Tonight, Susan and I split my bottle of Green Flash Double Stout. The beer pours a deep black with a very small, quickly disappearing tan head. It smells of dark roasted malts and roasted coffee. It tastes very roasty with the roastedness switching between coffee and dark chocolate. There’s a hint of hops bitterness at the beginning, but the malts really shine towards the end. It’s got a moderate amount of carbonation, but let it warm up a bit and it becomes silky smooth with a slightly oily mouthfeel. This is one fantastic beer. If you can get it in your area, it’s a must try. I’m thinking about getting another bottle on my next trip to Yankee Spirits and aging it for a bit.
Archive for July 14th, 2008
Portland, ME… at least according to Andy Crouch, author of The Good Beer Guide to New England. While I have never been to Portland, I won’t disagree with him. The sheer number of breweries in and around that small city makes it a pretty easy call, but competition in this beer-oriented corner of the country is tough.
Here in New England, several cities vie for the title of Best Beer Drinking City in the region. While listing my top cities, I think its important to do some geographic arithmetic. Of the top cities, the Massachusetts nominees include Boston (including Brookline), Cambridge (including Somerville, i.e. the near North of the River communities), and Northampton and Amherst. Maine offers Portland. New Hampshire offers Portsmouth. Rhode Island offers Providence. Vermont offers Burlington. Connecticut doesn’t really have a competitive offering but I’ll be polite and suggest New Haven.
He gave Burlington, VT second, listing the 3 brewpubs in a 3 block area a main reason. I’ll take that though. Burlington is a great city with tons of great beer. Heck, even the whole state of Vermont is into good beer. In all the restaurants we visited, I don’t remember seeing much Budweiser, Coors, or Miller. The same goes for the liquor stores and convenience stores. However, there was a lot more Labatt’s Blue than I normally see in southern New England (the French-Canadian population there could be the explanation). Regardless, Vermont tends to be very proud and supportive of Vermont products and smaller more homegrown companies.
Surprisingly, Boston came in third. The only beer destinations in the Boston area that I have visited are Cambridge Brewing Company (aka CBC) and Sunset Grill. However, for all the bars in Boston, Andy has it right. They’re all pretty similar and nothing special when it comes to beer selection. I do have to get up to the Publick House in Brookline sometime. Perhaps I can coax my Boston friends to go out to dinner there some night.
Anyway, the article is worth a read. He makes some great points about all the great New England beer towns.
I just ticked off two more recommendations from my BeerRiot recommendation list.
Abita Turbodog, an English Brown Ale, was a great suggestion. This beer was very flavorful, very smooth, and very easy drinking. The beer pours a very dark brown color, almost porter-like. It had a nice head that actually stuck around for most of the glass and left some nice lacing. The aroma was of roasted malts with a hint of nuttiness. The flavor was similar with lots of roasted malts, a slight chocolate flavor and a very slight hint of nut. This was a great recommendation for a great brown ale. Unfortunately, I didn’t have as good an experience with Jockamo IPA from Abita. It was an average IPA, but certainly nothing special with a very weak hops profile.
Chimay Première (Red), a Belgian Dubbel, was my top suggestion with a 5.0 rating for me (what I assume is the highest rating from the site). Unfortunately, I didn’t find this beer to be what a highly recommended beer should be. However, I must make a little disclaimer. I had a bunch of this at a Belgian Dubbel tasting. It was a few tastings, but they were all 2 oz. pours. It was enough to give me an idea that it’s not worth buying when there are many much better Dubbels available. This one was weak in flavor and body and compared to a lot of the other beers we tried that night, it was mediocre. I’d say, being as hyped as it is and the most popular Trappist brewery, it was a disappointment. For a better Trappist Dubbel, Koningshoeven, Westmalle, and Achel were far tastier.
Recent Comments