Saturday, July 30, 2011

What's In My Glass: 7/30/2011

Tonight's beer is Sierra Nevada's Kellerweis. I arrived at my aunt and uncle's house in Raleigh, NC this afternoon where we'll stay the night before finishing our trek to the Outer Banks tomorrow. We went on a beer run to a local Total Wine & More, and I'm sure I looked like a kid in a candy shop. I always look forward to this week long vacation for the opportunity to try a lot of beers that don't get distributed to Jersey. While I did have a minor score in finding some bottles of Founders Blushing Monk, which barely made it to shelves back home, I decided to save the new stuff for vacation proper and fall back on a reliable summer beer for tonight. Kellerweis is one of the better American brewed hefeweizens I've had, and not much beats it for a refreshing, tasty beer when the heat really gets up there. I haven't seen it on shelves much locally for some reason, so was happy to pick up a sixer of it tonight. Unfortunately, hefeweizens don't really have a long shelf life, and this batch is on its last legs. The great banana and clove flavors thrown off by a traditional hefe yeast were pretty faded, leaving a little bit of sweetness from the wheat as the main attraction. Still, those flavors combined with the beer being light bodied and highly carbonated made it perfect to idly sip as I sat on the front porch and caught up with family. Had I been seriously drinking and focusing on what was in my glass I probably would have been a bit underwhelmed, but for a mindless drinking session it was just fine.

What's In My Glass: 7/29/2011

Tonight's beer is Voodoo Brewery's Trapped Under Eisbock. I got this one in a trade (something I'll be talking about more in the future) with Beer Advocate member Soonami. Between the cool beer concept  (eisbock aged on cherries), even cooler name (Ride the Lightning is a killer album), and the fact that this is only one of ~400 bottles in existence, it was an easy choice for my 300th review on Beer Advocate and my inaugural beer on this blog. This brew started it's life as a strong malty (sweet) beer, before being frozen for 3 months. The freezing process allowed a more concentrated version of the beer to be poured off and aged on cherries for another three months. After some aging time in bottles it was sent out into the world. At 14% it's definitely a sipper, I've spent more than two hours (and counting) on this bottle. It's very rich, with not much carbonation, and ends up having roughly the consistency of a milkshake. There are some very cool chocolate and caramel flavors to be found, especially once the beer warms up some, but in the end I'm a bit let down that there's not much cherry/dark fruit flavor. The final product is a pretty good beer, but they evidently aged in in bottles for a year at the brewery, and while the result is a beer that's absurdly smooth for being 3.5x the normal alcohol found in a beer, it's also a beer that has what was supposed to be it's unique touch (the cherries) largely faded away. Hopefully Voodoo tries to brew something similar and gets it out in a little bit less time.

An Introduction (And a Beer)

Well, where to begin. With a brief introduction I suppose, before I jump in and start waxing poetic about beer. My name is Bill and I'm a 24 year old living in New Jersey. From when I started drinking in college I'd like to think I was drawn to better beer. Sure we burned through more 30 racks of Coors Light than I care to remember, but whenever possible my compatriots and I preferred Guinness, Blue Moon, and various Sam Adams offerings. All that started to change for me when I hit my senior year of college. I was talking with a friend that fall, and he couldn't contain his excitement over that year's batch of Brooklyn Brewery's Black Chocolate Stout had hit shelves. I was intrigued, I had never seen anyone show this kind of excitement over a particular beer. I started checking out Brooklyn's offerings, and quickly fell in love with them (especially the aforementioned stout). Brooklyn beers were a staple in our fridge for the rest of that year, along with anything else that looked interesting. We didn't really know what we were doing, just that what we were drinking was fantastic. I then spent a year in Boston for grad school that proved to be formative in my growing hobby/obsession. The Boston area is not only one of the best beer cities on the east coast, but ground zero for Beer Advocate. Beer Advocate is one of (if not the best) resources online for craft beer, and soon enough I was awash in pub crawls and festivals and other events. After my year at Boston College I moved back home, only now I had 150 or so bottles of beer sitting in my parents' cellar (yup, you can age beer just like wine) and a growing supply of homebrewing equipment.

Despite NJ being a relative wasteland compared to Boston as far as good beer goes, my enthusiasm for better beer hasn't been dampered at all, and this blog will serve as another outlet for that. I'll try to post at least once most days, touching on what beers I'm drinking, different beer adventures I've had (festivals, special bar events), homebrewing attempts, and whatever other random (beer related) thoughts pop into my head. I do review beers on Beer Advocate, but those tend to be relatively structured, formal exercises, and this will be my forum for more informal discussions about what I'm drinking. Also, you can expect photos to accompany most posts in the future, once I finish working out some technical issues (and by technical issues I mean me throwing out essential cables and wires). The title of this post promised a beer, but I've rambled on a bit, so I'll have a follow up post later tonight with my first beer discussion. Cheers!