Two thirds of this week's offerings are from west of the Mississippi...
• Black IPA (Otter Creek Brewing)
• Flipside Red IPA (Sierra Nevada Brewing Company)
• India Pale Ale (Avery Brewing Company)
• King's Peak Porter (Uinta Brewing Company)
• Oktoberfest (Great Lakes Brewing Company)
• Vanilla Porter (Breckenridge Brewery)
• All In Amber (Full Pint Brewing Company)
• Circus Boy (Magic Hat Brewing Company)
• Monkey Fist IPA (Shipyard Brewing Company)
• Raging Bitch Belgian-Style IPA (Flying Dog Brewery)
• Snapperhead IPA (Butternuts Beer & Ale)
• Stranger APA (Left Hand Brewing Company)
• Wildeman Farmhouse IPA (Flying Dog Brewery)
Got a couple of repeats this week -- BUT we also had beers from three previously unrepresented breweries, including a collaboration between a nano and a micro out of eastern Maryland. The Beer Club continues to bring good drinking and new discoveries...
• Bedlam! IPA (Ale Asylum)
• Genesis Dry Hopped Session Ale (Shmaltz Brewing Company)
• Hop Mountain Pale Ale (Old Dominion Brewing Company)
• Loser IPA (Elysian Brewing Company)
• Scratch 'N Sniff Red Rye IPA (collaboration between Pub Dog Brewing and Baying Hound Aleworks)
• Seneca Indian Pale Ale (Mountain State Brewing Company)
• Sprung (Evolution Craft Brewing Company)
A nice variety of styles this week.
• He'Brew Messiah Nut Brown Ale (Shmaltz Brewing Company)
• Headwaters Pale Ale (Victory Brewing Company)
• Saranac Red IPA (Matt Brewing Company)
• Striped Bass Pale Ale (Devils Backbone Brewing Company)
• Sundog Amber Ale (New Holland Brewing)
• Tell Tale Red Ale (Scuttlebutt Brewing Company)
• Baltimore Pale Ale (Full Tilt Brewing)
• Farmhouse Summer Ale (Flying Fish Brewing Company)
• Full Nelson Virginia Pale Ale (Blue Mountain Brewery)
• Oatmeal Stout (Breckenridge Brewery)
• Starr Pils (Starr Hill Brewery)
• Twisted Pine Hoppy Boy IPA (Twisted Pine Brewing Company)
• Wisteria Wheat (Fordham Brewing Company)
Phil would like you to know that Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Company, formerly an authentic an independent brewery, is now a brand owned and produced by conglomerate SABMiller. We all get suckered sooner or later.
• Diesel (Sixpoint Brewery)
• Henry Weinhard's Woodland Pass IPA (Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Company)
• Hop Hog India Pale Ale (Lancaster Brewing Company)
• Odyssey Imperial IPA (Sly Fox Brewing Company)
• Ruedrich's Red Seal Ale (North Coast Brewing Company)
• Summer Love (Victory Brewing Company)
• Geary's Pale Ale (D.L. Geary Brewing Company)
• Satin Solstice Imperial Stout (Central Waters Brewing Company)
• Extra Special Ale (Yard's Brewing Company)
• Swing Session Saison (Victory Brewing Company)
• Last Chance IPA (Weyerbacher Brewing Company)
• Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale (Flying Dog Brewery)
• Caldera IPA (Caldera Brewing Company)
• Dale's Pale Ale (Oskar Blues Brewery)
• Marooned on Hog Island (21st Amendment Brewery)
• Morning Glory Espresso Stout (Old Dominion Brewing Company)
• Oatmeal Stout (Mendocino Brewing Company)
• Rampant Imperial India Pale Ale (New Belgium Brewing Company)
• The Immortal IPA (Elysian Brewing Company)
A fantastic variety in this week's mix-pack!
• G'Knight Imperial Red (Oskar Blues Brewery)
• Toasted Lager (Blue Point Brewing Company)
• Cadillac Mountain Stout (Bar Harbor Brewing Company)
• O’Ryely IPA (Widmer Brothers Brewing)
• Gunpowder Falls German-style Dunkel (Bauernhof Brewing Company)
• Double D Double IPA (Old Dominion Brewing Company)
• Genesis Dry Hopped Session Ale (Shmaltz Brewing Company)
• New Albion Ale (Boston Beer Company)
• Righteous Ale (Sixpoint Brewery)
• Bête Blanche Tripel (Elysian Brewing Company)
• Scarlett Red Rye (Speakeasy Ales & Lagers)
• Old Heathen Imperial Stout (Weyerbacher Brewing Company)
Peak Organic and Southampton grace our Beer Club's brewery list for the first time. (Technically we've not had a Fordham beer either, although we have had three from Old Dominion.) Also glad to see seldom-submitted local brewers Sly Fox again. It's all about discovery!
• Samuel Adams Cream Stout (Boston Beer Company)
• Hop Noir (Peak Organic Brewing Company)
• Biere De Garde (Southampton Publick House)
• Odyssey Imperial IPA (Sly Fox Brewing Company)
• Ram's Head IPA (Fordham Brewing Company)
• Baba Black Lager (Uinta Brewing Company)
We've got a great variety of styles this week from all over the planet. Looking forward to making my way through these.
• Dominion Baltic Porter (Old Dominion Brewing Company)
• Full Sail IPA (Full Sail Brewery)
• Red Rocket Ale (Bear Republic Brewery)
• Sky High Rye (Arcadia Brewing Company)
• St. Rogue Red Ale (Rogue Ales)
• Theakston Old Peculier (T & R Theakston Ltd.)
• Wolaver's Alta Gracia Coffee Porter (Otter Creek Brewing Company)
I love stouts. Irish-style dry stouts or sweet milk stouts -- it's all good with me. In my experience, milk stouts are a little less common to find on the shelves, so I make a point to try them when I can. Lancaster Brewing Company's version is quite good, and is one of the few that seems to be readily available my area.
When I read last year that Left Hand Brewing Company was coming out with a milk stout, I added it to my wish list. I enjoyed the brewery's flagship beer, Sawtooth Ale, a few times last summer, and besides, I was curious what nitrogenated beer in a bottle would taste like.
As instructed by the bottle's label, I gave the beer a hard vertical pour, which resulted in a pleasant cascading wall of bubbles in the glass. The foam is a slightly brownish cream color and is so dense you're hard pressed to make out individual bubbles. Hangs around for the whole glass, too. The beer itself is effectively black, giving up a tinge of mahogany around the edges when held to light.
The aroma is sweet and roasty with nary a hint of hops.
Nitrogen gives this full-bodied stout a luscious, silky mouthfeel, almost without fizz. (By the way, there is no "widget" in the Milk Stout Nitro bottle, as found in cans of Guinness, Boddingtons and others. The nitro appears to be dissolved in the beer.)
True to its style, the beer has a deep roasty malt flavor with a faint smokiness. Just as it seems the flavor is about to descend into char territory, creamy sweetness swoops in and gathers the malt in its soft, pillowy arms and deposits it gently on the back of your tongue, where hops lend subtle counterbalance. As the beer warms, more floral and herbal hop notes come to the foreground. (The varieties used are Magnum and US Goldings, I was informed by Lora Berger of Left Hand, who was too polite to point out that this information is freely available on brewery's website.) Roasted barley is the main note remaining in the aftertaste.
Overall, a very nice milk stout, and a fine beer to inaugurate one of the shapely new Dogfish Head pint glasses my kids gave me for Christmas.
Incidentally, check out this crazy cookie recipe which uses this beer as an ingredient and is recommended to pair with it: Chocolate Chip Cookies with Bacon, Beer and Cayenne
From the bottle's label:
Brewed on the banks of the mighty St. Vrain
Super smooth with soft roastiness and mocha flavors
It was the first mix day in a while when all seven members contributed. We got another great batch of beers.
• Bell's Pale Ale (Bell's Brewery)
• Bell's Porter (Bell's Brewery)
• Exit 16 (Flying Fish Brewing Company)
• Köstritzer Schwartzbier (Köstritzer Schwarzbierbrauerei)
• Milk Stout Nitro (Left Hand Brewing Company)
• Mission IPA (Mission Brewery)
• Oak Barrel Stout (Old Dominion Brewing Company)
Here is a representation of a traditional style from Fish Brewing Company of Olympia, Washington. They dub their Leavenworth Biers line as "the Northwest's original German-style craft biers." This will be the first beer I have tasted from this brewery. (Props to Mr. Wade Malcolm for contributing it to the Beer Club.)
I don't have a proper wheat beer glass to try this in, so my trusty Spark pint tumbler will have to do. The beer pours the deepest brown in color, only letting though a bit of light around the edges. It produces one finger or so of light brown head.
The aroma is of roasted malt, mainly. Very little hop presence is detectable, but sweetness is suggested.
The beer has a fairly straightforward roast malt flavor. The carbonation hits right up front, after which the roastiness opens a bit to hints of hazelnut, with just a touch of black pepper on the back end. The strongest impression after my first sip was the beer's creamy, mouth-coating texture. Clearly a wheat thing.
Only toward the bottom of the glass did I start noticing the pure yeast flavor I would expect in a weizen -- probably because more of the yeast had sunk to the bottom. At 4.7% ABV, this beer would be highly sessionable, if you're so inclined. There is no intense sweetness or bitterness to wear your taste buds out.
Overall, not a knockout, but not at all objectionable.
From the bottle's label:
Alpine-style dark wheat ale
Even though only five of us chipped in this week, we still came up with three breweries that are new to the list. Good stuff!
• Bass India Pale Ale (Anheuser-Busch InBev)
• Sculpin India Pale Ale (Ballast Point Brewing Company)
• Sierra Nevada Porter (Sierra Nevada Brewing Company)
• Boulder Bend Dunkelweizen (Fish Brewing Company)
• Loch Down Scotch Ale (Arcadia Brewing Company)
Another great and varied assortment, introducing three breweries -- Boulevard of Kansas City, MO, Evil Genius (contract brewed through Cooperstown Brewing Company of Milford, NY), and Starr Hill of Charlottesville, VA -- that have not appeared in the lineup before.
• Fireside Chat (21st Amendment Brewery)
• Dark Starr Stout (Starr Hill Brewery)
• Evil Eye PA (Evil Genius Beer Company)
• Claymore Scotch Ale (Great Divide Brewing Company)
• Single-Wide IPA (Boulevard Brewing)
• Poor Richard's Tavern Spruce (Yards Brewing Company)
Only five beers this week, but a great batch -- mostly dark beauties.
• Baba Black Lager (Uinta Brewing Company)
• Bristlecone Brown Ale (Uinta Brewing Company)
• Heart of Darkness Stout (Magic Hat Brewing Company)
• Old Rasputin RIS (North Coast Brewing Company)
• Red Fish (Flying Fish Brewing Company)
One bonus did come to me via Deputy Features Editor Patty Talorico: an elaborately packaged sample of the 10th anniversary release of Samuel Adams Utopias. A review of that will be forthcoming in a future "Quench" column in The News Journal.
My Beer Club homies brought strong game this week, introducing two breweries previously unrepresented, and repeating no styles within the mix-pack. Good job, kids!
• ACME California IPA (North Coast Brewing Company)
• Barking Squirrel Lager (Hop City Brewing Company)
• Harvest (Long Trail Brewing Company)
• Hazelnut Brown Nectar (Rogue Brewery)
• Mocha Porter (Rogue Brewery)
• Resin (Sixpoint Brewery)
• Hi.P.A. (Magic Hat Brewing Company)
• HopFish IPA (Flying Fish Brewing Company)
• Hoptical Illusion (Blue Point Brewing Company)
• Humboldt Brown Hemp Ale (Nectar Ales/Firestone Walker)
• Otter Creek Oktoberfest (Otter Creek Brewing)
• Responders Ale (16 Mile Brewing Company)
• Undercover Investigation Shut-down Ale (Lagunitas Brewing Company)
