flavor. Body is light, doesn’t hang around on the palate. Does have a touch of creaminess, just a touch. Mild bitterness but does have a prickly carbonation.

It’s an excellent hybrid of a hazy and west coast ipa. It’s like a west coast ipa brewery that dips their toe into the hazy game. As a WC fan I like it but if you’re looking for a hazy juice bomb you’ll be disappointed.

local craft beer bar doing Crowler fills. Not a bad deal since 16 oz bottles go for $6.

 

Fremont's Winterskol chocolate stout.

16oz can split between a pair of WABL samplers. Bought it at the brewery yesterday. Dated 12/08/20.

Pours black with a brown head of substantial size, fades slowly and leaves a pretty thick layer capping the beer. Medium carbonation. Smell is coffee and roast grains.

Taste is similar -- coffee and roast grains. If pressed, I could characterize it as very dark chocolate, I do actually get a little bit of an acidic characteristic that I associate with very dark chocolate.

Mouthfeel is light, smooth, slightly creamy. Overall, nice beer.

 

I'm joining in the thread a bit late this week, but the fun hasn't been lost on me. I hope everyone is doing well this week. It's nice to see some good news and good brews being reported in the thread. Congrats to @Victory_Sabre1973 on his new gig and best wishes going forward! My first entry this week will cover two beers since I was too lazy to write them up individually.

The first is an imperial stout from Four Points Brewing in Charleroi, PA. This inaugural release of Man, Beast And Bird: Extra Vanilla is a big and burly stout perfect for this time of year. The vanilla is ample, but also well balanced which can be an issue in these types of stouts. The 12% abv was well hidden, but still provided a nice warming sensation. I saw the head brewer mention that this is the stout that he would like to begin their barrel aging program with, and I could see that being a fantastic pairing.

4.36/5 rDev 0%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.25

Look - Pours a jet black topped with a homogeneous, yet fleeting, tan head. It just looks thick.
Smell - Vanilla, bitter baker's chocolate, and roasted malt are the biggest aromas on the nose.
Taste - This stout just tastes deep and dark. The malt is roasted heavily and the vanilla is abundant on the palate. There are underlying notes of bitterness in both coffee and chocolate forms.
Feel - Thick and rich, this is a very full bodied stout, with no cloying sweetness.
Overall - A very good imperial stout thoughtfully conditioned with vanilla.

My next offering is a collab involving one of my favorite breweries and one that is not quite up and running yet. Dancing Gnome cut their teeth making some of the best IPAs in the region and continue to turn out top tier haze and imperial stouts quarterly. In this past year they've shown that they're very capable of making classic styles true to form at a high level as well. On of my favorites of this year was their English Mild from September. Necromancer is a brewery in the works that will focus on resurrecting often overlooked beer styles. That's were Square Dancing comes into play. This joint effort of both breweries is a Kentucky Common Ale. It was already entered into the database as an American Red/Amber. I could see it appearing to look like an amber, but the taste is much closer to a cream ale with a bit more depth of flavor from toasted grain. This does not taste to me to be in the same category as Fat Tire, Hopback, or Bell's Amber. In any case, it was a very tasty beer that makes me excited to try more neglected styles that Necromancer plans to explore.

4.12/5 rDev +3.8%
look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

Look - Pours a cloudy copper color topped with an inch of off-white tick foam.
Smell - The smell was bready with notes of roasted grain. Very little hop aroma.
Taste - The taste followed the nose with a biscuity backbone and toasted malt. A slight bit of spice also on the finish. All of the flavors were nicely balanced.
Feel - A full bodied creamy beer that was very soft in feel.
Overall - An easy drinking refreshing beer with a good amount of character.

I'm hoping to review at least one more new beer tonight, but if the Steelers game goes south too quickly that may not happen.

 

Another beer courtesy of @woemad. This is a variant of Batch 1 from Lumberbeard aged in Dry Fly Gin Barrels.
Pours a hazy pale yellow/gold with a rocky white head, decent retention amd lots of lacing.
Aroma- first whiff is of vanilla and before I looked up the aromatics in the gin I assumed this would be from oak barrels. Truth be told Im not getting alot in the smell. The gin is infused with juniper, apple, coriander, mint, hops and lavender- quite interesting. Even now knowing those ingredients I am surprised I cant get at least lavender, juniper because they are so bold. I am actually getting some fruit - apple perhaps, but not alot in the hop dept.
Taste- alot more in the herbal dept here. Juniper is present but not dominating, a touch of fruity hops, drying from vanillin and lavender(which ive used sparingly in cooking/recipes because it overpowers.) But its subtle. There is quite alot here and the flavors are emerging as it warms.
The feel is medium with light carbonation and there is some alcohol in the back. Its really feeling like a gin martini/beer combo at this point with its herbal drying on the tongue. Getting more juniper and mint now 15 mins. Very interesting brew and glad I got the chance. Thank You @woemad!