Thread O' Beer!

[Gizmo]

23. Baltic Porter(BRLO)


Following up yesterdays flop with a style I really enjoy, the Baltic Porter. This one was just a little too roasty to me, giving it a near burnt/smokey flavor, but not quite. Good maltiness and well balanced. It drank pretty fast, but I would have preferred maybe a touch less of the roasted malt to mellow it out just a tad.

1 beer remaining, as we approach the eve.

[bac0n]

Day 22: Category 22. STRONG AMERICAN ALE
Never Better Coronado Brewing Co | San Diego, CA

Overall Impression: An intensely hoppy, fairly strong pale ale without the big, rich, complex maltiness and residual sweetness and body of an American barleywine. Strongly hopped, but clean, dry, and lacking harshness. Drinkability is an important characteristic; this should not be a heavy, sipping beer

Only slightly less difficult to avoid in the Twin Cities than standard IPAs are the DIPAs, and to be honest, I don't get them that often, for a few reasons. First, they tend to be pricey, at least around here, selling in bombers for 10-15 bucks a pop or in 15 oz fourpacks for 16-20 bucks. Second, while when done right, they are things of beauty, they are VERY easy to fuck up, and then you have 20 bucks of beer to pour down the drain. And third, I was kinda spoiled from the get-go, my introduction to the style being Russian River's Pliny the Elder at the Great American Beer Festival ten years ago.

And this beer, while not a disaster, is not a triumph either. On the plus side, it has a nice assertive hop presence from end to end, citrus and a subtle tartness akin to green apple on the nose. Down the middle, in addition to the bitterness, I am picking up orange, grapefruit, and even cantaloupe towards the end. Finishes nice and juicy, with a lingering hop presence. I'm actually liking this beer more, the more I think about it.

In the end, the main ding I would give it is that it's a touch on the boozy side. About 12 ounces in, I am definitely feeling this one. Throttling that back on this beer would make a good beer great. I'm gonna give this one a 3.5 - good.

And then there were two!

[DFA1979]

Still reading guys. One of these days I'll get to try the ones on your lists.

[Gizmo]

24. Bonfire Brown (Saugatuck)


Finishing it off with a nice brown. I feel like this one is pretty well named, as this brown has a nice extra roasty flavor going on. Not overly roasted like before, but more roast than caramel, so I feel like this is bonfire brewed. Very drinkable, though not outstanding in any way. I'm more of a nut brown, so this one would not be one I'd seek out, but I could enjoy again with no problem.

And there ends another season of 24 new beers, this one the one I've most been concerned with from the get-go thanks to a wild 2020. Is this the last one I'll have here in Europe? I don't know, I've got a lot of anticipation in my life over the next couple months, and things still very much up in the air. Hoping everyone is safe and well and have a happy holidays!

[bac0n]

Day 23: Category 23. EUROPEAN SOUR ALE
Indian Red Scorpion Tripping Animals Brewing Co | Doral, FL

Overall Impression: A very pale, refreshing, low-alcohol German wheat beer with a clean lactic sourness and a very high carbonation level. A light bread dough malt flavor supports the sourness, which shouldn’t seem artificial. Any Brettanomyces funk is restrained.

Sours were once the king of the craft beer scene, before they were knocked off the throne by Hazy IPAs. I remember, about 10 years ago now, having one at the Minneapolis Autumn Brew Review, when there were few enough craft breweries to keep track of them all. It was made by Barley Johns located in the north suburbs, a small brewpub which makes almost universally mediocre brews, but this was anything but. It poured a bright red and tasted like straight-up vinegar. My face about imploded.

That horrific experience aside, I do enjoy the sours, but I do recognize that they are an acquired taste, myself being an example of someone who needed to have many of them to actually acquire that taste, and even now, I need to be in the mood for them. That being said, if there were sours like this around when I was first dabbling in the style, it probably wouldn't have taken nearly as long to grow as fond of them as I am now.

Billing itself as a sour ale with currant, cranberry, and raspberry, in truth, it is more a fruited berlinerweisse, meaning that it's lighter bodied, more tart than sour, with no brettanomyces - the bacteria that produces the "funk" that is exemplary of most beers that people think of as sours - to speak of.

As the picture above shows, it pours a light hazy rose, with nice head retention and arms. 20 minutes after I've poured it, there is still a head. It smells of tart cranberry, and tastes of it too. This is a very fruit forward beer, with the cranberry lending an almost jammy taste I would normally expect from a cabernet sauvignon, without being too heavy. In fact, it feels only slightly heavier than what I expect from a berlinerweisse. Down the end, the raspberry makes its way on in, and that is the taste that lingers.

This is a beer I would recommend to people who are curious about sours, but are not quite bold (or crazy) enough to try the weirder stuff. My wife, who has a very low tolerance for that sort of thing, rather enjoyed this one too. I'm gonna give this one a 4.5 - awesome. I will definitely be adding this to the top of my list when next I am in the mood for a sour, or for that matter a berlinerweisse.

One beer left! Hopefully I'll get to it yet today, BAC willing.

[bac0n]

Day 24: Category 26. TRAPPIST ALE
Rochefort 10 Brasserie de Rochefort | Rochefort, Belgium

Overall Impression: A dark, complex, very strong Belgian ale with a delicious blend of malt richness, dark fruit flavors, and spicy elements. Complex, rich, smooth and dangerous.

Yes, I am aware that the day and the style category don't quite line up, but all this talk of Rochefort 10 flung a craving on me. Not gonna beat around the bush here, I love love love LOVE this beer. It is the gold standard of Belgians, and if you asked me to pick 3 beers to drink exclusively for the rest of my life, this would make number 3 every time. Why not 1 or 2, you ask? Because 1 and 2 would drink regularly; this one, on the other hand, I would save for those special occasions where I felt I did something extraordinary, for I feel this is the sort of beer one would save for some special occasion.

In truth, I drink precisely one bottle of this beer a year: usually late in the evening December 24th, when the kids are in bed and i am doing Santa stuff: stuffing socks, staging gifts, taking bites out of carrots, that sort of thing. But now that my kids have aged out of that business, my Christmas eve has become that less complicated ergo this little ditty which I present to you.

I s'pose I oughta tell you about the specifics as to why I like this beer so. On the nose, I get caramel apple and sprice, nutmeg, coriander sometimes, brown sugar and apple other times. And then when I sip it, all the spices, all of them, hit me, cinnamon, nutmeg to start, again with the corriander and all spice, orange peel - shit, there is so much to unpeel here. It finishes with a big ol' smile on my face.

And that's a wrap, folks. Let me finish by saying that, as big a shit sammich as this year has been, ya'all have been, however small a part you think you may have played in it , a huge shoulder to put my arm across, and for that, I thank you dearly.

Gizmo, I look forward to some day soon buying you a beer. In the meantime, Godspeed and God Bless.

And Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

[Gizmo]

bac0n, you're doing yourself a disservice only drinking the best beer in the world once a year! I usually have one every month or so. Would love to join any and all of you sometime drinking some beers and shooting the shit.

[Scar]

Careful when he uses the word ‘ditty’. Last time I heard him say that, an accordion was involved.

[DFA1979]

bac0n playing an accordian sounds hilarious and awesome.

[Morris Schæffer]

There it is the RF 10. . Thanks for the effort Bacon
and Gizmo.

[bac0n]

bac0n playing an accordian sounds hilarious and awesome.

"Playing" may be a bit overly generous a way to put it...

[Scar]

It’s..... an experience.

[DFA1979]

Haha ok then.

[bac0n]

Nope. I may be stateside as soon as February if I don't get hired here like I'm hoping, or who knows when if I do.

Hey Gizmo - I still have that hazy I set aside in December in the off chance you didn't get the job you were looking for. If you want me to send it down, let me know!

[Gizmo]

Hey bac0n. You can drink it, as I got my final offer on Monday, and barring a catastrophe in the next month, I'll be here a while longer.

[bac0n]

Hey bac0n. You can drink it, as I got my final offer on Monday, and barring a catastrophe in the next month, I'll be here a while longer.

Sounds good... and congrats!

[Spun Lepton]

Packed one of these in a build-your-own-six-pack and had it to drink last night. Really good. Not intensely sour, so I could see myself buying a full six-pack of it.

[Gizmo]

Got my 24 beers ready for my December advent calendar/countdown. Anyone looking to join in has a little over a week before the 1st.

[bac0n]

Count me in!

[bac0n]

This year I am deciding to make it easy on myself and go with a pre-selected Beer Advent Calendar, of sorts: 24 Craft Beers of Cheer. Anyone interested in joining me?

[DFA1979]

My sister's boyfriend brought some good cool craft type beers for Thanksgiving since he works at a brewery. He even left some ones I didn't get to try. The sour one my sister gifted me was actually pretty good-it was called Seasick Crocodile.

[bac0n]

I got my first beer in the fridge chilling as I type this. Here is the rating system I will be using, pretty much the same as before:

5 - amazing. peerless. best in class
4.5 - awesome
4 - great
3.5 - good
3 - serviceable
2.5 - mediocre
2 - disappointing / minor flaws
1.5 bad / major flaws
1 - terrible
0.5 - this shit is going right down the drain
0 - what the hell did I just put in my mouth?

[Gizmo]

1. Christmas Hazy (Camba Bavaria)



When I first started doing this, what 8-10 years ago(?!?!), I almost never went for an IPA, regardless of time of year or how liked it was by the masses. Now my beer fridge is generally half hazy/New England IPAs and half everything else, including my occasional homebrew (i'm doing about 3 or 4 batches a year at most). I've really grown to enjoy a nice creamy NEIPA, as long as it's citrus, fruit, and flower, and less grass flavor. Here is a hazy christmas beer, not from New England, but right here in Germany, and it's decent. A bit citrus, but slightly more grassy than I like, but not too much. It's got a light haze, and is rather dry in the mouthfeel. Not sure what makes it "christmas", but whatever, tis the season. A decent start, not great, but at least not bad.

23 beers to go!

[bac0n]

Day One: Big Wave Golden Ale
American Blonde Ale | Kona Brewing Co | Kailua-Kona, Hawaii



Curiously, one thing that dawned on me after I brought this Craft Beer Advent Calendar home, is that all the craft breweries represented in this thing are owned by Dutch mega brewing conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev. I will have to apologize to my cousins who live in St. Louis MO, still bitter from when the local brewery was bought out by a foreign interloper. How much did they like Anheuser-Busch? They named their dog Mic-E-Lobe, that's how much.

That out of the way, day one is Big Wave Golden Ale, which I know I've had before, and was suspicious that I even had reviewed it during a previous 24 beers of Christmas journey and... sure enough, yup back in 2016 I reviewed it. That's probably the last time I drank it too, because, well, I gravitate strongly towards local breweries, and Kona Brewing ain't exactly local. However, I can see my frequency of drinking this beer ticking up this summer, on account that I'll be renting a condo with the fambly for a week over spring break about two blocks off Waikiki Beach, and, sure enough, there is a Kona taproom right around the corner. I can totally see myself grabbing a six of Kona in the following months out of pure nostalgia.

So, lets see about this beer, to see if my opinion of it has changed. Appearance wise, it pours a crisp clear straw color, light headed, but that's alright. Seems to me, this beer isn't meant to be thought about much; it's meant to be thrown back fast with the smell of saltwater on your nose. At first sip, it seems only slightly bready, which is nice, because American Ales overdo it way too much for my liking. What lies behind is crisp and clean, and I am picking up hints of pear and ever so little of sweet red apple. It finishes on a slightly bitter note, albeit nothing even close to an IPA or pale, so folks less inclined towards ludicrous hop profiles, you're gonna be safe with this one.

All in all, my score is 3.5, a slight uptick from 3.25 a few years ago. A solid, good beer. Nothing to get too super-duper excited about, but I could definitely see myself enjoying this on a nice warm summer day - or on the stool of a brewery with a beach view. Suddenly, April can't come fast enough.

1 down, 23 to go!

[Gizmo]

2. Dehydration (Tanker)



I know lemon and I know Goze, but I have no idea what yuzu is. Regardless, I expect a sour beer tonight, and that's what I've got in my glass. It's not a bad sour though, as the bacterial sourness is light, and buried nicely behind the lemon flavor and tartness, while there's a bit of sweetness (the yuzu?) as well. It's like a tart lemonade, but a bit of a bite from the sour yeast, keeping it from being swig-able. Instead, it's a sipable, alcoholic lemonade. Would I prefer yesterday's beer? Yes. Could I drink more of this one? Probably.

22 beers remain