Blind Beer Review

In the interest of expanding my beer horizons I decided to do a blind review of a beer from the fridge. I bought two mixed sixers the other day and don't remember all the specifics of what I got so this isn't the most blind review for that reason.

It's a good looking beer with a dark brown color that's very opaque. I got about a finger of head initially, although there's less in the picture after it faded some, and, as you can see on the right side, some nice lacing.

The aroma comes off as that of a very hoppy and sweet beer. At this point I'm definitely assuming IPA or possibly a hoppy barleywine. It resembles what I remember of Bigfoot (my knowledge of the fridge betrays me here. I'm almost positive I didn't buy any barleywines). There's a good amount of pine, sweet orange, and most prominently toffee/caramel. The taste takes mostly the same direction, with the caramel more subdued by pine and grapefruit pith flavors. This is quite a hot beer- I'm guessing the alcohol is around 8%, anything less and they didn't hide it very well. The bitterness of the hops is particularly gripping in the aftertaste giving it a quality I associate with Arrogant Bastard.

Overall this is a good beer if you're into full flavored hops and toffee. I generally like my IPAs to be more fruity and a little less full bodied, but if I consider it a barleywine it fits the bill pretty well for that- so maybe I shouldn't complain.

And the secret revealed is...

Green Flash Hop Head Red
I'm a little confused as to which beer this is exactly, but I think I recently reviewed it (BA has a Hop Head Red Ale, as well as a Hop Head Red IPA which this bottle advertises, but only has a handful of reviews. The Greenflash website on the other hand, only lists the IPA and not the ale which has a bazillion BA reivews. Anyway...)

Here's my non-blind review- it's interesting (and bad for my credibility as a beer reviewer) how different the two are (though maybe they're different beers. see above)

A- Pours brown with a lot of small carbonation bubbles- almost looks like it's a nitro beer. A full finger of head and some lacing, but not really interesting lacing.

S- This one's out of the gate with a nice strong aroma. Dank hops, caramel, malt syrup fading into brown sugar, some grass.

T- Lots of malt, like a brown nut syrup. And lots of hops, like grapefruit pith juice.

M- The bitterness is high on this one. It is definitely stronger than the taste would indicate which I'm not so high on, though it does fit my expectations of a red ale, so there's that.

O- A powerful beer that has a lot of flavors to sift through and digest, but still doesn't feel heavy or as alcoholic as it is. A nice example of the style.

Matilda- An Old Beer for the New Year

This is a beer I picked up in Ohio over the summer. Bottled on 11/04/10- so with a over a year of age on it, it should be spectacular- or bad. We'll see...


It's a pretty looking brew with a cloudy orange color. The smell out of the bottle was pretty intoxicating- lots of funk and cider. When it's in the glass the smell isn't quite as potent but still really nice. There's apple cider, sweet oranges, morning dew, and strawlike funk.

The taste isn't as amazing but still good- I'm getting a lot of grass when I'd really like more of the fruit flavors from the smell. Maybe more bread dough, like an unbaked loaf of bread that you left out all day my accident.

Overall I'm really liking this beer. I'm trying to imagine if any more age will improve it and I have to go with no. I've had this beer before and I remember being blown away by both the smell and the taste and this one really only blows me away with the smell. So the extra bottle will have to be drunk soon... Cheers to whenever that is. And Happy New Year.

Quick lunch break repost

I'm taking a lunch/ coffee (it's awesome how cheap brewed coffee is compared to chichi mochachinno coffee flavored drinks) break in between class and practicing and found this article in my regular blog readings. It's about progress at the FX Matt brewery, otherwise known as Saranac. Reminds me of the random nights spent down on the cheapo Commons bars drinking Black Forest. And even older memories of helping my dad and Tim Mount bottle the wine in our basement (the beer was theirs never mine). Actually those experiences are really my first encounter w/ craft beer. I wasn't ever exposed to BMC stuff as a kid because my parents never drank them. I can't say if that has affected my current drinking much but it might have.

new IBC head brewer

Just a quick repost for interested Itowners- Ithaca Beer has a new brewer joining the chief-
http://lewbryson.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-york-news.html

SA trip post #4 (Sunday)

On Sunday we walked a few blocks to the art museum (SAMA) It, like the rest of our trip was suprisingly nice. They had a buttload of stuff, more than you could see in a whole weekend, let alone a single afternoon. Then we walked down the river a bit to see the giant fish that they put up over the river under a highway overpass (just a block or two from the museum- "The Riverwalk" is the touristy area and downtown, but the river has sidewalks all along it through town).

Then we ate dinner at the Freetail Brewpub. I got my growler (thanks Fitty) filled with Morning Wit, a sour Belgian wheat, and we drank black saison

and a dry hopped IPA (super delicious and hoppy).

Sunday night was tamer. We walked around Alamo plaza and around the Riverwalk and ate some ice cream sandwiches.

SA trip post #1 (Real Ale)

Kaley and I took a long weekend trip to San Antonio over the start of our spring break. It was a lot of fun- surprisingly SA is a pretty cool city. Ever since I've been in Dallas, everyone has plugged how great Austin is, but nobody really talks about SA. I'll put up a couple more posts about our trip over the following days, but I'll start with our first stop (not counting a crummy gas station in Waco) the Real Ale Brewery.

Real Ale is in Blanco, Texas, in the hill country. It was nice to drive through and see cherry blossoms and lavender (they grow most of the country's lavender in this area). The brewery is pretty standard looking from the outside: big ass malt silo; metal siding; etc. Their tours/tasting on Friday is free which is awesome. On tap they had their standard pale, their blonde (tastes like Bud- read "AK would like this"), their ESB (English Special Bitter- a fairly malty and inoffensive British ale. Read "AK should try this instead"), and Phoenix (the doubled or Imperial version of the ESB). Now on top of these they had the special, unreleased, never been bottled, barrel-aged Real Heavy (wee heavy, a strong scottish style), and barrel-aged Sisyphus (barleywine). It was awesome to get a chance to sample these two.

Points of note on the tour:
-As their name indicates, they heavily promote "real" or cask ale. This is a way of serving beer in a keg which is naturally carbonated from the yeast. It comes out a little warmer (cellar temp) and with more "creamy" carbonation. They have something like 150 casks at Real Ale. (Ithaca Beer also does some of this- memories of Pixel lounge).
-Their fermenters are glycol chilled, not water.
-Their bottling line is way more mechanized than at Ithaca Beer. They have a machines to fold the sixer boxes, fold the case boxes, put the sixer boxes in the case boxes, label the boxes, and put the bottles into the boxes (along with all the actual bottling of the liquids). The most annoying and labor intensive thing is making the mixed pack which they have to do by hand.
-They have a machine to clean kegs (thus rendering Fitty useless).
-Like Franconia, and a lot of craft breweries, they are rapidly expanding. They just put in a new grain silo which is three times the size of their old one.
-They're currently expanding their barrel program to include more wine barrels and some bourbon barrels (Heaven Hill I think he said?), with the ones they have, seen below. This should make for some incredible beer.



The beer:
I'll limit my thoughts to the two barrel-aged offerings.

Barrel-Aged Sisyphus



I had this one second, but I'm putting it first here because it was the lesser of the two. Don't get me wrong, it was great, and better than normal Sisyphus (which I enjoy anyway), but the barrel didn't come out as much in the taste of the beer. The smell had a nice grapiness to it. There was also a sort of smooth vanilla and oak and silky maltiness. The taste was very much like a normal Sisyphus- sweetly malty, tropical fruit hops, probably more fruitiness than normal. Overall a very delicious beer.

Barrel-Aged Real Heavy

Now this stuff was REALLY delicious. It was one of those beers that I didn't want to drink because then there wouldn't be any left to smell, and it was a real treat to smell. There was amazing complexity with the interplay of sweet malts and fruit and woodiness. Oh and I forgot to mention that this was a slightly sour beer. The barrel had clearly inoculated it with some special bugs. The smell came off with a ton of light vinegar, like white balsamic, or cider vinegar. This was present in the taste too and combined with the maltiness of the base beer was just tasty. Hats off to Real Ale for a great barrel-aged beer (or two) and a great free tour.

Cincinnati Beer Scene

Kaley and I went through Cincinnati twice this summer, and then one more short trip on the way home from Ohio between Christmas and NYE, and we were pleasantly surprised by how nice a place it is. Really great areas right next to the Ohio river with the stadiums and a giant park on the riverbank. And then just up the hill a pretty business district with a lot of old buildings and history.

Then today I read about the brewery history of the city, including extensive caves and tunnels for lagering, on a beer blog I frequent. Wish I could be there this weekend for the Bockfest.

Franconia

I had to get out of the house fairly early today and took the opportunity to go tour the Franconia Brewery in McKinney. It starts at 11 on Saturdays, and McKinney's almost an hour away so it would've normally cut into my sleeping in, but today was a good day for it.

And I'm glad I did- it was the best brewery tour I've ever taken. The tour lasted about an hour after which everyone hung out and sampled some of their fine product including the second batch of their . The brewer/owner Dennis Wehrmann (only one other employee) led the tour and struck a great balance between technical speak and humor. Some key points for me:
-All their beer is brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot, which means only grain, hops, yeast, and water (so sadly no pumpkin beer from them)
-Their annual production was about 1,500 barrels (that's 3,000 kegs) last year and Dennis expects to double that this year (how's that for growth)
-They self distribute their beer (there's a pickup covered in Franconia decals). I'm not sure how they get around all the three tier laws but it's pretty cool and I'm sure it allows their beer to sell cheaper for it.
-They exercise a lot of quality control measures
-They don't bottle their beer (which I knew) but not due to the economics, but rather the environmental issues relating to the US not reusing their bottles. Dennis claimed that in Germany they reuse their glass bottles many many times over before even recycling them, and also reuse their plastic bottles (suprising. Can the Germany trip guys confirm or refute this?)
-The brewery is brand new and very environmentally friendly (no trash can).

All in all a great tour with a great drink local message and delicious beer.

Local beer from far away

Finished a long research assignment tonight and decided to relax with Dirtoir Black Lager from Rogue brewing in Oregon.


It's brewed with grain and hops which are grown on their own farm, although the label lists a whole bunch of specialty malts before it gets to "Rogue Micro Barley Farm first growth Risk Malts". In general the amount of specialty malts in a beer compared to the base malt is pretty small, so it's probably mostly homegrown. I give them props for cutting down on transportation needs and producing a uniquely local beer. This is a growing trend in beer now. Sierra Nevada recently put out a beer using all their own grown malt and hops. Bells makes a beer with grain(I think wheat)grown on fields they own in Michigan. And it goes pretty hand in hand with fresh hop beers (all but a very select few beers are made with dried hops because fresh ones go bad in a days time). Anyway on to the beer!

It pours beautifully- a total black color with a blooming head of foam that looks like hot chocolate. The look strongly resembles a super intense stout, especially with the dark head. It smells roasty and chocolaty and I can smell bits of smokiness as it warms up. The taste is good. As a lager there's not a lot of fruitiness, but great coffee and bittersweet chocolate notes. It washes down pretty cleanly- I could have a couple of these and not get sick of it or think it was too heavy. Reminded me a lot of the Saranac Black Forest which is probably my favorite Saranac beer, but this is better- more flavor and more complex overall. Quite a nice beer to savor at the end of the day.

Snow... and a beer

So it's snowing right now in Dallas. I had to get up and go to a lesson (all my other classes for today were previously cancelled, unrelated to the weather), which meant a drive to Denton. Luckily the roads were pretty much fine- it's warm enough that the snow's melting quickly on the roads. The biggest problem with snow here is that Texans don't have any idea how to drive in it. But today (unlike on Christmas Eve) I only saw one accident on my drive. Annoyingly my horn professor got a phone call during my lesson that they were closing campus then- after my lesson.

After driving home and eating lunch I went outside with my nephews to play in the snow. It's super wet and great for snowballs/ sculptures. A nice treat to experience some real winter.

When we got back inside it was hot chocolate for them, and a beer I've been holding for a while for me- Oatgoop.

It's a 10% wheatwine made in collaboration between Three Floyds Brewery in Indiana, and Mikkheller, an increasingly popular brewery in Denmark. It's quite a good beer and held up well from when I got it (I think Chad brought it back in August? something like that). Lots of pineapple and tropical fruit flavor in the hops. Tons of caramel. Not too boozy, just some hints of vanilla and scotch. Given how much hops flavor I got I'm curious how it would have tasted fresh- probably too much alcohol hotness without the age but I bet the taste would've been good.

So if you have some snow (CB and Beckum?) you should go throw some snowballs and have a beer- a great way to waste an afternoon.

Utopias!

On Saturday night I attended an awesome beer tasting at a friends house, mainly on the premise of drinking a bottle of Sam Adams Utopias. This is a crazy beer weighing in at 27%abv, meaning that if you drank 12oz of it, it'd be the equivalent of an entire six pack of bud light.

Needless to say we did not drink 12oz of it, but split a 24oz bottle six ways for 4oz a piece. The price of the bottle $150- also split six ways- was pretty hefty for a beer, but I'd say it was worth the experience.

As it happens I had suggested that weekend for the tasting because it corresponded with my 3 year mark on Beer Advocate and was the 250th beer that I reviewed there- so that made it even more awesome.

We also drank a bottle of Sinner's Blend 2009, from Lost Abbey Brewing which was incredible and ended up being in my top 10 beers ever. It was a sour ale with the perfect amount of sourness for my taste.

Here's my Utopias review, many thanks to Chad for organizing and hosting:

Appearance- 4oz of ruby amber liquid into my Duvel glass. I was expecting a much thicker liquid, but no it's pretty thin, not much viscosity. Obviously no head or lacing (with no carbonation) but it's got some legs- thin trails going down the swirls of the glass.

Smell- Whoa careful where you whiff this beer- the smell is strong. For all the beers I've hated on for not having a strong enough smell this makes up for it all. My first impression is brandy. Then I smell brown sugar, dark cherries, dark sweet sweet orange, maple syrup, toffee. Incredibly complex. There is also tons of alcohol- burns off my nose hairs and stops me from just smelling it for the rest of the night.

Taste- In the taste there's more sweetness and fruit compared to the smell which had more liqueur, at least in my first sips. Maple syrup comes to the fore. Candied orange peel, tobacco, juicy vanilla bean pods, blueberries. I'm noticing the tobacco more and more, which gives it some Scotch notes. And like the smell the taste is incredibly complex.

Mouthfeel- Burn, obviously- it is 27%. I wish I could say that the alcohol is hidden but not really. The sweetness covers it up a bit but not to a great degree.

Overall- it's hard to rate this as a beer- more a liqueur. One of, if not the most complex beers I've ever had. Quite the special experience.

Michigan Trip Beer Review #3

This is the last in my MI trip series. I bought a Shorts Brewing IPA that I was really excited about, but couldn't get to. And I also had Sundog, an amber from New Holland Brewing, but I didn't write a review- a good session beer though as far as I can remember. I'm going to a tasting this weekend which should be fairly epic. We're splitting a bottle of Sam Adams Utopias, which is ungodly expensive and holds the world record for strongest beer (27%), so I'll do a write up of that at some point.

Michigan Brewing Spiced Pumpkin Ale

Pumpkin beers are one of my favorite styles. During my first fall in Dallas I had a Dogfish Head Pumpkin' and couldn't stop thinking about how much like "fall" it tasted. That experience really sealed the deal, but I was a big fan of pumpkin beers before that too. This was my first time trying this one and I have to say it was way too spiced and sweet for my taste. In the aroma I smelled cinnamon, cloves, honey, and ginger. There was some remnants of pumpkin to go along with the spice but not enough to really support them. The taste was better, still sweet and highly spiced but with more graham cracker flavor. The pumpkin came out a bit. This beer really washes your throat off. I think it would be a great accompaniment to some plain cheesecake or maybe a do a vanilla ice cream float with it, but alone it was too sweet and spiced for my taste.

Michigan Trip Beer Review #2

The second beer I tried on my trip in Michigan was from Bells Brewery. I drank quite a few Bells in my time at Michigan. They are very well known in Michigan even among non-Beer Geeks- you can almost always find a Bells tap at even the skeeziest of bars. So although this particular variety was new to me, it brought me back to college days in some ways...

Bell's Rye Stout

Bell's line of stouts is pretty impressive- Kalamazoo, Java, Double Cream, Expedition, Cherry to name a few. Without checking I would guess they make the most stout varieties of any US brewery. This one is good, though I wouldn't say it's the best. The smell was like moist raisins over coffee. Roasty and somewhat sweet. The taste was more complex. Though I couldn't really pick out a rye character there were notes of coffee, maple syrup, and straw. And like some of it's brothers, especially the Expedition and Kalamazoo, this stout had an excellent mouthfeel- silky and sat on my tongue for just the right amount of time. All in all it's good, complex enough really sit and enjoy, but not so mind blowing that you couldn't have a couple of these.

Michigan Trip Beer Review #1

I took a short trip over MLK weekend to Michigan to see family and I made sure to drink some good Michigan beer there. The Texas beer scene is nothing compared to Michigan (Ithaca for that matter). I managed to find a store a quarter mile from our hotel in East Lansing and picked up a mixed pack of great stuff. Here's a review of the first one I drank:

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout

This is a beer I've been wanting to try since I started drinking good beer. Early in my beer drinking career I was fortunate to try barrel aged beers, and I liked them very much, already having an affinity for bourbon. So I was incredibly surprised and excited to finally find this one. The next day I even saw they had bombers of it! (too bad I had elected not to check a bag, or I definitely would have taken a bottle home).

And I'm happy to say that it meet my high expectations. It poured totally black and silky and deliciously velvet looking. I had to drink out of highball glass (the only thing available in the hotel) instead of a snifter (both traditional and recommended) so the aroma did suffer a tad, but was still great. A strong and complex smell with bourbon, oaky, vanilly. Booze notes of unrefined vodka and corn whiskey. Then bursts of chocolate- creamy and milky- rounding out a very complex smell.

The taste was sweeter and more boozy, but just as delicious and complex. It actually reminded me of Baileys in terms of the creamy sweet alcohol to it.

This beer really made the trip for me, and rates in my top 10 (not sure where yet...). If you have the chance (like you live in Chicago...) you should go out and find this beer.