New Beer Weekend #9

Wow, that is an incredibly colorful flight!

 

1. Welcome to what I think is the best recurring thread on this site. By a lot.

2. That looks like a very nice lineup of beers. Really well done.

3. Join us again - we'd love to have you share what you think about the beer you're enjoying. We're all just beer nerds that spend an inordinate amount of time beer nerding.

 

@FrankenMiller ... What @ovaltine said! Welcome, and nicely done!

 

Hello Late Night NBW

So I have this wonderful beer from our very own @FBarber
Ebulon by Scratch Brewing
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/31049/279868/
2019 bottle.
Amber to ruby in hue. Hypnotically clear. Fluffy white head rises a finger or so and quickly retreats to a thin milky cap.
Aroma hints at a strong Irish red ale sweetness deeply kissed by the elderberries: to me it's like a cross between cranberries and currants.
Flavor is beautifully complex. There is the tart fruitiness, caramel malt, a gentle funk in the background, and a nod to red wine barrel.
Mouthfeel is light on carbonation, medium weight. Solid.
Overall, I find this to be not just a very interesting beer, but a delightful experience. What a great surprise. Thanks Frank!

4.19/5 rDev +1.5%
look: 4 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 3.75 | overall: 4.25

 

Poured into a 16 oz tulip glass. Pours a very dark near pitch black with a 2 plus finger sticky dark tan head that leaves plenty of thick streaks of lace, with nice retention. 4.25

Smell is tobacco, leather, dark chocolate, coffee grounds, slightly Smokey, dark fruit, and a hint of warming alcohol. 3.75

Taste follows, dark chocolate, coffee, vanilla, tobacco, leather, dark fruit, and just a hint of booze, but at 12% ABV that is not a surprise. 4

Mouthfeel is bigger than average, a touch dry, almost creamy as it approaches room temp, gentle carbonation, and at 12% a sipper that is complex enough to hold your attention. 4.25

Overall this is a really well made RIS but the flavors are for the old school BA’s who still remember Stouts before they added stuff to them. $4.99 a 16.9 bottle a bargain and a really nice RIS. 4 Final beer of the Weekend for me. Night all.

 

Today was supposed to be another FH IPA for me, but alas it was not meant to be. Online ordering has been great in a lot of ways, but one thing it has also meant is that it's a lot easier for folks to log on just at release time and place their order, as it can be done from anywhere instead of needing to actually schlepp all the way over to whatever brewery is making their release. That means both of the FH releases that I had intended to pick up today sold out like *snap,* which isn't the end of the world, it just means sad me doesn't get what I want when I want it, ha.

Instead I'm grabbing a NON-FH IPA that I picked up at the grocery store earlier this week.
Ft. George makes a lot of good beer. They may not get the national love of some of the other more high profile local breweries, but they do pretty damn well regionally, I think, and, again, make tasty beer. Before even opening this one, though, I have mixed feelings. I love the focus on specifically the farms that brewers work with (there have been a couple of area-breweries that have done tributes to the region or to specific farms, or etc), and this seems like a cool new seasonal, from a concept-standpoint, but where my mixed feelings come in is that there's a small part of me that feels like releasing a farm-focused IPA in September with all the focus on hops and hop-imagery feels dangerously close to pandering/trying to trick people who are looking for FH options. I'm not saying that's necessarily what they are doing with this one, but it does skirt that line a little bit to me. The consumer needs to be conscientious of what they're buying and actually read the can, and I'm sure it will be tasty regardless and all that, but it still leaves a mildly sleazy impression to my idealistic naivety. That sounds harsher than I mean it, but I'm rambling.



Farmers Annuary is a new IPA with a date on the can of the 1st of the month (cue Bone Thugs).

In the glass it's quite lovely: pale golden yellow with a solid but soft egg-white head that only ever gets as small as a half a finger perhaps. Beautiful sticky lacing as well.

The nose is honestly a little disappointing. Subdued. Some earthiness, some floral sweetness, some tropical fruit and melon. It opens up a little more as it sits, but it's still the weakest link in the brew.

Flavour does not suffer from the same subdu-edness. Sweet fruity hops initially, with elements of papaya, melon, again some floral, and then BAM it's a sharp bitter hammer of pithy hop acids. That's the rest of the story. Sharp citric bitterness.
Reasonably soft with soft bubbles and a medium body. The sharp bitterness lingers and carries.
So last night I had an IPA that was not my preferred profile, but was still pretty enjoyable. This is more in my normal style preference, and is also well done and enjoyable, but doesn't quite get the balance where I'd prefer. The bitterness, while appreciated, distracts a bit and just doesn't quite hit the RIGHT note for me.

Cheers, and Go Hawks!

 

A late entry but a nice one. Another beauty from the Schilling Beer Co. of scenic Littleton New Hampshire, Nordertor, a fine German style Pilsner. Prost.



4.04/5 rDev -0.5%
look: 4 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

A moderate pour from a 16-oz. can yielded a finger of creamy white foam with with long retention and irregular blotches of lacing. Semi-clear (cloudy with the sediment added) yellow-straw color, shows some gold in front of bright light.

Bready and crackery malt greet the nose with a hint of lemon along with faint herbal hops.

The taste is semi-dry with average bitterness, hop and malt flavor is more pronounced as well as the lemon. It flirts at being juicy, apple , pear and grape are faint. A little chalky astringency develops late in the taste. The finish is quick, flavors drop of cleanly as mild bitterness remains for a long aftertaste.

Medium-light bodied with soft, plentiful carbonation. Smooth and session-able, right on target to style.
Old world hop flavors shine without being to bitter, big malt backbone. Another hit from Schilling.

 

I'll, good God!

 

Yeah, I get what you're saying.
I just watched my Patriots lose, we were away at Seattle and with the canned crowd noise not contributing to the home field advantage, the Seattle players on the sidelines began jumping up and down and screaming in an attempt to distract our offence. And it worked!!!

I enjoyed watching Tommy Two-Teams win his first game this season but with all the outside issues-it's not the same.

Cheers.