New Beer Weekend #90

Up next is Life Coach, a "session IPA" from Conshohocken brewing Company. I sent this to @2beerdogs, @BBThunderbolt and @jonphisher, each of whom was underwhelmed (at best). Time to take my own medicine and try it myself.

2.92/5 rDev -19.1%
look: 3 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 2.75 | feel: 2.5 | overall: 2.75

Pours an unattractive brownish / orange with a moderate amount of off-white colored head. Aroma is pleasant, if unremarkable. Light tropical notes but somewhat muted. Taste is simply not that good. Unimpressive and faint tropical notes that don't really stand out in any way. Feel is very, very watery.

This is labeled as a session IPA. I would normally show some leeway with this style, but at 4.8% it's not like this is super low ABV. Overall, this one is a miss and I regret having sent it to others! Oh well, at least the Man City / Liverpool game was fantastic.

 

Drekker Heaps Coconut Milk Stout, 7% ABV. Pours dark black with a 1.5 finger medium brown head that left spotty lacing. Nose is coconut and incredibly strong cocoa. Taste follows, strong chocolate, moderately sweet, faintly bitter. Decent mouthfeel, though a bit watery, and negligible carbonation. Overall, an outstanding cocoa stout, for a coconut stout.

4.5/5 rDev +12.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.75 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.5

A surprise showing from Drekker, given that they tend to concentrate on sours. I could drink a bunch of these. BBQ chicken in the crock for supper.

 

I just checked my ratings on "Top 250" beers, of which I've had 67. Of the top 11 I've rated which extends down through #26 on the list (Marshmallow Handjee, Heady, King Jjjuliusss, Mornin' Delight, King Julius, PtY, Very Hazy, Fundamental Observation, Very Green, Juice Machine, Julius), I'm -rDev on 8 of those (+rDev are in BOLD).

Apparently, ovaltine grades the best students in the class on a more difficult curve than the lesser students.

Whuddathunkit?

 

As Bell's Brewery - Eccentric Café & General Store makes its transition to its next corporate life, Larry Bell has released a stout he calls "Larry's Last."

It is, then, with a touch of sadness that I open this beer today.



Alright... melodrama over... to the beer...

Bell’s Larry’s Last Imperial Oatmeal Stout
ABV: 10.0%
IBU: 30

Dark, black, impenetrable even with a backlight, but the backlight reveals lightly brown edges. 1/2 inch khaki/brown head that is thick and creamy. Ok retention, leaving a wall of lacing.

Bright aroma, citrus-like. Hints of sweetness. Perhaps a bit of caramel.

The flavor does have the citrus-like aspect. And some caramel, chocolate even, dark fruits. But it also has roasted malts and a somewhat odd, hard to describe overall flavor. Kind of earthy-fruity flavor, cherry-ish maybe. It is different, but very good.

No bitterness and just a light taste of alcohol with some warming in the aftertaste. The taste at the finish continues with the earthy fruit and chocolate, brightened a bit by the citrus. The aftertaste lingers with a creamy and smooth coating. At the half-way point, there is some bittering residing in the aftertaste.

The feel is thick and creamy.

Overall, a very good stout.

L: 4.25 | S: 4.0 | T: 4.25 | F: 4.0 | O: 4.0 | Rating: 4.12

 

Happy Sunday all! The weather has given us a much needed dose of warmth and sunshine today, so I broke out one of the sours sent to me by @colts9016 - came here to chat about it and landed in a discussion of ratings. Well, it took me a while to start rating beers and I tried to do it right, won't go into it as it has been discussed quite enough for my tastes, but for heaven's sake, it's not helping to encourage people considering to begin rating I would think.
Keep it simple! We want more people involved, right? (Argh, maybe that's the rub)
Anyway, back to a Cherry Pie sour from Utah - The only Cherry Pie listed for Shades Brewery is a Kveik and states it's retired. Apparently it's unretired.

Poured red, not reddish, but red. With a curious haze to it. The white head was very short and didn’t last long.
The aroma was sour cherries and graham crackers, pretty wild how they managed that.
The taste followed, with the addition of some heat from the cinnamon (why, in cherry pie, one would want heat is a mystery to me, but it works!) and the vanilla presented as lactose.
The feel, well, it matched the taste very well, so I think it was good.
Really liked this one, thanks Jammin!

Now back to your esoteric discussions!

 

Goldfinger Black Lager.

Pours a dark brown color, verging on black. A finger and a half light khaki head that slowly dissipated, leaving some glass lacing behind. 4.25

Aroma is toast, biscuit, cocoa powder, roasted malt, some peat, some coffee, earthy hop. Smells bright and clean. 4.25

Taste is cocoa powder, biscuit, some bakers chocolate, roasted malt, earthy hop, some slight caramel, slight peat, light coffee. Big complexity for a 5% beer. 4.25

Medium body. Soft, slick, silky, but still manages to be crisp. Dry and clean finish. 4.5

This is an outstanding Schwarzbier. Goldfinger continues to impress. 4.25
Overall: 4.22

 

Only me and you are right in this world, and quite frankly I’m not so sure about you.

 

Today I have Everbloom from Counter Weight Brewing. I picked this up at the brewery 2-weeks ago.

4.25/5 rDev +2.2%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4.25
by woodchipper from Connecticut

Poured from a 16oz can stamped “YOU SHAMROCK! 03.17.22” to a Nonic at fridge temp.
A puffy white 1.5-inch head sits on top . The body is an opaque muted orange reminiscent of apricot juice. This beer laces the glass nicely all the way to the bottom.
The aroma is melon, mango and apricot with a minor dank background.
Apricot and melon are at the beginning of a swig. There is a real sweetness in the middle but the finish is slightly bitter hoppiness.
The mouthfeel is on the lower side of creamy.
Overall a well done fruity NEIPA.

 

That was filled at the brewery in Kennewick about 10 days before shipping. It's possible they didn't fill it all the way up, not counting the head, which is what makes or breaks crowler fills, imho. If it was indeed a short pour, that's more than enough time to mar the beer. Apologies.

 

Sup everyone? I have two new ones on deck for today! Maybe a third if I feel up to it. I just finished three homework assignments in a row for my Microbiology class (I have tended to procrastinate and do the entire week's worth of assignments the last day because, well, working full time and whatnot gets in the way), so I think I deserve a drink or several.

Up first is Definitive's Art Without An Audience. Great name, though I know for a fact these guys have a captive audience, so it must be in reference to something else... and yes, (good) beer is art.


This beer was canned around a month ago (3/11/22) and is apparently a collaboration with Second Wind Brewing (barely even noticed their logo up above Definitive's on the can). SW is responsible for a collaboration with Widowmaker called Bastards in a Basket, which is by far one of my favorite beers of the last few years (intense peanut butter & jelly sour beer; something I never thought I'd love as much as I did), so hopefully they do good work in their appearance here as well. AWAA features "all-advanced-hop products" which is code for "we are using a bunch of hyped up marketing gimmick stuff that may or may not be good, even though the hop varietals themselves are typically considered good, in the interest of improving hop utilization and efficiency." Oh, sorry, did my inner cynic just pipe up rather loudly there?

"Dosed heavily with Citra Incognito, Idaho 7 Lupomax, Bru-1 Lupomax, Cashmere Lupomax and Citra Spectrum"... oh boy, here we go. Please be good. I haven't had any spectacular experiences with any of the Incognito/Lupomax/Cryo stuff when compared to good ol' fashioned T90 pellet formulations, so honestly not expecting much here.

Pour is pretty uneventful outside of the nice initial head formation. I'm not in love with the slightly darker/dull orange hue of this compared to some other brighter, saturated IPAs I have had, but the legs are decent and lace is solid.

The nose is not inspiring confidence to me. There is a musky melon note surrounding herbal and grassy components with a hint of mango and apricot. Not getting any of the fun, catty/dank/bright tropical element found in traditional Citra formulations, and even the Idaho 7, a varietal I associate with Mosaic-like craziness that tends to appear a bit differently even in similar recipes, just... blends into a homogeneous boring nothing here. I find it ironic that Lupomax and whatnot seem to be all about concentrating a varietal's specific essence into a new form (or whatever, it's literally just marketing speak), but the process involved seems to sap any uniqueness of any used varietals out of the final product.

Flavor profile is... chalky? I can't taste much other than boring yeast-driven esters, a hint of chlorine(?)-like chemical-ness, and maybe (MAYBE) some very light tangerine. It's all so... dull. There's nothing exciting here whatsoever, and even as a "normal DIPA," it struggles to define itself whatsoever, since there's nothing particularly drinkable or enjoyable about it. As if I needed any more reason to dislike this new trend of brewers using fancy "hop products" as marketing tools for their mediocre IPAs which are seemingly brewed solely to push new SKUs into the market as quickly as possible... ugh. I don't want to be that guy, but there is nothing good about this.

Really hope the next one (a collaboration between two Maine brewers, and a flavored stout at that!) satisfies... can't win 'em all.

 

That's an awfully cool backdrop you've got going there.

 

Drekker Chonk Sundae Sour With Strawberry/Cacao Nibs/Coconut, 7.2% ABV. Pours thick and murky light brownish orange with a one-finger light orange head that left puree residue. Nose is strawberry, lactose, and chocolate. Taste follows, plus coconut and vanilla, moderately sweet, faint tartness. Thick and creamy mouthfeel, with tolerable carbonation. Overall excellent.

3.97/5 rDev 0%
look: 3.5 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

 

Greetings, NBWers,

36°, mostly cloudy and with a chance of snow here in Spokanistan. Glad I didn't go to Seattle for a weekend visit, as folks sometimes do around here. Snoqualmie Pass got closed down with winter weather. Right now the wind is a casual 5mph but it's supposed to get quite blustery today and tomorrow. Spring is quite unsettled around here generally, but the last couple weeks have seen damn near all possibilities, and that would seem to be continuing. I just hope we don't get the monsoon-like rain that's been increasingly a springtime feature over the last few years.

For whatever reason, I just wasn't in the mood for beer yesterday, so here's my first new beer of the weekend, courtesy of @Rub_This_BBQ and his massive box of Tree House beers that constituted his NBS BIF #15 attack upon my porch.
Today I hit a hallowed beer, judging by it's score on BA:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/28743/87846/?ba=woemad#lists
My score probably will strike some as an act of sacrilege.
I actually quite liked it, but my IPA tastes have been shaped by WCIPAs, so this is not something that I'd want to drink a lot of. I'm a fan of a more bitter, spicy and crisp hoppiness than the NE hazies typically exhibit. Still, the only real criticism I have of this beer is the slightly chalky, mineralish note at the finish, otherwise, it's a helluva beer. Just not one I'd want more than one of per drinking occasion.
Thanks, Bill!

 

Other Half Brewing just dropped in Houston this week. I'm giving a few a try...

First up, Forever Ever, labeled Double Dry Hopped Session IPA, 4.7% ABV


Pours a near opaque, milky yellow color. A dense white head forms with retention and lacing for days.
The aroma at first, is bursting with a fresh citrus, juicy tropical fruitiness. Though that immediately fades, and I'm left wondering what happened? For that first minute it was pungent, intense and interesting.
Taste wise, a bit of citrus, pine, and nondescript tropical fruits. Then its just kind of sweet. Nothing in the finish, and just kind of annoyingly there.
A light, watery body, and surprisingly low carbonation considering the pour. Outside of a chalkiness, nothing is really here. After a few ounces this has shown itself completely, and can't say I'm looking to finish this.

Other Half just came into Houston. I guess I needed to see what the fuss was about. My first experience is a dud. The initial juicy hit is all I get, as this shows itself all at once and then I'm looking for something else.

Overall score is a generous 3.06. Around the C territory for me.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/33510/158858/?ba=champ103#lists

 

Good afternoon NBW
This is my first new beer of the weekend after falling into some fresh, yet familiar, imperial IPAs yesterday...

Old Nation Night Farmer Porter

16oz undated can poured into an imperial tulip pint glass at just above fridge temp 6.5% ABV 20 IBU per can. The beer pours medium brown in color with chestnut highlights and sticky light brown head. The head recedes to a fluffy, uneven ring and leaves behind some lacing. The aroma is mild with earthy, chocolate, malty notes. The taste is bittersweet roasted malt with an earthy theme and mild bitterness. The mouthfeel is thin to medium bodied with average carbonation and a mostly dry finish. Overall, good.

I've spent a few late nights in a tractor cab in my teen years. My hats off to those who do it year in and year out.
Cheers all!

 

Greetings all from the great northwest where it's anything but spring. Snowing earlier, now it's sunny with temperature in the low 40s.

But, in honor of the start of baseball season we are going with Suicide Squeeze IPA. https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16077/225173/

A very good IPA indeed. Balanced flavor, not too fruity.

Until next time