Monthly Archives: November 2009

Warsteiner HiLight

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Beer-a-Day #318

I approach this beer with no small amount of trepidation. It is a “light” beer. It is a lager from Europe. It is in a clear bottle. If you’ve been following this project you know that any of those three things does not generally bode well for my enjoyment of a beer.

It’s lighter even than ginger ale. It appears to have avoided being lightstruck, but probably because they use hop extract rather than whole hops. Aroma is “beery” with a bit of lemon zest. Flavor is incredibly light. For all I’m giving up, 87 calories in 11.2 US ounces just doesn’t seem worth it. Better to skip the french fries and have a more flavorful beer.

Warsteiner Premium HiLight

Brew Free or Die IPA

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Beer-a-Day #317 beer cans waiting to be picked

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. I declare a “Can Week”! (But, sadly, this is the end.)

Today: Brew Free or Die IPA from 21st Amendment Brewery, a famous brewpub in San Francisco that only recently started canning some of their beer. (I couldn’t get ahold of their Hell or High Watermelon wheat beer for this week. I hope to get some soon.)Brew Free or Die IPA

Brewed with some serious west coast attitude. This aromatic golden IPA starts with a sucker punch of six different hops to the nose, quickly balanced by a solid malt back bone. Our top selling beer at the pub, this IPA starts big and finishes clean leaving you wanting more.

Amber with an orangish cast. Some fruit and resiny aroma from the hops. Has a very nice finish. Why, yes, I do want some more.

Caldera IPA

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Beer-a-Day #316 beer cans at parade rest

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. I declare a “Can Week”!

Today: IPA from Caldera Brewing a small microbrewer in Ashland Oregon and the first in Oregon to can their beer.

An American-style India Pale Ale brewed with plenty of body and an assertive hop profile.

Caldera IPAMedium amber and clear. Lots of grapefruity hop aroma. That’s pretty good, although I’m finding it a little harsh in the finish. My wife rather likes it, though.

Caldera Pale Ale

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Beer-a-Day #315 beer cans walking the line

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. It’s time for “Can Week”!

Today: Pale Ale from Caldera Brewing a small microbrewer in Ashland Oregon and the first in Oregon to can their beer.

A West Coast-style pale ale balancing plenty of hops with a malty backbone.

Caldera Pale AleStraw colored with a white head. Fruity aroma; reminds me a bit of pineapple. The bitterness from the hops sneak up on you. This is good. I’d gladly have this again.

Rogue Morimoto’s Imperial Pilsner

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I found a hidden gem in an offbeat section of Troy, New York: DeFazio’s Pizza.

I had stumbled upon the place using Yelp (or some other such app) on my iPhone. I was very skeptical at first having never heard of it before yet it had great reviews online. It also noted it as a BYOB. So, I gave them a call to check them out and they were very nice, suggested reserving us a table and said that we could bring our own booze. Perfect! I was ready for an adventure and I wanted to try the Rogue’s Morimoto Imperial Pilsner Al gave me.

It was a bit hard to find on a rainy Saturday evening, but I was not deterred. The place was small. Very small. The décor was…scant. My wife said the parking was scary. But they were very nice, gave us personalized service, and the pizza was high quality gourmet. We were going to the theater that evening and there were a few other people we suspected had the same agenda. Others brought several bottles of wine and looked like they were going to make it their entire evening.

My biggest complaint would be that they didn’t provide glasses, so I had to have my pilsner in a plastic cup. But that didn’t ruin it for me, nor the beer. This pilsner was in-your-face hoppy. This is basically an IPA brewed as a lager. But it also had good depth, meaning it wasn’t just hops, with a strong body of malted barley to back it up. Excellent all around; thanks Al.


Caldera Ashland Amber

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Beer-a-Day #314 beer can inspection line

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. Can you say “Can Week”?

Today: Ashland Amber from Caldera Brewing a small microbrewer in Ashland Oregon and the first in Oregon to can their beer.

A crisp, well-balanced, refreshing amber. Simplicity is the key to this recipe.

Caldera Ashland AmberClear amber with a cream-colored head. Aroma has a bit of vanilla and piney hops. Flavor is crisp and light without being too light. This is a quaffable beer. I’ll have this again.

Oskar Blues Old Chub

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Beer-a-Day #313 beer can chorus line

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. Why not “Can Week”?

Today: Old Chub from Oskar Blues.

Old Chub is a Scottish strong ale brewed with hearty amounts of seven different malts, including crystal and chocolate malts, and a smidge of US and UK hops. Old Chub also gets a dash of beechwood-smoked grains imported from Bamburg, Germany, home of the world’s greatest smoked beers. Old Chub is 8% alcohol by volume.

While Dale’s satisfies our hop addiction, Old Chub takes care of our deep affections for malt.

The cola-colored beer (almost black) features a tan head, a creamy, skim-milk mouthfeel, and rich, semi-sweet flavors of caramel and chocolate throughout. The addition of smoked grains gives Old Chub a delicate kiss of smoke on the finish.

Old Chub is the beer equivalent of a lightly smoked single malt scotch, or your favorite dark chocolate. We call it Rocky Mountain Mutha’s Milk. People who tell us defiantly, “I don’t drink dark beer,” often fall deeply in love with Old Chub. We can’t blame them.

Oskar Blues Old ChubDark coppery color. Warm, almost smoky aroma. Big, malty flavor with a good bit of complexity. That’s pretty good, although I don’t think I’d want it more than occasionally.


A.B.’s Beer Bread

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We had a party to go to this weekend where we were to bring an appetizer and a dessert. My wife made some cranberry and white chocolate chip cookies from a recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray package of dried cranberries. I wanted to do something a little more sophisticated and fun and so I turned to a recipe for beer bread that I saw Alton Brown make the other night on his "Fermentation Nation" episode of Good Eats.

The main flavors for this bread come from some dill, cheddar cheese and, of course, beer. AB recommended a good pale ale as opposed to a stout, or lager, that I see called for in many recipes. I decided to go with Ithaca’s Cascazilla, a monstrously hoppy brew. Here’s a picture of it…

Unfortunately, this bread was close to awful. I found it way too salty to begin with, but even beyond that it just didn’t have a good taste to it. I followed the recipe exactly including weighing my ingredients. The texture of the bread was perfect, so I am pretty sure I didn’t make any mistakes. I’m not going to even give you the recipe (though the link is above). The unofficial Hop Talk rating for this is a 1. So sad.

But the cookies were awesome!

Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout

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Beer-a-Day #312 beer can unemployment line

I was at my favorite retailer recently and I was able to score seven craft beers in cans. A perfect excuse to make this “Can Week”.

Next up: Ten Fidy Imperial Stout from Oskar Blues.

It’s the beer equivalent of decadently rich milkshake made with malted-milk balls and Heaven’s best chocolate ice cream. Ten FIDY is about 10% ABV and is made with enormous amounts of two-row malts, chocolate malts, roasted barley, flaked oats and hops. Its huge-but-comforting flavors hide a whopping 98 IBUs that are deftly tucked underneath the beer’s mountains of malty goodness.

Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial StoutDeep, opaque brown, with a head that looks like chocolate mousse. Lots of chocolate roastiness in the aroma. Boy, that smells good. The taste doesn’t disappoint. It’s big and malty and the bitterness, if anything, seems understated. That is really good.