New Beer Weekend #125

Chemesthesis by Jackie O's uses the flavor of ancho very well. I tried holding off drinking that one for NBW, but I was weak

Ancho is one of my favorite peppers as it has an earthy flavor with no additional heat. I love hot peppers, but don’t need them in everything.

 

Bale Breaker - Bramble

750ml capped/waxed bottle split between a pair of tulips. Bottled date 3/8/2022. Bottle #182/200.

Pours a very slightly hazy dark amber color with a fairly large head that settles into a thick, even skin crawling about 3/4 of an inch up the side of the glass. Some very fine active carbonation. Smell is some grain and hayloft, light brett spiciness, little bit of berry jamminess.

Taste is pretty similar -- lots of soft saison-y flavors, with a nice backing of berry juiciness and a hint of tart, a hint of kind of woody bitterness.

Mouthfeel is light, clean, soft, dry. Overall, this is a very nice beer.

 

Love Mosaic!

 

Cheers to @ovaltine for this Phase Three Pixel Density Citra IPA, 6.5% ABV; 3.92 overall

Pours a hazed gold/straw color with one finger of beige head. Good lacing & head retention

S: Some tropical fruit notes, a little citrus, nose is fairly muted

T: Oranges, green melon, peach & dryness up front. More green melon, sweet oranges, a little grassyness as this beer warms up. Finishes dry with lime, sweet oranges & grassy notes

MF: Medium body, low carbonation level, skews a little sweet

Easy to drink, a little sweeter than expected, but still tasty

 

Thanks to @ovaltine for this Revolution Brewing Coconut Deth Imp Stout, 14,3% ABV; 4.53 overall (I think miss marked a box ) 4.58

Pours an effervescent mahogany with a pinky of mocha colored head. Minimal head retention & lacing
S: Barrel, dark fruits, cocoa, some boozeyness, not a lot

T: Cola notes, dark fruit, barrel rawness & toasted coconut at the edges, fairly dry. Dark chocolate surfaces as this beer warms, along with coconut & & Bourbon, flavors really open up. Finishes with plenty of toasty coconut, dark fruit, & dark chocolate

MF: Medium body, slight carbonation. warming; carbonation picks up as this beer warms through

ABV is very well hidden, but still a sipper. Easily one of the best Coconut beer's I've ever had

 

When in good shape, they are great IMHO. Having said that,I don't recall if I had any since moving from Colorado ( almost 14 years ago )

 

I didn't think I would be back, but the bar at Bugsy's Resort on Lake of the Woods had a beer I have never had before.


Nautical Disaster - Lake of the Woods Brewing - American IPA - 6.4% ABV

I love an old school IPA, and this is. Lots of pine here, and delicious.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/32446/434301/

4.26/5 rDev +9.8%
look: 4.75 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25
Semi clear amber pour with a frothy, fluffy white head. The head is 1 finger, long lasting, and makes great lacing.
The nose has a pleasing to me pine hop aroma.
Flavor is pine dominant. The pine starts right away and continues throughout the beer.
The body is decent. The hops linger.
I love an old school pine ipa, and this is one.


Well, I will enjoy this tonight. See you all tomorrow from the middle of the lake.

 

Good morning NBS/nbw and thanks @SawDog505 for hosting his weeks event.
Todays is gloomy and we are expecting first snow tonight, glad to have the outside work complete yesterday.
This week is a local offering from a 1 man brewery, started 10 yrs ago. Stoneman Brewery in Colrain ma. This one is the Anniversary offering with a focus on all local ingredients.
Quite tasty
Cheers

Decade Double Bock

Doppelbock | 9% ABV
Stoneman Brewery in Colrain, Massachusetts

Reviewed by SABERG from Massachusetts

4/5 rDev 0% | Average: 4
look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4
Poured from a 500 ml bottle into the test glass
A - Deep mahagony brown, hard to peer through, the carbonation feeds a beautiful, lasting mocha cap
S - Roast malts, a hint of caramel, dark toast with a bit of brown sugar.
T - Again with the dark toast, but add some dark fruit, a hint of raisin, and again with that kiss of brown sugar.
A bit of alcohol in the mix
M - Medium in body, but with delicate presence, avoids the sweet trap. Clean and delightful dry finish, and a slight alcohol exhale.
O - A very good offering, with a beautiful clean texture. Flavors are in a tight, focused band that keep the style in mind.
Well done

 

Yesterday was a perfect balance of work, leisure and beer, and I'm hoping for a repeat today. My first beer for today comes courtesy of @foundersasap. This is Liquid Vinyl, a Russian Imperial Stout from Arbor Brewing Co.

Amber on the pour then the ubiquitous yet pleasing deepest of browns in the glass. Small amount of head receding relatively quickly to a thin cap & ring. Some nice roasty notes on the nose, and what to me smells like hazelnuts.

Taste is right up my alley. Loads of roast & char with some accompanying bitterness at just the right level lead the way, with a few bakers chocolate and coffee flavors rounding things out on the back-end. Feel is slick and maybe just a tad thin.

Overall, this is excellent (4.25 overall). I lean towards stouts with lots of deep roast vs. sweeter ones, and this is definitely the former. Great morning beer. Thanks, Jeff!

 

Good morning, Sunday sippers of unfamiliar libations of the malt variety. Today at the store, I was perusing the beer aisle, and my grocer had a variety of beers that caught my eye. One was a stovepipe of GBS, labeled for the chain ("Giant" GBS), and the others came from Starr Hill, out of Crozet, VA (just outside of Charlottesville). The first was a couldn't pass up 4pk of their imperial coffee cream stout that was half off, even though the date was quite recent.

The other was a holiday pack of flavored beers, which I might've passed up but one of the beers was a spruce IPA, and I quite enjoy spruce beers (and happy to hear that DFH is bringing Pennsylvania Tuxedo back in 2023). The others were interesting enough on their own, considering my experience with Starr Hill would indicate they were likely to use a deft hand to produce the flavors the beers claim.

I decided to share the beers with the GF in a flight format, as if we had ordered such a device from the brewer of the beers in the 12pk. In the taster tray are: Rum Cake Brown Ale, Spruce IPA, Snicker Doodle Ale, and Hot Chocolate Imperial Stout.


First off, they all poured with nice heads and colors that one would expect from the styles upon which these beers are built. The Spruce IPA has a slight amount of haze, but the brown ale and pale ale are quite clear (with the stout's coloring preventing anything definitive from me, but I bet it's pretty clear of particulate).

I decide to start with Snicker Doodle Ale, with my and the GF's initial whiffs not yielding anything reminding us of cinnamon sugar cookies. Granted, the beer was filled to near the lip of the glass, not allowing for much accumulation. Swirling and smelling from what was left in the can, and we both get a light, more earthy cinnamon and a hint of something sweet. I'd say at best, it's like a dry, pre-packaged cinnamon cake doughnut. Taste starts like a low-hopped pale ale a medium light malt character. As expected, the proclaimed flavors are subtle; both the GF and I agree we probably wouldn't come to snicker doodles without prior knowledge that was the target. But in the very back, I can imagine it with the prompt. Overall, though, this comes to me as just a fairly simple pale ale, with a hint of tang and phantoms of sweetness and spice in back.

Next we went to Rum Cake Brown, and learning from experience, jumped right into the taste until the liquid level allowed for the aromas to be teased out. The taste is not what I expected - it is a solid, medium bold, nutty and mildly bitter brown ale. Again, there's a little bit of something in the back; however, unlike the pale ale, it's not bringing me anywhere near the cake from the beer's name. Going back to the nose - it resembles the taste, with something vaguely warming thrown in. The GF didn't have much to offer on this one - so in the end, we both end up liking this one as a straight-up brown ale.

Onto the main reason for the purchase, the Spruce IPA. Even with a near-hero pour, I can smell the spruce easily as it pairs with citrus notes of lemon and grapefruit. GF agrees and sipping before me says, "Oh, yeah, definitely spruce." I'm quite looking forward to this first sip, and wow!! A spruce tree removal truck backed into me and dumped it's full load of clipping over me. Until this, I was not sure if I could argue for too much spruce in an IPA, but this one has me realizing there is a limit, even if it doesn't quite reach it. I think a light, crackery malt lies underneath the carpet of spruce, providing just enough sweetness to counter the Christmas dropping needles all over it. I'm happy, even more so since the GF finds it a bit "too sprucy" for her.

And lastly, the Hot Chocolate stout. Ok, so this might be the shortest stretch of a flavor within this pack. However, it is done pretty well here, a bit better on the nose than the taste. The nose is more of a sweetened dark chocolate hot beverage, where the taste leans more into a higher cacao percentage dark chocolate. It opens sweet enough to stay within character, but gets more of a regular roasty stout finish.

So overall, I'm quite happy with the 12pk. I was hoping I wouldn't get a bunch of artificially sweet flavored beers, and I didn't. With the exception of the Spruce IPA, I was hoping for well-integrated flavors, and I sort of got that. In my mind, the brown ale and stout could easily be marketed without the flavor moniker. As such, if you are looking for flavored beers, no need to try this mixed pack. If you're looking for a variety pack with a variety of styles decently made, you could easily do worse.

In the end (finally, you might be thinking), the GF's order of enjoyment is stout, brown, IPA, pale ale. I'd go IPA, then it's a tossup between the brown ale and stout, with the pale ale also bringing up the rear, though it grew the most on me.

 

Back on this NBS, with an offering from the textbooks.
Frost Beer Works has this Imperial firing on all cylinders.
We just got back from getting the tree, video chatted with Team #1
Now time for a beautiful Stout.

Cheers all

Heavy Imperial Stout

American Imperial Stout | 9% ABV
Frost Beer Works in Hinesburg, Vermont

Reviewed by SABERG from Massachusetts

4.19/5 rDev +2.7% | Average: 4.08
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4
Poured from a can dated 6/21/22 into the test glass
A - Dark brown color, lively pour generated a lovely mocha tower. Lacing is impressive
S - Char, bakers chocolate, a hint of anise, dark roast malts and espresso
T - All those aromatics, with he focus on he dark roast malt, and Madagascar 80% chocolate, I think the Madagascar because there is a subtle blackberry thread
M - Thick, rich and yes chocolaty, with a full palate cover, the linger and finish are succinct.
O - A very good, straight up Imperial Stout, mouth feel is luxurious. Flavors are in keeping with the classics

 

I like seeing two rye beers reviewed on a single page of NBW, not to mention another of a beer aged in rye barrels. Hopefully it's a trend that spreads to more brewers, including those around me.

 

I really liked that one a LOT. I think @FBarber did as well.

We should start a club and do a Deep Woods share!!!