As I posted yesterday, I finally got my hands on Tuckerman’s third beer, the 6288 Stout. As with their other beers, I was thoroughly impressed. This is, by far, their best beer. The stout pours a dark black with a small tan head. Aromas of roasted malts and coffee fill your nose. The beer is a nice consistency. It’s not too thin, but not so thick that it’s undrinkable. It has a nice coffee/dark chocolate bitterness to it. The flavors match the scents with lots of roasted malts and dark coffee flavors along with a very slight dark chocolate taste towards the end. There’s just enough of a hint of hops to add a little balance.
This is a superb stout and will likely be one of my regular go-to stouts (when I feel like driving to MA to get my beer). Unfortunately, I’ve heard that Tuckerman Brewing has met such a demand that they need to cut back on some distribution. I’m not surprised because their beers are fabulous. They make only 3 beers, but their all great examples of each style and brewed so well. I have a feeling they’re not going to be expanding a whole lot anytime soon, and I’m perfectly OK with that. I think what they do is great and their beers show it. I picture them as real do-it-yourselfers with a homebrewing mindset.
As far as I’m concerned, the beer I brewed with the Mr. Beer kit is infected. I just tried some tonight after 3 weeks of conditioning/carbonating and the beer still tastes like apple. If it was meant to be a lambic of some sort, it’d probably be good (though the other flavors from the pale ale don’t go well with the sour apple flavor). I took a couple sips and dumped the rest. This time I was sure to try one of the ones I bottled in the glass bottles to see if the little buggers hid in the groves of the plastic bottles. It tasted the same. I’m going to leave it for one more week and try some more and see how it is. I don’t have any hope for it right now.
I posted about it on the Beer Advocate homebrewing forum and someone mentioned that I probably didn’t have a chance because of the age of the ingredients (which wouldn’t surprise me considering I received the kit in December 2006, though the expiration date is September 2008). I’m not at the point where I’m ready to give up brewing though. Hopefully, I’ll soon be getting the real equipment (which I need to save some money to buy the other stuff that my boss doesn’t have) and I’ll be brewing real beer (though probably extract at first, at least until I have more space than just this apartment). I’ll be sure that once I get ingredients, I brew within a week or so to prevent them from getting too old.
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