Robert the Bruce - Three Floyd's Brewing

So, here goes nothing with my first dark beer review - a Scottish Ale. I feel better about the fact that I'm trying this one out because it's brewed by Three Floyd's, which is typically just great all-around in what they brew. Let's see how it goes!

Vitals:

Name: Robert the Bruce

Style: Scottish Ale

IBU: 30

ABV: 7.0%

Gravity: ??

Purchased at: Trixie's Liquor

Descriptions:

Appearance: Pours a deep mahogany color that reveals an almost dark ruby color if you hold it in the light. About half a finger of tan head (I'm surprised there wasn't more than that) which is pretty creamy but doesn't stick around too long.

Smell: Believe it or not the primary smell I get here is of raisins. There is a very sweet note to the aroma, maybe grapes or brown sugar? All of this is held up by a strong roasted malt smell. On second thought, I think what I smell is a hint of figs (maybe not the grapes/brown sugars that I hinted at earlier).

Taste: This beer is GOOD; you get a strong roasted flavor from the outset (it's almost like coffee in the way it tastes roasted). You get a bit of chocolate undertones as well I think. You can definitely note the 7.0% ABV in the aftertaste, just a BIT more than you should, IMHO. You get some leafy hops at the finish, giving it a slight bitterness, and the beer warms you up slightly as it goes down. The most surprising thing with the taste is that the raisin smell didn't manifest itself in the beer very strongly, if at all.

Mouthfeel: THIS is where the beer is a huge win for me. If I'm going to drink a darker beer I want it to be a medium body type like this. There's a tiny bit of chewiness to it, but also a lot of carbonation, which strangely play well off of each other and create a great drinking experience.

Overall Grade: B+

Comments: This is a very good beer, and I've come to expect nothing less from Three Floyd's. The beer is quite deceiving when you get to the mouthfeel after only looking at the beer. The taste is unique and the body invites you to have a few, unlike some other darker beers that leave you feeling like you just ate a 3 course meal involving a very large chunk of red meat. This certainly wins some points for dark beer in my book and could very well expand my horizons (you're welcome, Bhavin). If you can get your hands on this and are a fan of dark beer, definitely pick some up and try it out. If you hate dark beers with a fiery passion, this could possibly sway you a bit, but it's all about keeping an open mind and appreciating the beer for what it is!

Cheers,

Hurls

Wisconsin Amber - Capital Brewery

Okay, so from the start let's get this out there: Capital Brewery elects to put on some of their products "#1 Rated Brewery in America" or some such message. Having tasted 4-5 of their beers I find this quite hard to believe. Anyways, I decided to look into it and apparently in 1998 they were rated #1 brewery at the World Beer Championships. Now look, I don't have anything AGAINST Capital Brewery, but I just don't get that...either they had a massive drop off, or the judged were paid off or something. The way I would describe Capital Brewery is just solid. They brew a lot of different types of beers, but from what I have tasted you don't really get anything truly SPECIAL from them. You get whatever style you purchase, and yeah it'll be better than a macrobrew like Bud/Coors/Miller most likely, but I don't think I would ever go into a place with a wide variety of tap beers and ask for something from Capital, ya catch my drift? At any rate, this was left from our BBQ we had a few weeks ago, so I decided to go ahead and give Capital Brewery some review love, since I hadn't hit one of their products on here yet. Anyways, here goes...

Vitals:

Name: Wisconsin Amber ("Beer for Badgers" is a nice touch on the bottle)

Style: Amber Lager

IBU: ??

ABV: 5.2%

Gravity: ??

Purchased at: left at BBQ

Descriptions:

Appearance: This beer is surprisingly more of an orange-red than a true deep amber. About a finger of head, off-white in color, that recedes pretty quickly, leaving some cap (some floating foam head) on top of the beer. There is some subtle lacing but not much else here.

Smell: Caramel malts are pretty heavy on the nose here from the outset. There may be a bit of burnt sugar smell in there too, but not much else comes out aside from the large malty aroma.

Taste: The beer starts you out with some sweet caramel malts, and this continues through the drink.  You even get a bit of a toffee-like taste here somewhat. I don't taste the burnt sugars that I thought I smelled, but maybe that just is the toffee-esque taste that I had. Right at the end of the drink you get a bit of an earthy/grassy/leafy hop flavor, with a slight bitterness to send you on your way to your next sip. The flavor is OK, nothing great really stands out here...tastes like a standard amber, honestly.

Mouthfeel: Light-medium bodied with a slight astringent quality right at the end when the hops kick in (not too much astringent qualities, so don't let this scare you away). The carbonation is EXTREMELY weak to the point of almost being non-existent, or so it seemed to me.

Overall Grade: B-

Comments: Like I said in my little monologue, this is a solid but not spectacular beer. If you like ambers and want something cheap that you can go with quantity over quality on, then go with this. If you're looking for something higher end, steer clear and go with the Sprecher Special Amber or another craft amber with more flavor and a heavier body. All in all, this beer serves its purpose by hitting standard amber flavors, but yet nothing really sticks out...as I have sadly come to expect from most Capital Brewery offerings.

Cheers,

Hurls

A quick note about Gravity & IBUs

So, while at a BBQ this past weekend I was chatting with someone (thank you Shawn) about beer and they were asking what the hell the stats are that I put for each of my reviews alongside alcohol by volume (ABV). I realized it might be worth spending some time going over what these measures (IBU and Gravity) are in a bit more detail. I gave a somewhat brief overview on one of my earlier posts, but this should give a more in-depth explanation of some of these figures for anyone who cares to read this blog! I will consider that ABV is self-explanatory and will not go into any further detail, since it's just the overall alcohol content of the beer.

IBU: this abbreviation stands for International Bittering Units. This measure is essentially the measure of alpha acids (provided by hop cones - see picture above for what hops look like) and is measured in parts per million (ppm or mg/L) in the finished brew. A quick interpretation is that as your IBUs rise, so do the bitter flavors that the beer presents to your palate. However, it is generally accepted that human detection of differences in IBUs is a somewhat weak ability; what this means for you is that any difference in IBUs between beers that is approximately 6 IBUs or less will not strike you as being any different.


Most beers I have seen typically range from 5-10 IBUs to maybe 100 IBUs. The 100 IBU beers are going to be your ridiculously strong and hoppy IIPAs (Imperial India Pale Ale) and the like. Bud/Coors/Miller Light are all going to be in the range of probably 8-12 IBUs. Ambers will probably be in the 20-40 range; American Pale Ales in the 30-50 range, etc.


Most people think of hops and think of pure biting bitterness, but in reality hops do a lot of different things for beer. Without going into too much detail, hops are added while you are boiling the wort (essentially the sugars resulted from mashing and boiling grains...these sugars are necessary for consumption by the yeast that you add after the boil and cooling so that the beer can ferment and create alcohol). Most recommend boiling the wort with hops for an hour, which is chopped up into a few different types of additions (I am not going to get into different types of hops, their alpha acids and whatnot): bittering hops and finishing hops. Bittering hops are (typically) added for the entire duration of the boil and that's where the bitterness in your beer comes from. Finishing hops are added at various parts of the boil (usually 15 to 20 minutes left in the boil as a general standard). The purpose of the finishing hops are not to add tons of bitterness, but rather to give much of the hop flavor (yes, hops have different flavors, not just bitterness) such as floral, herb, leafy, spicy, grassy, citrus-y, piney, etc. etc. the list goes on. There are a lot of different ways to hop a beer but I'm not going to get into all of that here.

Gravity: So, the gravity of a beer is essentially how dense the beer is, and can be generally measured using two systems: Degrees Plato or Original Gravity (OG). Don't be overwhelmed by this, as a simple conversion can be calculated to get to one or the other. So, let's say that a beer is 20 degrees plato. Each degree Plato can be perceived as .004 OG units; as such, a 20 degree Plato beer would translate to 1+(20*.004) or 1.08. This 1.08 OG can be interpreted as the beer being 1.08 times as heavy as pure water. Again, for a comparison: Bud/Coors/Miller Light would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.025 - 1.04 most likely. American Pale Ales would probably be 1.045 - 1.06, whereas something like a Russian Imperial Stout would be in the neighborhood of 1.075 - 1.115 (at this point your beer is going to be somewhat "chewy"). Not quite my thing - I tend to like lighter bodied brews, but there are others who most certainly disagree. IIPAs will most likely be like 1.075 - 1.090, so quite heavy, but I am fine with it as long as it's HOPPY :-)


At any rate, hopefully this is (at least somewhat) helpful to anyone out there who wants to learn more about beer, or who is reading this blog and wondering what the hell kind of foreign language I'm speaking with all of these abbreviations. Next time you drink a beer see if you can pull up some info on it online. The ABV is often on the bottle/can, but IBU and Gravity are typically harder to find. As an aside, many brewers will not disclose their IBUs or Gravity for fear of someone "reverse engineering" their beers. It may sound crazy, but there are a lot of avid home brewers out there who can identify certain tastes and who try to make spot-on clones of beers they have tasted previously. While I can understand the paranoia, it does suck for someone who is interested in it for purely evaluative purposes.


I hope that, if you're reading this, you're leaving more educated about your beer drinking than when you started reading this post!


Cheers,
Hurls

Hopalicious - Ale Asylum

Ah, so many good memories with Hopalicious. Regrettably it has taken me quite a while to review this one, though it is one of my very favorite Wisconsin beers. Cheers to Marc for leaving a few of these as a leftover from the movie night we hosted back in the fall - that really got me turned on to Ale Asylum in general, and Hopalicious specifically. I also distinctly remember loving the fact that Ale Asylum provided fresh cascade hops to go with your beer at Quivey's Grove, which was fantastic. I will be trying to organize a big group for Quivey's this year and it should be even better than last year! Anyways, once Sarah got me a kegerator I knew the first beer that had to go in there...now on to the good stuff...

Vitals:

Name: Hopalicious

Style: American Pale Ale

IBU: ??

ABV: 5.8%

Gravity: ??

Purchased at: where HAVEN'T I bought Hopalicious? Hmm....

Descriptions:

Appearance: Pours a delicious looking golden orange color, almost to the point of being copper. Medium carbonation is evident from the tons of little bubbles excitedly rising to the top. The head content was less than I anticipated, despite being familiar with the beer, and it wasn't for lack of a good pour. All in all there was maybe slightly less than a finger of bone-white head, which surprisingly lacked retention but left a beautiful thick lacing on the glass.

Smell: Surprisingly, given the name, the smell is somewhat understated (especially compared to a lot of Pales out there). You get floral and citrus hops on the nose and a bit of sweet malt hiding in there. There may be a little fruitiness to it (grapefruit if I had to guess, but I'm not completely confident in that) but not too much.

Taste: This beer is very well balanced - you get sweet malt up front (not too much or too little) and you get the hop bitterness that hop-heads crave on the back-end of the beer. The hops are surprisingly piney with a citrus flavor as well. What's surprising to me here is that Ale Asylum prides themselves on putting in ELEVEN (yes, you read that right, as in ten plus one) separate additions of cascade hops to the boil. I am just becoming familiar with the brewing process, as I'm looking to try it out with Marc, but basically you boil the wort (will explain this in a later post) with hops for a long time (typically an hour, but some beers such as DogFishHead 90 and 120 minute IPAs, appropriately named by the way) boil for longer. The hops immediately added (and thus boiled the longest) are for bittering purposes, so you can get a lot of the bitter resins out of the hop cones. The later additions (boiled less) provide the main aromas and flavors. So, basically, with that long (yet quite abbreviated) explanation the puzzling thing to me is that Cascade hops typically impart citrus and floral tastes and aromas, yet I'm getting a lot of piney flavor here. It makes me wonder what the tight-lipped folks over at Ale Asylum are up to with this beer that they don't advertise. My guess is something like Chinook hops added with 15-20 minutes left in the boil but this is just pure speculation, since Chinook are known for being very piney. The key here is the smoothness of the bitter finish; you really get a sweet taste up front from the malt, then a pretty bitter piney bite, and then a surprisingly smooth bitter finish to bring you through. It glides off your palate rather than getting that scraping feeling that a lot of bitter, hoppy brews can give you.

Mouthfeel: Medium body with decent carbonation. I will say that the body is more on the light side of medium, so you could drink this all day (as I can personally attest to). You get a nice thin layer of residual resin on your palate, which is just right for this type of beer. You don't want your mouth to feel completely coated and overwhelmed, but this beer leaves you at just the right place: wanting to come back for more!

Overall Grade: A-

Comments: I consider this to be a close-to-perfect beer for year-round drinking; its versatility is very nice. I think it's light enough to be able to drink in the summer and give you a hopiness if that's what you crave. However, it's also bold enough of a taste, and not completely light bodied, so you can enjoy it when the weather gets cold. Most people know of my love for Ale Asylum beers (if you have a chance check out my post on Bedlam! and try that one out too). Also, as a teaser, I have a bottle of Ambergeddon (what a great name, by the way) in the fridge, awaiting tasting and review. This beer is available practically everywhere in Madison, on tap or for sale in 6 and 12 packs. If you consider yourself a hop-head, or have any interest in hoppy beers, this is a must-have staple of your beer drinking rotation. Go out and enjoy one and see if you agree with my assessment!

Cheers,

Hurls

Summertime - Goose Island Brewing Company

After scrubbing my palate of the Wild Blue fiasco that just occurred (see previous post) I decided to try a little redemption in the form of a summer beer that shares the season's name. First Goose Island to be reviewed and I would like to give a special thanks to Sarah W. for leaving this behind after our BBQ :-)

Vitals:

Name: Summertime

Style: Kolsch

IBU: 20

ABV: 4.7%

Gravity: ??

Purchased at: Left behind after BBQ

Descriptions:

Appearance: Beer pours an enticing golden yellow, with plenty of carbonation drifting quickly to the top. This is a welcome sight, and Kolsch is a good choice, as I've been drinking mostly wheat (i.e. hefe) summer beers, so it'll be nice to have something a bit more filtered, less cloudy, etc.

Smell: Nice citrus-y and grassy smells with a hint of bread from the grain they've used here. Smells like most Kolschs I've had, nothing really stands out here but it seems that this will be a solid beer.

Taste: Grainy/bready and malt flavors stand out here with some lemon tartness. There's a faint taste of grassy hops on the back-end, but obviously hops are not the focus of a Kolsch so it's an appropriate level. This beer is not very complex but has a nice balance to it and certainly does justice to the style.

Mouthfeel: Light and carbonated on the palate with a nice crispness to it. There's a minimal bite, but nothing too noticeable in that department. This is a very light-bodied drinkable beer.

Overall Grade: B

Comments: This is a very drinkable beer for your various summer festivities - it would be good on a boat while you're enjoying the water or out at a BBQ just getting some sun. More so than hefeweizens, which are heavier in body and typically with a yeastier and breadier taste, this beer could be enjoyed all day long. You get what you expect here, with nothing particularly eye-opening, but a pleasant tasting beer nonetheless. Make sure to keep drinkability in mind here; if I'm doing less than 3-4 beers I'm probably going with a hefe to grab the good flavors, but if I'm going to be out all day enjoying the weather and some beer with friends this is a solid choice to roll with. Happy drinking!

Cheers,

Hurls

Wild Blue - Anheuser-Busch

So, let's be clear from the outset. I did a BYO 6-pack from Trixie's Liquor to try some new things, review them, etc. I didn't realize this was an Anheuser-Busch product until I was trying to look up some stats on it. Very interesting that they're brewing a blueberry ale, and I wasn't ashamed of the choice to try it - gotta keep expanding horizons here.

Vitals:

Name: Wild Blue

Style: Blueberry Lager

IBU: ??

ABV: 8.0%

Gravity: ??

Purchased at: Trixie's Liquor (BYO 6-pack)

Descriptions:

Appearance: This is...beer? As you can see in the photo, this "beer" pours a deep dark murky purple color that looks like grape juice. There was about 1.5 fingers of light purple head (like a watered down eggplant color), which had pretty weak retention and minimal lacing left behind. I immediately begin to question my purchase.

Smell: This beer smells liiiiike......wait...for...ittttttt...blueberries - Surprise Surprise! Other than a faint mild maltiness to this beer it smells like what I'd imagine a blueberry soda to smell like. The smell is not very appetizing and my questioning of said purchase deepens.

Taste: Um...this tastes like a freakin' wine cooler...what trickery is this? No no no, hold on...I might be wrong about the taste...I think it may be better described as a glass of wine mixed with a shot of hard liquor mixed with a tiny bit of lager and finished off with a cup of sugar. Blech...this tastes like a bag of crap, very unpleasant. On a lighter note, Sarah seemed to enjoy the first sip. However, when queried as to whether she would like to finish the drink (I can't even call this "beer," much less beer) she respectfully decline. Purchase fail.

Mouthfeel: Light and over-carbonated - like grape soda. Not much else to say here...

Overall Grade: F

Comments: My first F given on this site. Anheuser-Busch must be so proud! You should avoid this drink at all costs. The only person who should buy this is someone who likes wine coolers but wishes to claim themselves to be a beer drinker. Even then it may be dicey. I feel like drinking this beer was like a bad dream in Willy Wonka's factory. Only, considering Willy Wonka could make the snozberries taste like snozberries, I doubt he would've slapped his brand on such an awful, POS drink, as Anheuser Busch shamelessly has. Shame on you, Anheuser-Busch, shame on you. To make matters worse, Anheuser-Busch doesn't even claim this as one of its own, as it is brewed by "Blue Dawg Brewing."

In conclusion - this beverage is like a small child. If you happen to have one, pay someone else to take it off your hands for a while so you can enjoy your evening.

Cheers,

Hurls

Imperial Weizen - New Glarus Brewing Company

After the last two posts being somewhat lackluster, I decided to revert back to my old fail safe - New Glarus beers. This is part of the Thumbprint series, and is only available for about 3 months. With the Thumbprint series, New Glarus turns Dan Carey, one of their owners (and a master brewer, I might add) loose with whatever he wants to create. Dan considers brewing beer his own personal form of expressing himself in art, so cheers to innovativeness and passion in the brewing process!

Vitals:

Name: Imperial Weizen

Style: Hefeweizen

IBU: ??

ABV: 9.7%

Gravity: ~20 deg. Plato

Purchased at: Trixie's Liquor

Descriptions:

Appearance: THIS BEER IS GORGEOUS! Pour reveals an extremely hazy light orange, and probably the cloudiest beer I've ever had. About 2.5 fingers of bone-white fluffy head (I had to skim some off the top because I couldn't finish pouring the beer), which has extremely good retention. All of this makes sense when you think of the hops they've put into this baby, combined with the fact that it's a hefe.

Smell: Bananas and cloves are strong on the nose here; the beer has a very sweet smell. This is somewhat offset (in a good way) by a biting citrus hop smell and a slight burn of alcohol on the nostrils (reminds me of Anchorman and Sex Panther..."it STINGS the nostrils", but most definitely does not smell like "pure gasoline" :-P ).

Taste: This beer is extremely well balanced with sweet vs. bitter. The wheat, bananas, and maybe grapefruit give you all the sweetness you need. There is a certain clove spiciness to the beer, which is nice. Lastly, the bitter citrus hops roll over top of the sweetness about halfway through the taste and continues on through the finish. The ONLY complaint I have is that the alcohol taste is slightly overstated and detracts a little bit from an otherwise amazing taste.

Mouthfeel: Heavy body (as evidenced by the nearly 20 deg. Plato, which is HUGE for a hefe of any sort). The beer is highly carbonated it seems and it tickles your tongue, turning slightly astringent as the bitterness takes over.

Overall Grade: A-

Comments: First of all I need to just sit back and recognize that this is SUCH an innovative beer. A+ on the creativity and effort piece, so cheers to New Glarus and Dan Carey. I love how the wheat is combined with citrus hops to provide a well-balanced taste. Most hefes could not pull off the hop aspect to the degree that this one does. Try this out NOW if you like hefes and hops. The 4 pack that the beer comes in will be more than enough for you; I suggest one per drinking session, and no more than 2 or else it'll put you right on your butt with the 9.7% ABV it boasts. Seriously, go pick up a 4-pack, you know you want to!

Cheers,

Hurls