Before I write the reviews on my most recently brewed beer (which is awesome) and do a write up on my next beer (Bavarian Heffewiezen) I figured I should complete my reviews of the beers I got in my last beer of the month club shipment. My first shipment was amazing, exceptional even, with the exception of the weird Belgian Bock that tasted like soda with medicine in it; Barbar winterbock. I had to choke down that last bottle (my wife insisted I toss it down the drain because of the faces I was making and the terrible sounds accompanying those faces) but I refuse to throw beer away unless it is infected. I was expecting the same level of exceptionality from this shipment, and if you recall my review of the friar's Belgian style white I was let down. The other beers I got were Sweetwater's Georgia Brown, Alhambra Negra from Spain, and De Koninck Pale Ale from Belgium.
First Sweetwater: I was super excited about this one because I've heard good thing about this brewery that I've never seen around here. The first bottle was too cold I think because I drank it and said "This tastes just like Yuengling". Don't get me wrong I love Yuengling. I can get it for 15.99 a case and it's my favorite every day beer in the summer. I just expect more flavor from a brown ale than I do from a lager. My next bottle I drank warmer and there was a little more hop bitterness but no more complexity than the first bottle. I would say this is a decent, easy drinking beer, but if it costs more than 16 bucks a case I wouldn't bother with it. I think I just prefer my brown ales to have more malt character and complexity like an English brown.
Next Alhambra Negra: This is a black lager. A BLACK LAGER! It combines the easy drinking profile of a lager with the toasty deliciousness of a stout! Or so I thought. I only drank one of these cause I opened the first bottle and it tasted so much like metal I thought I was sucking on a fistful of pennies. I can't stand beers that taste metallic. If it's only a little I can deal with it but this beer took it to a new level. I'm going to have difficulty finishing the other 2 bottles, maybe I will cook with them or something.
Finally the De Koninck Pale Ale. I like this one. It's a strange little hybrid. It's got the normal flavor profile of a pale ale but the added complexity that comes from Belgian yeast. I don't know if this is typical of Belgian pale ales but it's a nice combo that makes for an interesting beer to drink.
Now I don't want anyone asking "Jason, do you hate everything cause you give a lot of negative reviews?" because in reality I like a lot of beers. I think I've just been on a bad luck streak lately. Next month I am getting my next shipment and hopefully I will have 4 glowing reviews about the beer. And if I get my friend in California to send me the Sierra Nevada 30th anniversary series then I hear those are amazing so I bet I'll have good things to say about them, unless they taste like metal. Or soap. Or hotdogs.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
SLC (3 of 3)
Ok last post about Salt Lake City, hopefully the next post I write will be about Sierra Nevada's 30th anniversary series the first of which, an imperial stout, has been released recently and I am on the prowl for it. Anyway this last post is about odds and ends. I had 2 other beers on my trip and they were both delicous, one was a local brew from Wasatch Brewery in Utah the second was something everyone's probably had but me but I'll tell you about it anyway.
Wasatch Brewery's Devastator double bock- I had this one night at dinner when I got tired of messing around with the watery junk on tap. I didn't have high hopes but was proven wrong. This was a good double bock. It was sweet but more complex than just sugar. There was caramel and maltiness with no sticky cloying aftertaste. At 8% alcohol I was thinking it might be hot and boozy but it wasn't it was smooth and tasty. I would order this beer again.
The second beer was Negra Modelo. I know this is a standard beer but I have never had it before. You see Corona turned me off to Mexican beer with fruit floating in it so when I get Mexican food I usually skip beer all together. I had heard this particular beer was decent so I ordered it my last night in town when we went out for dinner. It came with a little piece of lime in the bottle and no glass to pour it in, but I figured when in Rome (or Mexico, or Utah I guess) and just went along with it. I have to admit it was not bad, not bad at all. I could see this being my go to Mexican resturant beer. It had a decent amount of malt flavor, clean aftertaste and I liked the lime in it, but I've said before I have no problem adding fruit to beer (I like the lemon in Hefes).
So there you go, 2 beers I didn't hate.
Wasatch Brewery's Devastator double bock- I had this one night at dinner when I got tired of messing around with the watery junk on tap. I didn't have high hopes but was proven wrong. This was a good double bock. It was sweet but more complex than just sugar. There was caramel and maltiness with no sticky cloying aftertaste. At 8% alcohol I was thinking it might be hot and boozy but it wasn't it was smooth and tasty. I would order this beer again.
The second beer was Negra Modelo. I know this is a standard beer but I have never had it before. You see Corona turned me off to Mexican beer with fruit floating in it so when I get Mexican food I usually skip beer all together. I had heard this particular beer was decent so I ordered it my last night in town when we went out for dinner. It came with a little piece of lime in the bottle and no glass to pour it in, but I figured when in Rome (or Mexico, or Utah I guess) and just went along with it. I have to admit it was not bad, not bad at all. I could see this being my go to Mexican resturant beer. It had a decent amount of malt flavor, clean aftertaste and I liked the lime in it, but I've said before I have no problem adding fruit to beer (I like the lemon in Hefes).
So there you go, 2 beers I didn't hate.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
SLC (part 2 of 3)
This is part 2 of 3 of my beer adventure in Salt Lake City (or Dumb Lake City if you read the last post). I don't carry around a tasting notebook with me so you will have to forgive the less than formal evaluations I am giving the beer on this trip, but if you want to get that fancy maybe Beer Advocate has them listed. That being said on to the red rock!
Red Rock Brewing company is another brew pub in SLC. I think they are the less famous of the 2. Their food was really good but this isn't a food blog (Note to self: Make a food blog) so let's get down to the business at hand, beer. We actually went to Red Rock twice. The first time I got an Oatmeal Stout and then saw a special edition Belgian beer aged in oak in cork finished bomber bottles. It was $15 so I did what anyone would do, I didn't order the one I wanted and ended up spending $10 on beer I didn't really want and obsessed about the Belgian for 2 days until I went back and got it. But we'll get there. First the oatmeal stout. It was good, the problem with that assessment is I don't know why. It wasn't complex, there was no coffee or toasty malts, no cocoa or burnt flavors. What it did have was a nice full oatmeal mouthfeel and some residual malt sweetness. It was very "drinkable" to borrow a phrase from beer commercials. I could easily put away a 6 pack of this stout and might go buy it if it were available around here.
The second beer I got was an Irish red ale. I wasn't expecting much but what I got was a really well balanced malty ale with a good amount of floral hop aroma and resinous and floral hop flavor. I really liked this beer too and would pay money for it again.
So why did I say I was going to be mean? Like I said I obsessed about the oak aged Belgian: Reve they called it, French for dream. More like Utah-ian for crap.
They wanted to make a high alcohol beer fine, but there are several factors you must be mindful of when doing so: 1) You need to use malt, you can't just pour in a crap-ton of corn sugar to boost your alcohol or it will become cidery, 2) If you use a yeast that leaves a ton of sugar behind you need hops or something to cut the sweetness 3) If you're going to use Belgian yeast, pick the right one. They failed at every one of these. This beer was a mess. Aroma was hard cider. Taste was so sweet that even my non-beer drinking friends that tried it remarked on how sweet it was. It also tasted like cider with Belgian yeast it in. The cloying sweetness paired with the thickness made it so I couldn't even finish the bottle (that and I had a flight to catch). They needed to use more malt or just make the alcohol content lower, pick a Belgian yeast with a higher attenuation, add less corn sugar and maybe add some more hops or some kind of spices to increase the complexity of this beer also if you're going to age it in an oak cask maybe age it long enough so I can taste some hit of oak. I got nothing from this, maybe the sugar burned out my palate early or maybe it wasn't there. But if you are going to hand number each bottle of a beer take your time aging it and do it right.
Part 3 will conclude this series and cover odds and ends I had in bottles.
Red Rock Brewing company is another brew pub in SLC. I think they are the less famous of the 2. Their food was really good but this isn't a food blog (Note to self: Make a food blog) so let's get down to the business at hand, beer. We actually went to Red Rock twice. The first time I got an Oatmeal Stout and then saw a special edition Belgian beer aged in oak in cork finished bomber bottles. It was $15 so I did what anyone would do, I didn't order the one I wanted and ended up spending $10 on beer I didn't really want and obsessed about the Belgian for 2 days until I went back and got it. But we'll get there. First the oatmeal stout. It was good, the problem with that assessment is I don't know why. It wasn't complex, there was no coffee or toasty malts, no cocoa or burnt flavors. What it did have was a nice full oatmeal mouthfeel and some residual malt sweetness. It was very "drinkable" to borrow a phrase from beer commercials. I could easily put away a 6 pack of this stout and might go buy it if it were available around here.
The second beer I got was an Irish red ale. I wasn't expecting much but what I got was a really well balanced malty ale with a good amount of floral hop aroma and resinous and floral hop flavor. I really liked this beer too and would pay money for it again.
So why did I say I was going to be mean? Like I said I obsessed about the oak aged Belgian: Reve they called it, French for dream. More like Utah-ian for crap.
They wanted to make a high alcohol beer fine, but there are several factors you must be mindful of when doing so: 1) You need to use malt, you can't just pour in a crap-ton of corn sugar to boost your alcohol or it will become cidery, 2) If you use a yeast that leaves a ton of sugar behind you need hops or something to cut the sweetness 3) If you're going to use Belgian yeast, pick the right one. They failed at every one of these. This beer was a mess. Aroma was hard cider. Taste was so sweet that even my non-beer drinking friends that tried it remarked on how sweet it was. It also tasted like cider with Belgian yeast it in. The cloying sweetness paired with the thickness made it so I couldn't even finish the bottle (that and I had a flight to catch). They needed to use more malt or just make the alcohol content lower, pick a Belgian yeast with a higher attenuation, add less corn sugar and maybe add some more hops or some kind of spices to increase the complexity of this beer also if you're going to age it in an oak cask maybe age it long enough so I can taste some hit of oak. I got nothing from this, maybe the sugar burned out my palate early or maybe it wasn't there. But if you are going to hand number each bottle of a beer take your time aging it and do it right.
Part 3 will conclude this series and cover odds and ends I had in bottles.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Salt Lake City
I just got home from my business trip to Salt Lake City. I did not enjoy this city which is why I have changed the name to Dumb Lake City, the weak beer was at least partially responsible for this name change, but not totally. Anyway, we have a lot of ground to cover so let's get to work on this multi-part series.
First the brewpubs;
Squatter's Brew Pub: I had a beer sampler here. Now, if you know me, you know I LOVE beer samplers, something about the tiny glasses and the number of beers I get to try makes me very excited. Now before I start bad mouthing this place I want to make sure you realize a few things, first I don't care what the percent alcohol of a beer is. If it tastes good it can be 4 or it can be 10, doesn't matter to me. I don't drink to get drunk. That being said, if you know anything about making beer you know that sugars and other compounds extracted from malted grain give beer both its flavor and it's alcohol. If you skimp on the malt you lower the alcohol content and flavor of your beer. With SLC's "no beer on tap above 4%" law that's what the brewers around here do, skimp. They do normal beers in bottles but we'll get to that later. My beer sampler contained a hefeweizen, an unfiltered ... thing, a pilsner, a pale ale, an amber and an oatmeal stout. Everything but the oatmeal stout sucked. They were all lacking flavor and tasted watered down, the hefe lacked any of the flavor characteristics I associate with the style (yeast, citrus, little bit of tartness) and had no aroma, the unfiltered thing was a hot mess that's all I can say. I don't normally care for pilsners, this one didn't make me want to change my opinion of them, it was fine I guess if you're into pilsners. The amber reminded me a little bit of Sweetwater's Georgia Brown ale, but once again watered down, the pale was ...... unremarkable since I can't remember drinking it. The stout was ok. Hints of coffee and a malt. Too sweet to get any toasty or burnt flavors from it. I would actually drink a whole pint of this, which is more than I can say about the rest of the bunch.
Someone at my table got a bottle of their double IPA Hop Rising. 9% alcohol trying to be a hop bomb. This thing tasted like hops, I've give them that. That's all it tasted like. It smelled like sticking my nose into a bag of hops pellets, which I do every time I brew, and tasted like a tea made of hops. There was no finesse here just straight up hoppiness. I enjoyed it and as a once and a while treat it would be great but I would never buy a 6-pack of this.
So this place was a total let down, which is odd because a lot of the bars in the area have huge signs up proclaiming they serve Squatter's beers on tap. To me that seems like the people around here give them way to much credit for what they are making which is mediocre beer. If they were able to take the limitations placed on them and make something remarkable then yeah yell it from the rooftops that you're selling it. But if you're a steakhouse and your window has a neon-sign telling everyone you proudly serve steak-ums you may want to rethink your business model.
Next time: Redrock Brew Pub (maybe I won't be as mean)
((I'm going to be just as mean))
First the brewpubs;
Squatter's Brew Pub: I had a beer sampler here. Now, if you know me, you know I LOVE beer samplers, something about the tiny glasses and the number of beers I get to try makes me very excited. Now before I start bad mouthing this place I want to make sure you realize a few things, first I don't care what the percent alcohol of a beer is. If it tastes good it can be 4 or it can be 10, doesn't matter to me. I don't drink to get drunk. That being said, if you know anything about making beer you know that sugars and other compounds extracted from malted grain give beer both its flavor and it's alcohol. If you skimp on the malt you lower the alcohol content and flavor of your beer. With SLC's "no beer on tap above 4%" law that's what the brewers around here do, skimp. They do normal beers in bottles but we'll get to that later. My beer sampler contained a hefeweizen, an unfiltered ... thing, a pilsner, a pale ale, an amber and an oatmeal stout. Everything but the oatmeal stout sucked. They were all lacking flavor and tasted watered down, the hefe lacked any of the flavor characteristics I associate with the style (yeast, citrus, little bit of tartness) and had no aroma, the unfiltered thing was a hot mess that's all I can say. I don't normally care for pilsners, this one didn't make me want to change my opinion of them, it was fine I guess if you're into pilsners. The amber reminded me a little bit of Sweetwater's Georgia Brown ale, but once again watered down, the pale was ...... unremarkable since I can't remember drinking it. The stout was ok. Hints of coffee and a malt. Too sweet to get any toasty or burnt flavors from it. I would actually drink a whole pint of this, which is more than I can say about the rest of the bunch.
Someone at my table got a bottle of their double IPA Hop Rising. 9% alcohol trying to be a hop bomb. This thing tasted like hops, I've give them that. That's all it tasted like. It smelled like sticking my nose into a bag of hops pellets, which I do every time I brew, and tasted like a tea made of hops. There was no finesse here just straight up hoppiness. I enjoyed it and as a once and a while treat it would be great but I would never buy a 6-pack of this.
So this place was a total let down, which is odd because a lot of the bars in the area have huge signs up proclaiming they serve Squatter's beers on tap. To me that seems like the people around here give them way to much credit for what they are making which is mediocre beer. If they were able to take the limitations placed on them and make something remarkable then yeah yell it from the rooftops that you're selling it. But if you're a steakhouse and your window has a neon-sign telling everyone you proudly serve steak-ums you may want to rethink your business model.
Next time: Redrock Brew Pub (maybe I won't be as mean)
((I'm going to be just as mean))
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