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Archives for April 2016

April 13, 2016 by Tupper Leave a Comment

Goose Island Brewing (AKA AB InBev), Chicago?  Fort Collins?

Goose IPA

 

  •     * Skip It
  •    ** Good Craft Beer
  •   *** Well Above Average
  •  **** Exceptional
  • ***** Top 1%
Rating: **  Value: *

20160413      Notice that this is Goose IPA and not Goose Island IPA.   This lightly feathered Goose is just 4% abv to comply with Utah’s “3.2” draft limit; the full flight version flaps up to a normal 5.9%.    There’s a tiff on the net between an AB brewer, who maintains that a different mashing process allows Goose to maintain the same hop rates as the Goose Island IPA and a beer “expert” who claims that’s just impossible.
—– I can see both sides of the debate.   It’s hard to imagine that you could put the same hops into a 4% beer without increasing the perceived bitterness, but there’s no doubt that brewers have learned a myriad of ways of boosting the body of a beer while still capping it at 4%.   The least professional of these beers are worty and unpleasantly sweet.   The best of them taste pretty much like…beer.
—–One thing we’re pretty sure of:  if you’re going to drink a beer and a half of the “low point” 4% stuff for every one beer you usually drink of the regular, you’d better allocate some extra time at the gym.   Reducing alcohol does cut calories in some SIPAs, but in quite a few it appears that it actually raises caloric intake.
—— Goose IPA is one of the best draft beers available in Salt Lake City.   Some of the local products are quite good – and especially if you’re going to try a range of styles you’re better off with the locals.   But Goose manages to disguise the sweetness without the sharp bitter that characterizes some of the SIPAs that are popping up all over.   The hops taste – like Goose Island hops: west coasty and fruity.   If you’re watching a ball game, which we were, and not picking the beer apart sip by sip, which we often do, you can forget you’re having a Zion reduced experience.
—– The ball park staff swore the product was hand filled into sixtels in Chicago; we can’t help noting that the much more efficient AB plant in Fort Collins, Co. is also much closer.

April 12, 2016 by Tupper Leave a Comment

RedRock Brewery, Salt Lake City, Utah

Drioma Russian Imperial Stout

 

  •     * Skip It
  •    ** Good Craft Beer
  •   *** Well Above Average
  •  **** Exceptional
  • ***** Top 1%
Rating: **+  Value: ***

20160412 —  We reviewed RedRock’s Bobcat Brown yesterday and chose it because it was an example of good craft beer in Salt Lake City.  We were impressed with the range that RedRock brewed—almost every one was professional and enjoyable.   The top of the line for us, though, was their top of the line – the Drioma Imperial Stout.
—-Ellie and I have a saying: “It’s Hard to Brew a Bad Stout” that we abbreviate to HTB on our tasting sheets.  That said, it’s not easy to make one rise above the crowd, even by a bit.  Drioma does, and it’s also staggering (sorry) to find a beer like this in the land of lightweights.
—Drioma presents rich deep dark chocolates, and some rich dark fruits, with a hint of fruit joining the festivities by the finish.  The chocolates seem to grow darker as it drinks, but there are also flavors of dark roasts and dark sugars.   It was desert for us, and a very welcome one.

April 11, 2016 by Tupper Leave a Comment

RedRock Brewery, Salt Lake City, Utah

Bobcat Nut Brown

 

  •     * Skip It
  •    ** Good Craft Beer
  •   *** Well Above Average
  •  **** Exceptional
  • ***** Top 1%
Rating: **  Value: **

20160411—-What would it be like if breweries in Utah could brew real beer like breweries almost everywhere else in the country?   The answer is that Utah would be a lot like almost everywhere else in the country, which is to say, a pretty good place to drink.  Strong bottled beer has been legal since the 2008 Olympics; if you go to a brewpub like RedRock, which does both bottles and drafts, you can get an idea what they’d be doing if they weren’t trapped behind the Zion Curtain.
_____Bobcat Nut Brown is a 6.1% brown ale—quite strong for a British Nut Brown, but not surprising in the high-test US of A.   It’s chewy and malty with a dark biscuit maltiness and a few wandering dark sugars here and there.  Into the aftertaste there’s a touch of toffee and a bit of fruit.   Altogether, it’s an easy to drink brown ale without the leathery edge that some stronger brown ales get from some types of dark crystal malt.

April 10, 2016 by Tupper Leave a Comment

 

Moab Brewery, Moab, Utah

Black Imperial IPA

 

  •     * Skip It
  •    ** Good Craft Beer
  •   *** Well Above Average
  •  **** Exceptional
  • ***** Top 1%
Rating: ***  Value: ***

Black Imperial IPA
Moab is the only brewery in … Moab, Utah, so if you happen to be there, this is what you should drink.   If you’re on the east coast, it’s not as easy a call.   The 75cl. bottles are striking and holler “I’m going to be really good” but sometimes they lie.   We assume it’s the long trip across the country that created our several disappointments.
—–Sometimes, however, like a power hitting player off the bench, they hit a home run rather than striking out, even with a bottle you can find around the DC area.   They only distribute in 7 states plus DC.  Maryland is one of the 7, go figure.
——Our beer of the day, the Black Imperial IPA, is one of the home runs.   We brought it to one of last year’s 6 ticket tastings at St. Dunstan’s church (see events for a similar tasting next week) and got a half dozen thumbs-ups.  .  It’s a husky roast ale with slight tropical fruit from hops and yeast.
The roast and fruit persist with a late near ashy bitter.  The 8.59%abv is either a tongue in-cheek “precision” or a code to some group of insiders – no brewery measures alcohol accurately from batch to batch with that sort accuracy.

April 9, 2016 by Tupper Leave a Comment

Epic Brewing, Salt Lake City, Utah

Epic Straight up Saison

 

  •     * Skip It
  •    ** Good Craft Beer
  •   *** Well Above Average
  •  **** Exceptional
  • ***** Top 1%
Rating: ***  Value: ***

Epic started brewing in 2008 when Utah finally relented and allowed “high point” beers – those over 4% abv—to be brewed in bottles.  They’ve never brewed a “low point” (4%) beer in all that time in this repressive republic.   The Epic Brewery and Tap Room in Denver is a different experience—plenty of “high point” draft beers there; of course it’s easier to get high in Denver in all sorts of ways.
——In Salt Lake City, you can go sample their beer in their “tapless” tap room as long as you buy food to go with it.   Otherwise the bottles you find around town might be a bit fresher, but they’re the same beer experience you’ll have if you pick up a bottle at the Wine Warehouse in Charlottesville, which is where we found this Beer of the Day.
——We featured a post about saisons early in this web adventure-  you can find it in the blog archive.   They’re very difficult beers to do well and plenty of breweries miss the mark.   It’s been a coule of years since we had it, but we thought Epic really hit the target with its Straight Up.   Very very echt (German for authentic; we use the term everywhere). Fruity hops along with echoes of lemon and stone fruit.  Yeast is tangy and slightly metallic.   It’s dangerous to think of a 7.1% beer as more-ish, but…   “Waiter—one more astonishingly legal 3/4th liter bottle, please.”

Next Page »

What’s New Inside

 Gold Metal Winning Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale Returns!

Join us at Dynasty Brewing on July 17 between 3PM and 8PM to savor the first batch of Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale in almost five years.  We’ll be there signing books at a huge discount and the brewery will be pouring the beer that was created to be “Hoppy enough for Bob and balanced enough for Ellie.”

It hasn’t been easy to resurrect Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale, winner of a gold metal at the GBBF in the ’90s when well hopped beers were rare and almost non-existent in the east.  We’ve collaborated with Dynasty’s head brewer Favio Garcia, the brewer who produced the last batch of Tuppers’ Hop Pocket at Old Dominion to reproduce an authentic version of the original.    Dynasty is in Ashburn, Virginia– almost within walking distance of the Old Dominion brewery that brewed the first batch just over 25 years ago.

NOW PLAYING: on Beer of the Day—  Some great beers in the San Francisco Bay area.  Scroll down below this entry to find the featured beer of the day.   >>>>>

Later — in July we resume some great weekend destinations for beer travelers that we’ve found researching our guide to breweries and inns of the Mid Atlantic.  Whether you’re looking for a turn of the (20th) century 100 year old quaint and slightly rickety hotel, an engaging B&B or a magnificent survivor of the great era of railroad hotels, we’ve found hem– within walking distance of a brewery.   We’ll present more previews of the book’s best here rolling up to Pennsylvania before we’re through.

 

 

 

Beer of the Day

only beer pub 27 IMG_3154

 At Pub 27 in Pompeii

Far From India: India Pale Ales in the 21st Century.

Date:  March, 2019

The Story—

The Beer—

Value —

Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

In mid-March we’re taking a look at the incredible variety of IPAs.   The style is by far the biggest seller among craft beers in the US and probably in Europe as well.   Even century-old breweries in Reinheitsgebot-narrowed Germany are brewing IPAs (if the brewer calls it “ale” it doesn’t have to conform to the strict purity law).   But you have to ask these days: What is an IPA”?  We’ll take a look at almost a dozen recognized and semi-recognized styles of IPAs in the next couple of weeks.

 We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests.   Not all our notes, though.  The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same.  (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”)   All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter.   Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers,   and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys.   At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

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