New Beer Weekend #84

Good day BAs! Thanks @SawDog505 for starting this weekends thread! For my fairly unusual Saturday post (My recidivist tendencies lead me to mostly post on the NBS end of NBW) I've got to show yinz this fairly local brewski:



Decorating Pieces of Time from Jackie O’s Brewing. 12.7 oz bottle purchased online from Jackie O’s, $15.82 (Including tax and shipping), $ 1.246/oz. Stored at 40 degrees after purchase. Reviewed 26/2/21. Note that I use DD/MM/YY protocol.
Undated bottle. Served at 56.6 degrees in a hand washed and dried Jester King snifter. Final temperature 63.1 degrees.
Appearance – 4.
First pour – Medium Amber (SRM 12), slight haze.
Body – Deep Amber (SRM 15), opaque. When rear-lite, weak light penetration gives a sienna glow. Precipitate is in suspension.
Head – Average (Maximum 1.3 cm, aggressive center pour), a little yellower than wheat and a bit wheatier than citron, fizzy and rapidly diminishing to leave a 0.3 cm crown and no cap. The crown is unevenly supplemented by effervescence and lasts the entire glass.
Lacing – None.
Aroma – 4.25 – Sweet toffee and brandy. No hops, no malt, no yeast. No alcohol.
Flavor – 5 – Begins slightly sweet with toffee, bourbon, and brandy overtones. No alcohol burn until it hit the stomach, producing a noticeable fireball which apparently took out the nerves. After the first swallow, only a soft glow was apparent. No hops, no malt, no yeast. Ethanol (12 % ABV, as marked on container) is hidden, attenuated by the sweet bourbon. No dimethylsulfide or diacetyl.
Palate – 4.5 – Full, approaching creamy, soft caressing carbonation.
Final impression and summation: 4.25 (After deducting 0.25 point for undated bottle) Wow! Easiest drinking barleywine I’ve ever encountered! Flavorful, smooth, non-corrosive alcohol - Time to make a beer run to Athens, OH, and stock up!
Rating 4.56, rDev +4.3%

Probably my first "5" rating for flavor - this is now my favoritefavoritefavorite beer for special occasions (like sun rise, moon rise, meteor showers, day, night, etc.)

 

A series of Pilsners

Tired Hands has made a series of Pilsners under the umbrella name of Austere Modular. In the past they did not denote the differences on the can label; as a consumer you just needed to keep up. But for this iteration they do provide information, it lists: Austere Modular 11 Single Hops Pacific Jade Pilsner. Kudos to Tired Hands for being more transparent in the labeling for this beer.

In past NBW threads I discussed the fifth and tenth versions of this series and those beers were excellent.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-sunday-week-794.639339/#post-6897233

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/new-beer-weekend-73.663651/#post-7408202

Can Tired Hands meet the “excellent” standard for this 11th version?

Below is how this beer/version is detailed on the Tired Hands website:

“Austere Modular 11

Brewed with the same base as AusMod10, consisting of German Pilsner malt with a splash of Vienna and Munich. We've been way too hype about this New Zealand Pacific Jade so we singularly hopped this Pilsner with it. This lil number was fermented under pressure and conditioned in one or our horizontal lager tanks with a lager strain we wish we had all of the time. It's a miracle the brewers didn't drink the tank empty before we got to package it! 5.0%”

https://www.tiredhands.com/generalstore/beers

Just a couple of days ago I homebrewed my annual batch of Bohemian Pilsner and for this particular batch I used mostly Bohemian Pilsner malt (Weyermann non-floor malted Bohemian Pilsner malt) but also a small portion (but more than a “splash”) of Weyermann Vienna Malt. I also brewed this beer in a more ‘traditional’ (European) manner since I used noble hops (Czech Saaz) hops for flavor/aroma.

A few aspects of this version of Austere Modular I think is worthy of further discussion:

Hops

The selection to solely hop with Pacific Jade hops is quite interesting. I have only homebrewed with one New Zealand hop variety (Motueka) so far and I liked this hop variety in my IPA. Below is how Pacific Jade is described (with emphasis in bold by me):

“Sensory Description:

Pacific Jade is most often associated with the bold and complex spicy aromatic bite of cracked black pepper, fresh citrus, and an underlying herbal note. It is often compared to Saaz.”

https://learn.kegerator.com/pacific-jade-hops/

So, this hop is “often compared to Saaz” which is something I have heretofore never read/heard before. I have homebrewed with Czech Saaz many times and I can report that in those beers I personally have never noted “fresh citrus” in any of those beers. I will have to be on the ‘lookout’ here.

Malts

I already discussed the aspect of this Pilsner being brewed with some malts other than Pilsner Malt. I enjoyed the malt aspect in Austere Modular 10 so in all likelihood I will like the malt flavors in this version as well.

Yeast

I found the verbiage of “with a lager strain we wish we had all of the time” quite intriguing. I wonder upon several things here:

· Which lager yeast strain did they use for version 11 (which is different from before)?

· What does this specific lager yeast strain ‘bring to the table’ as compared to past strains used?

· Why can’t Tired Hands use the strain “all the time”?

· Also, there was mention of “fermented under pressure” which may be a difference from previous versions.

The best guess I have as regards availability is that Tired Hands ‘borrowed’ some yeast from another (nearby?) commercial brewery and perhaps they do not have a yeast propagation lab onsite to store/propagate yeast for future batches.

Well, enough jibber-jabber. Let’s get down to what’s truly important: let’s drink!

Served in my Polish Pilsner glass:

Appearance:

A pale straw color with a BIG rocky white head.

Aroma:

A combination of bready, almost cracker-like malt and hop aromas of herbal/spicy.

Taste:

The flavor sorta follows the nose with the combination of prominent bready/crackery malt and notable herbal/spicy hop flavors but there is also an ‘earthy’ hop flavor as well. There is a notable bitterness with a lingering harshness to this beer.

Mouthfeel:

Medium bodied with a dry finish.

Overall:

This beer is OK/pretty good. While I enjoyed the bready/crackey malt flavors the aspect of ‘earthy’ I perceived from the hops and the lingering bitterness/harshness was a distraction for me.

I wonder if the differing fermentation conditions of this version resulted in some less than desirable tastes/flavors for my palate. Or maybe it is just a case of using solely Pacific Jade hops in this version does not ‘work’ for me?

The two previous versions of Austere Modular were absolute joys to drink for me. To quote Meatloaf: “two outta three ain't bad”.

Cheers!

@rotsaruch @KOP_Beer_OUtlet @RobH @honkey

 

Good Morning All and thank you @SawDog505 for the great weekend kickoff! I was in the process of creating this thread, but sadly had to abort my originally planned cellar review of a 2017 Epic Brewing Big Bad Baptist due to a severe infection, the first time I ever ran into an infected bottle in seven years. I posted this debacle in the Cellarury thread.

Looking at my remaining "New to me" beers for an audible, I selected this one for the morning.

Krebs Brewing Company Prairie Artisan Ales Okie



Bottle Notes: 12 oz bottle purchased in the Fall of 2019 at Fischmans' going out of business sale ($5 cash). Brewed and bottled by Krebs Brewing Co., Krebs, OK. 12.0% ABV. Imperial Brown Ale aged in oak whiskey barrels. Based on the following smudged bottle code (OKIE6CS 21:01 009 19), I take this to mean this was bottled on 1/9/19 @ 21:01.

Appearance: Single pour into a 16 oz nonic glass. Dark brown base with significant visible floaters, thin off-white brown head linger for a few minutes before leaving a creamy ring above the base. Not very appetizing. 2.75

Aroma: Significant oak barrel lead, paired with cardboard notes of oxidation and then a sweet stale whiskey follows, or perhaps that is a blend of whiskey and the base coming through. 3.25

Taste: Oxidized cardboard leads, stale whiskey followed by damp oak and coke syrup. 2.25

Mouthfeel: Flat cola in terms of syrupy body sand carbonation, sweet, halfway in and it's lighter than the abv. Feel floaters at times, sweet cardboard mixed aftertaste. 2.5

Overall: Halfway through, may or may not finish this. A loss to the cellar, though I don't think this beer was for me fresh or aged. Would sample a fresh pour at a festival, but wouldn't buy this again. 2.5

It is a Hanson type of morning, perhaps their beer festival will return one day.

Tomorrow we embark on the 18th year of celebrating New Beer Sunday! New Beer Sunday #888 to be exact, as the event was created 17 years ago on tomorrow's date, February 27, 2005. Hope you are all able to join us, and pull out a special beer for the occasion, or perhaps a favorite memory you enjoyed over the years in this very special thread.

 

Good morning BAs, and happy Saturday!

Today’s new beer is an impulse buy from Tavour recently - Backwoods Brewing Co., Carson WA, “King Size” Candy Bar Stout, made with cocoa nibs, peanuts and vanilla. The brewer implies that this oatmeal stout tastes like a Snickers…Ok, sounds good to me, let’s go!




Canned 12/20/21. Poured at 56°. Body is a dark brown with ruby see-through, good clarity, and a fast fizzy beige head that disappears quickly leaving a small island of micro dots; thin ring at best; spots of lace on agitation; no legs. Aroma is caramel malt, some peanuts as it warms. Weak chocolate flavor; vanilla; some peanut butter flavor as it warms. Light body; fizzy moderate plus carbonation; no warmth from 7.2% abv; light feeling for an oatmeal stout and the abv. Overall, not much to recommend here - feels watery and tastes artificial.

3.75 | 3.75 | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3.5
Score: 3.58 rDev - 4%

Tavour notoriously overhypes the beers it sells…some are hits, some are misses…this beer was a miss. Hope everyone has a great weekend - Cheers!

 

Fair State here in Minnesota makes some great lagers, including one of my 2021 favorites called Even Less Hype, a foeder-aged dark lager.

This is a Czech Dark Lager, but no aging, Tmave Pivo:

Appearance: Clear brown with ruby highlights, big head.

Smell: Roasted malts, some coffee, strong.

Taste: Roasty, nutty, kind of a mineral note in the background. Delicious and easy to drink.

Overall: I never was big on dark lagers, but in the past couple years I've found some really good ones. Tmave Pivo is great stuff, just hits the spot with a nice blend of roasted malt, nuttiness, and a distinct mineral finish that keeps me coming back. Tasty!

 

I will join you, @Roguer. The pour is quite foamy, with the foam featuring a light brown color, but my magical unicorn mug, which @LeperJim forged in another dimension before presenting it to me, hid my view of the beer, though it embraces the liquid perfectly. When the foam dissipated, there was a nice black color with brownish hues. The smell is very strong hazelnut, coffee, milk chocolate, light bourbon, and vanilla. The taste is strong with hazelnut, which then reveals coffee, milk chocolate, with a touch of bourbon and vanilla. The mouthfeel is smoother than I expected. It is like an iced coffee drink. Overall, I was worried that the hazelnut flavor would dominate this beer, but it simply takes the lead, as the other traditional KBS flavors follow. I really like this beer! I will always prefer original KBS over the variants, but this beer may be my 2nd favorite KBS edition, after the original.

 

Thanks @SawDog505 for getting this thread started. It looks like you've had some recent snow, and that reminds me how happy I am that I'm not out there shoveling.
Dogs have been walked, groceries picked up, and a run to the recycling center completed, so by my thinking it's time for a beer. I just got a new shipment from Beer Drop, and this is one of the selections.

The beer is a very dark brown with some garnet peeking through. Medium-sized tan head. A little lace.
Coffee aroma, some roasted malt.
Strong coffee taste, espresso. Coffee taste lingers. A little bit of chocolate, some late hoppiness.
Medium-bodied. I liked how the coffee stayed present.

 

Will have to check this one out if I find it. Thx

 

In honor of Vikings: Valhalla on Netflix, I got out my sacred drinking horn. This is ? by 3 Sheeps Brewing. The color is sun honey yellow. Beautiful. The smell is lemon, honeydew, honey, lavender, and freshly cut grass. The taste is sweet lemon cake, red berries, cream, oatmeal, with a white grape finish. The mouthfeel is buttery, light, creamy, and mimosa-like. Overall, this is an oat cream IIPA with lactose that is better than many others that have a similar design. I did not hear the story of why the beer is simply named ?, but I believe I can find out. Skol!

 

Top O' the afternoon to ye.♣
Amateur Drunk Day St. Patrick's Day is approaching and Rohrbach is celebrating with that most Irish of beers; the Cream Ale ┐(ﾟ ～ﾟ )┌


The can tells me that Patty's is an "Irish Style Cream Ale" brewed with European malted wheat, honey malt, and aromatic malt along with "authentic English-style hops" (I'm thinking that means English varieties grown in the US)

Do you remember the top rated malt liquors from that tasting? Patty's reminds me of those, but in a more refined way.

Patty's pours a clear wheaty amber with a short lived head and the aromas of sweet malts and creamed corn.
The taste pretty much follows with semi-sweet malts, a touch of honey, and a bit of corn in the background. There is a hint of pepper in the finish, but otherwise no noticeable hop presence.

The feel is smooth and a little slick with very little carbonation and a slight lingering pepper.

Overall Patty's is an easy drinking, medium bodied beer that leans on the sweet side. With the body, taste, and ABV (4.8%) Rohrbach obviously aims this at those wanting a beer to drink, as the label says "pint after pint" and they have achieved that.

3.72/5
look: 4 | smell: 3.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.75

 

Good morning! At least, it's still morning in Honolulu. I'd be thinking about lunch if I was home right now. Anyway, my son is sleeping in and my wife and I are bored, so we opened one of the last two beers in our hotel fridge. We'll be busy packing tonight, and flying home tomorrow.

16oz can served in a plastic hotel cup. Dated 12/14/2021.

Pours black with no head, after an initial dark brown skin appears and dissipates. Looks thick. Smell is sweet and chocolatey, vanilla, roasted coffee.

Taste is dark roast coffee, vanilla and chocolate sweetness.

Mouthfeel is on the light side of thick. Overall, it's not bad.

The hotel fridge is set super cold. As this beer is warming up, it showing more bright sweet flavors, the coffee bitterness seems less one-sided.

 

Every now and then I have some European Pilsners, but for one reason or another never review them. Time to start.

4.09/5 rDev +5.7%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4
by woodchipper from Connecticut

Poured from a brown 12oz bottle stamped Best Before End 2022/05 to a pilz glass at fridge temp.
Nice clear gold body with constantly rising nucleated bubbles rising the entire session. Ultra white head is about 3-fingers high and made of fairly large bubbles. Lacing is medium to good for half the sesion but fades to mediocre by the end.
The aroma is grassy with mild hop notes and a nice sweetness. No off flavors.
Taste is similar but with a heavier crisp hop character, not overpowering, decently balanced.
Mouth feel is thin, oily and well carbonated. Dare I say "crushable" as it probably should be.
Overall a great Pilsner.

 

I’ve wanted to try this one for a while but I’ve never been able to find it in NJ. Imports seem to come and go through the years so maybe it’ll show up someday.

 

Light golden honey yellow. The smell is orange, lemon, honeydew, grapefruit, with light biscuit. The taste is orange juice mixed with lemonade, with a slight bready background. Refreshing. Crisp. The mouthfeel is light, sparkly, and easy. A perfect summer beer. Overall, this beer is perfect to drink 12 of while watching a certain Chico, CA, native throwing footballs around at training camp next summer. In Colorado.

 

Central Waters Brewer's Reserve 7 Layer Stout, 12% ABV. Pours black with a ring of light brown bubbles. Nose is coconut, bourbon, lactose, and slight chocolate. Taste follows, plus graham, quite sweet, faintly bitter. Excellent smooth mouthfeel if a bit over-carbonated. Overall excellent. Decent, but not their best effort.

4.15/5 rDev -1%
look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25

I grew up in Wisconsin, but don't recall the "famous" dessert this supposedly emulates.

 

Long post before beer...that will come later today. A meaningful past couple of days...

This week I got another nephew, we was born Thursday at 10:45 PM to my brother in law. He has been a very close friend of mine since my wife and I started seeing each other junior year of high school, 19 years ago. He is as much of a brother as my actual brother is so I'm beyond excited to see him grow into a father.

Second, this is just a neat story of the universe speaking in mysterious ways...

Life has been pretty hectic lately and my wife shared an article with me on Thursday, the day my new nephew was born, that reminded me of so many things we strive for in our life together. It really moved me because I needed this reminder at this moment. I'm not trying to get philosophical or anything but this is the article, it is needed to bring this all back together at the end, really just the song talked about in the first paragraph but it weaves its way through the whole thing:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/03/why-we-are-never-satisfied-happiness/621304/

Some of you know and can guess Phish is very important to me and those four guys are almost as much a part of me as my family is. Well they finally played again this week in Mexico, first time since Halloween, because new years was cancelled cause of omicron. This is a band that has played around 1700 shows and more songs than most could imagine, heck for the 13 consecutive show baker's dozen run they didn't repeat a single song in the 237 songs they played. They also cover a lot of songs...but last night, a day after I read that article, as I was streaming it to the TV, out of a jam I start to recognize a riff and said "holy shit" (scared mrs phisher, I actually made her jump ) because that riff that came out of thin air slowly morphed into the rolling stones "(I can't get no) satisfaction." The one and only time they have ever played that song, a day after this article that revolves around this song moved me so much. I was in disbelief, smiling ear to ear, left speechless. If you didn't skim the article, it is the central thread to the whole thing.

Just wanted to share, one cause I thought it was so crazy and fun to convey in words to you all. But two...because I'm sure this has happened to all of us, those moments where everything just falls into place and you have no idea why or how, they will happen again, to all of us. Can't wait to pour a beer with you all later tonight.

 

This IPA is from an established brewery (2002) in my home state (NY) and has been brewed for at least 12 years. Yet somehow this is my first time trying it. Well, better late than never.
ABV 8.2%. Best by 5/19/22. Old school in the best possible way. Bracing, resinous bitterness, but in no way overbearing. Fully deserving of its 90/4.02 score. Very glad there are two left from the 15-pack in which this one came.