Lost in the Beer Aisle - Never take beer (or life) too seriously

Baxter Summer Swelter

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Lost

Tonight guest reviewer Kyle brings us a review of Baxter Summer Swelter from Baxter Brewing. Kyle lives in the Lower Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. He is a community organizer and fan of everything local including craft beer, food, and politics.

I grew up in Maine so I’m always excited to try new craft beers from Vacationland. With the temps on the rise I decided to pick up Baxter Brewing Company’s new offering-Summer Swelter.

Lemon smells burst out of the can and when poured into a glass (I usually drink it from the can) a frothy white head appears. This is Baxter’s first unfiltered beer so it’s hazy with an almost burnt orange color.

More lemon with some lime in the taste. It’s a little malty which balances the zesty taste. Quite refreshing and drinkable. Enough flavor to satisfy craft beer fans while also being a good introduction for friends who prefer other beers. At 4.7% ABV this is a fantastic beer for a backyard whiffle ball tourney, beach day, or day hike.

Enjoy!

-Kyle

Lost

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Foolproof Backyahd

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Lost

Tonight’s post comes from J.R. the G.R. (Jay R the Guest Reviewer). He is a regular LIBA reader and has attended LIBA beer meetups in the past. Many thanks for entertaining us this evening Jay…

So the fridge in our house went out last weekend. The new one got delivered this morning. Of course, the first things to go in was the beer supply, including the one planned for this review.

Foolproof Brewing is one of the approximately four million, six hundred and twelve new breweries to open in New England in the past few years. They are located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island and was started officially last fall, from a plan several years in the making. Owner Nick Garrison began brewing at home, and soon hatched a strategy to open his own production place. He recruited brewer Damase Olsson originally a Rhode Island native to come home after stints in Bolton’s Nashoba Valley Winery and Brewery and now defunct Pennichuck Brewing in Milton, New Hampshire.

They came up with three main beers, the Barstool Golden Ale, Raincloud, a robust Porter, and the subject of this review, the Backyahd IPA. They also have released two limited edition seasonal brews, the Revery Russian Imperial Stout and La Ferme Urbaine Farmhouse ale.

The Backyahd in question comes packaged in 12-ounce can, weighing in at 6%. The wording on the can states, “Guaranteed to deliver an unspoken Zen with a spatula in your other hand.”

It also describes the beer as, “…a tantalizing hop aroma. The beer’s bitterness pairs perfectly with spicing foods coming
straight off the grill.”

Poured into a Portsmouth Brewing tulip glass, I found it poured a hazy orange gold color, with almost no head to speak of. Interestingly, a second one I tried poured out with a fingerwidth or rocky, almost pure white foam atop. I am uncertain as to the difference in carbonation, as they were both poured alike.

The aroma was mostly hop-forward, with a citrusy, orange / grapefruit tang. The flavor is hop-dominated, unsurprisingly for an IPA. There is a touch of malty sweetness at the forefront, before the hops kick in, a combination of earthy and citrus, on top of the bitterness charge. The beer has a very quenching mouthfeel, but leaves you wanting another sip. At 6%, it’s one you can keep sipping on, within reason.

Overall, I found this a good beer. It’s no Heady Topper or Pliny the Elder, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a good one for drinking around the grill on a summer day / evening. I can see this becoming part of the rotation for summer beers for me.

Thanks to Josh and the Lost in the Beer Aisle crew for allowing us readers to submit reviews this week.

-Jay

Lost

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Ballast Point Sculpin IPA

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Silvio

I don’t know about any of you, but I’m feeling pretty jealous of Josh and his Hawaiian vacation. Beyond being my happy place, Hawaii has some great local beer. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a great week and the weather today is amazing, but I’m sure it’s balls compared to sandy beaches and cold Kona brews.

As some small measure of Pacific Ocean consolation, I’ve decided to review San Diego-based Ballast Point Brewery’s Sculpin IPA. I’ve learned this brewery is a bit of a West Coast cult favorite, and while I’ve favorably reviewed their Big Eye IPA before, I’ve never before been able to score a Sculpin.

This brew pours out a golden and slightly cloudy yellow, looking a bit like an unfiltered pilsner than IPA. I got a mix of fruity notes on the aroma, settling somewhere between apricots and oranges, with just a touch of stanky hops – my kind of IPA.

Tastewise, this is one of the better IPAs I can think of, and it’s got tons of flavor, starting with piney hops up front. The fruity aroma comes in through the middle, with lots of citrus and tropical tastes. Hard to say what the dominant fruit is here, maybe grapefruit? Regardless, Sculpin returns to its hoppy roots toward the end, with a stanky/resin hops end note that fades into a bitter mouthfeel that lingers until the next sip.

Ballast Point names their brews after local fish, and apparently the Sculpin is known for both it’s dangerous fin spikes and incredibly tasty meat. With just a 7% ABV, I’m not sure this brew is as dangerous as the fish, but I’ll definitely give it props for taste. Make sure to grab one of these brews whenever you can – I know I will!

Silvio

I like beer.

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Posted in Guest Reviews, Silvio Saturday, Style: American IPA | Tagged Apricot, Citrus, Grapefruit, Hawaii, Orange, Pine, Resin, San Diego, Stanky | Leave a comment

Golden Road Hefeweizen

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Lost

Today’s guest review comes from Tom Bedell. Tom writes about beer, and golf, for any number of publications. He’s most easily found at http://theaposition.com/tombedell/. You have the Helm Tom…

I’m working on an article about craft beer in cans for a southern California golf magazine, and therefore working my way through the cans themselves. The usual tough duty, and since I’m from Vermont I’m getting to try some west coast beers not normally found near home.

Enter the Golden Road Hefeweizen—as in entering my gullet—from the Golden Road Brewery, founded in Los Angeles in 2011.
Owners Tony Yanow and Meg Gill wanted to fashion a traditional southern German hefeweizen, and they traveled to Bavaria to learn about the style on its home ground. But when they returned home they added some California sunshine to their brewing vessels in the form of dried lemons and oranges (shown floating in the tank in the photo), to go along with the German hops and four different malts.

As might be expected, the beer is a zesty one, brimming with refreshment and the traditional esters associated with Bavarian hefeweizens, redolent of banana and clove. The citrus character is more evident in the tangy mouthfeel than in any overwhelming additional flavor. Nonetheless, no need to add a citrus wedge to your glass here; it’s already in it.
Packaged in a 16-ounce can, Golden Road Hefeweizen is a tall glass of invigoration, but at 4.6% ABV, no problem. It will agreeably cut a thirst on a golf course, or anywhere else for that matter.

-Tom

Lost

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Weyerbacher Heresy

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Lost

Greetings all! I’m Ryan, and I like beer. I’ve written for my own beer blog (Mould’s Beer Blog) for almost a year now, and have a heck of a lot of fun doing it. For my Lost in the Beer Aisle guest post, I’m enjoying a glass of Heresy from Weyerbacher Brewing. This Heresy has been sitting in my fridge for awhile now, just waiting for the right opportunity for me to spring it free. Thanks to Josh, that time is now!

Heresy
Weyerbacher Brewing Company
Imperial Stout Aged in Whiskey Barrels (Kentucky bourbon)
8.0% ABV

Heresy pours an inky, jet black color. In the glass, Heresy looks like motor oil topped with a small brown head. The head diminished fairly quickly, and didn’t leave very much lacing (if that’s your thing to take notice of). I let Heresy sit in my glass for somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. When I brought my nose to the glass, aromas of chocolate, vanilla and alcohol jumped out at me. In my first few sips, the vanilla whiskey flavor was definitely at the forefront. As my taste buds acclimated, chocolate and roasted malt became more prominent. Heresy is a fairly full bodied beer with low carbonation.

Overall: If you’re looking for a great introduction to bourbon barrel aged beers, Weyerbacher’s Heresy could be for you. Complex, yet approachable, Heresy is a beer I look forward to every February when it’s released from the brewery.

Again, thanks Josh for letting me post another guest review on Lost in the Beer Aisle! Cheers!

-Ryan

Lost

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Posted in Guest Reviews, Style: Imperial Stout | Leave a comment

Great Lakes Alchemy Hour DIPA

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Lost

Tonight’s guest reviewer, Bryan Roth, is a beer nerd and homebrewer living in Durham, North Carolina. You can read his thoughts on beer and the beer industry on his blog, This Is Why I’m Drunk, and send him suggestions on how to get his wife to drink craft beer via Twitter at @bryandroth.

In the old days of Egypt, alchemy was practiced by brilliant scientists working to turn lead into gold or even trying to create the elixir of life. In the 17th and 18th centuries, alchemy was used in the Western world to develop ideas of chemistry and medicine.

Despite the difference in time, four aspects connected the alchemists from days of yore to … lesser days of yore: magic, religion, spirituality and mythology. Sure as hell sounds like a beer to me, which is made up of four pretty important things, too: malt, hops, yeast and water.

Or, at least, it’s what I can only assume the “alchemists” at Great Lakes Brewing were thinking when they were concocting their Alchemy Hour Double IPA. They say it’s related to “Alchemy Hour” of dawn – the time of day for the perfect surfing waves – but then what’s with all the funky writing on the bottle’s label?

Tricky ones, those brewers/mad scientists.

This monster of a brew is brought to life with Mosaic hops, the cool, new kid in town born from a loving relationship between farmers and Simcoe hops, a classic West Coast hop known for its aromas of citrus and tropical fruit. Mosaic’s relationship to Simcoe is fitting, as it provides Alchemy Hour with tons of dank and resinous aromas of peach, mango, pineapple and whatever kind of tropical fruit you want.

There’s some tart grapefruit and rosemary just for good measure. Nugget and Cascade hops help a little.

You’ll find much of the same from this beer’s flavor, which charges into battle with your taste buds wielding pitchforks of apricot, pineapple and candied mango. If you’re patient enough to let this one sit in your glass for 10 to 15 minutes, caramel malt will add a nice bready base to fight off some of the hop flavor and lingering bitterness from each sip.

-Bryan

Lost

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Budweiser Light Lime Straw-Ber-Rita

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Lost

Day 1 of Hawaii. By the time you’re reading this, I’m about 10 hours into our 12+ hour flight and likely losing my mind. My buddy Rob from DailyBeerReview.com is covering for me today, and boy does he have a great beer to review for us: Budweiser Light Lime Straw-Ber-Rita!

So the Bud guys think making a strawberry-flavored version of their Lime-A-Rita is a good idea, huh? A “Margarita with a twist” so to speak? They even provided a picture instruction manual on the side of the can in case you don’t understand what “TRY IT OVER ICE!” means.

I got myself a 16 ounce can for the sole purpose of helping Lost keep his blog afloat while he’s afloat in some pool in a secluded jungle somewhere. Or something like that. Nutritional Information is as follows. Per 12 oz. (which means I would need to multiply by 1.333 if I want to know the whole can; you might have a different sized can so your math lesson might be different): Calories 297; Carbohydrates 35.4g; Protein <1g; Fat 0.0g.

Hot pinkish-red in color, almost blinding. Massively sweet and sugary strawberry aroma. I cracked it open outside so I could get some good light for a picture and I swear 100 mosquitoes swarmed the area. I'm thinking about putting it back out on the porch to see if they die when they touch this stuff.

So sweet! Strawberry and sugar overload. Actually, upon closer inspection, the can says it uses "artificial sweetener" so my bad. Basically, this is a strawberry wine cooler. That's it. The sweetness tries to mask the 8% alcohol and does a decent job doing so. But there is definitely a little alcoholic cough syrupyness going on here, minus the cough syrup thickness. Very chemical.

Really only one flavor going on here. Yes strawberry, though there was a little bit of lime in the finish. Dry at the end. WAY too sweet with an alcohol edge that's uncalled for. Do yourself a favor and just tip the cashier the $2 you were going to use to buy this.

-Rob

Lost

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Posted in Guest Reviews, Style: Malt Liquor | Leave a comment

Imperial IPA Blind Tasting

Posted on June 9, 2013 by Lost

Yesterday I had friends Norm, Greg, Heather and Sean over for an EPIC blind IPA tasting.

The Rules:

Only two people knew the full list of beers (My wife and me).
The tasting was fully blind. My wife selected the order of beers and poured the samples without anyone knowing what we were receiving.
We all scored the beer using super-official beer-judging scorecards.
Beers were based upon a mix of personal preference, and the “official” guidelines.
Final score of a beer was derived as an average of the taster’s scores.

We tasted 16 beers in all. At an average ABV of 8.7%, that’s a lot of imperial IPA!

The Beers We Tasted:

Alchemist Heady Topper
Back East Double IPA
Ballast Point Dorado
Ballast Point Sculpin*
Black Diamond Rampage
Bluepoint No Apologies
Captain Lawrence Captain’s Reserve
Firestone Walker Double Jack
Maine Beer Lunch
Marshall Wharf Can’t Dog
New Belgium Rampant
Port Mongo
Southern Tier Unearthly
Terrapin Hopzilla
Two Roads Road 2 Ruin
Wormtown Hopulence

* For the beer-Nazis out there, yes we know that Sculpin is not an imperial.

As we started the tasting, we all admitted that we were nervous – would we all give a great beer like Heady Topper a bad score? As we got a few beers in, a couple of things became clear. First, it would be very unlikely that we could identify a beer from tasting it; there were too many beers in the field. Second, we realized that we just had to trust our palettes; if we scored a “great” beer poorly, it wasn’t the end of the world,

When the beer had been drunk and the results were tallied, the winning beers were…

*DRUMROLL*

Black Diamond Rampage
Alchemist Heady Topper
Wormtown Hopulence
Maine Beer Lunch
Marshall Wharf Can’t Dog
Ballast Point Dorado
Terrapin Hopzilla
Southern Tier Unearthly
Bluepoint No Apologies
Port Mongo
Firestone Walker Double Jack
Two Roads Road 2 Ruin
Captain Lawrence Captain’s Reserve
Back East Double IPA
Ballast Point Sculpin
New Belgium Rampant

You can view complete results with scores from all participants by clicking the image below.

Many thanks to everyone who came out to the tasting. I had a ton of fun. Special thanks goes to Ben Roesch, co-owner & head-brewer of Wormtown Brewery, who supplied a large portion of the beer. And finally, an extra-special thanks to my wife for being such an awesome host. She opened, poured and delivered beer for over two hours and did it all the time with a huge smile. I owe you one babe!

I’m hoping to hold these every couple of months with different styles, so stay tuned for more blind tastings in the future.

-Lost

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Great Lakes Lake Erie Monster

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Silvio

Well folks, another week has passed us by and I once again find myself sitting in front of my computer, trying to come up with a lede for my beer review. Guess I just found one!

A run to the beer store today resulted in a bunch of new brews for review, but I’m most excited about Great Lakes Brewing’s Lake Erie Monster. This brewery always finds a way to tie their beers to a local story, and this one’s named after South Bay Bessie, the monster that’s supposed to live in the depths of Lake Erie.

I’m not sure about a monster living off the shores of Cleveland, but this beer definitely packs a monstrous one-two punch of hops and high alcohol content, weighing in at a fearsome 9.1% ABV. Wifey and I are headed out for dinner in a few hours, so I’m only allowed one (something about me always being hammered at dinner after I review beers) but I’m totally enjoying this brew.

The Monster pours out a clear orange-golden hue, with a nice little foam crown rising up from a constant stream of tiny bubbles, and nice citrus hops notes on the aroma.

This brew is surprisingly smooth for such a high alcohol level. It starts out with lots of bitter hoppiness, but quickly transitions into a nice mix of citrus and pine notes through the middle before ending on a bit of a sweet malted bread note. It’s a complex mix of flavors but it works incredibly well, taking you in three really strong but really distinct directions.

There’s a good bit of mouthfeel here, but the beer is overall eminently drinkable, making it a dangerous option if you’ve got to be somewhere public afterward, like me tonight. All in all, another excellent offering from the folks at Great Lakes.

Before I go, I wanted to give Josh a shout-out for hooking me up with super-sweet LIBA business cards, classy card case, and big baller title. Now I just need to start handing these babies out and watch all the swag come rolling in!