New Beer Sunday (week 547)

One more to finish another NBS. Shared this with my bro on a warm humid day along the southern shore. A bomber of Pipeworks Citra Saison with no batch code or apparent bottle date. The abv. on the label is 7.0%.

It pours a hazy pale yellow with minimal white foam. The aroma is citric in nature with earthy undertones. It has a flavor of lemongrass with a crisp dry citric finish. The body is thin and crushable despite the 7.0 abv. for the style. A good enough beer for a hot day but nothing earth shattering. My score was 3.92 / rDev 0.5%.



Here's the full review, have a great week.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/28178/130728/?ba=Prager62

 

Love how you really detailed your experience @ONovoMexicano It's amazing how our senses of smell and taste are inexrtricably linked yet we can have an experience like yours...Smells like "pissy and baby diaperish" while everything else about the beer stuns- in a positive way. Thanks for the read.

 

New IPA Sunday (sort of): Sixpoint Bengali

Evenin' NBSers with some special greetings for all you Hop Bine Huggers.

Weather here today was sunny with temps in the low 90s but no where near as high as some have mentioned. Mostly the wife and I spent the day organizing the house to prepare for some family visitors showing up on Tuesday. (Especially since we needed to do a bit of baby-proofing. :-)) We also got in a fairly extensive grocery shopping trip to be sure the cupboard had at least some of the foods, etc. preferred by our guests.

This evening's new IPA (sort of) is the Sixpoint Bengali. As usual my review (which is subject to change until I've finished the beer) appears here:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/10607/122334/?ba=drtth

I say "sort of" about this beer being a new beer because it is or it isn't depending on your perspective. One of the first markets Sixpoint expanded into was the Philly area and I first had the Bengali Tiger on tap at lunch at one of my favorite places in the city for a reasonable lunch and a flavorful beer within easy walking distance of the office. That beer was quite good in its incarnation as Bengali Tiger and one of the servers told me that the keg kicked faster than any she could remember while working there.

In those days we could do a second review of a different serving type and it wasn't all that long after having Bengali Tiger on tap that the canning (and contract brewing) of Bengali Tiger started. This led to a thread on here claiming that the beer wasn't as good canned as it had been in the keg (apparently people felt that it was inferior because of a brewing location outside of Brooklyn). So to test that out for myself, I went out and found a pack of the canned version (that was supposed to be inferior) and did a second review. Frankly, I couldn't detect any meaningful reason to think the fresh canned version was noticably different or inferior to the kegged beer. (BTW, that second review is the review of the Tiger that survived one of the site changes where reviews by serving type were no longer treated as being different so the first one was just deleted.)

Anyway, presumably the Bengali IPA is a transformed Bengali Tiger. Its nicely done in that the flavors are all definitely in there and all of them play well with each other and as a team. Better than the Tiger? Worse than the Tiger? Not that I can tell with my last Tiger being a long ways back in time.

This evening's music on the player is several miscellaneous pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach. All nicely structured like a good IPA, with components that just go well together. Also, in the spirit of enjoying something that has been transformed for presentation to an audience one of those Bach pieces is called Air on the G String. It was not originally written for the G string but a 19th Century violinist did some transformation and rearranging to produce this version. It was given the name Air on the G String because in its more modern form the violin part can be played entirely on the G String.



Cheers, all!

 

Welcome aboard.

 

Cosmik Debris an 8.3 percent DIPA from Creature Comforts with Simcoe, Amarillo, Citra, and Columbus hops.

Poured from a howler. Golden color and nice head with good lacing. Nice fruity aroma with some melon and pineapple. Taste follows the nose. Relatively dry finish with slight alcohol burn. Nice DIPA.

 

Back with another new beer, from a Portland-based brewery that is also new to me. At 5% abv, it could be called a "light" saison, and was brewed with rhubarb:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/33058/179617/?ba=woemad

It's good, but the body and mouthfeel are a little flabby. I'm generally pro-saison, but I'm finding it a little bit "meh."

 

Inadvertently ended up stocking up my fridge pretty good tonight -- while on a trip over to Kroger after work, I had planned on maybe buying a single bottle or two if they had anything new or interesting in the discounted beer bin, and was just about to do that (they had the bin crammed full of Torpedo bottles for barely over a dollar each, and they were much fresher than the two bottles of Torpedo I had before -- and I've been wanting to try that one again fresher, so yeah.)

But then I noticed that New Belgium and Devil's Backbone both had their fall variety packs in the refrigerated beer section, and on top of that they were both discounted to $13.99 from the usual price of somewhere in the 16-18 range. So... rather than just one or two bottles, I ended up with a variety 12-pack. XD

And then had to carry it aaaaaall the way back to where I had parked, probably a quarter-mile away. Yeah, I really did not plan on buying that much beer, but it was hard to pass up that kind of price on a newly-released variety pack, especially when Kroger's prices for them are usually much higher.

Anyway, here's my first new beer from the pack:


Hoptober, a golden ale and the "revival beer" of the pack, originally from 2009. Interesting to see a "hop pun" name that's not on an IPA -- though perhaps somewhere in the pale ale family, as the information on the side lists 40 IBU among the variety of hops and malts included. Speaking of which, the description of all the different malts and hops that went into this beer sounds really, really good. "Pale and wheat malt are mashed with rye and oats to create a medium-bodied ale with a creamy mouth feel. Centennial, Cascade, Sterling, Willamette and Glacier hops form a bonfire of citrus notes, fruity cheers and a bold finale." I know I like rye in beer, and most of the wheat beers I've had I liked also, and though I'm not sure about oats they at least sound like they'd be good in beer. Plus, that's a lot of different hops, some of which I don't think I've ever had (Glacier?) Hopefully this is as tasty as it sounds.

It certainly looks nice -- I don't think I've had a single beer from New Belgium that I would describe as not looking great. Nice golden color, clear, tons of tiny little bubbles streaming up from the bottom non-stop. Nice layer of white foam on top which shrinks into a thin layer on top and a thicker ring around the edge after a few minutes, but is definitely still present (and even leaves a few traces behind here and there as it shrinks.) Smell is also really nice -- fruity, bread-crusty, and occasionally I get hints of spiciness and piney hops in there too. Actually, maybe more like cedar than pine? There's a little hint of something coniferous in there, at least.

First sip -- I'm noticing that this just feels really nice going down, I almost want to describe the mouthfeel as "soft." Like, it's bubbly but doesn't come across as being at all fizzy or prickly. I noticed this with Sierra Nevada's new Oktoberfest recently also -- just very easy to drink quickly. This is at the same ABV% as that one too, now that I think about it. Tastes nice also. Fairly mild flavors overall, at least on the first sip, but there's a nice bready kind of thing in there as well as a fruity flavor that reminds me a bit of peaches. Maybe a bit of rye spiciness in there too, I'm noticing on the second sip. Bitterness is pretty low, and what's there just blends in so well with the peach-like fruity flavors and reminds me of the inner bits of a peach where it's a little more bitter/sour tasting, near where the pit is. There is a little bit of a leafy sort of hop bitterness starting to become detectable now that I'm around the middle of the glass; overall flavor is definitely still leaning toward bread-crust and peach/almost-bitter-fruity as the primary things, though. Burps definitely have that pine/cedar kind of thing going on, though. There's a nice little lingering breadiness that comes in a while after swallowing, once the little bitterness and peachy flavor have faded away, that's just a bit different from the other bready flavors present.

Overall, this is a pretty nice beer! Maybe not quite as amazingly delicious as the description on the side of the bottle sounded, but honestly not too far off. The breadiness, peachy/fruitiness, and slight spiciness in there is a really nice combination of flavors/smells for sure. I've found that I generally like my hoppy beers to also have some nice malt flavors in them too, and this definitely falls into that category -- there's a lot of different things going on in there, and I wonder if maybe this will end up being one of those beers where I'm able to pick up more of the different flavors better on my second, or third, or fourth bottle.

 

On the plus side, I think pee is the preferable pup-produced by-product. Cute little rascal, BTW.

 

Now up Narragansett Lovecraft Honey Ale, is really sweet and could use more balance. Not a good beer but not really a bad beer either.
3.49/5 rDev +6.7%
look: 4.25 | smell: 3.25 | taste: 3.5 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.5

16 oz can pouring to pint glass

A- A clear amber color with a lager off white head.

S- Sweet, honey, sweet grains, floral notes, light fruits, this a sweet smelling beer.

T- Sweet, honey, caramel malts, sugary finish, floral/herbal hops, slightly fruity. There is almost a sweet tea but not as good.

M- Sweet finish make this a little hash, medium body.

O- This beer is sweet, really feel like they should have added more hops for balance. Really like the idea of this beer, but the sweetness almost at the levels of wort. (529 characters)

 

Good evening NBS, hop everyone is enjoying the end of the weekend once again. Thanks to @cavedave for getting us rolling today. Not much going on here. Need to finish up a work presentation for tuesday ASAP, and yesterday was the MI Homebrew fest which was always fun. I didn't enter anything to the competition this year, but definitely a few next year. I bottled a barleywine 3 weeks ago that will be a prime candidate for judging IMO. Will have to decide on other things to make til then, I have plenty of time haha.

Here are today's new beers!

This finallly showed up, been waiting for 2-3 weeks at least. This is a great Oktoberfest! This one is in the paler category than last years version; color is brilliant golden amber, vs last years deep copper. Aromas and flavors of honey, toast, biscuit, light nuttiness, herbal, grass, light pepper, and yeast earthiness. Light earthy/spicy balancing bitterness on the finish. Great robust malt flavors with nice moderate earthy hop character. Super smooth with a fair amount of bready creaminess in the mouthfeel. Super clean lagering, no off flavors or esters. My opinions about this one and last years are pretty much the same. This still delivers all of the spot on expectation for the style; with plenty of robustness and malt complexity even for the paler colored malt profile. I bought an impulse 6 pack for good reason. 4.1


Very nice Belgian amber ale. Aromas and flavors of apricot, strawberry, plum, pear, apple, pepper, clove, caramel, toast, biscuit, brown sugar, brown bread, light chocolate/nuttiness, herbal, and yeast earthiness. Moderate amount of yeast spiciness on the finish; with great all around balance between malt and yeast flavors. Very impressive malt complexity along with the unique yeast fruitiness of this one. Medium carb/body; very smooth with a fair amount of bready creaminess in the mouthfeel. They certainly didn't go light on the munich malt in there. Really well done all around. 3.9


Fantastic DIPA! Aromas and flavors of huge juicy grapefruit, tangerine, pineapple, mango, melon, peach, berries, lemon/orange peel, and piney hop character; with some moderate malts of honey and lightly toasted bread with dank floral/grassy hop earthiness. Fair amount of pine/grassy bitterness on the finish; with overall very well balanced bitterness/sweetness. Not all too much actual malt character in flavors; mostly just juicy/complexity hop flavors in character. Super smooth drinking, pretty much zero alcohol present for 8%. This is absolutely delicious. 4.3


Cheers! Have a good night NBS.

 

Hello late night new beer folks. Long day visiting with lots of my wife's kin, and the day is winding down. We are "camping" with the RV parked in my father in law's driveway this weekend, and lots of folks coming and going today.

My new beer is Aphrodite, a stout that typically sits on the shelf next to the Peche Mortel at the local bottle shop:



Pours black with a tan head that disappeared quickly



Some lace as liquid reduced, no cap, and good carbonation. The aroma was mostly roasted malt with just a whiff of vanilla; a little chocolate too as it continued to warm. Flavors of cocoa powder, roasted malt and a little creamy vanilla; there is bittersweet dark chocolate in the middle; the "toastyness" becomes the finish. Smooth light mouthfeel, and a dry roasted malt tongue coating. Overall a lite easy drinking stout with a bittersweet dark chocolate/roasty linger. I'd give it just under a 4 overall.

 

Just caught up with all the posts, after spending time with family and giving them a few new beers to see if any sparked their interest. Brother-in-law ordered Sam Oktoberfest at dinner, so was interested in his thoughts on Sierra Nevada's version. He was happy when I said I'd think he'd be able to find some.

Ha-I can see yet again where having a tasting in person is better. I wasn't thinking about it at the time, so I don't recall, but had someone mentioned it being boozy to me while I was drinking it, I would have considered it. Interesting whipped cream reference would've been fun to look for as well.

 

Unibroue: Maudite


4.02/5 rDev -3.4%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Reddish brown opaque liquid with a huge cream colored head that unfortunately is quite short lived . A smells of spices and dark fruits and belgian yeast. Taste of sweet sugars and spices leading off but then turns to a slight sour on finish but nothing overpowering on either end. Mouth feel is highly carbonated with a slight warm after taste.

 

I almost forgot to include my 3rd new beer today!!! From Keuka Brewing in NY, I had a Hoppy Laker. The aroma had some citrus and a very defined malt profile with a grain/hay and even bread quality to it. The taste reminded me a bit of the old food pyramid in that the base definitely was the malt backbone and then on top of that came the hops which weren't bursting or popping out but certainly present but almost seemingly came in spurts. Overall I enjoyed it but not sure if I would necessarily crave it.

 

Welcome to NBS =)

 

Onto a ATG Mac Fanny Baw.

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/26850/91910/?ba=cindyjeffsmith