What beer are you drinking now? #919

I was out on my boat today and was attacked by skeleton pirates, but I managed to defeat them. I figured this would be appropriate to celebrate with:

 

Bitter unicorn tears taste the best.

 

Hooray time for stout!


Anchor Steam Brewing - San Francisco Stout by imbibehour, on Flickr

Cheers!

 

Cigar City - Big Sound Scotch Ale

 

It's only 6 months old but "the alcohol burn is gone and its a little sweeter up front" - my wife. She's right - excellent!

 

Rain pouring down, about to catch up on GoT and trying this one for the first time. Thanks @mmikey8! (sorry for the crap picture...)

 

I hate skeleton pirates and Illinois ****s!

 

I dig your review, this was a wow beer for me in such a little package. That aftertaste though! Cheers!

 

Closed on my first house today, eating pizza with the Mrs. and drinking my favorite beer to celebrate, Good Morning.

 

Happy Monday ba. Let's go islanders,

 

Trillium Double Dry Hopped Melcher Street, bottled today - cheers!

 

always great when an old friend comes back, Curmudgeon or not. Cheers.

 

I'm going Undercover!



For me not to drink three brews on a Monday is simply unheard of!

Musical Selection:

 

New beer - Ommegang Nirvana IPA, while getting ready to watch the re-air of Veep

This is an Ommegang recipe that is brewed at Boulevard in KC...... Wow, the nose on this is incredible - tons of soft citrus and sweet pine. Taste doesn't quite match, and a tad dry for my liking, but this is a nice bountiful offering here. Peachy and piney at the same time? Don't think I've ever encountered that before. Happy Monday BAs!

 

Having my first bottle of the last of the three Devil's Backbone collaboration beers while I'm waiting for some rice to cook (first time making non-instant rice, so it's going to be a bit longer than usual. XD)


...and that beer would be the Double Gooch Imperial IPA, made in collaboration with Fat Head's Brewery. The name cracks me up -- I don't know what a "gooch" is, but it is definitely a funny-sounding word.

As with most IPAs (whether normal or double or some other variation), you can definitely tell that loads of hops went into this -- I could smell a definite piney/fruity sort of thing even while pouring the beer. The taste is also very much hoppy -- though interestingly the pine isn't overpowering the other flavors, it's more blended in with the fruity (I want to say maybe a bit peach-like?) and other flavors (there's a bit of leafy/herbal/almost bordering on spicy type taste going on in there too) rather than "PINE! oh and some other things" like some IPAs. The "piney" hop flavor almost seems to be the least influential one here, with the leafy/herbal and fruity and oniony (mentioned below) flavors becoming more noticeable than the pine as I get toward the end of the glass. There's even a bit of an almost bread-crust-ish malt flavor in there, which tends to hang around (along with a bit of pine and some bitterness) in the aftertaste. Actually, on closer inspection (...sniffing the glass more) I can actually even pick up a bit of it in the smell now!

And now I'm getting a faint bit of something almost onion-like too. I know I see a lot of complaints about "oniony" hops in some beers, but it's definitely not unpleasant to me in this one -- blends in with the bread-crusty malt bit at the end nicely in a way that almost reminds me of that bread with the onion and spices and stuff coating the outside. I guess maybe some beers just go overboard with it, but it's far from overpowering here and I'm finding that it just adds something to the beer as a whole rather than causing problems. I may have to look into other beers that are known to have a bit of that "oniony hops" effect now that I know that I like it in this one, since this one is unfortunately a limited release that's going to vanish once the variety-packs go off the shelves.

I'd never guess this was 8% ABV if the bottle didn't tell me before I started drinking. There's just so much else going on that I'm not really getting more than the slightest hint of alcohol -- there was a bit of a "warming" sensation when I took my first sip or two, but after that not a single sign of the alcohol's presence. Well, at least until the slight lightheadedness and stomach-warming finally starts to kick in, heh. It actually "feels" less alcoholic than most (if not all) of the beers in the 7% range that I've had, as far as the degree of mouth-warming that happens.

At this point, I think it's safe to say this: these collaboration beers are all really good, and anyone within Devil's Backbone's distribution area (okay, that's only like... three states, but still!) who walks by this variety pack on the shelves without trying them at least once is missing out!