Beers in Review: Latest Quartet

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It's halftime in the South Carolina/Florida game, and I want to finish this post I started last night, so there's no time for dilly-dallying. Let's get to it!

Boulevard Brewing Company opens up this edition of BiR with their Tropical Pale Ale. Pouring an orange-to-gold color, with a ton of carbonation, this beer features massive tropical fruit aromas, including mango and papaya, along with some citrus fruit hints, as well. These major fruit notes continue into the flavor profile, which also features a mild hop bit at the very end of the drinking experience and almost pushing into the aftertaste. The mouthfeel of this beer is remarkable. The fruits used create a bright and slightly juicy feeling the mouth that is very enjoyable. Along with the carbonation, these notes from the mouthfeel give a powerful and refreshing liveliness to the beer.

Next up is Sweet Josie Brown from Lonerider Brewing Company. I find Lowrider to be a generally very solid, if unspectacular, beer producer, and the brown falls into this category quite well. It pours a deep brown color with some copper highlights, while the flavor profile brings plenty of caramel malts and some mild biscuity notes. Caramel and toffee also lead into a hint of smokiness, or some sort of burnt note. For me all of these flavors came together into a mild but noticeable French (very dark) roast coffee note for me--while I generally enjoy such coffee notes, this one went a little too far in the overroast/burnt direction. Again, very solid for the style, though I wouldn't mind a hair less of that burnt note.

Next up is Brown Ryed Girl from Unknown Brewing Company. It also pours a very dark brown color, and features nice roast (not as dark or burnt as the Lonerider) and cocoa and burnt sugar notes that bring an almost perfect level of sweetness. A slight spicy rye note is also present, and the beer has a nice malt backbone and just a bit of creaminess in the mouthfeel. This brown seemed to hit near-bullseyes for certain parts of my palate--not overly roasty, not overly sweet, nice mild spice note.

Finally, Southern Tier Brewing Company's Cherry Gose, which is officially an Imperial Gose (8.3% ABV) brewed with tart cherry juice. Beer is a pretty lightish red, but not pink, color, and I found the flavor notes to generally be on the mild side. Of course, there are cherry and berry notes throughout, though the gose has barely any sweetness, and there is a sour bite that pushes up at the end of the drinking experience. I found this gose to be straight forward. The beer hits its notes (mild sourness, very slight sweetness, cherry notes) well, and it all works out fine. I've had better goses in the past, though.

Beers in Review: They can't all be winners

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This BiR brings a wide range of emotions to this blog. Beers will be liked. Beers will be disliked. Let's find out which is which together.

The folks at Craft and Draft had a fun little tasting last week, pairing assorted beers from River Rat Brewery with specific types of candy. I tried River Rat's Broad River Red with a Kit Kat, and this initially generated a bit of a mental "taste" already, as the aromas of the beer matched the sweet cocoa and wheaty, biscuity notes from the Kit Kat. At least, they did in my head. Overall, the Kit Kat matched well with the Red ale and it's solid malt backbone with some spicy sweetness, and perhaps a dark cocoa hint...or was that the candy doing its job. Regardless, the Red is one of my favorites from River Rat.

Next up is Fandom Ale from Lagunitas Brewing Company. Fandom is a hoppy ale being brewed for the Buffalo Wild Wings sports bar chain. Now, perhaps that fact should have been the first red flag when it came to this beer. Pouring a straight-up yellow, I got tons of piney and vegetal aromatics before even taking a sip. These notes carried through to the taste. Flavor notes included assorted grains, vegetal notes, and hoppy pine. There was a mild hop bitterness that tended to carry through a dry finish into the aftertaste. These flavors, though were shoved in your face quite harshly during the drinking experience, and I found the flavor combination to be not very appealing. This was a serious miss by Lagunitas. Or a major cleaning problem on the part of my local BWW.

On a much more positive note, we move to a brewery that has rarely, if ever, disappointed, Bell's Brewery. Roundhouse is an India Red Ale brewed with honey, and is a fall seasonal with availability in September and October ONLY, per their website. It pours a reddish color, and is quite bold in both hop and especially malt flavors. Sweet honey blends well with a sweet maltiness along with mild crackery notes. This is balanced by a mild hop bite, with just a hint of pine present. I found this beer to be a quick drinker--highly drinkable and highly enjoyable.

Six-Pack of News, Volume 14

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Game 7 of the World Series is starting any minute now, but I had a full rack of stories for the news round-up, so let's get to it!

Anheuser-Busch and Otto, developers of self-driving truck technology, recently completed the first successful commercial shipment by self-driving truck when they sent a tractor-trailer full of beer on I-25 from Fort Collins, CO to Colorado Springs. The 120-plus mile trip was monitored by a truck driver observing the entire trip from inside the truck.

Vinepair likes their lists, and their latest is to consult "The Beer Goddess", nickname of a Portland-area bottle shop manager, about the 9 beers SHE likes to drink herself.

Vinepair's Nick Hines also documented the history of the Beer Mile, one of mankind's absolute best and absolute worst ideas.

In a recent interview, food personality Anthony Bourdain decided to be a little bit grumpy about the craft beer scene as a whole, and "beer snobs" in general. Bourdain insisted "(a) bar is to go to get a little bit buzzed, and pleasantly derange the senses, and have a good time...(it's) not to sit there f---ing analyzing beer." Now, I really don't see why bars can't be both, or at least fall into either category. I frequent a number of different types of bars, and some of them I specifically go to to "analyze craft beer". But there are also plenty of places where I don't want to spend a lot of money, or, to Bourdain's point, I just want to loosen up a little bit or not use my brain for awhile. I reasonably understand few bars could pull off both vibes. But I fail to understand why the "beer snob" place is not a place worth visiting. The full Bourdain interview from the website Thrillist can be found here.

I tend to not point out breweries' new releases, just due to the sheer volume of those releases. But any baseball fan will be very interested in an upcoming release from Samuel Adams. They will be honoring recently-retired Boston Red Sox designated hitter David "Big Papi" Ortiz with Big Hapi Double IPA brewed with mango. Sam Adams will release 541 bottles (matching Ortiz' career home run total) of Big Hapi on Friday.

Finally, the Great American Beer Festival recently wrapped up in Denver, Colorado, and the Huffington Post's Ryan Grenoble documented some of the oddest beers he found at the festival. Some of the more adventurous beers utilized ingredients such as pickles, birch tree sap, and scrapple (a meat-scraps delicacy most popular in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey).

Beers in Review: Giving "The High End" a try

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For today's BiR, I unintentionally have two members of AB-InBev's High End series lined up for review. Which is fine--despite my near-constant criticism of Budweiser & Friends, there is absolutely some worthwhile stuff in that High End line up.

But before we get to them, I have another 21st Amendment Brewery beer to check out. Brew Free or Die pours a clear golden color. Brew Free brings piney hop flavors and a bright, slightly juicy mouthfeel, and a very slight hop bite that blends with a mild maltiness. Flavor-wise, the beer almost plays like a session beer; everything is present and well-balanced, but on the milder side overall. The ABV is certainly not sessionable, though, clocking in at 7%.

Next is one of the long-time standard wheat beers, Hoegaarden. And "standard" feels like an apt overall descriptor of this beer. It's hazy and pale yellow in the glass, and got served with a lemon, which I immediately dumped. Hoegaarden has a generally mild flavor profile, with typical spice notes--cloves, coriander--along with some wheat notes and graininess. A hint of citrus and citrus peel is also present. There's nothing earth-shattering about Hoegaarden, but it does a fine job hitting all of the notes expected out of a wheat beer.

Finally, I felt the responsibility to try a real pumpkin beer before Halloween passed, so a couple weekends ago, I ordered a Night Owl Pumpkin Ale from Elysian Brewing Company. Now, my aversion to pumpkin beers is well documented (keep in mind, this was before Monday's Warlock tasting), but I just wanted to see if my palate had changed at all. Needless to say it hasn't. Night Owl pours a rich reddish-brown to bronze color, and reminded me of straight-up pumpkin pie. I detected tons of cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice, and other spices. I found it to be quite sweet, pushing towards the boundary of sickly sweet, to me. Now I'm sure this is exactly what the folks at Elysian were shooting for with this beer, but it is absolutely not for me.

One Year of PRB!

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Hello, friends. In case you missed yesterday's video (or didn't watch the whole thing), TODAY is the first birthday of Pourly Reviewed Beer!

To be honest, a year ago, I wasn't quite sure how far this would go.

The initial blogging concept started early in 2015 (as Inside the Keg), and Pourly Reviewed Beer started in what I'm calling the "Beta phase" in September of 2015. But that attempt resulted in just a handful of beer-related posts in a six-week period. Now, a catastrophic flood did play a bit of a role in that inconsistency, but mostly it was on me, and at the end of October I finally hunkered down and started writing pretty regularly.

After a regular posting schedule, I decided to add video to the site, grabbed a YouTube channel, and began weekly video reviews in February. That spring, the Six-Pack of News debuted, creating a dedicated semi-regular/as-needed news platform that had been attempted and abandoned a few times previously. Those first half of 2016 also brought the first theme weeks (Columbia Craft Beer Week in January and St. Patrick's week in March), the first event report (the Columbia Brew Bus in April), and the first in-depth location/travel posts (Posts from Asheville in May and June). The end result was an ever-increasing posting frequency, from about 10 posts/month at the beginning of 2016, to around 15/month in May and June, to what will likely be at least 20 posts in October.

So, where do we go from here?

Well, more of the same, and more frequently, is a start. I'm personally committing to having at least 5 posts per week, in an attempt to make this a site that MUST BE visited daily. This will include my recent commitment of YouTube videos each Tuesday/Thursday/one weekend day. After just doing a couple of events this year, I feel like that will be a big area of potential growth. Columbia has so many excellent beer events year-round now, and they should be shared with the world.

I also need to utilize social media better. Right now, the Twitter page gets some love thanks to some of my fellow beer bloggers and vloggers, but the Facebook page is little more than notices about new blog articles. Both platforms can be better utilized. I started this by linking my Untappd account to the PRB Twitter handle (add me on Untapped, username: PourlyReviewedBeer), but I just need to add my own thoughts and opinions to these platforms as they strike me.

Long form news and opinion pieces could also be a next step, but I will need to see how that fits into my current blogging set-up. Still, it's something worth looking into for the next year.

Now, to the many people I have to thank.

I must start with my incredibly supportive family, who are wonderful in so many ways.

To all the readers and viewers, thanks for stopping by, and stopping by often. Special thanks to those commenters, especially on YouTube. It's made for some great conversation, debate, and networking!

Specifically, to the members of the Columbia beer scene that have stopped by my little corner of the internet, thanks so much, and if there's anything at all I can do to help you out, let me know. I would love to do some collaboration.

 

Thanks so much, everyone, for all of your support. Here's to Year 2! Cheers!

Beers in Review: Assorted trio

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In today's BiR, two breweries are making their site debuts! Let's see who's here!

Leading off is Ithaca Beer Company and Flower Power IPA. Flower Power pours an amber to gold color, and is quite bitey--we'll get to that bit in a moment. A delightful flavor profile leads with a sweetness that reminds me of gummy orange slices, perhaps with the sweetness dialed down just a hair (though, still plenty of sweetness to be found). Further on, piney hops and a great deal of floral aromatics donate the senses. The mouthfeel can be a bit prickly, with perhaps almost too much carbonation. The only real downpoint for me was a hop bite that gradually builds while drinking and even after drinking the beer. It's completely tolerable for one beer, but this would probably not be a session, or even just "I'll have another", option.

Next is a beer from Fish Brewing Company, under their Fish Tale Organic series. Their Organic IPA is an orange-bronze color, and I was impressed by the malt/hop balance in this IPA. Initially, a malty sweetness leads off the drinking experience, shortly leading to citrus and pine hop notes with a minimal amount of bitterness. In addtion, there were also some spicy notes present in the back end of the drinking experience. This IPA features what is, essentially, my perfect flavor profile.

Finally, from two newbies to a fairly common brewery, Redhook Ale Brewery and their ESB. A pale orange to copper color, I first noticed the beer's creamy mouthfeel. A mildly sweet caramel maltiness was the first flavor I picked up, along with some earthy and bready notes, almost like a dense wheat or darker bread. There is also a very slight hop bitterness that mostly comes out in the aftertaste. Despite this now being a Budweiser product, I find this to be a decent little ESB, especially for what is usually a fairly affordable price point.

Beers in Review: Heavy Hitters

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I've got some big beers queued up for this review, so let's get started.

We start off with Thomas Creek Brewery and their Bourbon Barrel-Aged Quad, using Four Roses Bourbon barrels. This beer pours a deep brown and is quite hazy. The leading flavor is a whole lot of sugar, almost to the point of being sickly sweet, with notes of chocolate and dark fruits. Also, there was something in there I couldn't quite identify, flavor-wise, but it was almost making my lips pucker, as if there were some kind of sour or bitter note, but I detected neither. I would imagine such a note would speak loud and clear against the sweet notes, unless they were buried incredibly deep by that sweetness. Checking in at 10% ABV, the boozy note also pushes pretty hard. Despite those last couple of things, this was a damn tasty beer.

Next up is Sacred Heartier Double IPA from Columbia's own Conquest Brewing Company. Another big time beer, but it a totally different way from the Quad, obviously. The beer is a pretty orange color and quite clear. It is possible my palate was a bit skewed from the Quad, but this DIPA wasn't as sweet/boozy as I find most in the style to be. I was not bothered by this at all, as I enjoyed the solid hop presence that brought pine notes and a hint of citrus to the flavor profile. I haven't always been big on Conquest--I find them to be inconsistent, generally--but this was quite the hit for me. I just hope it's the same the next time I try it.

Finally, from Founders Brewing Company is the world-class Breakfast Stout. It's very nearly pitch black in color, with a mild boozy note (ABV 8+%) and some dark fruit. The Stout also brought a little bit of coffee and a slight-but-delightful chocolate brownie note that came through in the end of the drinking experience AND EVEN MORESO in the aftertaste. This beer has a considerable reputation, and it stood up to that reputation in my eyes.

So, this finally marks the end of all my beer reviews from the Craft and Draft Octoberfest party. I tried to save the best for last, but the truth is that virtually everything I had at this event was excellent. I look forward to this being an annual event curated by the great guys at C & D!

 

Video Review: Shiner Kosmos Reserve

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The latest video review is Kosmos Reserve from Spoetzl Brewery, aka Shiner. Check it out!

I'm looking to get into a more regular posting schedule. My goal is to have videos Tuesdays, Thursdays, and once on the weekend, likely Sundays. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Friday (and, frankly any video day, as well) will be dedicated to Beers in Review, Six-Packs of News, and more. The end goal is at least 5-6 posts per week, making PRB a location worth visiting daily.

 

 

 

That's the plan, anyway.