Beer in Review: NOT a beer from Ireland (Whoops!)

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So, in my journey to acquire Irish beers for this week's reviews, I made a slight error with one of them. Today's beer is an "Irish-style Cream Ale" that was made in England. Whoopsie!

Wexford Irish Cream Ale is made by Greene King Beers, though I can't find this particular beer on the website. This particular ale came in a larger aluminum can with a nitro widget. The result was that cascading bubble effect that Guinness draughts made most famous. The result is a smooth creamy white head on top of a gold-to-copper beer. The beer is flavorful, mostly consisting of bready malt flavors along with maybe a bit of caramel or toffee sweetness. The back end also has a mild amount of bite from the hops. This beer is much better than expected, as a lot of cream ales can be underwhelming in flavor. This one delivers very well.

St. Patrick's Week Beer Review: Guinness Foreign Extra Stout

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Because you KNEW we weren't getting through this week without a Guinness product.

The Guinness Foreign Extra Stout is pitch black with a bit of tan head, and has a fair amount of body. The first taste is a big sweet note of dark chocolate, combined with some breadiness. Towards the end I get a whole lot of maltiness, roasty and smoky notes, along with maybe just a slight touch of alcohol at the very end. I find this Guinness to have lots more flavor and be much more complex than the standard Guinness Draught Stout, which can be a little bit limited, flavor-wise. While not traditional, this is a nice alternative.

 

St. Patrick's Week Beer Review: Smithwick's Irish Ale

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Hello, everyone. It is four days until St. Patrick's Day, and we're going to honor such a notable holiday with four different Irish beers. Now, I will quickly note that these beers generally are wide commercial releases. This more or less can't be helped, as microbrews/craft beers FROM Ireland typically will not make it across the ocean to North America. So, we take what we can get, starting with arguably the widest release of the four: Smithwick's Irish Ale.

A Guinness product, Smithwick's is stylistically an Irish Red Ale. The most common Irish Reds available in the U.S. are made by Killian's and Samuel Adams. Smithwick's is typically better than either of those. It pours a pretty bold red color with perhaps some brownish hints, and has a nice pillowy light tan head. Upon drinking, the first notes are sweet notes along with some dark fruits. As my palate adapts, I find there is less sweetness that is replaced with just a small hint of hoppy bitterness. These notes gradually lead into maltiness and a hint of roast towards the back end of the sip.

Beers in Review: Sextet

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With the upcoming series of Irish beers this week, I don't want to leave any kind of backlog of pending beer reviews. So, I'll be knocking out six different beers in today's review. Let's get to it!

Leading off is Goose Island Beer Company's Green Line Pale Ale. It pours a crystal clear gold or honey color. Generally mild and well-balanced, initial impressions are of piney and citrusy hops and a hint of fruitiness. This all leads to a mild maltiness in the finish, along with some herbal flavors. The ABV is slightly high to fit into this category, but this pale ale otherwise falls into the "sessionable" category.

Next up is Brewery 85's Quittin' Time. Pouring a pale gold with a moderate amount of body and a notable amount of carbonation (with a white, pillowy head), this beer had some grassy and biscuit or grainy notes, but the most notable flavors were that of banana, and some kind of spice, something in the clove/all-spice vein (though, that may just be me interpreting the banana flavor).

Westbrook Brewing Company's Bearded Farmer #5 (also called "Thornhill") is a combination of sour and non-sour ales. Westbrook's Bearded Farmer series is a series of Saisons, which makes this all add up to quite a complex beer. A pale-yellow color, the first thing that hits are the citrusy notes from the sour side. The sour kick is noticeable but pretty mild, not overwhelming like some sours (this is helped by the "hybridness" of the ale). Eventually, the flavors transform into some very light grains as well as some funky Belgian notes along with some fruity Belgian sweetness. I would have called this one of the most complex beers I've had recently, if not for what came after this last night...

Evil Twin Brewing always makes stuff that's out there. It's not a surprise--they're from Denmark. Their collaboration with Connecticut's Two Roads Brewing Company resulted in Two Evil Geyser Goze. Now, because I don't think you'll believe my impressions, I feel the need to quote the Two Roads website's description of this beer, where they used "Icelandic moss, rye, herbs, sea kelp, skyr (Icelandic yogurt) and birch-smoked sea salt" in creating this beer. The Geyser Goze pours a light lemon color, and has very little body. Flavor notes? Smoky. Vegetal. Seaweed, of course. Peas (like, the vegetable). Once my palate started to adapt a little bit, I got some sweet hints, most notably of strawberries, but it was very faint. It wasn't sour, and only barely sweet. I can appreciate what Evil Twin and Two Roads were going for, but at the end of the day, it wasn't a beer for me.

Alpine Beer Company's Duet IPA brought me back down to earth a bit. Maybe it was just my palate recovering, but I found this beer to be quite straight-forward. A nice golden color with some body, I got a strong grassy aroma. Flavors of piney hops and sweet fruitiness. Pretty light overall. I enjoyed this beer, but I probably need to give it a second chance considering how extreme its predecessor was.

Finally, Southern Tier Brewing Company's 2X Smash, a Double IPA. Again, this is a beer I may need to revisit at a later date, but my local watering hole seemed to be excited about it, and had it in very short supply. I found the color beautiful, a rose gold (reddish-gold) hue. The DIPA led off with mild dank hops that leads to lots of nice tropical fruit notes--things like passion fruit, mango, and maybe some citrus. The hops were present but there was no bite; a bit of hop sweetness blended well with these tropical notes. The result was pleasantly sweet without being overwhelming.

Beers in Review: Plus a programming note for next week

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Three very different beers to discuss today. Let's get to it.

Vienna Lagers are not necessarily the most diverse of beer styles, but Devils Backbone Brewing Company is delivering on the style in a big way, having won multiple awards over the last several years. Their Vienna Lager pours a deep gold, and doesn't have a whole lot of body. Mild grain notes are accompanied by a great malt sweetness and some toasted notes. As expected, it is also very crisp on the palate and in the finish.

Next up, we try the Medusa Stout from Columbia's own Conquest Brewing Company. Pouring pitch black and having a good amount of body, you find many of the typical stout notes present: mild amounts of chocolate, some roasted coffee, some dark maltiness. There was also some bitterness present, but that tended to dissipate as it warmed. It had a pretty clean finish, but a bit of a smoky aftertaste or breathiness after drinking.

Finally, Terrapin Beer Company's session IPA, RecreationAle (not a typo). It's a pale gold color, has a moderate amount of body, and I find the flavors to be largely pretty mild. Citrus hops and a good amount of hop bitterness lead the way in sipping this beer. There is a bit of a fruity bite later on, along with something grainy as well. As a Session IPA, it's a relatively low ABV beer that would be best enjoyed quite cold on a summer day.

So, St. Patrick's Day is a big deal here in Columbia, South Carolina. We have a festival that draws 40,000 or more downtown to enjoy a big street fair, including 4 big stages of music, a parade, kids' carnival, and more. In the spirit of St. Pat's, check out 4 different Irish beer reviews next week, from Monday the 13th through St. Patrick's Day on Thursday. At least one of these will be a video review. That will all start Monday!

Beers in Review: Two more Pale Ales, plus a Lips of Faith

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We start off the latest trio of reviews with Dark Horse Brewing Company's Crooked Tree IPA. Pouring a deep gold and having medium body, the first thing to hit me on the sip were dank and piney hops. This combines with a mild maltiness and some hop bitterness towards the end, but generally this beer is pretty well-balanced. You might also find a hint of caramel in the flavor, as well.

Second is War Flag's American Pale Ale. It poured a hazy straw color, and featured a citrusy sweetness as the primary portion of the flavor profile. There were also some spicy flavors and a mild hop bite towards the back end of the sip, but it wasn't really bitter. I also found this beer to be crisp and fairly straight forward.

Finally, from New Belgium's Lips of Faith series, Le Terroir 2015. As a dry-hopped sour ale, this ale is quite complex. Sours by themselves typically have a unique combination of sweet, tart, and even salty flavors (see this December 8, 2015 review for a little more about sours/gozes). Le Terroir strikes many expected notes, but goes beyond. Early on in the sip, you get a lot of peach sweetness and dark fruit to winey flavors with some mild tartness that is really nice. The drinking experience becomes more powerful as the sip goes on, as the tartness ramps up with the ale becoming quite crisp, and there is even a hint of saltiness. In addition, the hops used in this ale (a unique addition compared to most sours) also make their presence felt in the second half of the sip. The hops make for a complex flavor profile that goes above the usual sour ale flavor profile.

I have waited so long to see this article!

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So, it's no secret that I am not a fan of the standard of the fall seasonal collection, the pumpkin beer. While I am happy to say I found a few that suited my palate fairly well, I typically dislike the all-in-pumpkin-pie flavor that many of these beers and the massive amounts of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and other spices that accompany these beers. Again, moderation is okay, but I find few of these beers practice such moderation.

This recent Forbes article tells me I may not be the only one getting tired of the pumpkin beer craze of the past few years. Pumpkin beers enjoyed reported 30+% growth each of the last few years, but sales fell flat recently, and some major retailers had some of the best-regarded pumpkin beers (such as Dogfish Head Punkin Ale and Southern Tier Pumpking) still in stock in February of this year! This was seemingly confirmed by the heads of the beer-tracking app Untappd, who reported increased check-ins for pumpkin beers "far after the new year, as late as January, February, March, or April."

Some thoughts are given for the decline. One potential reason, which could be a possibly encouraging sign, is that many craft beer novices once purchased these beers, only for them to become gateway beers, with these once-novices now purchasing other, different craft beers. The article also points to such things as the often-bemoaned "seasonal creep"--the introduction of such fall beers as early as July--and beer drinkers simply trying to diversify their beer experiences, though there are mixed thoughts on these reasons.

Personally, I am not going to cry too much over a significant reduction in the nation's pumpkin beer supply.

 

H/t: forbes.com and Tara Nurin

Beers in Review: Pale Ales

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For this week's written blog entries, I have a quartet of pale ales to write about. We'll cover the first two right now.

After checking my notes, I realized I reviewed this beer in December. It's quite a bit sooner than I would want to repeat a beer, but as a year-round release, I'm fairly confident it's from a different production batch, so let's do it. Lagunitas Brewing Company's Daytime Fractional IPA is a high quality sessionable IPA. It pours a pretty clear gold color and has a pretty low body. Big, bold citrus flavors are very strong on the palate, along with some dank and piney hop flavors. Overall, it is very well-balanced, bright, crisp, and easily drinkable.

I also had Founders Brewing Company's seasonal fruity IPA, Azacca. Having medium body and pouring a red-gold, similar to a dark ruby red grapefruit, this pretty color sets the tone for the flavor of the beer. It is quite crisp and features flavors of fruits and tropical fruits, including passion fruit and papaya. I feel like there was also some mango and maybe peach there, as well, but there was less of the two latter than the two former. The tropical fruits are well-balanced against a mild amount of hoppy bitterness. This is a really neat beer with a really neat flavor profile--it's not a profile you see often in a lot of readily available IPAs. The last one with such a strong tropical profile was the Sierra Nevada Tropical IPA.

Later this week, more pales from a couple of lesser-known breweries. Also, expect the first of the week's two video reviews tomorrow!

Beer spa!

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I'm presuming spa days are fun. As a guy, I've never done one. Mashable, however, recently reported on a Sisters, Oregon spa involving some of beer's key ingredients in their treatments.

Live many spas across this nation, Hop in the Spa offers many standard spa treatments: Swedish massage, hot stones, various ancient healing treatments. They are also offering treatments such as "microbrew soaks" and utilizing ingredients like barley, herbs, and hops and "hop-infused oils". The idea is that microbrews are made from materials that include vitamins and minerals like iron, selenium, magnesium, B1, B3, and more, and that these vitamins and minerals "will help with insomnia, anxiety, stress and help calm the nervous system down." Per an interview with Mashable, Hop in the Spa plans a future beer garden so customers can relax with a pint after treatments, and to sell branded products via their website.

You check out the "Services" tab in the link above for a full rundown of their beer-related and non beer-related services.

H/t: mashable.com and Sarah Spiegelman Richter

Beers in Review: A pair of pales

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A pale ale and an IPA on tap for today's reviews. Let's do it!

Natty Greene Brewing Company's Southern Pale Ale, their only year-round pale ale (also have 2 seasonal IPAs) pours a gold color and has a medium body. Interesting blend of hop flavors, initially showing off bright citrus flavor before leading into a hint of piney hops as well. Not too complex, but a very solid flavor profile coming out of this pale ale. It is pretty crisp to drink and has a pretty clean finish.

Next up is Eight Point IPA from Devils Backbone Brewing Company. A similar light gold or rich hay color with a light-to-medium body, the flavor is bold, hitting you with rich piney hops, along with some dank hints and maybe a something a little bit herbal or peppery. Despite the strong flavors, there is only a moderate amount of bitterness that tends to occur towards the end of the sip. The overall result is a beer that is surprisingly NOT overpowering, as some hop-powered beers can be. That hop bitterness hangs around the palate and the throat for a little bit after drinking.

Coming this weekend, two words: Beer spa!

Beers in Review: Abita, Highland, Stone

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There are some very interesting beers coming up on the blog this week, via both the written and visual mediums. Let's get to it!

A local watering hole I visited on Saturday looked to have an Abita Brewing Company tap takeover this past week. I don't know if that stemmed from Mardi Gras earlier in the month or what, but the Abita Amber was still on tap, so I decided that would be a good opener. Pretty straight forward with good flavor for an amber ale. I detected a bit of a grainy note early on, but this quickly resolved into maltiness. There were also some very mild sweet and caramel notes throughout. Pretty crisp and, again, fairly straight forward overall.

Next up is Highland Brewing Company's St. Terese's Pale Ale. It's a little milder, hop-wise, compared to their Kashmir and the seasonal Devil's Britches IPAs. Mild dank hops were present throughout when taking a sip. Eventually, the malts come forward a bit, and there are some fruity or sweet notes towards the end, making a decent balance as you take a sip. Maybe something grainy or toasty there, as well, but it's very faint.

The final beer for this entry is Xocoveza, originally another collaboration by Stone Brewing, along with their Homebrew Competition winner Chris Banker and Mexico's Cerveceria Insurgente in late 2014. Xocoveza (which is fun to say, but a pain to type) proved so popular that Stone brought it back late last year. It's popularity is well-founded--this was an incredibly complex beer. A Mocha Stout, I found Xocoveza on Nitrogen locally. The result was a beer that poured pitch black with a creamy head. The mix was beautiful. The aromas were incredibly powerful coming off of this stout: a bit of cocoa, lots of coffee, and the coffee note played heavily in the flavor, where it came off as a very dark roast, almost to the point of burnt bitterness. It toed this line very carefully, but was partially saved by quite sweet vanilla and especially chocolate notes. When combined with the super-fine foamy head caused by the Nitrogen, the end result was this almost drinking like a milkshake! Very tasty with tons of flavor.

Coming up in this week's video review: Westbrook's 5th Anniversary Stout! Coming early this week!

Beers in Review: Including a Triple Collaboration

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Returning to the realm of the written word (expect the next video review early next week), we'll open with a live tasting of Natty Greene Brewing Company's Red Nose Winter Ale. Having a red ale base, it pours an almost iced tea-like color and a pretty heavy body. The first impression is that of malty sweetness, and gradually, a number of other flavors blend into that sweetness. I'm getting some citrus hints, and a little of what I call the "fall/winter spice blend"--maybe a bit of nutmeg or cinnamon, something in that vein. It's not very strong, which is fine with me. There is a non-hoppy bite at the end from something--I can't quite identify the flavor, but doesn't really feel out of place.

Next up is a triple collaboration from Stone Brewing, Ecliptic Brewing, and Wicked Weed Brewing. Points Unknown IPA is labelled as a "double IPA blended with a barrel-aged Belgian-style Tripel". I typically don't want to quote bottles or websites, but given this beer's complexity, I feel they explaining it best:

“The Tripel was transferred into barrels that originally housed red wine before finding a second life as vessels for aging tequila. Four months later, that beer was excavated, then blended at one-fourth to three-fourths ratio with the freshly brewed double IPA to create...a blend of the traditional and the new, presenting a variety of diverse flavors that coalesce into something more unique than any one beer”

The beer poured cloudy and apricot-colored, and contained a mild hop bitterness. Coming in a 9.5% ABV, and with the use of wine/tequila barrels, boozy notes were pretty prominent, along with even some straight-up alcohol flavors. In addition, lots of fruit and red wine notes were present. I had a 22oz bottle of this, and really enjoyed about the first half, but the second half of the bottle became a bit of chore to drink. That's just me.

As one last note, I also had a draft of Sam Adams' Cold Snap winter seasonal, but I think there might have been something wrong with the keg or the system. I might just need to stop trying to judge drafts from this particular local watering hole. I will try to give it one more chance before the spring beers come in, but we'll see.

Video Review: Ballast Point Sculpin and Grapefruit Sculpin

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So, I have decided to take this three-month old blog and this face made for radio, and WE'RE GOING BIG TIME!

By "big time", I mean YouTube. I am proud to present my inaugural PRB video review on YouTube, featuring a side-by-side of Ballast Point's Sculpin IPA and Grapefruit Sculpin IPA.

 

So, hopefully you all will give me some time to 1) develop an internet personality, 2) figure out optimal video recording methods, and 3) LEARN HOW TO TALK WITH MY ENTIRE MOUTH!

It's a work in progress. I welcome constructive criticism.

The idea right now is one or two video reviews plus two to three written entries (reviews and news) each week.

Thanks for humoring me, everyone!

 

UPDATE: So, I figured out how to get my OTHER webcam into my movie-making software, so I hope the next video will be of better quality, both audibly and visually. Thanks for your patience!

Beers in Review: I'm not dead edition

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Hi! How are you? I'm great. I was out and about across this great country of ours, and am ready to get back to the bloggery. I considered writing an editorial about Peyton Manning's blatant shilling for Budweiser post-SB50 (turns out he owns some distributors or something), but that's really become old news. So, let's just get into some beers, shall we?

We start with Uinta Brewing Company's Golden Spike Hefeweizen, which poured a deep orange and was cloudy (not unusual for Hefes to be unfiltered and cloudy). Most notable was the graininess; lots of bready and crackery notes going on, along some citrusy sweetness. Banana notes were also present. Overall, it hits a lot of the standard hefeweizen notes. It was maybe a little more grainy than I like my hefes, but that's a personal preference as much as anything.

A brewery that almost never disappoints (a trend that hopefully continues after their acquisition by Constellation Brands) is San Diego's Ballast Point Brewing Company. As expected, even something as "basic" as their Longfin Lager is better than most or all of the rest. Longfin pours a pale gold with little body but plenty going on, flavor-wise. Strong grainy and biscuity notes that mix with a hint of hops. There is also a bit of sweetness that points to its traditional German-inspired style. This is a beer that is crisp, clean, and easy to drink.

Finally, Duclaw Brewing Company's Dirty Little Freak. Labelled by the brewery as a "Coconut Caramel Chocolate Brown Ale", this beer pretty simply puts a hammer to that nail. It pours a moderate-to-dark brown but is translucent. Again, the flavors are pretty well spot-on coming from the brewers. Aroma-wise, the smells probably rate in strength chocolate-caramel-coconut. Flavor-wise, the chocolate notes are quite evident, with hints of coconut. The caramel tends to come through more at the end or in the aftertaste. The bottle also says it was brewed with vanilla beans, giving the whole thing an overall ice cream sundae type of flavor. They seemed to nail what they were going for, but it's a bit too sweet for my taste.

Beers in Review: Left Hand, Sierra Nevada, and OMB

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I have three good beers to discuss today, and I don't have much of an intro in me right now, so let's just get to it.

Left Hand Brewing Company makes one of my favorite stouts on the market, their Milk Stout. This stout is available in Nitro (think Guinness-style tiny bubbles), but this bottle was not nitrogenated. Still, as expected, the Milk Stout brings a hint of creaminess, along with a nice maltiness. I also found mild roastiness, along with cocoa and maybe a bit of coffee as well. This stout had a medium body and was very smooth. A really enjoyable stout.

Next up was a great surprise from Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Sierra Nevada has started branching out of late, and started this some time ago under their beer fan-driven Beer Camp series. Last week, I tried a "Tropical IPA" from that series. Having a low-medium body, the first impression of this beer was straight up fruit bomb. Tropical fruits dominated the front of this beer, eventually giving way to a moderate amount of hoppiness that was especially evident in the aftertaste. A good amount of hop bitterness throughout rounds out this beer's flavor profile. Sierra Nevada has been diversifying their line-up of late (even going into Goze territory recently), but even this early-year seasonal was a bit of a stunner.

Finally, an entry from Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, their amber ale/Altbier, called Copper. Copper had a lightish body, but a good amount of flavor. There was plenty of malt, some nuttiness to me, maybe something grainy or grassy (or maybe something else?). I also detect hints of caramelly sweetness (especially in the finish and aftertaste) and bitterness. Surprisingly complex for an amber.