New Beer Weekend #43

Amazing work!

 

I've been putting off trying these two from OEC, until today!

Here's the first:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/34667/410202/



16 oz. can without a date.

Moderate pour yields a two (+) inch white head over a light to medium hazy golden body with a bit of sticky lacing. Nose of slight funk, slight citrus, a bit of spice, and a bit of floral/honey sweetness. Taste mirrors nose somewhat; very refreshing and quite lively with bready characteristics coming forward a bit with a fairly dry finish. Nice full feel and overall, an interesting and unique lager to be sure; and would recommend to any lager lover to experience a couple of these!
Cheers!!

 

Hey how’s the shoulder doing?

 

Ha, thanks. Let me tell you, even with a languid afternoon, and the occasional assistance from the Ms., working through x4 14% cans is tough work!

 

Here's the today's 2nd new-to-me from OEC.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/34667/448925/



16 oz. can with no date.

Moderate pour yields a one (+) inch white head over a hazy golden body with some sticky lacing. Nose of grass, citrus, and bready malt with a bit of floral aromas as well. Taste mirrors nose fairly closely with a medium hop bitterness and finishing somewhat dry. Good feel and overall, I'm guessing this can has a bit of age on it as the American hops aren't as prevalent as I expected, but still a tasty offering from Connecticut.
Cheers!!!

 

Another wonderful gift from a generous BA in Bend. Trying to control my cellar is exciting and delicious! Another month or so and I may be able to actually have all my beer in legit storage locations, instead of boxes on my floor!

So this is 2017 Motorhead from Sunriver, a black barleywine style ale.

500ml bottle served in a big snifter.

Pours a murky dark brown, small coarse head around the edges with a suggestion of a cirrus pattern spread across the surface. A few clumps of sediment were visible plopping into my glass just before I stopped pouring. Some active carbonation, but not much.

Smell is dark roasted malts, dates, vanilla, and oak. Maybe a little wet cardboard.

Taste is burnt toffee and chocolate, vanilla and oak, more of the wet cardboard, some anise, something slight vegetal. Oaky. Strong bitterness that I can't decide is roasted malt based or old hop based.

Mouthfeel is medium to thick, a little sticky. Overall, it's a pretty good beer, but appears to be a little past its prime.

As it warms up, though, there's more of a molasses sweetness that sets off the bitterness a little more flatteringly, and maybe a date/raisin sweetness (someone used the word blackcurrant earlier today, and that's the word I want to use, but that might just be recentness so I'm resisting).

Thanks Ryan!

 

Poured into a 13 Teku glass not sure when it was canned. Pours a very attractive hazy yellow, with a finger plus sticky white head that leaves thin lines of lace with excellent retention. 4.75

Aroma is buttery Chardonnay, guava, peach, pineapple, apricot, and white grapefruit. 4.5

Taste follows guava, peach, pineapple, butter Chardonnay, apricot, and white grapefruit. 4.5

Mouthfeel is above average, creamy soft gentle carbonation, a little dry, and at 8% calling it a NETIPA is a stretch, but it is TDH so loaded with flavor. 4.5

Overall this is a treasure, thanks @jzeilinger for the glass and awesome beer. 4.5

 

Well my post was like the overtime loss .

@WunderLlama the beer was by trillium BA endless night & day

 

One more to finish the weekend, Transient F--- The Mother Of All Stouts (Maple Syrup & Vanilla), thanks @ovaltine!
4.59/5 rDev +3.1%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.75 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

Thank you ovaltine for this
500 ml bottle poured into a tulip

A- Black with a small dark mocha head

S- Milk chocolate, vanilla, maple, oak, bourbon, roasted malts. On the sweet side but still balanced.

T- Chocolate, fudge, dark chocolate, maple syrup, roasted malts, oak, vanilla, bourbon.

M- Smooth, full body.

O- A very well done and balanced stout, everything comes together in a wonderful harmony. The bourbon barrel and alcohol a noticeable but don’t cross the line to being boozy.

Cheers NBW, stay safe!

 

What a great story, and writeup. Grazie!

 

in a sling for six weeks with no driving. That prevents me from visiting my favorite breweries. However, I have been able to secure new beers through some new innovative resources ....details on those beers to follow

 

Well time for something special, well deserved since I am well overdue for a NEW beer from these guys which is a rarity for me.




Poured from the bottle into a branded stemware Fonteinen glass. Bottled June 26th 2018. Season 17/18 Blend no. 66.

Deep orange bodied, opaque, but with a great tangerine glow, faint edge haze as well. Nice amounts of side carbonation, very fine almost microscopic, making the glass move when observed from a distance. Off white head, dissolves to a standard pencil thin white collar, not a very active center puck, only mildly. Still very nice looking gueuze, not the best I have seen from Drie F, but certainly fine.

What the beer doesn't excite in appearances, it so far makes up in spades in aroma. Even sitting at a distance it hits me. Big funk, sharp marmalade and white pepper notes coming off in big quantities. Flirts with tangerine like orange, hits of fireplace ash as well among the pepper like nose too. Seems to stay away from complexity and bold fruit, but it's classic profile is very nice.

Palate just provides a golden touch. Liquid soft bodied, with a hint of light bubbled carbonation that cuts a joyful rich body. Pepper ash and a big citrus funk in the mid palate, lemons, tangerine, more marmalade sprinkled with muted pepper warmth and heat. Silky finish, nearly honey like feel. Finish gets more orange centered in flavor, with a juicy quality mixed with excellent funky character.

Reading the bottle, spring honey added, woah didn't expect that! May not be the most exciting of the makers products, but is pure liquid gold in the glass.

look: 4 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5 | 4.47/5

Cheers!

 

Ok, back home, and on to another beer.
After we stopped at Copper Trail Brewing in Alexandria, MN, we headed a bit north, about 20 miles to Parkers Prairie, MN, and stopped at Thousand Lakes Brewing there. If my original plans for today would have happened, I wouldn't have made it there. Well, I'm glad I things worked out to be able to go there.

I had several beers there I was very happy with. I also brought this one home, that I didn't have at the brewery. I also had to add it to the system, along with others I had there.

Hefelump - Hefeweizen - Thousand Lakes Brewing - 4.9% ABV

The aroma is really what got me excited. It had such a strong "wheat" aroma. Then I sipped it, and for a second was - WTF? It was so bland and mellow, but like I said, that was a second. The Hefe really kicked in hard on the back. So full of banana, cloves, and bread/biscuit flavors from the malts. This is a solid Hefe, and I'll GLADLY drive the hour and a half there to get more. I'm very happy with this beer.

Review:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/58377/549641/


4.22/5 rDev 0%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.25

Crawler bought at the brewery 5-16-2021- canned on 5-13-2021.
This beer pours a very murky, hazy straw color. The head is a 2 finger white head. It looks very fluffy, and pillow like. The bubbles are mostly small. The head retention wasn't too good, but there's some lacing on the glass.
The nose hits hard. Tons of the standard "wheat" aromas, you'd expect from the style. Tons of banana, cloves, and it's backed up with a malty, biscuit, bread aroma.
Taste - Right away, it's very mellow, almost nothing there. Then, it kicks in very hard. Like the aroma, there's just a chorus of banana, cloves, bread/biscuit from the malts used to brew this beer.
This body is really thick, considering it's only a 4.9% beer. I'm very happy with the feel of it.
Solid Hefe, and a pleasure to try it. I'll be going back there again to get more of this during Hefe season.


Maybe one more today? Not sure if I even want to do more new reviews. If not, see you all next weekend.

 

Another week, another new Modestman IPA! These guys are doing a really good job recently. This is essentially a DIPA version of their Run Come Save Me IPA from a few weeks back.



The pour here is immediately at least a bit better than the last few MM IPAs I've had, though this brewery's stuff has kind of consistently been "less good-looking" than some other hazy hoppy beers I've had in the past. It's been okay, though, because the high quality of the liquids themselves has eclipsed how much I could possibly ever care about appearance. It's an opaque orange-cream looking brew topped with several fingers of retentive, foamy, voluminous head that never really fully fades out, consistently boasting a collar of intense suds with amazing legs and lace. Top notch!

Run Come Save Me was hopped with Idaho 7 and Citra, and Awfully Deep is no different as I mentioned above. It begins hitting my nose with apricot and juicy melon combined with mango, papaya, and slight pine-like resin notes. Perhaps a bit more subtle/less intense than expected, but it's still quite great-smelling. I've sometimes found Idaho 7 and Mosaic to have more than a bit of crossover in how "unusual" they can get in bigger beers, and I think the similarities come out in this one a bit, too, perhaps replacing some of the more intense dankness/berry undertones of Mosaic with a focus on softer stone fruit with I7. The Citra feels like it brings up a bit of a tropical undercurrent as well, with softer notes of pineapple candy coming up as it opens a bit.

Soft and focused feel with flavors of bitter tangerine rind, grapefruit, ripe mango, and pineapple with some notes of grassiness and dank pine resin/sap in the finish. I'd say it drinks less stone fruit-focused than the nose had me think it would. Light bitterness and oily aspects in the finish, though the mid-palate feel is plush and definitely very dialed-in. That gets me to my only real issue with this... it feels a little redundant. Like... too dialed in. They just released a 7% IPA with these two hops as the focus a few weeks ago, and now they released the "DIPA" version that is a hair over 1% stronger. I mean, don't get me wrong: this is very, very good stuff. It just feels a little silly to me, but the market loves "new beers" and the very concept of this thread plays into that, so maybe my cynicism should look in the mirror, as it has many times before, lest I become a boring hypocrite. Let's not overthink it TOO much, though! Love Modestman and always enjoy drinking their beer. This is probably not my favorite of their more recent offerings, even though it did look the best of all of them. There's an old adage about books and covers that comes to mind here, and I guess it can sometimes cut both ways...

Back soon with another!

 

Love keeping track of the S.

 

Here we go! Raspberry Jelly Donut Even More Jesus by Evil Twin. As I mentioned last night in my Saturday NBW post about an Evil Twin IPA that just came out, I had this on deck and have been excited all day to crack it and see if it is successful. I have had a few variants on EMJ before (including Even More Pecan Pie Jesus, Aún Más Chili Jesús, and Aún Más Café Jesús), but this seems like the first to belong to the unofficial "pastry stout" category out of any that I've tried. Well, here goes nothing!!



The pour here is a little less freaking terrifying than some other ET stouts I've had in the past, but it's still a tar-black liquid crowned with a finger or so of dark brown head that quickly sinks to a thin ring in my glass. The collar that it ends up with retains at that height, never fully dissipating. Additionally, there is some surprisingly nice, consistent lace that seems to have made an appearance, as well, so there's also that. Not bad!

The nose has my pancreas preparing for trouble... this smells sweet and decadent! Roasted coffee and mocha-like cocoa notes upfront with an almost-immediate switch to incredibly bright berry elements as soon as my senses adjust to the fact that "yes, this is definitely a strong imperial stout with fruit in it." Such a nice, complete-smelling combination of the original with an authentic-seeming raspberry element. Jammy but still prominent and measured, blending in with the rest of the base beer in a pretty artful way. Hope it comes across that way on the palate, too!

A bit more fudgy chocolate on the tongue (which is appreciated)... a bit tart but not "acidic," as it were, and I do get the dark berry flavor but it's combined well with the doughiness I assume is brought on by the donut addition (remember, this is the same guy who made Imperial Doughnut Break years ago...) so it doesn't sit atop everything else distractingly. I'm impressed by the integration of these things which seem like they could have easily been disparate and not put together well. Some solid roastiness developing as it acclimates to room temp, along with ashen chocolate malt and maybe even a hint of round, pleasing smoke at times, mingling satisfyingly with the raspberry jelly flavors. Yum. I would certainly drink this again... crazy good, and I really do think it's almost incredible how "not-saccharine" it is considering I prepared for the worst upon my initial sniff of it. Great recipe!

 

Love reading you, K. And such a detailed parsing of 4. Excellent!