Fantasy Football and Stone Brewing

So I finished my second and final fantasy football draft this week...maybe not FINAL, but last live money league. Pretty confidant in both of my teams so we will see how the season turns out. I will say I am extremely excited for this season, I am a huge Washington Redskin's fan and cannot wait to see what RG3 does this year. Anywho, nothing goes better with fantasy football and the NFL than good ol' BEER!

Last week I picked up a special beer; so special I saved it for a special night. I picked up Stone Brewing Company's 16th Anniversary IPA. I have never had the pleasure of tasting any previous aniversary brews from Stone (they have celebrated with Stouts, Ales, Porters and IPA's), but I am confidant that they would have been amazing, I mean look at who we are dealing with here! This IPA is actually a Double IPA and boy is it tasty. When researching the beer the first place I went was to the Stone Brewing website where they describe the process behind the anniversary beer. They chose to brew with what they call a lemon persuasion. All I know is that this beer was great! It clocks in at 85 IBU's which is obviously a lot and an ABV of 10%, which will kick your butt! (Here is what Stone has to say about it)

I poured the beer into a standard tulip glass to capture the head and aroma after the pouring. It is a very clean looking beer sits in the glass with a bright reddish orange look with a pearl white head to top it off. At first smell you get the lemon, but it is not the only fruit smell to it. The aroma will give you a slight idea as to just how complex this beer is. After taking a few deep sniffs I can pick up lemon (obviously), but also peaches. It is amazing what our sense of smell does for us, just smelling this beer I wanted to be sitting around a table sipping away chatting with friends taking in every scent the beer can give off.

I dove into my sip with unabashed enthusiasm, because really, I was tired of looking at it longingly and wanted to finally taste the beer inside! The beer was wonderful! Stone has done a wonderful job of making a big hoppy beer have a mellow malty side to it. For such a strong brew it had a very clean mouth feel to it and welcomed you into more sips, I found the fruity nature very refreshing and really kept the extreme bitterness to a slight roar which is not easy to do with this many IBU's. At first taste you get a bit of the hops, but the fruit really shines through and then finishes with a nice malty flavor. Even the after taste is great leaving a bit of spice flavor in the back of your mouth...very inviting! This really is a great drink for humid summer night sitting around the table with a bunch of buddies. Ultimately this is probably one of the more complex beers I have ever, which makes me think I should try it again just make sure that what I say above is correct, lets call it research!

I do recommend rushing out to pick up a bottle or two (or more) of your own and cracking one open right away, storing one away for a year or maybe even two. I plan to pick a couple more up myself and start a Stone Anniversary collection, opening a new one each year.

Cheers

TThis is Rhys wanting to cheers with daddy and have a picture of his drink of choice taken as well

Welcome Home

Whew! This is my first week back from vacation and boy have I been busy! Not necessarily with beer related items or activities, but with life in general. Last week Mallory and I spent a few days in New York City with our boys and her parents...Yes, the in-laws (really not bad as most would think!) We drove to New Jersey on Wednesday morning, getting there in time to attend the Yankee/Ranger game that night. In preparation for the game my father-in-law and I went out in search of some good craft brews (a great thing about my father in law... he like himself a craft beer...or two) We arrived at a local liquor store in East Rutherford, NJ with hopes that they will have a decent selection with brews that I cannot usually get in Northern Virginia. You can understand how horrified I was when all I saw was horrible Budweiser and Bud Lite. Yet like a shinning light from God there was one shelf full of Samuel Adams Octoberfest!

You may be surprised when I tell you this, but it was my first time ever having this Samuel Adams beer. I have never really been into fall seasonal beers mainly because I have never liked anything with pumpkin in it, but this is not a pumpkin beer and I am a bit more open minded now. So with no pretense in mind I cracked a few bottles in the parking lot waiting to go into the game and I must say I was very pleased. The beer was very smooth, with a great blend of the malty flavor you would expect from a beer better suited for the fall season than the summer. However, the malt flavor was actually a great choice since it was a rainy evening and the game was rain delayed.

Once inside the stadium I figured that I would not find anything worth drinking, but again I was pleasantly surprised when I found Goose Island IPA on tap at each stand. Again this was a beer I had not had before and found myself enjoying it immensely. It did not pucker your mouth like some IPA's, which is not a bad thing some times, but this beer was sweet like IPA's yet not overly so. Very drinkable which will leave you the ability to drink more than a couple before being down and out for the night, which is always a plus.  I would not hesitate to get this IPA again and will be looking for it at my local Wegmans.

Thursday's plan was to venture into the city and do some exploring, this is where the kids got really excited, they thought when we said World Trade Center we meant World TRAIN Center, crazy boys! This was not a beer excursion so no major opportunities to search the city of its wonderful hidden gems of beer goodness, but I was able to get a good idea that I want to go back just Mallory and I and really spend time exploring the concrete jungle that is New York City. We did stop for lunch/drinks in Battery Park where we found a Beer Garden featuring Victory Brewing Company, here I had their lager and Festbier, both of which were as good as you would expect from Victory Brewing. I was a bit surprised that a Philadelphia brewery would be in Manhattan and not a New York brewer, but that's a story for a different time. For dinner we stopped at an alehouse in the Upper West Side called Amsterdam Alehouse. This was a great place with great beer, with my dinner I had a Dale's Pale Ale drawn from a cask. For those not in the know a cask is just like a keg however the carbonation is lighter than what is usually found in beer (yes I know this is not an in depth description, but that's not what I am here for tonight).

All in all this was a good trip, it was the kids first time to the Big Apple and they had a good time. It was a quick trip that seemed longer just because of all of the walking around the city. I highly suggest spending a weekend to tour the city of your choice be it for the beer or just for the city experience I am sure you will have a good time. Best of all I was able to spend some great quality time with Mallory and the kids away from work!

Cheers!

International IPA Day

Hoppy IPA Day everyone...get it, hoppy!? I make myself laugh sometimes (admittedly more often than other people really). If you have not already heard , which if you are reading this I doubt thats the case; today is the second official IPA Day(IPA Day history). IPA day was created by online personalities Ashley Routson of Bison Brewing in California (Bison Brewing) and Ryan Ross of Karl Strauss Brewing Company (Karl Strauss Brewing Company). They wanted something that would unite the whole craft beer world, from California to Maine to Europe and beyond. I think it worked. I saw some statistics today and there were 6.4 thousand tweets with hashtag #IPADay and 4.7 thousand blogs/posts. It is amazing to me that the craft beer world is still so small and that people have not caught on yet!

I must admit that I have been excited and anxious about writing this particular blog post for the past week or so. The IPA beer has become the staple of just about every American Craft Brewery, and no two brews are alike while some breweries like Sierra Nevada and Oskar Blues have two different strong Pale Ales, so I knew I had to find a brew that was new (at least to me) and write a poignant and informative review. I have succeeded in finding a newer IPA I even went with a Double IPA and hopefully I will succeed in the latter.

Tonight was my last evening of manual labor with my dad for a little while, how long, I do not know. It is also the last night that I have to stay home alone and dress myself in the morning! The dressing myself is the scary part..trust me, I can however tie my own tie...YAY ME!

The beer that I am drinking tonight is from the Long Trail Brewmaster Series: Double IPA. It clocks in at 8.6% ABV with an 86 IBU rating. What this means to you is that this is a strong, bitter beer, at least in theory. Long Trail has brewed this IPA with the decidedly American Chinook and Cascade Hops. The Cascade hops give the beer a distinctive floral and "citrusy" taste while the Chinook hops give smokey and herbal flavors. This special bottle gives the drinker instructions on how to pour as well as what kind of glass to pour into. This being the big beer it is you will want to pour slowly so that the head does not get so big that you cannot drink right away. You will also want to serve this beer chilled at around 45-50 degrees, which in my opinion is to keep the alcohol flavor somewhat suppressed.

Upon tasting this DIPA your mouth is hit with the hops and all the floral and citrus flavors, but what Long Trail has done really well is bring out the malt flavor. If you let the brew sit on your tongue (its hard not to swallow good beer right away as I am sure you know this already) you can really feel the low carbonation of the beer and the alcohol softly hits the back of your nose. This beer gets better as you continue to sip and I will say my second glass was a lot better than my first, which is very impressive.

I am considering the purchase of another 1.6 pint bottle for ageing purposes, just to see how the character will change. Overall I enjoyed this beer, maybe not one I would get for an everyday drinking session, but one I would get for special occasions or special dinners, but make sure you are having a strong meat like beef brisket or grilled Lamb...at least that's what Long Trail says! Don't take my word for it, take theirs!

Happy reading and Cheers!

All Alone except for Brett

Tonight is the first of three nights that I will be home alone while Mallory and the boys are gone watching our niece for the next few days and I must admit, I am not fond of being home alone at night. I am very much used to the normal sounds of our boys at night; saying our goodnight prayers and tucking them in bed...and then tucking them into bed again when they get out....as well as those times I have to tuck them in a third time! So, needless to say, I am quite bored tonight and what better way to stave off boredom than to crack open a brand new brew! 


Tonight I had a couple of different options both of which are new to me and my tongue; the first being a Double IPA from a  brewery called Long Trail out of Bridgewater, VT (I had not heard of them until a trip through Wegman's last night, but I will be saving this for International IPA Day on Thursday), and the second/winner for tonight's purpose, is a beer from the Lips of Faith Series which is a collaboration between The Lost Abbey and New Belgium Brewing Companies. This beer is their Brett Beer, it is brewed with Sorachi Ace, Centennial and Target Hops, which means this is a going to be a good, fruity beer. 


The name Brett is short for a wild yeast called Brettanomyces; this is the first time I have ever tasted a beer brewed with Brett, having only read about them in Brewed Awakening and instead of boring you with the details, here is the wiki page as well as a link for Brewed Awakening (which is an awesome read for anyone interested in craft beer! Do I get paid for endorsements?) Brett Yeast and Brewed Awakening, again this book is a must read for anyone wanting to know more or read more about the craft beer scene. Now back to the star of this post...THE BEER!

BrettBeer poured a beautiful hazy yellow forming a finger and a half sized head. My normal routine before taking my first sip is to smell the brew a couple of times, first right after the pour then a couple minutes after the beer as been resting. This beer has a great fruity smell to it, you can pick up hints of lemon and pineapple. After smelling my beers I take a big first sip this way I can make sure that I get all of the flavors and try to find everything that each beer is hiding. With Brett, I got a carbonated mouth feel with then turned into tasting the fruit and hops used in the brewing process. What is really great about this beer it also has a malty finish to it where it leaves your mouth a bit dry ready for the next sip. Once finished there is a beautiful lacing pattern on the glass where each one tells a story of your drink.

While this beer has a higher ABV at 7.5 it is an easy drink that refreshes your palate and beckons you to take in more and more. This being a special collaboration with The Lost Abbey and brewed by New Belgium it is only available in a 1 pint 6 oz bottle, it makes for a great choice in beer to pick up a couple and share at a dinner party or BBQ.

Happy reading and Cheers!