New Beer Weekend #102

Good morning NBW
My wife was in Phoenix last week and I only lack beers from 3 (now 2) states, so here we go...

Big Blue Van from College Street


12oz canned 05/27/22 poured into a tall pilsner glass at fridge temp 5.4% ABV. The beer pours hazy peach amber in color with off white head. The head recedes to a thin ring and splotchy layer leaving some streaks of lacing. The aroma is blueberry first with general sweetness and wheat behind. The taste is more blueberry, slight vanilla and a wheat malt finish with negligible bitterness. The mouthfeel is medium bodied with average carbonation and a semi dry finish. Overall, good. I'm not normally a fruited beer or wheat beer person, but it's reasonably well executed and certainly as advertised.

Cheers all!

 

Good evening all Advocates,
my unreleased beer this weekend is part of a small refill for the fridge at one of my most trusted beershops.

Arbor Ales (Bristol, ENG) - ALL THE SIMCOE LADIES - Double Dry Hopping India Pale Ale (7,2%)

568 ml can (€ 6.50), on the label :"Best before: 21/10/2022".
I drank a lot of this brewery, then I got a little tired, but I know that on this style of beers I'm almost always a certainty.
It's a Double Dry Hopping Ipa with Simcoe, Mosaic, Idaho7 hops and the second dry hopping of Simcoe hops only.
Freshly uncorked aromas of ripe citrus and sweeter notes of tropical and summer fruit (peach, melon).
When poured, the perfumes explode and become more fragrant.
Foam present and of fair consistency.
Intense and opaque golden color (hazy).
In the mouth there are plenty of citrus notes (orange peel, grapefruit) that alternate well with the more tropical ones of pineapple, mango and a little sweeter of yellow peach and plums.
The finish is quite dry, but I would have expected it to be more bitter, which is not at all (and which I would have preferred), but certainly in this way more space is left for the fruity taste that continues to dominate the palate.
Excellent quality and state of form, but personally I would prefer a greater bittering contribution, even at the expense of such an intense fruity taste, which in any case, is pleasant.







Have a nice Sunday !
Sláinte !
Cheers !

 

Terminally Relaxed

7.5% Hefeweizen dry hopped with mosaic

Poured from a pint can, the body is a cloudy yellow with fluffy head. Good lacing throughout the tasting.

Nose is traditional Hefeweizen goodness: banana and clove.

The taste veers from tradition. Though banana and clove are present, soon the dry hopped mosaic adds to the mix with its juicy and bubble gum flavor along with a bit of hoppy bitterness. A bit of cracker is also in the mix. The jumble of flavors somehow pulls together into a fun beer. It’s almost like a Hefeweizen with a mosaic IPA boilermaker.

Compared to their standard Hefeweizen, this beer has more banana and clove which meets my approval.

Mouthfeel is good and carbonation very nice.

A beer I hope they release every year. An especially good beer for fans of Hefeweizens to try.

 

Happy Holiday weekend all.
Havent read the whole thread but Im off to a cookout where craft isn't a "thing" but I have a bunch of new beers provided to me by the awesome BA @JayORear Im hoping this is extended into Monday.
Cheers!

 

Brewing Projekt Gunpowder IPA, 6.8% ABV. Pours hazy light orange with a real nice 3+ finger white head that left great lacing. Nose is citrus and herbal, with light pine. Taste follows, slightly bitter, faintly sweet. Excellent dry mouthfeel, overall excellent. Reports on the ABV vary, the can wasn't marked. Hazy but not a NEIPA.

4.09/5 rDev +0.7%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

 

First new beer of the day for me is Ekuanot, from Kent Falls Brewing Co.

Bottle was an absolute gusher, which at least led me to pour extremely delicately. The end result was a good looking, golden yellow beer with excellent clarity and plenty of lively, white head with outstanding retention.

Aroma can best be described as tropical. Clear notes of lemon, with a melange of fruit notes that I can't identify individually, but that work well together. Little bit of earthy funk rounds out the nose.

Lemon shows up on the tongue, but more discreetly than the nose. The miscellaneous tropical notes take a little more of a back seat. Interesting earthy zing to the beer. It has a little bit of bite, but more in the tart sense than the hoppy. Crisp, lively and refreshing.

Overall, an enjoyable beer to enjoy on a beautiful summer day. 3.88

 

Good afternoon NBW
Another Arizonan fruited wheat


12oz canned 5/27/22 poured into a tall pilsner glass at fridge temp 5% ABV. The beer pours hazy dark red tinted amber with fleeting off white head. No residual head or lacing. Aroma is wheat malt with a hint of vague fruit. The taste is semisweet wheat malt with a hint of cherry and no appreciable bitterness. The mouthfeel is medium bodied with average carbonation and a semi dry finish. Overall, ok.

I have another fruited wheat, but I believe it's going to have to wait. There are more exciting options. Cheers all!

 

Good afternoon NBW!
Trending towards 80 today so something mild and refreshing was wanted.
I’ll have to keep looking. It was mild…

Poured straw yellow, very clear, topped with a nearly white head.
Aroma very mild, got just wiffs of bready malts.
The taste was banana forward, which struck me as very curious. Let it warm up a bit and still got banana, along with mild biscuit malts, no spices or floral so either they swung and missed or my taster is really off.
The feel was okay, much more mellow than I find most Pilsners, Czech or otherwise.
OA, glad I tried it but won’t be picking up a case anytime soon.

 

That'll ale what cures you......

 

Always tasty.

 

Brewing Projekt Smashing Spree NEIPA, 6.8% ABV. Pours light gold, with a 3+ finger white head that left heavy lacing. Nose is light citrus. Taste follows, slightly sweet, moderately bitter, somewhat juicy. Decent mouthfeel, overall very good.

3.84/5 rDev 0%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 3.75

 

The discussion thread in the Midwest forum about August Schell Brewing has a mini-exchange about the Grain Belt brand.

• Grain Belt traces its roots back to 1850 when German immigrant John Orth opened Minnesota’s second brewery, the John Orth Brewing Company, in Northeast Minneapolis.
• Orth Brewing combined with 3 other local breweries and was renamed Minneapolis Brewing Company. The Grain Belt brand appeared at the end of the 19th century when they introduced “Golden Grain Belt Old Lager.”
• The brewery was shut down from 1927 until 1933 due to prohibition.
• Officially named “Grain Belt Breweries” in 1967.
• By the end of the 60’s, Grain Belt was in the top 20 of the largest breweries in the USA.
• Business declined in the early 70’s and they were sold to G. Heileman in 1975, who shuttered the operations in Minneapolis.
• Minnesota Brewing (St. Paul) bought the brand from Heileman in 1991, and began brewing Grain Belt again in Minnesota, but they shut down in 2002 and sold the brand to August Schell Brewing.

It is apparently a successful “budget” brand for Schell, with the line now extended to 7 beers and 4 seltzers.

The beer I am having today is entered in the database as a “Lager - American Amber / Red”, which I suppose is fair since that is what the brewer calls it. However, I do wonder if it is an “Adjunct Amber” given the Grain Belt branding (but I can’t find any documentation of that).

Nevertheless, I will be reviewing this beer with as much of an objective open mind as I can while knowing it is Schell’s budget brand.

In retrospect, I perhaps should have also bought some Schell’s Firebrick to compare with this. Yeah, I know, one is a Vienna and the other an Amber… So? Perhaps I’ll do a side-by-side at some point.

Grain Belt Nordeast American Amber Lager
ABV: 4.7%
IBU: 10


Poured from a ~44°F refrigerator.

Tall white head, thick and creamy looking, with excellent retention, leaving a pock-marked surface as it does recede with thick lacing. Clear golden-amber body with good carbonation visible.

Sweet caramel and malty, slightly roasted aroma.

Plenty of flavor for a budget-priced beer. Caramel and toasty. Barley malt backbone.

The initial flavor is somewhat sweet, balanced with a crispness. Some hops bittering, and a touch of hay in the middle, leading to a slightly bitter, slightly sweet finish. The aftertaste is pleasant and sweet, but with a bit of a crisp, lightly bitter character lingering in my mouth, inviting another sip. As the beer warms, it develops a tartness in the finish.

The body is on the thin side, but not at all “watery”. Feel is bitter-sweet tending toward (but not quite reaching) crisp, with moderate carbonation.

As I finish the beer, I am left with a very attractively laced glass from top to bottom.

This is quite good, for a cheap amber lager. Good flavor and enjoyable on a summer day. While it won’t be a regular in my refrigerator, I certainly would pick this out happily from an AAL-filled cooler.

Maybe I’ll do the Firebrick-Nordeast side-by-side sooner rather than later. Maybe even make it a blind triangle tasting. It would at least be interesting (to me, anyway) to see if my review separation (Firebrick: 4.16; Nordeast: 3.53) holds up in a blind test. We’ll see.

L: 4.0 | S: 3.5 | T: 3.5 | F: 3.5 | O: 3.5 | Rating: 3.53

 

I like Nordeast (it was the “premium” beer at the venue where you could see concerts in Mankato - used to be the Midwest Wireless Center), but I absolutely LOVE Firebrick. That’s an excellent Vienna, IMHO.

 

I really enjoyed reading the history piece you shared up top; I enjoyed your review as I always do. With so many breweries early on in this country it would've be quite interesting to know what our beer culture would be like if not for prohibition.

I wonder if it we'd still be in the same place now; would money inevitably have won like it tends to and brands would've slowly been bought by others/combined? Or would we have a diverse beer culture? The cynic in me thinks we'd end up right where we are now but I guess we'll never know the true answer.

Are you a fan of other Grain Belt beers? I took a look at their site, the cans definitely have an old school look to them; I'm guessing that is what they are going for?

 

This morning I had a Suarez beer that I forgot I'd had before (Poet's Walk). This afternoon I'm having a Suarez beer that I thought I'd had before but hadn't. Basically, I can't keep track of what I've had and what I haven't.

From the bottle: Triangular Nature is a country beer brewed with a generous portion of raw buckwheat sourced from our neighbors. Fermented with a mixed culture and briefly ripened in oak casks to yield a dry beer of a deep golden hue.

Bottled August, 2020. Pours a bright, golden color with a good amount of fizzy white head and excellent lacing. Aroma is lemon grass, wheat, pear, and oaky funk. The beer really starts to shine on the tongue. Lemon & grass notes, combine with a really nice, complex barnyard funk that seems to evolve on the palate. Tart, dry, clean yet complex. Really good beer. 4.12

 

Good Sunday afternoon, New Beer Sippers and commentators. I hope everyone is enjoying the long holiday weekend. We spent the past 4 days at the shore and drove home today to avoid the crowds, jammed highways, and general lunacy. We actually prefer not to be down there over the major summer holidays.

On the way home I stopped at Joe Canal's in Egg Harbor Township to pick up some stouts and other big beers. On was Ominous Synth Music, an Old Ale from Bonesaw Brewing Company in Glassboro, NJ. Bonesaw is just far away enough that I don't go there but I buy their beer when I can find it. I enjoy their Barleywines and Stouts, and they brew a couple of really good IPAs. Old Ale is a style I really like but rarely see and this one is off-the-chart good. A couple of well-respected BAs, @NeroFiddled and @tobelerone, also rated it highly.

Poured from 500 ML bottle into a snifter glass. It pours a deep mahogany with a robust, creamy yellow-khaki head and thick lacing. It's highly aromatic with roasted malt, brown sugar, toffee, raisin, fig, and a strong whiff of sherry. The taste is rich and complex with abundant molasses, raisin, and fig over an earthy malt base with notes of brown bread, tobacco, burnt nuts, and red berries. As it warms in the glass there is increasing layers of taste with the influence of the sherry and whiskey barrels. While the ale is definitely sweet it isn't cloying and sherry influence provides balance. The flavors blend perfectly. This ale has a thick creamy - almost chewy - mouth feel with low/moderate carbonation and the taste is so big and impressive that I hardly notice the 13.3% ABV. While you can feel the alcohol it doesn't burn or distract. Overall, Ominous Synth Music is an exquisite Old Ale. It's well-conceived and supremely executed. Bonesaw really should be proud of it.

I guess you can tell I really like it!

4.59/5 rDev +0.4%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.75 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

Cheers and Happy Birthday, 'Merica! I, for one, am proud of my country and its history - warts and all.

 

I'm glad you guys are enjoying Richmond! I have a bunch of family buried in Hollywood Cemetery.

 

Really nice photo, Frank!