GRM beer tasting

Just finished a bottle of Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier. Brewed in a monastery since 1040, apparently, which I reckon is pretty damn impressive.

It's a bit expensive, but bloody good; has a distinct malty smoothness, with hints of bubblegum and banana flavours - quite unlike anything I've tasted before.

I see BoxheadTim and Salanis are already savvy to this beer, which means my uncultured palate can at least recognise 'good' beer when it tastes it .

In reply to poopshovel:

Do you mean Ruination? Levitation is their "low gravity" offering (still has more alcohol than a lot of macro lagers at 4.4%), never seen that one priced higher than the IPA.

Salanis: Is the Grand Cru new? We get a lot of North Coast offerings up here (Thelonious, Old Stock, Old Rasputin, Blue Star, Acme, Red Seal and Pranqster are usually at in stock at my local beer store), but I have never seen a Grand Cru. I do love me some Allagash Grand Cru when it starts to get chilly, although grand cru doesn't seem to be a defined style really.

Do you mean Ruination?

I did. Oopsadaisy. Had it at Taco Mac a while back and it was really delicious.

Liqour store got some choice new stuff in this week. I built a six pack with Jai-Alai, a couple different weyerbachers, and...crap, can't remember the others.

The Jai Alai was decent. I feel like I'm still chasing the Hop Crisis Dragon though.

Josh wrote: Salanis: Is the Grand Cru new? We get a lot of North Coast offerings up here (Thelonious, Old Stock, Old Rasputin, Blue Star, Acme, Red Seal and Pranqster are usually at in stock at my local beer store), but I have never seen a Grand Cru. I do love me some Allagash Grand Cru when it starts to get chilly, although grand cru doesn't seem to be a defined style really.

Seems to be new. This was the first that I'd seen it. I don't think that I've seen Allagash Grand Cru.

Given that you and Allagash are in Maine, and North Coast and I are in Cali, that could have something to do with how much we have available from each of those breweries.

Yeah, it's not a style. Apparently it's a term borrowed from wines used to indicate a really good growing spot or something. In beer it's generally just the best-of-the-best of what they do. Most frequently, they're a blend of a couple different beers aged different amounts in different conditions. The North Coast is tough to define style wise. It's like an over-strength Golden Ale, like double Pranqster, bourbon barrel aged.

Salanis wrote: The North Coast is tough to define style wise. It's like an over-strength Golden Ale, like double Pranqster, bourbon barrel aged.

Sounds like fun. The Allagash one is sort of a strong golden/weak tripel with spices, kind of like their version of a winter warmer. Gouden Carolus also has a Grand Cru (sometimes sold as Cuvee van de Keizer, I think) that's another completely different take, it's a boozy quad with strong licorice and dark fruit flavors, also pretty great.

In reply to Josh:

Is the Allagash one about... 7%? I'll have to hunt that down sometime. Spent too much money on beer yesterday.

Another one that I really like is Rodenbach Grand Cru. Again, totally different. It's nice and sour. Kind of a Flemish Red style. A blend of 67% old and 33% young ale that has been aged in wood vats. Really an excellent beer.

Also popped open a bottle of North Coast Old 2009 Stock Cellar Reserve. That was definitely rich. Old Stock is a barleywine, so about 12% and dark dark. Actually, it was a really gorgeous dark ruby, but you could definitely see the red if you held it up. Kind of like just a couple shades lighter than Guinness.

My girlfriend put it well: It tastes like candied figs. Really good.

Salanis wrote: In reply to Josh: Is the Allagash one about... 7%?

Round about there. I'm not sure how availability is recently, the website says it's out of production, but it was on tap last time I went to the Great Lost Bear in Portland, and I see bottles on the shelves regularly.

The best barleywine I ever had was on tap at Portsmouth Brewery for their christmas party (can't remember if it was in '09 or '10). It was two previous years' vintage, which means it was about 3 years post brew. The hops and sugars had really mellowed out and there was this very interesting caramel-butterscotch sort of thing going on. I never have the patience to let anything like that happen in my own modest stash :).

I had some Shiner Bock over the weekend. For some reason, I was thinking it was a decent beer. It isn't. It tastes about like Budweiser.

Had the Sierra Nevada Estate Ale last night. I was fairly unimpressed. The beer was good. I like the idea of sourcing the hops and barley from their own estate, and you can taste the influence of fresh picked hops. It just was not so amazing as to be worth the $10/750ml bottle price. Their Southern Hemisphere Harvest is out right now, just as good, and half the price.

In reply to Salanis:

What Sierra Nevadas are your favorites? For their mainline stuff, anyway.

Mainline favorite: Summerfest. One of the best Pilsners I've had, and certainly the best that I can find easily. It's only a summer release, but that's when I want a Pilsner. Perfect beer for finishing up a day working on some project.

Kellerweis is also very good, but I don't buy weissens regularly. Every now and then I'll be in the mood for one, but that's infrequent enough that it's not worth buying a pack. If I did, this would probably be the weissen for me. It and North Coast Blue Star are the two best weissens that I've seen in 6-pack form.

Torpedo is a good IPA, but there are others I prefer more. Lagunitas IPA is common enough here to be in most grocery stores. Racer 5 isn't as common, but I don't have to go out of my way to get it. The local BevMo has started stocking Sculpin.

Boutique: Their Ovila beers are outstanding. Not cheap, but priced comparable to similar beers, and proceeds go to help an Abbey.

Celebration is also very nice, but there are other holiday ales I prefer more.

I wish I could find half of this stuff in Alabama...

I can't remember who recommended this beer, but thank you from the bottom of my little beer swiggin' heart.

I got one of the big bottles, and it more than filled my big frosted mug. (I store them in the freezer) At first whiff, I got a distinct "wet cardboard" smell. And latter sniffs weren't much better. I thought great, I just spent a bunch of money (relatively speaking) on a skunked bottle. The taste was amazing, all roasty toasty goodness, with a crisp finish, and a mild alcohol warmth. I prefered it to "Old Rasputin", and that says a lot.

The Frazetta-esque label featuring a Pegasus was nice to look at while enjoying the cool warmth.

I had a few Shiner Bocks at "The Electric Cowboy" this weekend, while celebrating my wife's birthday, and enjoyed them. Nothing earth shaking, but a good drinkable beer, and a little better than a Budweiser. imho

Everything Unibroue makes rates at least a "good" and many of them creep up into the "Awesome" range.

If you can find a bottle of their Quelque Chose, get it.

It is a mixture of a Belgian Kriek ale and their brown ale. It's a deep red color, the sort of red wanna-be vampire Goths might wish all of their drinks might be. It's fruit character is clear and sour; they don't really hop this beer much. The malt gives it a sweetness to counterbalance the sour cherries.

Protip: get two bottles. Drink one lightly chilled. Drink the other out of brandy glasses lightly heated. Totally changes the experience of the beer.

Brett_Murphy wrote: Protip: get two bottles. Drink one lightly chilled. Drink the other out of brandy glasses lightly heated. Totally changes the experience of the beer.

Yeah, for darker beers, warmer is the way to go. "Cellar Temperature" (about 50-60) is usually correctly for big dark beers like Russian Imperial Stout. Only really light beers or ones with crappy flavors are best served at the near-freezing temp.

93EXCivic wrote: I wish I could find half of this stuff in Alabama...

Do what we had to do 25 years ago, here in BF Arkansas. Get a few of your friends, pick one liquor store, and special order a variety of beers. A sixer, a case, whatever is the owners minimum. After a while he will start stocking the ones you order the most, and he may (like ours did) start a singles wall. Where you can buy a variety, a bottle at a time to see what you like. That increased his buisness and educated his "regulars" to what a variety is available.

I still drive 30 miles to get to the one place that would work with us when we started. He is now one of the largest in the area, and a few others are starting to offer "specialty brews" (like Guinness LOL).

Trois Pistoles, yum. Either that or Maudite is my favorite Unibroue beer, it's been too long since I've had either.

I got an interesting treat this Sunday, on my way home from an autocross I stopped in at one of my favorite bars to catch the last few minutes of the Pats game and have a beer, and they happened to have just put on their last keg of Allagash Fluxus '10. This is probably the last time I'll ever see it on draft, the fluxus is a once a year brew that is different every year and so far never repeated. In 2010 it was a Belgian style imperial stout brewed with cacao nibs, and it was amazing. Like a black forest cake in a glass, rich with a of hint tartness under big roasty caramelly chocolate flavor. With a year under its belt it was quite different, it had dried out and soured noticeably, at first I wasn't sure about it, but by the bottom of the glass I was lamenting the fact that I'd already drank both of the bottles I bought last year.

I also picked up a bottle of that North Coast Grand Cru yesterday, along with a Stone Belgo Anise Russian Imperial Stout, which just sounds so ridiculous that I had to give it a try.

Girlfriend picked up La Fin Du Monde and Golden Monkey last night. I guess it's a safe bet that she likes Belgian Golden styles. That's cool, probably ties with Saison as my favorite style too.

Drinking a La Fin Du Monde now. To sum it up: It tastes like Dutch Apple Pie. Great beer.

I'm not a huge fan of Golden Monkey. It's quite good, but not up to par with other beers in that style. I asked her why she's so fond of it. Pretty simple: "It's the only one in that style that comes in a 6-pack". So, yeah. Not as good, but price for tastiness is about equal with other Goldens.

Belgian Stout sounds odd to me. I guess I don't see why not though. I like style fusion beers. I'd be interested in tasting one without the extra cocoa nibs, anise, etc. to see the full impact of the yeast. Or is that kind of what Trois Pistoles is?

Ok, weekend before last, I drove up to fort bragg and had some beer from Northcoast Brewing, it wasn't bad but I wasn't really impressed. It was cold and wet but didn't really rock me. I had their seal rock on the cask and it wasn't bad, I'd say good but not great.

You guys ever drink beer on the cask? I've had only a few good cask beers, many times it will pick up a weird flavor. Cask beer is more traditional of what beer was in another time; when you have beer served very cold it subdues the malt/sugar characteristics and flavors. In some beers the hops will make an otherwise balanced beer either taste overly hoppy or not balanced. The goal of a great IPA is should be to have a high alcohol beer with enough hops to balance the alcohol and malt. I taste too many IPA which don't have enough hops to balance the malt. I like lagunitas, but I almost feel their IPA is more of a highly hopped brown than an honest IPA.

Another great beer is bear republic red rocket, which is a spicy red ale with a good balance of hops. Nice and strong and red is not bad.

I don't know where you'd find(butt whole foods) it but Schneider makes a great weizen doppelbock called avenitus, one of my favorite wheat beers. It is like the oppossite of an IPA in that a good wheat beer relies on the malt to carry the flavor instead of having much hops but it is high alcohol which I like. I love me a nice fruity weizenbock. If you guys ever get a chance check out Erdinger in Venice beach on the boardwalk.

benzbaron wrote: Ok, weekend before last, I drove up to fort bragg and had some beer from Northcoast Brewing, it wasn't bad but I wasn't really impressed. It was cold and wet but didn't really rock me. I had their seal rock on the cask and it wasn't bad, I'd say good but not great.

Do you mean Red Seal? If so, that's one of their least interesting beers. Good and solid, but not terribly exciting. Pranqster, Old Rasputin, Brother Thelonius, and La Merle are where it's really at for their good stuff. Actually Scrimshaw and Blue Star are really good too if you are looking for a Pilsner or Weizen (respectively).

The goal of a great IPA is should be to have a high alcohol beer with enough hops to balance the alcohol and malt. I taste too many IPA which don't have enough hops to balance the malt. I like lagunitas, but I almost feel their IPA is more of a highly hopped brown than an honest IPA.

Uhh... No. IPA is not about adding enough hops to balance everything else. IPA is all about the hops. It's the most hop-focused style there is (not counting double, triple, or imperial IPA). In general the goal is to have just enough malt backbone with sufficient residual sweetness to keep the hops from being too overwhelming. A lot of breweries do leave their IPAs sweeter than I'd like though.

I don't know where you'd find(butt whole foods) it but Schneider makes a great weizen doppelbock called avenitus, one of my favorite wheat beers. It is like the oppossite of an IPA in that a good wheat beer relies on the malt to carry the flavor instead of having much hops but it is high alcohol which I like. I love me a nice fruity weizenbock.

I'm not sure if I've had Aventinus. It's been years if I have. Interesting style. It's actually a Weizen-Eisbock. Eisbock is an awesome style. You start with a doppelbock, and then you frost distill it.

As for Weizens, I'd say it's really the yeast that carries the flavors, more than the malt. All the banana, clove, bubblegum, and pepper flavors come from the yeast.

Salanis wrote: Belgian Stout sounds odd to me. I guess I don't see why not though. I like style fusion beers. I'd be interested in tasting one without the extra cocoa nibs, anise, etc. to see the full impact of the yeast. Or is that kind of what Trois Pistoles is?

Trois Pistoles is dark and roasty, but it's a strong dark ale, too sweet and not hopped enough to consider a stout. If you want to realy get what a belgian stout is all about, pick up a bottle of Allagash Black next time you see one. I love strong dark belgians, but you can't argue that style typically has much balance to it. The sweetness and booziness make them tiresome to drink a lot of, and most have barely noticeable hops. Black sort of fixes all of that, it has the nice roasty malt flavors, with the spicy, estery belgian yeast flavors, but it's drier, moderate in alcohol (7.5%), and has just enough hop bitterness to balance nicely. It's not the most amazing beer I've ever tasted, but it doesn't hit any wrong notes for me. It's probably the only dark belgian that I can get to the bottom of a 750ml bottle without either getting blitzed or being nauseated by the sweetness. If I had to pick one beer to drink exclusively for a year, It'd probably be Allagash Black.

In reply to Josh:

Yes, the world needs me to produce my brewing vision. I am making it my goal to create a proper fusion of Belgian and American styles. My latest Belgian Strong Dark is a thing of beauty: 9% Alcohol (it's for the holidays, so you can survive extended bouts with family), fairly dry, no solventy alcohol flavor, and balanced with about 50 IBU of spicy hops. I've also got an amber that's like a cross between an American Red and a Dubbel. My Belgian Blonde I hop up to about the same level as a Sierra Nevada, only I use European and/or New Zealand hops, not sharp American ones.

The hop issue with a lot of the Belgian beers, especially as they get bigger and darker, is that they spend time aging. Hop flavors mellow out very quickly. That's why Pliny has "Do not age. Drink as soon as possible," written all over it.

Fact: Dram Tree Scottish Ale will save an otherwise awful day. It could use a bit more hop or malt aroma, but it's a good example of the style: Sweet and fruity with a big mouth feel and a clean taste.

This thread makes me want to brew a batch of beer.

Brett_Murphy wrote: This thread makes me want to brew a batch of beer.

Salanis' work here is done.