FiftyFifty Eclipse 2011 Grand Cru verson

I have a few bottles of Eclipse left on the shelves downstairs, but can never remember what version each is. Since the only defining feature is the color of the wax, I usually don't find out until I take a sip, try to figure it out, then look it up on FiftyFifty's website here. Note, I'm usually wrong and feel dumb, but oh well. This time, I took a sip and swore it was the brandy version. Turns out, it was the Grand Cru version from 2011. Maybe it had some of the brandy blended into it as it was a blend of a bunch of the variants? Let's go with that so I feel less bad about my guess.

Very sweet, almost cherry like nose. It was the fruitiness that really threw me as I thought it was brandy. Some chocolate and fudge add complexity to it as well. Very nice body, thick and chewy which was sort of surprising. I've had other eclipse's that were a bit thinner than I like so this was nice. Body had a vanilla, bourbon, and chocolate sweetness with a very light alcohol burn in the finish. Between the strong chocolate and vanilla flavors and the chewy body, this was really good. Quite enjoyed this.

On a separate note, I still have a pretty big backlog of beers right now. I also want to talk about my trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming before it's too far in the past. Hopefully, some of that will occur next week but we'll see I guess!

FiftyFifty Eclipse Elijah Craig (12 Year)

I've been drinking beers off my basement shelves ever since Pax was born since we haven't been going out as much. That means I've been opening bombers more often and actually working through my collection. Since I've already worked through a lot of the more normal stuff, I've popped some slightly more special beers into the refrigerator and drank them on random weekends. Hence the Mother of All Storms from yesterday and now this was a bottle from late 2011. This beer was FiftyFifty Eclipse Imperial Stout aged in 12 year Elijah Craig barrels.

Caramel, chocolate, and fudge made up the nose. Very inviting aroma. Nice mouthfeel, thick and a little chewy. Body was sweet chocolate and a rich fudge with some vanilla in the background. The bourbon was really well integrated with the stout and didn't overwhelm anything. Pretty delicious offering from them. I'd read that this was commonly one of people's favorite variants and I can see why.

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.

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.

Philly Beer Week Day 1: Devil's Den

We decided to start off the this year's Philly Beer Week the same way we started off last year's by going to Devil's Den for the Bella Vista Beer Bash. It was so awesome last year that I figured it was a good choice for this one. I got there plenty early this year to ensure I got a seat and got one right on the side of the bar. By about 6:30, the place was pretty jam packed so it was a good thing I got there when I did. Here's what it looked like then.

Okay well that doesn't actually show the crowd real well but it was busy, I swear.