New Beer Sunday (Week 683)

I look forward to it, whether that is tonight or another day!

 

Happy NBS to you all! This was a real nice and productive Sunday. Did the yard work and trimmed the fruit trees and then I fired up the grill and had a few beers to reward myself.

First up was a beer labeled hoppy pilsner on the can, and it came from my awesome NBS BIF box sent by @akatz821: The Veil, Child Support! Citra


Nice yellowish color with a big white foamy head, that lasted. Nice lacing throughout the beer.
Definitely smell the citra hops, but also get a earthy scent and maybe some lemon.
The taste is very similar to an IPA. with piney and citrus notes.
I really enjoyed the feel on this one, dry and crisp with a good amount of carb.
This was very enjoyable and I could see drinking a bunch of these on a hot summer day, good beer for starting the grill.

 

Another from the awesome box from @akatz821:

The Veil Never Letgo:


Look is berry juice with a small amount of off-white head. Fades quickly.
Smell of faint and it is hard to pick stuff out. I am getting subtle hints of lemon and berry.
Taste is tart and salty with a berry and lemon flavor.
Feel is refreshing and salty, with a light feel.
Overall I was not getting any pomegranate flavor, but it was definitely a nice gose that would be good on a hot day.

 

Last one for the night is a big time want, also sent by @akatz821 in the NBS BIF:

Tyranena Brewing Company: Carnal Knowledge In the Woods:


First thing is that this beer falls into two of my favorite styles: Oatmeal stout and Rye whiskey aged

Look is dark black with a small tan head that lasted a good amount
Smell of rye whiskey and wood, with chocolate and molasses. Also getting a hint of vanilla on the end. Also has a overall scent of booze.
Very nice mix of flavors here with nothing over-powering. I thought from the smell that the whiskey would dominate but that is not the case. Getting oak and whiskey with chocolate, toffee and a hint of vanilla.
Feel light bodied and smooth, has a nice creamy feel (why I love oatmeal stouts) with a nice carb balance.
Overall I am really enjoying this beer at the moment and think it is a great example of a oatmeal stout.

 

Had this one earlier while getting the little ones bathed and in bed. Courtesy of a ninja attack from @WesMantooth it's been on my wants list for a bit now.

Pours a clear golden orange, vigourous pour yielded a big rocky head. Didn't stick around too long but left lots of soapy lacing.
Smells of citrus, tropical fruits, and a bit of dankness.
Taste follows, getting some pineapple up front followed with grapefruit and orange zest. A bit of oily resinous pine on the finish. Malt backbone is present but not overbearing.
Clean, crisp drinking beer.
Overall this one lives up to the hype, would be in my fridge often if distro was local.

 

Funky Buddha Hop Stimulator

look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

Not sure what it is, but I like this beer. It is different from other IIPA'S I have had in some manner. Possibly it is that there is a background sweetness to it that I would not normally associate with the style.

Am curious to see what my thoughts are the second time around..

 

One more before bed for me, this one from another BIF ninja attack from @jhavs

Pours a turbid yellow gold with minimal head.
Lots of peach and apricot on the nose.
Taste follows, fuzzy fruits but also getting a bit of lemon.
Medium bodied, could have a bit more carbonation. Dry finish invites another sip.
Overall a solid NEIPA, glad to have tried it and would gladly try it again.

 

Burial / Blackberry Farm - Jealousy & Murder

Moving on from one Burial collaboration to another. Blackberry Farm is one of the few American breweries that I think really makes saisons that are worth going to. I wouldn't put Burial in that category personally. Price and availability are the two main issues with Blackberry Farm. This Burial brewed beer is priced as high as the ones from Blackberry Farm. I had a decent hunch that this beer would not seem worth it to me if I bought it... but I did so anyway because I was feeling generous and I figured that I at least knew that it wasn't very old.

The label art on this one makes me think of Stranger Thing's "The Upside Down."

This is a "mixed culture" saison made with spelt (a common enough saison ingredient, think wheat) and Saphir hops. It has an acidity that feels quite sharp without feeling very strong (if that makes any sense). There's a subtle tropical fruit character underneath the more obvious lemon. Beyond that, this beer surprisingly fails to make much of an impression. This beer was the fourth recent 750ml saison/lambic opening for me. All the others were from Belgium. All the others were far more satisfying experiences too. This one was the most expensive.

 

Same here. The colors are so shocking! As you may have seen in my previous post, still in a gray/brown/white world here. (I made a couple memes, but meme-containing posts get deleted on BA[ Snowy corn field > New Camera question: Where's the color button? )

I saw it in Wegman's, only. Grocery store, of all places.

Well.... this is very highly regarded, going by ratings & reviews. However.... my experience doesn't match any of it, other than numbers. They have 7? taps, so could be a mistake. It was tapped 3/16 , so that could be it too. As such I didn't officially review it. 4.15ish, as I experience it now. Still quite like it, but not what is described by others.
Mother of All Bombs ["juice bomb"?] ,by District 96 Beer Factory

I'm getting grapefruit pith, and a mixed floral/mead/booze element (a la Hopslam,Flower Power, or Brain Bucket) on the aroma, and grapefruit,pine,& mead for the taste. Definitely not "juice bomb" type. Good, whatever it is.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/48768/281476/

 

Well Hello Late Night NBS.
I'm back with another one from the magnaminous @Buck89

Look At These Sticks by Tailgate Beer Co. in Nashville, TN

Golden, turbid, and a white fluffy head that retreats quickly. Not much in the way of lacing.
Smell is bright and tropical. Pineapple, maybe a bit of guava.
Flavor begins like the nose. But then hints of grapefruit, dank, and a warming, slightly astringent note.
Mouthfeel is really good. Medium, fluffy, and carbonated.

3.99/5 rDev -2.2%
look: 3.75 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

 

Schlafly Rye IPA

As I sometimes do here, all of my (4) previous beers very carefully transitioned thematically from one to the next. This is my last one of the day, and now I'm just kicking the door in instead. Schlafly is one of my usual choices for NBS though. They always just name the beer what it is - in this case a Rye IPA.

Color is a very deep yellow. I was expecting something a little darker for no actual reason. The taste doesn't deviate from expectations for a rye IPA. Beyond the usual, this one tastes quite herbal... and I am also getting what I consider to be a hallmark of some of Schlafly's IPAs - a sweet woodsy character. This one starts off very nicely but the lack of complexity hurts its drinkability once one gets 3/4s into it.

I'll take a moment to mention a pet peeve. Schlafly has an area on their labels where they stamp the bottled on date. This one just had an empty field. I give Schlafly a lot of credit for putting nice clear dating on their beers... but I frequently see beers from them with no date. Sometimes I wonder if the bottles weren't lined up in the machine properly, or if the machine wasn't calibrated properly, or if Schlafly isn't even trying to include the date all the time. It practically bugs me more to have the date oddly missing than to have a brewer never include one.

Cheers.

 

Spring Break Baby!!!
And a beer to share with my brother who's visiting.
I'm back. Again, thanks to @Buck89 in our cacophonous chaos that is NBS BIF #7
Catalyst IIPA by Bearded Iris
Yellow to golden, turbid. Fluffy head.
Smell is bright citrus. Orange, tangerine, and then some smooth hop bitterness.
Taste follows the nose, but some pineapple comes in, and then a spicy, herbal, warming bitterness that almost hints at, no it does hint at, onion. But not enough to scare me off. Complex.
Mouthfeel is soft, a bit creamy, and somewhat active in carbonation.

4.03/5 rDev -5.2%
look: 3.75 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

 

Good evening, fellow NBSers,

A late one for me, but also an early one. I'm at my folks' place, and I brought a grunt from White Bluffs, in Richland, WA, and drank it around midnight after they went to bed. Pictured in the background is my Dad's new acquisition.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/24517/290436/?ba=woemad#review
A kind of PNW spin on the hazy, fruit-forward IPA. Really tasty stuff. Hopefully, my NBS BIF target will be happy with it.

 

Part 2:
To finish off my pre flight brews, we have the 2015 vintage of Worthy Adversary by Fulton Brewing:

Look: pours dark as night with little to no head, and whatever head there was quickly disappeared. Had that oil like pour some stellar classic stouts would have.
Smell: smells roasty, at times even eating towards smoked
Tasted toasted.., or charred. but not roasted or smoked at all. Lighter bodied than I was expecting, but pleasantly so, as it made the brew super approachable. Fulton made a super balanced beer here, with a smooth char upfront and a bitter ending from the hops (that are still somewhat existent despite the years of age). Well done Fulton, thanks @Vidblain

And now, for a beer I took across the border. Staff Magician by Mikeller SD. This can went from @Bum4ever all the way in california, to myself on the east coast, BACK to the west coast in vancouver/whistler. It's a well traveled can for only being 10 days in existence. And it was a complete Ninja hit!
First off, excuse the stupid glass. My rental doesn't have the best glassware options to say the very least.
Look: Pale and thick yellow, like pineapple juice. high, light and airy head.
Smell: soooo much pine. and thus a heavy dose of a high THC sativa.
Taste is where i was confused. a NEIPA....that tastes like a west coaster? When you expect pineapple juice, and get bitter pine...it throws you out of whack thats forsure.
And to make it more confusing...the feel? it kept fluctuating between dry and juicy. I'm still a bit confused

 

Arbor Brewing Company's Phat Abbot is a good way to end my weekend and is my new beer for this Sunday.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1457/7523/?ba=neenerzig#review

Eric

 

NBS beer thanks to @jhavs
This is my first HF IPA and I'm really enjoying it. It's the first of many beers I'm gonna review thanks to Jon.
Cheers LNNBS



4.5/5 rDev -1.1%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.5 | overall: 4.5

A: Pours a light orange-yellow with about 2 fingers of white head

A: Smells like a nice, ripe, freshly peeled tangerine

T: On the first sip, you pick up lots of citrus; grapefruit, tangerine are the first two that come to mind. Very faint bitterness on the end.

M: Refreshing, clean, with a nice amount of carb for an IPA

O: Very enjoyable IPA; I can see why its highly sought after. Glad I got to try this.

 

LNNBS crew stand up!

I figured now that I got that Founders BS wrapped up, and my cooking and eating are complete, the dogs took me for a nice long late night walk, and I can move to the next phase of cleaning the apartment while I have it to myself, it seemed almost... obligatory to continue to dig into that series of boxes that @FlintB sent along as part of the BIF.


I'm not much for presentation. The meatballs were bomb AF, but the chickpea substrate was just OK. I think I may just not be that into chickpeas.

Obligatory was the first of the Transient IPAs that I grabbed and put into the fridge.

So I have a confession. I have a hard time rating the appearance of this new wave of, what @beertunes affectionately refers to as AOAs (American Orange Ales). I'm not really a fan of the milky opaque appearance in my IPAs. It just isn't what appeals to me. But I realize that there is a specific intention for the brewer to present an expression with which I am not particularly aligned. So I have a hard time rating the appearance of these such brews. It doesn't look good TO ME, but it is an accurate representation of what the brewer is attempting to create. It's well crafted, but I'm not the target audience. It's the same dilemma as when trying to rate a style that isn't really to one's liking. "This tripel doesn't really appeal to me, but I can tell it's a well crafted version of the style."
So this is one such beer.



Totally opaque colloid-oid body that is a pale, washed out orange. Like if you were cleaning a wall that had been drawn on in orange chalk, and the soapy runoff took on an orange hue. But without the negative connotations of that description, just the pallete. Fluffy white head is beautiful and sticks around for a little while, and the sides of the glass carry said legacy forward as I clear it of the liquid.

Nose is sweet floral orange backed by tropical notes and just enough supportive straw malt to give it body and keep it balanced.

Flavour begins initially with the same floral orange peak which is quickly carried forth by a strong undercurrent of bitter pithy hops. Delicious. Some of the same nods towards tropical fruits as well keep this thing a wonderful balance of the spectrum of what hops can provide.
Highly carbonated and medium-thin bodied, the long pithy bitter finish is a pleasant reassurance, paired with a dry characteristic that bades me take another sip.

This is a really good IPA. I'm enjoying it quite a bit, indeed moreso than I had expected upon first pour. Would GLADLY drink more of it if the occasion arose.
Thanks Brian for sending it along! I look forward to continuing to explore the bounty of the midwest that you bestowed upon my fridge!


Cheers

 

Don'cha hate when you end up paying the most for the least?