New Beer Weekend #133

Good evening NBW
Long day in the car, but home now enjoying a store aged Baltic Porter

Collective Arts Origin of Darkness collaboration with Siren Craft Brew
500mL bottle marked 2019 release poured into a Duvel glass at just above fridge temp 9.6% ABV. The beer pours opaque very dark brown with light brown head. The head recedes to a thin ring and island. The aroma is moderate in strength featuring rum, dark fruit and toasted / roasted malt. The taste is a bittersweet mash up of the rum, barrel, raisins, dates and prunes and malt. Moderate bitterness. The mouthfeel is medium bodied with just less that average carbonation and a mostly dry finish. The oaky rum barrel really keeps the sweetness in check and there's a port-like character that is drying as well. ABV is fairly well disguised. Overall, very good to excellent.

Cheers all!

 

Brewer's Reserve Vanilla Rye Stout
13.1% stout by Central Waters

Poured from a twelve ounce bottle, the body is dark black. Small initial tan head and no lacing of consequence.

Aroma Is an equal mix of vanilla and rye. Lightly sweet and enticing.

Taste features the rye but the booze never is too hot. The vanilla pairs well with a hearty malt bill to try to balance the rye. Finish is boozy with a slowly fading rye.

Mouthfeel is superb. The malt keeps this stout from being a rye bomb. Smooth and creamy, carbonation seems perfect.

Fan of rye? Belly up.

 

Nice start! I love it.

 

Hello Late Night NBW...
It's been a while. Life sometimes gets in the way of beer. Shitty, I know, but it does.

Anyway, here we go.

Tomorrow by Second Chance Beer Co. in San Diego, CA.

Hopped with Strata & Idaho 7.
Best by date of May something 2023
Straw to gold in hue. Abundant white head. 2 inches of fairly dense foam hangs out for a good spell. After a few sips, tapers off to a consistent 1/4 inch milky foam. Lacing is patchy.
Nose pops with some mango, grass, melon, and a zesty citrus punch.
Flavor is a medley of tropical notes with a hint of onion and weed. I'm still picking up hints of mango and citrus, but the grassy notes come in and take it in a few interesting directions. Is it pivoting toward a piney resin or is that more of a weed note. I like this ebb and flow.
Mouthfeel is on the crisper side, drying out a bit at the end. Carbonation is moderate.
Overall, a very pleasant ride.
3.74/5 rDev 0%
look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.75

Wishing you all good beer and good health.

 

Good morning, fellow beer nerds. I've settled in for my somewhat normal weekend routine when I'm home......catch up on work while watching soccer and enjoying a beer.

My first beer today is another one that I'll cross-post in the Cellaruary thread. This is Fudge, by Tree House. Canned over three years ago, it's been sitting undisturbed in a small fridge in my basement ever since.

As an aside, does anybody else find the can descriptions from some brewers to be a bit much? This one includes the sentence "....to craft a beer that ignites your senses with joy and exhilaration".

3.74/5 rDev -13.2%
look: 3.5 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 3.75
Canned December 11, 2019. Appearance is pretty much like every other stout, with the only interesting item of note (at least to me) is the discrete yet persistent small center of carbonation that bubbles up from a single point of focus just off center from the middle of the glass. Almost like the bubbles are struggling to escape something very thick and have to band together to gain the collective strength to breach the surface.

Aroma is very sweet. It doesn't burst from the glass, but up close it's pleasant. Maybe a hair more lactose than I'd prefer, but that sweetness is mostly balanced from some nice underlying chocolate and faint roast notes.

Taste is better than I expected, with a little bite up front (whether from the cocoa or some roasted malts I can't say) doing a nice job of balancing out some underlying sweetness. I do get impressions of chocolate from this, but it's not all the way to fudge. Creamy and full feel, as expected.

Overall, good beer. I don't think I'd want to drink two back to back, but as a slow sipper on a Sunday morning, I'm enjoying it.

 

It is such a wonderful beer, a very highly drinkable hoppy beer. I find it very refreshing in warm weather in particular.

 

When is the new BIF?

 

I had this one last night and fell asleep before I could post it. So, here goes:

Blood Brothers x Yakima Chief Hops YCH Trilled and Tested Dry Hopped DIPA with Mosaic, Citra and Simcoe. This is both a riff on their Trill series of IPAs with rotating hop varieties, and an entry into their recent Over the Tap event.



Pours a very opaque and turbid dirty yellow with ample creamy head that never quite leaves the surface of the glass. Extensive, thick lacing.

The aroma is very dank up front with a broad fruit cocktail in there as well. A slight piney note too.

Flavour follows. Slightly boozy, dank, fruity I an indeterminate/broad sense. A tad sweet, but enough of a bitter finish for me to excuse that.

Thick body with a very creamy mouthfeel. Enjoyable for the style.

This is one of the better hazy IPAs I’ve had from Blood Brothers. I regard them as a tier two maker of the style generally (locally) and this sits slightly above their usually grade. I’d drink it again.

 

Happy Birthday to you and Mrs O!

 

Up next is another Tree House beer, but I'm going lighter this time. This is Old Growth, a Kentucky Common Ale.


3.53/5 rDev -13.9%
look: 4 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 3.5 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.5
Canned September of 2022. Pours a bright light reddish-brown with excellent clarity and a solid amount of head that displayed good retention. Overall, good looking beer. Nose is mostly sweet grains / corn. Taste largely follows, but with a little more bite than the nose. Some faint malty flavors on the finish, and tasted blind I might have thought there was some bourbon barrel, even though that's not the case. Light and easy going down. Overall, a little more bite from the hops than I would have preferred, but still very easy drinking.

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@tasterschoice62 the chatter over in our current BIF thread is that the next BIF will likely be somewhere in the mid-March to early April timeframe, with signups obviously kicking off in advance of that. Basically, relatively soon, but not quite yet.

 

My wife is at our local animal shelter cleaning and walking dogs, so I'm handling our mutts on my own. They do much better as a singleton than a threesome, so that's how I do it. On the negative side, it takes me three times as long to walk them. But on the positive side, I get three times as much exercise.
My new beer for today is Life in ColorADO, a saison from New Image Brewing.

A dark orange color. There is a large white head that sets a world record for dissipating. No Lace.
Aroma is sweet, fruity, a little funky.
Taste is sweet fruit up front, a little tart, then some funk at the end.
Crisp, very carbonated.