Mmmm, yummy!
Due to the fluidity of national borders, St. Ephrem’s birthplace, Nisibis, is no longer in Syria, but is the present-day Turkish town of Nusaybin. I’ve never had a Turkish beer. Can anyone recommend one?
Today is the Feast of St. Norbert. The founder of the Premonstratensians was born in Xanten, on the left bank of the Rhine river, so appropriate beers for today would be from Germany. Might I suggest an Altbier?
Last year - in June of 2007 - I reviewed beers from:
Two words: too sour. Smelled doughy and grainy, and the flavor was way too sour. No noticeable hop aroma or flavor.
Millstream has put out some really lovely beers. But this isn’t one of them. Give this one a pass.
It’s a beer with a substantial mouthfeel, as would be expected with a doppelbock, but it’s pretty smooth-drinking. It doesn’t tend to linger on the tongue after swallowing.
There’s a big, malty taste, but the hops are quite noticeable, especially at the finish. On one swallow, I happened to swish the beer in my mouth, and was rewarded with blast of carbonation coming out of solution, as well as the taste of alcohol hotness - as if this was a young big beer. This beer has an ABV of 7.2%, so I’m not entirely sure whether I should be surprised at that.
I’m not usually a fan of the bock beer styles, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I’d definitely drink it again.
I had a good time at the Brewers’ Heritage Festival is St. Louis on Saturday. The ground was soggy due to recent weather, but it didn’t rain during my session.
I got a nifty little tasting glass which resembles a miniature version of a pilsner glass. There was a logo on one side, and a 3 oz. indicator mark on the other.
It was a well-attended event on Saturday. There was a lager tent, an ale tent, a food tent, a festival tent, a stage, and a merchandise tent. Brewers lined the side of the Ale, Lager, and Festival tents on the side of the tents in the direction of the exterior of the venue. This allowed for short lines parallel to each other - one for each variety of beer. The organizers set up small bar tables throughout the tents, around which people stood and tasted. This encouraged people to move away from the lines, which further aided movement to and from the lines.
The homebrew that I tasted was a very interesting light-colored rye beer. The festival brew was a dark lager - that is, a lager brewed using dark-colored base malts. An interesting idea, I must say. Four different breweries took a stab at making the festival brew. I was very pleasantly surprised by Anheuser-Busch’s version. If they made it commercially available, I would buy it, and consider it their second-best beer (after the Michelob Porter).
Schlafly’s Imperial Stout was the only stout I tried, and it appeared to be a very young beer. There was a noticeable hotness to the alcohol. I’d recommend cellaring that beer for a while.
My brother tried a smoked beer (not a porter, interestingly enough). I took a whiff, and it smelled for all the world like a smoked ham. I couldn’t imagine drinking something that smelled like that, but he said it tasted very good.
I ended up trying a lot of different beers, including two different types of porters, blonde ales & lagers, a dortmunder Helles, a couple of red ales, and my favorite of the day, a Vienna lager. There were other beers that I tried and enjoyed too.
Here’s a few pictures I took by holding my camera up over my head:
And my drinking buddies (who also happen to be related to me) who came with me:
A good time was had by all.
I’ll be heading down to St. Louis on Saturday to attend the St. Louis Brewer’s Heritage Festival. I’ll be bringing my brother and my cousin along. This will be my first beer festival, so I’m quite looking forward to it. Let’s hope the weather is nice!
When you pop the cap off the bottle, your nose is immediately greeted by a strong smell of cinnamon. Uh-oh. I started to worry. But fortunately, the cinnamon flavor - while present and very noticeable - is not overwhelming. In fact, it provides a very nice finish for the beer.
No. 15 pours a nice reddish color with a decent head. Really, everything about this beer is pleasant - from mouthfeel, to aroma, to the base flavors. It’s not a huge, bold beer, but it’s a wonderfully delightful session beer.
Upon popping the bottle cap of this lovely beer, I was immediately struck by a nutty aroma. Wow!
Oh, yes. This is a Trappist beer. It definitely bears a family resemblance to Westmalle Dubbel, but there are differences as well. Whereas Westmalle has a very creamy head, Rochefort’s is more fizzy, like the carbonation in a soda pop. Rochefort tastes dryer. The ABV is not very different from Westmalle, so I’m assuming that Westmalle contains more unfermentable sugars than does Rochefort.
There is the previously-noted nutty aroma, plus a chocolate aroma, and a subtle fragrance of plums. The taste is rich, full of chocolate, and very pleasant.
Rochefort is to beers what champaigne is to wine. Yummy. A very satisfying beer. God bless those Trappist monks!
It’s a great session beer, or a great beer with which to refresh yourself after working outdoors.
Yummy!
Two Brothers Brewing Co.’s Prairie Path Golden Ale is a pleasant surprise. I didn’t much care for their Weisse beer, so I didn’t have high hopes for this one. I’m glad I was mistaken. This is a very clean, crisp, and refreshing beer. But, unlike an American pilsner, it has flavor. This is the kind of beer I’d like to drink after a hot day of mowing the lawn.
Prairie Path is mildly carbonated, with not much in the way of a head. It is brewed with Belgian malts and Saaz and Golding hops - the very best of ingredients (IMHO). The hop bitterness perfectly balances the malt sweetness. There’s a pleasant floral aroma, and the ale yeast did leave some fruity esters. In other words, this beer has some character.
It did have a rather substantial mouthfeel, and a slight aftertaste - somewhat reminiscent of a steam beer.
All in all, I was impressed.
A friend of mine challenged me to make a list of the top 10 beers. I told him that I hadn’t had every beer in the world, so that was impossible. He then amended his challenge to me for me to list the top 10 beers that I have had.
A very difficult proposition, since my tastes and preferences do change over time. And really, how do you compare a porter to a hefeweizen? But I thought I’d give it a shot.
I started out by making a list of what I thought were truly “world-class” beers. I ended up with a list of 20 such beers. Then I tried to put them in the order of how much I enjoyed them. I’m sure I made mistakes doing this. And deciding that this beer belonged in the top 10 and that beer belonged in the second 10 was difficult and painful. But, in the end, this is what I came up with:
10. Belhaven St. Andrew’s Ale
9. Goose Island Christmas Ale
8. Millstream Colony Oatmeal Stout Lager
7. Hacker-Pschorr Weisse
6. Samuel Smith’s Organic Ale
5. Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter
4. Fuller’s 1845
3. Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier
2. Ayinger Brau-weisse
1. Westmalle Trappist Ale Dubbel
Honorable mention: Arcadia Ales’ London Porter Ale, Rogue Shakespear Stout, Samuel Smith’s Organically Produced Lager Beer, Samuel Smith’s Pure Brewed Lager, Hofbrau Munchen Original Lager Beer, Erdinger Oktoberfest Weizen, Fuller’s London Pride, Fuller’s London Porter, and Spanish Peaks Brewing’s Black Dog Ale.
Coniston Brewing Co.’s Bluebird Bitter pours a lovely honey color with a small head and gorgeous lacing. It has a citrus-like fruity aroma with a hint of …something. The bottle says it’s geraniums, but I can’t quite tell. There’s a rich maltiness that provides a nice mouthfeel and contributes good things to the flavor, and the hops are somewhat understated for a pale ale. There’s a spicy note and a bit of a flavor of pine resins. When the beer warms up to the recommended serving temperature, that note is actually pleasant, but if you serve the beer cold - as in, directly from an American refrigerator - then it becomes a stumbling block to enjoying the beer. The low alcohol level allows this beer to be a nice session beer.
Do yourself a favor and let the beer warm up to cool, not cold, before you drink it.
To sum up: not bad, but nothing to get excited about.
You won’t believe this:
Joe Six-pack will have to pay a lot more to get his buzz on if Assemblyman Jim Beall has his way.
The San Jose Democrat on Thursday proposed raising the beer tax by $1.80 per six-pack, or 30 cents per can or bottle. The current tax is 2 cents per can. That’s an increase of about 1,500 percent.
Gotta love California, huh?
Full story. H/T: Vodkapundit.
