New Beer Sunday (Week 599)

Onward to my second new beer of the day. Looks like Stone is doing well in NBS, so I will ad to it.

On to my third Enjoy By variant. Poured 12oz bottle into snifter. A clear dark gold with streams of bubbles ascending to the 3 finger white head. Retention is amazing and leaves a cap with very thick lacing on my glass. Aroma is very fruity with some nice citrus and dank hops. Sweet tropical notes. Flavor is more tropical and juicy with faint notes of pine and a bitter finish. Feel is medium with an oily feel, but slightly dry on the finish. Not too different from Enjoy By.

 

Back with the first beer of the day, courtesy of @beertunes, an Oyster Stout (the beer, not beertunes) from Blaine, Washington, the last town one passes through on I-5 before entering Canada. My only memory of being in Blaine comes from June, 1994, when on my way to B.C. Place Stadium to see these guys:

(The clip's from London; couldn't find one from the show I was at)
There were so many people heading up to the show, the border guards were waving through anyone not actually pointing a weapon out the door or visibly shooting up, and it still took forever to get across. One of the people in the car I was driving (there were 8 of us fools spread across two cars) got out and smoked a cigarette while able to casually stroll alongside the car, traffic was moving so slow.


The beer (my 1300th rated, per BA. Woo hoo! or something) is only the second Oyster Stout I've ever had. Like the first, it's a fairly subtle affair, but this is still quite enjoyable to drink, and could be Exhibit A in the argument that stouts don't have to be big, barrel-aged booze bombs to be enjoyable, flavorful beers. Per the label, Atwood brews this beer two miles from the oyster beds the oysters used in it came from, so I'd say they're keeping things local.

EDIT: Whoops, here's the review:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/45649/237100/?ba=woemad#review

Only other new beer is from the same box this came in, a big, BA stout, and I'm not sure I'll hit that today or not.

 

I'll let this next one warm as well, then .

I did actually post a review of Sly Fox's Grisette as a palate cleanser as I read some posts. Today's now completed batch of beer was a SMaSH with Golden Promise and Chinook, while Friday's was with Centennial. My brewing process is not that fine tuned, so there are likely enough brewing differences that will lead to differences in the beer as much as the simple difference in hops. I did get a slightly better yield on this batch, but it is still going to be below intended ABV.

Now on to my last Tired Hands beer (likely for a while given what I understand about their popularity), Technicolor Splendor, a Double IPA.


Pours a little "dirtier" than the Alien Church, with about the same amount of initial head.

The nose finally shows the fruit and yeast that I have been expecting from these brews. Granted, I only have one brewery that I am using as a "similar style" to compare to in these beers, but the nose on this is more like what I am familiar with. An tropical orange juice blend hits my nose with a definite but subtle yeast note (think maybe fresh sourdough without the sour notes). Then there's a that what-I-have-been-calling woody note that has been a thread through these three brews.


Taste starts with the same nice tropical orange note I got in the nose, no surprises here. That woody note comes right along and brings balancing bitterness. Even more than the last beer, it brings a coconut flavor with it that adds to the tropical smoothy impression I am getting with this beer. Very smooth and soft, the feel of this beer fools me into ignoring the bitterness that is definitely there as I feel it building upon my tongue later into the glass.


Of the three beers from @CanConPhilly, this is the one I feel is most similar to the Aslin beers I have to compare to. The soft, creamy smoothness makes both breweries beers different than a similar tasting and soft (yet not creamy smooth) beer from RaR, OTC (or OTC Prescriptions, a beer brewed with/for Max's Taphouse), what I also feel is in the NE IPA realm.

This is my favorite of the bunch (and the GF's as well). Of the other two, I rated the Alien Church higher, but I feel I might enjoy the boldness of the D2H3 Galaxy almost as much.

 

Happy New American IPA Sunday!

Very nice sunny, low 80s day here on the Western Slopes. Did a nice little hike earlier. Having a pretty tasty brew. Seems that this brewery does not get that much love, I always love to have a new brew from them whenever available.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/14400/229494/?ba=Wasatch#review

Cheers!

 

Hello NBS'ers! I need to apologize again for my absence over the past few weeks, but hey, nobody's perfect, right? Down to business. I have for some weird reason been unable to obtain Aecht Schlenkerla Eiche. I was fortunate enough to have it one time in Bamberg, Germany, but that was over six years ago. Never had an issue grabbing their Lager or Marzen, but this one has eluded me for some time...until now! So here it goes:

Aecht Shlenkerla Eiche
Smoked Doppelbock
8.0% abv


Appearance: When held up to light, it shows a wonderful garnet color with a touch of brown. A thin khaki head dissipates quickly, but lingers just around the rim of the glass.

Aroma: Instantly blessed by campfire goodness, filling the air noticeable 3 feet in any direction (does fade...or I just got used to it ). Also smells slightly medicinal, but can also detect a pleasant, yet faint, caramel and bready scent fighting its way through all that smoked oak.

Flavor: I suspected the flavor to be dominated by the smoke (and it is), but I actually taste a strong resemblance to honey glazed ham as the sweetness showcases itself more than the other Rauchbiers I have had. The oak is noticeable as well.

Feel: Unique. Starts thin, but is rich, and leaves a resin like oiliness that coats the mouth to mouth and lingers. Also, surprisingly balanced. Not too sweet, not too bitter, just well rounded.

Overall: I believe I have found my new favorite from Schlenkerla! But who knows...every time I have one, I have the urge to revisit the others, and the circle of favoritism cointinues.

Cheers, and Happy Sunday!

(Special mention to @TongoRad . The last time he had this beer posted, I believe I complained to him about my local nonavailability.)

 

New DIPA Sunday





Bell's The Oracle

'Sup, BAs?

The Oracle pours a hazy apricot-orange color with a finger of off-white head that leaves very thick lacing.

It's got a sweet, caramel-and-butterscotch aroma with some orange and other mixed fruit behind (pineapple, grapefruit, tangerine, apple -- all very mild). Smells creamy, almost like a fruit-flavored Werther's Original.

At first, the taste is nothing like the nose suggests, just a straight-up bitter hop assault from the initial sip through the aftertaste when served cold. Sure, there's some pine, a little citrus and a nutty malt impression, but it's underneath the bitterness -- very much like a ground-up bitter pill taste. Not so good.

As it warms, the malt sweetness and orangey characteristics appear; it's still very bitter, but in a much more enjoyable way.

Medium bodied with very strong carbonation that helps the bitterness linger when cold, and becomes softer and more pillowy when warm.

This was pretty awful straight from the fridge, but tastes delicious once it warms. Generally, I like to taste a beer cold and see how it changes as it warms. If I ever get this again, I'll make sure it's no colder than cellar temperature before serving.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

 

More beer.

Tangerine Haze | Stillwater Artisanal Ales


Stillwater Artisinal Ales - Tangerine Haze by imbibehour, on Flickr

Poured from the bottle into a Spiegelau IPA glass.

Opaque and glowing apricot orange and lemon yellow body. Hazy and cloudy but not really into turbid mush territory. White head, only about three fingers with little retention. Settles to a thin puck, no lacing and simple collar, and then to nothing.

Quite a mix of aromas on the nose. Slightly hinting funk with quite a sense more of tropical than citrus qualities. Has that classic juicy quality on the nose, but also a sense more of pineapple flavors than tangerine. Decent sensing if a bit jarring.

Palate gets more into box juice than beer. Wet bodied but still decent enough to stay out of watery coating with a decent depth. Straight up Tropicana juice box pineapple flavors in the mid palate. Finishes light with more fruit store bought pineapple juice, but also with a faint spiced funk note that is unfortunately just a bit too buried.

Once again, it's another loaded new wave hop brew that tastes more like grocery juice than beer. A few interesting funk kicks make it a bit different on the palate, but I would prefer if this actually tasted like beer. Life could be worse though.

look: 3 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 3 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3 | BA Generated Score: 3.23

--------------

 

Tired Hands doing the Lord's work. Juicy, unfiltered and damn good. Tropical notes, mosaic hops. Boom

 

Wedge Brewing's Beire deGarde on a new saison Sunday
This has a pronounced saison yeast influence, is lightly hopped and has the sweet, deep malt presence that accompanies the style. This one veers a bit with a high a.b.v. (8.1%) and a syrupy feel and finish. I might need a nap in the field if this was my farm worker's lunch.

 

Hi everyone. Man, is it hot today! Driving up from the shore I thought my tires were going to melt. I usually like to be ambitious on NBS but it's just too hot for a big beer. So I pulled this from the box of southern beers my buddy gave me recently: a Hefeweizen from Yazoo Brewing Co. in Nashville. I wasn't expecting much and was pleasantly surprised. It's not a bad American rendition of the style, which is one of my favorites. And it really hit the spot on a hot, humid day. Here's my review:

3.81/5 rDev +2.4%
look: 3.75 | smell: 4 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 3.75

Poured into weizen glass. It pours a cloudy, golden-orange color with a thin, milk-white head and minimal lacing. It smells of yeast, banana, orange, clove, wheat cracker, and a whiff of tobacco. It tastes like a classic hefeweizen, except that the flavors were rather subdued. There was less sweet citrus and it was a little more tart than I anticipated. There was no date on the bottle and the taste may have fallen off a little. That said, it's not a bad rendition of the style particularly when compared with it German cousins. It's light in body, nicely carbonated, and with an ABV of 5% it is welcome on a hot day. Overall, its a creditable American Hefeweizen. It isn't Weihanstefphaner, Franziskaner or Ayinger but it is comparable to Flying Dog and close to Sierra Nevada's Kellerweis.

As always, I'm enjoying your reviews. Have a great day, all!

 

Here ya' go, NBS! A beer so new its can release was today and I had to add it to BA. I was in Columbus last night for a Volbeat concert and saw Hoof Hearted was open to the public today with their latest can release. Um, hell yes? Not one of their beloved IPAs but a collaboration with Burial Beer Co in Ashville. It was great to check the brewery out, have a couple other beers of theirs on tap and bring some of this home. It reminded me completely of cinnamon chex crunch cereal. Not a hop bomb but unique and enjoyable. The review below got all 3.75s except the smell which got 4. Cheers!



16oz can (collaboration with Asheville's Burial Beer Co), can just released today, poured into a pint glass
A: Pale yellow with a thin head
S: This smells just like cinnamon toast crunch. End of story
T: Cinnamon, cereal, vanilla, just as mentioned on the can
M: Very light, fresh, a touch simplistic
O: Tough to incorporate cinnamon into a beer but with the light blonde style it's pure without anything else getting in the way; the addition of light malts and vanilla make it very reminiscent of the well known cereal

 

Great review! The bottle cap alone is worth the price of admission. What breed is Huevos?

 

Apparently, while still relatively young, she left opera for musical comedy. I'm not sure why. Maybe Broadway was a better place to work, financially, than the Metropolitan Opera House. Or maybe, like Sinatra, she decided her voice wasn't going to hold up and it would be better to do something a little different. I suspect judiciously chosen Broadway musicals weren't quite as exacting as some arias could be.

 

Enjoy Portland. It's a great beer town!

 

Happy NBS, all! Here's hoping you all are staying under the melting point during this heat wave that seems to be inescapable 'round these parts. I've done my best this week, with road trips to S. Jersey, the Poconos and Jones Beach. Unfortunately, not all of my potted plants are doing so well, and I had to set up a triage space on the shady back deck, which includes one butterfly plant that was just coming into its own before the heat got to it. Here's his companion who seems to be doing just fine, for whatever reason-


sitting alongside an Almanac San Francisco IPA

So, how's the beer?
The nose is beautiful, fruity and complex. They should all be like this- fruity like a dessert pastry, full of peaches, tangerine, guava, cantaloupe, but balanced with a judicious amount of grapefruit peel and dank/onion support. The palate is initially sharp hit of the fruit, cut short by a sudden wave of coarsely bitter grapefruit pith, and then sort of evaporates. Mouthfeel is in between silky and chalky.

This seems to be the way IPAs are made nowadays, and imo lean towards being a bit too dry for their own good. Whether this one fits the "NE Style IPA" moniker or not may be irrelevant, but it certainly strikes me as a 'modern' take. Or would that be Po-Mo?

Stylistically, these feel disjointed to me for the reasons stated above- no real connection from the aroma through the finish.

I have no idea how to score this one, so I'm letting the BA system tally the points. Here's how it shakes out:
3.57/5 rDev -9.2%
look: 3.5 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 3.25 | feel: 2.75 | overall: 3.5

So, solidly in B range, which seems fair allthings considered.

 

My Mom was from Birmingham, was very talented, but met a guy from Richmond, training nearby for the Pacific theater. He made it back against all odds, and Mary Lou never stopped singing.

 

Article I read a few years back indicated that she was dissatisfied with the Met apparently having stereotyped her for only relatively minor roles, e.g., a maid servant, etc.

 

New Amer. Strong Ale Sunday (Week 599)

Greetings fellow NBSers from on the ridge in Mid Hud Val, NY. If you know what BOS means than you will know the seriousness of the situation of being a mega BOS, which is what I am right now. I have been in 117 degree weather, in Navajoa, Mex., but I think I have never been so hot as I was yesterday at about 1:30, 95 degrees in humidity that was just short of a cloud on the ground. I now understand how old farts die in this shit. Still feel messed up from it, but this beer is doing me right.

No surprise to those who know me how much I love Rushing Duck, and this is a blend of four beers brewmaster Dan Hichcock put into barrels, including a SmasH he brewed for this blend, IIRC, and blended to make this. Strong, thick, coating, complex beer that most closely resembles its BSDA roots, but you can taste how there are other elements in it that add wonderfully. Here is the birdseye lowdown on this caper. RD Part IV



Hope you also have a Great American Beer in your glass. Cheers!

 

Most creepifying label I've seen today, except maybe the cyclops cow beer @WesMantooth posted earlier (like a cow after a transporter accident wandered into 'The Scream'). Doesn't mean I wouldn't grab it in a second if I saw it. Some of the circles I travel in, this would be considered epic. Oh. and I've never had a beer brewed with spelt that I know of, so I'd have to drink it, you know, for science. Plus, Tired Hands...