New Beer Sunday (week 507)

Evening NBSers, long time no post! I just got in from the drive back from St. Louis. Had the privilege of going to Abraxas Day at Perennial yesterday. I brought this growlette of Boneyard RPM (courtesy of my wonderful trading friend @NW_IPAHEAD) with me to share, but I had a VIP ticket which meant that I didn't actually have to be there until 1, so I opted to sleep in instead of joining my friends in the line that formed at 7 a.m. By the time I got there they'd been sharing for hours and once the event started, we each had our fill of wonderful Abraxas and Coffee Abraxas, no one was interested in sharing any more, so home with me came the growlette! Yes, I know, we should all have such problems!

To be frank, I'm kind of happy to have this little baby all to myself. This is my first time with this particular Boneyard offering--everything I've had of theirs is simply outstanding and this is no exception. The first thing that wowed me, other than the impressive inch-thick foamy head I got with the first (and second!) pour was the beautiful brassy, coppery color of the beer. Really pretty just to look at.



The smell of this stuff is pretty amazing--the aroma is literally like a walk in the woods of the Pacific Northwest--piney, woodsy and earthy. The flavor is actually a bit more restrained than the aroma would suggest, but I think that's due to the nice caramel sweetness that takes a bit of the edge off the piney hops.

Finally, I don't know why I am such a sucker for purty lacing, but this beer does it right!



Really love this beer; it's a gift to get the chance to try such great stuff! So, while there's lots of folks on this site counting the bottles in their cellars and trying to get one over on some unsuspecting trader, when I get to try such great stuff courtesy of such nice people, I am definitely winning. Here's some late 60s light funk in celebration of that! Cheers all!

 

Got to agree - OK but not the best.

 

Had this on tap at World of Beer pour a deep dark Opaque black that had an overflowing mocha head smell is bourbon Dark Chocolate boozy sweetness and burnt sugars just a delight with hints of vanilla love it.
Taste follows the smell bit the bourbon is just right well balanced with great bourbon flavor balanced by the stout flavors really well blended beer dangerous smooth reminds me of a weaker parabola. Lots of vanilla and rich dark chocolate so good.
I really love this beer was worth the price tag hopefully I can procure a couple bottles before they are all gone

Barrel Aged Narwhal is incredible.

 

Thanks for the Ronnie!

 

Welcome to New Beer Sunday!

 

Good evening NBS! Another week gone by, more new beers to try. I have a shorter week this week due to Veterans day being recognized on Friday. Not really much planned this week for homebrewing or commercial beer buying. Need to take care of the hospital financing and some other bills this week. Real life can suck sometimes.

New beers this evening:

Very nice rye IPA! Taste of big grapefruit, tangerine, pineapple, lemon zest, orange peel, citrus rind, caramel, spicy rye, toasted bread, floral, grass, and pine. Good amount of pine/citrus rind bitterness and rye spiciness on the finish. Very nice balance of malt and bitterness. Very juicy on citrus/tropical hop flavors. Smooth, moderately creamy, and fairly crisp/sticky mouthfeel. No cloying flavors at all. Really enjoyed this stuff, the rye certainly gives it more of a mouthfeel and malt presence; but the nice bitterness makes it really come out very well balanced. I might have to grab a full 6 pack eventually. 3.9


I've had the Stone and Victory in-house versions many moons ago, but never the Dogfish Head. This stuff is simply excellent all around. Taste of lemon, pear, white grape, pepper, clove, cracker, and bread; with extremely well balanced herbal/floral/grassy earthy spice flavors. Fair amount of peppery saison finish with the earthy spice flavors. Zero cloying flavors at all. Very smooth and crisp for 6.8%. Not too dry either. This is completely my favorite of the three. Saison and spice balance was just damn near perfect. Plus I can go buy more right now. Delicious stuff. 4.1
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Amazing imperial stout no doubt. 2013 vintage. Aromas were very nice, but very lacking in bold intensity and complexity I expected for 13%; bit of booze in there as well. Taste of big milk chocolate, cocoa, coffee, vanilla, toasted coconut, toffee, bourbon, oak, tobacco, light char, and roast/oak earthiness. A fair amount of roast and oaky bitterness on the finish. Great flavor balance and complexity of dark/roast malts and bourbon barrel complexity. Very smooth, creamy, and fairly slick mouthfeel that is fantastic. Maybe a touch of oaky astringency, but it really isn't that much at all. Very smooth and drinkable for 13%. Overall this is extremely outstanding; but really doesn't meet the marks for me of the overall average, but I'd drink totally this again in a heartbeat. 4.43


Cheers

 

I was *this* close to heading down to the CLink and catching the Seahawks/Giants game in person. I figured it would be a good combination celebrating my first week with a real job/distracting from last night's breakup, but laziness really took over more than anything, and instead of dropping 150 bucks and getting soaked through and probably getting sick (probably not the best idea to get sick the week I'll start working with a bunch of immuno-compromised kids...), I saved the money and sat on a comfortable couch and watched on a bigass TV instead. C'est la vie.

I'm not crazy about pumpkin beers. I think they're a fun novelty, and that some can be pretty good, but pumpkin in general I've always been pretty blase about. Which is to say, I don't know why I've embarked on this particular odyssey. I've got a fridge full of pumpkin-ish beers, and have been exploring them for the last week or so. Today's offering wasn't so much pumpkin as it was squash, but for these purposes they're close enough. Dark Harvest is an interesting dark saison/farmhouse base with that grainy earthiness that also doesn't really excite me, but I can appreciate, with roasty/ashy notes, but the squash offers a roundness on the bottom edge and an interesting creamy sweet note that seems to work. Cool.

Next up: dinner. Looks like it will be incredibly simple, but really tasty for some reason.



One has a reason. The other has a different reason.

 

Good Old Dog avatar!

 

Welcome to the Narwhal Nation! Or not, if you've been here all along - Good Beer -Wahoo!!

 

I've drank my share of the base Narwhal over the years, that's why I was super-stoked when I found out SN was putting out a barrel-aged version. It definitely delivers!

 

Hey NBSers,

Late night entry and has to be short.

Scotch Ale by McEwan's



Has to be one of the references for the style, no? Aroma and flavor are classic, mouthfeel seems a little thin compared to US examples, but that's more my fault than the "authentic" version's. Very enjoyable and an easy sipper for the evening. 4/5

 

This is one I am very curious to try.

 

That was an interesting beer to brew. I don't have time to do many test batches these days so I had one shot at it as a 60 barrel batch. I don't typically brew many very malty beers like this, but I've been wanting to have a go at it for a while. A lot of times, when breweries brew malt forward beers, they don't put the same effort into sourcing high quality malts the way they do when they brew hoppy beers. I decided to use nothing but the highest quality English malts we could get. With floor malted Maris Otter being the base, we used pale and dark chocolate malts, and the less known oat malt. Oat malt is unique in that you can really taste the graininess of the oats, unlike flaked oats where they really just mostly add to the mouthfeel. I am really pleased with the results. I agree there is a lot of oat flavor, but I think the predominant flavor for me is the dark chocolate. We should have plenty to last us a while since I brewed another 60 bbl batch and will be brewing yet another 60 bbl tomorrow.