New Beer Sunday (week 535)

Been on my radar. Damn I'm thirsty from that pic!!!

 

So it's a copy of that tradition on bridges in Paris, and I think one in Vencie too? Seal your love, throw the key away. Can you use a combination lock?

 

So it's still Sunday here on the West Coast, but I really do try to post earlier. I had a bit of a business meeting that took longer than I had hoped, but was dying to come home to my boys and this. I've been meaning to try this for a good while now and finally have the moment to do so!




New Weizenbock Sunday
Le Petit Mort - 9.05% ABV
Central Waters

To start, I am not very familiar with the many Weizenbocks and shooting a bit in the dark here. I do enjoy a Weihenstephaner Vitus and Ayinger on occasion, but am new to Weizenbocks in general and this is my first review of this style and hope to gain more knowledge.

It pours a very dark brown with a dash or red and a white top ring head. It looks quite pretty. The smell is a very delightful bourbon with a good blend of dark fruits/fig. Reminds me of a fruity Barley Wine to be honest. First Sip, let just sit for a good while. Unlike the scent, the dark fruits take over but you will feel that bourbon seep into the that flavor rapidly. It has this great caramel texture through out and takes the sting off the bourbon, but it is 9.05% ABV, so you are bound to feel a bit of a burn regardelss, but it's not a overpowering one...at least for me(I love bourbon-aged brews). There is some good carbonation and this is not at all as heavy or sweet like a Barley Wine, so it goes down a little lighter.

So, I noticed some of the characteristics of what I get with a Vitus or Ayinger, I didn't completely get here, and it could be the bourbon, but for that same reason I would say maybe this isn't a classic Weizenbock, but it was a very enjoyable beer for me and would buy it again. If you like bourbon-aged combined with dark fruits, I would give this a shot.

On a side note. My wife, laughed a bit when I told her the name of this and I wiki'd it and found out why.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_petite_mort

 

Staggering in late with actual beers consumed today. Me and my friend Joe did a road trip to Zythum Brewing in Fairfield, WA, and Paradise Creek in Pullman, WA. In between we passed through a bunch of the little towns that make up the Palouse.

Zythum - the tiny, virtually nano-brewery in the virtually nano-town of Fairfield, 40 miles or so southeast of Spokane - came through with flying colors. They only had three beers on: I had a pale ale that hit all the right buttons but was kinda perfunctory at the same time, but the Combine Hefe was something special - a 9.5% Hefeweizen brewed with around 70 IBUs worth of hops, plus the yeast seemed a lot closer to one from a traditional Bavarian Hefe than the type found in myriad "American Wheat Ales." Tasty and super-drinkable. I'm not sure, but I think it might qualify as a Wheatwine, a style of beer only slightly less rare than a unicorn (at least in my experience). They also had a Rye Pale Ale that I passed on, being the driver, but they had their own root beer and ginger ale (a clone of old-school Vernors) that were awesome when I sampled them. The couple who owned the place were really cool as well. They've recently purchased a larger system and should soon be distributing beyond their taproom , which is located in a 9,000 sq foot space that was formerly a grange, gas station, Studebaker dealership and hardware store. I will be checking them out again.

60-odd miles further down HWY 27, Paradise Creek was a place I expected more from. They've been around for nearly 5 years now (they had signs advertising their anniversary in a few days) and have been bottling and distributing for a while now. They are ensconced in what was known as the Old Post Office Movie Theater when I lived in Pullman about 20 years ago, and are one of the few microbreweries I've been to with marble floors. Much like Zythum, they were sold out of their IPAs. Unlike them, they didn't have any beers that were particularly interesting. The food was decent, for the most part (I had a pulled pork sandwich; my friend had a cheeseburger with bacon - the bacon was, in his words, "smoked, but not cooked"), I had a Kolsch that was decent but nothing special, and when we split a taster paddle, nothing I had inspired me to get a growler fill. Oh, and when I ordered their Imperial Stout they had listed as on tap, the very hot but not terribly attentive waitress didn't tell me it was out, but just brought me a glass of their regular stout instead.

So, I guess the moral of the story is, when the hole-in-the-walll brewery seems to deliver, don't waste your gas continuing down the road to the more established place.

 

I am going to have to start stealing everyone's cool alliterations. =)