The hops just keep growing. The largest plant is now one of the Cascades which overtook the Centennials this past week. It is almost 10 feet tall. The other plants are between 7 and 8 feet tall, except for the second Cascade plant which is just barely 5 feet tall. I’ve got 2 Cascade plants; one of them is the largest and one of them is the smallest. I wish I knew why.
Both the Cascades and Centennials have begun to sprout hop cones. They look like little spiky shower heads. The Cascades are definitely ahead in terms of the number of cones. The largest plant has at least 100 of these things on it, which I hope means an abundant harvest. No cones on the Newports at all and the very beginnings of some cones on the Willamettes.
One more developing cone picture, this time on a Centennial.
Filed under: commercial beer, tasting | Tags: commercial beer, harpoon, hefeweizen, tasting, ufo
Harpoon UFO Hefeweizen pours a hazy yellow with a creamy persistent head. The aroma is of bananas and cream, sweetness like a banana candy or syrup, and a mild lemony citrus smell. The palate opens with light creamy banana, and follows immediately with a mild citrusy lemon flavor. Where the banana is dominant in the aroma, the lemony malt dominates the flavor. The beer is well carbonated, which contributes to its mouth feel. A mild tartness completes the palate.
I’m not a big fan of wheat beers. UFO is no exception, though I find it to be milder and thus more tolerable than other hefeweizens. I just don’t like the banana or lemon flavors.
Filed under: commercial beer, tasting | Tags: biere de garde, commercial beer, flying dog, garde dog, seasonal, tasting
We had another round of Friday beer at work.
Garde Dog poured an orangish tan with ample head and very visible carbonation. Grape dominated the aroma, with a background of berries and straw/grain husks. The flavor opens with grapes, an almost wine like taste, followed by a belgian-like carbonation and finishes with a light malty sweetness. Definitely not what I expected from biere de garde and certainly not what I expected based on the label. I liked it. Check out Flying Dog online.
Filed under: commercial beer, tasting | Tags: commercail, fort collins, pomegranate wheat, rocky mountain ipa, tasting, z lager
I made another self-made sampler pack from Frugal MacDoogal from Fort Collins Brewery. They have had Fort Collins beer for a while now, but I just got around to trying them out. We tasted these the same day we tasted the beer from Great Divide Brewing. As you can tell from the slowly degrading quality of the bottle pictures, the amount of beer we drank up to this point may have impacted our ability to accurately judge the beer. Alison was officially drunk.
Major Tom’s Pomegranate Wheat pours a pale yellow with a light head and heavy, audible carbonation. The aroma is yeasty and smells lightly of berries. The palate opens with ample carbonation on the tongue followed by a soapy flavor, some tartness, and a light tang in the aftertaste. Not great.
Z Lager pours and reddish/tan color with a clear aroma of grain husks, smoked beech wood, and kalamata olives. I can distinctly smell the beech wood. The flavor opens with toasted malt, then merges bitter and beech wood smoke together in the middle of the palate, and ends with that same kalamata olive flavor from the aroma. Geoff first identified the kalamata olive aroma in this beer, and once he said that, I could clearly smell and taste olives. I actually didn’t dislike this beer, which is what I anticipated from myself after having recently tried smoked beer for the first time. I think I enjoyed the lighter character of the beech wood smoke over the darker smoke flavor of the O’Fallon smoked porter I tried. Perhaps I just tolerate smoke better in a lager than in a porter. I’d like to try this again sometime as a full pint.
Rocky Mountain IPA pours an orange/copper color with an ample head and plenty of hop aroma. Citrusy C hop aroma clearly present with grapefruit dominant followed by tangerine. The palate is moderately bitter for an IPA, not excessive, and the finish is mostly dry with just a hint of sweetness. The dryness of the finish is much like a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Bitterness builds in the aftertaste. This is a good example of a standard American IPA, no complaints. This was clearly the best of the tasting session of Fort Collins and Great Divide beers.
Filed under: commercial beer, process | Tags: bittering, cattle bile, cow bile, hop shortage, reinheitsgebot
With the ongoing hop shortage people are looking for other ways to bitter their beer. Here’s an interesting idea from the East Germans as documented in the New York Times back in 1991.
“They convinced us that to be competitive, we had to brew under the German beer purity law,” Mr. Funk said. “And they created marketing and advertising concepts for our products. Before unity we used to put cattle bile in our beer to give it the bitter flavor of hops, which we couldn’t always get.” The brewery now spends $533,333 annually on advertising, compared with $6,666 under Communism.
Cattle bile does sound bitter.
Filed under: commercial beer, tasting | Tags: commercial, denver pale ale, great divide, samurai ale, tasting, wild raspberry ale
I was at Frugal MacDoogal’s last week and picked up a self-made sampler from Great Divide Brewing Company. I hadn’t seen Great Divide beers for sale in Nashville before, so I thought I would give them a try. I ended up with a couple of bottles of Samurai Ale, Wild Raspberry Ale, and Denver Pale Ale.
Geoff, Alison, and Charlotte came over and we had a tasting session. It’s way easier to taste beer with a group of people. You don’t have to drink the entire bottle, so you can taste a far greater variety of beer. I’m also willing to try things I might not otherwise try since I don’t have to drink the entire thing. It’s nice to discuss the beers; it makes it much easier to develop an opinion when you can talk about what you are tasting and smelling.
Samurai Ale poured a very pale, hazy yellow with a minimal head and plenty of fizzy carbonation. The aroma is lightly grainy, but there is only a slight aroma at all despite all those bubbles. The drink opens with a slight, clean sweetness, but generally resembles water. A slight fruity flavor develops and the drink ends with some bitterness. I assume the clean/watery body is a result of the rice used in brewing the beer. It has that distinctly Budweiser feel. I’d say this tastes a lot like a slightly hoppier Budweiser despite being an ale. Not very exciting.
Wild Raspberry Ale poured a reddish-purple and looked remarkably like a glass of iced tea. The beer smelled like raspberry candy, sweet and fruity. The flavor is exactly like raspberry syrup but with far less sweetness and with a light body; I’d say it tastes something like raspberry Kool-Aid. Stephanie thought it tasted like raspberry cough medicine with a lighter body. I think I’ve had too many things flavored with raspberries (candy, medicine, whatever) to really enjoy a beer flavored with them. Pass.
Denver Pale Ale pours an orange, tan color with a moderate head. The aroma smells like canned vegetables, which I understand to be DMS (Dimethyl Sulfide), a common off flavor/aroma in beer. I’ve always wondered about DMS, but I smelled it clearly in this beer. I think it smelled mostly like canned green beans. I got zero hop aroma. Maybe there was something wrong with the bottles I bought, as I find lots of discussion of hop aroma and no discussion of DMS on RateBeer. The beer opens with hop bitterness followed by a light malt body and finishes with bitterness in the back of the mouth. Basically, something was wrong with this beer; it tasted like a pale ale from a bad brew pub. I’d try it again to make sure I didn’t get a bad bottle, but I also think that there are enough american pale ale’s out there that all basically taste the same, and this one was not one of the better ones.
So overall I was definitely not impressed by Great Divide. I’m glad I didn’t have to drink a whole pint of any of these beers and wouldn’t really buy them again. Like I said, I might try the DPA again to verify my first impressions, but I think that I am done with these beers.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Sweetwater Georgia Brown pours a reddish dark brown with a minimal head. The aroma is of malt. I get lots of caramel and nuttiness with hints of banana in the aroma. The flavor is again malty, with plenty of caramel and nuttiness, but with a hint of chocolate malt in place of the banana aroma. The body is relatively thin for such a malty beer; perhaps this is due in part to the very light carbonation. There is a very slight bittering quality in the drink that fades quickly, leaving a malty taste in the mouth.
Filed under: commercial beer, tasting | Tags: commercial beer, kolsch, schlafly, summer kolsch, tasting
I just bought some Schlafly Summer Kölsch for a Friday afternoon of hanging around at work. We’ve been trying to enjoy ourselves a little more at the office and relax for a change. I figured I might as well try some new beers while someone else is buying.
I also tend to write way to much in these beer reviews. I’m going to try to keep it under control from here on out, if I don’t I think I’ll stop writing reviews because they take too long.
Summer Kölsch pours a pale golden color with an average head. The aroma is sweet like orange blossom honey and smells a bit like freshly picked grapes. The flavor is light, lemony malt. The bitterness is light but more than I expected for a kölsch, but I haven’t had one in Köln in 5 years, so I’m not sure how good my memory is. The body is light and the carbonation is fine bubbles and tingles the tongue. This is definitely an easy drinking summer beer.
