New Beer Weekend #88

Chicken fry poutine came out great! Will definitely make again.




Think it would prob be even better with normal fries in addition, but I would likely go for some freezer aisle ones if I were to shallow-fry the chicken again, just to cut down on prep. Cheddar cheese curds are also a total necessity for this, as anyone who has had good poutine knows. Had to go to another store to grab some, so I knew my dedication would pay off in the end.

Anyway, let's celebrate with one more DIPA. This is Equilibrium's Double Fractal: Hilbert Curve. I think Double Fractal is a DIPA series and all of the beers therein are named after types of fractals, which is cool and exactly up EQ's alley of semi-obscure mathematics related beer names and concepts.



The pour here is, whaddya know, essentially normal as hell for a NEDIPA these days. Opaque and orange-yellow in hue... big helping of spotty white foam right upfront that sinks to a half-finger or so after a few minutes. Lace is almost a pure sheet of suds, but it seems weirdly-superficial to me for some reason. There's no substance to it, or so it seems. Average legs, too. Overall, not impressive.

EQ likes to be pretty over-the-top in their descriptions, and they wax poetic about this being hopped with Idaho 7 and Citra, followed up by a dry hop with Riwaka and Galaxy, but... honestly, this just smells like some kind of under-fermented cider to me, for some reason. I get a bit of stone fruit and melon (not unusual for them, honestly), but besides that it's like apples and some light spice to me. Huh, earlier my senses were working just fine... or maybe this is old? It's odd, because recently, I've noticed this brewery getting muuuuuch better with apparent, consistent can-dating, but this doesn't have anything on it whatsoever. Most of the Untappd check-ins are recent, so I bet it's fresh, but I'm wondering if there's any coincidence with how weak this smells and the fact that I can't tell when it was made.

The flavor profile, too, leaves me with this weird feeling of "wait, why do I care about this? Is this even good?," which really is not a feeling I prefer to feel after drinking a new beer. I don't know, something seems very off here. It basically tastes like nothing, but there are some slight apricot and mango notes if I really try to find them. I'm so confused... maybe I got a can toward the very end of the run or something? I mean, that would be my luck, eh? This just doesn't taste like anything. I feel like it has a refreshing profile for its ABV, and the yeast is slightly-characterful and ester-driven, for sure, but I feel like it's totally missing the hops or something. I really cannot pick anything out of this. It's so anonymous! At least usually with EQ, I can taste their melon-forward yeastiness and pick out some of the hop treatment they've done, but this is just some boring shit. Feels a lot like I'm missing something...


...at least my food came out good. Have a great week, BA!

 

@ichorNet that looks amazing, the only problem for me is I bet it tastes even better.

 

Well wanted to double this weekend,

drinking the Reverend by tree house


Th labels and descriptions are always over the top, so what I like to do is drink the beer without reading the label and then go back and compare and see do think the descriptors where () or ok I got some of those tasting notes



4.17/5 rDev -2.3%
look: 3.75 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 4.25
by Rub_This_BBQ from Massachusetts

This case I did , the Dark chocolate brown sugar who’s all there did not get the hops bitterness in this case though.

overvall good beer for a good cause.


The Reverend is an oatmeal robust porter brewed with a complex assortment of caramel and roasted malts softened by a copious dose of oats! Pouring a jet black color in the glass with an attractive off-white head, it carries notes of silky smooth dark chocolate, brown sugar, and roasted malts balanced by an appropriate bitterness. Brewed in recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. and his enormous and lasting advancement of civil rights, a portion of the proceeds from each batch will be donated to The Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling, a grant-making organization that funds scholarship awards to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color within the brewing and distilling

 

I am truly sorry that I cannot share it with you. I'm not too far away from NJ though. If you really had dedication, you could drive five hours and have it.

Cheers, though. Hope you had a good weekend.

 

Love Poutine nice take.
Cheers!

 

Well here we are, last beer of the weekend. Yep, it’s a tripel, and it is one I have never had before. Friday I had at Bernardus tripel for the first time so here goes another…

Tripel Karmeliet



A cloudy orange hued straw color, super bubbly big soapy bubble head. Dissipated relatively fast to a thin layer of opaque white.

Nose is very banana, bubble gum forward, has an almost bread like quality to itself, a touch of something refreshing like apple.

Taste is similar to the nose with all the same parts except the refreshing appleness is more noticeable and on the finish.

Medium body but it drinks very light, the carbonation is big when it hits the tongue, almost bubbles up the whole mouth. A really nice minor acidity on the finish.

So as I drank this I was sort of contrasting it to St Bernardus from Friday, I couldn't help myself. They are both very refreshing beers for the ABV they have, they also both drink quite easily. St Bernardus however was reminded me more of saisons I've drank. Tripel Karmeliet reminds me more of wits I have drank. Two interesting and neat beers to have tried.

I hope everyone has a good week ahead, in 5 days we'll be right back here again.

 

Alright I’m in, see you around 1:30 AM

I just hope it’s not too late, you better not have already finished it.

 

Hydra Melted gelato By Mortalis

4.44/5 rDev +0.9%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

New beer and brewery for me



Can purchased at Empire Liquors poured into a teku, thank you @nathanb47

Poured like liquid raspberry jam…dense, thick , pulpy yet i see a few streams of carbonation..like the gas bubbles that erupt from a primordial swamp…and, then..then the foam it..rises…your know the foam head that is produced off of a nitro tap when you get a Guinness? Imagine that in purple …looks wild . It sits there , like a two finger thick layer of purple swamp scum, looks crazy . The retention is infinite..it sits there..waiting for Godot..it has not moved in 10 minutes after the pour

Aroma is blackberry and raspberry ice cream

Taste is blackberry and raspberry ice cream ,sweet and then tart, starts sweet finishes sour, berry fruits

Mouthfeel is like a smoothie with a slight sour tingle , dairy creamy sorta like a milk shake, tart finish



Good …is it a…beer? Smoothie ? Sour???Its different but good

 

Good Sunday evening, campers. We've had our grandson to ourselves for the weekend, which was fun. He is still running in overdrive and I have no idea how with everything we've done in two days...all intended to tire HIM out...yeah, that worked.

So...what is gracing the glass tonight?



Complementary Colors - a collaborative effort from Collective Arts Brewing and Untitled Arts. According to the can, this is brewed with unfermented blueberries, lemon juice, and maple syrup. It is a kettle sour of the fruited ilk, and the beer store dude said it tastes like a blueberry pancake... So it was just weird enough to make me curious.

Well, it pours blueberry color, fairly cloudy with a short-lived but spectacularly hued blueberry foam head.

Straight up delivers what it says on the can as soon as the top pops. Maple. Blueberry. Lemon. Done...I can't find anything else in the aroma, but it is absolutely huge. It's filling the room...seriously...the missus could smell it from the family room...

Ok...I'm not gonna lie. I really enjoy the taste and it certainly puts me in mind of a blueberry pancake doused in maple syrup. It hits extremely sweet like maple sugar candy (fine with me - I can embarrass myself eating those things) but the lemon eventually comes in and cleans up the palate. Heavy blueberry rides somewhere in the middle and I find it extremely tea-like even carrying a little bitterness. Oddly that adds to the pancake effect kind of like a bit of char on the edge of the pancake where the butter burned a tad. Once all that nonsense goes thru and you think the party is over, there is an enormous aromatic sledgehammer hit of blueberry and lemon. A very good thing because it really completes the taming of the sweet maple that dominates early in the taste. To me, the sour is all driven by the blueberry and lemon, not the base beer. I pick up some bready malt hiding in the shadows, but essentially it melds into the overall effect. But my word, the olfactory component of the taste is amazing - fantastic aromatics.

Not a slushy at all, it is medium bodied at best.

Another beer I am thoroughly enjoying, but another that begs the question of what it actually is, in a way. It's an adjunct-driven kettle sour I guess is the way to look at it. I will not be able to rate it completely objectively. It delivers the intent of the brewer in spades. I like the look. The smell is awesome, the flavor hits a bunch of happy spots for me, and the aromatic effect in the taste is insane. It's bold, outspoken, unabashed. It lands north of the 4.0 line, but I have to admit it is heavily flavored (ok...it had to be said) by the subjective liking fun factor. I'm beginning to think for this type of beer, that is how it needs to be. I can't see scoring it as a straight fruited kettle sour where it'd struggle to be average.

 

That looks freaking awesome!

 

Hello Late Night NBW (NBS pages)
Well, here is one helluva nice drink from the Extreme Beer Box.

Frosé Hydra Deuce

Record in the BeerAdvocate Extreme Beerfest box 2022
Appearance: Well, gorgeous purple sludge. I mean the color is pretty. The head is lighter, heading toward a pinkish lavender color, but only rising a finger or so, and quickly tapering off.
Smell is divine. A true melange of blackberry, cherry, vanilla, and lightly sweet grain. But the fruit blend is most pleasing.
Flavor definitely brings even more lush complexity. The cherry is more evident here, but the berry notes assert themselves as well: blackberry & boysenberry. The vanilla is ever present but so elegantly folded in. As the beer warms, the apricot brings in some nice chewy stone fruit notes, both overripe apricot and dried apricot hints ebb and flow. An undercurrent of sweet, crackery grain must be the graham cracker. And finally, as this gem continues to warm an essence of the cinnamon peaks in at the back or my upper throat and sinuses. A minor acidity comes through near the end.
Mouthfeel is a bit pulpy and chewy, but it works. carbonation is light and finishes a tad acidic.
Overall, this is hella unique and an exquisite experiment. Would love to share this one with friends a few times a year.
4.28/5 rDev +4.1%
look: 3.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25

Shared this with a buddy and he was as impressed as I was.

 

Trust me...don't let that foamy sludge dry on that nice Teku... I've been using plain old pint glasses for these Mortalis smoothies. Although this one, my wife and I both picked up some underlying beer-like taste.

 

How many years ago did they close up?

 

Pretty sure around 2015 was the end, and that bottle was certainly older than that as theyd fallen off the shelves before then. I have one tripel and a bottle of Jack d'or left... It was right after the time of the pay-to-play episodes here on MA where Dan was...well...loudspoken.

 

This is pretty amaziIng. Poured into a 13 oz Snulip glass. Pours near pitch black with a 2 finger sticky brown head that leaves plenty of thin streaks of lace with nice retention. 4.75

Aroma is hazelnut, cocoa nibs, coffee, vanilla bean, toffee, and oaked bourbon. 4.5

Taste follows Hazelnut, chocolate, coffee, vanilla, toffee, and bourbon. 4.5

Mouthfeel is above average, a tad dry, gentle carbonation, and easy drinking at 12.0%. Pretty special. 4.5

Overall this is an absolute treat. Pretty amazing brew. 4.5

 

How fun!

 

My final new-to-me tripel for the weekend, and one that claims history back to the 1600s, but is currently part of the AB-Inbev corporation. And, it's the #4 rated tripel on this site.

Bosteels Tripel Karmeliet
ABV: 8.4%
IBU: 16

Tall, white head from a VERY gentle, drizzle down the side pour. Audible fizziness as I pour, almost like a soft drink. Very good retention leaving sticky lacing (and a nicely laced empty chalice). Slightly hazy golden body, heavily carbonated.

The aroma is not too strong, but sweet. Bubblegum, and a bit of banana.

The flavor brings the tastes promised by the aroma, sweet bubblegum and banana. The middle has very slight bittering, which does not last into the finish. Behind the already mentioned flavors is a lightly tart fruitiness, perhaps pear (hard to tell) along with a semi-sweet component - perhaps even vanilla - and floral. The finish is creamy and smooth, with an aftertaste of smoothness, maybe from the soft carbonation that is hard for me to describe, spreading out on the tongue. This aftertaste is exquisite!

The mouth feel is quite smooth (yeah, I keep using that word), with a gentle carbonation on my tongue. Moderate body.

I seem to have saved all of the really different tripels for today. Karmeliet is malty, smooth, and yet heavily carbonated with a huge creamy head, not very (if at all) spicy, several sweet components to the flavor without ever entering cloying territory and finishing only semi-sweet. The feel of the aftertaste is, as I stated above, exquisite. Wow!

An excellent end to the weekend!

L: 4.5 | S: 4.0 | T: 4.5 | F: 4.75 | O: 4.5 | Rating: 4.41

 

Not a huge Boss fan?!? Can't that get you deported from NJ?

 

After farm chores and getting ready for the pigs. Time to drink a beer. I am starting with a sour. This beer is bright and has plenty of sourness, yet tamed with the fruit. Well-balanced beer! Everybody's Passion Fruit Sour. 4.31
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25

 

de Garde is LEGIT!