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Put that artisan bread baked with beer into the toaster but don’t put just any marmalade on it.
Not when you can slather IPA jelly on top. Or any of the other flavors like Porter, Black IPA or Oatmeal Stout from Nancy and Walter Warner’s preserves from their Potlicker Kitchen.
$7 will get you one jar and if you like it, you can buy sets. Breakfast just got beer-ier.
After the multitude of helpful GABF statistics started being posted online, it got me to thinking about a personal pet peeve of mine. Why pilsners aren’t loved more.
Using BeerAdvocate as a test case (that I will explore further, at a later date), German Pilseners 1-50 range from 4.04 out of 5.0 to 3.7
Czech Pilsener from 4.18 to 3.55
That’s a range of of .34 and .63 respectively.
Now look at these two, more loved styles:
American IPA 4.53 to 4.22 for the top 50
Double / Imperial Stouts 4.67 to 4.28
That’s a range of .31 and .39
Obviously IPAs and big stouts seem to be starting with an advantage because their higher ranking beers score higher than their Pilsner counterparts. But what strikes me is that the 50th best IPA and 50th best Imperial Stout are considered that much better than the absolute best Pilsener, from whatever country.
Now, I don’t expect a Pilsener to score 5 out of 5. But I can’t believe that the Top 10 in any category don’t track at the same levels.
Looks like the Session stubbies from Full Sail are branching out for 2015. Currently there is the red labeled lager, alongside the other year-round Black lager. Then there will be a full-time Session IPA. Joining the Holiday Fest lager in the Session seasonals will be an Export lager and a second ale, Session Cream bringing the total ales to two and lagers to 4. All with distinctive colors to make for easy shopping. Of the coming arrivals the cream ale is the one that I would buy first. I prefer the less brewed styles obviously.
I am not fond of the beer name though I do like the bifurcated label and color scheme for this To Øl collaboration IPA. But I am quite interested to see how the Mosaic hop, aged no less, works with the strong taste of cedar. I am also intrigued by the new to me Siren Craft Brew from Berkshire, England.
Mike Hess Brewing has reached the 4 year mark and to celebrate they did, surprise, an Imperial IPA which was dry hopped with Simcoe and Amarillo.
Hopefully the brewing went better than in year two.
On to the video to find out…..
Whilst wandering through my Trader Joe’s, I stopped at the “orphan” bottles and cans section of the beer aisle and I saw a “classic” Stone IPA right next to the newer Go To Session IPA. Immediately, I thought, it was time for a taste test. How did the two compare. Is there a stylistic shift or are they just variations on a theme?
Classic IPA
Pours clear and fizzy orange. Compared to the Go To, it has less head to it. Pine/woodsy aroma and a strong punch of bitterness. There is some notes of citrus and fruit punch in there as well which fades as the beer warms and more of a spicy rye quality becomes more evident. A bit too astringent for me after a strong start.
Go To Session IPA
Pours a hazy yellow color. Oddly no “enjoy by” date on this bottle. Lighter tangerine aroma here. Much softer and a little more floral/ soapy notes here. Both have lingering hop presence to them. Just that this fades out quicker. A little watery as well.
Verdict – Neither have much malt presence to them. My preference for lighter hands on IPAs leads me to Go To but in the end the harshness of the Classic loses the battle more than Go To wins it.
Part of me wishes that Almanac would stay with the fruits and odd styles like Gose. And part of me does not like the damn curlicue/scrimshaw font either. But I guess, when in Rome. Go hoppy. I am sure it will be a strong beer.
“Introducing our year-round Almanac IPA in 22 oz. bottles! This copper-hued, West Coast hop bomb is brewed with a malt base of California-grown two-row barley, with additions of German Vienna, Crystal and Biscuit malts.
Then we start layering on the hops—grown in California, Oregon and Washington. We combine Apollo, El Dorado, Simcoe and Mosaic to create our own twist on the IPA style with intense aromas of grapefruit and tangerine peel, melon, pineapple and pine trees. The finish has a clean bitterness and light saltine cracker note.”
Sorry for the non-ringing endorsement in the intro. As much as I love hops, I wish some people could overcome the urge to add another IPA to the pile. But if the beer drinking people want bread and circus.
One of my favorite breweries, Beachwood has joined the growing list of Stone collaborators to create an Unapologetic IPA along with third partner, Heretic Brewing.
This IPA that was kindly provided to me by Stone pours a bright and cheerful orange. The first taste that comes through is Concord grape. Grape Ne-Hi to be exact. Then a heavy bitterness hangs like a shroud.
The aroma is great on this one. Zippy and filled with grape notes. But that promising start is undone by the heaviness. There is just an astringency that makes this below average. And then the cat pee notes kick in a little too harshly as well. And since these are such new hops. Belma? Yakima #’s without catchy names? I don’t really know what is causing the high points or the low.
This just verifies that the Stone IPA palate is not mine. That is no knock on Stone. Their Hophead fans are legion, so they are playing to their customer base for sure. And I know they have a session IPA out there that is more in line with my delicate sensibilities but I would have liked to see less hops here. Toned down the ABV a skosh as well.
All apologies but this IPA is not for me.
First off, I am not even going to try to spell the name of the new series of beers from Stone. Them’s the breaks when you choose a name like StocheeheenieWTF. But I will try the beer. The first in the series was the Grapefruit slam that I thought worked as a beer more than the marketing. But I am a sucker for grapefruit and it worked well with the hops. Now they have gone to the Belgian Quad and used Triticale which reliable Wikipedia (and other sources) describe as, “….a hybrid of wheat and rye first bred in laboratories during the late 19th century.”
This beer was strange. Not easy to drink. It was sharp with an astringency to it that made me pucker, even though it wasn’t sour at all. It also tasted thin. I expect Quads to have a little heft to them. Not viscous, per se, but have a solid malty backbone to lean against and this did not have it. Their was also a lack of spice to it and it had more of a Belgian strong ale straightforwardness to it. I couldn’t finish this one, to be honest. I poured out a solid half a glass. It did work better with the dessert than the main course in my testing but I think that was the sweetness of the fruit crumble that balanced out the strange taste that I will attribute to the Triticale or the yeast.
The second beer was the latest Enjoy By, with the patriotic date of 7/4/14 on it.
Needless to say this is bitter. And a little less fruity than past incarnations that I remember. But it certainly is crisper and more direct than the usual Stone hop bombs. There is mango and pineapple notes followed by a dankness and heaviness as the beer warms up and hits the back of the palate. It certainly sticks around as well. Not many scrubbing bubbles. And at over 9% abv, this is probably more a Triple or Imperial IPA depending on your taxonomic leanings. There is a bit of acrid bitterness but the ABV doesn’t heat you up. But I wouldn’t put someone in charge of the 4th of July grill who has had one of these. My personal palate would have liked a less heavy dankness and a brighter fruit note but I am not like most Stone fans so this is probably more in line with their tastes than mine.
In recent years, I have become more fond of the Stone Collaborations then there core line-up. They can get a little too zany and pump up ingredients that should be bit players when simplicity might work better. But their experimentation is a welcome switch from their usual flavor profile. And though I was not a fan of WootStout or the R&R Coconut IPA, I liked that they were enlisting home brewers of both the non-celebrity and celebrity types in their creations.
And the latter continues with a musical (String Cheese Incidient / Alice Cooper) themed collaboration that adds a reliable hop like Nugget with somewhat newer varietal Comet and Calypso with dry-hopping of Vic’s Secret, a new Australian hop. Then they added in coriander and elderberries.
That is the backstory, now here is the review…
The “CD” pours a bright and clear orange. Not much of a head to it. Nice and bubbly looking though. The smell is a bit non-descript with a hint of soapiness to it. The first flavor that I get is grape. Concord grape. Grape jelly grape. Then there is a really harsh bitterness that fades into a currant note. To the point where I Googled elderberry to see if that was what I was tasting. After a few sips this bitterness coats the tongue and the mouth and the grape notes fade to the back and one is left with the harshness only. There is also an astringent and wood pairing of notes as well. The former adds to the debilitating bitterness and the former tries to perk things up without much success.
I don’t know if it was the mix of hops or the elderberry and coriander or the combination of all three but this is just too much and it becomes oppressive tasting.