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
Day #584 Caskette / Tired Hands Brewing Company, Ardmore, PA
Previously from this brewery: Is it lazy that I just link you to the Tired Hands tag rather than listing out all of the TH beers? Maybe. Or maybe I'm just efficient.
Keeping things brief, as it's been a busy week. But you're not here to hear about me and my problems, you're here to learn about beer. I don't know, I guess that's why you're here. Maybe you're here to feel better about yourself after reading about my problems. Either way, I'm fine with it. I do appreciate you reading, regardless of your motivation.
If today is Tuesday, then I'm making one more back in time review from an old visit to Tired Hands. Up to bat is a glass of Caskette, a "hoppy golden ale." In a pint glass, this beer is an orange amber color, with a fluffy white head that lingers. The aroma is of bread and citrus, and when you take your first sip you pick up flavors of cracker, lemon, flowers, and earthy pine. This beer is light and refreshing - I ended up ordering two. Sue me.
Fuzzy. Deal with it.
Thing to Think About Today
I suppose if I'm drinking Tired Hands, I'll close things out with Hands Down by Dashboard Confessional. Enjoy your evening, dear friends. Be good. I miss you all.
Day #583 5 Out Of 5 / Tired Hands Brewing Company, Ardmore, PA
Previously from this brewery: Um, many beers. Easier to just click this link and read about them.
And another Monday comes and goes. Hopefully you all survived intact. For today's review I'm going in the Wayback Machine and pulling out an old review from Tired Hands that has been hiding in the back. Today's beer is the 5 Out Of 5, an Imperial Stout. This beer was touted as a "must drink," and based on how quickly they were going through kegs of this stout, I figured it was worth a try. In the glass, you seee a dark black color and thin tan head (just like every other stout ever, but I still feel the need to describe the appearance of every beer I drink). When you inhale, you get..... a lot. Espresso, nutty, malt. When you take a sip, there's a crazy mix of maple syrup, peanut, slightly toasted malt, and a big dose of sweetness. Considering this beer was brewed with marshmallow and maple syrup, that sweetness is of no surprise. Stouts aren't usually my cup of tea, but there's so many good things going on in this beer, I would gladly have another. In fact, I'd like to have this beer with breakfast, if possible.
The always fun window art
Tired Hands changes beers frequently, so I guess I can give them a pass on having a website that never seems to be updated. I guess.....
Thing to Think About Today:
Okay, so we have a beer called 5 Out of 5, and I drank it in the Philadelphia suburb of Ardmore. Which of course means it's time to think about Ben Folds (he of the Ben Folds Five) and the catchy Rockin' the Suburbs. Enjoy your Monday, dear friends. I sincerely hope you kicked some ass today.
I haven't taken an extraordinarily crappy photo like this one in quite awhile. It's almost like my camera knew this beer was going to knock me for a loop and gave me a drunken photo without actually being drunk yet. Hey, camera...thanks. Thanks a lot.
What is pictured in this terribly blurry photograph is the 5 Out of 5--a weird imperial stout from Tired Hands Brewing. Tired Hands is my happy place. Evidence is found in the "Previously Reviewed from" list below. We drink a lot of Tired Hands beer in our house.
5 Out of 5 is brewed with lots of malts, peanut butter, cacao, maple syrup,
marshmallow, vanilla bean and One Village espresso. What, what?? 5 Out of 5 is brewed with malts, peanut butter, cacao, maple syrup, marshmallow, vanilla bean and One Village espresso. What's more amazing is that almost each of these flavors presents itself in the best way possible.
First off, let's talk about the color. It pours nearly black as night in my glass. It had an amazingly thick deep tan head. It's smells rich, sweet and a bit chocolatey. The first sip stopped all four of us who ordered on dead in our tracks. Awkward glances were exchanged as we each tried to figure out what we were tasting. Is it chocolate? Maple syrup? Is that marshmallow? There's the vanilla. Ooh and the nutty flavor from the peanut butter.
Reviews were mixed but overall positive. 5 Out of 5 is a strong beer (10% ABV) with a lot of flavor. It's sweet but not syrupy. If you don't like a sweet beer, this is definitely not for you. But if you're up for a flavor adventure, this is one weird imperial stout that I highly recommend.
OK so the name of this beer from Tired Handsis not Lil Lady 2 Electric Boogaloo, but it totally should be. Why? Because this is the second iteration of Lil Lady that I've had and every movie sequel's subtitle in my book--thanks to Mr. Blog Named Brew--is Electric Boogaloo. If you don't get the reference, please see this IMDb site for more information.
Sometimes I just want to drink beer and not have to think about it so there isn't a review of the original Lil Lady. This one is made with Rooibos tea, wheat and honeybush
tea. It's then fermented with Pennsylvania wildflower honey. It poured a very cloudy, deep orange-y tan color with a white head. The smell is very wheat-y and mild. The flavor is a little on the tart side, which I loved. It has an earthy flavor. There's some unripe fruit in there. The beer's description mentioned strawberries and I think that's pretty accurate.
This is another excellent offering from Tired Hands and I highly recommend it. And if this doesn't sound like your kind of beer, go anyway because you are guaranteed to find one you love.
Beer stats
Style: Grisette
ABV: 5%
IBUs: Unknown
Rating: Excellent
Previously reviewed from Tired Hands
I'm dropping Vonnegut knowledge and a review of Bokonon
Day #519 CuzCuz / Tired Hands Brewing Company, Ardmore, PA
Previously from this brewery: I'm lazy today, so just click this link and it will take you to all 332 beers sampled from Tired Hands. Seriously.
Good afternoon and Happy Mother's Day to all! Hopefully you're having a nice, stress free, relaxing day with your moms or kids or both. We actually celebrated yesterday, and did a combo surprise birthday party for my aunt/Mother's Day gathering. Good time, but a long day. Today was spent celebrating with Mother Nature, as I got on the bike for the first time in a solid two months to go for a ride along the Schuykill River. Good way to spend a sunny and breezy day, which included the added benefit of making sure my awesome calves stay toned and sexy. Need to make sure I keep looking good for you faithful blog readers, after all.
Need to run out and get some groceries, so I'm jumping right into the review portion of today's post. You get a glass of CuzCuz from local favorite Tired Hands. This American IPA is brewed with hops from New Zealand, and shows up in your glass a cloudy dark yellow color, with a fluffy white head. Or, as I'm fond of saying, the same color as every beer they make (this isn't exactly true, but true enough that I make this joke anyway). There's a welcoming aroma of grapefruit and pine, and when you drink it, you find this to have a subtle bitterness, with mango joining the pine and citrus party. I'm sure this beer has already kicked and might never appear at Tired Hands ever again, but on the odd chance it hasn't or it does, this beer makes for a great summer choice.
Wow! For once, I didn't take a shitty picture!!!
Thing to Think About Today:
Last year for Mother's Day, I dropped some Mother and Child Reunion from Paul Simon in this space, and that's about the best Mother's Day song I can think of. So, I head in a different direction this year, and give you the wonderfully under-appreciated comic genius of Michael Keaton with Mr. Mom, the story of a stay-at-home dad finding his way - hilariously. Thank you to all the moms out there for everything you do to keep the households running at optimal performance!!
On more than one occasion during the past few weeks (okay, on about 139 occasions during the past few weeks), I have had the overwhelming urge to scream, "My mother is dead. I'm not buying her a piece of your insipid jewelry to show her I care." Or "No, my dead mother doesn't need flowers." It has made me feel a bit like a crazy person. Where is this what-I-can-only-describe-as very finite, but blinding rage coming from?
I'm pretty confident that I've made peace with having lost my mother way too soon. In fact Mom and I (and Mr. Blog Named Brew, too) are having an extended adventure together. One day, I'll clarify that statement so it reads less crazy and more sentimental.
So what's with the rage?
I feel like I don't matter. I don't have a mother. I mean I do, but just not one who I get to hang out with on Sunday in the traditional way. Consumerism is making me feel less important on the second Sunday in May. Consumerism is telling me that I don't count because I can't "celebrate" on Sunday. Kmart, Zales, JCPenney and many others have all made it clear that I also don't count because I decided I'm not procreating.
Well guess what? All those stores, all those advertising agencies and each one of those marketers can go fuck themselves. Mom and I and the Mr. are going to have another adventure on Sunday and it's going to be better than any store-bought, prepackaged nonsense I'm expected to partake in.
So there. And yes, I do feel much better now that I got that off my chest. Now let's talk beer.
Eye 4A Face is one of the newest saisons from Tired Hands Brewing Company. As I've mentioned before, if I write about a Tired Hands beer and it sounds good--run to their brewery in Ardmore (PA) immediately because it's very likely you will never find it again.
Eye 4A Face poured a hazy orange-ish/brown color with a loose white head. It smells a little funky and woodsy. The flavor has lots of wood and a perfumey vanilla taste. It's very malty, but also has a good amount of hoppiness to it. I'd presume from the dry-hopping with Amarillo hops. It's complex in both aroma and flavor but is quite easy to drink.
Beer stats
Style: Saison
ABV: 4.5%
IBUs: Unknown
Rating: Great
Previously reviewed from Tired Hands
I'm dropping Vonnegut knowledge and a review of Bokonon
Another nice, springtime Saturday here. Took the dogs to the vet this morning, and the good news is they have a clean bill of health. Always good to hear, as they're now ten years old - not exactly spring chickens. The bad news is that I needed to sell my car to pay for their vet bill. They're cute and friendly, but they don't have jobs and they make me buy them things. And vet bills are expensive things, unfortunately.
Further complicating the problems of my wallet today: someone cloned my debit card Thursday and managed to get about $900 out of my checking account before my bank's fraud department shut them down. Not a big issue, as the money will be returned to my account, but seriously.... give me a break. What if I needed that money today? What if they waited six more hours until my paycheck hit, and they cleaned out $100,000? (because that's how much I get paid every two weeks).
Finished hearing me complain? No. Not yet you aren't. I also need to finalize and submit my taxes this weekend, which means I'll be forking over some (more) hard earned cash to Uncle Sam on Monday. I'd rather owe money than get a refund - people who celebrate huge refunds don't realize that they've been giving the government an interest free loan all year. That's not good, people. I get that a big check from the government is fun to cash, but the best scenario is owing nothing and getting nothing back come April 15. Well, a better scenario would be owing less throughout the year, but no chance of that happening any time soon.
Finished hearing me complain? Yes, now you are. Please resume enjoying the rest of this blog.
Today's review is another beer from a visit a few weeks back to Tired Hands: Pacific Jade, a single hop Saison. It poured a cloudy light yellow color, with a persistent white head. The aroma is herbal and floral. Marci said it smelled like marigolds. Sure, I guess. The taste is unusual; light, but dry with enough hop bitterness to get your attention (although not much pine or citrus that hops brings). Plenty of floral, grassy, herbal notes. Unusual and different from the average saison, but like everything at Tired Hands, it's tasty.
I'm convinced all beers at TH look like this.
Not blurry, just the color
Thing to Think About Today:
Today I close still thinking about money and the people working hard to separate my cash from my wallet. So here's to you, veterinarian, credit card fraudster, and the Federal Government! I present to you Ol' Dirty Bastard and the ever appropriate (although completely not safe for work) Baby I Got Your Money. Sigh. Back to the coal mine next week for me....
Hustle day today; exceptionally busy day in the office followed by a spring league basketball game tonight. Therefore, you get just the facts. But they're facts about beer, so I think everyone should be just fine.
After running some errands on a recent weekend, we stopped into Tired Hands in Ardmore to catch a beer and unwind. First up was a glass of Fauna, a pale ale brewed with Brettanyomces from their Darwin Solera series of beers. In the glass you see a bright but hazy orange hue, with a fluffy persistent white head. The aroma is tart and funky, with a good bit of lemony citrus. The taste is dry and earthy, with a very measured bitterness, and good flavors of grass and citrus, most notably lemon. An interesting take on a pale ale courtesy of the Brett addition, but but quite good! A rather drinkable beer at 6.4% ABV, for those who like to keep score.
Hello there, sexy.
As always, if you visit and don't order the candied bacon, you're wasting your time.
Thing to Think About Today:
Beyond the name of this beer, the word fauna refers to animal life of all types, and comes from name of the Roman goddess of fertility and earth. To honor Faunus and the fauna all around us, let's revisit the Animal House, the greatest movie of all time, and let Otis Day and the Knights bring it home with their legendary fraternity party version of Shout. This scene is what college is all about, people!
Because it is basically impossible for me to only have one beer at Tired Hands Brewing Company, I present the other beer I tried during my visit on Saturday.
The Tabel Printemps. It is a table saison that's brewed with limes and locally sourced cilantro. It poured an opaque yellow-orange color with a thick, almost creamy off-white head. The flavor is mild hops, lime and is a little grassy. The aroma is mild with hints of citrus. Tabel Printemps is an easy-drinking beer that you need to try before it disappears.
Beer stats
Style: Saison
ABV: 4%
IBUs: Unknown
Rating: Great
. Previously reviewed from Tired Hands
I'm dropping Vonnegut knowledge and a review of Bokonon
p.s. I blame Tired Hands' array of cheeses and pickles. And the honey! Oh the honey! If you have a chance to try anything that comes with the lemon-infused honey, I promise you will not be disappointed.
If there's two things I can count on from Tired Hands Brewing Company, it is good beer and obscure literary references. I present to you Bokonon as evidence.
Bokonon is an enlightened hoppy brown ale per the description on record at Tired Hands. Since I'm used to the peculiarity of Tired Hands' beer names, I got to googling this one. Turns out that Bokonon is a Kurt Vonnegut-created religion from his book titled Cat's Cradle. I haven't read much Vonnegut so this was new information to me.
Oddly and perhaps in a twist of Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon, I read this quote by Vonnegut just last week:
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion.
I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
As I find myself recklessly hurdling into one of the busiest times of my year, I find solace in this particular quote. And I agree wholeheartedly that it is by far better to laugh than cry.
But what about that beer?
It poured a hazy chocolate brown color with a full tan head. It had a piney hop smell. The flavor is exactly as promised: a hoppy brown ale. It's light, piney, a little earthy. Has lots of malts. There's a bitter chocolate thing happening and has a great mouthfeel. If I were spending more time at Tired Hands that day, I would have definitely ordered a second one.
If you are any where in southeastern Pennsylvania, you need to get yourself to Tired Hands Brewing Company. In fact, you need to get yourself to Tired Hands Brewing Company on a regular basis. Why, you ask? Because they are brewing some amazing beer, but in very limited quantities--twelve kegs at a time per their website. Their beers range from inspired saisons to great big IPAs that make you think you're imbibing on the West Coast. While they do have a few beers that are mainstays on their menu, most often I fall in love with the ones that are much more ephemeral.
Take Good Good Things for example. It's a sour IPA that I drank back on December 15. What I should have done is reviewed it straight away so you had a chance to experience it for yourself. Instead I got caught up in the beers of the moment in the days since then and now Good Good Things is a distant memory. Oh the difficult life of the beer blogger. But a quick review of what's up next at Tired Hands certainly doesn't disappoint. There's at least three beers on that list that I'm eager to try. Good Good Things poured a very cloudy apricot color with a thick ecru head. The flavor is tart with lots of hops, the taste of pith and some nice lemon. The smell is earthy, a little funky. There is a solid sour sharpness to the flavor, which I loved and it has an intense hop bite at the finish. It kept getting me right at the back of my tongue. There was also something very organic in the smell that I couldn't put my finger on. I wrote down bark in my notes. Good Good Things was definitely a winner in my book. Beer stats Style: Sour IPA ABV: 6.2% IBUs: Unknown Rating: Excellent Previously reviewed from Tired Hands
Gary's review of Good Good Things
Gary's first visit to Tired Hands where he tried the Frippand caught hell from me for not including me on the trip
My review of Trois Enfantswith a side of wistful writing about my love of Philadelphia
Day #388 Good Good Things / Tired Hands Brewing Company, Ardmore, PA
Previously from this brewery: my take on Fripp, Marci's review of Trois Enfants
I sent 2012 out with a bang yesterday and welcomed in 2013... by laying around the house, watching movies and football, and writing about beer (of course!). I hope you all had a good evening, and hopefully your resolutions haven't run off the rails already. In my last post of 2011, I hoped 2012 would see me accomplish four things: Do more for other people, don't be so lazy, exercise more, and learn something new. Unwritten at the time but still a goal was to finish the 366 challenge.
I think I did very well on that list. You probably don't care to have me run down the hits and misses, so I won't, but I think I'm going to carry the spirit of those four items forward into 2013, with some additions. Therefore, in 2013 I hope to:
Spend more time with the people I care about
Do a better job of sharing my time and talent with organizations/people who are in need
Keep exercise as a priority throughout the year (particularly the winter months)
I'm sure there are other things I could add to that list, but I think that's a good start for the year. And our first beer of the year comes from the oh so wonderful and ever so pretentious Tired Hands. They recently had Good Good Things on draft, a sour IPA. I haven't run into too many sour IPAs in my travels, and I love sours and IPAs, so this was a must sample for me. In the glass, this beer has a hazy dark orange color, and gives off a tart aroma, with some light citrus and pine. When you take a sip, there's a tart sourness right up front, with tons of orange and grapefruit in the middle, and a nice bitter finish. An absolutely delightful beer.
Tired Hands produces great beers, and my only (small) complaint is that they rotate in new beers so quickly, you never get to revisit really good beers. There's a fair chance they may never brew this beer again, which is unfortunate. I wish they would slow down the perpetual motion machine and just bring back some of the really great beers they make rather than continually rolling out new experiments.
Good? Good!
If you get the chance to visit Tired Hands in person, do not leave without ordering the candied bacon. It's quite fantastic.
Thing to Think About Today:
Obligatory song for the day here on New Year's Day. Worth a watch just to see Bono's early 80's hair. To all of you reading this, may 2013 bring you good health, good fun, prosperity, and tons of good beer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8BtB4C3Vi8
"I want to be with you be with you night and day / Nothing changes on New Year's Day"
Today started with the most impossible bike ride ever. The five mile loop at Valley Forge National Park is a bitch. It doesn't matter if you're on foot or on wheels. It SUCKS. That loop allowed me and my bike to have a not so lovely walk today. Tomorrow I'm hitting 30 very flat miles...thank you very much.
The remainder of today was all beer, all the time. We hit up Round Guys Brewing to refill our growler and sample some new beers. I tried the Wild Eyes Series 3 and it was quite good. We also got to render an opinion on a new syrup to accompany the Berliner-Weiss. Between the elderberry and black currant...black currant all the way.
Next up was a stop at Tired Hands. I stopped for the Mysterious Mood, stayed for the Undertow, and then really stayed for a random encounter with friends. A quick stop at The Beer Shoppe was our final destination. The only way this place could get better is if they separated the recent arrivals into a section that made it easy for us beer fiends to find the new stuff. Three sacks of beer later, the blog is stocked for the coming days. Big shout out to Ralph...thanks for the help!
Salinger says, "Hey.".
He also claims it's tough guarding all that beer. I compensate him well in Milkbones.
Tonight's beer is the Girardin
Gueuze. It poured a light amber color with a minimal head. It smelled funky with a little mustiness. There was also a sour aroma. The flavor was mineral, tart and a bit watery. The smell was way more potent than the flavor. But the flavor doesn't disappoint. There's an interesting softness to this Gueuze...kind of malty underneath the lemony tartness and funkiness. I would put it in my top ten Gueuzes.
Yesterday's post -- Beer 213 -- officially wrapped up my review of beers I sampled on my west coast vacation. I drank some amazing beer, some average beer and pretty much everything in between. It was an amazing experience and I'm so thankful that Gary was there for every last moment of it. I'm also thankful that we managed not to kill each other despite only being separated during the vacation for a total of 75 minutes. (Don't ask. There was one killer hangover that would only be cured by McDonald's breakfast.)
But after almost two weeks on the road, my own bed was calling my name and I had to rescue Kelli from the evil genius dachshunds, who terrorized her for her entire dog sitting experience. As I jetted back to Philadelphia, the usual sense of anticipation of going home washed over me. I love where I live -- there's no doubt about that. And as we began the descent into Philadelphia, I leaned my head against the airplane's window and spied some familiar landmarks. The Cira Center sparkling alongside the Schuylkill River. The glow of the Pyramid Club in the hazy night sky. The faint and approximate location of the museum that brings me great joy and a sense of belonging.
A few weeks later I find myself jonesing for a lot of the beer that I drank on that trip, which is unfortunate because so much of it isn't available east of the Mississippi. But I'm continuing to find amazing beer and some of it in my own backyard.
Tired Hands Brewing Company opened not even two months ago. Located in Ardmore (Pennsylvania), Tired Hands is already wowing the beer aficionados in the area. I sampled a few beers on my first visit, but the one that really did it for me as the Trois Enfants.
It is a barrel aged biere de garde. It poured a hazy chestnut color with a very thick ecru head. The smell was spicy and nutty. The flavor was caramel malt and it had a creamy mouthfeel. The hop impact was minimal -- my kind of beer.
Tired Hands just released an American Berliner Weisse that I'm very eager to try. Hopefully it will still be around for my visit next week!
Beer #180 Fripp / Tired Hands Brewing Company, Ardmore, PA
Is this the shortest post ever? Possibly. Spent the day churning out work in the morning, then relaxing with my co-workers at a Phillies game - they lost, big surprise. Ended the evening with my co-workers with a visit to Tired Hands, a new brewery in our (relatively speaking) neighborhood. Marci is furious, as I went there without her, but hopefully we can make a stop together over the weekend. Very cool place, very good beers.
I tried the Fripp, an English Bitter. An amber color in the glass with a thin head, you pick up aromas of malt on the nose. With the first sip, you find a mix of toffee, lightly toasted malt, and bitter hops. Nice mix, although it was hard to focus on the aroma - the downstairs bar is right across from the food prep area, and everything smelled delicious. Fripp checks in at a mellow 4.6% ABV, in case you were keeping score.
Trust me, it looks better than this in person.
If you're near the Main Line, definitely make a point to stop by. This brewery will no doubt gain a cult following in very short order.
Thing to Think About Today:
We're keeping it brief today. It's been a good day, but a long day, and we've come to the point in the festivities where I need to head to bed. If we're talking sleep, then let's let The Tokens close the day with The Lion Sleeps Tonight. A video Marci has already shared in her writing, to be sure, but it's worth another listen, and I defy you to not sing along.
