Beer-a-Day #325

In the 14th Century, Sailors would rely on sheer skill to get from a starting point to a final destination.  They called this Dead Reckoning.  We see our beer the same way.  We know where to begin and know where to go, but there are hundreds of ways to get there.

Dead Reckoning is unfiltered and weighs in at 5.8% abv and 53 IBU’s. It features Pilsner, Caramel, Chocolate and Roasted malts along with Chinook and Vanguard hops. “The outstanding taste and flavor of Dead Reckoning originates in the chocolate and roasted malts,” says John Trogner. “There is a nice hoppiness in the front of the beer, followed with a rich, smooth cocoa mouth feel.”

Very dark and nearly opaque. Beige head is a finger thick and rugged. Chocolate and roast coffee; smells rich. Nice roasted flavor with a hefty yet mellow bitterness. When I think of a porter that’s pretty much what I’m looking for. Delicious.

Tröegs Dead Reckoning Porter

Beer-a-Day #324

Anniversaries are important. They are benchmarks to help us gauge where we stand, and more importantly, they help us to see where we have come from. Each fall, we like to celebrate our anniversary by releasing a very special beer. A beer that represents our past while looking forward to our future. For the past 29 years, we at Sierra Nevada have had a commitment to using the finest raw ingredients, and the freshest, most flavorful hops in all of our award winning ales and lagers. Our Anniversary Ale is no exception.

This beer is a big, full-flavored ale bursting at the seams with fresh, spicy and aromatic hops. Our 2009 Anniversary Ale is brewed in the style of an American IPA, a style that Sierra Nevada helped create. This beer is a complex brew made up with a combination of four varieties of malts that add a rich and complex backbone to showcase our signature hop variety: the Cascade. This hop produces the big piney and citrusy flavors that Sierra Nevada beers are known for and is one of the varieties that have become the definition for what the new styles of American beers represent.

Gold with an orange hue. Quite a bit of grapefruit in the aroma. Oh yeah, that’s Cascade alright. Yum.

(Hey, Ron! Get some before it’s gone!)

Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale

Beer-a-Day #323

This dog enjoys his days in the sun… Old Scratch Amber Lager is a malty, mellow beer that is fermented at medium temperatures to develop both ale and lager characteristics. “Gold Scratch” raises the standard in the amber lager category.

Pretty copper color, clear, with a good sized off-white head. Rich and malty aroma, with a bit of floral hops. Medium-bodied and malty but easy to drink. This is one of my fall-back beers.

Flying Dog Brewery – Old Scratch Amber Lager

Beer-a-Day #322

The young pup of the pack… Tire Bite Golden Ale is a refreshing, light, warm weather slammer with a flavorful hop edge. Brewed using exclusive imported German hops, this beer draws craft beer drinkers back from the “dark” side of the cooler.

It’s been unseasonably warm this November, so what the heck. Light gold with a white head that drops quickly. Aroma is very light, perhaps a bit floral. Taste is a bit fizzy and, well, inoffensive. I generally love Flying Dog beers, but this one didn’t thrill me.

Flying Dog Tire Bite Golden Ale

Beer-a-Day #321

This thirst quenching Barons Pale Ale uses the finest Australasian ingredients including Pacific Hallertau and Nelson Sauvin Hops. Best enjoyed icy cold.

Pale with a yellowish-orange caste. I get a bit of lemon and caramel in the aroma. Medium body with just enough hops in the finish. I’m glad this made the trip from Australia in such good shape.

Barons Brewing

Leinenkugel’s Fireside Nut Brown Ale is a seasonal release from Leinie and here is what they have to say about it…

While the star of this holiday season is the roasted malt character, the well-balanced flavor and brilliant amber tones give Leinenkugel’s Fireside Nut Brown a comforting approachability that you don’t experience in traditional English-style nut browns. English two-row malts give this lager a maple aroma and pronounced chocolate, caramel and hazelnut top notes that dance around the palate before finishing gracefully.

The name alone makes you want to pour yourself one this Thanksgiving. I found this ale simple, and malty. The best way I can describe it is biscuity, both in aroma and taste. I liked it, but expect a “small” beer here.

Since Brown is not my favorite style and happens to be one of my wife’s favorites, I also looked to her for an opinion. She thought it was very good and described it as, “I think I need another to describe it”.

Beer-a-Day #320

A world class traditional pilsner, Warsteiner Premium Verum is a slightly pale German-style pilsner with a clean, crisp, refreshing import taste. Warsteiner is brewed with fresh Arnsberger Forest spring water sourced at the brewery in Warstein, Germany, naturally soft water that helps to create the smooth taste and thick creamy head. Warsteiner truly is The Premium German Beer. Brewed according to the German Purity Law of 1516.

Pale straw with a fizzy head. Aroma is light and crisp. Taste is light and crisp and eminently drinkable. What a German pilsner should taste like.

Warsteiner Premium Verum

I have made a minor tweak to the BrewPoll plugin. It should now behave a little bit better with large images in your posts.

It is working here (currently WordPress 2.8.6) but is simple enough that it should work on any 2.x version of WordPress. (But you’re keeping your WordPress installation up-to-date anyway, right?)

If you find it useful, please drop me a line.

BrewPoll plugin

Beer-a-Day #319

Anchor Steam derives its unusual name from the 19th century when “steam” seems to have been a nickname for beer brewed on the West Coast of America under primitive conditions and without ice. The brewing methods of those days are a mystery and, although there are many theories, no one can say with certainty why the word “steam” came to be associated with beer. For many decades Anchor alone has used this quaint name for its unique beer. In modern times, “Steam” has become a trademark of Anchor Brewing.

A pretty amber color with a thick head. Aroma is unique; I don’t know if I’ve ever smelled anything like it. My wife says it smells “clean”. Taste has a bit of oakiness and toastiness to it. It’s good.

Anchor Steam

Beer-a-Day #318

I approach this beer with no small amount of trepidation. It is a “light” beer. It is a lager from Europe. It is in a clear bottle. If you’ve been following this project you know that any of those three things does not generally bode well for my enjoyment of a beer.

It’s lighter even than ginger ale. It appears to have avoided being lightstruck, but probably because they use hop extract rather than whole hops. Aroma is “beery” with a bit of lemon zest. Flavor is incredibly light. For all I’m giving up, 87 calories in 11.2 US ounces just doesn’t seem worth it. Better to skip the french fries and have a more flavorful beer.

Warsteiner Premium HiLight

Beer-a-Day #317

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. I declare a “Can Week”! (But, sadly, this is the end.)

Today: Brew Free or Die IPA from 21st Amendment Brewery, a famous brewpub in San Francisco that only recently started canning some of their beer. (I couldn’t get ahold of their Hell or High Watermelon wheat beer for this week. I hope to get some soon.)

Brewed with some serious west coast attitude. This aromatic golden IPA starts with a sucker punch of six different hops to the nose, quickly balanced by a solid malt back bone. Our top selling beer at the pub, this IPA starts big and finishes clean leaving you wanting more.

Amber with an orangish cast. Some fruit and resiny aroma from the hops. Has a very nice finish. Why, yes, I do want some more.

Beer-a-Day #316

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. I declare a “Can Week”!

Today: IPA from Caldera Brewing a small microbrewer in Ashland Oregon and the first in Oregon to can their beer.

An American-style India Pale Ale brewed with plenty of body and an assertive hop profile.

Medium amber and clear. Lots of grapefruity hop aroma. That’s pretty good, although I’m finding it a little harsh in the finish. My wife rather likes it, though.

Beer-a-Day #315

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. It’s time for “Can Week”!

Today: Pale Ale from Caldera Brewing a small microbrewer in Ashland Oregon and the first in Oregon to can their beer.

A West Coast-style pale ale balancing plenty of hops with a malty backbone.

Straw colored with a white head. Fruity aroma; reminds me a bit of pineapple. The bitterness from the hops sneak up on you. This is good. I’d gladly have this again.

I found a hidden gem in an offbeat section of Troy, New York: DeFazio’s Pizza.

I had stumbled upon the place using Yelp (or some other such app) on my iPhone. I was very skeptical at first having never heard of it before yet it had great reviews online. It also noted it as a BYOB. So, I gave them a call to check them out and they were very nice, suggested reserving us a table and said that we could bring our own booze. Perfect! I was ready for an adventure and I wanted to try the Rogue’s Morimoto Imperial Pilsner Al gave me.

It was a bit hard to find on a rainy Saturday evening, but I was not deterred. The place was small. Very small. The décor was…scant. My wife said the parking was scary. But they were very nice, gave us personalized service, and the pizza was high quality gourmet. We were going to the theater that evening and there were a few other people we suspected had the same agenda. Others brought several bottles of wine and looked like they were going to make it their entire evening.

My biggest complaint would be that they didn’t provide glasses, so I had to have my pilsner in a plastic cup. But that didn’t ruin it for me, nor the beer. This pilsner was in-your-face hoppy. This is basically an IPA brewed as a lager. But it also had good depth, meaning it wasn’t just hops, with a strong body of malted barley to back it up. Excellent all around; thanks Al.

Beer-a-Day #314

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. Can you say “Can Week”?

Today: Ashland Amber from Caldera Brewing a small microbrewer in Ashland Oregon and the first in Oregon to can their beer.

A crisp, well-balanced, refreshing amber. Simplicity is the key to this recipe.

Clear amber with a cream-colored head. Aroma has a bit of vanilla and piney hops. Flavor is crisp and light without being too light. This is a quaffable beer. I’ll have this again.

From Tiger Beer in Malaysia, by Saatchi & Saatchi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfZta3CBppU

Beer-a-Day #313

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. Why not “Can Week”?

Today: Old Chub from Oskar Blues.

Old Chub is a Scottish strong ale brewed with hearty amounts of seven different malts, including crystal and chocolate malts, and a smidge of US and UK hops. Old Chub also gets a dash of beechwood-smoked grains imported from Bamburg, Germany, home of the world’s greatest smoked beers. Old Chub is 8% alcohol by volume.

While Dale’s satisfies our hop addiction, Old Chub takes care of our deep affections for malt.

The cola-colored beer (almost black) features a tan head, a creamy, skim-milk mouthfeel, and rich, semi-sweet flavors of caramel and chocolate throughout. The addition of smoked grains gives Old Chub a delicate kiss of smoke on the finish.

Old Chub is the beer equivalent of a lightly smoked single malt scotch, or your favorite dark chocolate. We call it Rocky Mountain Mutha’s Milk. People who tell us defiantly, “I don’t drink dark beer,” often fall deeply in love with Old Chub. We can’t blame them.

Dark coppery color. Warm, almost smoky aroma. Big, malty flavor with a good bit of complexity. That’s pretty good, although I don’t think I’d want it more than occasionally.

We had a party to go to this weekend where we were to bring an appetizer and a dessert. My wife made some cranberry and white chocolate chip cookies from a recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray package of dried cranberries. I wanted to do something a little more sophisticated and fun and so I turned to a recipe for beer bread that I saw Alton Brown make the other night on his "Fermentation Nation" episode of Good Eats.

The main flavors for this bread come from some dill, cheddar cheese and, of course, beer. AB recommended a good pale ale as opposed to a stout, or lager, that I see called for in many recipes. I decided to go with Ithaca’s Cascazilla, a monstrously hoppy brew. Here’s a picture of it…

Unfortunately, this bread was close to awful. I found it way too salty to begin with, but even beyond that it just didn’t have a good taste to it. I followed the recipe exactly including weighing my ingredients. The texture of the bread was perfect, so I am pretty sure I didn’t make any mistakes. I’m not going to even give you the recipe (though the link is above). The unofficial Hop Talk rating for this is a 1. So sad.

But the cookies were awesome!

Beer-a-Day #312

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. A perfect excuse to make this “Can Week”.

Next up: Ten Fidy Imperial Stout from Oskar Blues.

It’s the beer equivalent of decadently rich milkshake made with malted-milk balls and Heaven’s best chocolate ice cream. Ten FIDY is about 10% ABV and is made with enormous amounts of two-row malts, chocolate malts, roasted barley, flaked oats and hops. Its huge-but-comforting flavors hide a whopping 98 IBUs that are deftly tucked underneath the beer’s mountains of malty goodness.

Deep, opaque brown, with a head that looks like chocolate mousse. Lots of chocolate roastiness in the aroma. Boy, that smells good. The taste doesn’t disappoint. It’s big and malty and the bitterness, if anything, seems understated. That is really good.

Beer-a-Day #311

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. So, I’m declaring this “Can Week”.

First up: Dale’s Pale Ale from Oskar Blues.

Dale’s Pale Ale is our flagship beer and America’s first hand-canned craft beer. It’s an assertive but deftly balanced beer (somewhere between an American pale ale and an India Pale Ale) brewed with hefty amounts of European malts and American hops.

It features a merengue-like head, a copper color, and a hoppy nose, thanks to a big post-boil addition of Centennial hops. To complement its hoppy first impression, Dale’s also sports a rich middle of malts and hops, and a bracing finish. Dale’s is 6.5% alcohol by volume, and features 65 International Bittering Units.

We think of it as the perfect, everyday beer for hopheads like us. Dale’s Pale Ale’s rich flavor has helped us make many new fans, and its numerous honors have helped us kick huge holes in the misconceptions regarding cans.

Muddy amber with a little haze; off-white head with lots of lacing. Nice big piney and resiny aroma from the hops. Nice “backbone” and plenty of bitterness in the finish. A glorious beer for my fellow hop-heads.