Yards Trubbel De Yards

It's been a while since my last post and it'll be a bit after this one too since I'm heading to San Francisco soon. Oh well, it happens right? It's been a couple weeks since I had this Trubbel de Yards at Kite & Key, but no matter. It's sort of a mix of tripel and dubbel according to Yards.

Certainly looks more like a dubbel than a tripel. Taste went that way too. Lots of caramel with a little chocolate in the nose. Pretty nice. Medium body, not thin but not thick either. Flavor was a mix of caramel and banana bread with a little cocoa in the finish. Quite delicious, glad I got to try it. I thought they were planning on releasing this in 750mL bottles, but we'll see if that plan comes to fruition or not.

Kevin Mudrick IRS

This is the second of the bottles Kevin gave me a while ago. This time it's an imperial stout which was aged on Jim Beam soaked American oak cubes. Interesting stuff eh? At this point, it was also about seven months old.

Lots of things going on in the aroma. Chocolate and roast mainly but then some sort of, like, juicy flavor to it. Jo thought it was similar to apple juice while I thought it was sort of the flavor you get from cocoa powder at times. Different thoughts for sure. The body was pretty similar actually with some vanilla, chocolate, and more of the cocoa powder / apple juice flavor. None of the flavors were too strong or anything and they blended pretty well. Flavors became more cohesive as I drank through the bottle which was good as well.

Pretty decent imperial stout even after a year. More consistent through the whole thing than the ODD barleywine I had earlier which is nice to see. Be interesting to see how different the IRS was fresh and without the oak chips but either way I enjoyed the glass I had of this one.

Einstock Icelandic Toasted Porter

I was sent a box of a few beers for a secret santa I participated in over the holidays. Clearly the person did their research and recognized I liked beer. Not that it's hard to realize that but still. I started with the Einstock Icelandic Toasted Porter since it seemed like it had the best chance to be decent.

Smelled of toasted nuts and cream. Nice nose especially if you like porters. Creamy mouthfeel with a light toasted nuttiness and some roast bitterness in the finish. Continued that way throughout. Really, a pretty solid porter and a good way to start things off.

Wedge Brewing Company

The other brewery we visited while in Asheville was Wedge brewing. This time Jo decided it would be easier to just drop me off there and go do something else rather than sit there watching me drink. Probably a good idea I'd say considering the whole not drinking thing. Wedge wasn't located in an industrial park like Pisgah but it still didn't seem located in an active part of Asheville. Also, slightly hard to find since the entrance is behind a building but I found it so most people shouldn't have a problem. It has a large outdoor area and a tiny bar area. Again, during the summer, I bet it's super cool considering it had a whole bunch of games like cornhole and other stuff out there.

When I arrived just after opening, there were already quite a few people there and in line. It was Friday, but it was just before New Years Eve, so I'm guessing a lot of people had the day off. I settled into a seat near the taps and ordered their Vadim Bora, a raspberry imperial stout on nitro.

Starr Hill Cryptical

A friend of mine was nice enough to give this to me a couple weeks ago. Cryptical is a 7.5% Imperial Stout from Starr Hill which is just outside Charlottesville, VA. I'm not totally sure how a 7.5% ABV really makes it an imperial, but hey that's what they are calling it so that's what we'll call it.

Mild nose but there is some clean roast hiding in there. Decent mouthfeel too especially for it's strength. Earthy hops, roast, and a bitter finish make up the body. Nice mix of flavors. This isn't anything people will go crazy over, but it was definitely solid.

Cascade Blueberry

Last week I splurged and decided to pick up a bottle of Cascade Blueberry. It's a blueberry sour from out in Oregon. I actually thought it was a Cascade pub exclusive and didn't expected to find it here in Philly, but it was available and so I figured I'd give it a try.

Strong blueberry nose with a hint of funk. It's nice to actually smell the fruit instead of just crazy vinegar or sourness. Very impressive flavor. Blueberry up front, balanced by a pleasant sourness that isn't too strong. The fruit actually grew a bit as I got used to the sourness and it was just really flavorful. This may be the first blueberry beer I've actually liked! Not too surprising it's in a sour. I'm honestly inclined to say this is nearly worth the price or at least worth splurging on once. Also makes me wonder if the Apricot sour they often sell is worth the steep cost. Maybe I'll find out at some point.

Oakland Brewing Sticky Zipper

This was a gift from my sister in law for Christmas. I do so love getting beer as gifts. Sticky Zipper is an IPA from Oakland Brewing which seems like it is brewed in a place from San Jose.

Pretty decent nose, full of grapefruit citrus. Thin body, though, and quite bitter at first. Unfortunately, the body just seemed to be missing something. It was bitter and had a nice brightness, but it just felt empty in the middle. It actually felt like some homebrew I've had where the hoppy part is nice but the body suffers from lack of something. Still, it wasn't terrible, just a little boring. I've had worse that's for sure.

Pisgah Brewery

On our recent trip to Asheville, we decided to fly to Raleigh and drive there since it seemed easier than catching a connection. This meant that it was super easy to stop at Pisgah since it is right on the way into town, just off route 40 (I think it was 40.) Very convenient. Even being that close to the highway, though, it's still somehow sort of felt in the middle of nowhere. Funny. Like a lot of breweries it's located in an industrial park and pretty nondescript. Upon entering the building, it looks like a warehouse as you find your way to the bar area. The bar area itself, though, was pretty neat looking with a decent number of taps and lots of room.

On the left are their house taps and the right are a few guest taps. Pretty cool that they have both though I imagine (hope?) most people stick to Pisgah's own beers since why else visit a brewery.

New Belgium Frambozen

So I was right and I was lazy today. Beer it is! One of the places we had dinner in Asheville was Barley's Taproom, a quite large and pretty nice pizza place. There was a decent number of drafts with quite a few local ones, but I started with one from New Belgium and then moved to local. Frambozen is a raspberry brown ale which I didn't know at the time but does make sense considering the flavors.

Basically smelled like raspberry iced tea with the raspberry overwhelming everything. Since I didn't know the style at the time other than it had raspberry in it, my notes say, "big raspberry flavor on top of a lager like flavor, a nuttiness if you will. Slightly odd finish too." Knowing it's a brown ale as a base makes some of those flavors make sense, but I still wasn't a big fan of this. The raspberry was nice but otherwise it was just eh and I didn't really like the base beer flavors. Win some, you lose some. Sorry New Belgium!

A Very Merry Dock Street Christmas

I had a few bottles of various Dock Street bottles burning a hole in my basement so what better time to open a few than during Christmas? I planned on opening four different ones but never made it to the fourth bottle as I kind of forgot to put it into the refrigerator. Oh well, I just had to deal with only three, woe is me.

Since it was the newest one, I started with the Man Full of Funk Porter, their porter dosed with Brettanomyces and then aged in apple brandy barrels for like three years.

Highland Cold Mountain

We spent the few days before New Years in Asheville, North Carolina and I spent that time mostly drinking local stuff. We hit up a few breweries but didn't manage to make it to Highland because the day we could go they were closed for a private party. Sucks. So, I made do with trying their Winter Warmer, Cold Mountain.

I didn't know what to expect from this but actually found it pretty good! Sweet vanilla in the nose. Guessing it's brewed with it based on the strength. Continuing from there, the body also had a light vanilla sweetness with even more vanilla in the finish. However, it was never cloying or too sweet, just pleasant. I unfortunately don't remember what the main flavors were since the vanilla was apparently my focus. Nice job on a decent winter warmer regardless. Wish I had been able to make it to their brewery just to check out some other stuff. Oh well, next time!

Some Beers before Christmas

I opened a number of bottles with my family over the holidays, some I took notes and pictures and some I didn't. The latter was sometimes because I didn't feel like it though honestly sometimes I just forgot. I think I drank these two on the same night so lets talk about them together! If I don't I'll never finish writing about everything so lets go.

I had thrown a couple bottles in the beer fridge at random so there was no theme for this day. We started with the white wax version of FiftyFifty Eclipse, an imperial stout aged in 20 year old Elijah Craig bourbon barrels. The thing about the Eclipse series is that the barrel treatment (aka the barrel the beer is aged inside) is only referenced by the color of the wax. You have to look up the beer somewhere and compare the wax color to figure it out. Kind of a funny way to do things, but that's how it is.

He'Brew Jewbelation Sweet 16

The Jewbelation series from He'Brew brewing is an anniversary series they release every year. At least for the last couple of years, each new iteration adds 1 percent to the ABV to match the year, making this year's version 16%. I'm not really sure on a style but it's probably listed as an American Strong Ale. A quick glance at BeerAdvocate shows I'm correct mostly because that's just a catchall category for strong beers that don't really fit anywhere else.

Smelled of chocolate, raisins, and plums. Basically like a quad mixed with a less sweet port. No real hint of the 16% in the nose which was nice. Super thick though with enough carbonation to keep it from being cloying. Tasted of chocolate and burnt plums with a little harsh bitterness in the finish. The alcohol is not as hidden in the body as the nose, but it came and went as I drank more and was never too oppressive. I thought for a 16% monster it was remarkably easy to drink. My brother in law liked it quite a bit too. Definitely an interesting beer and for like $8 it's quite a deal. Also, my parents bought this for me because they liked the bottle which is pretty funny.

Deschutes Chasin' Freshies and 500th post

Well, this isn't nearly as epic as I expected my 500th post to be but whatever, I'll just have to reach 1000 and do something interesting for that. Right? Totally! So Chasin' Freshies is a fresh hop IPA from Deschutes given to me by my brother in law. I'm not sure when it was released, but we drank it the day before the best by date arrived. So I win this round, Deschutes, but just barely.

Bright, juicy nose. Very inviting. The body basically tasted like passion fruit to me with a light bitterness in the finish. Very pleasant even if it was at the tail end of its freshness. I don't know how well this would hold up past its best by date, but it was certainly still good before it. Very interesting flavors in this and quite enjoyable.

Baking during the Holidays

I know it has been a while since my last post but that's the holidays for you. I basically spent the last 10 days eating and drinking almost constantly. Have a lot of different beers to write about at this point as a result. However, it's going to take a couple days to get back into things since I'm a lazy bum so I'm starting with an easy one. Writing about stuff I baked with beer!

I made two things over the holiday, one really easy one and one slightly more complicated. The first thing was just a plain old beer bread. This is as simple as it sounds, just a normal bread made with an entire bottle of beer instead of all water. I have a bunch of Brooklyn Brown Ale in the house so I decided to just use that but you can really use almost anything that has a maltier base. I don't know what something bitter would do to the bread so you may want to avoid IPAs and such but maybe someone with more knowledge would say they're okay too.