Duck Rabbit Hoppy Bunny

I'm really not a huge fan of Black IPAs as I've said before but as most of you know I have serious issues about wanting to try everything. So, here we are, with a glass of Duck Rabbit Hoppy Bunny at Kite & Key.

Nice nose, strong grapefruit mixed with a nice roast. Basically what you'd expect from a decent black IPA so that's a good start. Unfortunately, the nose didn't follow through to the body. In the first sip, the grapefruit faded immediately and I just got roast and caramel with a light bitterness in the finish. Honestly was almost a little sweet which is just crazy for this style. This ended up more like a lightly hoppy porter than a black IPA. Even the body was slightly thicker than I'd expect. It wasn't terrible or anything just not very true to style. Jacquelyn, the bartender, liked the name at least so it has that going for it.

Firestone Walker Wookey Jack

Now that my Labor Day beers are finally behind me, I can move on to some I've had since then. To start, I drank a Firestone Walker Wookey Jack this past Sunday while watching football. (So happy football is back even if listening to people talk about their fantasy teams is just about the most boring thing ever. It's worth it.) I was given this after buying a whole bunch of other beer from a local store. Lucky me and really nice store! Wookey Jack is a black IPA made with rye.

Grapefruit nose, hints of some rye spice. Tons of super fruity grapefruit at first, followed by some light roast and finished with more grapefruit and a decent amount of bitterness. Very dry and bitter aftertaste as well though that lets up when you get more used to it. Most of the bitterness was from the hops for sure but there is definitely some influence from the rye and roast.

Pretty great black IPA or American Black Ale, whatever you want to call the style. If you're looking to try it yourself, it's on draft around Philly right now and there are probably bottles still available too. Give it a try, it was tasty.

21st Amendment Back in Black

Been working through my hoppier beers before I head off to Belgium next week so opened one my cans of 21st Amendment Back in Black. The brewery itself is in San Francisco but I'm pretty sure the beer for the cans is brewed in Minnesota or something.

Slightly roasty nose with some piney hoppiness. Body followed with more roast and some slight bitterness. Nice creamy mouthfeel which was quite nice actually. Basically exactly what you'd expect from a not too hoppy Black IPA, sorry I mean American Black Ale, and decent enough for the price.

Visit to Taproom Spring House

My wife and I finally had a free weekend and managed to combine it with a visit to the Spring House Brewing Company Taproom and the new Troegs brewery. I'm going to start with the Spring House taproom and make a post about the Troegs brewery in a few days. We've been trying to get out to Lancaster to visit Spring House for going on three months probably. I think we must have planned at least 2 or 3 other visits and had to cancel them all for one reason or another so lets just say I was excited.

I first learned about Spring House a few years ago, probably in August of 2009 or so, when I bought a case of their Kerplunk Chocolate Stout. Previous to this past Saturday, I had managed one visit out to the brewery which is actually a barn next to the brewer's (Matt Keasey) house but it must have been over two years ago at this point since I didn't write about it. I imagine if I had started the blog I would have written something. That visit was quite cool just because the brewery was so rustic. I mean it was in a barn, how much more rustic could it get? However Matt finally realized he needed to do something about the large number of people that were visiting the barn and parking on his tiny street and so he opened the Taproom to alleviate the crowds. I'm glad he did since it was quite impressive and well put together.

Dinner at Kite & Key

In a change from my regular Tuesday at Kite & Key routine, my wife joined me for dinner so I was there a bit longer than usual. Nice to mix things up every once and a while, ya know? I got there a bit before her so I ordered a Deschutes Black Butte Porter to pass the time.

Delicious chocolate roast nose. Starts with flavors of roast and chocolate, finishing with a slight smoky character. The mix of chocolate and roast is really well balanced. Very tasty. So disappointing that it'll be gone soon and not available year round. If only Deschutes distributed to Philly for real. Oh well.

London Grill & Deschutes: East Meets West

Finally we come to one of my favorite (possibly the favorite) nights of Philly Beer Week, the Deschutes dinner at London Grill. However, lets back up about 45 minutes before the dinner started. Kite & Key was doing a Founders Brewing event (named F*CK Monday for Founders Unites Canada and Kentucky, clever) and advertised that they were going to be tapping Canadian Breakfast Stout. Since it is one of the beers that I really wanted to try at some point and is super rare, I knew I had to stop there before heading to London Grill. I arrived around 4:30 only to find out most people arrived at 4 and all of the placeholder cards for a glass were already handed out. Sucks to be me. Luckily, I had met a couple guys the day before at Eulogy and they offered up an extra seat at their table to me. This meant, when the waitress came around for who wanted what, she did her best to include me in the order. Fingers crossed, I just had to wait and see what happened. Waiting paid off as I got my first glass ever of Canadian Breakfast Stout!

Why I Oughta IPA

I realized I still had a bottle of my buddy's Black Double IPA (his words) in the beer refrigerator and figured I should drink it while it's still sort of fresh.  I had it once before during the second beer tasting and thought it was pretty tasty.  This time I haven't had like six beers before it and thought it was still really good.

Inviting aroma of pine and orange peel.  Lots of citrus and pine notes up front with a pleasant roasty finish.  Some sweetness balances a slight lingering bitterness.  The best part, at least for me, is that the bitterness from the hops never overwhelms the palate and just kind of lives on the edge.  I'm a big fan of balanced IPAs and found the roasted finish to be one of the better ones I've found in black IPAs that I've had.  Nice job Pete.

San Francisco - Beers and Beer Week

An amazing coincidence occurred with our trip.  Somehow we planned it so that part of it overlapped with the beginning of San Francisco beer week.  I have no idea how that happened.  I totally didn't look it up before we decided on dates and then convinced Jo that it was a good idea.  See, just a big coincidence!  Or I'm totally lying.  Whatever, stop looking at me like that.

While we managed to make it to a couple events, there were a bunch of other places we went as well.  After getting back from Sonoma and all the breweries, Jo and I visited her sister's neighborhood and, lucky for me, that included a trip to the Toronado.

Weekend!

After a relaxing Thanksgiving with many great beers, Jo and I made our way back to Philadelphia.  On the way (okay not in any way on the way since it's 45 minutes past our apartment) we stopped at the Victory Brewpub.  Originally, I was going to pick up some bottles of Dark Intrigue, their new Barrel Aged Storm King, but they sold out of 70 cases in about 45 minutes November 24th so that idea was shot.  However, I also wanted to pick up a shirt from them, so we decided to go anyway.  When we arrived the parking lot was super full, but we managed to find some seats at the bar.

I started with a glass of Old Horizontal, their barleywine.

Smelled strongly of alcohol with very little sweetness.  The last few barleywines I've had all smelled very sweet so this was quite a change.  Initially, it tasted like slightly bitter alcohol.  After drinking some more, I realized it was just really heavily hopped.  Similar to Stones Old Guardian, but even hoppier.  The bitterness didn't linger, but every sip I took started with it.  It relaxed a bit as I had more but definitely a different take on the style.

I followed that up with a glass of Yakima Glory, a Black IPA.  At one point this was known as Yakima Twilight but they changed the name probably due to trademark issues but who knows.  If you do know, drop a comment about it.

Very pretty pour as they had it on one of their hand pumps.  It looked slightly darker in person than in the picture but regardless it's still darker than a regular IPA.  Smelled hoppy.  Very creamy.  Some roast followed by a lot of hop flavor but no real bitterness.  The fact that it was on hand pump masks some of the hop bitterness in a similar way as having it on nitro in my opinion.  I find the consistency and mouth feel change pretty dramatically.  I thought this was quite pleasant and would be interested in trying it again out of a normal tap to see the differences.

After that we drove home and worked on cleaning the house to get ready to put up some Christmas decorations.  To relax, I popped the bottle of Stones Imperial Russian Stout I bought from Capone's a few weeks back.

I noticed later that the gargoyle on the bottle is wearing one of those tall, Russian hats which is pretty funny.  Pretty neat bottle in my opinion.  Smelled sweet with some alcohol, mild coffee and some chocolate notes.  Initially, I got bittersweet chocolate flavors with a pleasant warming from the alcohol.  Some roast and even some really mild tart flavors in the background, almost cherryish.  No bitterness at all and really well balanced between the alcohol and the rest of the flavors.  This is probably one of the best Imperial Russian Stouts I've ever had.  Definitely lived up to its reputation.

Devil's Den is having an event December 1st that Jo and I should be going to.  They said they'd have different oaked or aged beers on draft so there should be some good stuff.

Visit to Hulmeville Inn

I had a free afternoon and hadn't seen my friend in a while so we decided to meet up at the Hulmeville Inn.  Great beer, decent food, and an awesome owner, what's not to like?  I was excited to try a couple of the things on draft (the owner, Jeff, lists all of their current drafts on the website and I check it entirely too often) plus my friend let me know that they had some new Cigar City stuff in bottles.

The main thing I wanted to try was the Dark Horse One Oatmeal Stout as I loved the Plead the Fifth and wanted to try another of their stouts.  This was the dead man walking, the oldest keg on draft, so it was also heavily discounted (although Hulmeville's prices are ridiculously low anyway.)

It had a mild roasted aroma but not much else.  No strong oatmeal smell on this one.  First sip had a little oatmeal, some malt and a small finish of alcohol bitterness.  As I worked through it, the oatmeal started to dominate the other flavors which was pleasant.  Good stout, but nothing compared to the Plead the Fifth.

After that, we were offered a small taste of Sam Adams Utopias which pretends to be an American Strong Ale.  Really it's a liquor aged for a number of years in all sorts of different barrels and ends up at a whopping 27%.

Considering its ABV, it wasn't surprising that it smelled and tasted like a liqueur.  I thought it was sweet and syrupy and tasted a little like some bourbon stouts taste.  I'm incredibly glad to have been able to try it since it's expensive ($175 a bottle) but seeing as how I'm not a big liqueur fan, I don't know if I'd get it again.

After that, my friend and I ordered bottles of Cigar City Either and Or so we could check them out side by side.

While they are both Black IPAs and made with similar recipes, the differences shine through quite clearly.  The two beers are a result of a collaboration between Cigar City and two breweries; Hill Farmstead, located in Vermont, and Grassroots, located in Denmark.  You can read all about the specifics here but the gist (as far as I could tell) is that Either is Cigar City's version and Or is the collaboration of the other two breweries.

The Either smelled delicious.  Hints of alcohol, some hops but not too much, and some malt. Flavor was very smooth with some hops but no bitterness to it.  I thought it tasted similar to Jack & Ken's, Sierra Nevada's 30th Anniversary Black Barleywine which I talked about in this post.  On the opposite side of the coin, the Or smelled much, much hoppier without the delicious malt smell from the Either.  First sip just punches you with hops and bitterness and it never relents.  I called Hop'solutely a Hopwine in the previous post and Or is in exactly the same category except I guess it would be a Dark Hopwine.  It wasn't bad, but compared to the Either, I didn't feel it competed.  Of course my friend who likes IPAs more than me enjoyed the Or a lot more than the Either.  So, if you like hops a lot, drink the Or.  If you like maltier beers with some warming alcohol, get the Either.  You win either way but you win more if you choose wisely.

Then, the owner Jeff happened to be drinking a bottle of Jubel 2010.  Notice in my "beer cellar" list I currently have a bottle of that on my shelf.  I was curious where he picked it up and while chatting he offered me and my friend a sample of it since they weren't going to finish the bottle and because he's awesome.

It poured a dark brown color with minimal head, but the bottle had been opened for a bit so the carbonation may have been higher in the beginning.  It tasted of caramel, toffee, and some spices.  Super delicious and now I cannot wait to open my bottle.

Finished up with a glass of Boaks Wooden Beanie, a Dubbel aged in oak.  Actually, forgot to get a picture of this, but think of a glass filled with a brown liquid and very little head.  Smell was very Belgian, bananas and sugar.  Taste followed with some caramel, bananas, and sort of a biscuit flavor.  I also got some apple as I drank more.  Good dubbel and I'd order it again.  Plus Boaks is in Pompton Lakes, NJ near where I grew up.

Once again, a great trip to the Hulmeville Inn.  Everyone is always really nice there and Jeff, the owner, is always willing to chat with me which is awesome.  His beer knowledge is really thorough and it shines through in the draft lists at the Inn.  Plus, the prices there are always the lowest in the area.  The bottles of Either and Or were only $8, the same as my friend found them in Florida.  Just crazy good.  So, if you're in the area, definitely stop in for a drink.