New Beer Sunday (week 537)

Holy early start today @cavedave, as I'm still just getting to my coffee (mornin beer). I will return a little later on. Sorry I missed everyone last week, but I'm back wait to you see what I got for y'all

 

Wow, this is an early start. Be back later with a Pils I've not had yet. First though spending the day helping a neighbor whose prepping to move in a couple of weeks. Gonna miss these folks as they've been nice to have around here.

Meanwhile, enjoy.

Cheers, all!

 

^ Whoa baby I swooned a little bit there. Thanks Dave for getting us going this fine morning. I have a beer lined up. But first.



I am going to call my review"the devil you know" (lol in honor of yesterday! Holy hens tootin' horns batman. The duvel thread was outstanding.) Cheers you all and see you at the races. ( get it? the races. thats two, TWO puns. =)

 

As always @cavedave and the Beer Gods are in communication with me, I've been awake since 10 p.m. last night: I ran a 13.1 mile trail race Saturday morning at 7 a.m. Then put up more fence, popped the Heinie mini keg for Champions League, gave my dog a bath, grilled brats the next thing I know I wake up on my sofa at 10 p.m. can't sleep. Damn.

Second Ommegang NBS in a row:

Joemmegang. Coffee ale brewed with cocoa nibs // I think that's what the bottle says. 7.5 % ABV

Look: The beer looks like an amber ale with a creamy head that recedes to a crescent moon film. Little or no lacing.

Aroma: Amazing amount of Belgian yeast overtakes the coffee. There is some oak wood and coffee grounds in there.

Taste: Weak coffee and an earthy tea note. The coffee is very evident but strained and weak.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied and carbonated. A bit harsh.

Overall: I paid $15 for this. Not worth it. Coffee presence was weak and tasted more messy as it warmed.

Rating: 3.09 which is -20.2 rDev. Wow. Didn't like it. Faint cold coffee and Belgian yeast do not make for my happiness. This is okay. This is why I love Beer Advocate, NBS, and WBAYDN. We get bad beers. But I did;t drain pour. I'll drink the rest. Because BEER. I'll be back later with cheaper beer that may taste better

 

Never to early with a child than that wakes up at the wee hours. This is almost noon for me

Found this a few months back on the outskirts of Boston, 17 $. Had high expectations and have to admit having mixed thoughts about it.

The aroma is spot on, can almost taste the cranberries and overripe raspberries. The flavor is similar but way more mellow than expected. The oak presence is negligible and overall lacks tartness. I still enjoyed it as the flavors are consistent with the aroma. Glad to have tried it but I think I prefer the Grand Cru.

 

Yep, definitely going to try and make it back for this weeks NBS! Got a particular beer I picked up a couple weeks ago for today! Cheers everyone!

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/07/merkel-obama-beer-sausage-breakfast-g7-summit

 

New Breakfast Stout Sunday

Another perfect morning on my deck. I have a bunch of new beers to try thanks to a shopping spree in Columbus last night. (NBSBIF2 spoiler #3. This isnt the only one of these I bought). I probably wont be able to share any more though as I we are wrapping up the dance season (all 10 months of it) today. It includes a father-daughter "dance". Please note the quotation marks around dance. I am very competent when it comes to baseball, soccer, football, golf, but this will be like watching a manatee try to run the Boston Marathon. I also have a 15 year old that requires some sort of birthday party tonight.

Anyway, today's new beer has a reputation of being as good as Founder's Breakfast Stout. Hence, the glassware choice.







Finally! A positive rdev. 17 of my last 20 have been negative. Of course some of them are less than 1%, but it was making me feel like a spoiled A hole.

4.45/5 rDev +4.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.5

The 12 oz bottle pours a viscous, jet black into the snifter. The dark tan/mocha head is on the smaller side even wih a solid pour, but about an 1/8" ring stays around the whole time. A little bit of lacing.

Smells like coffee beans first, then some milk chocolate, roasted caramel malts, and some sweetness. As it warms, the malt really starts to shine. It's a nice combination of oatmeal and a fresh mash.

Taste is pretty sweet up front. A Twix like chocolate and milk sugar. Deep roasted malts follow, and the most coffee flavor is actually at the back end. Aftertaste is where I notice the coffe the most and is pretty bitter considering the subtle flavors overall and the 30 IBU label. Alcohol not noticeable at all.

The body is where this one really shines. Even though there is a slight tingling feel to it, overall it is very silky smooth, creamy, and slightly chewy, yet very easy drinking. I am tempted to go 5 in this category.

I have heard talk of this Ohio brew being as good as FBS for a few years, so I was glad to finally find bottles if it closer to home than Toledo. I kind of wondered how much homerisk was taking place. While I dont think it is quite as good, it is close, and holds it's own for sure. The coffee is a more subtle/balanced/integrated. Kind of like an FBS with after 12-18 months. It is also sweeter, perhaps a tad too much. It drinks like a milk stout on steroids. I bounced back and forth between 4.25 and 4.5 here. However, it lets you know it's there in the end. Another world class beer from Ohio.

I thought of this as I was carrying a growler, a crowler, a 6 pack, a 4 pack, and a new glass in from the garage last night.

 

Good morning fellow NBS'ers. And today I am trying a twist on an old favorite. In honor of yesterday's Drink with the Duvel thread I am calling it "The devil you know. " This drinks very much like the devil you know and as you can see I could not find oranj on the nose but I did find what I think people are calling artificial in the reviews I read . it's good though and as you drink it the brightness comes out in a cheerful demeanor on the palate. You realize it's a touch more roasty and that spice is the tang of the orange peel. As it warms the edges smooth and this turned out to be very fresh and very pleasant.







Happy New Beer Sunday

3.69/5 rDev -15.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 3.25 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 4 | overall: 3.75

Pours thick and black. No head. Sits in the glass like oil. Black gold. Nose is rich chocolate and very milky creamy. Smells like fudge. No orange on the nose? It has some good roast, caramel and even some mellow coffee. I expected orange. Taste is roast that is not shy. Lot's of chocolate and some orange peel that comes across as bitter in places in the drink. It's actually so well in the background it's hard to describe. If it wasn't for a faint bit of spice and pith from it to draw my attention I would have missed it. Then it comes over me slowly. How fresh and light that orange peel is and how it's just a hue in this chocolaty beer. Finishes with a lingering chocolate, a touch of bitter,smooth and creamy.

Cheers everyone!

 

Hoppy Sunday, Beer Advocates!

Beer #734: Sierra Nevada Hop Hunter IPA

Bottled April 13th and poured June 7th.

Appearance: Semi-aggressive pour didn't do much for forming a head -- the beer is golden in color with a very slight hop haze. No lacing at initial pour, but some showed up further down the glass. (3.5/5)

Smell: I'm sure it makes me sound like a sack of shit, but this actually smells like concentrated hop oil, and that's not a bad thing at all. Piney, a little herbal, and a citrus peel/oil quality, too. Smells semi-sweet overall. (4/5)

Taste/feel: Bitter resinous hop flavor at the start, with a dry, almost wheat-like malty finish. The carbonation is very aggressive, and the body itself is borderline very thin when nearly ice cold, which is both surprising and disappointing. A little bit of a grapefruit/grapefruit rind flavor finds its way through as the beer warms a bit, but the beer remains quite bitter and not especially well-balanced. Approaching room temperature, a Fruit Loop flavor starts to show itself, which reminds me a bit of Bell's Two Hearted. While I can deal with an unbalanced IPA at times, I can't quite get past the watery mouthfeel when this is straight from the fridge-- this almost drinks more like a session IPA at that time, and that's not a compliment... that is to say it comes off a bit like carbonated hop water. Again, as with most beers, Hop Hunter improves a lot as it warms up a little bit. More malt flavor and a little sweetness can be tasted (on top of that Fruit Loop-like flavor) and the mouthfeel (somehow) seems to become a bit less thin. (4/5, 3.75/5)

(4/5)

This isn't as good as SNPA or Torpedo in my eyes, but it is still a respectable IPA, and one that's better than many breweres' best IPA. I'd highly recommend sitting this one out at room temperature for a few minutes before diving in... my review score changed dramatically after it warmed.

3.95/5 (-2.9% rDev)

 

Exactly. I'm still drinking it. It tastes very watered down. The most expensive beer I purchased before this was biscotti break for the same price. Expected more with this. No worries. This is Beer World, we live we learn

 

Happy Sunday!
The sun is shining and I'm hoping it hits 70 today. We're going to visit my mother, and take her out to lunch. An amazing woman. 90 years old and living independently. We keep trying to get her to move in with us, but she's not having any of that.
Today's new beer is Methusalem. The label says it is a sour altbier. I found it at the 7-11 in Kittery. The manager has a wonderful beer lineup, certainly nothing you'd expect from a 7-11.
In a snifter the beer was a dark reddish brown color with a tiny tan head. It was very still.
Sweet aroma, some dark fruit. There was a hint of sourness.
Caramel taste, plums and raisins. A tinge of tartness.
Sweet, medium-bodied.
A very easy to drink beer. The 10% ABV is not at all noticeable.

 

Good morning New BSers! It's actually a sunny day here in NW PA, so far. Today the cleaning out of my mother's apartment continues - as well as the ongoing cleaning of my Mother-in-law's house, not to mention the reorganization of our house to accommodate some stuff from both. Consequently, I'm becoming more of a follower of Thoreau - simplify, simplify, simplify. My mother has very real dreams and when she awakes she frequently can't tell where the dream ends and reality begins. Yesterday she was telling everyone she was going to die last night. She didn't.

Today's first REAL beer is this:


A decent stout, but it's billed as a saison because they use Belgium dark candi sugar and French yeast. No. It's a stout. It won't be appearing in my NBS BIF #2 porch bomb, currently being assembled.


$ 2.00/12 oz can at 1000 Beers, Erie, PA

Undated can at 45 degrees into tulip, finished at 53 degrees: suggested range 45 - 55 degrees.
Aroma primarily of roasted malt with a hint of chocolate, lasts the entire glass
Head large (6 cm, aggressive pour), light brown, creamy, diminishing to 3 mm ring and layer
Lacing poor – rare small island of tiny bubbles
Body dark brown/black, opaque
Flavor of roasted malt with some fruity esters; no hops, no alcohol, no diacetyl
Palate medium to full, watery, lively carbonation

Appearance 3.75, Aroma 4, Flavor 3.75, Palate 3.5, Overall 3.75 rAvg 3.31, rDev + 14.5%

 

Berkshire Czech Pilsner

A fellow BA was kind enough to send me a couple of bottles of Berkshire Czech Pilsner.

On the bottle it states: “Berkshire uses authentic Pilsner floor malt from the Czech Republic in this classic beer Light in color, our Pilsner is dry, crisp, and pungently hopped with Czech Saaz hops to impart a rich aroma, and a subtle bitterness to the finish.” Well, it sure reads tasty!

Poured into my 17 ounce Pilsner glass:

Appearance:
This beer has a nice golden color with a big fluffy white head.

Aroma:
The initial whiffs are of bready aroma with herbal/spicy hop aroma from the Czech Saaz hops; and initially just a tiny hint of citrus/lemon from the hops. As the beer opens up there is some diacetyl present on the nose.

Taste:
The flavor follows the nose with bready malt and herbal/spicy Saaz hops flavor. There is some diacetyl which becomes more noticeable as the beer opens up; this aspect is somewhat reminiscent of Pilsner Urquell to me.

Mouthfeel
The body is a tad on the light side for a Czech Pilsner and it has a clean/crisp finish.

Overall
An enjoyable beer from Berkshire Brewing and it looks nice in my 17 ounce Pilsner Glass! For folks who are not fans of diacetyl, this may not be a beer for you but the diacetyl level is low.

@kozaka

Cheers!

 

Good day good sirs, lovely madams, mediocre lads, and so-so girls.
Overthought.

This Sunday finds me back on the island of my upbringing as I am delivering a package to my folks. One component of that package has four legs and is partial inspiration for one of my brews today (though she's not old at all, let alone really old), as I will be out of town for a number of days starting at the end of this week. My father's day present also worked out so serendipitously that I had to give it him a week and a half early. I bought myself a weatherproof bluetooth speaker brick to better facilitate my music-ing, and thought my dad might like one as well considering he works outside and that music is an integral part of his life (if I hadn't been born, he probably would still be traveling the world playing from Rio to Nanjing to Berlin). So I bought him one at the same time. I was listening to mine and he started marveling over it and talking about how much he liked it and wished he had one himself. Well, rather than risk his buying himself something similar in the intervening week, I figured I'd give it to him a little early. I hope it serves his purposes as well as I think he believes it will.
Weather has been gorgeous the last couple of days, after a couple of days of rain (we need it, even up here).

After dwelling on some dumb shit, I ultimately decided to make an appearance at a celebration at mi tios spot in honour of the happy graduates who walked yesterday. It was a perfect blend of old school island spirit buoyed by the newer generation and played out in a boisterous but self-controlled atmosphere in a slice of paradise even within the refreshing well that is the island (seriously, when you have a creative person who has a construction background and an ambitious artistic spirit designing his own place, the opportunities are amazing). Very glad I convinced myself to ignore the funk and the shroud surrounding the date and venture out.

Amazingly I imbibed in not a thing while there, but I schlepped some things up from my apartment with me specifically to share on this fine morning (even if my parents' trick refrigerator door claimed the life of one of the single-releases).

I started with one of those APAs that really begs the question of what the difference between an APA and an IPA is. Holy Mountain seems to be one of the rising stars of the Seattle beer scene, and Kiln and Cone (Batch #4) was just my second exposure to their take on this craft we all love so much. Pastel orange/gold on the pour it offers a beautiful head and lovely lacing down the glass while imparting a nose that is initially oozing juicy citrus and fruits, but which eventually comes to be dominated by a blunter edge and a grainier/paler malt profile. I was enamoured of this first stage and ok with but not as excited about the second. The flavour follows the second refrain to a T, with blunt pine and bulky bitterness balanced by the malts. The finish is long and extremely bitter, primarily that pine but with some notes of orange zest and pith helping to build said crescendo. While I enjoyed it I ONLY (ha) saw it as quite good, but can understand where some see it as excellent.

My second new beer since 6 ate seven (nine was apparently too much) is another from my voyages to the far east. Or at least as far east as THIS country goes, and really, what does the rest of it matter? Anyway. One of the brews I brought back from my trip to New England was Smuttynose's Really Old Brown Dog. I felt it was mildly appropriate for me to imbibe today as I was brining my dog back to Lopez. She's not old (13 1/2 months or so), and she's more black than brown, but she's definitely got some brown to her and she IS a dog. Plus the family's dog is really old (14 years or so) and while she may be more of a blonde-ish with her white, if I really wanted to I could claim said honey-blonde was actually just a super light brown-ish. Enough over-explanation? I agree.
ROBD is an old ale, which is a style that, per my experience, can be quite hit or miss. I've had some examples from breweries I absolutely adore that were just... feh. But when pulled off right, and when one is in the right mood, it can be quite enjoyable. Really Old Brown Dog falls more in that latter category. Though it pours a generic murky swampy light brown, it soon makes up for it with a bouquet of tart dried cherries and prunes with just enough dulling leather and withering tobacco to evoke them images of Merlin Olsen and Ron Burgundy. Drinking it brings much the same experience as they dark dried fruits still possess enough juice to lead the charge while the armchair and ancient manuscripts work with a Riesen sweet middle to allow for some altitude change when the finish recommits to the bittering side of the cherries and tobacco. I dig it.

Holy hell that is a long post. Apologies to anyone who actually stuck through all of it: that was even longer and more rambly than I normally am, which is saying something!

The song currently occupying the position of main earworm working its way through my various mater:

 

After a late night, I was able to get up decently early to see the initial entries to NBS. I even got a nice little walk in to clear the cobwebs a tad. Nothing in the way of new beers for me yet, but enjoying through others right now:

Hmmm... another want to add from a NBS post, plus the brewery looks like they might produce good stuff (low number of ratings caution aside).

This was a beer that I liked the initial sips, and slowly dropped my ratings as I worked through the beer (but still rated it pretty well). Mostly I thought that "artificial" flavor seemed like an orange liqueur was added to the beer, and the alcohol taste slowly became less appetizing. I think in the end I felt I needed another one at some point to solidify my initial thoughts versus my final thoughts.

Cheers!

 

Hello NBS...I read each weeks post but seldom do I stop in and say hello...HELLO!​

Agave Wheat - Breckenridge Brewery - 4.2 ABV​

Pours a golden orange yellow sunburst, balanced with a cloudy, hazy body. Beautiful white head with rings of white lace dancing on the glass as I empty it's contents into my mouth. Very little nose. Lemon, sour biscuit up front, overly carbonated with an acidic slightly sweet finish. I use agave in a few recipes and it's sweet presence lingers on the finish but it is very underwhelming.

I'm very disappointed, I expected a much larger flavor relationship between the wheat and the agave and they both let me down. It looks much nicer than it drinks.

Clean and refreshing, a decent summer beer for a newbie but overall...yawn...lawn...

Cheers!​

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