Wynchwood Hobgoblin Dark English Ale

Got this in a mixed 12 pack from a co-worker and wanted to do some quick tasting notes.  It has an almost raisin-y aroma and a very clear, deep red/brown color.  The head is tan with a little bit of lacing, but it doesn’t really last.  I was trying to place the taste and someone on Beer Advocate said it’s a “hint of toffee and caramel” — I think that’s about right.  It’s extremely malty with very little hop presence or alcohol taste — quite smooth.  5.2 ABV in a bottle (what I drank) and 5.0 ABV in the cask.

good (not extraordinary) beers

I haven’t done a lot of crazy tastings in the past week or so. I’ve had the Red Hook IPA (no direct link) in my fridge lately and I really like it as a middle-of-the-road, drinking beer. Definitely a good everyday beer. 6.5% ABV. I’ve still got the North Coast Cru D’Or around and I still have no idea what I’m going to do with it. My latest bright idea is to blend it with some root beer or something else — we’ll see about that. We were at the Durham Tyler’s the other night and I had Rogue’s John’s Private Locker Stock, which was the Brutal Bitter. Here’s the description of that from the Rogue site:

JLS Release #23: Black Brutal 2007 ~ John Maier has brewed a dark verison of Brutal Bitter for a second time, with some degree of variation from the first Black Brutal recipe (aka, SkullSplitter). Black Brutal 2007 is mahogany in color with a smooth roasted malt flavor and agressive bitterness. Unfiltered ~ Unfined ~ Uncompromised… Prost!

Black Brutal ‘07 is brewed with Great Western 2-row and Munich; Weyermann Carafoam Special, Carawheat, and Melanoidin malts, along with Summit, Simcoe and Amarillo hops in the boil, and more Amarillo in the hopback; plus free range coastal waters, and top fermenting Pacman yeast. Black Brutal ‘07 measures in at 15.1 Plato OG, 4.2 Plato FG, and approx 60 IBUs.

I can’t add too much more than that — it was good, although I guess it wasn’t extraordinary. I liked it. That’s about it. I also had the Bell’s Two Hearted IPA again — enjoyed it the second time and I’m just wishing I could find it in a six pack somewhere. One other beer I saw at the store and was intrigued by was the Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat. At $6.59, I couldn’t really resist it. It’s a nice, light wheat, although there’s definitely a strong orangey, coriander flavor to it. When I think of wheat beers, I think of summer beers that you drink on the porch. This one fits that category well, but I think the extra little bit of sweetness would prevent me from drinking more than one or two. I can’t say I’m disappointed with this beer, because I really didn’t know what to expect, but I do wish it was one I could drink in earnest on summer evenings. 4.9% ABV.

hop notes

A quick post to consolidate some hop knowledge. My sister is thinking of planting a hop garden and was wondering about varieties. I did some looking around, and here’s what I came up with:

I think Cascade would be good, as well as Willamette or Sterling. Those are all aromatic. Good bittering hops would be Nugget or Chinook. I was just looking online and it appears all of the above should be fairly hearty and high-yielding. Check Wikipedia too for hops — tons of good information.

And this exchange b/t my sister and brother:

Well, I went ahead and ordered some from this place:
http://northernbrewer.com/rhizomes.html
They require a minimum order of 2. I went a bit nuts and ordered 4 different ones. They won’t mail them out til growing time, but once they come I’d be more than happy to share. (I don’t really need four hop vines — apparently they grow like weeds anyway, and I wouldn’t have room for them.) I got one each of Cascade, Cenntennial, Fuggle and Mt. Hood. (descriptions are here: http://northernbrewer.com/hops.html) I can keep 1 or 2 and give the others to you, so let me know which ones you want.
On 3/15/07, Mike wrote:

Cascade is the best, I have heard. I am hoping to plant some myself. Let me know what you decide.

It got the wife and me thinking that we may want to brew an IPA next and order some extra hops to bring the flavor up.

more bell’s and a double dose of dubbel

Had some real technical difficulties with this post — accidentally navigated away from WordPress while in the middle of a long post. WTF is up with the auto-save feature?? I see it working all the time, but when I actually need it, it’s nowhere to be found. Snap.

I’m not sure there was much of a theme with my beers this past week. Here’s what I tried:

Bell’s Two Hearted Ale — This is Bell’s IPA and it’s very good. I had it at Flying Saucer in Raleigh. I’d like to try it again because I didn’t really devote enough attention to tasting it. We were talking to people we didn’t know while I was drinking it, so I was concentrating much more on my small talk skillz. I’m hoping it shows up in stores — at the moment, all I’ve seen in stores is the Amber Ale, Kalamazoo Stout, and the Porter (?) I think. 7% ABV.
North Coast Silver Jubilee — This is a farmhouse ale brewed by North Coast to celebrate Whole Foods’ 25th anniversary. I had it back in 2005 when it first showed up and I guess I tasted the aged version this weekend since they only brewed it once. It was still delicious — a fizzy, full head with a floral taste and hints of fruit. I don’t remember the nuances of the first tasting well enough to say whether it benefited from aging or not, but I really enjoyed it and it didn’t seem any worse for the wear from sitting under florescent lights in Whole Foods for over a year. The bottle is a dark brown or black, so that probably helped it in terms of skunking. 7.3% ABV
North Coast Cru D’or — Organic Belgian-style Dubbel. I have to say I was hugely disappointed by this beer. I usually really like everything from North Coast (see above), but this one is a dog. It’s got a thin mouthfeel, very little head, and a boozy, plum/prune taste to it. Very unpleasant. I really don’t know what I’m going to do with the remaining two I have in my fridge. 8% ABV
Avery Collaboration Not Litigation Ale — Belgian-style Strong Ale. This was as good as the Cru D’Or was bad. It’s a blend of two Belgian-style ales named “Salvation” from Russian River and Avery. I was really surprised to see it in NC since it’s two western breweries and those beers are extremely scarce here. I think it helps that it is officially distributed by Avery (which is pretty widely available here) and not Russian River (which is completely non-existent). I don’t really have notes on it, but I liked it and plan on drinking more of it tonight. Bought from Whole Foods in a 22 oz. ABV is 8.99%.

sweet styles, not-so-sweet beers

I started last week on a Belgian kick, encouraged by an article in All About Beer talking about Tripels. I didn’t know that it’s not that old of a style (it first appeared in 1934). The article mentioned that Westmalle invented the style and that it’s still considered the exemplar. So I decided I needed to buy some again. As usual, it was thoroughly enjoyable. I always think of Tripel’s as candy sugar sweet, but the Westmalle really isn’t — just good. I didn’t try much new stuff last week — mostly trying to work may way through some old beer I have, like Terrapin Imperial Pilsner, Duck-Rabbit Barleywine, and that crazy Wild Hop Lager. One thing that I did try again is Ayinger’s Celebrator Doppelbock. It’s funny — I had Celebrator years ago in college and I thought it was terrible. That may have been because I found it at a decrepit Dayton supermarket on super sale with a very thick layer of dust on it. I remember that it was strong, sweet, and sickening. I feel like it created an instant hangover as I was drinking it; I forced one down and that was it. So needless to say, I stayed away from it for a while. When I saw that it was highly-rated on pretty much all the beer sites, I decided it was time for another try. I bought some at the Good Beer Store and was pleasantly surprised at how good it is. Not as sweet as I expect from Doppelbocks (that seems to be a theme of this post) — definitely dark and malty with hints of coffee, but not sugary sweet. Also, the ABV is lower than I remember: 6.7%. It’s not totally my style, but I did really enjoy it for what it is — I’m glad I tried it again. I also made a trip to Carolina Brewery and tried both their Anniversary Ale and IPA. The Anniversary Ale was ok, but it almost tasted more like a white beer than a traditional Belgian Dubbel (which is I believe what they were going for). I did think the IPA was quite good though. It seems like brewpubs tend to tone down IPAs and go for the more traditional English style, but the CB IPA was quite bold and good. I definitely liked the IPA better than the Anniversary.

miscellaneous stuff

Haven’t had much time this week to update things, but here’s what I’ve been drinking lately:
Corsendonk Blond — very good. I had their bruin a while ago and wasn’t overly impressed, so I stayed away from the Blond for a while. I really like this one though.
Wild Hop Lager — this is kind of a funny one. My wife saw it at the store a while ago and never bought it because she was suspicious that it was a “micro” from one of the major brewers. She finally broke down and bought some. I had the same suspicions when I saw the label, and sure enough, it’s from A-B. Not that I’m all that opposed to a major label micro, as long as it tastes good. This one tastes pretty much like Budweiser.
Victory Hop Devil — an old standby that I really like. Had some from the bottle and up at Pepper’s Pizza, where we got a pitcher before the UNC-Miami basketball game. Always a winner.
Great Divide St. Bridget’s Porter — I’ve been slowly working my way through a six pack of this. It’s a decent porter, but really not stellar. Fine, not great.

Bosteel’s Triple Karmeliet — had this up at Milltown last weekend. It really is fantastic — a big, sweet, frothy triple. Milltown is great because they serve it in the proper glasses and the one for this beer is large and festive. I had tried the Triple Karmeliet a few months back and it really stuck with me, so I decided I definitely needed to try it again.

Duck Rabbit Rabid Duck Imperial Stout — we had made the trip to Milltown for a tasting party for this beer. It’s quite good, although a real handful. It’s an alcoholy, strong, opaque stout, as an Imperial Stout should be.
While at Milltown, we ran into Sean Wilson, from Pop The Cap. It’s thanks to him that I can buy most of the beers on this site in North Carolina. He spearheaded the campaign to raise the alcohol limit in beers from the prohibition-era 6% to the current 15%. And he’s a real nice guy.

hell’s bells

This past weekend we met my sister and some of her friends at a cabin in Maryland, so there was quite a bit of beer drinking. We took some random beer up there — a Magic Hat sampler, a six of Sierra Nevada IPA (that’s one I’d never seen before we bought it), and a mixed six pack of all the beers I’ve been posting about earlier. We also took our French Broad 13 Rebels ESB growler. The drive up there was pretty horrendous because it started snowing as we were driving through the mountains in West Virginia and none of the roads were treated. As we were looking for the cabin, we pulled off to ask for directions and, what do you know, it turned out to be a beer store. So we perused that — I was very tempted by the DFH 120 Minute IPA, but it was $8 for a 12 oz bottle. We ended up buying a Rogue Shark Tooth Ale (yikes! the Rogue site says it was a special 2001 bottling; I wonder how long that was on the shelf!) and a Smoke Ale since I’d never seen those before.

 

So anyway, on to what we actually tasted. I’ll probably break it down over several posts because, naturally, I sampled lots of beers. First things first — my sister was very kind to bring some Bell’s Expedition Stout, which I’ve been dying to try, and it definitely lived up to expectations. It’s an extremely dark, thick imperial stout with a nice tan head. The taste is smoky and chocolaty, with a pronounced, but balanced alcohol taste (11.5% ABV). In short, it’s awesome — one of the best imperial stouts I’ve had. And that’s not even my new favorite beer! That honor goes to a second Bell’s, the Hopslam double IPA, also brought by my kind sister. It’s got a huge hop taste to it, with citrus and pine flavors, but it’s less sweet than another of my favorite IPAs, the DFH 90 minute. Really a fantastic beer that I’d highly recommend. I’m hoping that Bell’s will start listing the alcohol content on beers above 6% so that they can be sold in NC. The Hopslam is 10% ABV.

back to IPAs and whatnot

After so many barley wines lately, I decided to get back to drinking my favorite style of beer — the IPA. My wife was going to the store and I asked her to get me something that was good and preferably cheap since we were low on funds. She came back with a six pack of Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA. A great choice considering, a) it was on sale, b) I’d never had it, and c) it was delicious. It’s a pretty standard IPA — nothing fancy, but with a definite hop bite that I was craving after all the malty barley wines. It’s certainly not the best IPA I’ve had, but it’s better than some of the tamer ones I’ve tried (Pyramid IPA, I’m looking at you).

A second beer I tried this weekend was Highland Tasgall Ale. I’d been really looking forward to trying this since Beer Advocate reviews rate it as the best Highland. I have to say that I wasn’t particularly a fan of Highland beers until we visited the brewery in Asheville, NC a few weeks ago. They don’t usually do tours on Saturdays, but they were extremely accomodating (thanks, Sandy!) and we got to look around their huge new facility. It was very impressive, and really, the beer samples tasted better than I ever remembered. We tasted the Gaelic Ale, St. Theresa’s Pale Ale, Kashmir IPA, and Black Mocha Stout — all were very fresh and delicious. We also toured the French Broad Brewery while in Asheville. Again, very nice people and extremely informative. In addition to their regular line-up of beers, we also got some samples of their small-batch barley wine — it was fantastic! The Asheville brewery circuit wouldn’t be complete without a trip to Asheville Pizza and Brewing. We only sampled the beers there and had dinner (no tour). The beers were good enough, but it was quite crowded and not that enjoyable. One gripe with eating there was that they didn’t have a host(ess) to seat people and there was a long line, plus multiple entrances. So when a table would open up, it was kind of a free-for-all of everyone trying to grab it. Lame.

But anyway, back to the Tasgall Ale. It’s an extremely tasty Scotch style ale — dark brown, with a slightly smoky, malty taste and just a little hops (although more than what I would expect from a Scotch ale). Not the easiest beer to find, but well worth it. It’s 8% ABV and I bought it at Sam’s Quik Mart in Durham.

whew, another barley wine

So I was at the store tonight and noticed that the new Duck Rabbit seasonal is a barley wine. Even though I have a full mini-fridge (and regular fridge), my lovely wife let me buy a six pack. I figured I was on a barley wine kick, so I might as well try the Duck Rabbit as well. I’d say it’s a happy medium between the Dogfish Head and Carolina Brewery. It’s got a sweet, extremely malty front, with a strong, but not overpowering alcohol finish. ABV on this one is 11%. I’m always a bit nervous about barley wines because I lean toward more hoppy beers and I don’t especially like lots of sweetness and alcohol. I’ve got to say, though, that I’ve been really enjoying the barley wines I’ve been trying. They’re nice for sipping when my wife is having a glass of wine because I can’t drink them very fast and one is usually enough, especially if they’re high in alcohol. The Duck Rabbit is perfect for this — not 15% alcohol, but enough to know it’s there. Definitely a very enjoyable beer.

more terrapin

I also tried two more Terrapin beers, again bought from Sam’s — Rye Pale Ale and the All-American Imperial Pilsner. The rye was pleasantly hoppy and dry with maybe just a very faint rye taste. I expected much more rye, which is why I stayed away from it for so long. It’s definitely an unusual beer — light enough that you could drink a few, but with enough flavor to enjoy it. The imperial pilsner was somewhat average. I think I like the Rogue a bit better. I can’t think of anything particularly wrong with it — it just didn’t wow me.