A little beer shopping tonight

[detlef]

I just cracked open my Dogfish Head Squall. Very nice unfiltered 90 min IPA

I also have a 12 pack of the cleveland beer week collaboration which took far too long to hit the shelves. The Beer Week was October and tax laws and whatnot halted this coming to market.

I'm sure the wet hop IPA has disintegrated somewhat. I'm not a beer judge and unless I had one from 6 months ago to drink side by side, I'm sure it will fare just fine.

It's also dry-hopped above and beyond the usual hop treatment the 90 gets and is bottle conditioned. A very cool beer indeed. Among my favorites from DFH.

[loaf]

Squall was tough to get down. Took about an hour for the whole 22 ounces. good stuff though

[jetsfan]

Left Hand TNT

 

Gotta be one of the strangest beers I've tasted. Labeled as a Weizen Doppelbock, but it tastes nothing like one. I think the Lapsong Souchong tea pervades the entire flavor. It could age well I guess?

Edited April 25, 2011 by jetsfan

[loaf]

Hitting stores now

got my buddy holding two bottles for me.

[detlef]

Hitting stores now

got my buddy holding two bottles for me.

Just called my rep. He says it has been listing in their computer for a few weeks but none has hit the warehouse yet. Thanks for the tip. Mind you, this is the kind of thing that would get allocated so 1) They'd be putting aside a case for me and 2) telling me about the same. But just in case it slipped through the cracks, now they know I want some.

[jetsfan]

Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfenweisse has got to be the best IPA-Wheat beer I've tried. Run out and get some!

[Hugh B Tool]

Just had my first(of many) Russian River Supplication. American Wild Ale, to me the best of this style I have ever drank. Tart, yet smooth and sweet. Aged in pinot noir barrels which come through as the beer warms. This beer is effn good and definately worth a try of this style. I need/want many more for sure.

 

Russian River is a powerhouse of good brews.

[detlef]

Just had my first(of many) Russian River Supplication. American Wild Ale, to me the best of this style I have ever drank. Tart, yet smooth and sweet. Aged in pinot noir barrels which come through as the beer warms. This beer is effn good and definately worth a try of this style. I need/want many more for sure.

 

Russian River is a powerhouse of good brews.

It's too bad we don't see them out here unless some geek smuggles a few bottles home in his suitcase. I love me some wild Ales as well. We're hosting an Allagash dinner tonight, so we'll be tasting Confluence and Interlude (Interlude also being aged in used wine barrels). Someone gave me a bottle of supplication, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. All I've tried from RR is Pliny the Elder (which was lovely indeed).

[Caveman_Nick]

Had me a bottle of My Antonia last night. Very clean, light beer. Hoppy, but not extremely so in an obnoxious IPA way (not saying all IPAs are obnoxious, just that they can be)

[loaf]

Had me a bottle of My Antonia last night. Very clean, light beer. Hoppy, but not extremely so in an obnoxious IPA way (not saying all IPAs are obnoxious, just that they can be)

I've seen it but went with the Squall instead.

[bpwallace49]

My chef does some work with the Blue Moon people in Illinois.

 

He brought in a 750ml bottle of Blue Moon "Grand Cru" for me today

[jetsfan]

Stone - Green Flash - Pizza Port Highway 78 Scotch Ale is malty-goodness. However about 2x the price of Oscar Blues Old Chub - the gold standard of Scotch Ales in the US, imo.

 

I had a cask Stone Smoked Porter over the weekend, meh. I think Left Hand's Fade to Black has got to still be the best Smoked Porter I have had.

 

Also sampled Dogfishhead Namaste, best American-made Wit I have had, hands down. Still not as good as the Belgian variety....

 

It's funny, tried the Deschutes Inversion IPA and Red Chair PA over the weekend, I am growing tired of IPAs while my wife has become a total hop-head. I'm starting to drink stouts, porters and scotch ales like crazy.

[detlef]

Stone - Green Flash - Pizza Port Highway 78 Scotch Ale is malty-goodness. However about 2x the price of Oscar Blues Old Chub - the gold standard of Scotch Ales in the US, imo.

 

I had a cask Stone Smoked Porter over the weekend, meh. I think Left Hand's Fade to Black has got to still be the best Smoked Porter I have had.

 

Also sampled Dogfishhead Namaste, best American-made Wit I have had, hands down. Still not as good as the Belgian variety....

 

It's funny, tried the Deschutes Inversion IPA and Red Chair PA over the weekend, I am growing tired of IPAs while my wife has become a total hop-head. I'm starting to drink stouts, porters and scotch ales like crazy.

I'll second that. I think it's because the beer is big enough to carry the smoke. When the beer is not rich enough in it's own right, the smoke just takes over.

[jetsfan]

Tying one on tonight to some Oskar Blues Old Chub. GD that is malty goodness.

 

ETA: meant to agree with det above, the Fade to Black v2 was perfect for a smoke beer.

Edited May 6, 2011 by jetsfan

[bpwallace49]

12 pack of Bells Oberon tonight

[detlef]

12 pack of Bells Oberon tonight

My summer jam is going to be their Oarsman instead. It's like beer-flavored Gatorade.

[BeeR]

I can't drink em all the time but love IPAs....just had Dogfishhead and Sierra Nevada's "Torpedo" IPA. I still think the former is if not the best one of the best - certainly the best the grocery store has to offer

[bpwallace49]

My summer jam is going to be their Oarsman instead. It's like beer-flavored Gatorade.

 

That isnt exactly an appetizing description . . . .

[BeeR]

lol

 

I'm not even sure how that would taste but I'd rather not find out

[jetsfan]

Harpoon Quad is surprisingly decent. Malty, almost Belgian yeastiness. Not a bad effort

[jetsfan]

Magic Hat Circus Boy Hefeweizen - made with lemongrass, it really changes the flavor of the wheat-beer, kinda tart, don't know if i am a fan yet

Westmalle Dubbel

Stone Old Guardian Belgo (bought 3, 2 to age)

Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shutdown Ale (case)

Edited May 11, 2011 by jetsfan

[detlef]

Tried the Hellhound on my Ale yesterday. Amazing how well those 100 IBUs are integrated. Pretty cool beer.

 

If I may geek-out for a minute, I thought I'd share the conversation we were having about that as we tried the beer. There's a chart in Randy Mosher's book Tasting Beer that illustrates the perceptive level of bitterness in beer and that it is a ratio of original gravity (sugar prior to fermentation) to IBUs. That's why some double IPAs seem less bitter than other American IPAs even though there's more IBUs in them. Because there's so much more malt.

 

The confusing thing is that most beers just label ABV, but that doesn't take into account any difference in how much un-fermented sugar remains in the beer. With wine, alcohol level is a much more reliable measure of how "big" a wine is because nearly all of them have residual sugars that are roughly the same. So, you can assume with some degree of reliability that a 14% wine had more sugar to begin with than a 12% wine, because both used basically all of it up and one had enough to get 2% higher alcohol.

 

This isn't automatically the case with beers as so many beer yeast strains crap out at lower alcohol levels than wine yeasts. So, you can't assume that, the reason why an 8% ale has less alcohol than a 10% ale is simply because there was less sugar to begin with. In fact, they both could have had exactly the same amount but the 8% beer just has more residual sugar than the 10% one.

 

And, considering that it is the sum of both the fermented and unfermented sugars that mitigate the bitterness in a beer, it's hard to get a read on it if all you know is the ABV and IBUs. I think Rogue labels Plato, which is the measure of total sugar prior to fermentation, but who among us know how to read that and, what use is it if only one brewery bothers to mention it. That simply means you can determine the relative perceptive bitterness among Rogue beers.

 

At any rate, geek-out complete.

[jetsfan]

Those of us who brew know Plato, ibu, og, sg, fg and all the important things that define a beer.

Most brewery websites have all that info so you can get an idea of how balanced a beer may be before buying it. I usually buy, taste and then look up, sometimes to my detriment. Oh well.

[detlef]

Those of us who brew know Plato, ibu, og, sg, fg and all the important things that define a beer.

Most brewery websites have all that info so you can get an idea of how balanced a beer may be before buying it. I usually buy, taste and then look up, sometimes to my detriment. Oh well.

I imagine you would. Here's my issue. So, great, I understand the whole thing well enough to realize that this ratio is important. And, aside from people that actually brew, that likely puts me in a rather small minority, even among people who are fans of craft beers. However, I still have no idea, yet, what to look for in terms of where those numbers should be to create a beer that tastes one way or another.

 

I mean, the easy part is understanding that more sugar relative to IBUs means less bitter. It's stupidly obvious. More sugar=less bitter. Mind you, it took me some time getting the nuts and bolts of that through to an intelligent guy who actually knows his way around beer but knows wine much, much better (because he kept on getting hung up on ABV as an accurate predictor of sugar at "harvest"). Which actually brings up another point. I think the biggest problem is that it is much easier to tell the difference between not sweet and barely sweet than it is between barely sweet and a bit more sweet. Just like anything else, the difference between nothing and something always seems bigger than the difference between varying degrees of something.

 

And, since nearly all wine is dry, those that are not stand out. On the other hand, nearly all beers are sweet to some degree, so telling the difference between the varying levels should be quite difficult.

 

At any rate, the really hard part is being able to look at a label or a website and knowing what those numbers should predict. Mosher's graph, as helpful as it is, merely shows where typical examples of styles lie on the spectrum. My guess is that, once you get into one of those styles, you're really splitting hairs.

 

We do a "beer geek" series at the restaurant. (As if the twice monthly brewery-specific beer dinners aren't geeky enough), but this series is more style focused, so, rather than trying a bunch of different styles from one brewery, it will be several flights of, say, American Wild Ales or some such. One that could be cool would be to gather up some American IPAs and DIPAs and research the plato and IBU levels of each, arranging them in order of the ratio and trying to see whether the group finds the perceptive level of bitterness to follow as it "should". And because I've cellared just a few DIPAs (realizing that it is not the type of beer that wants that but just curious what will happen to them), we could throw a fresh vs year old bottle of a few of them and see what's up with that.

[sundaynfl]

I imagine you would. Here's my issue. So, great, I understand the whole thing well enough to realize that this ratio is important. And, aside from people that actually brew, that likely puts me in a rather small minority, even among people who are fans of craft beers. However, I still have no idea, yet, what to look for in terms of where those numbers should be to create a beer that tastes one way or another.

 

I mean, the easy part is understanding that more sugar relative to IBUs means less bitter. It's stupidly obvious. More sugar=less bitter. Mind you, it took me some time getting the nuts and bolts of that through to an intelligent guy who actually knows his way around beer but knows wine much, much better (because he kept on getting hung up on ABV as an accurate predictor of sugar at "harvest"). Which actually brings up another point. I think the biggest problem is that it is much easier to tell the difference between not sweet and barely sweet than it is between barely sweet and a bit more sweet. Just like anything else, the difference between nothing and something always seems bigger than the difference between varying degrees of something.

 

And, since nearly all wine is dry, those that are not stand out. On the other hand, nearly all beers are sweet to some degree, so telling the difference between the varying levels should be quite difficult.

 

At any rate, the really hard part is being able to look at a label or a website and knowing what those numbers should predict. Mosher's graph, as helpful as it is, merely shows where typical examples of styles lie on the spectrum. My guess is that, once you get into one of those styles, you're really splitting hairs.

 

We do a "beer geek" series at the restaurant. (As if the twice monthly brewery-specific beer dinners aren't geeky enough), but this series is more style focused, so, rather than trying a bunch of different styles from one brewery, it will be several flights of, say, American Wild Ales or some such. One that could be cool would be to gather up some American IPAs and DIPAs and research the plato and IBU levels of each, arranging them in order of the ratio and trying to see whether the group finds the perceptive level of bitterness to follow as it "should". And because I've cellared just a few DIPAs (realizing that it is not the type of beer that wants that but just curious what will happen to them), we could throw a fresh vs year old bottle of a few of them and see what's up with that.

 

I normally consider myself a beer geek/snob... but reading all this just gave me a headache! Good insight!