Posts tagged 'beer'
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Beer recipes added - August 11, 2016
Just a quick update to the main page here - I’ve moved all my old beer recipes over from my home directory on the old website to a more prominent position on the new site. I’ve also added a bunch of recipes I made since then, including some very recent ones (not that you can tell - there’s no dates on any of them). I will be looking at expanding this in the future as I come up with more recipes.
These are all under the beer link at the top of every single page, but if that’s not obvious enough you can also check them out here:
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #39 - May 17, 2009
Frequently, Magic Hat puts some crazy miscellaneous beer into their mixed cases as a test. It’s usually named something like “Batch 47” and if enough people like it, it ends up as a regular beer with a real name in the future. This time, it looks like they’ve been experimenting with three drastically different beers all under the name “Odd Notion”.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #38 - May 16, 2009
I bought a mixed case of Magic Hat beers, so expect a couple reviews of those in the days ahead. I started off with Wacko, which I knew nothing about in advance. Magic Hat isn’t really known for telling you a lot about their beers on the bottle. You stand very little chance of knowing what style one of their beers might be. You’ll be lucky if it’s even got a style at all. They take a very lax attitude towards crazy things like style, which can be fine sometimes. On the other hand as David Shea mentioned weeks and weeks ago, they also tend to focus on the hype more than the beer sometimes. So with that said, here we go.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #37 - May 15, 2009
Okay here’s the thing. I’m out of things to say about pale ales, American style pale ales, imperial pale ales, imperial anything else, and double any of the above. As of this beer, I need to branch out very wildly and try some crazy new things. The next few days will probably not see this happen, but it’s got to happen very soon. I’m tired of writing about all the same things.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #36 - May 14, 2009
This thick, black ale is supposed to be fermented with ripe elderberries and therefore have some of the flavor of them. However, neither Sarah nor I could get any elderberry flavor from this beer. The reason for this is that one of the primary malts in the beer is roasted barley, which produces a very roasted, nutty, burnt flavor in the beer. This is normal for a stout or even a lot of porters. However, the strong flavor of that malt does make it hard to tell what else could be going on.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #35 - May 13, 2009
Okocim
Either I should stop trying Pilsners since they all taste very similar to me, or I should try a whole lot more since I am starting to pick up some subtle flavor differences. This Polish Pilsner pours the same translucent straw color with loads of carbonation and head that you expect from a Pilsner. It tastes like a traditional Pilsner up front, but there’s a marked sweetness in the aftertaste that’s not really very welcome. It’s not nearly as clean tasting a Pilsner as a lot of the Czech ones I’ve tried. That seems to be a characteristic of the style - you should taste it while you’re drinking it, but it gets out of the way quickly and leaves you wanting more.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #34 - May 12, 2009
Now this was a fantastic beer. It bills itself as an American Style ESB which had me a little nervous, since American Style is code for excessively hopped. Of course being an ESB, the balance was tilted towards hops. But it was not at all the bomb that some of these other beers I’ve tried have been. I suppose I’m getting ahead of myself here.
It pours a great amber color with a small sized white head. The head doesn’t last too long, either. Right away you smell the hops and baking bread. It’s a very pleasant aroma that really entices you to take a drink. The flavor is dominated by the taste of nuts, bread, and bitterness. While it’s rather full bodied, it’s not over done. Everything about this beer is well-balanced and well-made. It’s probably one of the best I’ve had in this experiment so far, and I’d like to go back for a whole six pack of them.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #33 - May 11, 2009
Julius Echter Hefe-Weiss-Dunkel
The style of tonight’s beer requires a bit of explanation first. Most people know hefeweizens as very light colored, lightly flavored beers. They’re usually straw or almost white in color, depending on which region you get it from. However there’s another kind of wheat beer called the dunkelweizen, meaning dark wheat. These are much darker and more flavorful. There are some truly outstanding ones out there if you know what to look for. Even though I’ve only made one batch of my dunkelweizen (for the BBBQ several years back), I’d say it was one of my favorites.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #32 - May 10, 2009
All the way from the country of Hawaii comes this Kona beer. Kona has been making inroads in Massachusetts and New Hampshire lately. There was even a rep in the beer store offering taste samples when Lon and I went to pick up this and the UFO White on Saturday. David tells me this is because it’s also being brewed and bottled here on the continent. It’s still a little strange to see Hawaiian beer on the shelves in sunny New England.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #31 - May 9, 2009
The easy part of this project is drinking beer every day. The hard part is writing about it. I’m not really much of a writer, which is why these updates come in sporadic batches. I have to work up the interest in writing, then crank them all out in a hurry before the mood passes. Entries for the previous two days will be along shortly.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #29 - May 7, 2009
I’m going to cheat a little bit on this new beer thing, but just this once. I’ve had Duvel before. It was at David’s house when we all got together to watch the 2004 presidential debates. While I got the impression that I did not like it at the time, I didn’t give it a proper review and I’ve been trying to block the whole experience out of my head. So since I got a free one tonight at my usual bar, I decided I could cheat and do a proper review of it. I hope everyone will let me get away with it. I also hope I can get away with not drinking it out of a tulip glass. I’m kind of slumming it with this beer snob thing tonight.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #28 - May 6, 2009
This is the last of my crazy mixed six pack from deepest, darkest Cleveland. Too bad. I guess after this I’ll have to make some trips to the homebrew store or the store down by work. Anyway.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #27 - May 5, 2009
Today was the one year anniversary of us moving into our new building at work. Coincidentally, it was also Cinco de Mayo, the traditional American holiday of dressing up in silly hats, smacking pinatas, and switching out our crappy American beer for crappy Mexican beer. As such, we had a party after work with buckets and buckets of crappy Mexican beer. I was hoping for some Negra Modelo, being a fan of that beer, but it was not to be. So seeing an opportunity to grab something new, I pulled out a bottle of Dos Equis Ambar. That’s right, Ambar.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #26 - May 4, 2009
Hey look, a continental European light lager! As you might have guessed, it’s transparent, straw colored, highly carbonated, moderately hopped, and just a little bit sweet. It’s also fairly crisp and refreshing. How surprising. Unlike other light lagers I’ve had, this one comes from France. I have little to say about it, though. It’s good but it’s not really a standout. If you’re ever in France and need a decent standby beer because you’re sick of wine, this would be a good one to get. But, I wouldn’t really have a reason to pick it out over another import in your local beer store.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #25 - May 3, 2009
All the way from the Philipino mega food conglomerate San Miguel comes tonight’s beer, a dark European style lager. Dark European lagers are popular in a variety of unusual places in the world like Mexico, due to the flight of brewers out of Germany in the 19th century. I believe something similar is how we have an interpretation of a continental European style in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This is also part of my plan to widen the list of countries I’ve been drawing from, especially from the traditional large beer producing countries.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #24 - May 1, 2009
This is going to be a really lame review, but I found Bell’s Two Hearted Ale to be a rather standard, well made IPA. I did not really notice anything outstanding about it. It was more of the floral style of IPA than the grassy kind, but that’s about it. I think perhaps I should stop trying and reviewing IPAs unless I’m told they are really standouts since I never have much interesting to say about them. For the most part, they’re just very interchangable beers for me.
Oh, I know how to draw this out a little bit. Sarah was back in Ohio for a week in April and brought me back a six pack of random beers I haven’t had before. This one comes from a brewery in Michigan that’s not distributed in NH, but is where she’s from. So this was one of the random one she picked up for me. She also got me a case of miscellaneous Great Lakes beers. I’ve already had all them so I know they’re fantastic.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #23 - April 30, 2009
We go once again to Germany for tonight’s beer, the land of the dreaded German Purity Law that is both a great source of pride and a straightjacket for commercial brewers. Luckily it is no longer in effect. This beer claims to be a Maerzen or Oktoberfest beer, but it is like none I have ever had.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #22 - April 29, 2009
Buffalo Bill’s Orange Blossom Cream Ale
The front of the label says Buffalo Bill’s Brewery, the back of the label says Pyramid. That means this beer is contract brewed, which is not in itself a bad thing. That just means one person came up with the recipe and had it brewed using the spare capacity at a larger brewery. From the website, it looks like maybe beers on tap in the restaurant are brewed on site but bottled beers are contract brewed. Nothing wrong with that. I bet lots of places do the same thing. I’ve sometimes wondered if I should do the same thing, but decided against it because that takes the fun of brewing out and leaves you with all the marketing and business work. Yuck. Anyway, on with the show.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #21 - April 28, 2009
Smuttynose 2007 Really Old Brown Dog
I bought this bottle of Really Old Brown Dog a couple years ago because I liked the name and put it in my kitchen beer rack to see what it’d end up tasting like. Two years later and having no other new beers in the house, I threw it in the fridge for later. The bottle was so old that it still had dust on it. I hoped the age wouldn’t detract but being part of the Big Beer Series, I figured it could do with a little aging.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #20 - April 27, 2009
From the people who brought you Gulden Draak and Piraat (yarrr!) comes Augustijn. This is another strong Belgian abbey-style ale, but unlike all those others it’s not nearly as sweet. I’ve had both of those before and while I liked them well enough, they’re both awful sweet. Gulden Draak was described to me as “candy”, in fact. So I’d say I enjoy them only every once in a while. I was nervous this beer might be more of the same.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #19 - April 26, 2009
The second I read “Yorkshire Square Brewing System” on the website, I realized someone on this project had already written about Black Sheep. Sure enough, David Shea drank it way back on day #5. It seems so long ago and so many beers away. His is a pretty good review, and I’d like to echo many of his observations here. I hope we don’t have too many overlapping beers. This is the first one, at least. Hopefully we can go another 20 days before we hit the next.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #18 - April 25, 2009
Tucher Hefeweizen is a rather standard German hefeweizen. It pours a cloudy straw color with a gigantic foamy head that sticks around for quite a while. I made sure to swirl the bottle to get that last bit of yeasty goodness when pouring it into my hefeweizen glass. The smell is typical German wheat beer, too - no detectable hops, fruity, a hint of the wheat and yeast to come. Tasting it, I got minimal amounts of the flavors you would typically expect. There was little in the way of banana or clove and only a bit of yeast flavor. I also noticed a high degree of carbonation in the beer. The aftertaste didn’t do all that much for me either.
Bottom line, this was a refreshing but uncomplicated wheat beer. I’d love to get more yeast out of it. And I’d love to really get a good banana flavor, but there was little to be had. So I might pick up one of these again in the future, but I’d reach for a Paulaner (or homebrew) first. The dunkelweizen is probably worth trying out.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #17 - April 22, 2009
This being an English beer, I sampled it in the English way by not letting it reach -45F in the fridge. Instead, I drank it at a much more moderate temperature. Sadly, I did not have a cask of it in the cellar that I hand pumped into my glass. I had to settle for a bottle. I hope my English friends won’t report me to CAMRA.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #16 - April 21, 2009
Once again and at the suggestion of previous commenters, I returned to Brooklyn Brewery for something new. This was one of the few beers at Nashua Garden I haven’t had before and wouldn’t mind trying, so it was a pretty easy choice.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #15 - April 20, 2009
It’s Australian for crap beer.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #14 - April 19, 2009
Flying Dog Tire Bite Golden Ale
I don’t feel like writing a whole lot about beer tonight, so let me jump straight to the point. Tire Bite is a golden colored, light bodied, moderately hopped pale ale. The hops contribute a good amount of bitterness and citrusy flavors. Their website indicates Perle and Hallertauer hops, both of which I have used in my homebrews before. I thought they tasted familiar. This is a very refreshing beer and you could easily enjoy several in a session. It’d be particularly good on a hot day.
This is my first Flying Dog beer and I like it quite a bit. I’ll have to search out a mixed pack of theirs and give a couple others a try. I recommend you do the same.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #13 - April 18, 2009
Pennichuck Backdraft Chocolate Porter
Two weeks into this experiment, and I’m right back where I started: a chocolate beer. This time, it’s from the relatively new and relatively small Pennichuck Brewing Company in Milford, NH. You’ve probably never even heard of Milford, NH. I guess it’s not really an internationally known brewing town. Perhaps future editions of my Designing Great Beers will talk about how to treat your water to match Milford, NH.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #12 - April 17, 2009
Today’s beer was a great example of how American microbrewers interpret traditional European styles: just keep throwing more hops at it until it’s “Imperial”. I don’t really like this trend, since the bigger and hoppier beers seem to get closer and closer to the same result regardless of the initial style.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #11 - April 16, 2009
Now here is a completely different style from anything I’ve done in this project so far. The Duchesse is a Flemish Red Ale. This means it’s from the Flanders region in Belgium and that it’s going to be rather sour. This is an old, old style of beer. And like many of the Belgian beers, it’s pretty off the wall. Most people haven’t have anything like it before, nor would they likely consider it to be beer. It’s also the most expensive beer I’ve had in this project at about $11 for a 750 mL bottle.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #10 - April 15, 2009
Star Island Single is Smuttynose Brewery’s latest year round beer, replacing Portsmouth Lager in the lineup. That’s a little surprising to me, but sounds good. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Pilsners (though I do enjoy one on occasion) so this is an interesting change. The Star Island is billed as more of a sessionable Belgian ale with some spices. Let’s see how it stacks up.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #9 - April 14, 2009
This was a very well made, tasty, and refreshing pilsner. Not one of those crappy ones like you’d find in a gas station.
Okay that was a really short review, but I don’t know what to say. Pilsners tend to fall into two groups for me: good and crappy. There’s no real middle ground and I can’t taste much difference within the two groups. Oh well.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #8 - April 13, 2009
Straight to the review on tonight’s beer - no introduction. Anchor Bock pours a dark rusty color, almost black or very dark brown. I would have called it black had I not held the glass up to a light and looked through to see a color. The dense head is white and very long lived. I’d say it probably lasted halfway through the glass.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #7 - April 12, 2009
As a homebrewer, fruit beers are tough for me. I like some of them and have tried to make several fruit or spiced beers, but they almost always come out a total disaster. Either I get sick of the flavor long before I run out of beer or they end up as gushers that mostly go down the drain. So I tend to stick with store bought beers if I ever want anything with fruit added. I’ve had some luck with adding fruit concentrates but that’s just not the same.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #6 - April 11, 2009
Due to extreme amounts of laziness, I was not able to acquire another new beer for today. So, this review is the second (and last) of my Portsmouth Brewery beers. I picked it up yesterday as well, so you know it’s got to be pretty fresh beer.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #5 - April 10, 2009
Yesterday, we were in Portsmouth NH doing wedding stuff. While we were there, we stopped in at the Portsmouth Brewery for lunch and some beers. I didn’t get any beer to go with lunch, but I did get a couple of singles to go and a pint glass. Here’s the first review of one of the singles. The other will follow in a couple days. I want to avoid getting too many from local brew pubs since very few people will ever get to try them. But you can’t avoid that entirely, so here’s one.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #4 - April 9, 2009
Now here is a beer I am genuinely surprised by. I’ll admit to not being much of an IPA fan. As I’ve previously mentioned, I’m not much of an Imperial Anything fan. This extends to IPAs because of the tendency among brewers to make ever bigger and hoppier IPAs. I like hops as much as anyone, but I don’t enjoy the feeling of eating a pile of lawn cuttings in my beer. So, I was a little surprised to enjoy Hop Devil.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #3 - April 8, 2009
Sam Smith’s Winter Welcome 2008
Tonight’s new beer has been sitting in my closet for several months. I made a trip to the homebrew store a while back and bought a couple random singles for later, but then kind of forgot about them. One was the black chocolate stout from the other night, and one was this beer. I think there’s still a couple more random singles floating around back there that I’ll have to try out in the days to come, too.
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100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #2 - April 7, 2009
The first beer I ever drank that I really enjoyed was Hoegaarden. At the time, the concept of really good beer was foreign to me, though I was willing to give it a try. After that half liter in the heavy octagonal glass, I was hooked. In the years since, I have come to realize that Hoegaarden is decent, but not really anything special anymore. It’s basically an industrial product put out by mega huge brewing conglomco InBev. But I still have a soft spot for it.
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100 Days, 100 Beers: Day #1 - April 7, 2009
Inspired by Will’s frequent statement that he needs exactly 100 beers and kind of stuck in a beer drinking rut, I have decided that for the next 100 days I will have one new beer every day. Now of course, that doesn’t mean I can’t also enjoy beers I’ve already had. I just have to have a new one in there at some point too. I’m also going to declare that homebrew shouldn’t count. And you can’t embark on a mission like this without documenting it in painstaking detail on the internet. So with that in mind, I present day #1…