What Was the Last Beer You Drank?

[Bubba83]

Well I was all excited to try the latest Frank Zappa release that I picked up at Safeway, go figure right?

Wow, this is my first time with the whole bottle though, and let me say, it's definitely a sipper that you should share with someone else! Excellent all around though, a very satisfying way to end the night while I hack away at my computer keyboard programming websites.

And for tonight... I cracked open my 2nd Lagunitas Cappucino Stout to redeem their name!

Never dissapoints, but isn't overwhelmingly flavorful either...

The following night will see me having another Anchor Christmas.

Okay, I was utterly dissapointed. This is the first beer I've had from Lagunitas that I didn't love. It's just a very weird brown. You get maltyness that resembles Brown Shugga, but it's mixed with an off citrus and heavy heavy bitter aftertaste that doesn't have any of the nice hop flavors to go along with it... Some people who reviewed it on BA liked it quite a bit, so I don't know what's wrong with me, but there you have it.

Lagunitas' Lumpy Gravy. 7.2% ABV, supposedly a brown ale... Can't believe I found this at Safeway? Go Safeway!

[ParkTrips]

nearly done with the goods I got from Derek last summer, here is yet another beer I can't get without driving a few hours...

there's the face of a man who had almost forgotten about hops... perhaps a brew from Stone wasn't the best place to reintroduce myself despite the face, its still good stuff!

Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale from Stone.

A standard lager, nothing too special or unexpected here. A better version than, say, Budweiser though

edited to add in another beer... Samuel Smith's Lager

[DerekRx]

Over the weekend I decided to crack open something else I got from Justin last month, all the way from McMenamins Brewing, Hammerhead Ale.

It survived its cross country journey well, and was pretty hoppy for a pale ale, almost like an IPA-lite. Good stuff, and nicely balanced. Thanks, Justin!

Hammerhead Ale, an American Pale Ale from the Pacific Northwest

[65skylark]

^ You're welcome! I'm glad to hear it wasn't too bad. I have never had it bottled before, as I live about a mile away from one of their local brewpubs, so I was hoping it wouldn't be horrible after the trip to PA and who knows how long in the bottle. I'm sure they keep their stock pretty fresh though. It is one of my personal favorites from McMenamins.

[Bubba83]

^ Are you looking forward to the upcoming release of The Abyss Justin? I only hope I will be able to find it somewhere down here after the 15th.

[Nrthwnd]

A can of Labatt's Blue.

 

Actually a few - they were all good.

 

[Juggler]

Not too much going on in blighty right now. Had a selection of Ales over Christmas courtesy of the CAMRA beer club which went down rather well. 19th Jan is the Winter Ales festival in Manchester so I shall be trawling the halls and sampling plenty of ales. Next month is the biggie with the Buzzards annual trip to the Oakwood Beer Festival in Rotherham. As usual with a good dozen of us meeting up at Sheffield Control we need plenty to drink so I had a busy few days brewing recently.

The new dispensing equipment has arrived and I've also tidied up the beer engines.

Bre Day 2. The Honey'd Ale during the boiling phase, just look at those hops?!

Brew Day number 1. This is the Mild being Sparged.

The latest batch of my own brew. ChocOrange Stout V4.

A rather pleasant Red Dragon.

CAMRA beer!

[mcjaco]

I really enjoyed Corsendonk's Christmas Ale. Probably because it was a Belgian not trying to be overly spicy like all the other holiday brews.

 

I agree with Bubba on Lagunita's Cappacino Stout, after Brown Sugga, it's my favorite of theirs. And I'm not a huge fan of them.

[65skylark]

^ Are you looking forward to the upcoming release of The Abyss Justin? I only hope I will be able to find it somewhere down here after the 15th.

 

I'm actually thinking of making a trip to Bend, OR to visit the brewery the week it comes out. I'll have a PTR up in this thread if I do.

[Bubba83]

^^^ Nice to hear from you Juggler, it has been a while!!! The Chocolate Orange stout looks awesome to say the least. Version 4 huh? How is it? Cool pictures I always like to see all of the brewing process on a micro level.

 

^ Oh man, I am so jealous if you do go! I hope you do cause then at least I will get to see pictures of the event. If I wasn't paying off a ton of bills and had some extra cash right now I would totally meet you there!

[Juggler]

Hey Bubba,

 

Well I'm still very much in the fledgling stages of my brewing career and the ChocOrange Stout was something suggested to me before I went to the All grain set up. The trick has been how to get enough of a hint of Orange into the brew but not too much that it over powers the other flavours. I started from a basic Oatmeal Stout recipe and then altered the ingredients. Initially I tried adding some Curacao Orange Peel to the fermentation Vessel but I found it gave it more of a spicy undertone rather than actual Orange. I also found the black malts coffee notes was also cancelling out the Orange to some degree. So version 2 dropped the Black, increased the chocolate and I also late hopped with some Cascade hops which have a citrus taste to them. That worked a bit better but still missing the Orange.

 

Version 3 was for a friend of mine and stuck fairly close to number 2 with a slight tweak of the amounts.

 

Version 4. Now this was much better. This time I grated some fresh oranges and added the zest to the mash as well as dicing the oranges and dropping them into the mash as well. I didn't late hop this time as I wanted to see if just the addition in the mash would work. I also left out the Curacao as I wanted just the Orange so I had a starting point. After drinking I found it was a lot better but it missed the zing of Curacao and I think the late hops help to bring out the flavour. So batch 5 has had a bit of everything! A kilo of Chocolate malt in the mash along with the orange zest and diced oranges. Late hopped it with some Cascade hops and dropped some curacao into the fermentation vessel.

 

Blimey! It's all a learning process but I'm really enjoying it and so far I've not brewed anything I wouldn't drink if I was out and about.

 

As for the Honey beer....WOW! Had to transfer that between vessels today and the aroma coming off the beer was just amazing. It was far better than I expected so I'm hoping it'll drink really well in about a months time when I take the beers with me over to my Uncles for the Rotherham Beer Festival weekend. The Stout and the Honey will be our before and after the festival drinking!

[ParkTrips]

Back to sippin Belgian products for tonight...

and a great ale it is! I could hardly taste the 10% abv like most fine beers, and much like its appearance, the mouth feel reminded me of a wit as well. Just... that it was overall quite good and not something I could care less about

Maleur 10*, a strong ale that looks like a wit with its dense yellow, yeasty appearance..

[65skylark]

Had a couple of Deschutes' finer ales this last week in anticipaton for the release of The Abyss.

Very nice. Lightly hopped and at first it was almost too biscuity tasting, but it got better with each drink. Very smooth finish and a nice refreshing, easy drinking ale at only 4.8% ABV.

Last night I enjoyed another of Deschutes seasonal ales, Buzzsaw Brown.

My favorite winter ale so far this year. I may have to pick up one more pack before it's gone for the year.

My last bottle of Jubelale.

[Juggler]

Well as the Festivals slowly approach I decided to go back to where it all began and a bottle of the first real ale I ever had!

 

As for the festivals here's the beer lists for next week's Winter Ales Fest and next month's Oakwood Real Ale Fest, I figure some of you might like to have a look. The previous 2 years at Oakwood have seen us taste over 100 different ales on each occasion between us so we have a target to beat this year!

 

http://www.winterales.uku.co.uk/beer-list.htm

 

and

 

http://www.realale-oakwoodtc.org/beer.php

It may not be anything special in the taste stakes but it still goes down rather well.

Wadworth's 6X the beer that's to blame!!!

[DerekRx]

Nice to see some activity going on in here. Time to contribute some stuff I had this week.

and since it was my 10th visit, I got another free gift because I'm in their mug club, which is completely free!

Hey Jahan, I got a pint glass just for you for when you turn 21!

Since it was on cask as well, that's where I started. Using nothing but Simcoe hops, this one had nice grapefruit and grass flavors with a little malty backbone and a dry pine finish. And on cask, it was even smoother and creamier

Finally, today it was back to Rock Bottom to try their latest offering, the Sub Zero IPA, which we missed out on last year because of trouble finding parking.

Oh yeah, this stuff is fantastic! Lots of different hops make this one really strong. Nicole said it gave me pot breath

Last night, time to crack open a hop bomb in the Port Brewing Hop-15

Hey Joe and Justin, I've got ya covered with this year's batch of Troegs awesomeness, as fresh as it comes!

Loaded with coffee flavor, nice and thick too! Shame it's only seasonal, guess I better cherish my remaining bottles and save them for special occasions

Thanks to Joe, it's time for me to Wake-N-Bake with some Terrapin goodness. Look Bubba, no crazy head!

For our UK friends, a Samuel Smith Winter Welcome, with lots of maltiness, tastes of butterscotch, toffee, and caramel, with a nice bitter finish

Lots of hops, but not a lot of alcohol taste makes this one trouble making double IPA

A local seasonal favorite, Hop Wallop, a double IPA

One day I decided on the Sierra Nevada Celebration 2007, pretty good stuff, nice and hoppy

[65skylark]

^ Thanks for reminding me. It's been a while since I have been to the Rock Bottom here in Portland. I keep telling myself I'm going to get over there and sign up for the mug club so I can at least get my free pint glass after 5 trips.

[Bubba83]

^^ Oh man Derek, Where'd you find Hop-15??? That's awesome, I'm jealous! Nice non-inky wake n bake you got there! Pretty awesome you got a case of Nugget Nectar too, that stuff sounds so good...

 

^ I meant to ask you before Justin, did you ever find any of Deschutes' Hop Trip this harvest season in bottles near you? If so, did you try it? I'm interested in getting someone's opinion of it.

 

I was over at my uncle's on Friday, here are the beers we had there.

Perhaps the freshest bottle of this stuff we've ever had the pleasure of drinking. The head was very pillowy and it was incredibly aromatic, and tasted of course of fresh grapefruit.

And we'll end the night with a local favorite. Anderson Valley's Hop Ottin' IPA.

Pretty mellow follow up to Double Bastard, perhaps we should have led with this beer.

Samuel Smith's IPA... My uncle picked this one up again.

Uhhh yeah, this beer is amazing as everyone already knows... Tremendous hops yet an undeniable smoothness of huge malty backbone as well.

Double Bastard #2. We needed something that wouldn't dissapoint after the lackluster Thunderhead.

I'm pretty sure I've had a single of this before, and I remember it being better. This may have been a bit old, because the unique hop flavors weren't there, leaving only high dull bitterness.

Pyramid's Thunderhead IPA. Pretty cool label and had a nice head on it...

[ParkTrips]

Going Bubba style, three beers over the span of three days..

Still fine as always!

Tonight, I had pasta for dinner, and an Ayinger Celebrator to drink along with it

It worked out to be a fairly good beer... but holy crap, the last of the beer went down with a hell of a punch. It wowed me for sure, with all the sediment that had collected in the year plus since it was brewed, but I'm not sure if it was good or bad...

Next up, Collaboration Not Litigation, a blend of Russian River's Salvation and Avery's Salvation belgian style beers.

The facial expression shows it all, but eh, it was one of the better pilsners I had. Much closer to what we drank in Germany than the typical American crap

First, the Lagunitas Pils - a Czech style of beer that I am not much of a fan of. I figured it would go pretty well with the chili and tortillas

[65skylark]

^ I meant to ask you before Justin, did you ever find any of Deschutes' Hop Trip this harvest season in bottles near you?

 

I never did see any at the local stores in my general area, but honestly, I didn't go out of my way to find some, either. Next year.

 

In other news..........I got a very cool package in the mail today from PA. I'll post some pics over the next few days.

[Bubba83]

^ So I guess you're not going to Bend tomorrow then?

[Juggler]

Well I couldn't resist the temptation any longer and I know I should give it a few more days but what the hell it's cheaper than buying bottles. So I pulled my first pint of Mild this evening since I set the hand pumps up properly and WOW! I wasn't sure what to expect as I've not brewed a Mild before but I wanted something that wasn't too heavy for the coming weekend.

A nice deep red colour, a wonderful malty nose, sweet to the taste with a little hoppy after taste.

[65skylark]

Well I didn't make it to Deschutes Brewery today for the first pour of The Abyss as I was hoping. I have just been way too busy at work. I did call up the brewery today and talked to the manager of the gift shop. He said they weren't set to get anything in until Wed or maybe even Thursday and that if I were to get there on Thursday I would probably have a good chance of getting a case. So, the plan is to make it down there on Thursday, but we'll see. Either way, I have six bottles reserved through a local distributor Derek led me on to. Three of them are Dereks, the other three are mine.

 

Anyway, speaking of Derek, I got a nice little package yesterday from him with four different brews that I have never had the pleasure of drinking. One of them I had never even heard of. So, of course, that is the one I started off with.

Very nice. Advertised as a red ale, this one had a red cloudy color and a nice strong hop presence. Tasted more like an IPA with nice grapefruit citrucy notes. Got better with each drink. I'd probably give it a solid B+ rating overall.

 

Looking forward to the next!

Hedonism Ale from Legacy Brewing. One of the local brewing companies in Derek's area.

[DerekRx]

Even though it's crappy Winter time, there's plenty of reasons to be happy. One is that Justin should hopefully be heading to Bend soon and will return with a Deschutes report. Another reason, Troeg's Nugget Nectar has returned for the season, this year a whole month earlier than usual!

but Gumballhead doesn't make the winter go away. Oh well, I know how to deal with that, it's soon time to pay an old friend a visit...

It's wheaty, it's sweet, it's piney, it's balanced, it's Summery, it's fantastic!

super foamy Three Floyds Gumballhead, GO!

Blah! It's snowing, thus finally proving it really is Winter. Perhaps I should drink something more Summery to make this go away

And how fresh it is! The fresher, the more piney, and this stuff is as fresh as it gets, meaning it's like shoving a straw into a pine tree and sucking out the sap

Just released, it's the time of year to celebrate the return of Nugget Nectar!

[65skylark]

^ I did, infact, make it to Bend, Oregon yesterday. We made a nice family trip out of it. We all had a lot of fun taking the brewery tour and then later heading over to the Deschutes Public House for some pub exclusive brews. Oh, and I happened to score one of the last cases of one of the highest rated and rare beers in the world while I was there, too. Let me just say, WOW! I will have a full PTR up in the next day or two.

 

But, for tonight, I opened another selection sent to me from Derek and the one that I was looking most forward to trying, Mad Elf from Troegs.

Wow. This beer is really something else. The cherry flavor really comes through on the first drink. Smooth and sweet, this beer is one you want to take your time with. At 11% abv the alcohol content is well hidden. I enjoyed my one glass over the course of about 45 minutes.

The Mad Elf Ale. Nice copper color and wonderful aroma.

[Rugged One]

This past Friday Derek came over for our first tasting in a while. Luckily we had been stockpiling some pretty darn good stuff in the meantime.

 

So begins the first edition of Friday Night Pints of 2008!

This guy had lots going on with it, including dark fruits, heavy malts, and a yeasty chalkiness to it. Quite interesting and a nice sipper to end our night with. Until next time!

We finish up the only way we know how. With another special beer. Actually anything from the Lost Abbey is pretty darn special. In this case, it's the Ten Commandments, a Belgian Strong Ale.

This was another fine beer and a great example of a Coffee Stout. Just a ton of coffee notes with espresso, burnt coffee ground bitterness, and a nice creamy body. Definitely a breakfast for beer champions!

We keep the top 100 rolling with #93, a bottle of Beer Geek Breakfast. This is an Oatmeal Coffee Stout brewed by Mikkeller, one of the best breweries in Denmark right now.

Wow, I think this is seriously the best fruit beer we've ever had. Just tons of sweet Raspberry goodness that is offset by a almost perfect amount of tartness. And then as if that wasn't enough, it even ends with a little bit of hoppiness. We loved it!

We get things back on track with the #62 beer in the world. The Raspberry Tart from New Glarus. I believe this is our first beer from these guys. It definitely left a favorable impression!

Actually, it wasn't bad with some nice citrus and hop character but like most of these blended beers, it's like, What's the point? Especially if your going to wax top the bomber like it's something special.

So what poor beer is going to have follow up that awesome beer drinking experience for us? Something some Southern Tier of course! The Gemini, a 50/50 blend of their Hoppe Extra Pale Ale and Unearthly DIPA.

Needless to say, you would have to wipe the smiles off our faces right now. This beer just doesn't have balls. It has big ole' hairy balls! I swear they must ferment this stuff with testosterone instead of yeast. The Dark Lord IS that damn manly!

And probably the most impressive aspect of this beer is the body. Just as thick as can be with the consistency of motor oil. After we poured, there was still this Hershey syrup type sediment in the bottom of the bottle. After pouring that out into our glasses, this was what showed up in Derek's glass. An evil grinning skull face. Awesome!

For us at least this beer totally lived up to the hype. Just huge awesome notes of chocolate, coffee, espresso, dark fruits, and burnt malt.

It's the biggest and baddest beer on the block. The Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout! Released only one day every year. Big props to Deuane for hooking us up!

TA-DA! Instant #2 beer in the world!

Hmmm. What could be in the bag? Being our first tasting of the new year, I decided to break out something special for us...

It was decent. Lots of typical witbier characteristics. Bread, yeast, orange zest, coriander spices, and honey but then that 9% had to rear it's ugly head. We're glad to have tried it though.

We start out with something light. OK, if you consider 9% light. It's the latest commemorative batch from Bell, Batch 8,000. A jacked up Imperial Witbier.