New Beer Weekend #289 (for @cavedave!)

I was at Great Heights Brewing yesterday for some happy hour beers. They have a new IPA that I tried...

General Pacific, West Coast Style IPA with Amarillo, Columbus, & Chinook. 6.8% ABV.



Pour a clear golden/orange color. A white head forms with good retention and lace.
Very aromatic, with citrus, pine, grassy/floral notes and a little bit of melon .
Taste wise, follows the nose, with a pine, grassy, floral character up front. Citrus and melon, and lingering bitterness is nice.
A medium body with crisp carbonation. Super clean and dry. I can have multiples of these at the brewery, very easy to drink.

This is just a solid IPA. Well made all around. I will probably bump the score up a little after a few more tries, which I will be glad to have. And hope this sticks around as more than a one off.

Overall score is 4.03, easy A-
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/50326/782099/?ba=champ103#lists

Cheers to cavedave...I can't write any poems but here is something from JP Donleavy

Beyond this vale of tears,
There is a life above,
Unmeasured by the flight of years
and all that life is love.

Or this one will be part of my eulogy, I hope Dave can appreciate...

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter
and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.

 

I 'heard' Frankenstein as I read your poem!

 

Oud Beersel Oude Kriek Vieille

From a caged and corked 475ml bottle dated BB 16/11/2043 (the longest expiry that I have ever seen). Poured into a tulip. A big three finger fine dirty pink head on a clear, very dark ruby.Excellent head retention, probably helped by the nucleated glass, sticks around to the end. Sheets of clingy fine lacing.

Sour fruit and some oak in the nose. Dark cherry. Tastes slightly sweet up front, but dries towards the end. A clean cherry dominates the middle. A long moderately sour finish.

A very smooth and soft texture for a Lambic. Medium body and good carbonation. Overall a fine Kriek. Very smooth and well balanced. The sweet/sour balance is bang on. An outstanding example and well worth a try.

4.23/5 rDev +1.4%
look: 4.5 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4.5

 

Got some unexpected stuff going on today, but wanted to check in and pay my respects. All of these will drank thoughtfully throughout the day. Hopefully I can check back in, but no guarantees. Cheers to all my fellow BAs both here and on the other side!

Ghosts in the Forest - The Lost Abbey
Three Philosophers - Ommegang
CBS - Founders
Narwhal - Sierra Nevada

 

Indeed

 

I have various new beers to try this weekend and I will get to them.
I like the story @cavedave told about Sun Ra. Thanks for sharing that @beergoot I saw Sun Ra and His Band From Outer Space in 1989 at New England Conservatory of Music for $2.50. I invited 5-6 Brasilian buddies and my friend Roger Miller, a notable guitarist and composer. The band had just returned from a big tour of Brasil and Sun Ra had 8 killer Brasileiros in his band plus vets. What a great 2 hr show. He had his organ hooked up to a custom light show...a log drum from Africa that was 9ft tall which rqr'd a large step ladder to play...long songs with dense matter, textures, and high levels of improvisational skills I've yet to experience anywhere else to this day.
When I toured with Roger Miller, the song "Space Is The Place" was pretty much on every set list. We were proud to play it in Washington, DC at a little spot called DC Space, where Sun Ra would occasionally be found.

 

Free Will Brewing Ralphius Two Year Laird’s Apple Brandy

I don’t normally participate in NBW, but will make an exception today. I loved New Beer Sunday, which to me, offered a few things:

1/ An Excuse. An excuse to acquire and open 50+ new beers each year, and not unlike a holiday and professional sports, an excuse to take a little time for myself away from life’s responsibilities.

2/ A Meditative Experience. Selecting a beer and sitting quietly with it, being open and aware, considering what about it I appreciated — a useful exercise in noisy world.

3/ A Communal Experience. Posting a review to the site, to help advise other’s choices; checking in with familiar strangers on a Sunday afternoon to see how their weeks were going and what they were drinking; actually trading beers and meeting up with some.

I remain grateful to Dave, Maria and others for curating the space so perfectly, and hope others still get the same — or something different — out of NBW today.

Today’s Ralphius offering pours black with a thin, short-lived, soupy mocha head that doesn’t cover the entire surface of the beer.

A massive fresh apple aroma shows immediately upon first cracking the bottle open. Sniffed in the glass, the apple’s coupled with red wine, sherry, oak, pear and distant caramel.

A similarly-interesting mix of flavors carry to the taste: pear, chocolate, oak, wine, apple butter, cinnamon. Plenty of alcohol heat, as usual. Strong, lingering caramel-cover apple appears in the finish.

It has an oily mouthfeel with restrained carbonation.

The apple brandy really shines in this, presenting several different iterations. It’s not my favorite play against the base, but still a worthy addition to a phenomenal series.

 

Thanks for this post and for joining this weekend @thebeers ... I very much enjoyed reading and couldn't feel more the same on your points of 1, 2, and 3.

Looking forward to joining you all with a beer when I have the time later today...

 

(Just an aside but I spent a lot of time in the previous century spinning Mission of Burma and No Man.)

 

I haven't posted a beer in a NBW thread in forever, but I wanted to participate this weekend as a tribute to cavedave. I was fortunate to spend a little bit of time with Dave outside of these forums. This seemed like a perfect beer to post about. Dave loved wild ales, brett beers, American saisons, and lambic... and he loved the brett series that Trinity released in 2015. These beers were each made with a different strain of brett to showcase the brett character differences. Dave said that the No. 4 beer in this series was the "most extreme in a good way" beer he ever had. His review of it (pasted below) is one of my favorites:

I didn't open a No. 4 in this series, but a No. 7.

Trinity Brewing - Magical Brettanomyces Tour No. 7

This beer was 100% brett fermented with B. Anomala / Anomola. I don't know the proper spelling because they seem to spell it both ways on the label (bad font)... and an internet search didn't help me out. It's also made with rose hips, amaranth, lemon grass, and grains of paradise. It seems really silly to me to add various spices to this beer series since the point of these beers was to highlight the various brett contributions. Feels counterproductive. This beer was also aged in French oak Chardonnay barrels. 5.6% ABV.

This bottle is 10 years old. Coincidentally, Trinity Brewing just closed shop on Dec 21st 2025 - so it feels extra-fitting as a choice today. Let's get through that red wax.

The beer is golden yellow with great clarity (with careful initial pour - plenty of yeast sediment at bottom). Small head that vanishes quickly. Aroma has acidity that only shows up in the taste at a much lower level. Taste is surprisingly delicate and mild. There’s very little there. It's dry-ish. Very slight white wine character, slightly bitter and bready. Goes down way too easy. Not what I expected at all, but much more enjoyable than expected. Oddly enough, the bottle label states that this brett strain is “well known for its intensity, specifically when aged.”

@TongoRad

 

20 bucks @cavedave woulda been into this crunchy offering.
Falling Knife + Dane Moore NBA Podcast 2nd Apron American Pale Ale 6%abv
Vera, Centennial, and Simcoe hops. Light, highly tasty, and pretty damn dry.

4.16/5 rDev 0%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4
16 oz can canned 10/17/25 into a nonic pint glass.
L: Pours a radiant chill hazed dark yellow gold with a rocky white 1/2" domed pillowy head, lush steady carbo, head recedes to thick frothy, medium-heavy lacing with perforated sheeting.
S: Citrus, caramelized malts, quite fruity, fruit bread dough, a hint of candy sugar, and aromas are fairly bold.
T: Gently sweet, fruit salad, citrus zest, a note of bread dough, gently sharp and a bit tart. It is lightly full-flavored and has a light orchard note. Bitterness lingers with grapefruit and light lemon zest.
F: Lightly crisp medium-light bodied and slightly juicy mouthfeel with a slightly broad and pillowy center and a medium length fairly dry finish.
O: A hop-lovers Pale Ale. Malts are in the back seat yet are present. It leans a bit West Coast esp in the finish which is quenching. A hop-frwd easy drinking blend that is excellent in its style.

 

Rog & I really liked Geary's Pale Ale from Maine

 

NBW cheers to @cavedave and started off my new brews today with this tasty barrel aged imperial stout:

Barrel-Aged Speedway Stout: Coffee Cake Edition (2024) | AleSmith Brewing Company | BeerAdvocate





Good amount of barrel here, and no one flavor overpowered the others. Nice Speedway Stout variant that's worth picking up! Should have another new brew review or 2 later today.

 

O'so Brewing BeerAdvocate review meetup with @Mdog. For @cavedave. Ida's Dark Secret. A barrel-aged Door Country black raspberry blonde ale. The look is rose-colored, but otherwise clear, with a slight white foam ring. The smell is strong with black raspberry, funk, grape, and blueberry. It smells like Sweet Tarts. The taste is black raspberry, boisenberry, and grape. It is quite sour. It is sweet, but mellow. The mouthfeel is sparkly, clean, crisp, and smooth, with medium-high carbonation. Overall, this is a nice sour beer, but not as good as any New Glarus Brewing sour beer. They are the standard in Wisconsin. But it was nice to try something new.

 

How fitting, and thanks so much for that trip down memory lane! Dave and I both really fell for that beer although at this point I don't remember which one of us was the first to report about it. But, yes, I do remember us both being a mini fan club for it. Too bad how it mellowed out over the years.

 

Closing out Dry January 9 hours early because drinking cellar pulls in a snow storm is one of my favorite past times. 2018 Mother of All Storms to kick it off!

 

Still can't get it right to post pics but Celebrating CaveDave with an SN Celebration ipa and an excellent Transparent Mouse Trapp Belgian Tripel.

 

It is nice to be back together as we always are, here in this thread sharing our love of beer with one another. This weekend’s thread carries a little more weight though.

It is no surprise that this thread is where I met and interacted with @cavedave the most. Our interactions spurred conversation about our mutual interest in music, weed, food, and of course beer. So here are a some things I learned from our friend…

The popcorn messages…Dave got me hooked on making and jazzing up my own popcorn from kernels, in his words from a previous message, haiku and all:

A lesson learned from Dave in this thread at some point in the past…Dry Irish Stout and breakfast food are the perfect pairing, I still try and do this any time we have breakfast for dinner and I have one on hand.

Reach out to any BA , as Dave would, when you think of something they’ll enjoy…

So enjoy his recommend tune quoted just above while reading on if interested in learning about one of the beers in the new Dogfish Variety pack...



Thanks for bringing so many of us together, rest in peace and thanks for all your positive interactions with us all.

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

Now what brings us all together each weekend, and will every weekend going forward, sharing beer experiences with one another...this beer is from the new Dogfish Variety pack and despite having highs in the teens I'm jumping into this kolsch and pretending it is spring...

Dogfish Head - Kööölsch (Kölsch Style 4.6%)



Pours light straw; clear with slightest opacity and white uniform head, itty bits of lace dot the initial pour.

Snappy malt and hop laden nose; herbal comes to mind first soft hints of flower petals and fresh kilned malt; intoxicating hint of fruit character as it warms, reminiscent of canned pears.

Taste instantly lives up to the pear noted on the nose; last note from the nose becomes first on taste; flavors then shift into delicate malt and earthy herbal leaning hops; the malt keeps sucking me back in, just ever so slightly kilned or toasted and pairing real nicely with this beers hop character, great tasting burps on this one.

Light bodied beer with good fullness; soft on the palate, perceived sweetness lingers ever so slightly before pleasantly drifting away into a fluffy soft finish that morphs into an off dry finish, low to moderate bitterness with appropriate drinkability enhancing carb.

This beer is a winner, in fact a big winner in my opinion, its kolsch like with a hint of something different which is hard to pin down but very much in line with Dogfish of Old. I have two cans left which I will save until warmer days. Definitely recommend the new variety pack all beers in it were great!

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

If you pop into this thread please join us this weekend and any weekend going forward, the more the merrier. Stay warm everyone and I look forward to all the beers we drink together on this special weekend.

 

Happy Saturday, BAs. I went to look back at some early posts to see if my memory was accurate, but I can only go so far back on the site right now. But given that Dave was one of the dedicated curators of the thread, it makes sense that it was him who contacted me in the story.

In the earlier days of NBS, when I started posting, it was a bit more common to post an opening about what style your new beer was, briefly speak of the weather (a thing I am tired of at the moment), and post a link to your review. A lot of the posts were fairly short without the longer posts that are now ubiquitous.

As a young, snot-nose BA, I knew the site had a search feature and so I figured people could look up the beer to see the review I gave, so posting the link was unnecessary. So i ended up posting a photo of the beer I just reviewed with little else for context.

I know, hard to believe, but it was a long time ago, I've had time to find all the words.

Anyhow, I can't recall if it was in the thread or as a aside via DM, but Dave gently prompted me to write about the beer or at least post a link to the writing I had already done.

I didn't want to just post a link or just copy and paste what I had already written. So, using the openings by Dave (and Maria) as inspiration, I started writing alternate versions of my official reviews. Sometimes they were mild alterations and other times I had real fun with it.

Anyhow, I think I had Dave to thank fore the nudge, but even if it wasn't, my interactions with him over time easily fit whomever first set the hook on me with NBS. And he was definitely a reason I kept with it for quite a while.

So, I do actually have a new beer. It may end up sounding like the post of @Mdog because it is an "actual" rye Schwarzbier, according to Alternate Ending Beer Company.


We've Gone to Plaid doesn't look plaid in the glass - it actually is a very dark brown but does have a large head that isn't quite as big as I see in the picture of Köstritzer, though it is of a similar color.

Aroma is dark roasted coffee, like one I might've been wrapping my hands around while wearing a plaid flannel shirt earlier this morning. There is also some dark, dense bread notes in there, close but not quite the pumpernickel @Mdog mentioned about his true German Schwarzbier. There might be some woody hops in there, nothing fruity - dark ore otherwise.

Ok, yep - this beer is bitter enough that I don't think it is just from roasted malts. The boldness of this brings an edge to this beer that helps nudge it to a medium-weighted beer, in my mind. The colors of the malts interact with the lines of carbonation and perceived rye spice to form a cohesive experience, if it goes a little beyond the normal flavors one would expect a Schwarzbier to be wearing.

On my first sips, I thought this beer a little dry ad boring. But then I started seeing some structure, and things came together a bit more cohesively. It definitely seems an American twist on the style beyond just the addition of rye.

 

New beer . . .

Southern Prohibition Festbier

Clear light gold color with moderate white cap and lacing.

Taste is sweet malt and no question about it. Flavors are rich and rise above the medium texture. Hops are present from start to finish and balance with while at the same time complement the malt.

Medium texture with balancing carbonation.

At 4.8 ABV it's not a light weight but is defenitely an invitation to partake more than one.