Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Time to crack open the impressively packaged Imperial Double Mash Stout from MacLeod Ales…
This is a gentle giant of a beer. Pours dark brown in color with just a few, fast dissipating bubbles on top. I get cherry, chocolate and a slight nutty taste at first. This is a smooth beer. The ABV is not showing. As it warms, I get Dutch chocolate pudding with a bit of coffee bean bitterness.
Thanks to City Beer Store of San Francisco, I snared a couple beers from Ruse Brewing in Portland.
Static Equation – pours a hazy yellow color. label claims apricot, grapefruit and dankness from the Citra-Simcoe-Mosaic hop trio. I get a dank Meyer lemon taste with a pillowy feel to it. Bit of a hazy burn at the back of the palate.
Ghost Coast – clear and yellow in color. has a good strong lemony bitterness. lot of malt chewiness here as well. gettin a bit of grassy character as well.
Thought Frequency with Great Notion – lightly hazed yellow color. quite spicy and herbal driven. light in texture. pine aroma to me. a bit of a toasted malt character here that is different from most hazies and not what I expected from a Great Notion collab.
Time to review New Zealand hopped beers via Paso Robles and Firestone Walker.
Let’s start with Nelson, a West Coast IPA. It pours a dark orange color. I get grape must and a slight tannic quality on the first sip. A little cat pee in the aroma. Further sips reveal a Concord grape note. There is a good hit of bitterness. Finishes with a combination of herbal and spicy.
Elenna is a hazy and a higher ABV than most FW beers which usually land in the 5.6% range. It pours a murky yellow color in keeping with the style. Aroma is forest like. Quite soft on the palate. Little bit of a cream texture. At the end I get a mixture of cherry and citrus.
Two more from Eureka Brewing to review (one of which is a bit long in the date tooth)…
West Coast Drift – big, big pineapple aroma and flavor. Like opening a can of pineapple in pineapple juice. Medium low haze in the glass. Overall nice strong bitterness to balance the juice notes.
Double Bogey DIPA – This one was canned in late January so a tad out of date. Sweet tart meets alcohol. Strong but not super bitter. I would like to taste a fresh one for comparison.
The second pairing from the California Craft Brewers Association is another NorCal duo.
Bike Dog and Urban Roots from Sacramento bring us rainbows and poodles.
Starting with the Hazy Pale Ale – Guys, Gals and Non-Binary Pals which pours a haze lemonade color which is followed by a big lemon aroma. Guessing there is some Citra involved here. A bitter beginning melts into softness. Quite a yeasty filling character from this one.
Next is Make It Easy IPA from Bike Dog. This West Coast IPA pours bright yellow clear. Almost looks like a pilsner. A bit of cat pee on the aroma but that fades as you get a clean and crisp IPA.
I have been really enjoying the best of California breweries boxes that I have bought through the California Craft Brewers Association. And this month, the summer box arrived so it is time to dig into reviews of some of the noteworthy beers from it.
We start with two styles that are off the beaten track. A double named beer from Sierra Nevada and a cream ale with a candy twist from High Water Brewing.
I was psyched to have the pale bock but the yellow / orange hued beer was a little one note. A nice malty note with a touch of apple cider but not much else and for a beer that is 6.8%, it tasted bigger alcohol wise. A twelve ounce can would have sufficed.
Break Apart was as advertised. Big orange aroma and flavor. Soft, giving it a creamsicle taste that was quite nice. I didn’t get a large hit of chocolate but the little amount there conveyed that Christmas orange taste.
Two from Eureka Brewing to dig into today starting with a hazy pale using the Pink Boots hop blend.
Pandora Wakes pours a bright yellow with a top heavy haze to it. Crisp taste with a little watery edge to it. I know that is contradictory but this beer comes across more session/light. Some bitterness up front with a cherry note. Not what I would consider hazy though.
La Brea Stout promises chocolate and coconut. I get some of the former and none of the latter. It pours a nice dark color but no head to it. There is a soft roasty character that I like.
Hazy and N/A? Let’s dive into the next Free Wave from Athletic Brewing
First item of visual business is that it is not holding the haze very well. It isn’t crystal clear but a little added murk is in order. The aroma is very much orange candy or soda. That carries over into the taste which has a pretty good level of piney dank bitterness but I am not getting the pillowy quality that should be in the style. Then the body fades at the end a bit. If this was labeled West Coast, it would get higher ratings but for a hazy, it misses too many marks
The second of the Three Weavers featured reviews is Light Trails IPA. Getting quite a bit of grape character to this one Soft texture here as well, the bitterness is nicely understated. The aroma is very red wine barrel. Not the usual aroma which wakes up the senses. Overall, a very tannic experience, the IPA for wine fans.
My interest in the Oscars has waned over the last few years but if the movies nominated one of the few that caught my eye was Minari, so when I saw that Southland Beer Co. was selling a unique witbier honoring that movie, I picked it up along with another beer from this unique brewery, Dokkaebier.
Not their Kimchi sour though.
Let’s start with the Grand Quimen Pilsner which starts off well but the crispness slides into a more silky mouthfeel. I get a weird tannic but smooth note. I would hazard a guess that I would not like this tea straight. The tea does come through which is what you want but this just doesn’t quite reach the mark for me.
On to the water celery! And Citrus Witbier. This pours a dark amber. Not what I was expecting. The aroma is straight up celery. A little more expected. There is a big malty note sitting under the celery taste but the citrus is missing. And to me, this isn’t a wit really. I would need to get some spice and any citrus (lemon, lime, traditional orange).
Of the two, I would go with the tea pilsner even though the tea was not to my liking, it was in balance with the beer where the celery was not.