Gun Hill E Pluribus Lupulin No VI Speculum Speculorum, Bronx, New York

Date:  November 30, 2018

The Story—  Gun Hill opened in 2016 when a couple of baseball-playing buddies hired a brewmaster and found a good location a musket shot away from the site of the Revolutionary battle of Gun Hill.

We’ve said it over and over:  you can have a great location and all the enthusiasm in the world, but if you don’t make good beer, someone down the street will, and you’re spent grain.   Gun Hill’s narrative was good enough to get the beer poured in the theater featuring Hamilton, and their beers have been good enough to secure the market that was handed to them.

We’ve had well over a dozen of their beers in the past year or two.   Their record isn’t perfect, though a wacky variation of a Berliner Weisse may well find a market niche that is far far away from ours.   Most of the beers, however, have been good standard craft beers or better.   Their best work has involved darkness and strength, but they produced an exceptionally good version of an American kolsch — one of the hardest styles to nail.

We found this beauty in a can at Poughkeepsie’s Half Time Liquors (see earlier posts for details).  We’re still not altogether used to finding beers that could be well suited to embossed bottles with foil tops and maybe a brewery emulate ringing the neck ….   in a can.   But once it’s poured, it’s the taste and not the container that matters.

Our last post was on New Belgium’s The Hemperor, a beer that is starting to win us over for it’s dankness and complexity.  But for a dank charge, you can’t do much better than Gun Hill’s Speculum Speculorum.   Ellie rated it well above average, which is high praise from her for dank-in-your-face; for me, I just want to be pickled in it when I die. If we were doing a “beer of the month” and had to limit ourselves to 12 beers a year, I’d push for this one to be chosen.

The Beer—It’s a 9.3 Imperial/Double/Between-the-eyes IPA.  Hugely dank from the start – earthy, pine, overripe fruit with oregano and mushroom.  An assertive orange juice forces its way in at the end, but every sniff on every re-taste puts you back in dank barn.  Ellie picked up the saltiness of the booze while I was distracted.  “Sheesh, she said, though finishing her portion”.   It seemed to me they brewed exactly what they intended to– and exactly what I wanted them to.   Just pickle me in this when I die.

Value —  Excellent!  It would have been a fair price for a good craft beer.  For this, just sell the car if you have to.   You can’t drive after this anyway.

This week we focus on the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

Soon we return to  HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE–  Some of the great beers we’ve found in our European travels.   A few may be some of the surprisingly good beer we’ve found in “bad beer cities”  as we researched our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.)   We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.

COMING IN DECEMBER:   THE TEN BEST IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS.  We count down to the New Year by thinking back of some of the greatest beers we’ve found in the last five years of hunting.   These beers are in our top 0.2% of the beers we’ve tasted recently.   

 About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   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.

Victory Mighty Things Imperial IPA, Downingtown, Pa.

Date:  November 29, 2018

The Story—  We’ve known the founders of Victory since they were brewers in the Washington, DC, and it’s been a thrill to see them soar to such heights.   After  a merger with New York’s Southern Tier brewery and an acquisition of SixPoint, they’ve grown to be the 14th largest American brewery.  But the founders of both Victory and Southern Tier have been left alone to continue to brew in the way they see fit.

Victory has succeeded by brewing honestly good beer first, and marketing wisely as a secondary priority.   We don’t always thrill to their latest so-far-our-of-the-box-it-drops adventure, but more often than not they hit it out of the park.  A far safer investment than some of their sours, at least for us, are any of an apparently endless parade of very strong and very good beers. If the beer is heavily hopped, so much the better, they’re masters of hopping.  We jumped at this one when we found it in September at Half Time in Poughkeepsie.

The Beer—  It’s an Imperial IPA — at 8.3%, but it’s less in-you-face than many of the style.   While we like an occasional hop jolt (we are still “hop pocket” people at heart), it’s nice to settle in with an IPA that’s as soothing as a barley wine with an easy sipping hop quality.   Mighty Things starts with soft chalk, soft fruit, and some lightly toasted malt, resolving to a nice back bitter late.  Resin, chalky rich malt and hop flavors remain as it drinks.  They’re all soft flavors but they last and –softly — build to a true Imperial IPA.

Value —  Good to very good.   Victory prices their beers exceptionally fairly.   It’s not hard to find a genuine gem from them at a price that’s in the middle of the craft beer pricing.

This week we focus on the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

Next week we return to  HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE–  Some of the great beers we’ve found in our European travels.   A few may be some of the surprisingly good beer we’ve found in “bad beer cities”  as we researched our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.)   We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.

COMING IN DECEMBER:   THE TEN BEST IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS.  We count down to the New Year by thinking back of some of the greatest beers we’ve found in the last five years of hunting.   These beers are in our top 0.2% of the beers we’ve tasted recently.   

 About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   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.

Mikkeller George (Georg) Imperial Stout,

Date:  November 27, 2018

The Story— We’ve reviewed many Mikkeller beers her and elsewhere over the years.  We’re in awe of this former schoolteacher turned MegaContract brewer.  He’s also spun off a couple of students and inspired countless other brewery-less brewers to find a niche in this brewing revolution.

Contract brewers come in all sorts and sized.   Some just try to capitalize on a locale or a name and couldn’t care less about the stale pale ale they stuff in the can.   Some have breakthrough ideas but have trouble sustaining their businesses after others copy their ideas and the home brewery is no longer available.  (Pete’s Wicked and, we’d like to think, Tuppers’ Hop Pocket).  Other continue to drift around the world looking for breweries with extra capacity and an interest in collaboration.  (To Ol, Evil Genus).  Some try to use the contact base as a platform to build brick and mortar breweries –  Gary Heurich swore he’d build a brewery but never did.  Jeremy Cowan brewed well in a number of places and marketed brilliantly, establishing a state of the art brewery in upstate New York, but selling out in a few years and returning to the contract life.  Mikkel Borg Bjergsø brewed superior contract beers– often at Belgium’s De Proef brewery– then opened bars to highlight his and other brewery’s craft beers and finally opened his own brewery in San Diego.   AleSmith needed to expand and instead of tearing everything down, sold their old brewery to Mikkel and built a new brewery along side of it.

This is the first beer we’ve had from the Mikkeller’s San Francisco brewery and it’s a winner.  “IHTBABS” condensed in our notes to “HTB” stands for “It’s hard to brew a bad stout” -and it is, but really good stouts may not have to worry as much about off flavors as brewers of pilsners, but balancing sweetness, chocolate, roasts and booze in a huge Imperial Stout requires a good deal of skill.   Mikkeller’s worked with world-class brewers for years; it’s small wonder that he’s been able to reach world-class standards.

The Beer—  Creamy and very rich.  Dark malts, range from roast to some chocolate and toffee.  Dark fruits mingle and richness rocks the remainder.  Ellie found it unctuous (Ellie’s like unctuous) but ultimately hot. No one left any on the table.

Value — Definitely good value.   Fairly big bucks for a big bottle.   You get what you pay for for sure.

 This week we focus on the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

Next week we return to  HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE–  Some of the great beers we’ve found in our European travels.   A few may be some of the surprisingly good beer we’ve found in “bad beer cities”  as we researched our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.)   We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.

COMING IN DECEMBER:   THE TEN BEST IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS.  We count down to the New Year by thinking back of some of the greatest beers we’ve found in the last five years of hunting.   These beers are in our top 0.2% of the beers we’ve tasted recently.   

 About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   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.

Green Bench Postcard Pils American Pilsner, St. Petersburg, Florida

Date:  November 26, 2018

The Story—  Green Bench takes its name from the fact that near the turn of the 20th century thousands of public benches, painted green, welcomed visitors and bonded locals in St. Petersburg, Florida.  Founded in 2013, and brewing on a modest 15 barrel system, it’s expanded its marketing area well up the East coast – we found this bottle at Half Time in Poughkeepsie, New York.  We worry when breweries outreach their natural market area;a 15 barrel system ought to be challenged to keep up with it’s local demand.  Many of the several beers we had from Green Bench had seen better days. An inspection of the date indicated it had been in spent 6 months in transit before reaching our cart.   Still, we had to admire the professionalism of the beers.   Even well out of date, the beers were pleasant and interesting.   Next time we’re near St. Pete’s, well be standing at Green Bench’s door at opening time.

The Beer—The usual suspects stroll through the flavors of this citrus forward IPA, but after 180 days the lemon and orange are sweeter than tart even though there’s a peel-ish oil.  Chewiness may have increased over the half year, or may have been a part of the original taste, though we’d bet it would have played a less prominent role.

Value — Fair, even with some age on it.  We’re pretty sure it would be Good and maybe even Very Good if we could have gone to the brewery to get it.

This week we focus on the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

Next week we return to  HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE–  Some of the great beers we’ve found in our European travels.   A few may be some of the surprisingly good beer we’ve found in “bad beer cities”  as we researched our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.)   We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.

COMING IN DECEMBER:   THE TEN BEST IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS.  We count down to the New Year by thinking back of some of the greatest beers we’ve found in the last five years of hunting.   These beers are in our top 0.2% of the beers we’ve tasted recently.   

 About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   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.