AaronS Posted September 12 Author Share Posted September 12 triple crossing falcon smash india pale ale - 7% abv. this is the flagship beer from a well regarded brewery from richmond, virginia that sends beer to new york occasionally. it uses the falconer's flight hop blend, which is an older mixture of c-hops that's used in some maine beer company beers as well as evil twin's falco. this is a pleasant mix between new and old - it's basically a ne ipa but there's a little bit of malt sweetness and a fair amount of bitterness. there's a fair amount of detail here - citrus, peach, some tropical stuff, a hint of weed - and this is really a pretty well made beer. recommended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted September 20 Author Share Posted September 20 wild east first down fresh hop pale ale - 5.4% abv. wild east is a gowanus brewer that I always want to like more. they make straight up the middle interpretations of classic styles that are almost always well made. they make beer for adults, it's all relatively drinkable, and so on, but I find all the lagers lacking and only like the hoppy beer sometimes. this is one of the better ones, there's a nice mixture of what taste like c hops (they're unspecified varieties grown in new york state) and malt. there's some pine, hard to pin down fruit notes, and diacetyl. I liked the first few sips of this a lot but as I have more I think I prefer the last couple west coast single IPAs I've had blah blah blah blah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted October 3 Author Share Posted October 3 westbrook brewing company graveyard shift ddh india pale ale with citra and citra incognito - 7% abv. I used to drink a lot of westbrook when I used to drink more and was happy to come across a bunch of different kinds of their beer today. incognito is a liquid hop product that I've mostly had in other half beers. this looks like a typical hazy ipa but is really pretty bitter. there's a bunch of orange marmalade upfront that gives way to big notes of guava and mango, some sweetness, and more bitterness. recommended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted October 4 Author Share Posted October 4 westbrook brewing company costume party imperial stout with chocolate, peanuts, caramel, and candy bars - 11% abv. this is the kind of beer I associate westbrook with - a lot of their early imperial stouts blew me away at the time, and their versions of the evil twin stouts from the same time period were a lot better than almost anything else evil twin has done. this one was made with a ton of snickers bars, which makes the rest of the adjuncts make a sort of sense. this one doesn't really work for me, there's the light body that all their stouts have, but apparent alcohol shows up ahead of everything else and the finish doesn't fix things. all the adjuncts appear, even if the chocolate is more like fudge than a snickers bar, the peanuts and the caramel taste good, this isn't hard to drink, and so on, but this isn't as clever as mexican cake or their older beers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted October 5 Author Share Posted October 5 westbrook brewing company märzenbier octoberfest-style lager - 5.3% abv. märzens, specifically the one degroen's used to make in baltimore, are what got me into beer, as I must have mentioned ad naseum on the old site. I haven't come across another one with the same kind of yeast notes, but I do like the style a lot and this is definitely a good version of the maltier kind of octoberfest beers you usually see in the us. this has a pleasant set of caramel and bread malt notes with a little bit of lemon in the finish. this is clean and well made, there's no off notes and it's simple in a pleasant way. very mildly recommended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted October 6 Author Share Posted October 6 westbrook brewing company india pale ale - 6.8% abv. westbrook has had a beer with the same printed cans since I've been aware of them, even if a cursory googling says this didn't always have wheat in it. I'd bet the hop bill hasn't changed much - cascade, centennial, the ctz blend, simcoe, and amarillo, - and this still has the mixture of citrus, malt sweetness, stone fruit, and tea that the older ipas had. still one of the better examples of the older style ipas and so on. recommended blah blah blah. and blah. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted October 7 Author Share Posted October 7 maine beer company fall coffee stout - 5.6% abv. this has a really phenomenal mixture of hops, roasted malt, and coffee flavors. there's a little bit of malt sweetness at first, which is followed by some mint, citrus, and milk chocolate mixed with the kind of delicate lightly roasted coffee you'd actually want to drink. this is really well made the way that all their stuff is - the flavors are all clean, well defined, and work together, and so on, and there's a reason they can charge so much for their beer. this is as good as any hoppy dark beer I've ever had. strongly recommended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted October 19 Author Share Posted October 19 westbrook brewing company the night before gingerbread stout imperial stout with natural flavors - 11% abv. I always feel a little bit silly buying this kind of stuff - but as the posts above show I’m really enjoying coming across their beer again and I thought an actually spicy stout might hide the apparent alcohol well etc etc etc. so is this the right kind of boozy mess? no, not really. there’s some ginger, some baking spice, booze, orange marmalade, that weird mint flavor you get when you combine hops and roasted malt, and more booze. this is reasonably well put together if a little obvious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Bonner Posted October 19 Share Posted October 19 (edited) Speaking of old friends. Rodenbach on Nitro tap in Antwerp. Edited October 20 by Anthony Bonner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted October 30 Author Share Posted October 30 really miss the rodenbach they had on tap at tørst when it was good. abomination brewing company wandering into the fog double dry hopped double India pale ale - brewed at the 12 percent brewing project, 8.6% abv. abomination is one of the older 12 percent brands and this is one of their older beers, and I guess they make it often enough that they had silkscreened cans made. this one has oats and wheat with mosaic, pacific jade, citra, summit, and enigma hops, which would have been pretty modern back then. I haven’t had this in a few years and it’s just as good as I remember it - there’s a nice mixture of tropical fruit, apricot, and the kind of bitterness I associate with galaxy hops that’s followed by some creaminess and some citrus. I can’t read the code on the bottom of these cans but these seem really fresh, this is a lot more delicate than the way I remember this and I’m glad I picked these up. mildly recommended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony Bonner Posted October 30 Share Posted October 30 torst isn't good anymore? I ended up at treehouse brewery between youth soccer games last weekend. place is total factory and treehouse is like the opposite of what I like to drink these days, but I have to admit one 12 ounce pour of some 8% super hazy NEIPA went down pretty nicely. Pretty amusing setup tho. They have two bars - one that is IPAs and Stouts, one for Lagers and Crispy beers. I'll let you guess which one had a twenty minute wait for a drink and which one you could just walk up to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted October 31 Author Share Posted October 31 the tap list isn't that much of an outlier anymore, largely because they focus too much on the same local breweries a lot of other places do, and the staff has turned over a lot and the service is not at all what it should be at those prices. part of this is that the euro craft stuff I like so much isn't available anymore, but five of twenty one taps on their site aren't beer and apart from the hair of the dog stuff they what they have isn't that hard to find. and since I have such good taste in beer here are two beers brewed at the same place with the same theme! abomination brewing company forbidden pumpkin imperial milkshake style india pale ale brewed with pumpkin, spices, vanilla & milk sugar - brewed at the 12% brewing project, 9.3% abv. this is more or less as described - it's fairly thick, tastes like artificial pumpkin, baking spices, and hops, but (god help me) the hops are actually fairly well integrated with the pumpkin flavors and this is bitter enough that it actually tastes like beer. not recommended, but it's hard to think you'd be disappointed by this. fat orange cat cautionary tale ale with pumpkin, vanilla, and spices - brewed at the 12% brewing project, 8% abv. I was mildly curious about how different these two beers would be, but this is actually an imperial brown ale with adjuncts and is nothing like the beer above it. there's a fair amount of sweetness here, as you'd expect, but it actually tastes a little bit like malt, and the overall effect is a lot like the old mikkeller stuff in that there's a good version of an imperial brown ale that works with the adjuncts blah blah blah. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitchell101 Posted November 1 Share Posted November 1 Just in time for election day, Some Vague Reassurance Everythings Going to Be Alright from Kent Falls Brewing. Super fresh IPA, (Canned just a few days ago) with Connecticut grown grain and Citra and El Dorado hops. I can drink this beer all day at 6%. Very well balanced and simply delicious. Beautiful in the glass too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted November 5 Author Share Posted November 5 three floyds x pig destroyer permanent funeral imperial ipa - 10.5% abv. apparently this goes back to 2013, and pig destroyer is a grindcore band (not a brewery) that had already released it's best stuff by the time they told three floyds to just use citra or whatever their contribution to this beer was... I've had this a few times and never liked it as much as their other double ipas, but this is decent. this is a big beer, with a ton of citrus, pine, and booze that's reasonably detailed and well put together. mildly recommended. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted November 15 Author Share Posted November 15 to øl mine is bigger than yours barley wine-style ale - brewed at de proef brouwerji, lochristi-hurtle, belgium, 12.5% abv. I’ve had a bunch of these for a while now, there’s a post on the old site that reports on the email I sent them asking how old this is. I think they told me this was bottled in sometime around 2018. this reminds me of a very old keg of aventinus I had at the owl farm once - the body of the beer is starting to fall apart but the flavor profile is pretty intact and there are no real off notes. six years is actually pretty young for a beer like this to fall apart, I’ve had english barley wine that’s more than three times older than this that looked much better than this, but unlike the equally old mikkeller stouts that had a similar texture this actually tastes the way it should. there’s the kind of huge malt notes that you’d expect, and there’s a big set of orange marmalade flavors that you’d get in a traditional english old ale that have a fair amount of pine in them, which is I guess what you’d expect from something made with c hops. that’s exactly the kind of americanized/overly hopped version of a traditional english style that made me like de proef, to øl, and mikkeller so much, but at the same time this doesn’t seem to be aging as well as the bigfoot collection I’ve amassed over the years. recommended, but drink now if you have some. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted November 27 Author Share Posted November 27 firestone walker wookey jack black rye ipa - 8.2% abv. this is yet another one from the good old days. this one goes back to 2014 and uses citra and amarillo hops, which is what was in union jack at the time if memory serves. that’s changed a lot over the years, but this is the way I remember it, which is always nice. there’s a pretty spicy set of roast malt notes that definitely tastes like rye that’s followed by some fairly bitter herbal hop notes that start out with mint and give way a pleasant version of the citrus and and tropical stuff that you associate with citra. this is really pretty well made - it’s really clean, has well done, well defined flavors, the combination of malt and hops is fairly sophisticated, and so on. this is a lot like the maine beer company stuff, which is the highest praise I can give this kind of beer, but at a much lower price point. it really bothers me that their beer is so hard to find reasonably fresh around here blah blah blah. this showed up in nyc about three weeks ago and still tastes great even though it was canned in early october. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted December 1 Author Share Posted December 1 (edited) maine beer company wolfe's neck india pale ale - 6.2% abv. I think of this as one of the newer maine beers but apparently this goes back to 2016. this one's got simcoe, mosaic, columbus, and idaho 7. maine almost always uses established hops with something new, which is definitely how this tastes. there's a pretty soft version of the berry and grapefruit thing you'd get with mosaic and older hops with a little bit of tropical fruit and bubble tea underneath and some grassy lemon in the finish. this is a lot closer to a north east ipa than I remember it, has all the hallmarks of maine's beer - clean flavors, quaffable, expensive, balanced, etc etc. I don't see this one around as much as most of their other beers and I like this a lot more than the bottles of lunch I had over the holiday. strongly recommended. Edited December 1 by AaronS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AaronS Posted December 2 Author Share Posted December 2 oxbow brewing company noel dark farmhouse ale - 9.5% abv. the only information I can find about this on line is that this was made with wheat and took eleven months to make. it's dark brown, has a big set of booze and odd yeast flavors with some dried fruit underneath. the mixture of saison yeast and brett is pleasant enough, but none of this really works together and the apparent alcohol really mars the fruit. I thought this would be better. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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