New Beer Sunday (week 550)

You know you can't ever win those "discussions"

 

glad you came through with a post.. as i sat here running food costs i figured i would take a break and scope out this weeks story, but to no avail until now. Bittersweet as it were, I didn't realize it had been a year for your loss today. have one for him, im sure he would want you to. 'forever young'

 

What's up nbs players. Labor day weekend in full effect and just straight killing it here on the island. Summer seems to be coming to an end but I think I've got a few more beach weeks to go. Spent the day a the beach, of course, and now relaxing and about to fire up the grill for some dinner.

My new beer is Oscillation 001 IPA from Finback brewing co. Pretty cool to see this in cans and for what has really become an explosion of nyc craft brewers over the past few years.

The pour is an amber/orange color with hazy clarity. The nose tells of citrus, lemon, and grass. Not terribly floral at all. The drinking starts out very dry with heaps of hops on the finish. Very smooth all around with tones of pine, resin, and citrus. A definite malt back bone really seems to give it some sweetness. The flavors seem to really be all over the place. I get very earthy tones as well as the citrus fruity ones. Really has more of a west coast feel to me.

Overall, this beer is good but not great. I really want to love it but it seems to be just a jumbled mess of styles. I'm in the 3.5/4 range but I will submit an actual review later tonight.

 

New Scottish/Orcadian Ale Sunday

Happy NBS everyone! For my first new beer of the day, I had one that I've been waiting to try for a while, Orkney Brewery's Dark Island Reserve: http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/118/40573/?ba=bluejacket74





I thought it was pretty good. It's a nice Whisky barrel aged brew, but with it being aged just 3 months the barrel flavor is noticeable but not very strong. Still, I'm glad I picked this one up. I'll be back on here later with another new beer, cheers!

 

Third beer of the day 4 Hands Cuvee Ange, a little overpriced, but pretty good.

3.98/5 rDev -0.3%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

500 ml bottle, 2015, poured into a tulip

A- A hazy ruby red with and brown tint and and off-white head.

S- Raspberries with a jam like sweetness, sour cherries, blackberries, some funk, touch of oak, some red wine.

T- Tart fruits, mix of cherries, blackberries and some raspberries, some red wine/grape skins, finish is oaky, bitter, earthy, and a little funky. Taste is decently sour then turns to be more wine like.

M- Light body, nice carbonation.

O- A decent sour, with it was fruitier and more sour. Feel like this could maybe benefit from time to let the yeast to its thing and maybe a bigger base beer. (616 characters)

 

NBS, part II

Terrapin Hopsecutioner - Terrapin Beer Company, Athens, GA

4.32/5 rDev +13.4%
look: 4 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.25

Hopsecutioner is a slightly hazy, pale amber beer that sports a thick, lingering fluffy just-a-bit-off-white head that leaves moderate amounts of lacing. Its nose is big: mostly pineapple, resinous pine and floral notes, with lesser amounts of bright citrus and some boozy undertones. Up front, the palate is bitter pineapple and citrus; by midpalate a slightly-toasted, slightly-sweet bready malt foundation shows through, balancing the flavor through the end; the hops flavor broadens to include the pine and floral notes from the nose. The finish is quite clean, with just a hint of pine left behind; this is quickly joined by a moderate hoppy bitterness that lingers a few moments. Mouthfeel is a bit bigger than might be expected from the light/medium body, and the texture is creamy and smooth. This is a very well-balanced, drinkable IPA. (845 characters)

OldManMetal, 5 minutes ago



Will drink again.

 

Back for another that I'm sharing at my bro's. A collaboration with 350 Brewing and Hailstorm appropriately named Howdy Neighbor as they're located a stones throw from one another. It's a strawberry lemon Kolsch with a bottle date of 08/11/15 and an abv. of 5.2%.

Pours a beautiful reddish gold with generous white foam. A mild aroma of strawberry and lemon. The flavor is mild strawberry with a hint of lemon in the finish. It has the typical thin but refreshing feel for the style.







Overall a nice beer on a hot finish to summer. I don't mind these once in a while as a change of pace, but don't actively seek them out. Kind of humorous that they sealed it in pink glittery wax.

Link to review.....

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/34112/186999/?ba=Prager62

 

Well a good long day coming to an end. And new beer #3 today what the hell. Left work around 5 had a couple leipZinger gose on the way home, now I'm enjoying this waiting for dinner to grill up. Got this courtesy of the same friend that brought my first 2 new beers this morning.

Look. A nice shade of golden red ? Smell like an IPA but can says ohh hoppy red ale misse that part. Taste is prett good a nice hop up front gives way to a decen ale on the finish glad I tried... Again maybe probably not... Good but not my style. Damon I wish Pipeworks would come to CT cause I've had quite a few of there beers and they've all been pretty damn good. See y'all nnext weekend I'm out of new beer for today. (But not outa beer)

 

well here is my ribs all done, smoked to perfection, and a DIPA to wash them down with, and then tonight sitting in my backyard, a 22 oz'er of wootstout!

the DIPA here is no special treat, too much malt, not nearly enough citrus for me, but I will soldier on and drink it anyways, dreaming of that wootstout later, until next sunday, I say salute!

 

New... erm... Nordic Pale Ale that Seems Like a Gruit Sunday?

I don't often drink new beers on Sundays but when I do, I know just where to go. And here we are on this not-at-all-muggy Boston evening staring down a new brew: Hay Is for Horses by Cambridge Brewing Co. Based on a recipe derived from a past collaboration with a Danish and a Belgian brewery, CBC calls it a "Nordic pale ale with hay and oats." (No horse blanket, but it's still quite warm out so I suppose that would be unnecessary.) It was also brewed with timothy and yarrow and, yes, this drinks like a fairly robust gruit. Pale malts, grassiness, a touch of sweetness, and a sort of bright herbal quality. A bit weird but quite likable at about 5.5% abv.

Bleakies Tested, Equine Approved.



Have a happy Labor Day, folks. Fire your boss.

 

Some of their beers are brewed in Connecticut here in New England

 

New American Belgian Strong Dark Ale Style Sunday (week 550)

Good evening fellow NBSers from on the ridge in Mid Hud Val, NY. Crazy day at work, four hours that seemed like twelve. Likely I will dream of cardboard tonight. Highlight of the day was folding up a 12' x 12' cardboard photo of Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow to fit into the cardboard roll off.

Homegrown white eggplants with roasted peppers for supper. This beer is kicking my ass. 13+% ABV and doesn't taste it a bit. Yodel ay ee hoo! That is all. Hope you also have a Great American Beer in your glass. Cheers!

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/27917/131199/?ba=cavedave

 

Last weekend, my little sister let me have one of each beer from the Newcastle variety pack we picked up to refill her fridge back home. Now I'm getting around to the third of those beers:



Newcastle / Caledonian British Pale Ale. Like the session IPA from the same pack, this is apparently a collaboration beer.

Color is pretty dark for something called a "pale" ale -- sort of on the border between orange and brown. It's pretty clear, though dark enough that it's hard to see the rising bubbles without the help of some source of light (with some help from my phone's screen, I can see that there's a decent number of them rising up all the time.) Not a huge amount of foam on top, and what was there shrank into a thin coating on the surface of the beer pretty quickly, with a thicker ring around the outside edge. As I'm drinking some, the foam is leaving some pretty substantial trails down the side.

Smell is... mostly just a "beery" sort of smell right off, but with a bit of a caramely thing coming in toward the end. On a second sniff, I'm getting a bit more of a buttery, biscuity sort of smell and... actually, this is smelling a whole lot like the session IPA from the same pack, but with less of the hops. Huh.

The taste is... a bit weird. The first sip has all of the same things I was getting from the smell, but with a strange sort of bitter, almost medicinal-seeming aftertaste that's hanging around in my mouth long after the other flavors have faded away. Thankfully, that flavor is not as strong on the second sip as it was on the first, but it's still there and still very strange. That aftertaste is shifting a bit toward just being a little bitter and leafy rather than weird and medicinal as I drink more of this, but still, just a really odd flavor overall. As with the smell, it seems a whole lot like the session IPA I had from that pack, except with less hop flavors present.

Mouthfeel is also odd -- a lot lighter than you'd expect it to be going by what it looks like, and very fizzy. Almost too fizzy. The fizz and that lingering bitterness on the end combine in a not-so-great way. Well, at least on the first few sips; around the halfway mark it seems that the fizz is calming down a bit which makes the mouthfeel of it more pleasant.

I'm just about at the half-a-glass point on this one, and so far... this has definitely been my least favorite of the three from that pack (a bit surprised to see it's rated the highest of the three on here!) What I'm tasting here isn't really matching up much with the description on the back of the bottle, either -- there is some "herbal bitterness" in there, but none of the other things described (like a "sweet, citrus hop aroma" or "woody/spicy" flavors) are really coming through at all. Maybe that pack was just a bit old, so some of the hop-derived features of the beer have faded away with age? I've found what I assume is the bottled-on or best-by information, but... it's a code (L505082659, with an 06 on a second line) rather than a readable date so I'm not sure what the heck it means.

I'm thinking I'll slow down a bit, cook some supper, and see if this one improves as it warms up a little. As-is it's not bad, but it definitely isn't impressing me much either.

 

Haha, stinkhorns are so cool. We have ones even more phallic than that one, gotta laugh when you see em. (I am called shroomer Dave by some folks)

 

I think the cedar reference, burnt or not, opened up a new way of describing happy embers for me. Thanks . Ok-had to do as edit: hoppy ambers (stupid autocorrect doesn't know me yet.

I did a side-by-side of SN with Ayinger and ended up enjoying the latter a bit more for the reasons you mentioned in your review. Can't wait fir your thoughts on the "others".

 

Good to read your reviews again.

 

Stone Thunderstruck IPA .... went into the beer store today looking for Founders Harvest Ale, but they didn't have it, so tried a bottle of this instead, well I think we have another top notch IPA from Stone, they know hoppy beers, really enjoying the flavor of this one and like this is strong but not too high of ABV as packs a lot of flavor

 

New Baltic Porter Sunday: Sixpoint 4beans.

Evenin NBSers with special greetings to all you lovers of practical perfect porters.

Been a wonderful day here in SE PA today with comfortable temperatures and humidity and not much to do except enjoy the weather, take care of a few odd jobs, and finish off Labor Day preparations. Lots of folks from this area are "down the shore" for the official last weekend of the summer season so every place we've been to for some last minute shopping has not been crowded and there haven't been any lines.

This evening's new beer is the 4beans Baltic Porter from Sixpoint and I'm thinking at this point that it well deserves all the praise its been getting. Lots of coffee and chocolate flavor with a bit of sweetness and vanilla foating around in the background. Fortunately I found a 4 pack and will be having another as fall moves in to take over the weather.

As usual my review is in progress here:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/10607/183169/?ba=drtth

and is subject to revision until I've finished the beer.

Periodically on this site we see/hear people spend a good amount of time complaining about how expensive this beer hobby of ours can get. As I mentioned some weeks back on an NBS, one of my other hobbies is using fountain pens both for taking notes and for sending occasional hand written notes to family and friends. I thought some of you might be interested in seeing a report on a just how expensive a hobby such as fountain pen collecting can become. Personally, after watching the video I'll not be complaining about costs of beer and expect to be able to point out to family (especially the wife ) and friends that if they think my beer budget is high, they should see how much another active hobby of mine might cost (if I could afford to indulge).



Cheers, all!

 

Blondibock
Mammoth Brewing Company
Bock / 8.00% ABV
3.89/5 rDev -4.2% | rAvg: 4.06
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 3.75

500 ml bottle poured into a tulip glass
A: Pours a hazy dark orange with a white head, not much head retention, decent amount of carbonation, looks a little thin for 8%.

A: Vanilla bomb, lots of vanilla, bourbon, toffee, very sweet, not getting much else, some alcohol on the nose, pretty bright aromas, bourbon really shines through.

T: Like the nose, a hit of vanilla, toffee, and bourbon, slight bitterness in the middle, slight finish with caramel malts coming through, lots of vanilla and bourbon, overwhelms the other characteristics.

M: Medium mouthfeel, bourbon adds some heat, semidry finish, fairly easy drinking.

O: I thought the bourbon and vanilla came through really good, however, I would to have the bock's characteristics come through, but they were overwhelmed by the bourbon, enjoyable, but could have been better with some depth and complexity, with some age it might change.

Pretty cool cap