what beers are you drinking?

[Sneakeater]

20 minutes ago, AaronS said:

somewhere inbetween a helles and a pilsner if I understand correctly.

That's a good place to be!

[AaronS]

it turns out that that is a good description of the way this beer looks but it's much maltier than most examples of either style.

[Sneakeater]

That's what your write-up made it sound like!

[Sneakeater]

(I don't want to gush, but you do the best, most communicative tasting notes I've ever seen.)

[AaronS]

three floyds the fifty million dollar man double india pale ale - 8.5% abv. this is a pretty average version of a pre-ne ipa dipa - there's a big set of bitter hop flavors that hint at peach and tropical fruit, along with a malt presence that's a little bit too sweet. I can't read the date on the bottom of these cans, but I'm sure an older sierra beer from the same grocery store would have been better and so on. meh. look for me to post about zombie ice the second I get my hands on it blah blah blah and blah.

[AaronS]

the alchemist heady topper ale - 8% abv. I’ve posted about this well known beer a few times and have probably had another half dozen or so cans in bars since they started sending cans down here a few years ago. I’ve enjoyed it every time I’ve had it, as you’d expect for something that still feels special every time I have it, but I haven’t had enough to really get a handle on how this tastes. while I’ve always consumed them the day I got them this is the first time I’ve seen a dated can, so I guess it’s the first time I’m certain these cans are fresh. (about two and a half weeks, which is the sweet spot for these kinds of beers.) this is a pretty opaque shade of orange, which appropriately enough makes it a mixture of older (color) and new (haze) beer. the last couple of times I’ve had this I’ve realized that despite it’s fame as the original ne ipa (a title I’d give to omnipollo’s fatamorgana and the early hill farmstead beers) it’s actually it’s own thing, even if that thing is closer to a superlative old dipa than the newer stuff. this has a little bit of the thicker mouthfeel of a ne ipa, but it doesn’t really taste like it was made with oats and it has more of a traditional malt base than those beers do. the hop profile (current guess would be columbus, chinook, simcoe, amarillo, and nothing as new as citra or mosaic) has a great mixture of dankness, stone fruit (peach, apricot), and a softer version of the kind of green vegetal flavors that a lot of the early other half beers have. oddly enough the way that the herbal hop notes interact with the sweet malt reminds me of peanut butter jelly bellies the same way a lot of the early other half single hop beers did, only there’s a bunch of peach and apricot that shows up as the finish dries out. this is a lot better made than anything centre street has every produced though, meaning there are a lot of clean, well defined flavors that have a lot of complexity without being muddled, and it has the same mixture of simplicity and detail that makes well made beer so quaffable. another striking thing about this is the almost complete lack of citrus, although the way that the malt and hops combine does remind me of marmalade, if that even makes sense and so on and on. I’ll stop now, blah blah blah, but anyone who likes beer should have a few of these. my strongest recommendation.

[AaronS]

sierra nevada bigfoot barleywine-style ale - 9.6% abv. this is my yearly post about how much I like this, the larger version of celebration, one of the other sierra beers I say the same thing about every year. it’s got the exact same ingredients (carmalized malts, two-row, cascade, centennial, chinook, and ale yeast) and is about as similar as you’d think two beers with the same ingredients made by the same brewery would be. the big difference is the 2.8% abv, which as I always mention is smaller than the gap was when I first had this more than twenty years ago. (an occasion which is surprisingly beat into my mind given that it involved me vomiting I front of about twenty or thirty I supervised at the time.) I recently had the 2017 vintage on tap at tørst, which convinced me to leave the bottles of the last few vintages I have where they are for a long time. this is still terrific fresh though, it’s hoppy enough that it’s not really that different from the way I remember double ipas from the early two thousands. this has a big set of pine, resin, and a little bit of grapefruit on top of some sweet malt notes that probably won’t come into their own for at least ten years, although the basic caramel/orange marmalade you expect from the style is here. this is the ur-american barleywine (as sneak would say) tho and this is mostly hops at this point. apparently this only goes back to 1983, and old foghorn was first made in 1975. very few of the barleywines that I remember from the early two thousands  (weyerbacher blithering idiot, alesmith old numbskull, avery hog heaven, rogue old crustacean, bells third coast, hair of the dog doggie claws, stone old guardian, brooklyn monster, victory old horizontal, I guess the various mikkeller worse/worseter beers) are still around, although I see that north coast old stock ale and anchor’s old foghorn are still available elsewhere. recommended now or a long time from now.

[StephanieL]

Last month, my boss' boss gifted me with a bottle of his home-brewed brown ale.  He brought in a growler today for a little office happy hour, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that he'd included ginger and nutmeg in the brew.  Since the weather this weekend is going to be cold and wet again, maybe we'll open our bottle.

[AaronS]

grimm cloudbusting #10 double india pale ale nectaron, nelson sauvin, riwaka, and southern cross - 8% abv. this was probably my fourth favorite grimm dipa when grimm dipas were about as good as any beer I’d ever had. I can’t bring myself to try a new branch of one of the other three, but I really liked this the last time I had it and the hop bill in this one is really appealing. this pours an opaque shade of yellow orange that looks like apricot juice and tastes more like bitter peach juice than anything else. the bitterness tastes a little bit like new zealand hops, but this has a lot more hop burn than their old beer did and the waves of tropical fruit that I used to go on about are nowhere to be found. this does have a nice, slightly chewy mouthfeel and as you get used to the bitterness the vegetal part of the typical antipodean hop profile becomes more apparent, along with a little bit of lychee and rambutan. this is solid, especially for something that’s so easy to find, but this isn’t as good as the last batch I had, let alone their beer when it was blah blah blah. this is far better than the last thing I had from other half I guess.

[AaronS]

here are four (hopefully brief) reviews of ipas from new belgium - I don't normally knowingly drink beers owned by large conglomerates, but I keep coming across stuff on the web that says that these are by far the best mass produced hazy ipas and my curiosity got the better of me. as you'll see I was under the mistaken impression that the entire voodoo ranger series is hazy, which is why you read the can before you purchase I guess.

new belgium voodoo ranger ipa - 7% abv. this one has amaraillo, cascade, mosiac, chinook, hbc 522, mosaic (they list it twice), citra, and strata - this is a mixture of two new hops and a lot of old standbys. this beer pours a completely transparent shade of yellow and tastes strongly of sweet malt, and the small amount of hop presence tastes like a combination of c hops and juice box apple juice. I suspect there's a fair amount of diacetyl in this, but whether or not that's true this terrible and I knew I had picked up the wrong one as soon as I smelled it.

new belgium voodoo ranger juicy haze ipa - 7.5% abv. this one has citra, cascade, centennial, simcoe, and nugget, which is a pretty old school hop bill for a hazy ipa, but it is made with wheat and hefeweizen yeast and it definitely looks the part. this is even sweeter than the beer above it, and to the extent you can make the hops out you can taste the citra before there's a very yeasty finish that reminds me of a bad witbier and oranges. this is fairly juicy, I guess, but it tastes artificial and the unpleasant yeast flavor is really strong. this is like omnipollo's fatamorgana made by or for idiots I guess, and is this is probably pretty close to a higher abv version of sunny d cut with blue moon.

new belgium voodoo ranger imperial ipa - this one has ale yeast plus delta, bravo, mosaic, calypso, centennial, cascade and is the same clear yellow that it's non imperial version. this isn't that different from the lower abv version above, but it's not any better.

new belgium fruit force fruit punch ipa - 9.5% abv. this one has pahto, amarillo, centennial, galaxy, sabro, lotus, and straga - which is pretty modern for a mass produced beer. the new belgian website doesn't list any adjuncts for this, but it tastes a lot like hawaiian punch with some sweet malt in the background and tastes artificial the same way the juicy haze ipa does. apparently this is made with london ale iii yeast, but there's some off flavors here that seem as likely to be from the yeast as anything else and I guess I'm mildly impressed you can make something this artificial tasting from the ingredients listed on the website. I'm sure someone who knows more about food science would be more impressed by this and so on.

I didn't expect to love these beers, but there's a fair amount of praise from people I respect for this stuff online and I'm pretty shocked at how poorly made they are. even the worst beers in the current sierra nevada portfolio (atomic torpedo and big little thing) are far better than this stuff, and the gulf between these and almost everything else I've had in my local bodega is enormous. I guess these beers and the pre-sellout stone portolio probably have roughly similar amounts of residual sugar in them, but the bitterness in bad versions of the older beers makes them much easier to drink than this stuff and so on and on and also on. my strongest non-recommendation blah blah blah.

[mitchells]

Maybe time and place but we were at New Belgium in Ft Collins last summer and really enjoyed two of the beers above. But we were sitting outside on a beautiful afternoon with mountains in the backdrop. Out of a tap and servers (and everyone else) were so nice. Not as good as nearby Odell’s but still enjoyable beers that seemed very well made.  That being said, I never consider buying New Belgium stuff at home. 

[AaronS]

you’re hardly alone in liking their stuff, I picked them up because I keep seeing positive things about them online. I’m sure the backdrop and being on vacation didn’t hurt either.

I guess it’s possible these were made in north carolina.

[AaronS]

three floyds jinx proof lager -5.7% abv. this is exactly what I want from three floyds - a well made, super clean, very american beer that's extremely hoppy and stronger than it tastes but still quaffable. this was a part of their year round lineup a while ago (beer advocate says 2009) and is back as part of their new sampler. it's named for a dc tattoo shop that I never liked that much, but this is a lot cooler than all the lame branding stuff hardy was doing back then and so on. this has a fairly sweet malt presence and a ton of grassy noble hop spice that has a little bit of tea and a fruit flavor that's escaping me. beer advocate has this as a dortmunder export lager but I'd put it in the italian pilsner category, although I guess it's maltier than the schilling/wild east/oxbow italian pilsners I like so much. recommended.

[AaronS]

three floyd’s zombie ice double pale ale - 8.5% abv. as the name suggests this is the bigger version of 3f’s zombie dust, an all citra “pale ale” that’s gone from one of the best beers I’ve had to a solid option at the grocery store that doesn’t really sell that quickly over the last ten years. it’s hard to say what’s changed more over that time, of course, but the pilsner that came in the same variety pack was excellent and it’s hard not to be a little disappointed by this. it’s about the same color of slightly amber yellow as zombie dust, and isn’t really any maltier. this has a big set of orange marmalade flavors with a little resin and some sweet stone fruit. this is comes off like a slightly juicer version of the beers that made such a strong impression on me twenty years ago, and this is definitely one of those beers that tastes better the more you drink and so on.

[AaronS]

lawson's finest liquids little sip ipa - 6.2% abv, brewed at two roads in stratford ct. I just looked up my first post about this and apparently I really hated it, which is consitent with the way I remember it was on draft at my local (which doesn't have the cleanest tap lines), but I liked their double sunshine with grapefruit a lot and thought this would probably taste better to me now that I'm not drinking dipas all the time. and... this is a little better than the way I remembered it. this is as citra focused as the other similarly named beers from lawson's, and has the same mixture of citrus, mango, and pineapple that those beers have at their best, but it's also a little bit too sweet and the malt profile isn't developed enough to compensate and so on and on. this is a lot better than the last couple of sip of sunshines I've had, which is surprising given how little I liked this at first. is the two roads version actually better than the vermont original? blah blah blah and blah.