What's In My Glass: 8/30/11

And I’m back after a couple days of radio silence. Last night I had some killer Hill Farmstead beers on tap in New York City, as well as a bottle of Kern River Citra that had just come in the mail in a trade that same day. Reviews are either posted or queued in my backlog of review notes. I started tonight with my second can of Surly Furious from a recent trade. There’s not much to add to my thoughts from the other night, there’s a little bit of malt there to support a ton of pine and citrus hoppiness. Once again I declined to review this beer as I’m a little burnt out from beer writing. I’ve got 29 beer reviews logged so far in August, plus notes for another seven, and more than 20 posts here on this  blog. Since Furious is a year round, flagship beer for Surly, I’m confident I’ll have it again and be able to formally log a review.

The main focus of the evening was a big monster of a double IPA called Knuckle Sandwich from Bootlegger’s Brewery out of California.

It was a very cool extra to find in the box I got yesterday with some bottles of Kern River Citra (thanks to Brian from California). It’s a monster of a beer, clocking in at 10%ABV, and it’s got a lot going for it. It’s more in the East Coast IPA vein, meaning there’s a fair amount of sweetness to balance out the hops. As for the hops themselves, the bitterness here was surprisingly mild, and there was some pretty cool orange and tangerine notes to be found on the back end of each sip. All that said, I was a little let down, because I expected that a beer called Knuckle Sandwich would really hammer me with the hops, and this one was a bit more mellow and balanced.

That’s it for tonight; I may or may not be back tomorrow night before going dark on Thursday. Friday night I’ll be attending the first meeting of the Brooklyn Brewery’s Order of Osiris and will definitely have a report on that.