So my beach vacation is just about half over, but filled with some really good beers. I have blogged on some of the major 750s I have tried but there were others that I did not that I felt could be touched upon.
Drinks
Des Geants Voison
I tried this on Saturday evening after our trip to the Outer Banks and was somewhat disappointed. While it was a decent beer and a good Saison, it was not the caliber of Saison I was expecting. This beer was darker than most Saisons, which is no big deal just an observation. I didn’t get that much flavor out of it either, but it was at least somewhat easy to drink. I would definitely prefer a Dupont over this though.
2008 Sam Adams Longshot
I picked up a 6-pack of the new longshot winners just to give it a try and overall they are pretty good. The traditional bock has a good level of malt but still retains its light lagerness (I is that a word?).
The double IPA is good but a little over the top. Its a little sweet and has a huge range of hop aroma, flavor and bitterness. This is truly hop juice. From the bottle the description indicates that it includes a wide variety of hops totally 6 lbs per barrel! Considering a barrel is 32 gallons, even if you round up to 40 for kettle and transfer loss that scales down 1.5 lbs for a 10 gallon batch, which is an insane amount of hops. Overall a good beer but almost too powerful to drink more than a couple.
The cranberry wit was ok I guess, but no my favorite. It does have decent wit impressions with the spices and orange coming through, but the cranberry kind of tastes like it was just added to the finished beer from extract which means it lacks a little complexity. Its an ok summer beer that I’m sure all the chicks and blue moon drinkers would enjoy, but definitely not a session beer for me.
Victory Wild Devil
I had another 750 of this last night after the Jolly Pumpkin and it was excellent. Out of the five or so brett beers I had before this I think I liked this one the most. The experience of those beers on previous days helped to pull out the hops even more this time around. The hop flavor and bitter is just right and the brux is appropriately showcased as well. I enjoyed every sip of this beer and wish I had more. I did not post on it because I already have a previous post, so figured I would mention it here.
Other Drinks
A few other drinks worth noting are the Dales Pale Ale and Festina Pesche. I enjoy the Dales Pale Ale on the beach because of the cans and it never disappoints. A nice pale ale with a sharp bitter punch. The festina is also a really nice summer beer. The tart and sour flavor mixes with the mild peach aftertaste works wonders. Its light enough at 4.5% that this works great on a hot day. The only downside I would say is that the tart/sour combo occasionally reminds me of acid taste after a long puke, yuck!
Book: New Brewing Lager Beer
I picked up this book at MDHB to read at the beach because I have been wanting to check the book out for a while now and needed a new book to read.
This book has a wealth of information on all the areas of brewing but takes it almost to its determent. The factual information provided is often way too abstract and related with little context that its hard to apply. Some sections provide so much technical information from the atom level explained in excruciating detail (like the water section), but other important sections are so brief that the difference becomes very apparent.
The book states that its not about lager beer but is only called that because the most recent beer revolution culminated in the techniques and practices for creating lager beer. On the surface this holds true but when you read through the book, it does more than favor lagers. Generally a chapter of the book will discuss in detail many aspects of the chapter, but when examples are presented they are almost always within the context of lagers. Some attempt is made to reference how ales are handled in these situations but these occurrences are always very short.
Factually most of the information seems to be on, but other statements seem to be arbitrary and unnecessarily constraining. The best example of this is when the book talks about temperature ranges that you need to hold in various situations. The book is very detailed about this and presents every nuance of how the beer may be affected if you don’t do exactly what is described, which is good to know, but in many cases seems too rigid and uptight. Seriously, relax and have a homebrew. Really though, the information is really good and will be a great reference, I just think its comes off as arbitrary at times.
In summary, this will be a great reference. At times I felt like I should have a highlighter so that I could pull out some of the really good pieces of information. The book reads like a manual which kind of makes it harder to use as a reference, especially with all of the detailed information included. This is not a book for beginners at all, but should be targeted to an experienced homebrewer or even micro-brewer as the book cover states.
This edition was release in 1996 I think, but there are only a few places where this shows. Some of the information is definitely out of date, like its references to wild yeast and bacteria but many other sections are still very relevant.
Experiences in Beer
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