New Beer Sunday (week 532)

Good Sunday morning, BAs ! Once again, I'm as pleased as Goldmember with the keys to Fort Knox to be here for this week's New Beer Sunday ! I'm not sure what happened to the original post, but thanks to @utopiajane for the re-boot !


This week, both I and my taste buds are offering Stone Brewing Company's Ruination 2.0 Double IPA. I've been waiting to try this to see how it would stack up against the original, and I finally scored a bottle yesterday. So without further ado (or adoo-doo, which may be more appropriate to my posts), here are my notes after pouring from a bomber into my trusty tulip glass...


Appearance : A clear, light honey-color, with a medium density, half-inch head. Good lacing retention in the glass.


Smell : An even combination of citrus fruits (tangerine, orange, grapefruit) and a little papaya thrown in, along with an even amount of hoppy goodness.


Taste : A quick zing of the citrus fruit flavors , followed immediately by an impressive rush of piney hop bitterness that lingers. After that, I get a more subdued return of the citrus mixed with a light honey sweetness. The 8.5% abv is there, but not overwhelming.


Feel : I get a medium-thick resinous mouthfeel that hangs on for a while.


Overall : Wow. This is an excellent brew, and once again, Stone continues to impress. It's been a long time since I've tasted the original Ruination, but if memory serves, this one takes both the citrus aroma and hop flavor up a notch. While to me it doesn't have quite the level of palate-obliterating effect as, say, Palate Wrecker, or Hopscickle, it's definitely a hop bomb, and more than worthy of being included in the annals of Hopdom. Well done, Stone, well done indeed !!!


A-4.5 / S-4.25 / T-4.5 / F-4.5 / O-4.44

 

Been waiting for this thread to land. I enjoyed this this morning while my better half slept in, giving me the chance to catch up on some emails. Now we're off to see the new Avengers movie

It's rare for me to give a 5 to anything but this beer's appearance nailed it. I stopped pouring when the head was around the level of the 3F mark. About 30 seconds later when the picture was taken it was at the top of the glass, then continued to rise until it was nearly one-finger above the glass! This was with a slow-moderate pour. Fantastic.
The beer itself was very enjoyable- so many "barrel aged" beers these days don't add much to the base beer, but this one nails it with nice bourbon/vanilla accents. The only surprising thing is the lack of wine flavors since 55% is aged in wine barrels. No complaints, though, it's a very nice beer and one I hope to see again. I don't get why the average is below 90 but to each their own.
The weather here is fantastic and I wish I could be outside all day but am looking forward to the movie as well.
Cheers!

 

Battle of the Kolsch beers – Sunner Kölsch vs. Victory Kühl Kölsch

Victory has a new bottled Kolsch that is part of the Victory summer variety pack. I really appreciate that Victory has finally decided to make a bottled Kolsch beer!!

I thought it would be fun to conduct a tasting of this beer along with a German brewed Kolsch beer. While this may not exactly be like Pacquiao vs. Mayweather I still thought it might be a good match to have.

Protect yourself at all times, make this a clean fight, don’t hit lower than the belt line, make this a good clean fight.

Served in my 0.4 liter Stange glasses:

Appearance:

Sunner Kölsch: Golden colored with a frothy white head.

Victory Kühl Kölsch: A brilliantly clear straw color with a billowy white head.

Aroma:

Sunner Kölsch: Subtle vinous aroma with hints of grain.

Victory Kühl Kölsch: A noticeable aroma of Pilsner malt with just a tiny bit of sulfur (struck match) on the initial sniff (not too noticeable as the beer opens up).

Taste:

Sunner Kölsch: Flavors follows the nose with vinous and biscuit malt flavors and very little bitterness.

Victory Kühl Kölsch: Flavor is dominated by the malt (bready malt flavor) with low bitterness.

Mouthfeel

Sunner Kölsch: Smooth mouthfeel, medium bodied and medium level of carbonation.

Victory Kühl Kölsch: Medium bodied, medium carbonation with a dry/crisp finish

Overall

Sunner Kölsch: A refreshing beer to drink on a warm/hot summer day. This beer has more complexity in comparison to the Kühl Kölsch.

Victory Kühl Kölsch: Also a very refreshing beer. This beer has more drinkability, or as the Germans say: süffig!


I really enjoyed drinking both of these beers. I really wish that Victory Kuhl Kolsch was available in 6-packs.

Cheers to Victory for producing a bottled Kolsch beer!!

 

Man, I clicked on the NBS link all eager and excited to see what people are up to this week and it distappeared in the time it took me to read the first post! Glad it's back, and it looks like it will stay this time...

I missed last week as I hit the road again, this time with my brother (still up for debate who the better travel partner is: him or my dog... [JK, it's probably him, since he can drive for long stretches. Plus, he's allowed on the trails in national parks, though HE'S even less responsive to my commands than Porter...]). We navigated our way to Painted Hills Oregon, to Yosemite and down Highway 1 through Big Sur, Los Padres National Forest, and the PCH in general. Beautiful. We really do live in a beautiful country(/world...).

(Painted Hills, the ones that looked like Jupiter to me [there were others that I labeled Venus, Mars, and Neptune])

(Yosemite Valley)

(Rainbow from the spray at Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite)

(McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in Big Sur/Los Padres/PCH/Hwy 1 area [Fun fact: it didn't used to be a beach!])

Our travels took us through Portland and Bend, so (naturally) I grabbed some select offerings along the way (but nothing fancy, and not a whole lot). Today's selection is one such beverage. Buoy is a newer-ish brewery operating out of Astoria, and I picked up their IPA while I was in PDX, having heard good things. The overarching theme to this particular brew is orange. After a deep amber to copper body featuring a beautiful fluffy white head, the senses that remain when our eyes are closed bought all in to the majesty of Oranje.
The nose is floral and tangelo sweet, with an inscrutible spicy element lurking. It starts off down a creamy sweet orange route (orange blossoms and creamcicles jumped to mind) before following Vlade Divac on a detour down a road to bitter pines without relinquishing any of the floral or orange notes present on admission. Creamy smoothe and imminently drinkable it belies the 7.5%, and finishes with the citrus bitter of orange rinds layered with a floral nectar sweetness that keeps it from committing fully to a stereotype. Overall a thoroughly enjoyable brew, with just enough uniqueness to let it remain memorable in a crowded wing, though it does not jump into the realm of undeniable for me. But I will definitely grab another if I see it, and would love to see the differences on tap.


The rest ain't worth talking about.

Cheers all!!

 

Thanks, @Todd . I appreciate that.

Greetings, NBS!

Beer #708



While I had this beer yesterday (I couldn't wait to open the growler), I'm finishing it now. Sometimes a beer of this magnitude requires several hours to process. Here's my review from yesterday...

Good God, finally. I've been interested in this ever since I started enjoying the style 2.5 years ago. I couldn't ever manage a bottle, but I got a howler (32oz growler) fill for $27 including tax earlier today. Poured into a Sam Adams Perfect Pint. My expectations are stupidly high... which is probably a bad thing.

Appearance: Poured down the center of the glass and gave a thick and creamy brown head about two fingers high that went down to a thin layer. The color is, of course, pitch black, and there's basically no lacing. Great looking beer as a whole. (4.5/5)

Smell: Very nice. Really a lot of coffee in there, which I wasn't really expecting -- dark roast coffee is one of the first things I pick up, followed by roasted malt, and a little bit of chocolate, too. Really, I don't know what it is, but I don't pick up an insane level of oak or vanilla -- I do get a fair amount of bourbon though, that's for sure. KBS definitely smells "hotter" than some other BBA'd stouts I've had. (4.75/5)

Taste/feel: And this is where I'll lose some friends (as if I have any) -- it's just not quite blowing me away. I will say, it's unique and unlike BCBS (the popular comparison). Coffee stands out in a huge way with KBS, being at the forefront, and then it's very heavy on the bourbon, with a pretty bitter finish -- this is not at all syrupy sweet like many others in the style, and for that, I appreciate it... but I'm not sure that it's worthy of a 100 rating on this site. Of course, I'm just one unpopular opinion. It's just that I don't get an overwhelming amount of depth in this beer. It's a lot like black coffee with a shot of bourbon, and just a little tiny bit of vanilla/oak/barrel... but mostly coffee and bourbon. The aftertaste is that dark roast coffee with a bit of a boozy burn, and a fair amount of warmth. Maybe it's because this is fresh and/or from the tap, but my jaw's certainly not to the floor. As it warms up a bit of dark chocolate hits the back of the tongue on the finish, but some more barrel character would go a long way here. (4.25/5, 4/5)

The mouthfeel of this is, as I figured it would be, quite nice. It's not super thick and heavy like some other BBA'd stouts, but it's got a reasonably nice feel and makes for an excellent sipper.

A great beer, but without a doubt, a very disappointing one, simply because I was expecting this to be, if not my all-time favorite beer, right up there. It turns out it barely cracks my Top 50. I'll finish my howler tomorrow and make rating adjustments if necessary, but as of now, this is just a very good (albeit overhyped) BBA'd stout. I don't think this beer is better than BCBS, or the far lesser known but still insanely awesome Bourbon Ben's Asthma by Short's. It's a beer I'd most definitely have again, but I wouldn't seek it out aggressively. If I do find this beer again, I hope it's in a bottle, so I can put a few years of age on it in hopes of developing more depth and also mellowing it out.

TL;DR: Certainly buy it if you see it, but I wouldn't trade my cellar away or drive far too pick up a bottle/growler/case/what have you -- it's not the best in the style, in my opinion. Definitely ecstatic that I got a chance to try this beer though. Pretty freakin' marvelous.

(4.25/5)

4.36/5 (-5% rDev)

Cheers, BA!

And yes, it pained me to say BCBS is better than KBS.

 

Greetings, fellow NBSers, and thanks to @utopiajane for kicking things off,

48 degrees and partly sunny this Bloomsday Weekend. There’s approximately 46,000 people running through the streets right now.

As usual, I’m finishing off my coffee this time of day. I needed coffee before I made coffee – I generally use cheaper stuff from a can on weekday mornings (I go to work at 5 AM) and grind good beans on my days off when I get to wake up more gradually and actually enjoy the coffee. Well, I celebrated my first day off since Monday, bleary eyed after watching the big fight last night at a friends house where I breathed in so much cat hair it was the equivalent of a hangover, by forgetting what I was doing and making a pot of the cheap stuff I use as a caffeine IV. Oh, well, more for tomorrow I suppose.

In terms of new beers during the week, I finally stopped by Iron Goat on a Wednesday and had their “Year of the Goat” beer for that week (each Wednesday, IG puts on a single-keg “experimental” beer that will probably never appear again). Last Wednesday's was a “Strawberry Rhubarb Saison,” which was quite tasty, with a restrained fruit profile. I’m honestly clueless as to whether the rhubarb did anything at all – rhubarb is not something I’ve had much of – but the strawberry was more of an accent to the saison characteristics rather than a dominating factor, and it drank quite easily. Another new beer for me was Fremont Triple Trifecta, which I drank at home after getting off work yesterday:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/20680/157426/?ba=woemad

Way more drinkable than a 12% “Triple IPA” has any right to be!

Got a few options for a new beer today, some potentially great, at least one probably hideous. Maybe I’ll lead with that!

 

Here's a "new" beer, but a veteran to boot! This beer cones from Mills River, North Carolina. It still is the lovely beer that presaged much of what we know.
This is my my cat Bob, messing around the catnip plant. He goes out a few times a day. Bob is way cool!

 

Agreed. KBS used to be on point for me until I tried my first bottle of BCBS. Since then I haven't been able to enjoy KBS the same. Now it just lacks the flavor and mouthfeel I've come to expect from that style. It's still not bad, but it's not worth the trouble to acquire when there's others out there that exceed in quality and accessibility. Great review!

 

Very cool pics! I hit Painted Hills last June while camping in the Umatillas. Very impressive, and I took lots of pics, including one very similar to yours, but the most spectacular "unit" of the John Day Fossil Beds for me is Sheep Rock - it's like being set loose on an alien planet set from Star Trek (but with better production values).

 

Thanks!
That's what I heard and I wanted to head out that direction, but time waits for no man (and it would have been too long of a detour to head out that direction and then get back on the road and position ourselves for our Yosemite adventure the next day). But I really want to see it eventually, I've read it's supposed to be beautiful and your assertion just reinforces that. Next time!!

 

Greetings from New Hampshire. A lovely Spring day that is in the mid 70's. So I took my beer out to Hoit Pond in East Concord, New Hampshire. Only had one but it was a good one. Bissell Brothers The Substance from Portland, Maine. An American pale ale that is hopped up with citrus, floral. orange, lemon zest, and grassy characters. And there are malts in this as well along the line of barley grain, toasted biscuit, and just a whiff of wheat. An all around enjoyable drinking experience.

 

Happy NBS! It is so nice outside today that I am not spending much time around the computer. Quick review of GLs Alberta Clipper Porter. Big roasted malts with a nice dark chocolate nose and some jammy raspberry notes. Flavor is the same and the porter really shines with out being overtaken from the chocolate covered raspberry flavors. Terrific beer from GL and I recommend it.



PS I hope you cheer up Jane.