New Beer Weekend #287

Yo! @Beersnake Thank you for starting this weekend's thread!

I just finished this new one from iconic East Coast brewery Victory. Grapefruit Cloud Walker DIPA. I enjoyed it, yet it left me wanting just a bit more. Lawsons set the bar high here in this micro genera. I will however drink more of these!



3.98/5 rDev +5.3% | Average: 3.78
look: 4.25 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4 | feel: 4.25 | overall: 4
I enjoyed the hybrid nature of this one. Reminiscent of Grapefruit Double Sunshine in nature, it has West Coast IPA vibes as well as NEIPA attributes. Does it measure up to Lawson's version? No sir. However, it does deliver a nice drinking experience with a winning blend of dank hop presence and grapefruit tartness. Reminds more of a West Coast IPA overall. There are juicy, dank, and bitter moments. I'd like to see a bit more aggressive hop notes coming through, but this is just fine as is. I bought a single to taste, but I'll grab more while it's fresh.

 

A brewery opened up in my town so I had a couple beers to get a read on them...

Mana Brewing Altbier

Appearance: Clear dark amber, good carbonation, ok head-not much room in the glass for a head.

Smell: Light malty/sweet aroma.

Taste: Mild sweetness, moves to mild dark fruits, medium to light body, finishes with mild fruit and slight earthiness.

Overall: A new brewery in my town, so must try the beers. The altbier is pretty solid, nice mild dark fruit notes and nice appearance.

Mana Brewing Red Rye

Appearance: Clear dark amber/red, small head fades out pretty quickly.

Smell: Can't smell anything with multiple pulls, can't ding it too much since I didn't pour it and shove my nose in while pouring.

Taste: Candy sweetness but not cloying then switches to moderate fruitiness. Very little apparent rye. Medium bodied. Finish just continues the fruitiness.

Overall: I typically like rye beers so had to try this one. Unfortunately I don't really get any rye character. Tastes like a typical amber but with a little more fruitiness and fullness.

 

Achel Tripel from De Achelse Kluis

From a 330ml bottle dated BB 04/06/2025. Poured into a chalice. A one finger fine white head on a hazy dark gold. Good head retention. Sticks around to the end, probably helped by the nucleated glass. Some slippery fine lacing.

Fruit and spice in the nose. Tastes of fruit up front. Some spice. Sweet at first but dries towards the end. A almost imperceptible hop finish.

A medium body and good carbonation. The ABV is well hidden. Overall a fine Triple.

3.9/5 rDev -4.2%
look: 3.75 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 4

 

So @vurt and I did a trade and he sent me this really good take on the classic RIS. They added oatmeal into the mash and something called midnight wheat.

Poured stout black with a one inch thick brown head that left impressive lacing.
The taste is very deep, strong coffee, cacao,
Oatmeal and dark bread. But much more chocolate and coffee.
The feel is viscous, probably from all the oatmeal in the mash.
OA, an excellent example of a take on the classic RIS.
This will do it for me tonight, but a couple more tomorrow.
Cheers all!

 

When is a Pilsner not a Pilsner?

I met some buddies for beers and lunch at a local craft beer bar/restaurant. This place also has a bottle shop and since I arrived early, I decided to do some window shopping in the bottle shop. I noted a new beer (well, new to me): Tonewood Chilly Bin West Coast Pilsner.

On the back of the can the following information is listed:

“Style: West Coast Pilsner

Hops: Eggers Riwaka, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook

Malts: Pilsner”

Through my homebrewing I am familiar with all of those ingredients (having used them in my homebrewed beers) except “Eggers Riwaka”. I know that Riwaka is a hop variety from New Zealand but what does “Eggers” mean?

I always like to learn new things about beer and brewing so some web surfing is in order:

“Eggers Riwaka hops refer to a premium, intensely aromatic New Zealand hop grown byEggers Hops, a specialist farm focused on the temperamental Riwaka variety, producing unique flavor profiles (like grapefruit, passionfruit, tropical citrus) due to precise harvest windows, with their select "Eggers Special" offering an elite, highly sought-after expression of this celebrated hop.

Key Aspects

The Grower: CraftBeer.comEggers Hops is a 6th-generation family farm in New Zealand's Upper Moutere Valley, known for its dedication to cultivating exceptional Riwaka.

The Hop (Riwaka): A prized NZ hop famous for its potent grapefruit, passionfruit, lime, and tropical notes, but notoriously difficult to grow.

The Difference (Harvest & Selection): CraftBeer.comEggers segregates lots by harvest date, creating distinct profiles (early vs. late harvest) and unique appellations, similar to winemaking.

Eggers Special: A hand-selected, rare, elite batch of Riwaka from Eggers' farm, offering "next-level" intensity and complexity, described as incredibly fruity with vibrant citrus and unique herbal notes.”

So, how does a West Coast Pilsner which includes some Eggers Riwaka hops taste like?

Served in my Polish Pilsner glass:

Appearance:

A hazy straw yellow with a white head.

Aroma:

On the initial pour there are prominent fruity aromas, kinda reminiscent of Juicy Fruit Gum.

Taste:

The flavor follows the nose with fruity flavors but as the beer opens up there is also some floral aspects and even some hints of diesel/dank. There is a notable bitterness.

Mouthfeel:

Medium bodied with subtle impression of juiciness and even a very slight tinge of hop burn with a dry finish.

Overall:

There is a lot going on with this beer and I am uncertain what I think about this beer. It has a ‘interesting’ flavor profile which is not exactly to my personal preference. I will drink the remaining five cans and maybe then formulate a more complete opinion about this beer.

I suspect that if I were presented with this beer blind, given its appearance, flavor profile and mouthfeel I would state that it is a Juicy/Hazy Pale Ale.

Cheers!

@KOP_Beer_OUtlet @rotsaruch @RobH

 

Took one for the team...

UB Taj Mahal Black Label Euro Strong Lager, 7.1% ABV

Pours a fairly flat gold with traces of beige head. Zero head retention & lacing

S: Apple juice notes, that's about it

T: Bready notes, pears & grassyness& hints of honey up front, a little dryness. More pears & grassyness, some breadyness once warm. Finishes a bit sweet, some grassy & apple & pear notes

Medium body with extremely low carbonation, just enough hop bitterness to keep this from totally going in the shitter balance-wise

Usually, I say let a beer warm up, drink this ice cold or colder. Not really drinkable, my beer choices would have to be horrid to this again. If I had it to do all over again, pass. A better nose & some carbonation ^ this would be passable

 

Happy Friday, New Beer people! High five to @Beersnake for getting this thread started, and also for getting me to Google "mizunura'.

As @Whyteboar pointed out a couple posts ago, he and I did a trade. Many tasty stouts were exchanged, including this one, which I could hardly wait to try...



Bell's 40th Anniversary Expedition Stout

Look:
A black-brown body which transmits no light (except at the edges, which are also black-brown but have persimmon highlights). A dark brown head fizzes up and then right back down, leaving a minimal ring that yields minimal lacing.

Smell:
A mouth-watering combo of dark chocolate and bourbon up front, followed by shades of oak, vanilla, and a drop of soy sauce. As it warms, the beer gives up notes of coconut, caramel, blackberries, and molasses.

Taste:
It starts with rich chocolate and an almost savory salty note, a little caramel, and bourbon. Not too sweet! There's also roasted malt, marshmallow, coffee, fireplace smoke from the next block over, some mildly tangy oak, and a black bean earthy character. The finish kicks off with light char and a little prune and dried apricot. The aftertaste is bitter chocolate ganache, espresso gelato, a drizzle of molasses, and the gentlest possible licorice note on the breath.

Feel:
The body is as heavy as melted ice cream, and the carbonation keeps to itself in the corners. There's an impressive lack of alcohol heat.

Overall:
Bourbon barrel-aged Expedition Stout? Yes please! This beer certainly lives up to its billing. Is it better than regular Expedition, with its straightforward roast and bitterness and exceptional balance? That's a great question, and I'm not sure I can answer that yet. Perhaps it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Perhaps less is, indeed, more. Perhaps going big is not necessarily better than going home. Still, I'm thrilled to have had the chance to try this beast of a beer, and I'm glad to have another bottle to savor some other time.

Thanks Craig!

 

It is a shame that they changed this beer @JackHorzempa. The initial few times brewed it was one of my favorite new beers of theirs. Then it took a turn into what you experienced, I even said as much to a store worker locally who tried to tell me how great it was “it’s like a lightly hazy pale ale.”

This beer I loved…if you read my review you’ll see it is a different beer from the one you experienced and I sorely miss.



It was crisp, clear, clean and had this awesome clean distinct chinook bite. I confirmed a change process with the bartenders there when it happened a year ago or so now.

 

Saint Arnold has a new year round Hefeweizen out. Description from the brewery below:

Our Hefeweizen stays true to German brewing conditions: high amount of wheat, multiple mash steps… and no dry hop. However, we did put some American influence on it by using Strata hops from the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy the banana and clove aroma, balanced by a honey and biscuit malt character.

5.1% ABV | 17 IBU

Malted Barley: 2-row, Pilsner, White Wheat, Acidulated
Hops: Hallertau Hersbrucker, Strata
Yeast: Hefeweizen



Pours with the barest amount of light haze. Really, almost clear, a golden/yellow color. A dense and ever lasting white head forms with lace left behind.
Aroma is big fruity esters up front. Banana and lemon rind. With snappy wheat. Simple and spot on.
Taste wise, like the nose big on the esters up front. I get more of a lemon meringue pie up front, but that quickly turns to big banana flavors. Zesty, spicy clove and wheat mingle. Maybe just a touch of hoppy bitterness but very light.
A medium body and crisp carbonation. After this breaths a little, it become ultra smooth. Which all leads to a very moreish offering.

If I was to be a little TOO judgmental here, this is more of a Kristalweizen. But maybe they wanted the marketing around this a little different than their old school, and long forgotten by most now, Texas Wheat. Anyway, its a better wheat beer than that was by a mile (at least from memory), and unless something looks like pond scum, quibbling over "haziness" is something for some other new style of IPA I don't really care about. So, its just really good...I'll be getting more.

Overall score is 4.05, A-
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/337/775977/?ba=champ103#lists

I had several out in my courtyard while really getting into this new Karl Ove Knausgaard novel. Very nice.

 

Good day BAs! Thanks @Beersnake for opening the thread!

Today's New Breakfast Beer:



Chocolate Peppermint Stout from Hardywood Park Craft Brewing. 16 fl oz can from Franklin Beer, Franklin, PA. Picked up 10/01/26, in reefer at distributor. $ 3.75 (including tax) ($ 0.235/fl oz). Reviewed 17/01/26, review 3674. Note that I use DD/MM/YY protocol.
Bottom of can stamped “8/25/25.” Stored at home at 40 degrees F. Served at 45.5 degrees F (Can says “Savor at 45”) in a hand washed and dried Jester King snifter. The final temperature is 47.6 degrees F.
Appearance – 4
First pour – Deep Amber (SRM 15), clear.
Body – Brown (SRM 30), opaque. Under direct light, same. When rear-lite, same with light penetrating only at the edges, amber.
Head – Small (Maximum 0.7 cm, aggressive center pour) Biscuit lightening to almond as it oxygenates, high density with short retention, falling to a 0.5 cm crown fed by active carbonation and a thin partial cap.
Lacing – Fair. Tight arc of tiny to near-microscopic bubbles.
Aroma – 4 – Chocolate and peppermint – after dinner mint. No hops, no vanilla. No alcohol (9.2 % ABV as marked on the label).
Flavor – 3 – It begins slightly sour with bitter Baker’s chocolate predominating. No vanilla, no hops. Sort of peppermint flavoring. No dimethylsulfide or diacetyl. Uncomfortable gastric burning.
Palate – 3 – Medium: Watery: Soft but lively carbonation.
Style: Sort of follows the BA style description.
Final impression and summation: 3.5 Uncredited label art. Ambiguous date. Just another stout, certainly unremarkable. Off to the drain.
Rating 3.4, rDev -12.1%

One and forever done.

 

Yep, that pretty much sums up this beer.

Did they tell you what the change was?

I suppose that Tonewood is not too different from other US craft breweries in terms of providing 'shiny new thing' beers to their customers.

Cheers!

 

No they didn't, this was just chatting with multiple bartenders on different occasions about how cloudy and less clean it became. I don't think it had anything to do with making it a shiny new thing as it wasn't advertised ever, it was just stunningly obvious to me as someone who loved that beer initially.

But good for them cause it appears to sell well, and when I told the store guy how I didn't like it anymore he was shocked so maybe I'm in the minority cause it appears to move quickly from the brewery fridge and is usually relatively fresh.

 

As a beer consumer I find that to be unethical. If I purchased a six-pack of Chilly Bin at my local beer store expecting the beer to be x and instead it is y, with no acknowledgement of a change (e.g., "new and improved" on the can), I would be really pissed off.

The business folks at Tonewood should not be doing this crap.

Cheers!

 

Barrel Theory Velvet Eclipse


Appearance: Black, huge head.

Smell: Roasted malts, bit of chocolate, bit of yeast note.

Taste: Balanced, mild roasted malts with wheat and very light phenol yeast note. Light bodied. Gives a bit of lemon then wheaty finish.

Overall: A black hefeweizen, so a dunkel weiss then? Does taste more like a dunkelweiss than a hefeweizen. Easy drinking, probably better in warmer weather rather than 10F.

 

Same, although better than the one I had last night. If pickings weren't so slim around here lately & I wouldn't have even looked at it twice.

 

Did you get one from two Christmases ago?

 

Jack — I think this is exactly where the disconnect is, and it’s not a small one.

If a beer changes in any meaningful way, that has to be communicated to the customer. Full stop. That isn’t nitpicking, and it isn’t entitlement — it’s basic transparency. When someone orders a beer they know well, they’re ordering an expectation, not just a name on a tap handle.

I say this as someone who genuinely enjoys going to Tonewood and respects the product. My current profile photo is literally from there. I’ve had small conversations with Eli over the years and he’s a very talented brewer. They’ve also historically taken quality seriously — even having in-house sensory/QC at points. So this isn’t about “they don’t care” or “they don’t know what they’re doing.”

But here’s the hard truth from experience: great beer alone does not protect a brewery from internal drift.

When I trained breweries out west, one of the core lessons was alignment — front of house and back of house have to be in sync. Not “ideally.” Not “eventually.” Constantly. Even if pouring beer is “just a job” to someone on staff, they still need the tools and information to do it correctly.

I’ve seen this disconnect firsthand — from watching a server dump beer straight from a tap line onto the floor at the now-defunct Devil’s Creek, to later seeing that same person as a customer at a Pliny the Younger event at Monk’s. World-class beer doesn’t fix disengagement, lack of training, or loss of pride at the point of service.

Where things start to unravel — and I’ve seen this more than once — is when ownership or brewers aren’t fully aware of what’s happening day-to-day in the taproom, taproom managers are making calls without full context, and changes happen quietly because “it’s close enough.” Over time, nobody feels empowered — or required — to explain anything to the customer.

That’s how trust erodes, even when the beer is still good.

I hate even bringing this up, but when I ran a brew club in Collingswood, we had some very real conversations about drinking culture, boundaries, and how easy it is to lose the plot when things pile up — long hours, availability of alcohol, blurred lines between work and social space. Everyone is responsible for how much they drink, yes — but systems still matter. Communication still matters.

So no, this isn’t about attacking Tonewood or questioning their intentions. It’s about saying: if a beer is different, the customer deserves to know. A simple note, a verbal heads-up, anything.

I’m sharing this with care, not heat. Because I’ve watched breweries with incredible product slowly stumble over things that had nothing to do with recipe or talent — and everything to do with communication.

Cheers!!!