Sours on Christmas Eve

Well, guess I decided to write about Christmas Eve instead of the Bell's event. Too lazy to get the pictures off my camera right now mostly. For Christmas Eve, I decided to do a sours theme because I wanted to see how the two Captain Lawrence beers were tasting and I needed to get the bottle of Duchesse de Bourgogne out of my beer fridge.

I started with the Cuvee De Castleton as the base for it is a blonde ale and I thought it would be the lightest flavored. It's aged with muscat grapes.

Musty nose with a bit of grape in it. Quite inviting. Super tart but no mustiness in the first sip with a bit of grapey sweetness. Pretty dry finish. Continued along those lines with a perfectly balanced tartness never becoming to dry or acetic. Really delicious.

Beers on Little Christmas Eve

For the past two years (that's this year and last since Christmas is over now), I've been sharing some of my cellared (okay, it's just a basement) beers with my wife's family over Christmas. It may only be a two year tradition but it certainly feels like it's going to stick. Besides forcing my hand into drinking things out of the cellar, it's also fun to share the beers with people that aren't as into the beer scene as me. Gives a new perspective on things and such. This year I decided to do theme nights starting with Imperial Stouts.

The first one I opened was the pretty rare Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout (CBS).

New Holland The Poet

In my last visit to Kite & Key before the holidays, I ordered a New Holland The Poet, an oatmeal stout. It was actually a hard decision this time since there had been a decent amount of turnover but this seemed like a good choice.

Roasty nose but pretty mild otherwise. Smooth roast flavors started things off mixed with a slight bitterness. As it warmed up, some milky creaminess joined the roast and smoothed everything out. The latter was definitely the oat part of the beer coming through and it really brought it from just being okay to being pretty decent. Quite an enjoyable beer.

Hope everyone has a great holiday and has some awesome beers lined up! I know I do with some Founders CBS tonight, some Captain Lawrence sours tomorrow, some pumpkin beers on Sunday, and then maybe some barleywines Monday. Should be a great weekend.

River Horse Tripel Horse

Another of the beers left behind by my forgetful friends was River Horse Tripel Horse.

Hints of banana and clove with a decent amount of sweetness in the nose. Some alcohol too. Starts really sugary with clove and more hints of bananas. Mostly continues that way though the sweetness becomes a little much after about half the glass. Decent enough but it wasn't as good as the Heavy Seas Yule Tide from the other day.

Random Beer from my Brother

My brother has started to make a tradition of giving me beer as my Hanukkah present. Works for me! This one we were supposed to open together, but we totally forgot to do so. Oh well. This was a beer made by a friend of his at a brewery (possibly Shenandoah which is now the Farmer's Cabinet brewery) and was supposedly an Oatmeal Stout.

Smelled like dark fruit with a hint of hops. Some sourness in the nose was the first hint that something was terribly wrong with this. At first, I thought it was a sherry flavor since it was over a year old, but as I drank more I realized it was more of a sharp tanginess, reminiscent of infection. It sort of reminded me of a really poor sour porter but way less drinkable. I did manage to get through the whole glass in the picture so it wasn't undrinkable, just bizarre.

Honestly, looking at the picture, you can see how thin the body is since you can basically see through it. My recommendation to my brother's friend is to drink the rest of these if he has any left since it's just going to get worse as the infection spreads.

Heavy Seas Yule Tide

One of the random side effects of the beer tasting I held a little while ago was that a bunch of beers were left in my refrigerator. I wanted people to take them home with them but they forgot. Oh well. Guess I'll just have to drink them. The sacrifices I make in life.

The Heavy Seas Yule Tide, a Tripel, was one of them.

Quite a sweet nose with hints of clove and some slight pepper notes. First sip was quite fruity, lots of apple flavor. Some peppery bitterness appeared as I drank more but the major point was the fruity sweetness. I think I like my tripels to be dryer as the sweetness in this one was a bit too much for such a big bottle.

Nodding Head 12 Beers of Christmas

On the second Saturday of December, Nodding Head held an event called 12 Beers of Christmas. They've been doing second Saturday events for quite a while now and they always have a few special beers for each event. For this one, they had 2010 Sledwrecker, Phunkywine, and some Grog aged in a JW Lees barrel. There were also quite a few others as they had like 12 beers available so it was quite an afternoon. When I arrived, things were slightly busy but there was plenty of room to stand.

Knowing I'd end up ordering all the beers I wanted anyway, I decided to start with the JW Lees Grog as it was in a small firkin sitting on the bar so I felt like it had the highest chance of kicking at some point.

Jabroni En Garde

En Garde is one of the homebrews that my buddy Pete brought to the beer tasting the other night. It's a Biere de Garde according to him.

Peppery nose with some breadiness to it. Not as much spiciness in the first sip though. Some bitterness followed but very mild. Decently clean finish. As it warmed up, I started getting more notes of clove which was really interesting. I'm guessing it's a result of the yeast but regardless it makes the beer much better.

A Swedish Beer on Saint Lucia

For those that don't know, my wife is half Swedish and so we celebrated Saint Lucia day this year. Saint Lucia is a Swedish holiday where parents force their young daughters to wear crowns with lit candles on their heads which then drip hot wax all over them. Nah, just kidding. Well, okay, sort of kidding. It's really about how the Swedes thought December 13th was the darkest day of the year and so they celebrated Saint Lucia bringing them light. To remember this, they have children wear crowns with candles hence the melting wax. Nowadays, though, I believe they use electric candles so it's much safer.

We finally have enough room at our new house so we had some friends over to celebrate Saint Lucia this year. One was nice enough to bring a beer that was actually from Sweden, Dugges 1/2 Idjit, a porter.

Nose was full of roast, molasses and licorice. Really interesting. First sip had roast, coffee, a little saltiness, and some hints of licorice. The saltiness and licorice made for an interesting finish to the beer. Apparently, salty licorice is a thing and quite a favorite in Sweden so it makes sense to aim for that flavor. It actually reminded me a little bit of Deschutes The Abyss although only in flavor not body. This was pretty unique and it was really nice of my buddy to bring it.

Beer Tasting 4

Yet again I invited some friends over to share some beers and hang out. There were eight of us this time so there was quite a bit of beer opened, some good, some, well, not so good. I also discovered they think I use the descriptor banana a ton when writing this, but I attribute it to drinking Belgian style stuff a lot right now (especially Weyerbacher) and I'm sticking with that.

Here's the first set of bottles we worked through.

From left to right but not in order: Pete G. En Garde, Samuel Smith Winter Warmer, Pete G. Double Pumpkin, Allagash Tripel, Victory Otto, Boulevard The Sixth Glass, Mike D. Braggot.