365 different beers from 365 different breweries in 365 days with random musings on beer, food, music, sports, dogs and anything else interesting along the way
Don't mind this photo. It appears that I'm hanging out and drinking in Hell with all the red lighting, but no...it's just a bar with bad lighting in State College (Pennsylvania).
FoundersMango Magnifico con Color is the Magnificent Mango with Heat. Heat? Yup, heat. It's brewed with mango and habaneros from Michigan. What you can't see from my photo is that it poured a beautiful pale gold color with a barely there white head. The flavor is smooth and sweet--lots of mango deliciousness without being cloying. The habaneros lend a heat that's best described as a slow burn. You don't really notice it at first, but then it starts building and becomes a delicious and fiery yang to the sweet yin of the mango.
I have mixed feelings on all the pink-hued products that get shoved down our throats this month, but nothing I wrote didn't make me sound like an uptight, self-righteous prick so I'm letting it go. I just ask that you think twice about purchasing that pink product to help fight breast cancer. What organization is getting the money? Are they directly doing research, education or patient outreach? Wouldn't you be better off writing a check to a well established research group rather than overpaying for a pink water bottle? Be smart.
One pink product that I didn't mind pouring down my throat was the Pynk tart berry ale, which is brewed by Yards Brewing Company. Yards is donating $1 from each case of Pynk sold to the Tyanna Foundation, which supports local organizations throughout mid-Atlantic region to treat and care for breast cancer patients.
It poured a rosy brown ale with a pale cream color head. It had a strong berry aroma and the flavor was nutty and full of berry notes. Pynk is brewed with tons of fresh raspberries and sweet and sour cherries. I think the addition of the cherries definitely helps give it a tart, crisp refreshing quality rather than letting it get overly sweet. I also noticed that it has more malt flavor than many other fruit beers that I've tried.
Beer stats
Style: Fruit beer
ABV: 5.5%
IBUs: Unknown
Rating: Good
Previously reviewed from Yards
Some gratitude and a Brawler
Ignore the caloric information and just read about the Philadelphia Pale Ale
To say that there's been too many dark hours lately is a great understatement.
You know what else is bright? This Founders Brewing Company's Rubaeus, that's what. I've dubbed the Rubaeus my tailgate beer this season and have been drinking it straight from the bottle, which has deprived me of this burst of color. It's not quite so vibrant in person, but there is definitely a bright pinky-red thing happening in what otherwise is a brown colored ale. It also has a minimal white head. The smell is very ripe raspberries and the flavor is malty and fruity with lots of raspberry and general berry notes. It's sweet but tart although I'll admit that the sweet tends to overpower the tart.
As I started to write this post to commemorate Mr. Blog Named Brew's 38th 22nd birthday, I thought I might start with a trip down memory lane to see what we wrote about last May 1. He was thoughtfuland I went on a drug-addled ramble. That kind of sums us up.
Since I'm not sick or on drugs this year, here we go.
Happy, happy birthday to my best friend, my partner in crime, my drinking buddy, my lov-ah! There is no one I would rather spend today with--or any other day for that matter. You are my heart and soul. Thank you for being awesome.
And thank you for introducing me to all sorts of rap music...old school, new school, East Coast and West, gangsta and that with a conscious. So of course any time we visit Lancaster Brewing Companyand I abbreviate it in my notes as LBC, there goes Snoop Dogg on and on about his gin and juice in my head.
My segues astound you, don't they?
Lucky for us, this trip to the LBC was without drama. It wasn't without good beer though. I went with the Strawberry Wheat, which poured a slightly pink amber color with a thin white head. It smells of wheat and fruit and that carries through nicely to the flavor. It has a very natural strawberry flavor to it. Nothing unnatural or syrupy here.Overall I think this is a good fruit beer. It may not be up there with 21st Amendment's Hell or High Watermelon, but it holds its own.
Beer stats
Style: Fruit beer, wheat beer
ABV: 4.7%
IBUs: 16
Rating: Good
I didn't realize I was writing tonight and don't have anything clever to share. I'm also kind of fried from the past few weeks on the job. Part of on-the-job risks is the inability to be clever after seating 900 people at a variety of events during a three day period. My world is all dining rooms, table numbers and worrying that I lost someone in the last table shuffle. Event planning. Riveting stuff.
So how does one properly escape from the world of event planning when it all starts seeping into one's dreams? Good beer. That's how. It started with Day of Marci yesterday with visits to Spring House Tap Room and then Lancaster Brewing Company. A glorious day like yesterday requires a road trip. That's another proper way to decompress.
Tonight's escape comes from 21st Amendment Brewery. Unfortunately in our 24 hours in San Francisco last summer, we didn't find time to visit in person. Don't worry. That will be rectified in the coming years.
I'm not a fan of watermelon so I was skeptical the first time I heard of this beer. Then I managed to get my hands on some and HOLY COW! SUMMERTIME IN A CAN! Yes, it is that good.
It pours a slightly hazy golden color with a loose white head. It smells of wheat and citrus and light watermelon. The flavor is a strong, natural watermelon wrapped up in a nice wheat beer package. It tastes like best thing ever on hot summer days. It has a nice body with a bit of prickly carbonation.
Beer stats
Style: Fruit beer, wheat ale
ABV: 4.9%
IBUs: 17
Rating: Excellent
Today's beer was originally on the docket for #351, but research revealed that it comes to us via a subsidiary of the Boston Beer Company. It is the House of Shandy's Curious Traveler Shandy.
I am a sucker for anything tart. If you've been reading this blog for any of amount of time, you're probably familiar with my love of tart, wild ales or sour beers. Another delightful take on a tart beer is the shandy or radler.
A shandy, or shandygaff, is beer mixed with citrus-flavored soda, carbonated lemonade, ginger beer, ginger ale, or cider. The proportions of the two ingredients are adjusted to taste, normally half-and-half. Nonalcoholic shandies are known as "rock shandies". A shandy containing beer and cider is called a snakebite. Radler is the German version.
In some parts of the United Kingdom, shandy is also used colloquially as a euphemism for alcoholic drink. To say someone "had a few shandies" does not necessarily mean he drank shandies exclusively, or at all. Rather, it is implied that he drank a large quantity of alcohol. So now you know.
My shandy was very hazy--an almost opaque wet straw color and had a loose white head. It smelled of lemon candy. The taste reminded me of a lemon pastry. It was sweet but tart with a good amount of wheat flavor.
Beer stats Style: Shandy ABV:4.4% IBUs: 7 Rating: Good
Previously reviewed from Boston Beer Company My review of Infinium back at Beer 42 Gary's take on the same one
Beer #360 Bumble Berry / Fat Head's Brewery, North Olmstead, OH Beers to go: 6
We've hit the 360 beer mark, which means we're in the final week of the blog! So many exciting things in store, as I'm counting the ballots for my year-end awards. Brewery of the Year, Beer of the Year, Newcomer of the Year, Brewery Visit of the Year, etc. Be on the lookout..... it's going to be legendary.
Can't look too far ahead, as we're still on our last seven beers. Tonight's brew is Bumble Berry, a honey blueberry ale from Fat Head's Brewery in Ohio. This beer was a late season gift, which I very much appreciate. In the glass this beer has a clear light amber color, with a wispy white head. Your nose picks up a nice blueberry and grain aroma, and the taste is pure summertime - good, natural blueberry taste, with some good sweetness and a clean finish. It's as though they managed to take a blueberry muffin, and make beer out of it. This beer would be great in the summertime, and seeing how it was over 60 degrees today here in Philly, it's not too bad in December either.
I've also had the fortune of recently sampling Fat Head's Head Hunter IPA (also a gift from a dear friend!), which was a very good beer. Looking forward to adding these beers into my rotation if they start shipping further east.
Berry good summer beer. See what I did there?
Side note: The guy on the label, Mr. Fat Head, I presume, has more than a passing resemblance to former University of Kansas head football coach Mark Mangino. See?
Fat Head Logo
Coach Mark Mangino. Separated at birth?
This brewery originally started as a brewpub on the South Side of Pittsburgh in 1992, and they moved to a larger brewery space in Ohio in 2009. They also maintain pubs in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. No information available on their website about the girth of the founder's head, but we'll assume it was/is significant.
Thing to Think About Today:
We've talked a fair bit about the Fat Head aspect of this brewery, so let's change course and close out today's post with a tie to the beer: in the spirit of Bumble Berry beer and the Christmas season, Chuck Berry will be taking us home with his rendition of Run, Run Rudolph. Good night, friends.... see you tomorrow.
Game day, bitches! By the time you all read this, I'll be two hours into the best tailgate ever! Don't worry about me...I have deep fried peanut butter and jelly.
Today's beer of choice? The High Noon Saloon and Brewery Oregon Trail raspberry wheat ale. It's brewed in Leavenworth, Kansas, which is the start of the Oregon trail.
It poured a hazy golden color with a thin white head. It smells strongly of fresh raspberries. The ABV is 5.5%. It has lots of very nice raspberry flavor but is generally watery. It's as if someone left a bunch of ice in my glass and it melted and left this behind. It has potential but didn't quite make it. I'll call it average at best. Cheers.
I'm going from no pumpkin beers to two pumpkin beers in a row. Watch out!
Today's pumpkin beer - a pumpkin lager beer to be exact (6% ABV) - is from Lakefront Brewery, Inc. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Yesterday an ale. Today a lager. What can I tell you about this one? I know it was bottled during the first week of July thanks to the handy chart on the side of the label.
It poured a hazy orange color. It looked much more appealing that yesterday's pumpkin ale. This one had little to no head at all. It smells of fresh pumpkin and nutmeg. The flavor is quite nice. After yesterday's disappointment, I'll admit I was a bit gun shy about another pumpkin beer. The Lakefront was full of natural pumpkin flavor with a good amount of spice. The spices are peppery with some cinnamon and nutmeg but are very well blended with the beer characteristics. I still get good beer flavor through the pumpkin and spice. For as unbalanced as the Shipyard tasted, this one is perfectly balanced. Interestingly there is something to the Lakefront pumpkin lager that reminds me of mulled wine.
Beer #292 Raspberry Tart / New Glarus Brewing Company, New Glarus, WI
I'm definitely beating The Cold, but he's not going down without a fight. Later this evening, I'll be having an awesome time watching David Byrne do his thing on stage! Yes, the former front man for the Talking Heads has kicked off a new tour, and we're catching the only (I think) Philly date. He's sharing the stage with St. Vincent, who I'm admittedly not all that familiar with, but honestly - if David Byrne was on stage with a tree sloth who played the bongos I'd buy a ticket.
Today's beer is the Raspberry Tart from New Glarus Brewing, out of Wisconsin. This beer was a great gift from a fellow beer geek and member of our PSU tailgate squad. Great gift, you see, because New Glarus really doesn't ship outside of Wisconsin, their home state. They recommend you pour this beer into a champagne glass, and once you do you'll find a dull ruby color and no head. There's a pleasant raspberry aroma, and the taste is tart and sweet, with fantastic real fruit flavor. A bit of carbonation, but maybe not as much as you expect from something in a champagne glass. Really amazing beer, and I'm quite pleased I was able to cross this brewery off the list!!
Pretty, and pretty damn tasty!
New Glarus was founded in 1993 by a husband and wife duo, and they're still going strong in the world of craft beer. For my Philly people who are all jealous because we got this rare beer and you didn't, inexplicably you can sample it this weekend too! Hawthorne's Cafe is hosting a fundraiser for the Pennsylvania Society for the Protection of Animals on Sunday, and will be pouring not only New Glarus but also Tyranena (also rare around here) as part of their dinner that night. Check the details here. Help animals in need AND drink great, hard to find beer? No brainer. Get on that, people.
Thing to Think About Today:
While thinking about raspberry beer, I realized I've already used Raspberry Beret in this space back in May - even though Prince is being a total jerk and yanked the video down from YouTube. Dick. So instead, let's go ahead and think about David Bryne (also not a newcomer to this space). I've come to realize that I'm completely drawn to music that appeals to smart people. Call me a snob, but music that tells a story, or has depth to it, or feels like artwork, or simply makes you think is far more appealing to me than.... well I won't name names here and hurt anyone's feelings. Obviously, the Talking Heads fit my criteria of "smart music" perfectly.
It seems the playlist tonight will feature most everything from Byrne & St. Vincent's new album,Love This Giant, along with songs from St. Vincent's past work and Byrne's incredibly good solo work. And, it appears there will be some classic Talking Heads in there, which is always a treat. CAN. NOT. WAIT! I don't expect to hear And She Was tonight, and I love it so I'll go ahead and drop it in here so we can all enjoy. Have a good night, folks!
Behold the awesomeness that is the Victorian Secret raspberry wheat ale from the Gamble Mill Tavern.
I would vote the Gamble Mill one of the central Pennsylvania's best kept secrets. I had no idea it was so good. Not only were the beers delicious, the food was quite good as well. Gary rates his experience here.
The Victorian Secret is named after Bellefonte, Pennsylvania -- the town where Gamble Mill is located, which is oft referred to as Pennsylvania's Victorian secret. It's brewed with a combination of wheat and barley, fermented with the tavern's house yeast and finished off with pureed raspberries.
I wasn't picking up much in the way of scent -- just a tiny bit of raspberry in the nose. Darn ragweed allergies are always getting in the way. There were tons of raspberry in the flavor and there was absolutely nothing artificial about it. I hate, hate, hate when non-natural flavors are used to approximate a particular flavor. If you want it to taste like raspberries, you've got to use real raspberries and the Gamble Mill's brewer totally gets that. The flavor of fruit was balanced nicely by wheat. It poured an ever so slightly pink-tinged hazelnut color, which isn't showing up very well in my photo. Overall I was very impressed by Gamble Mill's offerings and by this one in particular.
For whatever reason, as I sit down to write something profound about the first Penn State game under Coach O'Brien, I managed to get The Second Week of Deer Camp stuck in my head. So there's that.
What are my hopes for today's game? Honestly to make the haters stop hating, but I realize the lofty nature of that wish. I want everyone wishing for the old days to stop it. Those days are over. Over. We have got to move on as an alumni group, as a student body, as human beings. This should have, could have, would have is not healthy.
It's a new day in Happy Valley. Let's all enjoy it and celebrate it. Let's have a real good time.
You know what's also a real good time? This crazy ass premium blackberry lager from Blue Dog Brewing called Shadow's Wild Black. The problem is that it's made by Anheuser Busch InBev. Oops. So I guess it's a 2 for 1 today.
The Wild Black is made with natural flavor and color from juice and has an ABV of 8%. Somehow InBev claims this one is brewed in Baldwinsville, New York. Honestly I did not have high hopes for a fruit lager. The color is a clear ruby with a thin ring of white head.
The smell is all blackberry - nothing else. It has a very strong aroma of fruit. The flavor is very boozy. There's a noticeable alcohol burn and it's almost schnapps like. But all that fruit flavor tastes natural...nothing artificial about it, which is great. The fruit and carbonation overpowers any hints of malt or hops. I will admit this one is unusual and I probably couldn't drink two in a row. That being said I did enjoy it. I shall rate it good.
Ugh. InBev. You kill me.
Now I'll tell you about the real beer for opening day. The Stiegl Pils is brewed in Austria. It pours a golden color with an off white head. I think it was leaving lacing but I couldn't really tell in the goofy plastic cup I was drinking out of. It smells rich and of grains. The taste reminds me slightly of melon with some hop bite. This is a nice beer. I'll rate it good.
Now I'm off to cheer on the white and blue because I've never stopped believing. Cheers!
It's Friday and I was in a conference room for the entire day, so I'll dispense with the silliness and get down to business. Tonight's beer is a great summer time choice, the St-Ambroise from Brasserie McAuslan in Quebec. This beer shows off a clear golden color, with aromas of apricot and summer time. It has a clean taste, with clear notes of real apricot flavor. One of the risks with fruit beers is that overly-artificial flavor, but you're safe here. Very real, and quite nice on a nice summer night. Find it? Drink it.
Fruitacular
In case you're wondering about the beer name, this brewery is located on St. Ambroise street in Montreal, Quebec, and has been brewing craft beer since 1989. Now you know.
Thing to Think About Today:
Students are returning back to college campuses this weekend, which always makes me think fondly back to my annual arrival in State College for another semester of class. Let's go ahead and weave Canada into this post along with some memories of freshman year. Obviously, I'm talking about the Crash Test Dummies here. These guys were one hit wonders with their smash (?) hit Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm. Maybe not the most popular song from freshman year, but the lead singer of this band was the long lost twin brother of the RA on my dorm floor freshman year. So much so, that we dubbed him "Dan Test Dummies" for his totally 90's straight, grunge-y, long hairdo. Dan Test Dummies was okay in my book, as he completely looked the other way when he would walk into our room and see us doing something absolutely, positively against dorm policies, such as our floor to ceiling stack of beer cases (the spoils of war from a raid on a rival fraternity's basement) or the perpetually in the mini-fridge pitcher of Great Bluedini flavor Kool-Aid and whatever hard liquor we could score. Dan Test Dummies was good like that, but that might be because he was stoned pretty much around the clock. Here's to all dorm RA's being good people, and here's good luck to the incoming freshman. You might need it. And if anyone can find me a packet of Great Bluedini, I'll bring the Vladimir brand vodka. Just like the old days...
A perfect day like today calls for a summertime beer. I think Brasserie McAuslan's St-Ambroise Apricot Wheat fits that bill nicely. It poured a golden straw color with a thin white head.
The aroma is sweet fruit and orangey apricot. The flavor is sweet apricot and
wheat. There's also a lot of peach flavor as well. It has lots of refreshing carbonation and all that fruit is well balanced by a nice wheat tang. I really liked this beer.
There was so much beer consumed during the great beer-cation of 2012. It is a full two weeks since my return and I'm still writing about the beers consumed on that trip. I'm so glad that Gary agrees to my hare-brained schemes!
Ballast Point Brewing Company was one of the first breweries we visited and it was definitely among the highlights of this trip. Honestly for some reason I had decided I didn't like Ballast Point because they were big and hoppy. I don't know what is wrong with me sometimes. Seriously. Look how happy I am drinking their beer!
Sadly not all were mine.
I had three sample pours:
Mmm...mmm...good!
On the left is the Barmy Ale. Lovely golden ale with a fluffy head that disappeared quickly. It smelled of apricots and drank with a honey tinged smoothness. The ABV is 10% on this bad boy...but you would never know it from the taste. Delicious!
In the middle is the barrel aged Piper Down Scotch Ale. This one was aged in bourbon barrels and you can smell it right away...oak, vanilla and bourbon. The flavor is oaked with lots of malt and vanilla. There was also some underlying fruit in the flavor. Another great beer.
I finished with the Black Marlin Porter. It looked like cola with a thick tan head. It smells of roasted malt and coffee. There's an almost smokiness to the flavor along with chocolate, roast coffee, some licorice even. Very complex.
Gary's sampler...I totally should have drank it when he was in the men's room!
Ballast Point is going in my top 25 list although I'm at a loss as to which specific beer makes it. Cheers!
I had planned to write about Van Diest's Frulli Strawberry Ale, but it turns out that it's brewed by Brewery Huyghe, which also happens to brew Delirium Tremens. Ugh. I reviewed Delirium Tremens about 136 days ago.
The Internetz are being completely unhelpful as I try to figure out the relationship between Van Diest and Brewery Huyghe. All I know is that it's pretty clear that Huyghe brews Frulli. I'll file this under "things that would have been helpful a few weeks ago."
Anyway the Frulli poured a hazy, rosy amber color with a bubbly pink-hued head. It smelled and tasted strongly of strawberries. From my research, I've learned that Frulli is a highly rated fruit beer because it tastes natural and not at all artificial. I can attest to that. As a big fan of fruit beers, the kiss of death in my world is artificial tasting flavor. Frulli definitely had all natural flavor.
I had this beer with dinner at Flip Side Burgers in Santa Rosa. Burger was fine...nothing to write home about. This was supposed to be my second to last review from my trip to the west coast. Oh well...
*** Instead the official review will be of Toria Tripel. Brewed by De Hoevebrouwers in Belgium, it is a Belgian Tripel weighing in at 8.6% ABV. It poured a hazy straw color with a small and thin head. It smells of chamomile. The taste is hops and honey and on the thin side. While the higher ABV isn't evident at first taste, it definitely shines through toward the end.
From what I could figure out from a rough translation of the brewery's website home brewers won a competition in 2006 and began producing small batches of a few recipes and may now be doing the gypsy brewer thing and brewing at various outposts throughout Belgium. Or not. Sometimes Google translator is a little dicey.
I'm in for a world of hurt tomorrow. I don't adjust well to time zone changes and I'm currently and solidly on Pacific time despite being back home. I've lost my sense of what time it is completely. Tomorrow's 5:30 a.m. wake up call is going to be ugly.
Instead of dwelling on that mess, let's talk about a beer I had while we stayed at River's End in Jenner (CA).
The Marin Brewing Company's Raspberry Trail Ale poured a bright straw color, which you can't see at all from this photo. It had a full, white head that left a bit of lacing behind. The smell was strong raspberries and had a malt sweetness.
The flavor was nutty malt, very smooth with a medium body. The raspberry is mostly in the nose and not the flavor, which is fine by me. If you're a regular reader, you know I love a good fruit beer...as long as the flavor tastes natural. And sometimes natural means lighter flavor so this one rates high with me. The Raspberry Trail Ale was the perfect beer to sit outside and sip on this particular night.
As I sat there in the middle of nowhere, the lack of ambient light made visible more stars than I could see in our planetarium at work. I'm not going to lie...it kind of gave me heart palpitations. I get incredibly nervous when there isn't a high quality hospital nearby. I'm just weird like that...
Confession. I am in a piss poor mood. I currently hate the world and I'm pretty sure the world has it in for me. I just want to scream bugger off and go hide under my blanket.
My beer is not as cold as it should be. I managed not to orchestrate its migration from basement beer shelf to the fridge. I've been thinking about this beer since about 4:30 p.m. when the third half of my day began. (You know it's a long day when it has three halves.) So that is disappointing in an exponential way.
Into my pint glass went the Shiner Ruby Redbird. It poured a light shade of amber with a very fizzy head that bubbled and fizzled away pretty quickly.
The scent is straight up ginger...pickled ginger. I love ginger, but I'd guess this may not be a beer for everyone. The flavor was very light and at 4% ABV, I could make this a summertime go to beer...if only I could find more than a stray bottle now and then. (Damn you, Pennsylvania and your stupid laws.)
The flavor is grapefruit, ginger and what I believe to be citra hops. It's fruity but quite tart. I really like it!
