Happy New Beers

As another year comes to a close I can't help but sit back and reflect on all the great beers I have had this year. I thought I'd call out a few that I haven't written about already.

Flying Fish Exit 16 Wild Rice Double IPA- I believe this was their fifth release from the exit series. It is the best from the series so far, and possibly the best beer they have ever made. It is a lemony, floral, grainy thing, kinda along the lines of Pliny the Elder or Captain Lawrence, Captains Reserve. It is lighter on the malt with citrus dominating the aroma and finish. The use of wild rice in this brew gives it a nice toasty grain flavor that is really unique and tasty.

Corsendonk Christmas Ale- This is a limited release Belgian Strong Ale. It is chock full of malt that leans towards darker fruits like cherries and plums. There is some nice belgian yeasty spiciness as well. It is really delicious. Very drinkable, but it still packs a punch at 8.5% abv. It has a distinctly chewy mouth feel that adds volumes to the experience.

Stone Sublimely Self Righteous Ale- This black IPA is a remake of their 11th anniversary ale. It is hoppy as hell. Lots of grapefruit and lemon citrus aroma and flavor with a nice malt back bone. I could probably drink this one everyday if it wasn't 8.7%.

Lefebvre Hopus- Got this bottle from Belgianshop.com. An interesting brew. A Belgian take on hoppiness. It is tame by US standards, but still pretty good. The beer is hoppy and fruity with the Belgian yeast profile playing off bitter hops.

Stone Double Bastard- This isn't new or hard to find, but I had never had one before about a month ago. A co-worker shared his bottle with me after we closed down the store the day before Thanksgiving. We drank the beer in the parking lot of staples out of paper cups while watching out for the Madison cops. Double Bastard is big as hell with a ton of hops, malt, sweetness, bitterness, fruit, pine, and some alcohol heat to boot.

In the market for some beers

disclaimer: I started this post before Christmas, but finished it on 12/27.

Today I was off from work. My big plan was to finish up my Christmas shopping, which I almost did. I hit up the beer store with the intention of getting just a couple bottles as gifts. I ended up with a full basket worth of brews. The whole time I was walking around I kept cursing because there was so much I wanted to pick up just for myself. It took some real restraint not to load up on all the seasonals. I ended up grabbing just three bottles for myself. Being at that particular store made me think about what makes up a good beer store. There are so few good stores in Jersey. The few stand out stores definitely have their flaws, but I am grateful for their existence. Below is a list of a few of my favorite stores and what they have to offer.

Oak Tree Discount Wines and Spirits: 902 Oak Tree Ave, South Plainfield, NJ.
This is the most well regarded beer store in Jersey among beer geeks. They offer a wide range of domestic and import ales and lagers as well as your usual wine and spirit selection. They have a full range of larger format bottles along with 12 ounce singles and six packs. There is a pretty well stocked refridgerated section. They offer all the macros in a bunch of different packaging (ie six pack, case, 30 rack, etc). They might have kegs, but I'm not sure. Probably what makes this place really stand out is their selection of import beers. The entire back wall of the store is dedicated to imports from around the world. They have everything you could want from Belgiam, Germany, England, and beyond. The beer manager is knowledgeable and helpful. I will say that the last few times that I went there, I was disappointed in the selection. They really didn't have much new. The seasonal display left something to be desired. The domestic shelves also looked like they hadn't been restocked in a minute. I haven't been there in a few months, so hopefully they have gotten their act back together.

Joe Canal's Discount Liquor Outlet: 489 Route 1 South, Iselin (Woodbridge), NJ.
This place has a good selection of craft brews but it is mainly a wine and liquor store. They have your usual macro selection with plenty of refridgerated options as well as room temp pallet drops towards the back of the store. They have one wall dedicated to craft beer. Decent selection of domestic bombers and some larger format imports. They offer some single twelve ouncers as well. Selection is above average, but far from ideal. There isn't much in the way of good customer service as the beer guy works between two stores, and judging from the way the department usually looks, he is spread a bit thin. One thing that sets Joe Canal's apart is that they have a growler fill station. They will fill any half gallon growler from one of their six rotating taps. They also sell empty growlers to fill.

Shoprite Liquors of Westfield: 333 South Avenue, Westfield, NJ 07090.
This is my new favorite spot. They have a good selection that seems to be restocked often. Their seasonal offerings and displays are top notch. Tight, inviting displays, with good variety and selection. They have a wide range of larger format singles and six packs. They have some stuff you wouldn't expect like Green Flash and Ballast Point. I found an '08 Sierra Bigfoot there (blog post to come). The staff is helpful and seem knowledgeable. I still haven't met the main beer guy, but he seems to have a grasp on what he is doing because each time I have been there I walked out with way more than I expected to purchase. The picture above is bottles I got from this place.

Check these places out if you are into craft brew. Support the few stores that have good offerings and if you know of any other good ones, send them my way. Cheers.

Thirty Somethin

Thirty years ago I came kicking and screaming into this cold cruel world with bright eyes and a calm demeanor. My birth was not, however, the most notable thing to happen that year. Nor was the election of Ronald Reagan, champion of the upper upper class. No, the best thing to come out of 1980, by far, was the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company, champion of the cascade hop. This year they celebrated their thirtieth anniversary with a series of beers; Three colaboration brews and one brewer's reserve. Seeing as how Sierra is my favorite brewing co I was super excited to get my hands on these limited releases. Finding them proved often to be more then difficult. Places where beer dudes (and dudettes I suppose) go to get good beer would sell out of them super fast. Oak Tree in South Plainfield didn't even put them out for sale. You had to ask the beer manager to get one out of back stock for you. The same was true for Joe Canal's in Woodbridge. I found that the best place to acquire these bonus wagners was off the beaten path. Places like Madison Wine Cellar would get a case in and not know exactly what they had on hand. I got a bunch of the first and fourth release from there. I found several of the third release at a big beer mart outside of Asbury. It was like finding that the baseball card where the dude is flipping the bird.

The beers come in handsome cork and caged bottles. If you had the hook up you could get them in a nice wood storage box. There was also a Thirtieth anniversary snifter that went along with the beers. They were released every few months over the course of this year. They all were pretty big beers that should age well. I bought several of each. I drank at least one of each fresh and aged the rest. Then, leading up to the one year anniversary of beer glasses I drank each beer in succession culminating in my first taste of the brewer's reserve grand cru. What follows is my impression, from what I can recall, of each beer. I was gonna post a pic of each pour, but you can check my twitter feed if you really want to see that.

Fritz & Kens Stout:
The first release from back in March. This stout was a collaberative brew between Sierra founder Ken Grossman and (at the time) Anchor kingpin Fritz Maytag. FYI he is grandson of the appliance magnate and also he sold anchor shortly after the release of this beer. The beer is big as hell, super dark, and super delicious. Lots of roast and bitter sweetness. Nicely balanced. Really a quintessential American stout. It coats your palate quickly and basically becomes your night. Like, you can drink this while you are watching the Rangers game, but really you are watching the Rangers game while drinking the beer. Aging for nine months smoothed this beer out a bit. It was super creamy and thick like a bitter chocolate beer shake. Nice lacing and all that beer geek junk too. When I opened it after aging the bottom of the cork exploded. It was cool.

Charlie, Fred, & Ken's Bock:
This beer was released in May. It is a collaborative brew from Ken and pioneer craft brew writers Fred Eckhart and Charlie Papazian. They brewed an Imperial Helles Bock. Basically a maibock that is big as hell(es). This thing is delicious. It is malty and toasty and amber as fuck. It is out of left field really, as Sierra is not really known for their lagers. They did this one beautifully. A new take on a classic style. Initially it was my least favorite of the four, but after tasting it recently I think I would put it at number two of the four. It's tough to rate these things because they are all awesome. The most interesting thing about this one is that it has some alcohol heat that comes through at the back of your palate, almost in your throat. It really is interesting and for me it really added to the whole experience.

Jack and Ken's Black Barlywine Ale:
This is an interesting one. On this beer Ken Grossman teamed up with Jack McAuliffe. Jack started the New Albion Brewery in Sonoma Cali back in the day. It was a small operation that inspired many of the craft brew pioneers like Ken and Fritz. The beer they decided to brew for the anniversary is a black barleywine that is brewed with only American Cascade hops. It came out in July. This beer is seriously intense. I've had three so far and the first two times I had to ask for help in finishing it. It is big as hell. Very much a barleywine, but it has elements of stout and porter. Pretty much it is a barleywine with a ton of roast, some heat, lots of hop bitterness, sweet stout maltiness, but a medium syrup like body like a bw. It is a force to be reckoned with.

Brewer's Reserve Grand Cru:
This one is the culmination of the series. It is a blend of oak aged bigfoot ale, celebration ale, and fresh pale ale that is dry hopped into some sort of celestial nectar that words can not really properly convey. It has the best elements of all three beers and then some. Malt and sweet from the barley wine is complimented by the citrusy cascade hoppiness of the pale ale, which is further grounded and balanced by the piney hoppiness of celebration. Bangin. get your hands on this one if you can. Definitely my favorite of the series. It is of note that I prefer it from the bottle rather then the tap. The same goes for Sierra pale ale. I'm not sure if they bottle conditioned this like they do with the pale. Weird how Sierra is like that. Mostly I prefer tap, but Sierra does a real good job with bottle conditioning.

Hope you enjoyed my run down of this series. I still have a random assortment of these bad boy's left. Hit me up if you wanna do some drinking. They are good for one, but are best shared. Cheers.

Golden Anniversary

Not really that long ago one of my favorite beers was Golden Anniversary Beer. Golden Anni is a cheap fizzy yellow beer. It is listed on Rate Beer as a blonde ale with a rating of 1 out of 100. You could get it at the beer store in New Brunswick for $2.65 for a sixer. The price was a big part of the allure. Also the initials are GAB, which led to the obvious word play Gift of GAB. As in, you look like you could use one more, here is the gift of GAB. One of the greatest days of my life as a touring musician was when we discovered 40's of GAB at a grocery store in Rochester. My how things have changed.

To mark the one year anniversary of this blog I busted out a beer that I had been saving for over 2 years. I am referring to Stone's 12th anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout. When this beer first came out, I bought six of them. Like all Stone anniversary releases, it came in a 22oz bomber. The last time I had one was at least a year and half ago. I remember it being quite good back then, so I was psyched to dig into this one. The first thing I noticed when I poured it was the lack of head and carbonation in general. It required quite a vigorous pour in order to get any kind of fizz. Color wise, it was consistent with what you would expect from an oatmeal stout. Aroma was that of sweet chocolate with some bitter roast aromas as a counter. It smelled good, but I was weary due to the lack of carbonation. I dove in despite my reservations. Like I expected, it was definitely lacking in the CO2 department. Looking past this, it was still a pretty tasty beer. Lots of chocolate and coffee flavors with a bitter backbone to counter the sweet from the massive malt bill. This beer definitely smoothed out over the last two plus years. No heat whatsoever despite the nine plus percent alcohol.

The other thing that surprised me about this beer beyond the carbonation is that it seemed to loose some body during the aging the process. When I first tried it in '08 it was full bodied, thick like a beer shake. Now, while still more full bodied then an amber or pale, it really didn't coat my palate like I thought it would. Later on I checked the cap and I could clearly see that the oxygen seal had shrivelled up. This leads me back to the subject of cellaring. I store my beer in a cabinet at room temp. My apartment generally stays between 65 and 70 degrees. These are not great conditions for storing beer. Ideally you would like to store beer at around 52 degrees with a high degree of relative humidity. These conditions are not acheivable when you live in an apartment complex. My only other option right now besides my beer cabinet would be the fridge. That isn't really a good option though for two reasons. First, I need to store food and fresh beer in there. And number two, refrigerators are designed to keep their contents dry. This causes the oxygen barrier on crowns of beer stored for long intervals to be compromised. The beer is thus exposed to oxygen which fucks beer all up. So right now it looks like I'm damned either way. The best solution would be to either buy one of those wine cellar things or design some sort of beer storage system. A project for another day. Right now I need to take it down. I have regional dudes coming into the grocery store tomorrow and I need to get some rest because I gotta be up by 4:00 am tomorrow. Thanks for reading over the last year or however long you have been paying attention to my half drunk rants on beer. Stay tuned for some more good anniversary stuff. Cheers.

Beer Glasses

Tomorrow will mark the one year anniversary of this blog. The day I started it, I was sitting alone in my apartment drinking Sierra Nevada Celebration ale. I was pretty deep in and I got the idea to do a blog about beer. Really it was just a whim, but I'm glad that I did it. I've enjoyed sharing my beer related experiences with you. Over the next year, I will be attempting to bring out more material and hopefully be more consistent with my posting.

To mark my one year mark I am unveiling the new name of the blog: Beer Glasses. Thanks to my friend Jim Cottage for the kick ass logos. Check him out his work here. Beer blog is too bland and Beer Glasses fits the style of the blog better. Be sure to follow me on Twitter. The link is in the top right corner of the blog. Right now, I have 0 followers. Let's work on that.

Over the next couple days, I will be posting a series of anniversary related posts where I dip into my private reserves and drink some of that top shelf ish. Stay tuned. Thanks for reading and cheers.

All Grain, All the Time

A couple weeks ago Adam and I did our first all grain batch. It's been two years since our first extract batch and we are only now getting into the AG. It's all good, because we are back on the horse and it should be all grain from here on out. We ended up doing the mash on the kitchen stove, which involved a complicated two pot system for heating the strike and sparge water. It was a little dicey at times, but thankfully Murphy spared us, and I think we got a pretty good technique going on. For the boil, we brought it outside to the propane burner, which is way more efficient then using two burners on the stove. Doing full wort boils is the way to go. The beer we brewed was a fairly standard American pale ale. It smelled really good when we transferred it to secondary last weekend. I'm looking forward to tasting this one. Check out pictures at the end.

A while back I posted this about open that bottle night. Now it seems that Mark Dredge has stolen my idea. Check it out. Well, maybe he came up with it independently, but either way, I was first. In any event, I am going to open up some bottles pretty soon. Maybe not this weekend as he suggests. This blog will be a year old in one week. As part of that anniversary I will be opening a few things I have been saving. I might post a video too. Stay tuned.

Also, I got a twitter account. I'm still getting used to it, but my thing is @beerglassesnj. Follow me if you want. I mostly just post pictures of what I am drinking each night.

Ingredients


Sparging


The boil