Well then.

Allow me to extend my condolences to Mr. West Coast and the rest of the citizens of San Francisco after a hard-fought loss in yesterday's NFC Championship game. We were both rooting for a 49ers victory, since it would certainly have been fun to yell at each other from coast to coast.

Love it.

I was rooting for a 49ers victory because of what happens now: the unmistakable merry-go-round that will become the ESPN, NFL Network, Boston Globe, and New York Daily News as they all try to stretch a three-year-old football game into two weeks of anticipatory coverage. David Tyree. Remember him? The guy who said he'd give up that catch and the Giants 2008 Superbowl win to keep marriage in New York between a man and a woman? He's back and he's going to be ALL OVER YOUR TV. As my buddy wrote on his blog two days ago: "You know what’s annoying? Hearing Boston and LA fans discuss the NBA Finals of 2008 and 2010. This would be even more annoying."

So as a Boston native, I was really hoping to avoid (for Winter anyway) the whole New York vs. Boston hatefest. Hating on the Yankees is fun in Boston, but what's even more fun across America is hating on both of these cities for hating on each other. Sort of a modern-day crane and clam. Anyway, I hate the Giants.

Aaah... The New Jersey Turnpike...

Here's a beer that's a little topical. We've done a few posts on Flying Fish Brewery before, each of them on their Exit Series of beers that celebrate New Jersey. Exit 16, their Wild Rice Double IPA, is named after the grains that used to cover the wet marshes of the Meadowlands, near the Giants' home stadium.

Like scum on a New Jersey waterway.

This was incredibly hoppy (duh, it's a double IPA), but I was unprepared for how dry the beer was going to be too. Usually a beer will have some malt sweetness as a base against which the hops can work. Not this one.

I will concede that this is a very nice-looking pour.

I got a really nice light yellow pour with a lot of sticky lacing that was not dissimilar from the sort of greasy foam one finds in the Hackensack river up here. The nose was the traditional citrus fruit salad (orange, lemon, grapefruit) with some brighter floral notes and intense pine resins. On the palate, bone dry, with incredible bitterness as well. I wasn't really able to taste any sweetness in the beer - the bitter hops just hit and hit hard. I also wasn't able to detect any wild rice, though one of the things I dislike about wild rice is its bitter aftertaste, so maybe it was there all along.

Maybe the only reason to brew big bottles is to have a label

big enough for your essay-long descriptions.

This is an unmistakably American double IPA - punchy, intense, and wildly unbalanced. It's not my favorite thing to drink, but if I can find another bottle of this limited release, I might bring it to a Superbowl party.

Happy Birthday, West Coast!

In honor of Mr. West Coast, whose birthday it is today, I'm reviewing a recent favorite. Avery Brewing, from Boulder, Colorado, has been doing pretty much everything right for just under two decades. Avery's very delicious Hog Heaven is a perfect specimen of what they do well. And I happen to know that contrary to his name, Mr. West Coast is in fact from the heartland state of Iowa, a land of pigs and porcine deliciousness. And I know Mr. West Coast is a pork fan, so here's to him, and to this marvelous beer.

Hog Heaven - one of their Holy Trinity of Ales

The first thing one notices is how fantastic the labels are. Avery puts a lot of work into its label design, and it shows. Nicely done, folks.

Nice pour. Yes, we're eating sushi behind this.

It pours a really nice and almost viscous orange, with a very weak head that faded fast. As a dry-hopped beer, Hog Heaven has a lot of aroma. I got a burst of citrus on the nose - grapefruit and orange, mainly, with some nice floral resins too. As it warmed, I also started to smell a very welcoming undertone of caramel.

The description, while correct, borders on hyperbolic ridiculousness.

Avery describes Hog Heaven as a "dangerously drinkable garnet beauty" with "intense bitterness and the dankest of dry-hopped aromas." I'm not sure I got dank aromas - they were lively and fresh, but I can attest to both its bitterness and its dangerous drinkability. That drinkability is dangerous primarily due to Hog Heaven's 9.2% ABV.

Nice color.

One thing I didn't taste in this beer was the alcohol. 9.2% ought to burn a little on its way down, as a warning - this didn't at all. I got punchy hop bitterness, a lot of the aforementioned citrus, and wonderfully full malt flavors, and the beer itself was pleasantly thick. I could drink a lot of this beer far more quickly than might be prudent. The malt really comes into its own about halfway down the glass, so although there's plenty of hoppy bite, the whole thing ends up really well balanced.

Happy Birthday, Buddy.

So there you have it - Happy Birthday, West Coast, and cheers to you!

Aloha! ...Oregon?

One of the nice things about my fiancée is that she likes beer. It's nice to have someone to try a bottle of beer with, or to kick back and have a beer with, or shop for beer with. It helps when you also think that person with whom all that beer is happening is really cute.

Another nice thing about my fiancée is that her dad likes beer, and they have cool things in their house including beer from bygone eras. What follows is one such beer.

A True Oregon Experience?

Behold, Star Brewing Company's Pineapple Ale. You know you're in for a treat when the interwebs note that it's been closed since 1996. Says a positively ancient article from the Portland Business Journal, "Wayne Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Star Brewing, said the company expects to close its Portland brewery by late September and move the operation to Phoenix. The company will be reborn as Phoenix Ale and Lagering Co. and consumers in the Southwest could start quaffing its brew by February 1997." However, that proved to be too optimistic: Star never made it to Phoenix, and shut down instead. A quick google search reveals that Wayne Anderson is now the chief sales manager of Oskar Blues, so at least he's landed on his feet.

I don't know why 1894 is featured on this bottle.

But back to the Pineapple beer. There's indication then that this beer is around 15 years old, since an article in Country Living from 1996 notes that the Pineapple Ale was added at that time. Here's a quote from the article: "Though Star features such high-flying comets as an Alt, I.P.A., and an Imperial Stout, it is the Raspberry Ale that puts ink on an account ledger. "It's an abomination to mankind," [Owner Scott] Wenzel overstates, "but it represents 44 percent of our sales." Star has just added a Pineapple Ale to its line." The art is screened onto the bottle directly, so it's held up nicely. As my future father-in-law opened the bottle (with significant trepidation, I might add), we were all shocked to hear the breaking of a potent seal.

Real live bubbles. Who'd have thought?

Bubbles! Actual carbonation survived for 15 years in this bottle. Impressive indeed. The aroma was all sugary sweetness and while I wouldn't have been able to pick "pineapple" out of the aroma if asked directly, I suppose after a while I started to detect some hints of the ripe tropical fruit on the nose. It wasn't a bad pour either - good ruddy copper color and a fluffy head that stuck around a while.

"Surprisingly tart" is not a descriptor I would use.

Flavor was really out there. True to its aroma, this was a super sweet beer. I tasted none of the Perle & Willamette Hops that were so lovingly highlighted on the bottle. Nor do I think I got much of the 2-Row, Munich, or Carastan 30-37 malts. What I got was sugar and maybe some very sickly-sweet pink bubblegum.

A Vacation In A Bottle!

In my dream vacation, I'm drinking a different beer.

When I was a kid, my Dad used to crack open cans of Dole pineapple chunks to put on cottage cheese. I, being wholly uninterested in the cottage cheese, would spoon the pineapple juice / syrup out of the can. The flavor here was not far removed from that sensation, and it left me in much the same state: speedy sugar high followed by crash.

Sediment. Not nearly as much as a beer this old should have had.

We were totally impressed that this beer had held up for as long as it had. Between the four of us, we ended up finishing a nice tasting of this bottle, though I'm pretty sure I was given the lion's share. This beer went down quite easily, I have to say, but it sat weirdly in my stomach and I would not recommend it again in case another bottle is somehow found.

Celebration

One of my favorite beers, year after year, is the Sierra Nevada Celebration. Unlike Abita's Christmas Ale, the recipe for Celebration doesn't actively change from year to year - Sierra Nevada finds what it likes and sticks to it. Minute changes do occur, I'm sure, and as such, I had high hopes for the 2011 version, after my West Coast partner reviewed the 2010 incarnation and found it a little lacking.

My camera doesn't really like the color red, which is a problem

in photographing a beer that's this copper-colored.

I poured this one into a tall pilsner glass. It poured a really nice ruddy copper color, with the thick head that Sierra Nevada always seems to get right. Because I can't always remember from year to year what this is supposed to smell like, it ends up being new for me each year, and I really liked what I could pick up. A lot of grapefruit and pine resin hops on the nose, for sure.

I've already remarked on the scenic quality of Sierra Nevada's labels.

Nonetheless, it bears repeating. Their graphic designer is awesome.

I've been harping on balance for a while now, as it's one of my complaints about American beer that it tends to be really hop-heavy. Sierra Nevada has been leading the movement (I've just sampled their Estate Ale and hope to write it up soon) with huge quantitities of very intense hops. Their Pale Ale, for instance, is a bitter standard in my mind. However, Sierra Nevada takes time to select the right hops, so while things are definitely bitter, everything just works. I think what I like about Celebration is that it's still got a good malty backbone that balances out some of the hops while the bitterness cuts through the rich food of the winter season and provides a spicy counterpoint to what is otherwise a very heavy couple of months.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. True to the aroma, I got a lot of grapefruit flavor, with some honey and toffee from the malt. It reminds me of wintertime citrus instead of the picturesque snow-covered cabin on its label. I really liked the mouthfeel as well - I didn't find it terribly thin, but I can see what West Coast was thinking when he called the finish "harsh." I disagree - I found it bracing and refreshing, but I could imagine that the astringency might be off-putting as well.

This was lovely, and very easily drinkable.

A bit too easily drinkable...

And one more thing: I'm really glad to find a winter ale that isn't heavily tarted up with "winter flavors." I'll have far too many examples of that particular travesty in the coming weeks. This one is one to celebrate.

Christmas on the Bayou

OK, after the snooze-fest that was last night's Allstate BCS National Championship Game at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, in New Orleans, I'm a little Louisiana'd out. This after the nail-bitingly close yet also oddly boring Sugar Bowl exactly a week ago featuring my Michigan Wolverines. But this one's for Mr. Drew Brees, who led my fantasy football team to a commanding win (176.32 - 61.30, but who's counting?) over my sophomore year roommate from college and, as a result, won me a handsome virtual trophy.

Sure looks promising, doesn't it?

I've sampled Abita before: even in Ann Arbor, I was able to get a few of their beers. I have enjoyed some of their lineup - their Amber is lovely, as is the Turbodog. But their Christmas Ale did not live up to their potential. Actually (and unfortunately), it kind of did, given the weaknesses of Abita's Purple Haze, and the truly offputting weirdness of the Satsuma.

All that head is trapping some very weird aromas.

I think there were just too many things going on in this beer, really. It poured nicely dark into the glass, settling to the color of its own bottle, and with a head that started out with very large bubbles that formed the basis for a thick creamy off-white foam. The aroma was promising - it had some floral hops and nutmeg along with an intriguing lemon-pepper thing.

Mirrored labels are hard to photograph.

But on the tongue, the lemon-pepper kind of took over and the beer finished sour. I tried to find some maltiness in here, especially with a beer colored this darkly, but it all got overwhelmed. Not Abita's finest outing. The back label reads "Every year the recipe changes. Abita Christmas Ale is a perfect gift. It's always the right color and fits nicely in your hand... we hope it's just what you wanted." The thing is, there's no talk of flavor or aroma or deliciousness. Just color and how it fits in my hand (it did, thank you). Maybe next year, we try working on flavor?

Happy New Beer!

I had a wonderful holiday. I got to go home and see my family, and I got to go out West and visit my fiancée's family too. And I had an awful lot of vacation days I needed to use up. As such, I had a lovely chance to try some delicious East and West coast beers. Over the next month, I'll try to get through the whole notebook. This may take some time - there were a lot of beers. Like I said, I had a wonderful holiday.

The holiday season may be over in terms of Advent, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's, et al., but Winter seasonals are delicious throughout the cold and dark awfulness that typifies January through March. That is, many of them are delicious. Some of them suck. Today's beer is not one of those: this beer is good.

Fest!

Session Fest is the holiday brew from the good people at Full Sail Brewery, out in Hood River, Oregon. It's a refreshingly light beer in a season traditionally marked by dark brews, which I appreciated. I don't know much about the style (Full Sail invokes a "Czech-style strong lager . . . called polotmavé or literally 'light dark or semi-dark'") but Session Fest is themed by its colors too. They wanted a red beer with a white head and a green label. Not too subtle in terms of symbolism, but they succeeded.

A good amber is tough to photograph

in crappy apartment lighting.

As discussed prior, I'm not sure Session, as a label, fits within the classic definition of a session beer. A session beer should be lower alcohol, under 5% ABV, but needn't be a flavorless affair. At 6.2% ABV, Session Fest isn't really a session - they do get away with it, I suppose, by packaging their beer in an 11 oz bottle? Maybe?

Speaking of packaging, their bottle caps are adorable. Session seems to have replaced the "rock" in their rock-paper-scissors scheme with "fruitcake." I bought Session Fest as a single, so I don't have any other reference points, but I wouldn't mind another purchase to check under more caps. The naughty - nice markings are a nice touch too.

The beer itself pours a nice reddish-amber, and they got their white head in order as well. I got a lot of grassiness and toasty bread on the nose. It's got a surprisingly spicy flavor - the well-toasted malt serves as a nice background to an undeniably peppery finish. It's so different from the other two Session beers that I'm happy to have the trio to choose from. I do wish that they had the balls to make an actual session-style, but a low-alcohol brew is a summer conceit, and I can't really complain from the depths of January. Nice work.