Latitude 48 IPA Deconstructed

Going to be honest here I’m not a huge fan of Sam Adams. It’s something that I can’t really put my finger on to be honest. I don’t mind the taste of their beers, they are well crafted and good tasting. It could be because they are literally everywhere (which is a huge credit to them for being that big and that popular). You go to a bar that is sporting a craft beer tap in Syracuse or really anywhere in the northeast (where you’ll most likely find me in a bar) one of your options will be Sam Adams. Whether it’s the seasonal or just the standard Boston lager on tap chances are it’s there. It’s definitely a beer I begrudgingly have to order more often than not over the macro selection of Coors, Miller, Bud and the light varieties of all of them. This could be the reason why I never by a 12er or a 6er of Sam because I am pretty much forced to drink it at every turn if I end up at a regular restaurant. But while searching Beers of the World in Rochester a couple weekends ago looking for something new I stumbled upon something I could not pass up; a mix 12 pack of IPAs from Sam Adams the “Samuel Adams Latitude 48 IPA Deconstructed” with 5 new IPAs. 5 IPAs in one box you say? I couldn’t say no.
I’ve never expected much from a Sam Adams beer. Just to be middle of the road craft style they’ve never disappointed me (except on that beer that was more like a marinade that a beer; in fact it was used as one on steaks later that week) and to be honest they have never blown me out of the water either. So, today as I began to fire up the grill for some burger grilling; I opened a bottle to try out the standard Latitude 48. To be honest, I was pleasantly surprised having never drank one of these before. The beer was very well balanced and completely satisfied the hop head in me. The plan in this blog is basically to rank my favorite of the 6 varieties in this 12 pack. Highest to lowest and after drinking the first 10 sips of this one I am already stoked for this project and this blog. I won’t be rating each by taste, appearance, aroma, etc like normal blog entries. This time I will just be ranking them, and giving an explanation of why they were ranked the way they were. That’s right in a good old fashion taste contest I’m lining them up and tasting each one and giving them a ranking!!! Get excited. This of course will be done after hockey so be prepared for what I would likely assume will be poorly written and misspelled explanation of why they are ranked that why because I had put down a 6 pack just before writing it. Not that this was well written... (This is what you get when an economics major with no interest in proof reading is writing for you.)


To be continued….

Devine Rebel – Mikkeller and Brew Dog Collaboration

Before the review I’m going to write out what is on the bottle… mostly because it’s awesome and to give a little background.
“In a rock ‘n roll collaboration, 2 of Europe’s most extreme, experimental brewers have combined forces, talents and ideas to produce this innovation ale.
Uniting inspitation, ingredients and people from around the world this beer was brewed and aged at BrewDog in Scotland.
This rebellious beer is partially aged in oak speyside whisky barrels and partially aged in stainless steel, combines an ale yeast and a champagne yeast and showcases a single hop variety.”
Yea, this beer sounds awesome. 2nd to beer on my list of preferred drinks is scotch, so this is going to be an awesome beer for sure. Let’s Do This!
The point breakdown for a beer is as follows!
Appearance (0-3)
Aroma (0-4)
Taste (0-10) [Hop/Malt Balance (4); After Taste (3); Mouth Feel (3)]
Overal Impression (1-3)
Appearance (2.5) – Just like the weather out in Syracuse on a regular basis this beer is partly cloudy. Dark Amber to Brown in color. Really what you would expect from a English Style Barleywine, aged in scotch barrels.

Aroma (3.5) – I can pick up all of the malt and the scotch in the nose of this beer. It truly blends together so well that the untrained taste buds may miss the scotch nose on it but it’s there. Possibly more standing out because of the amount of time the beer aged but it is definitely there.

Taste (7.5) [Hop/malt (2) After taste (2.5) Mouth feel (3)] – There is little to no hop character that stands out in this beer, making it overly malty in strictly that category. The balance really comes over the palate with the Scotch and the Malt flavor not so much the hops. Partial credit here but I can’t award full credit that’s for sure. The After taste lingers a little bit. It’s a beer that I truly enjoy so I like the aftertaste but if you weren’t a fan of this beer you probably wouldn’t finish, or need a water to help clean the palate. Mouth feel solid, it’s a full bodied beer with a great mouth feel; comes out very well balanced.

Overall Impression (3) – Loved this beer. I liked this beer so much after the first time I tried it I bought one from a tasting event from the left over stash after everyone was done sampling. I don’t remember if I got a good deal on it or not; but still it was worth it just to have this beer for the future. Honestly this is probably the beer that got me likely Barleywines in general. This is a very well balanced beer; with some scotch undertones and not too overbearing with hops or malts. The scotch really evens out the beer in my mind to not make this barleywine too malty and sweet.

I looked at some reviews online of this beer, many people seemed disappointed in this beer in general. I'd like to believe that the beer got a lot better with age, and I wasn't the only person who truly enjoyed this beer. You have my review; please by all means go and out and get one and let me know what you think. Get some craft beer and support a couple of great breweries from across the pond. Until next time Cheers!

Sorry about the weak photo... I'd take another one but the beer is... well gone.

In case you were wondering… beer came in a 11.2 fl oz bottle. Batch was 243 and the beer was bottled on 07/09/09.

The Great Vermont Adventure

With plans to head to Vermont for a weekend getting very close I set out to make a plan for my trip up that would not only get me to some great beer but to hopefully some brewpubs to sample some local fair. Star Date... Thursday January 27th 2011. My plans began in motion choosing the best breweries en route and in the surrounding areas of my ultimate destination. I ended up settling on 7 breweries I would like to visit, not only for the beer but for the stamps so that I could conquer the Vermont Brewery tour. Here were my destinations: Madison Brewing Company, The Alchemist, The Shed, Rock Art, Long Trail, Harpoon and finally McNeill's.

The game plan was to start on Friday and meet Dan for lunch at the Madison Brewing Company. First success. Sampler order, let's do this thing. The beer wasn't great, so it wasn't the best start to the journey but it was alright. The food was a little better, service a meh. Overall seemed like a pretty cool place. More of restaurant than a bar with plenty of seating and a relatively tiny bar. It was mid afternoon on a Friday so the service wasn't great, but who's complaining I was on vacation. I enjoyed my time there and it was time to pack up and head to the next destination. So we headed north on RT 100 toward Waterbury VT. When we walked in and took a look around this was the place to be in Waterbury (which isn't too far away from Stowe VT and their ski resort). While it was not easy getting a drink at this hour or finding a comfortable place to stand, I was making sure that it was going to happen. I grabbed a Holy Cow IPA on cask as well as a Beelzebub Stout. The IPA tasted great on cask I was truly impressed, as well as the Stout. Of the 4 other people I was with none of them had a bad thing to say about either beer. I really did enjoy the stout though which was a full bodied experience with a great malt character from beginning to end. Simply delicious. The saddest thing about this brew pub was that they did not serve growlers. I treat growlers like trophies, probably because I never won any sports championships as a kid but that's not important now, and I love bringing them home and off showing all the different breweries I have been too.

Day 2: After hitting up the log cabin for the remainder of the night. It was time for day 2 of the adventure and 2 more brewery destinations... Right after we stopped at the Ben and Jerry's factory (obviously). First stop for a late lunch/snack was The Shed, located in Stowe VT. Their bar area looked awesome had TVs set up plenty of people in there and a real cozy atmosphere in there. Unfortunately with the size of the party and the available space in the bar we went to the dinner room. Which is retrospect was pretty awesome. The dining rooms were truly beautiful. 2 different dining rooms that were separated with seemingly 2 different themes. Order up them Samplers (8 to be exact). Beer was good, not amazing but solid brews across the board and a new fun way of serving the samples, on a ski with mounted glass holders. It was pretty awesome. Food was decent but we were in a hurry and just got finger foods. Growlers were available for purchase as well; Amber Ale came home with me. 1 party member did not finish all of their samples, unlike the day before at Madison, I grabbed most of what was left and slammed it home, she did man up for 1 of the glasses that were left over. On to what was the most anticipated destination for me of the trip Rock Art Brewery. (Note: Rock Art is moving soon to a new facility right on Rt 100) We tried to get a tour but the owner was building something in the back, and didn't want people walking around. We understood and sat down for a sampling anyways. They were rocking 4 beers on tap in the tasting room. We were able to sample everything that was on tap and get a souvenir glass for our trophy case. Now since this happened a little while back, my memory may be wrong but I believe they had Ridge Runner, The Riddler, Magnumus Ete Tomahawkus and either the American Red or the Helles Bock on tap. All of which were delicious. I grabbed a growler of Ridge Runner, picked up a sampler 12 pack and a bomber of Vermonter before I left. Overall the employees were great, gave detailed descriptions of the beer as well as being very polite and ready to interact with customers. Since I did manage to spend a decent amount of scratch at the brewery I got a bunch of free stickers and stuff. I did get a chance to speak with one of the brewers as well which was a pleasant and surprising experience when she told me that she only brews once a week there. Our brewery adventure was finished for the day. With a big day of traveling back to our real lives ahead of us and 3 more brewery stops it was time to head back to the cabin for dinner and well more drinks.

Day 3: The journey home (more accurately to CT) We set forth from the cabin in the early hours and headed south toward Bridgewater corners. Thanks to Dan's GPS technology he took a short cut and beat me to Long Trail by exactly .2 seconds. Long Trail doesn't serve growlers but did give out samplers in cupcake baking trays which was a pretty awesome idea to be honest. As you can image another sampler went down in VT, along with lunch. Before we sat down we went on the tour of the facility, which actually is a walk down a catwalk but a tour nonetheless. The best part of this visit was that the brewers were right in the middle of the mash, so the entire building smelled wonderful. Once again another great meal with some great people. Once the meal was over it was off to Harpoon Brewery in Windsor VT. I didn't realize they had a restaurant here as well, for a sampling room. If I had known that we probably would have skipped that wait at Long Trail (which was completely packed) and grabbed some beers our stamps and headed out. Lesson learned for the future. Harpoon was very classy looking, wish I could have sampled some food there as well to give a review but the beer was great. Another fun thing about Harpoon was that it was right next to a dog sledding course. So the huskies were out running around while we were sampling beers. This could have definitely been an all day affair in Windsor if it was planned out better. Growler of Leviathan Series Imperial IPA purchased to finish off my 4 growler purchases, of the weekend. It was time to head south for 1 last brewery stop. That was McNeill's Brewery in Brattleboro VT; where I was lucky enough to get the Dead Horse IPA on cask, the ladies got the Oatmeal Stout on cask. Both were delicious and a great way to cap off the weekend in Vermont.

Thanks for taking this journey with me in my long winded story nature. I should be able to get a beer review up in the next couple of days after I find a delicious to give a review for.

Beer #1 of the Journey
Ice Sculpture outside of The Alchemist




The Whole Haul back from VT and CT!
The Sexy Growler Shot ;)

Great Divide's 16th Anniversary Wood-Aged Double IPA Review

This is a wonderful offering from Great Divide. Celebrating sixteen years of brewing, Great Divide made this, a wood-aged Double IPA. As always top-notch style points for the label design.

I aged this beer about seven months, so don't expect huge hops in my review you lupulin freaks!

Appearance: Pours a wonderful clear copper color. Like a burnished copper, but brilliantly clear. The head is off-white and thin, but extremely persistent. Lacing flows down the side with each sip, leaving a ring like a trail of memories all the way to the bottom.

Aroma: Surprisingly strong notes of vanilla and oak. The hops come in the background, but certainly make their presence known. This beer does not lack a complex aroma, it's bursting at the seams with strong scents. As mentioned, the hops fall in behind the vanilla and oak, but it's a beautiful balance that leaves you aching for a sip. There's also some sticky sweet malt aroma, like you fired a sticky bun on an oak plank, simply wonderful.

Taste: Bitterness is very smooth. The oak is as bright as the hops, but doesn't have that astringent or overpowering oak flavor a lot of wood aged beers have, very smooth and complimentary. There's a nice amount of mouthfeel here, but with the wonderful balance of flavors, you could easily forget this is 10% ABV.

Overall: Simply put, this beer is a delight. Even though it's getting up there in age, it's a beer that ages remarkably, which is surprisingly for a double IPA. It is the best wood aged hoppy beer I've had in quite some time.

Great Divide - Titan IPA

The point breakdown for a beer is as follows!
Appearance (0-3)
Aroma (0-4)
Taste (0-10) [Hop/Malt Balance (4); After Taste (3); Mouth Feel (3)]
Overal Impression (1-3)

Not taking too many risks with this 2nd beer up for review here. Why? Not sure to be honest it's the first thing I pulled out of the garage this evening, well... the 3rd but the 1st one I decided to review. In case you were wondering, the tasting came from a 12oz bottle (bottled OCT 25th), poured into a pint glass (as you can see above). Moving on from my night to what you people actually came here for this review!

Appearance (3) - Beautiful off golden brown heading toward amber color. Not cloudy at all.

Aroma (3) - Great aroma of hops pouring out of the glass and right into your nose. Surprisingly with this beer you can even get a good sense of the malt to hop balance even in the nose.

Taste [Hop/malt (4) After taste (2) Mouth feel (3)] - Well balanced hop to malt characteristics coming through in this beer, despite the indication of a lot of hops that should be coming through with the nose. The after taste basically gets a knock because I really wish it lasted longer, but it is a very clean finish. The mouth feel is great not over powering and not too light. While the hops may scare away some new to IPA drinkers it is a good IPA to begin your adventure into the west coast style of IPAs.

Overall Impression (2.75) - Great Divide is a heavy / strong beer maker so heavy that their variety 12 pack actually has no beer in it under


While I would like to give this beer a 3; let's be honest this is review 2. I would start to feel like Homer Simpson in the episode where he was the restaurant reviewer. Name of the episode is "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?" to quote that episode... "9 thumbs up, what was that?" from here on out, I will try to be a little more particular and harsh on the beers. But it's going to be a long a hard road because I love beer so much and find so few that I just don't enjoy. Anyway Cheers and until next time good drinkin'.

Smuttynose - Baltic Porter

As always the point breakdown for a beer is as follows:
Appearance (0-3)
Aroma (0-4)
Taste (0-10) [Hop/Malt Balance (4); After Taste (3); Mouth Feel (3)]
Overal Impression (1-3)

Kewi-
- Appearance (3)
Great porter appearance; black good dark foamy head
- Aroma (3)
Very Strong aroma. May scare away the casual drinker. Not a bad aroma, a tad on the intimidating side.
- Taste (7) (hop/malt 2, after taste 3, mouth feel 2)
Strong roasty taste, malt comes through over any real hop character throughout. First impression though and it sticks throughout is the roastiness of this brew.
- Overall Impression (2.5)
This is a great beer to have just 1 of; it would be hard to drink more than one of these in a sitting for even an experienced porter drinker. Perfect hanging out and relaxing drink after work. I think it would go rather well with a juicy steak.
Total - 15.5


Amanda
- Appearance (3)
- Aroma (3.5)
- Taste (9) (hop/malt 3, after taste 3, mouth feel 3)
- Overall Impression (3)
Total 18.5



...to be continued, as I can not read Amanda or Rockney's writing. Penmanship people.

Syracuse Brewer's Market Starts a Blog!

It's the day after Christmas and the folks at the Brewer's Market are hanging out to watching football and drinking Christmas beers. This year Rockney Roberts, one of the partners, received a red metal bucket filled with local and delicious craft brews from his Aunt. (Thanks, Aunt Gloria and Uncle Dominic.) Rockney and his wife, Amanda Roberts, a local designer, have filled their Christmas bucket of brews with Syracuse, NY snow to chill the brews for drinking. Finally, the relaxation is setting it.

Kevin Williams, the other partner of the Brewer's Market, is watching his NY Giants team as his enjoys Middle Ages' Dragonslayer, an Imperial Stout. It's rich black-brown color, dark creamy brown head, delights the eye and rolls over the palate with it's roasty flavor.

The goal for the Brewer's Market's Blog is to bring the joy of beer to the Syracuse, NY area. "We would like to bring people together with taste, color, and pure beer fulfillment", says Amanda. "I would also like to see the Brewer's Market become a beer store that will bring the community of Syracuse, NY and it's surrounding areas closer because of the love of beer".

Joy to the World, thanks to delicious brews with good friends and family!