One last post before Christmas

Okay, things have definitely been very quiet on the Rich on Beer front. We've changed our morning routine to feed Pax breakfast, which is a ton of fun, but it doesn't leave me a ton of time to relax and get in the writing mood. Since I'm not a writer by profession or really talent, it takes me a while to get words on to the screen. Or at least interesting words. I've still been drinking new beers all the time, don't get me wrong, just haven't written anything for a while. Today, to get one more post written before the holidays, I'm going to go back a few weeks and post about Deschutes The Abyss from 2010.

Lots of bourbon vanilla notes in the nose. Medium mouthfeel on it. Body was full of licorice and roast with the bourbon and vanilla taking a back seat compared to the nose. Some molasses sweetness came out as I drank more rounding things out. Pretty nice though the mouth feel could have been a little fuller and the bourbon vanilla stronger in the body. Still, definitely glad I drank it.

I actually opened this because the Friday before I went to Jose Pistola's for the Deschutes Beer Camp lunch and it made me want to try an older Abyss. Muller Distributors paid for my lunch there too which was cool. I think I still have two more years of Abyss in the basement that I will get to at some point.

Also, I'm going on vacation now so look for some posts in the new year, hopefully a little more consistently. We'll see!

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.

Beers at Sabrina's

Just before Thanksgiving, some friends of mine decided that their cellars were getting too large. To try and start to fix the issue, they asked on twitter if people wanted to go to a BYOB and share some beers and have dinner. I had nothing to do that night and Jo didn't care about eating dinner alone so I figured why not. After some back and forth, we decided on Sabrina's in Fairmount as I figured it wouldn't be too busy as it's mostly a brunch place and it's informal enough that they wouldn't mind us sitting around drinking forever.

After ordering some food and settling in we decided to start with Deschutes The Dissident, the one sour Matt brought along.

Deschutes Jubel 2010

I've had this bottle for a few years at this point. Luckily this is one of those Deschutes beers with a "Best After" date so it was built to last. Yes, that's after, not before. It was originally a surprise gift from my sister in law living in San Francisco. I think I asked her to bring me a bottle of Abyss or something and since she's great, she also brought a whole bunch of other stuff.

Unfortunately the bottle didn't have a description on it, but apparently it was aged in Pinot Noir barrels for nearly a year according to the BeerAdvocate entry. That's sort of a rumor without a description on the bottle though.

Awesome nose, very impressive. Caramel, vanilla, plums, kind of port like. Knowing now that it was apparently aged in Pinot barrels, that last point actually makes some sense. Very thick body, limited carbonation as you can see in the picture. Basically a mix of chocolate and caramel with plum and some other dark fruits. Sweet and strong but never astringent or sharp. Just super smooth. Pretty awesome and very complex. Even at over 10% abv, I believe, no hint of alcohol. So glad I had this as it was delicious.

Deschutes Black Butte XXIII

Another beer we opened over Labor Day was Deschutes Black Butte XXIII. The base of this is an imperial version of their delicious Black Butte porter with 25% aged in bourbon barrels and some aged with a variety of ingredients. Each year they change that list meaning it tastes differently if you have it year to year or at least I imagine it does as this is the first time I've had it.

Great nose. Just a pleasant bourbon flavor that's not too strong or too hot. Thick body too. So far, so good! Get a little orange flavor in the background, some roast, and a great bourbon vanilla finish. Just really delicious throughout. Glad I have another bottle!

Forgot to mention this is actually last year's version. The newest one, XXIV, came out a month or so ago I think.

Sharing Some Beers

I trekked out to the wilds of Collingswood, New Jersey last week to share some beers with a buddy. When another friend had to cancel after injuring himself playing basketball, we changed what we were going to open and instead decided to compare a normal version of one beer to the barrel aged version. We thought it would be interesting to see how much barrel aging can change a beer. Turns out quite a bit.

We started with the normal version of Flossmoor Station Hi-Fi Rye, a rye barleywine. Flossmoor Station is a small brewpub outside of Chicago for the curious.

Philly Beer Week Day 7: De Dolle & Deschutes

For the seventh day of Philly Beer Week, the beer gods gave me De Dolle and Deschutes. Originally I had only planned on the Deschutes event but it turned out that De Dolle was at Monks when I got there so win win! Of course all of this meant that I had to brave the waters of Monk's back room again but I was hoping that it wouldn't be as bad as Sunday's Funky Buddha event. For the most part I was correct though it did get pretty busy later during the Deschutes stuff possibly because Monk's was the only place they visited during Beer Week..

When I arrived the back room was only a little crowded and so it wasn't too hard to get my first beer. I realize I was at a De Dolle event, but I didn't feel like one of their beers. Instead I went with the intriguing De Molen Bakker Wort Brouwer, a whisky barrel aged imperial stout.

20th Anniversary of London Grill

This past Monday was the 20th Anniversary party for London Grill. Pretty Impressive. For the party they had a really nice beer list but considering my weekend and the fact that it was Monday I unfortunately didn't have much will to participate. When I arrived around 5:30 the place was already pretty full. A lot of industry folks, some brewers, and a few others I recognized. You could really tell what London Grill and the owner Terry mean to the area and the industry just by looking around the room.

I started with a glass of something I've talked about a bunch but I don't even care because it's so awesome, Deschutes The Abyss.

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.

Thursday at Urban Saloon

Jo and I went out to Urban Saloon on Thursday to celebrate getting an awesome new couch. Hey, got to celebrate the little things in life, right? Surprisingly, Urban Saloon always has a couple really good beers on draft even though from the outside it doesn't feel like it should. Plus their prices are downright reasonable which is sometimes hard to find in Philly.

I started with a glass of Deschutes Inversion IPA. I got to try it at the London Grill dinner, but only a tiny bit so I didn't get a good feel for it.

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!

San Francisco Preview - Deschutes The Abyss

I'm finally back from San Francisco and, man, without even really concentrating on beer events (my wife may disagree but I stand by this statement!), I got to try some amazing stuff. I've got a whole series of posts planned for the next few days, but I'll start off with a simple but delicious one, Deschutes The Abyss.

I've been super excited to try this one for a long while now but since Deschutes doesn't distribute to the East coast it takes some help.  Lucky for me, there was still plenty available in Noe Valley even though other parts of the city were all out.  As a result, I was able to bring a bottle home for later plus open a bottle to share and finally get to taste it.

Poured black with light brown head.  Smelled delicious, tons of chocolate and roast with a bit of vanilla.  Thick, chewy mouthfeel.  Flavors followed the nose and were just as intense.  Chocolate, licorice, vanilla with some oak and bourbon.  Definitely felt like there was some licorice and oak in the finish as well.  The base of Abyss is an imperial stout brewed with licorice and molasses which is blended with 33% of the same beer that was aged in oak bourbon barrels.  Since it only has a third aged in barrels, the bourbon and oak blend rather than overpower which makes it so much more enjoyable for me.  Very impressed with this one and really glad I have a second bottle.

Look for even more stuff in the next few days.  We visited four breweries, drank some beers at Toronado, and went to a couple bars.  Just awesome beers and all stuff I can't find over here in Philly.  I even brought back six bottles of stuff I can't find in the area.  Great trip and you can read all about it soon enough.

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.

Las Vegas Beer

Got to Las Vegas early enough to get some dinner and a nice beer.  Walked over to Mandalay Bay to go to the Burger Bar, a place I read about on Beer Advocate.  Turned out to be a pretty good place with a good beer list.

Since I can't get it around here, I decided to get the Deschutes Black Butte Porter.

This porter was really quite good.  It had a roasty aroma to it that was very inviting.  First taste was nutty and smooth.  Working my way through the beer the nutty flavor started to remind me of hazelnuts.  All in all, this was a good choice.  If I was able to get Deschutes in the area I'd get this again.  Plus this makes me super excited to try the Jubel 2010 if their regular beers are this good.