My Good Friend Matt and I Do Some Tasting

With summer weather winding down and Fall already here, it's no surprise that the beers we went for on our day of adventuring to the local homebrew shop and a new beer store in town were Oktoberfest, Pumpkin and IPAs. Actually that's somewhat of a surprise for my friend, who is a huge Hefeweizen fan.

First stop, The Owl House. Check out their restaurant website here. Love that place and their selection is always changing and awesome.
We both got 5 samplers each and a sip of another, I don't have notes on what Matt tried, but here are mine:
1) Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale - Very roasty nose, pumpkin, cinnamon, had only a taste but liked it very much. 5.9% ABV, more here.
2) Brouwerij De Babendere Bavik Premium Pils - Honey nose, crisp, spicy hops, breadiness, touch of champagne, supposedly Belgium's best Pilsner by award and one of the hold outs to the mighty Labbat company that goes around buying up Belgium breweries and closing them. 5.2% ABV, more here.
3) Brouwerij Van Honsebrouck Kasteel Inglemunster Pumpkin - Pumpkin, roasty, sweet yam, overpowering pumpkin sweetness actually, warming, pumpkin pie or cassarole, dry. 8.5% ABV, their website here.
4) Bell's Best Brown Ale - Strawberry, cranberry, malty sweetness wins over the bitter, brown amber color. 5.8% ABV, more here.
5) Dark Horse Single Hop Series: Falconer's Flight - apparently this is a single hop variety of thier Crooked Tree IPA and may be referred to as FF Dekoorc Eert (from what I have seen on BeerPulse, here), aromatic, pungent hop taste, mango, grassy, piney, tropical fruit, a lot going on for 1 hop variety. 5.9? ABV or IBU, Dark Horse's list of beers here.
6) Stone/Heretic/Beechwood (Collaboration) Unapologetic IPA - Honey, alcohol, pine, syrupy smooth, lemon, slight haze, drippy legs. 8.8% ABV, tons of details here.

Second Stop, AJ's Beer Warehouse and then my place. Here's what we tried:

1) Ninkasi Oktoberfest Festbier Lager - A little orange, citrus hops, lingering sweet bitterness, sugar, carbonation was high, lemon. 5.9% ABV, more here.
2) Rogue Farms Pumpkin Patch Ale - Pumpkin, cardamom, smooth, slightly hoppy finish, spicy, semi-dry, nitro pour?, low to no carbonation, nice legs/head retention, dark amber color. 6.1% ABV, more here.
3) Shipyard Pugsley Signature Series: Smashed Pumpkin - pumpkin, honey, semi-sweet, acidic, good head retention, clove?, balanced, hides the alcohol really well. 9% ABV, more here.
4) Elysian Space Dust IPA - Lasting mouthfeel, spicy, nice lacy legs, a good bitterness, gritty?, grainy?, grapefruit, melon, lime, tropical fruit, floral aroma is slight. 7.2% ABV, more here.
5) Shipyard Puglsey Signature Series: XXXX IPA - high alcohol present but acceptable, thick legs, citrus, grapfruit, some pine, full mouthfeel, golden dark color with good head. 9.25% ABV, more here.
6) Atlantic Brewing Co. Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale - my favorite blueberry ale, it is a beer first, with hoppiness present, blueberry is tart yet sweet, malty backbone, citrus and peel, nothing else like Maine blueberries and the aroma they impart. 5.1% ABV, more here.

Best of the day: tie between Elysian Space Dust IPA and the Dark Horse Falconer's Flight Single Hop IPA, I was surprised by both and enjoyed them immensely.

Two New Beer Books in My Collection

I have recently acquired two new beer books and am very happy with both.

The first, The Brewers Apprentice, by Greg Koch & Matt Allyn, is an excellent resource for brewing general styles and specific aspects of brewing. Each chapter incorporates an interview with a highly respected brewer who's at the top of their game regarding the aspect the chapter is about, whether it be hops, aroma hops, malt, IPA's, Belgians, etc... There are questions  about how someone came to be a brewer and what drew them to a particular style as well. If I was to try a new style, there are great tips in each chapter from water to yeast to fermentation techniques.

The second, Boutique Beer: 500 Quality Craft Beers, by Ben McFarland, is perhaps the best collection of awesome beers in one place that I've yet seen. There are books like 1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die! (Adrian Tierney-Jones, ed.), The Beer Book (Tim Hampson), World Beer (Tim Hampson), 300 Beers to Try Before You Die! (Roger Protz) and 300 More Beers to Try Before You Die! (Roger Protz) that list a ton of different beers, but none talk about the beer in such a way I think. I say I think because I've only skimmed the two Tim Hampson books, both of which are great in their own way, but they do not offer as many unique beers and tend to cover the mainstream craft scene. There are also great highlights about specific breweries all over the world. I'm still reading through this and it is super enjoyable and gives wonderful brews to chase after, even if some of them probably never make it over to the States.

My next book conquest is between two different books: The Beer Book, by Tim Hampson, or Home Brew Beyond the Basics, by Mike Karnowski. The former is more of a novelty item with over 1700 beers to ogle from all over the world. The latter is probably the best manual type guide to homebrewing with tons of pictures and helpful information.

Homebrew #2: IPA - Pliny the Toddler (sort of)

It's been over a month since I last brewed my second homebrew. This time I chose a recipe from the American Homebrew Association website, one that was originally printed in the Zymurgy magazine. Here's a link to the recipe. Pliny the Toddler is a clone of sorts, a sessionable clone of Pliny the Elder by Russian River Brewing, CA. My brother loves IPA's and this seemed a logical choice, to involve him in the brewing process, split the resulting batch and brew a nice IPA.

I did deviate from the recipe a bit. If you notice, using the extract substitution (because I only have a 5 gallon brew kettle) the recipe calls for 5.6 lbs of pale liquid malt. The homebrew store only carries 3.3 lbs cans. The original recipe calls for some pale malt and some maris otter, so I bought two 3.3 lbs cans, one of pale malt and one of maris otter (contains at least 60% maris otter). When I brewed I just added it all. 5.6 lbs became 6.6 lbs. Also, to try and balance this, I added 1 oz. of each hop variety instead of .75 oz.

The result: A rounded malt balanced IPA, slightly grainy mouthfeel, with an excellent aroma and late bitterness. The hop aroma of mango, grass, floral, citrus, pine and spice dissipates somewhat quickly but it is beautiful. In retrospect, the Warrior hop addition at Warrior hops of 15.7 alpha acids (Centennial 9.0 a.a. and Columbus 15.2 a.a. should have made up for something though!) could have been more. I also omitted the gypsum, which would probably accentuate the hop even more and dry the beer out a bit. I also do not know what ABV it ended up as, because according to my hydrometer reading (which I'm thinking is not accurate) it started at an original gravity of 1.037 to 1.038 instead of 1.048 like it should--and I even added more malt! Somehow I did not manage to get an accurate reading or my efficiency was very low. Final gravity before bottling was 1.010 to 1.008 (if accurate).

If you're using the Untappd app, look for my version of Pliny the Toddler under the homebrew name of Shew Brew.

Beer Group October Tasting (#4): Oktoberfest/Pumpkin Brews...Our Biggest Group Yet!

We had our October tasting last night and it was a smashing success! There were 11 different beers and yet only nine people showed. Some of the beers we didn't get a huge sample of, but that was alright as we tried them first and they were the weaker beers in most everyone's opinion anyway.

The guidelines for this month were to bring only Pumpkin or Oktoberfest Beers. I was a tad worried that only Pumpkin beers would make any sort of worthwhile representation, but it was fairly split down the middle as you will see and both styles made fairly good showings.

Here's notes on what we tried:

1) Brauerei Beck's Oktoberfest - the lightest beer of the night, very little aroma, a light hop bitterness at the tail, a tad skunky, I didn't check the bottle to see if this was brewed in the US or exported, but I think the lightness of the bottle contributed to this, a slight apple flavor, and a touch of alcohol, amber color. 5% ABV.

2) Harpoon Octoberfest - Nice malt aroma, apple again, sicky sweet almost, semi-dry, grayish-white foamy legs, lager malt aroma comes out more as the nose acclimates to the aroma. 5.3% ABV. More here.

3) Dundee Oktoberfest - Sweet, but more like a lager (without much other flavor adding to the lager taste), little aroma, tiny prickles of hops on the tongue in the aftertaste, watery legs, thick mouthfeel, alcohol was a little too much (as I've encountered with other Dundee Ales). 5.5% ABV. More here.

4) Yuengling Oktoberfest - Roast turkey, honey, less sweet than some of the previous beers, but with a definite residual sugariness (which incidentally is not very appropriate for the style), a touch of apple, dark amber color with a decent mouthfeel. 5.4% ABV.
5) Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale - A very interesting beer, tasted like a cinnamon fireball or big red bubble gum, pumpkin spice, nutmeg, a good head, apple cider, drinkable, smooth, golden color, soft mouthfeel. 4.5% ABV. More here.
6) Harpoon UFO Pumpkin - wonderful pumpkin nose, ginger shines through with aroma and spice, cinnamon, hazy dark gold, medium full mouthfeel, creamy and semi-dry. This would be a go to session pumpkin beer for me. 5.9% ABV. More here.
7) Firestone Walker OAKtoberfest - Not much aroma, some bitterness, vanilla, smooth then bitey, thick legs, semi-dry, clear dark straw color and I think a better example of a genuine Oktoberfest style than the others. 5% ABV. More here.
8) Samuel Adams Fat Jack Double Pumpkin - Ginger, maple, yams, toffee, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cough syrup mouthfeel (and taste if you think about it), red Amber color, nice head, smokiness, full mouthfeel, a definite flavor explosion. Perhaps my favorite pumpkin ale. 8.5% ABV. More here.
9) Southern Tier Warlock - Milk, almonds, chocolate, nutmeg, cereal, stale milk and cereal, ginger?, roasty, creamy like cream cheese (goes well with carrot cake apparently), semi-light mouthfeel, semi-dry. 8.6% ABV. More here.
10) Dogfish Head Punkin Ale - Not a huge aroma, pumpkin flavor throughout, carbonation level is high, spices, gold color, hazy, dry, grapes or yeast or champagne notes, medium mouthfeel. 7% ABV. More here.
11) Southern Tier Imperial Pumking - Milk again, cereal, stale, vanilla, sweeter than the Warlock, nutmeg, cinnamon, pecans, copper color, particulate. Weird how both Southern Tier's give me that milky cereal aroma, I almost wonder if that is because the beer was off or something? Anyone have a similar experience? 8.6% ABV. More here.

Favorite of the night; actually I'll give two, one Oktoberfest and one pumpkin.
Oktoberfest - Firestone Walker OAKtoberfest! Clean and true to the style.
Pumpkin - Sam Adams Fat Jack Double Pumpkin! Complex and a huge burst of immediate flavor.

He Said and the Search for AJ's Beer Warehouse

I was looking on 21st Amendment's website, here, the other day and saw this beauty of a beer, He Said. It is a collaboration with Elysian Brewing and each 4-pack contains two different beers, a Baltic style Porter and a Belgian Tripel. Interestingly enough, they are both brewed with pumpkin as well, plus some other added ingredients. So, using their "Find Some" search feature at the top of their page I looked up where they distribute. Lo and behold, AJ's Beer Warehouse (their website here), in Henrietta has He Said! I'd never heard of AJ's before but knew where about it is located.  It is actually almost right across from Sunset Hydroponics and Homebrewing, which is another great store and where I got ingredients for an IPA I homebrewed, which I'm sure I'll write about soon because it's almost done bottle conditioning. Anyway, AJ's has a stellar selection of beers, 80% of which are kept in walk in fridge units. The remaining 20 percent they are currently building a fridge unit for as well. They also have a dedicated section to NYS breweries and a whole bunch of draft lines with NYS beers as well. I was impressed.

Here's some notes about both beers in the order I drank them:
1) He Said (Belgian Tripel) - This is brewed with Galangal and Tarragon. Galangal is Thai ginger variety. I was really surprised by these ingredients in a Belgian beer, but they worked together beautifully. The tarragon I usually think is sour, but not in this. There was a subtle sweetness about this beer. It had a fantastic pumpkin aroma, especially in the olfactory, it was creamy, marshmellowy, the malty pumpkin hit your palate later, it's color was light golden amber and presented delicate legs. I really enjoyed this. 8.2% ABV, see more specifics here.
2) He Said (Baltic Porter) - This was brewed with Vietnamese cinnamon and caraway seeds. The Vietnamese cinnamon or Saigon cinnamon supposedly has more pronounced aromatic qualities, is used in making Pho and stuck out in my mind. This actually reminded me somewhat of a Doppelbock, with its smoky pork flavor, definite cinnamon, spice, slight sweetness (less than the Belgian Tripel), thick foamy head, roasty with some chocolate?, slightly warming and deep brown color. 8.2% ABV, see more specifics here.

Another beer I'll add to this list I tried yesterday was Three Head's Brewing Bromigo: Smoke Maple Amber Ale. This had serious pork notes, almost too intense in the sense that I had a hard time focusing on anything else. There was an underlying sweetness from the maple, it was a gorgeous clear dark Amber with reddish hue, off-white head, spicy, peppery with a hop end that brought balance to the smokiness. 7% ABV. More here.

My favorite of the night: He Said (Belgian Tripel). Very well done on this one.