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.
