Day 78 (10/10/2011): Devious Imperial Pumpkin by Fegley's Brew Works

Another pumpkin ale, this one from Fegley's Brew Works, Pennsylvania brewery I had never heard of before. This imperial pumpkin ale has the highest ABV of any I have tried so far, clocking in at 9%.

In both the smell and taste, this is on the higher end of the spice spectrum, with cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg making their presence known right up front. I don't get much else from the taste other than the spices, a good bit of caramel malt sweetness, and a tad of the alcohol. Not much pumpkin flavor here. The alcohol also provides a slight burn in the mouthfeel, which is magnified by higher than expected carbonation and a thinnish body. I sort of expected a bigger-bodied beer than this.

This isn't bad by any means, but I think it's probably at the bottom of the pack in terms of pumpkin ales I've tried so far. I could definitely go for more pumpkin flavor in it, along with a bigger body and less carbonation. Despite these flaws, it's not a bad beer; it's just that there are probably better choices readily available no matter where you live. I give Devious Imperial Pumpkin by Fegley's Brew Works a B-.

Style: Pumpkin ale
Beer Advocate: B
Ratebeer: 64/74

Day 60 (9/22/2011): Cherry Chocolate Stout by Stone Brewing Co.

Not particularly impressed with this one. The cherry flavor was not integrated well at all, in my opinion. It almost tasted artificial, though I'm aware that it is not. There is also a good bit of tartness in the flavor which is a byproduct of the roast and the cherries. I could've done without the tart flavor; it was really odd when mixed with the chocolate/cherry sweetness. The beer definitely gets partially salvaged by the smell, which got better and better as the beer warmed. Think chocolate covered cherries. I was hoping that the taste would improve with it, but no dice. A valiant effort, but not particular good, especially at almost $4.00 a bottle. I won't be revisiting this one. I give Cherry Chocolate Stout by Stone Brewing Co. a B-.

Style: Milk/sweet stout
Beer Advocate: B
Ratebeer: 98/98

Day 41 (9/3/2011): Zoetzuur Flemish Ale by De Proef Brouwerij

 (Sorry folks; no picture for this one. I can't seem to find my camera at the moment and it contains all of the pictures for this review.)


As you may be able to tell from the blog, I've been on a sour kick ever since I was sent a set of Russian River wild ales. I had never heard of this one, but it was a Flanders red and I figured it would be tart enough to hit the spot.

It pours a hazy red-brown with a good sized off-white head. It has nice lacing as splotches of the head stick to the side of the glass. There is a lot going on with the smell. There is a ton of funk from the Brett, a great deal of cherries, some sweetness and spices, and an odd mustiness. It doesn't smell particularly sour at all. This is probably the "funkiest" beer I've ever smelled before. Almost overwhelming.

The taste is a little tart, but not sour at all. The tartness seems like it's from the cherries and not a wild yeast strain. The spiciness in the nose shows up here as well. There is also a strange aftertaste that I can't put my finger on, possibly Brett-related. I can't say this one tasted like I expected; not particularly sour and barely tart. It's not really my thing at all. It has a medium body with medium-low carbonation.

I am definitely disappointed in the lack of sourness. It is super funky and musty, which doesn't go well with the sweetness, in my opinion. I wish I could put my finger on the aftertaste; I definitely did not care for it, but I have no idea what it was.This one wasn't terrible, but was weird. I probably won't return to it in the future. I give Zoetzuur Flemish Ale by De Proef Brouwerij a B-.

Style: Flanders red ale
ABV: 7%
IBU: ?
Beer Advocate: A-
Ratebeer: 98/82

Picked up at Market Wines at Findlay Market for $10 or so for a 750ml bottle.

Day 29 (8/22/2011) Kingpin Double Red Ale by Bridgeport Brewing Co.

I have to say that I was not particularly looking forward to this one.

For one, I'm not much of a fan of red ales. They always seem malt forward in a way I don't particularly care for: more candy sweetness than the complexity found in other malty styles that I do like. The second is that its reviews on both sites (and particularly on Ratebeer) are frankly just not very good.

The last factor had nothing to do with the beer itself. For the past couple of weeks, our big old home has been experiencing backups of its basement drains. Before this weekend it was just stormwater. To my delight, the backup this weekend was the type that carried toilet paper and other goodies with it. Gross, huh? I thought so. So, after spending some time in the basement with the plumber yesterday evening trying (unsuccessfully, I must add) to clear our drains, the last thing I wanted was a beer. I grabbed the one I wanted to drink the least in my fridge so something I was looking forward to wasn't wasted on my crappy attitude.

Not a good context for this beer to be reviewed, huh? I suppose in a perfect world it would have blown me away; changing my opinion on red ales forever while simultaneously all of my drains magically cleared themselves for free. Unfortunately not.

Kingpin pours a typical color for its style: a dark, almost copper, amber color with about an inch of creamish head. It leaves uneven splotchy lacing as it quickly recedes. The smell is what I expected as malty breadiness and sweet fruit scents meet my nose. It has a lot of the candy sweetness that I was worried about. For a supposedly super duper hopped beer, I'm sadly getting almost no hop notes.

Luckily the taste is a tiny bit more balanced than the smell, with it running from the familiar fruity sweetness to open up, followed by bready malts and finally a slight hop finish. Not bad, not good. Just sort of there. It isn't terribly complex at all.

It has a medium body and medium-low carbonation with no alcohol burn present.

If I had to throw one description of this beer out there, it would probably be 'meh'. It's not bad enough for a drainpour by any means, but it definitely would never inspire me to open another bottle of it. It is a very simple beer, overwhelming any hops that may be present with malty sweetness. The claim of being 'triple hopped' seems ridiculous after drinking this and it makes me think it might be the same marketing gimick used by many macro brewers. I give Kingpin Double Red Ale by Bridgeport Brewing Co. a C+.

Style: American amber/red ale
ABV: 7.5%
IBU: 65
Beer Advocate: B-/B-
Ratebeer: 59/13

Acquired via a generous Beer Advocate in Oregon. Not distributed out this way.

Day 20 (8/12/2011): Caldera IPA by Caldera Brewing Company

I was really, really surprised I didn't care for this beer as much as I thought I would.. I've seen it on the shelves before around Cincinnati and I had been meaning to try it. After receiving it as a surprise in a box, I decided to give it a whirl.

It pours a nice crystal clear amber-red with a fluffy head. As it recedes, it leaves a nice lacing. The smell is fruity hops with a sweet, malty undertone.

The taste is what put me off this beer. It has all of the hoppiness of the smell with none of the sweetness. It doesn't seem particularly balanced to me, especially when the finish is so bitter.

The body and carbonation are about typical for an American IPA: medium and medium-light, respectively.

Over all, this beer is just not balanced enough, in my opinion. The very bitter finish is unappealing to me. I realize it is a West Coast American IPA, but the best beers of that style always have a strong malt backbone to even out the hop overload. Not in this case. I give Caldera IPA by Caldera Brewing a B-.

Style: American IPA
ABV: 6.1%
IBU: 94
Beer Advocate: B+
Ratebeer: B+

Acquired via a box from a very generous Beer Advocate in Oregon. I believe I have seen this in Cincy/NKY before, though, so you should be in good shape if you would like to try it.

Day 16 (8/9/11) Siberian Night Imperial Stout by Thirsty Dog Brewing Company

I've always seen this on the shelves, but never grabbed on before. Price discrepancy aside (see below), the are a pretty darn good deal for a single bottle of such a high ABV beer, so I decided to give it a try.

Siberian Night, as the name implies, pours a deep, deep color. It's an almost black body, but not quite, with a finger of tannish-mocha head. The smell is of heavily roasted, almost to the point of charred grains, with a backing of coffee, chocolate, and dark fruits. The magnitude of the roastiness is a bit odd and almost threatens to overwhelm all of the other scents.

The first thing I notice in the flavor is the earthy, roasted malts. It tastes like I would expect charred wood to. Not particularly pleasant, as it imparts a bitter flavor to the beer. In addition to the roast, there is also some coffee, a little chocolate, and the tiniest bit of hops. All of the bitterness I get in this beer is from the roasted malts, not the hops.

The carbonation is medium-low; pretty much spot on for an imperial stout. It has a medium body and a smooth feel. There is a little burn from the booziness, but not much from almost 10%.

There's not much that really separates itself from the pack other than its earthy, charred taste/smell (bad) and its smooth mouthfeel (good). It is a good value, especially in the imperial stout style, but I wouldn't put it higher than other reasonable priced beers of the same style like Old Rasputin. If you're a fan of big, not particularly sweet stouts, this might be up your alley, but it didn't really do it for me. I give Siberian Night by Thirsty Dog Brewing Company a B-.

Style: Russian Imperial stout
ABV: 9.7%
IBU: 58
Beer Advocate: A-/B
Ratebee: 100/98

Purchased at Party Source for $2.05 a single. Four packs are also available, strangely enough, for $11.49. Somehow it is significantly cheaper to buy singles than a four pack? That doesn't make much sense. This beer is available in both Ohio and Kentucky.

Day 8 (8/1/2011): Alesmith IPA

If my beer drinking career was Craiglist, my experience with Alesmith IPA would be in "Missed Connections". Another Ratebeer top 100 beer, I was lucky enough to have found a bottle of this at Dilly Cafe a year ago. I brought it home, and to my extreme sadness, watched about 75% of it gush out of the bottle when it was opened. I have no idea if it was because the bottle conditioning of the beer, an infection problem, or what, but pretty much all of the beer was wasted and what was left didn't take very good.

I hoped that this was a fluke and have been looking for a fresh bottle since. This is pretty difficult since Alesmith doesn't date their bottles (more on that later). I finally got my hands on a bottle last week and hoped that I actually got to drink it this time.

Alesmith IPA is bottle conditioned, meaning that it is bottled with live yeast. This gives the beer a cloudy tint when pouring. The head is a slight off-white is stands strong, with a little lacing after it dissipates. Strangely enough I don't get a ton of hop smell. There is clearly some, but the yeast smell coupled with a little bit of green apple. Not what I was hoping for and not what I was expecting.

The taste is a little better, but the hop flavor still are lacking immensely. It almost seems like you get the hop bitterness without much of the pungency or other flavors from it. At this point, I'm convinced that this is an older bottle. It is pretty balanced; nothing groundbreaking here.

It has medium carbonation and a light body; very refreshing if nothing else. It is a very dry beer, despite the malt sweetness.

Clearly I have terrible luck with this beer. For the price, I don't think I will ever buy another bottle of it until Alesmith gets with the program and gets their bottles dated. That goes with all breweries: bottle date your IPAs! No one wants to drink a year old beer with all of its hops degraded. If I get a chance to try this on tap, I'll jump at the opportunity, but you know what they say: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...)

I give Alesmith IPA a B-. Not terrible, but frankly, not very good. Certainly does not live up to the expectations.

Style:American IPA
ABV: 7.25%
IBU: ?
Beer Advocate: A
Ratebeer: 100/100

Acquired via trade from a Beer Advocate in California. Thanks! Alesmith products are distributed in Ohio. Remember to ask your store when they received their last shipment in so you don't get burned!

Day 1 (7/25/2011): Palo Santo Marron by Dogfish Head

So, after a relatively false start, a trip out of town for a wedding, followed by nasty cold, I'm finally ready to get this show on the road. I still have the sniffles, but I don't think they'll greatly affect my ability to taste beer.

As some of you know, I recently got married AND bought a house. Why not take care of all the big stuff in one month, right? Anyways, yesterday evening's bit of backbreaking manual labor was tearing down an old compost bin and bagging all of the compost to be hauled away. This would theoretically be a simple task, but whatever Einstein built the bin constructed the walls out of wood lattice. This is roughly the equivalent of building a dam out of attached screen doors; it just doesn't work. What this means is that roughly half of the compost is no longer in the bin, but has slowly eroded and is now surrounding it. Fun!

The purpose of that story is to get across that after an hour or so of that nonsense in 90+ degree heat, I was ready for a beer. After a shower, I opened the fridge and gave the selection a look over. Any reasonable person would, of course, pick something crisp and refreshing like a hefeweizen or IPA (both of which I have in my fridge). What grabbed my eye, of all things, was a brown ale. And not just a brown ale, but one that is 12% abv. Sometimes I wonder about those hamsters running on their wheels making my brain work.

I popped the bottle, poured it into one of my favorite tulip glasses and simultaneously saw and smelled that I was not dealing with your average brown ale. I suppose I should have expected that from a Dogfish Head beer and one which is 12% and has been aged on wood.

It pours a dark, dark brown bordering on black, with about a half inch of tan-brown head.The wood aging is immediately evident in the smell, but after that, in descending order, the scent is booze, roasted malts, dark fruit, and a bit of vanilla. The booze is right up front there with the wood, though, and dominates pretty much everything else.

The same is true of the taste. The primary thing here is the 12% abv, with the wood, roastiness, coffee, and raisins/dates taking a back seat. It has a good amount of sweetness to it, but finishes with some hop bitterness. The 50 IBU is there, but not too pronounced. In terms of body and carbonation, I'd say it is roughly medium for both. It drinks more like a thin imperial stout than a brown ale.

Overall, I thought this beer was a boozy, hot mess. I probably wouldn't even consider it a brown ale; it's better thrown into the catch all category of  American strong ale. At the 12% showing considerably, it definitely is a candidate for cellaring. Hold onto a bottle of this for a few years and my guess is that the flavors would even out and the alcohol in it would cool down a bit. If you want to try it fresh, though, consider it a sipper and let it warm a bit before you dig in. The flavors became quite a bit more complex as it warmed.

I would like to try this cellared, but fresh I give Palo Santo Marron by Dogfish Head a B-. The booziness just overwhelms anything else good it has going for it.


Style: American Brown Ale
ABV: 12%
IBU: 50
Beer Advocate: A-
Ratebeer: 99/98

Purchased from Party Town (Florence) for $4'ish a bottle. Pretty readily available where Dogfish Head is distributed.