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
Friday night before a bye week for Penn State football is a glorious night.I'm sleeping in until I feel like getting out of bed tomorrow. Or I'm going to go bonkers and hit a spin class and yoga to work off all the damage I've done at the previous five tailgates!
Tonight's beer is the Out of Bounds stout from Avery Brewingin Colorado. It poured a super dark brown with just a hint of light making it through the liquid around the edges. It had a thin cocoa-color head. The aroma was coffee, dark roasted malts and black pepper. The flavor was chocolate over bitter roast coffee with lots of malt. There's a good amount of hop flavor in there too. While it drank with a thin mouthfeel the taste lingered on my tongue for quite awhile.
Mr. Blog Named Brew has a sickness. He freely admits not being able to walk past any of the beer displays at our local groceries without stopping to browse and ultimately buying at least one bottle. He succumbed again recently and we found ourselves in possession of The Maharaja from Avery Brewing Company.
"This," the Mr. declared very definitely after his first sip, "is a top 25 beer." Trust me, he says the exact same thing every time he drinks The Maharaja. So you know it's true.
The Maharaja is an imperial IPA, which is an IPA-derivative that I can get behind. Big flavor. Big hops. Big Beer. It pours a bright amber color with a pale beige head. I wrote in my notes that it "smells breast." What in the world does that mean? I'm going with bready--most likely correct because my spellcheck hates when I type bready. There's some honey and citrus hops in the aroma as well. The flavor is citrus, biscuits, lots of hops, and pine. It's a little boozy and has a mild alcohol burn. I like that it also has a strong malt presence to balance out all those hops. (It's brewed with a "deranged amount" per Avery's website and the hops include Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial and Chinook. It's then dry-hopped with more Simcoe and Centennial!)
The Maharaja is part of Avery's Dictator Series. Unfortunately this is the only installment I've ever encountered.
Beer stats
Style: Imperial IPA
ABV: 10-12% (varies by batch)
IBUs: 102
Rating: Great
Previously reviewed from Avery
My review of Hog Heaven(barleywine) and White Rascalwith a five-finger discount confession
A Hog Heavenreview from the Mr.
If you're one of my three loyal blog readers or a Twitter follower, you may have noticed we took our tomfoolery on the road to Texas this past week. It was fantastic and fun and we got to cross another state off the list in our quest to visit every state in the Union. We're at about the midway point in that quest and are looking two knock down another two states in 2013 if all goes according to plan.
All I have to say about Texas--and Austin specifically--is that there is some amazing beer there. We did a lot of bar hopping and brewery visiting during the past four days and I'll regale you with reviews and photos in the coming weeks. Yes, weeks. We packed a lot into four days.
Funny story from the trip home. Both our outbound and inbound flights were plagued by a series of delays--perhaps that's why I tend to do most of my traveling during more agreeable weather. But as I stood in the security line at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, all that waiting paid off. I could have sworn something kept brushing up against my backside. A quick glance over my shoulder revealed the usual families and random people who make up a security line. Odd. But there it was again. This time I noticed a slightly embarrassed mother pulling her child away. A young girl, maybe four years old. Awkward glances were exchanged and I shuffled forward. But then there was giggling and what was decidedly a small nose in the crack of my ass. Yes, that adorable kiddo had her face in my rump.
More awkward looks and some rather entertaining discipline between mother and child ensued. As did several more instances of inappropriate touching in public between my ass and a child's face. At one point I looked at the woman and before I could even say anything, she admits it is an extremely awkward phase her daughter is going through and apologized profusely. Honestly I was so entertained that I had some wonderfully bizarre material for my next post that the kid could have goosed me and I would have hugged her. And seriously? Who goes through a phase where they like to be extremely close to strangers' backsides?
I can't even begin to find a segue between having my butt face-groped by a toddler and Avery Brewing Company's Hog Heaven. So let's just get to it.
Hog Heaven is a dry-hopped barleywine style ale. The color is dark reddish-apricot and hazy with a medium cream color head. As I drank my way to an empty glass, the lacing was significant. The smell is decidedly hoppy with lots of of pine. Every so often I would get some fruit undertones, but I had to work to get there. The flavor...it's like a barleywine and a west coast IPA had a
baby! There were lots of bitter hops from start to finish. Beneath that is caramel malt
goodness and rich, dark fruit. Hog Heaven had a very interesting and unexpected
flavor.
Beer stats Style: Barleywine (dry hopped) ABV: 9.2% IBUs: 102 (crazy high IBUs) Rating: Good
Day #377 Hog Heaven / Avery Brewing, Boulder, CO
Previously from this brewery: The Maharaja, White Rascal
It gives me great pleasure to report that I am done working for the year. Well, technically I'm in the office on New Year's Eve, but that's more of a social call than anything. Feels nice, as I haven't had time off at year end in a number of years. I will use some of the down time to keep working through my awards list for the year. Beer of the year, brewery of the year.... all the heavy hitters still to come.
So far, the Mayans seemed to have missed on the apocalypse thing (although the night is young - they didn't pick an hour), much to no one's surprise. However, on the odd chance that this was the end of the road, I was preparing myself by getting closer to heaven. No, not the mythological awesome place in the sky - a bottle of Hog Heaven from Avery Brewing. This barley wine is a bright, dark amber color (apologies for the bright/dark paradox there), almost like the color of tea. The picture below doesn't do this beer justice, so I apologize for that. The aroma is light, with plenty of hops and citrus. The taste is dry, with pine, tons of caramel, and a honey sweetness. More hops than your typical barley wine, which is just fine in my book. The beer got better as it warmed a bit in my glass, but regardless of the temperature it was straight up delicious. I mentioned when I reviewed The Maharaja that I intended to add more Avery to my line-up, and Hog Heaven definitely reinforces that opinion. Find it and drink it, you won't be disappointed.
Hog wild!
This brewery started brewing in 1993, and their increasing popularity has led to a number of expansions since then. Of particularly interest to me, Avery has been barrel aging beers since 2003.
Thing to Think About Today:
If I think about Hog Heaven... then clearly I'm thinking about Pigs In Space, an always classic skit on The Muppet Show. You can never have too much Muppet Show, quite frankly. And to tie up everything today with a nice, neat bow? This episode is about.... the end of the universe! Oh, you silly Mayans. Better luck next time, fellows.
Is it strange that every time I walk through the make-up section at CVS, I have an overwhelming urge to steal lipstick or lip balm? I'm 37 years old. I have disposable income. I don't want for anything. And yet I have a very visceral urge to five-finger-discount the latest lip gloss.
Confession time. I stole a lipstick once. It was YEARS ago. I was in high school and snagged a Revlon Colorstay lipstick. I'm pretty sure I wore it once and it screamed, "I'm stolen!" the entire night.
Yeah, I'm a goody-two-shoes dork.
Now onto the less dorky part of my writing. Let's talk about Avery Brewing's White Rascal. It is a Belgian Wheat ale or white ale -- unfiltered with flavors of coriander and Curaçao orange peel producing a refreshingly zesty classic ale per Avery's website. I had this one on draught at TJ's in Paoli.
I thoroughly enjoyed the White Rascal although I tend to really like white ales. It hit all the right tasting notes -- coriander, wheat, citrus zest. There was even a little bit of banana in there. It had a great mouthfeel. It poured an nice, hazy blond with a good head and left just a bit of lacing. I would rate it up there with other favorite white ales, which include Hitachino Nest White Ale, Blanche de Bruxelles, Allagash.
I'm looking forward to day 367 of this adventure so I can start revisiting breweries because there is a long list from Avery that could be among the first. At the head of the pack is Avery's Samaels -- an oak aged ale with an ABV of 15.5%! It's a limited edition release and since that happened back in April...I may be SOL.
Dear Beer Gods,
Please send me a bottle of Samaels. Just one. I won't be greedy.
Beer #126 The Maharaja / Avery Brewing Company, Boulder, CO
What a glorious day! I won't waste a lot of time talking about it, mostly because I'm trying to enjoy it more than I'm trying to write about it. I will say that it's nice to sit out on the deck with the laptop and combine the two.
As part of my uber-productive morning, I hit up Whole Foods for lunch. Couldn't stop in without checking the beer section, and one of my purchases was The Maharaja, an Imperial IPA from Avery Brewing. Your bit of worldly knowledge for the day: the title Maharaja comes from the Sanskrit words for "Great King."
This beer shows off an amber hue in the glass with a white head that mostly dissipates. The aroma is heavenly mix of pine and citrus; smells just like what you'd expect from a great IPA. The taste has just the right amount of hop bitterness, with notes of grapefruit, pine, and a more prevalent than expected malt sweetness. If you love hops or IPAs, you really must try this beer - it's fairly amazing. At 10.4% ABV and a 22oz bottle, thankfully I'm in no rush to do much else this sunny, warm afternoon.
Imperial IPA, meet my Imperial pint glass
I'm a big fan of Colorado brews, yet I've never really added many Avery beers to my rotation. Well, that changes as of today - can't wait to check out some of their other offerings. This beer is part of Avery's Dictator Series, which is an exploration of beers using traditional methods. In addition to the the Maharaja, there's the Kaiser and the Czar. I eagerly await the Kim Jong-il version, because he was all sorts of batshit crazy, and who doesn't love that?
Thing to Think About Today:
It's nice out, I'm drinking, the dogs are snoozing in their dog bed on the deck. It's Saturday! If you didn't know that yet, I'll go ahead and let Ludacris tell you more about it in this (unfortunately) safe for work version of Saturday. No one better to spend a sunny day drinking with than Luda!
