West Coast Tiny Bottles

So I found two beers in the stash from California and both are in little stubby bottles! Match made in heaven?  ...good enough to drink tonight at least!

Nectar Ales - Humboldt Brown.  Nectar strives to be a sustainable brewery, recycling into various products what other brewers would consider waste, using all natural/organic ingredients where available.  This brew right here is made with all natural hemp..  what?  Hemp beer?  YEP  5.7% ABV and 32 IBUs.  A nice rich brown pour with a faint head..the usual brown notes..some malts, faint molasses, some chocolate and spices and a touch of hops.  A super light body for a brown, crisp actually.  Toasted nutty malts dominant with some chocolate and coffee flavors and a decent hop profile.. a bit floral, a little citrus.  Not sure where the hemp plays in.. there is some herb/spicey notes with a little sour taste on the finish.  Confusing about the hops, but a great take on a Brown Ale!

Double-up Wednesdays

My collection is growing WAY outta hand..I gotta step up my drinking!  On deck tonight, 2 brews from 2 breweries, a two-fer!

Summer Stragglers

So I found 2 more beers in my box o' goodies that are summer seasonals!!!  WOOHOOO

Boulder Beer - Sweaty Betty..  a nice wheat ale at 5.2% ABV.  Man..the head on this disappeared FAST..wow!  This babe pours a beautiful hazy sunshine..this even LOOKS like summer in a glass!  A distinctive toasty malty sweetness to the nose with some peach/apricot aromas..slightly hefeweizen-esque as well..  delicious.  Despite the head disappearing than the Rays playoff season, (yep..  cultural reference!  Google 2011 Tampa Bay Rays if you're reading this in the future Mr. McFly) Ms Betty here is fairly crisp and carbonated..  definite summer wheat taste.  Light toasted malts and bread with some citrus/lemon peel, coriander..touches of clove.  The faintest sour/bitter taste on the finish..finally some hops poking through!  An easy drinking summer (I finished it before I finished typing!  Oops!) with a little different flavor profile..not the best, but fairly unique..nice.

Cape Ann Brewery - Fisherman's Ale.  A Kolsch-style ale at 5.0% and 24 IBUs.  A fairly muted nose to this beer..like a normal Kolsch, but smelled from across the room.  Light grassy/piney hops are noticable along with a freshly-baked bread maltiness and some sweet fruits.  The taste is very refreshing, but follow the nose.. a bit muted, a little muddled together.  Lemon peel, bananas, apricots are all present, but almost seem to be fighting the light, sweet malts and the hops are struggling to make themselves present.  Had nice flavor and very refreshing for the summers on the sea, but might need a little refining to make it great.   B+

Big Beer Friday!

So it was Sept 23..just a normal Friday night..  went to go chill and watch some movies..but decided to drink some big ballsy beers for the hell of it.  Why not, right?!  Definitely made the movie way more enjoyable..but hey.. who wouldn't love ThanksKilling?!  A movie about a possessed turkey demon (puppet) who kills every 505 years (except it totally wasn't that long) on Thanksgiving..  and it was made with under $4,000 by college students..  kick ass!

Sierra Nevada - 2011 Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale.  I can't turn down a beer called Bigfoot!  Have had a few barleywine style brews.. haven't been much of a fan, but SN makes some good stuff, so let's see what they got.  At 9.6% ABV and 90 IBUs..this is certainly a bigfoot of a beer!  Crazy dark amber/copper pour with a big head for such a big beer.  A big, hoppy profile with strong malts and a new grain-y aroma I haven't encountered before...  barley mayhaps?!  The strength of the beer isn't too hidden, the alcohol sneaks in and isn't shy about it's presence.  Rather carbonated for such a beer beer with a bit of caramel/sweet wheaty malts  from the get go that jumps into that high ABV hop profile...you can tell there's a crap ton of hops..very piney/grapefruit..but the strong malt profile saves this from tasting like liquid hops.  Strong, dry sipper, but with plenty of flavor and awesome balance between huge hop and malt attacks.  For sure changed my perception of barleywines..gonna pick this baby up again!

Victory - Golden Monkey.  Love this brew!  a 9.5% ABV Belgian-style Tripel.  A lovely hazy golden yellow with a super foamy head..  the aroma of a typical Belgian Triple at first..  fruity, banana, clove, bit of spice and some yeast, but a nice candied sugar sweetness and hints of alcohol set this apart.  More of a citrus/sweet bite to the nose...taste follows right along.  The alcohol plays a prominent role..not hidden behind much.  Plenty of bready malts and smooth, full fruit flavors with more of that spice and candied sugar and a little citrus hop bite in the finish.  Banana, yeasts, peppery spice are dominant with some green apple/pear hints and a nice sweetness make this WAY too easy to drink!

Lagunitas - Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale...  DAMN.  Great story behind this beer...apparently there was an undercover investigation of the brewery by the local police and they had evidence of smoking/selling weed at the brewery during some fest they were putting on..so the ABC shut them down for what ended up being 20 days on St. Pattys 2005.  Quite convoluted investigation apparently..but Lagunitas decided to say F you and brew a crazy beer to commemorate the occasion!  And by crazy I mean 9.8% ABV and 70.5 IBUs.. a double/Imperial IPA style beer.  Dark coppery red with a surprising head for an Imperial..  very sweet for such a big beer..light caramel notes, sweet malts and even a slightly sweet grapefruit-esque hop smell with a ton of alcohol mixed in..  Big body of toasted malts with some caramel/toffee that tries to balance out the crazy hop profile..but fails.  The hops in this are in no way bitter, surprisingly smooth and creamy..sweet actually...  Tough to place fully..but trust me here..this is a crazy good awesome beer!  Thank God for that 'investigation'!

Keeping Summer in a Bottle

Summer is coming to an end.. but not before regular season baseball ends, New Hampshire turns a fall mosaic and I compile a few summer brews for ya!  A great time for seasonal beers; albeit a bit lacking in variety, summer beers are nonetheless delicious!  The crisp taste, light citrus flavors, the warm breeze and gorgeous skies...  priceless.

..and what better way to kick of a cornucopia of lovely summer beers than with Summer Love itself!?

Mass Brewer's Fest 2011

Oh Hell Yes!  Mass Brewer's Fest 2011 - 2nd annual beer fest put on by the Mass Brewer's Guild at the World Trade Center in Boston!!!!!  I mean, really... just check out that beer list:  Mass Brewer's Fest 2011    Damn, right!?  80+ and there were a LOT more pouring there that weren't listed.  Probably close to 100 beers and a couple casks!  Could not have asked for a better night... started off around 70 degrees or so..didn't get below 60, few clouds in the sky...  and a shit-ton of beers flowing

Gonna TRY to remember which ones I had, and shared as well....  (I probably forgot 2 or 3 breweries we hit..  so damn hard to remember everything I had!)

I absolutely HAD to start the night at the Backlash table.  Seriously, Maggie and Helder of Backlash are amazing and the beer is out of this world!  How in the hell could a beer this great be a brewery's FIRST beer!?  They were true to their word too, this was even better when tapped!  Check out the prior post about Groundswell!! Draught gave this beer more complexity and brought out hints of spice and pepper..poured crisper than from the bottle as well.  Again, outstanding.. follow this brewery people, they're goin' places!

Bar Beers

Due to the lack of a great phone camera and a resistance to bring my real camera to the bar each time for fear of looking like a creep, I have some great beers to talk about, with shitty pictures to accompany them!

A Coupl'a Foreign Brews...

Don't go the foreign route too often, so the random ones I got layin' around.. yeah easiest to just group 'em all together into one little non-American post!  Don't usually stray past the borders of the good ole US of A,  1. its tougher to tell what the beer is like (like with Sam Cherry Wheat..Kona Pipeline Porter.. get it?  we're descriptive) 2. even if the label is descriptive..IT'S NOT IN ENGLISH dammit!  A recent post.. Backlash Groundswell for example, not descriptive, but I can read it!  It helps.  Can't tell what these weird foreign words are..translate please!

So..to start off with, let's just hop the pond and try some more Samuel Smith beers!

IPAs!!!!!!!!!!!

Finally trying to get a little consistency to these posts...  up now, a few IPAs!!  Hopefully we all know what an IPA is, but for those of you who don't, open up your ear holes and drool over this knowledge bomb.  Back in the day, those damn Brits were "colonizing" everywhere, aka being land-hogging douches.  And of course, they wanted all their shit with them wherever they went, especially beer and tea.  The beer part is cool, tea...not so much.  One of the beers that was sent to their colonies in India was a pale ale that was slightly stronger and more hopped than most of the time and was meant to be cellared after brewing.  Hence, the journey to India was actually a benefit to this beer.  Lesser hopped beers and those not quite a strong could spoil.  So the new style of beer that was made to send to India became hoppier and known as India Pale Ales.

Pats Preseason #2 and MORE Dogfish Head - aka the Glory of 120 Minute IPA

Thank you, Twitter!!!  Never thought I'd say that, but thanks to Twitter, I was able to find out that the Gaff managed to get a keg of Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA!!!  120 Minute on DRAUGHT!  BOOM