RunawayJim.org

I’m continuing through my beer collection that’s too large at the moment.  Last night and tonight were no different.  Luckily, I have a lot of very refreshing beer, which is perfect for these ridiculously hot and humid summer nights.

Over the holiday weekend, I had a bunch of Festina Pêche.  I believe I’ve written about that before.  So to keep it short (and me somewhat dry), I’ll just say that it was a perfect BBQ beer.  It’s refreshing, easy drinking, and well worth a try, even if you’re not into beer because it doesn’t taste like any beer you’ve ever had (unless you’re like me and are really into beer).

Last night I decided to crack open my bottle of Rock Art Jasmine Pale Ale.  It sounded like a nice light beer, perfect for a hot day.  I was right.  It’s basically an amber ale brewed with jasmine.  It’s got a nice light flavor with a little floweriness (if that’s even a word) and a nice herbal quality.  It’s light, it’s not too sweet, but it hit the spot.  I give it two thumbs up.  Later on, I decided to try Dark and Stormy Night from Picaroons, the 5th beer from my trip to New Brunswick.  The label calls it a dark wheat ale and describes it as a German dunkel crossed with an English ale, and that’s exactly what it was.  It’s got a nice roasted quality with a nice wheaty/yeasty breadiness.  There’s a hint of caramel as well.  I was going to add it to Beer Advocate because it wasn’t there last I checked, but someone beat me to it.  I reviewed it anyway.  It was added as a dunkelweizen, though I was going to add it as an English brown ale because, to me, that’s what it tasted like (though the wheat and yeast obviously were what threw me off).

Tonight I started with Aprihop, which I have talked about here, but is one of my favorite summer beers (even though Dogfish Head releases it in the spring for some reason).  It’s a nice fruity IPA with the apricots balancing off the hops bitterness.  It’s very refreshing, even though it’s 7% ABV.  With dinner, I had 1809 from Weihenstephaner, a Berliner Weissbier.  It was absolutely awesome, though the first pour was a bit foamy.  It pours a nice pale grassy yellow with a lot of effervescent bubbles.  If I didn’t smell it, I would’ve called it a pilsener.  However, I did smell it and it has a lot of sour notes to it.  Basically, it’s a sour wheat beer, though quite refreshing and not quite as sour as a lambic.  It’s very light and very drinkable, and absolutely perfect for a night like tonight with temps in the upper 80’s.

I need to get out of this room, it’s really hot in here (I should invest in another air conditioner for my home office).

To avoid having to play catch up again, here’s tonight’s beers, since they’re out of the ordinary.

I started with Picaroons Man’s Best Friend.  It’s a porter, I imagine an American Porter considering the body and bigger flavor.  It’s got a nice roasted malt flavor with just enough smoke to give it another dimension, but not enough to call it a smoked porter.   The beer is hopped for perfect balance, but it’s all about the malts.  It’s probably one of the best porters I’ve had.

The second beer of the night was less impressive.  I had Rock Art American Red Ale.  It looks as though it’d be a great red ale, but it’s a bit light in flavor.  Everything else is spot on.  However, as it warmed, the flavor picked up quite a bit.  It’s very drinkable, but nothing special.  I have 2 more in the fridge, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy drinking them.

I’ve had a lot of beers that I haven’t written about.  You can always check my beer list if you’re curious as to what I’ve been drinking.  I keep that more up-to-date than my posts about beers I’ve had.  Anyway, here’s some of the beers I’ve had since I stopped writing about them.

As I posted previously, I picked up a bunch of beer from Rock Art in Vermont.  I have since tried their Midnight Madness Smoked Porter and their IPA.  The Midnight Madness was awesome.  It was nicely smoked and a great all around porter.  The IPA, however, was pretty bland.  It was light in color, flavor, and body.  It didn’t have the hops flavors I’ve come to love in my IPA’s, but it wasn’t really an English-style IPA either.  I probably wouldn’t bother with this one again.

One beer I picked up in Vermont that I thought was really solid was Peak Organic’s Maple Oat Ale.  This one has a nice hint of maple and the smoothness of the oats.  It’s a really great amber ale that I will likely buy again and again (perhaps they’ll find their way down to RI soon).

I rarely give a beer a drain pour.  However, I tried the bomber of McNeill’s Summer IPA.  It was easily the worst IPA I have ever tried (and being an IPA fan, I’ve had a lot).  I drank a full glass, but poured the rest.  It was just an unbalanced mess of hops and malt that didn’t make for a drinkable beer.

Another recommendation from BeerRiot was Clipper City’s Loose Cannon from the Heavy Seas lineup.  It was good, but nothing special.  I’d consider it just an average IPA.

Another disappointment was Founders Devil Dancer.  I use the term “disappointment” lightly as the beer was good.  It just wasn’t what I expected.  They call it a “Triple IPA”.  That’s not a true style (not yet at least), but the beer tasted like a slightly hoppy barleywine.  It was good and definitely worth trying (and maybe I’ll buy it again), but I wanted a DIPA at the time.

I tried a different Victory beer (and I think I’m just about through with their whole lineup aside from the bigger bottles, like V-12 and V-Saison).  I had the Moonglow Weizenbock.  It had a nice banana and spice flavor to it, but it wasn’t overly complex.  I’ve had better weizenbocks, but this one is still a great weizenbock from a great American brewery.

Finally, the beers I brought back from Canada… I had Picaroons Blonde Ale and Picaroons Yippee IPA.  The Blonde Ale was simply fantastic.  It was a nice light ale.  It was very refreshing, but still had a lot of flavor.  The IPA wasn’t quite as good, but it was still a good English IPA.  It had this other flavor to it that I couldn’t figure out.  The only thing I can liken it to is a slight whisky flavor (perhaps it was aged in barrels).  Other than that other flavor, which did make it good, it was a very solid beer.  The label made it sound like they were playing around with the recipe with each new batch.  I’ll have to look over their Brewer’s Log to see if I can find it.  Picaroons is turning out to be a totally awesome brewery.  I can’t wait to try the others I bought.  I had to add the Blonde and the IPA to BeerAdvocate because they weren’t listed (new styles, perhaps?).

That ends my catching up.  I’ll post about the Dogfish Head dinner in a little bit.  Right now, I think I need some Mr. Lemon.

I’ve been keeping up with my BeerRiot recommendations and when I saw that Yankee Spirits had Hop Rod Rye from Bear Republic, I had to pick up a bottle (it was my top recommended beer).  The beer pours a dark amber-brown color, much darker than an IPA’s normal color, with a nice thick head.  It smells of hops, but it’s not a strong smell.  From the name, I think it’s safe to assume that it’s brewed with rye (perhaps that’s why it’s so dark).  The flavor is nice.  It’s not too hoppy, but the hops are there.  There’s a nice malt balance and the rye, while not strong, is noticed.  It’s very drinkable, and at 8% ABV, it’s on the high side for a standard IPA.  I didn’t notice the alcohol at all and I drank the entire bomber myself.  It was a good recommendation, though I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite beer.