My problem with Nugget Nectar

+1 +1 +1

I would love to see this in the 16 ounce cans year round. I'd be taking it on every camping trip.

It's good but only (super)good because of limited availability.

 

About two dozen good year round offerings should take note. Seasonal is the way to be, year round is tiring and just not conductive to fresh and good beer all the time. The brewery tries to maximize profits and ends up killing a good thing half the time.

 

There has been a bit of discussion about Ballantine IPA and its alleged similarity to Nugget Nectar. Smuttynose produced a beer that is a recreation of Ballantine IPA based upon a recipe formulated by Bill Pierce; that beer was called Cluster’s Last Stand. I reviewed that beer here: http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...and-vs-pabsts-ballantine.217032/#post-2853438

Cluster’s Last Stand (Ballantine IPA) does not taste like Nugget Nectar. Nugget Nectar has a much bigger malt backbone.

Cheers!

 

Agreed, plus Ballentine IPA to me was way more pine and resiny...whereas NN is more juicy and malty. I don't care what anyone says, I love NN and think it's an awesome beer.

 

I'd agree the Cluster's Last Stand was rather distant from the Ballantine IPA at least as I remember it, even the last one circa-1995. The Cluster's tasted to me like an APA and was starting to oxidize after a few months, at least the bottle I had, in general it was disappointing.

Alan Kornhauser's terrific Woodstock IPA was a different story. BA-ers can read reviews of it right here on this site into the early 2000's. Obviously some of the reviews contradict each other but if you read them all a picture emerges consistent with my recollection of the 70's Ballantine: malty, slight oak, more English than American in the nose (or at least, not typical PNW), good bitterness, big rounded character. Some people said pine and twiggy. In the end a beer is a beer and no two side by side will be alike 100% but that IPA, allowing too it wasn't 7.5% so you'd have to scale up for a full compare, was just superb. It's in the category of beers that if I had to choose only one for the rest of my life it could very easily be that one and while I wouldn't probably go so far for the NN it had many of the same attributes IMO, just a great balance of prominent flavors more on the British side of the register than American, at least in the cask form I had it.

I don't know if the Woodstock IPA is still made or if it is whether it has changed from Kornhauser's original take on it. I believe I've read the hop formulation did change in later years.

 

FWIW, I meant I love NN in the can. Sorry if it was misinterpreted.