The Drunken Polack

Maine Beer Company has been around for a few years now.  MBC is mostly known for their hoppy amber ale Zoe. They’re a small brewery and don’t distribute to far.  So I was very surprised one day when I walked into my favorite beer store and saw a few bottles of their stuff sitting there.  Over time more and more of their stuff has showed up, including Zoe.  So here is a quick run down of what I’ve tried so far.

King Titus – King Titus is an American Porter that comes in at 7.5%.  It pours an almost pitch black color.  Motor oil like pour.  Nice khaki head.  Lacing throughout.  A good looking beer.  Smell begins with a really nice roastiness aroma.  Char, chocolate, woody, with a nice bit of hoppiness to it.  It smells fantastic.  Taste is also fantastic.  This is a porter I could drink every damn day.  Nice roasted malt, slight coffee, bittersweet chocolate.  Just lovely.  Mouthfeel is robust, smooth, and full.  Leaves a bit of a dryness in your mouth.  This is a top notch porter.

Rating: A-

Zoe – This is the beer I was looking forward to the most and it didn’t disappoint.  This is a hoppy amber or red ale. It pours a dark amber color.  Nice two finger light khaki head.   The aroma and taste is full of hoppiness.  Piney and full of citrus but like any good beer of this style there’s a nice big malt backbone to make it almost balanced.  Nice caramel backbone.  Mouthfeel is lovely.  Smooth and medium bodied.  Definitely one of the best beers in it’s style and my favorite of the bunch.  Drink as fresh as possible.

Rating: A

Peeper Ale - Now going from my favorite of the bunch to my least favorite.  Peeper is a straight up American Pale Ale.  There are examples of great APAs out there.  Zombie Dust and Daisy Cutter come to mind.  They linger on the border of IPA while still sitting in APA.  Still having great flavor.  This beer on the other hand didn’t have much of anything to it.  It gets nice big ratings on Ratebeer but I just couldn’t see that.  Light aroma and taste of lemon and citrus.  It’s there but it’s hard to find.  Mouthfeel is light and crisp.  I will give Peeper this, it’s a easy drinker and close to a sessionable beer.  I’d like to try this again down the road.  Maybe I didn’t have a real fresh bottle.

Rating: B

Mo – OK so Peeper was disappointing but Mo isn’t.  This is again a American Pale Ale but this time it’s filled with tons of dry hop flavor and aroma.   Full of tropical fruits.  Citrus, grapefruit, pineapple.  Has a good amount of dank to it.  Fresh and big tastes and aromas.  Mouthfeel is creamy, medium bodied, and a bit bitter and dry.  If you’re thinking of trying some brews from these guys I would recommend Zoe first then Mo.

Rating: A-

So if you don’t know the story yet, this beer has been released a few times until different names.  09-21-12, 11-09-12, etc.  Stone is basically telling you to enjoy this beer as quick as you can.  What’s cool and frustrating at the same time is that not everybody gets this beer.  Basically they pick and choose their distribution area for this beer even though say my area gets Stone all the time, we only got this latest version.  I usually wouldn’t care but damn this is a fine beer.  I wanted more than this one bottle I was able to pick up.

Enjoy By is a 9.4% DIPA.  It pours a clear copper color.  Small white head with good lacing throughout.  As soon as you put your nose up this beer you’ll know why Greg and the rest of Stone wants this beer drank as fresh as possible.  It smacks the nostrils with West Coast IPA greatness.  The aroma is mostly citrus.  Huge amounts of it.  Mixed in there is some other tropical fruit notes and ends with some pine.  Lovely Lovely taste.

When it comes to taste, I haven’t had an IPA like this in a while.  Tastebuds are attacked with hoppy greatness.  Citrus is just everywhere.  Orange Zest!  It’s so hoppy that it kind of gives an earthiness off, like you’re chewing on hops.  It’s hard to explain.  It’s just big and brash.  Tropical fruits are there again, pine, and biscuit malt backbone.  Just a huge taste here.  So good.

Mouthfeel is nice.  Medium bodied.  Nicely carbonated and slightly bitter.  But not as bitter as I thought it might be.

Top notch here and an early contender for my 2013 best of list.  This is the best IPA Stone has put out in my opinion.

Found: Grape and Gourmet, Virginia Beach, VA
ABV%: 9.4%
Price: Around 7 dollars a bomber
Website: http://www.stonebrew.com/
What the company says: You have in your hands a devastatingly fresh double IPA. While freshness is a key component of many beers- especially big, citrusy, floral IPAs- we’ve taken it further, a lot further, in this IPA. You see, we specifically brewed it NOT to last. We’ve not only gone to extensive lengths to ensure that you’re getting this beer in your hands within an extraordinarily short window, we made sure that the Enjoy By date isn’t randomly etched in tiny text somewhere on the bottle, to be overlooked by all but the most attentive of retailers and beer fans. Instead, we’ve sent a clear message with the name of the beer itself that there is no better time than right now to enjoy this IPA.
Other beers to try from this brewery: Stone Old Guardian, Stone IPA
Other beers to try within the same style: Russian River Pliny the Elder, Hill Farmstead Abner
Rating: A+

A few weeks ago I was lucky to stop by Tired Hands Brewing Company again. I got to try 6 new beers on their always revolving tap list. All we pretty darn good and one in particular was fantastic. So fantastic I took a growler of it home. So first up is the best.

Nigel – This one is an Black IPA. It’s named after the character Nigel Tufnel from This is Spinal Tap. Out of all the brews I got to try this one was my favorite. Both me and my fiance agreed. We brought home a growler of this stuff and enjoyed it on a Sunday full of football. It’s full or pine and grapefruit. Not much of a malt backbone at all. Just a purely hoppy and fantastic beer. It left a nice bitter and dry mouthfeel.

Rating: A

California Uber Helles – Not much of a lager fan but this one ended up being nice. Up front there wasn’t much of anything when I took my first couple of sips but as I drank it all started to come together. Nice citrus notes. Mango, tangerine, grapefruit with a nice grainy malty backbone. A nice clean refreshing lager that I would drink over and over.

Rating: B+

DeepSleep – This one is described as a Black Winter Lager. It’s brewed with Smoked Malt and some pine needles. It’s poured a almost black color with reddish tones when held up to the light. Like the Helles above I had a hard time picking up anything in the beginning but a few sips in more and more showed up. A nice smokiness mixed in with chocolate and cherries. Their description of this beer is right on. It’s smooth and full bodied.

Rating: B+

DOMO – This is the first of the bunch I tried. It’s a Barrel Fermented Black Rye Saison. It was fermented for four months in Weyerbacher Insanity and Red Wine Barrels. What a mix! And what a treat. While it’s not called a sour, it’s a saison fermented with Brett. You get sour cherries, earthiness, mustiness, chocolate, and some roasted malt. It’s different and took a bit to get used to but in the end I really enjoyed the heck out of it. Nice punch of sourness.

Rating: A-

Yes, Yes, Yes, Killing the Ego – What a name for the beer. I actually love the way these guys name most of their stuff. I hope I can be that creative one day. This one is a Dark saison brewed with Vermont maple syrup and conditioned on 55 lbs of organic Ecuadorian cacao nibs. They also get creative with their beer ingredients. Sadly I feel like this was the one I enjoyed the least out of the six. Couldn’t really get much out of this. Small amounts of dark fruit, coffee, chocolate, and burnt malt notes. Yeasty. Both fiance and I both agreed we couldn’t get much out of it.

Rating: B-

Single Hop Saison, Motueka – Single hop beers a lot of the times don’t do much for me. I know they are trying to showcase the hop but most of the time that hop doesn’t do enough for me. I feel the need for more of a mixture of hops in the brew. Not here. I like what this hop does and I would love to brew with it myself. It’s a light brew. Hazy light orange color. Smell and taste is full of fresh lemon, citrus, and grass. Peppery and yeasty. Wish I would of brought a growler of this stuff home with us too. I hear this hop is hard to find. I’m on a mission

Rating: A-

First off I hope everyone has had a Happy New Year.  I hope you also drank some good stuff over the holidays.  I know I did.  I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on this site.  With a lot going on with work and me just being plain lazy it’s been a pretty large gap of time since I’ve wrote about beer.  Bottom line is, I’ve missed it.  So what better way to start the blog again by giving you my top 10 beers of 2012.  Now these beers don’t exactly have to be brand new beers that were first brewed in 2012.  Bottom line is these are beers that I’ve tried for the first time in 2012.  Hopefully next year I have a ton more beers to choose from as I get back into trading.  Some of these beers I haven’t done reviews for but those will be coming soon. So here goes!

1. Hill Farmstead Abner – There was no question on my number one beer on this list.  This is the best beer I had all year.  It’s my favorite IPA of all time and I even told Shaun via twitter that if I have a boy, his name will be Abner =)

2. Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout – People drool when this beer is mentioned.  Yes it’s that good and yes it’s rare.  It’s a one and done.  Never to be done again.  It’s basically their Bourbon County Stout aged 2 years in 23-year old Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon Barrels.  It lives up to the hype.  It’s rich, boozy, a sipper, and just divine.

3. Cigar City Bourbon Barrel Big Sound Scotch Ale – I fell in love with this beer on first sip.  One of the best barrel aged beers I’ve ever had period.  The Scotch Ale base beer was kind of hidden but what the barrel did to this beer is make it one of the most complex well rounded barrel aged beers I’ve ever had.

4. The Alchemist Heady Topper – This beer has become just a bit more main stream since it’s been canned for a while now but when I first had it’s early in the year it was just starting to get out there.  Talk about a wallop of hops.  Just fantastic.

5. Hill Farmstead Society and Solitude #2 – Hey look it’s Hill Farmstead again.  Yes they rule and yes this Black IPA ruled.  Finished the whole growler in a night.  Not as good as Abner (but what is?) but still amazing.

6. Surly Five – Only sour to make it’s way to the countdown.  Surly isn’t known for sours because well I think this is the first one they released.  Well maybe they should change that because this was excellent.

7. Three Floyds Zombie Dust – If this shit was local I’d have this in the fridge 24×7.  Boarding on IPA but they call it an APA, this beer is full of Citra and well I have a boner for Citra.  It’s just lovely.

8. Firestone Walker Sucaba – OK I’m kind of breaking the rules here when it comes to putting a beer on here that I’ve had before but I won’t count the first time because I wasn’t impressed with it because well I don’t think I drank it at the right time.  It was stuck between being fresh and the year I like to wait before popping open a big Barleywine.  So this bottle I drank fresh and well I fell in love with this huge flavorful Barleywine.

9. Alewerks Bitter Valentine and Ebenezer – First time I’ve combined two beers on the Top 10 list so this actually sorta turns into a Top 11 list but I wanted to give a local brewery some love.  Alewerks (formally Williamsburg Alewerks) has been putting out great beer over the last couple of years.  Two of their newest ones is an over the top West Coast IPA that us East Coast people don’t usually see and one is a Winter Warmer that is just drinkable and lovely.  To bad it was made only once and was never bottled.  Keep on making the good stuff.

10. Tired Hands The Everyday Complications of Modern Human Life – I was torn adding this beer to the list.  It didn’t get my highest rating.  I think I gave it an A but the more and more I think about it this beer does a lot for such a small abv.  Around 3.5% to be exact.  This is a Rye Beer.  A Rye APA to be exact and it’s full of flavor.  Totally drinkable and totally awesome.

I’ve been meaning to starting blogging again and I will start up after the New Years.  I miss talking about beer.  I’ve just been busy with work for the most part.  So stay tuned if you even bother coming back to this site =)  I hope all of you are doing well and have some great beer over the Holidays!

Stone 10th Anniversary Ruination – When I first got into craft beers Ruination was one of the first beers I tried.  I was amazed how hoppy a beer could be.  Fast forward to today and while Ruination has dropped from being one of favorite IPAs of all time, it still does it’s job and tries to ruin your palate.  This version of Ruination is a little bit different.  They amped up the abv by 3%.  Now it sits up at around 11%.  I also think they dry hopped this beer more than the regular version.  But honestly I didn’t sense much of a difference than the regular version.  Still a nice brew with a citrus hoppy flavor with a bite of bitterness.  OK more than just a bite, it’s a nice and bitter IPA.  Mix in some caramel malt backbone, pine, and sweetness and you still have Ruination at it’s finest.

Rating: A-

Stillwater Import Series Vol. 2 ‘A Saison Darkly’ - I don’t know if I can fully get into Dark Saisons.  I’ve tried a few and something is just a tad bit off with them.  This is one is no different.  While being an decent beer, it just doesn’t make me want to drink a Dark Saison over something like Fantome Saison.  The smell and aroma on this one is full of Belgian yeast, apples, pears, bananas and some oak.  But then there is the chocolate and for some reason it just doesn’t meld well with the other fantastic ingredients.  This is a good quality drinkable beer.  But I’d rather go with something else if I’m ever in the mood for a Saison.

Rating: B+

Dogfish Head URKontinent –  This brew is a mixture of a lot of different ingredients.  Waddle Seed, Toasted Amarath, Green Rooibos, Honey, Myrica Gale and some more regular brewing ingredients like Pilsner, Chocolate Malt,  and some Belgian Dark Candi Syrup. I had to google a bunch of this stuff to even see what it was.   As you can see, a lot going on.  In the end though I think it all melds together nicely.  Roastiness, chocolate, sweetness from the honey, coffee, and some dark fruit.  Mouthfeel is nice and dry.  This is a different kind of Dubbel and each ingredient shines though.

Rating: A-

Three Floyds/Mikkeller Boogoop – Here’s a collaboration brew between Three Floyds and Mikkeller.  Two really great breweries.  This one is classified as a Wheatwine but they call it a Buckwheat Wine Style Ale.  This is one of the many “Goop” collaborations.  They’re done Risgoop, Oatgoop, Hvedegoop, Ruggoop.  This one is just oozing or gooping with flavor.  Citrus, wheat, pine, pineapple, toffee, caramel, and it’s a boozy one.  Loved this beer and it’s nice complex hop profile.  Very hoppy for the style of beer.

Rating: A

Yes I’ve been slacking once again.  This time I like to blame my work schedule.  But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped drinking some fantastic beer.  To get into the swing of things here is a quick review of a beer I had a few weeks ago while visiting Williamsburg.  Williamsburg has a newish bar named Dog Street Pub.  I’ve been following them for a little bit now and they always seem to have a nice rotating tap list.  If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a sucker for one off beers or stuff that is only available on tap.  So when I saw Fiat Lux on tap I made sure me and my fiance got one.

Fiat Lux is a Witbier coming in at 6.1%.  It’s part of their Brewmasters Reserve line.   It pours a bright murky orange.  A nice two finger pure white head is poured.  Great retention and lacing.  Good looking beer as you can see from the picture.  It has a lot of the smells and tastes that most other Witbiers have but I liked this one because it seems to take those ingredients and ramp them up a bit.  It’s a bigger smelling and tasting Witbier without killing you with a higher abv.

When put up to the nose you’ll pick up a nice earthy aroma.  Hay like.  Wheat.  Citrus and some lime thrown in there.  Once again this is a nice different Witbier here.  Bigger aroma than a lot.

Up front this one is nice and fruity up front.  Citrus from the coriander, banana, and lime.  It then melds into a earthiness.  Once again wheat and hay like. Yeasty.  The ending is zesty, sharp, and a tad bit bitter.

Mouthfeel is medium bodies, crisp, and nice carbonated.  Smacks the lips.

Overall this is a high quality well made Witbier that I would drink again.  I’m honestly not a fan of a lot of Brooklyn Brewery’s every day beers.  Maybe they should change things up and introduce this into a seasonal or maybe their regular lineup. Then again it could just stick to what it is now, an every once in a while brew .  They make some really good draft only beers like Blast, their DIPA.  So look out for these beers.

Found: Dog Street Pub, Williamsburg, VA
ABV%: 6.1%
Price: Around 7 dollars a glass
Website: http://www.brooklynbrewery.com/
What the company says: Combining Canadian and American malts with a large proportion of un-malted white winter wheat, Fiat Lux starts with a Belgian witbier inspiration. A blend of Pacific Northwest hops, a little lime peel and a dash of Indian coriander brings a bright blast of citrusy aromatic sunshine, while German Perle hops supply a nice big zap of refreshing bitterness.
Other beers to try from this brewery: Brooklyn Brewery Black Ops, Brooklyn Brewery Local 1
Other beers to try within the same style: Allagash White, Dogfish Head Namaste
Rating: B+

Hill Farmstead/Mikkeller Daybreak - Still trying to catch up with reviews so here’s a few more before the month of September is gone.  First up is a collaboration effort between Hill Farmstead and Mikkeller.  If you know anything about Hill Farmstead they love to brew with citrus.  This time around they brewed a Imperial Stout with citrus.  This is a rotating release but I believe the bottle I have is from the first batch.  But don’t quote me on that.

This beer pours a pitch black color.  Small tan head is poured with decent lacing throughout the glass.  The aroma is burnt and roasted malt.  Chocolate, slight coffee and just a tad of citrus here.  The taste takes the roasted and burnt effects I got in the aroma and doubles them, maybe triples.  One of the most roasted flavors I’ve ever gotten out of a stout.  I loved it.  Once again the coffee and citrus are small here but noticeable.  The bittersweet chocolate tried to balance out with the roastiness and burnt taste but doesn’t quite get there.

Mouthfeel is a nice plus here.  It’s medium bodied to almost full.  Slick and coates the mouth nicely.  In the end this is a winner.  I think next time I’ll try to get a fresher bottle to see if the citrus comes through more.

Rating: A-

New Belgium/Alpine Beer Company Super India Pale Ale – Another collaboration beer here.  This time it’s New Belgium and possibly the brewery who does the best IPAs period, Alpine.  If you’ve never had Alpine before.  Do your best to try any of their IPAs.  Duet, Nelson, Bad Boy, Exponential Hoppiness, etc.  Trade for them.  Whatever you need to do.  They are all top notch.  Alpine is a very small brewery so it’s really great to see one of their IPAs out there.  I say their IPAs because honestly this beer is all Alpine.  This might of been brewed at New Belgium, but the aromas and taste of this West Coast IPA is just something that Alpine would do.  So thank you for New Belgium for letting them brew on your system and letting most of the US finally get a taste of Alpine =)

Super IPA pours a clear copper golden color.  Nice big fluffy white head is poured.  Great retention and lacing.  Aroma is full of hoppy goodiess.  Tropical fruit, pine, floral goodness.  Dank aroma.  Aroma is almost devoid of any malt backbone.  Taste is pretty much the same.  There’s a small caramel malt backbone trying to peek through but the army of hoppy West Coast IPA ingredients won’t let it through the gates.  Pure hoppy goodness.  Pine, citrus, honey, floral with a tad bit of alcohol coming through.  For some much hoppy goodness it’s not really too bitter.

Mouthfeel is a bit big on this beer.  Thick.  Sticky.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a beer that Alpine was involved in.  And I can say that I miss them dearly.  If I lived in the San Diego area, Alpine would be my go to brewery for IPAs.  There’s really no reason to go anywhere else.

Rating: A+

Firestone Walker Wookey Jack – Last but not least is the latest Firestone Walker beer to hit my area.  Wookey Jack.  What we have here is a Black IPA brewed with some Rye.  Black IPAs are really hit or miss with me.  There are some really good ones but some really just bad ones and nothing in the middle.  Wookey Jack definitely sits up there as one of the best one’s I’ve ever had and can’t wait to open up my last bottle.  

Wookey pours an almost pitch black color.  Slight hues of brown come through.  Small tan head is poured.  Aroma is not quite balanced here.  The hops really win here.  Pine and citrus.  Great stuff.  Mixed in is some spicy rye, toasted malt, and cocoa hiding in the background.  Lovely smell.  Taste is just as good and this is definitely one of the best Black IPAs I’ve had.  Nice big taste.  Instead of the hops taking over here, the spicy rye actually hits the palette first.  If you read this blog, you know I love everything rye.  Following that earthiness comes through mixing in with pine and citrus.  Resinous.  The brew ends with some nice bitterness.

Mouthfeel is medium bodied, silky smooth.

This is right up there with the best of the bunch.  Firestone Walker can really do no wrong.

Rating: A

This past weekend my fiance and I were headed up to New Jersey for a little vacation.  Whenever I go up there I like to stop at a beer store in Maryland but this time I decided to venture about 20 minutes off the highway and hit up a brewery that I’ve been following on Facebook for a while.  The brewery name is Tired Hands Brewing Company and they are located in Ardmore, PA.   At the moment they don’t open until 4pm daily so when we got there an half an hour early we decided to walk around Ardmore a little bit.  It ends up being a nice quaint town with unique shops.  It looks like the perfect spot to open up a brewery/brewpub.  4pm came rolling by and we headed in.  Such a nice place to have a brew.   Everyone there was super nice and helpful. The brewpub is designed in such a way where it’s just a unique place to have a brew.  If you look straight back you get to see some of the tanks through a window and above that they state whats fermenting on a black board. I forgot to take a picture of that.

It’s a rather small space.  They pour the beer and prepare their food in the same spot.  Downstairs there are a few tables.  Upstairs is more space so sit but we forgot to go up.  To busy drinking!  They have 8 beers on tap at all times.  2 mainstays and 6 rotating.  Their mainstays are HopHands, a nicely hopped American Pale Ale ringing in at 5.2% abv and FarmHands a saison brewed with rye, wheat oats, and malted barley.  This one rings in at 4.8%.  Nikki and I decided to try all 8 of their brews in little 4oz glasses which in the end didn’t seem to small =)  I’ll try to go through all the beers but honestly we drank 8 different beers in an hour and it was kind of hard to keep track of.

FarmHands – First up was their freshest beer on tap.  FarmHands.  Like I mentioned before this is one of their two beers they always have on tap.  It’s a Saison ringing in at around 5%.  I can see why they made this one one of staple beers.  It’s flavorful while not killing you with alcohol.  It’s refreshing.  Aroma and taste of Belgian Spices, Lemon, Citrus, Earthiness.  It’s very cloudy, lacing everywhere.  It was a good introduction to their style of brewing.

Rating: B+

The Everyday Complications of Modern Human Life –  What a name for a beer.  This is a Rye Beer.  More like a Rye American Pale Ale if there was such a category.  It rings in at around 3.5% and this beer tied as my favorite beer of the trip.  I fell in love with this beer.  For being such a session-able beer this beer is just exploding with flavor.  The Rye is pretty huge here and so is the hoppiness.  They used Cascade. I loved this beer so much I bought a growler of it for the rest of the trip.  That growler was destroyed 2 days later in about an hour.  If I could brew this beer at my house it would always be on tap.  100% of the time.

Rating: A

Deuce – Yup this beer is called Deuce.  No idea why.  Maybe it’s because it’s the color of a #2 or something.  But this is classified as a American Brown Ale.  This one is brewed with corn.  It’s a sweet tasting beer.  Chocolate, citrus, nutty, and grassy hoppiness.  Overall this is one of the more enjoyable Brown Ales that I’ve had in a while and would recommend it to anyone.

Rating: B+

Ooey Gooey – This one is tied as my favorite of the trip.  This is another Saison but this one is aged in Wine Barrels.  The aging did some really nice stuff to this beer.  When put up to the nose, you’re greeted with Belgian Yeast but your also greeted by a nice fruit aroma.  Pineapple, pear, grapefruit.   The wine characteristics shine through here too and are easy to pick up.  Slight hints of oak but the wine comes through.  Hints of mustiness and funkiness.  A lot going on for such a low abv beer and it just proves you don’t need a high abv beer to have a ton of flavor.  Highly drinkable.  I picked up a growler of this and brought it back to VA.

Rating: A

In the end we also tried 4 more beers.  R5 Saison, Borage, and Po-Tee-Weet which are all Saisons and of course HopHands their APA.  I would write more about them but in the end they all sort of melded together.  I can tell you that HopHands is a quality APA that I would drink a ton of and that the other 3 Saisons were unique.  Everything we had was quality.  The whole experience was quality.  From the beers to the brewpub itself.  I will be stopping by everytime I’m near, which I will be XMas time =)  Support these guys.  I think they have something special here and watch out for bottles of their stuff hopefully hitting soon.  I know they’re bottling their Black Saison called Black Lagoon and they’ll be bottling their biggest beer yet ringing in at 13%, Westy 13.

You can visit their Facebook page here

https://www.facebook.com/tiredhands

and visit their web page here

http://www.tiredhands.com/

Founders/Green Flash White IPA – Here I am again.  Slacking on beer reviews.  Some of these brews I had even a few months back.  Laziness has once again sat in but I made a promise to myself to keep this blog updated at least twice a week like a good little boy.  So here is round one of a lot of reviews coming up in the next few weeks.  Up first is a collabration brew between two really great breweries.  Founders, who might be in my top 3 favorite breweries period and Green Flash out of San Diego who make some really good stuff as well.  They decided to go with a White Ale/IPA hybrid.  I like their choice in style here.  When it comes to collabrations you really don’t see many people doing a style like this.  In the end I really enjoyed this beer.  So much after I finished my first bottle I went out and found some more.

This one pours a hazy orange color.  A ton of head is poured.  Pure white, frothy, spotty, sticks everywhere on the glass.  Nicely carbonated.  Bubbles shooting up from the bottle of the glass.  When put up to the nose your greeted with a really nice smell.  Sweet, citrus, banana, wheat, and a yeasty spicy aroma.   Nice and strong aroma.  Which I expect from these two great breweries.  Taste is more of the same.  Big but balanced between all of the ingredients.  Nothing takes over.  Wheat, citrus, mustiness, banana, Belgian yeast, spices.  In the end everything lingers nicely on the tongue including some alcohol.

Mouthfeel is lively, medium bodied, and crisp.  When it comes down to it, this is one of the best versions of the style I’ve had.  Only one that I can think of that is hands down better is Anchorage Bitter Monk.

Rating: A-

Stone Bottleworks 13th Anniversary Ale - Every year Bottleworks has a brewery make them a anniversary.  If you don’t know who Bottleworks is, they’re a bottleshop located in Seattle, Washington.  In the past Russian River, The Bruery and a few other breweries have made beer for them.  This year Stone took a stab at it and came up with an American Strong Ale.  Being that this is Bottleworks 13th Anniversary, Stone decided to make a beer with 13 different types of hops and 13 different types of grains.  On to the review

Bottleworks 13 pours a very dark brown.  Small tan head is formed.  Smell on this one is pretty damn nice.  A ton going on.  Dark Chocolate, Pine, Molasses, Dark Fruit, Roastiness, and a small bit of coffee.  Lovely.

For the taste up front is some nice chocolate that melds into dark fruits.  Mixed in the middle is roastiness and smokiness.  I also picked up some caramel and toffee.  Then in the end hop bitterness attacks the palette and lingers nicely.  Piney.  So much going on here.

Mouthfeel is thick and finishes dry.

This one is a winner from Stone.  I’m so glad I bought a few bottles of this stuff.  I can only see it getting better and better.  If you see this still sitting around, buy some and lay it down.

Rating: A