Ballast Point Black Marlin Porter

It has been a few weeks since I was able to make it to Kite & Key due to holidays and general laziness. Turns out it's more difficult to go somewhere every week when you don't just walk by it. Who knew. Well, regardless, I made it on Monday and got a glass of Ballast Point Black Marlin Porter.

Solid nose for a porter. Nutty and chocolate with a decent amount of roast in it. Exactly what I want in a porter and I expected good things from it. Body was similar and just as solid with a mix of chocolate and roast with a bit of caramel sweetness. The finish was nice and dry, too, wrapping everything together and keeping you wanting more. Just a real solid porter that's actually distinguishable from a stout which doesn't always happen given the similarities in the styles. Nice stuff.

Philly Beer Week Day 3: Eulogy, Capone's, and Monk's

Our Sunday was looking to be a pretty busy day as we had three different events we wanted to hit. Well, I wanted to hit. Luckily for me, Jo offered to drive me around from spot to spot. I'm really lucky. We started out with our new tradition of Eulogy's Coffee Beer Brunch. This event is pretty self-explanatory, as it's a brunch with a number of coffee beers on draft. Here are my thoughts from last year's event.

When we arrived, we happened to get a parking spot across the street and then found two seats at the bar. Really convenient. The brunch menu was a little small this year having only two dishes, but the chicken fried steak was pretty tasty so that sort of made up for it. Hopefully next year they have a couple more things available though. We ordered a Ballast Point Victory@Sea, a vanilla coffee porter, first.

Ballast Point Indra Kunindra

This was another bottle given to me by my friend out in San Diego. I'm pretty sure he sent it to me because it's hugely polarizing and wanted my opinion. Considering he likes it though at least he's not playing a trick on me. The reason this beer is so odd is that it's made with madras curry, cayenne pepper, cumin, toasted coconut and kaffir lime leaf with a 9% foreign / export stout base. So, yeah, kind of bizarre.

Smelled like cumin and curry with a hint of coconut. Really strong cumin smell. I like cumin, but it was still a bit off putting as it's not a smell normally associated with a beer. Luckily, the flavor wasn't dominated by the cumin but instead by coconut with some chocolate and roast from the base stout. There was a little hint of lime and the finish had some cumin in it but at that point it blended well with the rest unlike the nose. As I drank more, my lips started tingling a bit which was a result of the cayenne pepper in the beer. It's not something you notice flavor wise as there's no spiciness, but it still manages to make its presence known.

I drank the whole bottle myself so I'd say I enjoyed it, but not sure I'd be interested in drinking a second. It was one of the most unique beers I've ever had, though, that's for sure. I do find it funny that there are reviews complaining about too much cumin, too much spice, etc. I mean, what did they expect? It's not like Ballast Point hid what this was. The ingredients are written right on the bottle! Silly people. Like complaining a sour tastes sour or a coffee stout tastes like coffee.

Voodoo at the Khyber Pass Pub

After a great couple of beers at Capone's for lunch, Jo and I took a few hours off to run some errands and prepared for dinner and beers at the Khyber Pass Pub. The event Saturday night was with the Voodoo Brewery with head brewer Matt Allyn and his assistant. Voodoo is a Pennsylvania brewery located all the way on the west side of state. It's a really small brewery with just Matt and his assistant as the employees and then a group of volunteers for when they need more people. They make a few really good beers that can be found in Philly although I don't know how far their distribution really gets. On Saturday, the Khyber also still had some taps from their Ballast Point event the night before, some Duck Rabbit stuff, and then a whole bunch of other awesome beers on their 20 taps. So it really wasn't just a Voodoo night as far as beers go which allowed for variety.

Ballast Point at Capone's

With the first day of Philly Beer Week under my belt, my wife and I planned some errands around stopping at Capone's for lunch for the Ballast Point event. I knew this would be the only day I could get out there and how could I have a beer week without involving Capone's?

We arrived around 12:15 and while there were a few people, it wasn't too crowded. Apparently the Hill Farmstead event the day before was ridiculous as a bus full of beer geeks showed up so that would explain that. Even though this was the Ballast Point event, I noticed Hill Farmstead Fear & Trembling was still on draft and decided to start with that instead. This was brewed with some smoked malt then aged in some sort of red wine barrels if I remember correctly. There are a bunch of different versions of it on BeerAdvocate but I think it was the Cabernet version.

Ballast Point Sculpin

Continuing the parade of IPAs, I opened a bottle of Ballast Point Sculpin the other night.

Very inviting and delicious smelling grapefruit aroma.  Just huge and awesome.  Grapefruit starts things off and is then balanced by some bitterness and a tiny bit of sweetness.  The bitterness never gets overwhelming and all the flavors melded really well and were very clean tasting.  It was pretty amazing how close it tasted and smelled like grapefruit juice.  What a great IPA.

Beer Tasting 2

I held another get together for a few people this past Friday.  This is the second time I've done this with the first in October.  They each brought a couple bottles of beer they wanted to try and I supplied some pizza and banana brownies.  Some bought based on the labels (one bought his bottles because there were dogs on the label) and others (me) bought because there were some beers they wanted to try but never get around to picking up.  Either way, we ended up with another fun lineup.

From left to right, we have: Why I Oughta IPA (Pete G's Double Black IPA), Ballast Point Victory at Sea, Troegs Flying Mouflan, Uintas Labyrinth, Terrapin Big Daddy Vlady's, and Cigar City Bolita.

It's a Bourbon (Beer) Afternoon

Hulmeville Inn hosted their second annual Beer Geek BBQ on Sunday and had a really great tap list to go along with it.  While I had quite a few awesome beers, the stand outs for me were the three bourbon barrel aged beers: Dark Horse Bourbon Aged Plead the Fifth, Allagash Bourbon Black, and Port Older Viscosity.  The first is a barrel aged Russian Imperial Stout, the Allagash is a barrel aged Belgian Strong Ale and the Older Viscosity is a barrel aged Imperial Stout.  Hulmeville had them all in different sizes and availability which was pretty nice considering their strength.

Two for Tuesday, Redux

I had to drop some beer off at a friend's house in South Philadelphia so Jo and I went to Devil's Den for dinner.  The food was good and the beer was better.

The first beer I had was a collaboration between Two Brothers and Urthel called Moaten.

You can see it's a dark reddish-brown color with a small amount of head.  Pretty much what you'd expect from a Flanders Red Ale.  The initial taste is similar to apple juice and that flavor really sticks with you throughout the entire beer.  I wasn't terribly impressed with this since there was nothing really separating it from other beers in the style.  It would make a good introduction to the style as it is really mild, but compared to other offerings such as the Ichtegem's I posted about it was just kind of boring.  Nothing bad, but nothing interesting either.

The second beer I had was Ballast Point Sculpin.

I'm not a huge fan of IPAs as I prefer darker, maltier beers, but I've read a lot about Sculpin on Beer Advocate and had to find out what all the fuss was about.  I put the glass in front of a candle for the picture so the color is odd, but it was what you'd expect from an IPA, light brown and very little head.  The smell was all grapefruit.  Probably a little overwhelming if you don't like grapefruit, but it's what you'd expect from a good IPA.  The initial taste follows the smell of grapefruit, but impressively enough the bitterness doesn't linger at all.  I've had some beers that go overboard with the bitterness and that's all that is left on your tongue, but this one was incredibly good.  If you like IPAs definitely search this one out.  I know it's available in bottles at some of the distributors around here but it may only be in the 22oz cases.  Still worth it if this is your type of style.