I Drink Good Beer

“100% Wisconsin malt of six different varieties impart the natural toasted color to this bottle conditioned unfiltered ale. Clean hazelnut notes result from these carefully chosen barley malts. Hops from Slovenia, Bavaria and the Pacific Northwest give Fat Squirrel its backbone. When the going gets tough, remember to relax a moment and enjoy the “Fat Squirrel” in your neighborhood.”

Drink Indigenous: The motto of the local Wisconsin brewery. Only the locals and those visiting “America’s Dairyland” are privileged enough to sample the line of fine brews from New Glarus, which have never been distributed beyond state lines. Being that I’m currently only about 2.5 hours from New Glarus, I’ve had the opportunity to sample a few of their beers both on draft and bottled. If you haven’t already realized, this post is going to focus on my thoughts of their year round brown ale offering; Fat Squirrel.

Fat Squirrel is a nut brown ale, that I would say is brewed on par to the style and very drinkable at 5.8% ABV. From the bottle, it pours an amber color and remarkably clear for an unfiltered beer. After pouring, there is almost no head and the head that does develop dissipates quickly. With a whiff of this beer, the aroma smells rich with a hint of brown sugar/maple syrup with a malty background, almost no smell of hops.

With the first taste, I can already tell this a beer I’ll definitely enjoy. The medium, light body of this beer makes it go down smooth, but high carbonation levels almost seem to take away from it. My initial thoughts upon first sip was lots of caramel with a nice bready, malty finish. The brown sugar shines through in the taste of this beer as well as standing out in it’s aroma.  I enjoyed the way the taste lingered on the back of my tongue between sips. This brew finishes pretty dry, making it easy to kick back with a few.

After enjoying a six pack of this, I can see why New Glarus keeps this beer on rotation year round.

Stay tuned for my thoughts on other offerings from Wisconsin’s favorite craft brewer!

I have to start with what I am drinking right now.  Russian River Brewing’s Beatification.  This bottle is Batch 2 from 2008.  This stuff is super dry, ultra funky, and uber-tart.  The nose on this beer is all lemon and barn yard.  It tastes like grapefruits, lemons, the sugar from the bottom of a sour-patch kids bag.  As you drink it you get distinct experiences all over your tongue. The tip gets the citrus, the middle gets an earthy/mushroomy flavor, and the sidesget assaulted with acidic/tannic prickliness.  As it has warmed up and my pallet has become accustomed to the flavors the flavor of the beer has evolved.  The intense sourness has tapered off and the earthy complex components have come forward.  I really enjoy the California versions of lambics.  I wish they would make more of this stuff.

My last batch of home brew has come into it’s own over the past couple weeks. I was shooting for a belgian wit but the homebrew shop did not have the proper yeast strain when I  was buying my ingredients.  But they did have a Belgian Golden Strong Ale yeast (Duval). So I ended up with a hybrid of a beer.  This was my first all grain beer and I has turned out very well.  There is an aroma to it that I do not like but the flavor is awesome.  There is a bit of the sourness that comes from wheat and the malt flavors are much more complex compared to when I have brewed with extracts.  While I was brewing I threw in some dried orange peel, dried lemon peel, coriander, and a few cilantro leaves.  There isn’t anything too distinctive in the beer, just a light easy drinking wheat beer.  It weighs in at about 3.8% abv.

Stone Brewing offered up some vintage beer last weekend.  They were pouring their 2008 Old Guardian Barley Wine aged in red wine barrels.  This stuff was pretty cool.  A big beer at 11.26% abv.  It is malty.  The hops that were there in 2008 have faded away; this was expected due to the beer’s age.  The barrel influence on this beer is rather subtle.  It is not red wine like, nor woody, nor sour.  I enjoyed the beer.  I expected the barrel aging to make it more extreme; but the barrel helped mellow out the beer.

Finally ,I attended Stone’s 4th Annual Sour Fest over a week ago.   Missed out on a some of the more popular beers (the kegs had already kicked by the time I got there).  But I still had my share of old rotten beer.  I love those sours.

After visiting rogue in Newport, OR, we went back to Portland for one more brewery visit. The Bridgeport Brewery was founded in 1984 and is Oregon’s oldest craft brewery.

We were too late to tour the brewery, so we headed over to the brewpub for food and beer. The food was amazing (like all the eats in Oregon). Here is the mac and cheese that Jeff had, it was awesome!

My favorite beer was their India Pale Ale. It was very rich and was so good I forgot to take a picture of it. We also tried their Haymaker Pale Ale. It was crisp and delicious. We stayed there for awhile then headed to the world famous Otto’s Sausages.

There we picked up some British Bangers and Bratwursts, and headed back to our buddy Josh’s place to grill out and drink our newly purchased Rogue Yellow Snow IPA and Rogue Imperial Stout (too stout for me!)


Overall this was an amazing trip that took us all around northern Oregon from the mountains to the beach. This is the trip I always bring up when someone calls me a beer snob. My next visit to Oregon will be for their Annual Beer Festival where all the breweries bring out their best for the Rose City to celebrate. I will leave you with this video of the lineup at Rogue World Headquarters, collect them all!

Well Im too sure how to write about this beer, it is my first braggot.  It poured with no head with little to no carbonation.  The mouth feel was of syrup with pear juice and honey all the way through blending with the sweetness of the alcohol.  I bought an extra bottle to stash away and drink during the winter months, hell I may let it sit a little longer.

-Brian

As the titles states this post will be all about the tool I use to open alcoholic beverage container units aka bottles. I rock a Supreme bottle opener, I purchased it in 2007 at Leilow Honolulu, HI. What is Supreme you may ask? Supreme NYC was established in 1994 and what many consider a high end skate / lifestyle brand. This bottle opener has done more then just open bottles, acted as a flat head screwdriver, a mini pry bar, and countless other activities it wasn’t built for. And the damn thing keeps on trucking!!!

Hey everyone, this is Jared and this is my first post on IDGB or on any blog for that matter.  I am an avid ale drinker and serious hop head from North Jersey.  It doesn’t matter what type of beer it is, if it has hops in it I’l at least try it and more than likely enjoy it.  I came across 2 exceptionally delicious beers that I thought were worth sharing,  Sierra Nevada’s Sourthern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale and Troegs Flying Mouflan.

Both of these beers are extremely hoppy but in different ways.  The Flying Mouflan is a beefed up version of Troegs Nugget Nectar with some more alcohol but doesn’t carry the hops as well.  It is an awesome beer that pours really well with a lot of head and great consistency through and through.  The Moulfan is pretty heavy so be ready for the meal in a glass aspect of this beer.

The Southern Hemisphere Harvest Ale is one of my all time favorite beers.    This beer is all about hops, it hits you up front and finishes with a crisp hop aroma and flavor that never fades.  As the name implies it is a distinctly fresh beer that should be enjoyed whenever possible.  It lingers on your tongue begging you to go back for more.

I would recommend both of these beers to anyone who loves full bodied hopy ales.  Both are great to drink at a summer bbq or on a cool autumn night.

-  Jared

So my past month has been spent in Laredo, TX.  An empty void of good beer if I have ever seen one.  Thank you Sierra Nevada for a keeping me going.  But last weekend I made the three and a half hour drive to Austin.  They have beer in that town. We went to The Draught House in the north part of town.  Great bar. You can drink and play darts in the parking lot!  People also brought their dogs and had pizza delivered.  Like I said, “Great Bar.”  So on the way out of town I stopped at Whole Foods.  There I piked up some Brooklyn Brewing beers, a 6-pack of Racer 5, an Ommagang Belgian Pale Ale, and a bottle of Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale from Boulevard Brewing Co. out of Kansas City, Missouri.  (which is what I am drinking tonight)  The Tank 7 is a fantastic saison.  I wish I had bought more of this stuff.  It has a really mellow nose of pale malts and yeast with earthy hop aromas.  The beer starts out with a sweet taste then it becomes peppery and spicy; finely finishing very dry with a green apple after taste.  That is a simplistic description of the beer because it is very complex and satisfying.  I also taste hops, mushrooms, pears, wheat, sourdough… This is what I look for in a sasion.  Complex, dry, and leaves you wanting more.  Unfortunatly this is the only bottle I have and it does not reach Southern California.  If you every come across this beer I say try it.  Tank 7 is an excellent example of a world class sasion.

We have a new contributor here at IDGB, Ryan aka Ryan Devilhorns.  He will sharing his trip to Stone 14th Anniversary party as well as other beer related events in California.   I snagged this post from his personal blog www.givemeshred.com  Check him out!!

- Brian

For the most part, I like IPA’s, stouts and ales, and that is what I stick to.  Imperial IPA’s transcend all three for me and are my absolute favorite beer type.  After attending the 13th Anniversary party and getting my fair share of 13th Anniversary ale, I was thrilled to see that Stone was going Imperial IPA for 14th.

I had a chance to stop by Stone today on the way home, in the hopes that they’d have some 14th Anniversary for the early birds, and they didn’t disappoint.  I got a couple of bottles of 14th and a growler each of Self-Righteous Ale and some Smoked Porter.  The selection this week was pretty much just the normal selection; a little underwhelming, but with the anniversary party coming up, I figure they’re holding back some of the more rare brews.

I got home early, so I wasn’t going to wait; one was getting cracked tonight. After cooling for a bit, I got out my 13th Anniversary taster and  had my first sample of 14th.  The result: totally disappointed.  DFH 90-minute and Green Flash’s Imperial IPA offerings are straight up delicious, and this didn’t taste anything close to what I consider a good IIPA.  This tasted dangerously close to Sawyers Triple, of which I am no fan.  The taste is just too close to a Belgian / triple style beer for me.  The taste is definitively Stone, but this is not the taste I was expecting from the Stone version of an IIPA.

I’m actually saddened to see that Stone went a little overboard on this IPA.  It’s a good beer, but that’s about it; just good, not great like many other Stone offerings.

- Ryan

After visiting Portland and Pacific City, me and my buddy Jeff went off to Newport, Oregon in search of Rogue perfection. We started out at the Rogue Ales Public House. This is where Rogue started out at and brewed all their beer until 1992 when they moved across the river to the big brewery. This is located down on the docks in the fishing district.

Here we had a couple of beers before we realized that the brewery was moved across the river. The coolest part of this restaurant/bar were the hand painted murals on the wall of various rogue beer labels.

We moved across the river to the amazing sight of Beer-varna

To get in you have to walk through the big red silo. I loved the message painted nice and high for everyone to see.

Inside you first walk through the brewery area. This has all the vats that hold their various brews waiting patiently for their transformation to awesome. Then up the stairs to the bar. Here, of course, they have every Rogue beer on tap, plus a tap for Coors Light. I asked the bartender why there is a tap for this lame beer. She responded by putting a glass under it and pouring out water. “We only serve Rogue here!”

Jeff and I wanted to try every beer, but there were so many we failed miserably! Here I am working on my sampler. My favorite here was the I2PA or XS Imperial Indian Pale Ale.

Best thing about being in a bar in Oregon are the Oregon Lottery Game Machines right there in the bar. Jeff managed to win enough to pay for our whole tab for the night!

They even had a bottle of the super rare Ten Thousand Brew Ale. Too bad I didn’t get to try it.

The food was awesome too. Here is the hummus flanked by the Captain Sig’s Northwestern Ale and what I think is the Double Dead Guy

We hung out until sunset then went off in search of seafood. We stumbled into the most amazing seafood place I’ve ever been in called Shark’s. I had the delicious seafood cioppino made even better with a fresh Winder Hefeweizen. Soooooooooooooooo good.

We stayed the night at the super cheap Money Saver Motel and went back to Oregon for one more brewery visit, stay tuned for the conclusion!