New Beer Sunday (week 559)

Buenos dias, NBSers. First up, this excellent Altbier from Lagunitas.



The beer is excellent - an altbier (a style I enjoy - SHOCKER), with all the estery goodness you expect from the style, and then Lagunitas kicks things up about 8 notches by dry-hopping the beer, and suddenly you've got a resiny, estery masterpiece, IMHO. It's an outstanding example of a brewer thinking outside the box and taking a very good beer and making it (very near to) world-class. If they brewed this year-round, I'd regularly have it in my beer fridge. Rated 4.19 here:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/220/189994/?ba=ovaltine

 

If I were a cat I would be purring right now.

 

Happy Birthday Sophie!!!

 

Zwet.be was really interesting. A Porter with wild yeast fermentation.

 

Well Hello NBS Faithful!!!
Greetings to All, and thanks to Maria for starting us off today.
I'm barely half way through the first page, and need to hurry up and mention a few good'uns.
I'm brewing with a buddy, so less time to elaborate. But, it sure feels good to get my boil on, so to speak.

We've enjoyed Boulevard's Dark Truth Stout. A nice one. A bit of slightly bitter coffee roast up front, with some hints of dried dark fruit coming through. Finishes with the roast bowing out a bit to let some sweet caramelly notes peek through.
I like this one. There were a few other solid offerings too (Racer 5 by Bear Republic and Goose Island's Oktoberfest), but they weren't new.

I'm hoping the Red Trolley clone we're shooting for comes out good. I'll report back in a month or so if it does. If it doesn't...Well, maybe it never happened.

 

What's up nbs players? Long hard day of drinking beers and watching football here despite getting dragged to my nephews 3 year old bday party. Cool and breezy fall day here on the island. Just about all the god damn leaves have fallen leaving a nice mess for me.

My new beer today is Hop crop, a fresh hop ipa, from Chatham Brewing here in NY. It has a canning date of 9/2/15,

The pour is a very dark amber color with very little clarity. Nose is not floral at all and pretty meager. Slight hops and malts but still very subtle. Nice and hoppy right upfront on the drinking with a firm malt balance that seems to add to a smooth and soapy finish. Tangy fruity notes come on the more I drink it.

Overall, a pretty average/below average beer at best. The taste is pretty good but that's about it and I'm not sure if that's just because I'm a tad drunk to begin with. I'm in the low 3's all around.

 

You left out the gutters to clean... otherwise... :-)

 

Back with another new one tonight thanks to @egrace84.

I'm inching closer to my 1000th beer, and have picked out a nice one from Central Waters for the occasion on a future NBS...

This one is Oso's Grandpa's Got A Gun - a strong ale with maple and aged in brandy barrels.

First off, the name is perfect, and I loved the story of the side of the bottle (pic below).

This is right up my alley, a nice combination of maple and brown sugar with dark fruits and just a hint of alcohol heat. Listed as a strong ale, but could easily pass as an English barleywine. Might need to track down something else from these guys.







http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/16386/167025/?ba=richj1970

 

Greetings, all! We had a fairly nice weekend, and even got some sunshine this afternoon. A similar scene played out here as was no doubt playing out all over the region, as the neighborhood was buzzing with the sound of leaf blowers. I always enjoy the first round of the year, because you don't have to be too thorough; there are still plenty of leaves on the trees, and you'll just have to be out there soon enough again anyway. Today was just a nice time playing with power tools in the breezy sunshine.

Still, I did manage to get a lot of leaves to the curb, so I think I deserve a treat! Here's Dogfish Head's Higher Math, their 20th anniversary brew:


I have to be in a whimsical mood for these kinds of beers, and this one just happened to catch me at the right time. My main beer goal this week was to try to drink down the fridge before really starting to stock up again, so picking up a 'unique' bottle or so is all I was really interested in when the beer guy put it in my hands; right place/right time and all that .

So, anyway, just how is this 17% chocolate-cherry blonde ale? The nose is intriguing- very fruity yet delicate right from the start. Cherries are right up front, naturally, but there are also some berries and dark fruit supporting them. The chocolate is very subdued, not even as potent as the spiciness from the yeast, but it is noticeable. After a bit of swirling I get some warming alcohol bubbling to the surface. I really dig it so far, allowing the cherries to be the star of the show, with everything else serving as accents or support.

First sip...and everything turns into a confused mess, clashes dominating. First of all, it's much richer than the nose suggested. Then, the spicy accents weren't happy being in the background any longer; then the alcohol fired its way forward, and the cocoa and fruit weren't playing nicely at all. The gentle harmony suggested by the aroma had disappeared.

But, hey, you never know. I've been down this road before; sometimes it takes a few sips for one's palate to become acclimated to everything being thrown at it.

Sure enough, by the third or fourth sip I'm getting a rich, chocolate dessert beer with the cherries playing the supporting role. A true reversal of poles. I think it really helped that I adjusted to the yeasty spiciness and it doesn't seem as out of place as it did on my first sip. I'm about halfway through, and will be getting enough enjoyment out of it to look forward to the remainder. I'd prefer the beer that the nose suggested, but this is turning out to be pretty ok in the end. B for effort (3.5).

 

#2, this excellent brown ale from Toppling Goliath (they do know more than hops, apparently).



4.17/5 rDev +5.6%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.25

Look: rich mahogany brown, less than one finger of tan head, a gorgeous brown ale.

Smell: lots of toffee, some chocolate and caramel.

Taste: waves of toffee at first taste, then dark chocolate and caramel. Magnificent.

Feel: a boisterous feel to this brown, it's bubbly and spry on the tongue.

Overall: Tumbler is my favorite brown ale, and this is equal to Tumbler, IMHO. If you like browns, which I do, seek this out. It's an excellent example of the style.

 

New Beer Sunday: An English-style Brown Ale.

Evenin' NBSers, with special greetings to all those friendly fans of flavorful lower ABV beers.

Well some yard and leaf work is finished, some guttering is cleaned out, and the weather to do it cooperated beautifully. The brewer of tonight's new beer tells us that it pairs well with wood-splitting, leaf-raking, and pumpkin carving. Well I've no wood to spit, the time for carving pumpkins has passed, so that left only leaf-raking and one out of three ain't too bad.

This evening's new beer is the Long Trail Harvest Barn Ale, a beer from Vermont that is not loaded with hops ( ) but does use a local ingredient from Vermont, Maple Syrup, which adds its own unique flavor to the mix. During this season of the year lots of us tend to associate "harvest ale" with wet hops and sort of forget that lots of other crops are harvested in the fall and that for the folks in some areas fall harvest involves a lot of hard work. The brewery intends this beer to celebrate the harvest season in general.

As usual my review (which is subject to change until the beer is finished) is to be found here:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/94/272/?ba=drtth

On the whole I'm enjoying this beer quite a bit since it is a lot of what an English-style Brown Ale should be. There's complex malt flavors, just a touch of bitterness and the Maple Syrup is handled "delicately" so that you can tell its in there but it's not so strong you want it to end soon. Rather, this seems a really nice beer to serve/have more than one of during an evening with good friends and good conversation. As I indicated earlier in the day I've not had a long trail beer in quite a while (about 5 years and its been 6 since I enjoyed my way through a case of their Double Bag), but I've already put this one on my shopping list for next fall in time for the pumpkin carving and leaf season. (Being a suburbanite, I'll leave the wood splitting to others.... )

 

Now up Weyerbacher Tiny, pretty tasty, a little boozy.
4.09/5 rDev +4.6%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

12 oz bottle, dated 5/29/15, poured into a tulip

A, pitch black with a two finger mocha head.

S- Chocolate, coffee, some hints of dark fruit, bananas, some alcohol.

T- Dark chocolate, some dark fruits, coffee, bananas, some alcohol, decently balanced.

M- Medium to full body, alcohol is fairly noticeable.

O- Yeast dominates this beer, a good take on an imperial stout. Worth picking up, a little boozy, but would probably be great in barrels.

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Greetings All:

Checking in from the great northwest with a pretty good beer form the north east.

Sam Adams Hoppy Red.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/35/183489/

A nice red. We have some nice red ales out west as well. But this one is good. I wish I could get it outside the fall sampler.

Rainy and cool on a weekend when the Seahawks have a bye and fall chores were the order of the weekend.

Until next time,

Happy Trails!