We love the guys at Hanger 24, what a great interview with Joe Savage brewer at Hanger 24. Good beer and fun times.

Midas Touch from Dogfish Head Brewing Co.

This is the Hoppiest beer I’ve ever had. Even hoppier than Mikkeller’s 1000 IBU. Plus Palate Wrecker has the most wonderful hop aroma I’ve ever smelled in a beer. This is a mega awesome hopacoaster of a beer. 

Here’s some notes from green flash on the process.
“Chuck came up with a new method to make a Double IPA by performing a double brew to make a single beer. First there is a single infusion mash and subsequent boil at 65 IBU with Columbus and Centennial hops. Then a second duplicate mash using the 65 IBU wort instead of water and a second 65 IBU boil using the same hop schedule. The result is a higher gravity beer with kettle caramelizing in place of crystal malts and an elevated hop flavor and bitterness that might not be achieved with the same amount of ingredients in a single brew. Hop Heads, this beer is for you! ABV: 9.2%.”

Noble Ale Works

Kenny and I went out to Noble Ale Works in Anaheim California to talk to Jerry Kolbly about his beers, his brewing style and the upcoming craft beer dinner Kenny is going to be doing o April 19th featuring all Noble Brews.  In this episode we taste Noble Alpha Red, Noble IPA, Noble Dark Sybian Black IPA, and Noble Knight Changer Stout! Jerry is making sure to put Noble on the map as the Hoppiest brewery in Orange County, or even Los Angeles County for that matter! Check it out!

Ok, we are not sure if this is a Vertical or a Horizontal tasting. What we have here is Santa’s Little Helper 2010 vs Barrel Aged Santa’s Little Helper 2011 from Port Brewing in San Diego. This was a real treat to be able to try these back to back and really see what the barrel aging process did to this beer. Which one is better? Watch and see… the results may surprise you.

I knew that harpoon was one of the brands to keep an eye out for. I was able to pick up a couple of their winter seasonals, and they were pretty damn good. This one is their Chocolate Stout, which is one of the most chocolaty chocolate stout I’ve encountered.

It kind of brings up the debate about how much is too much. I like to taste the flavorings in beers that use them, however, there is a fine line where it becomes overpowering. I don’t think Harpoon’s Chocolate Stout crosses that line, but it does come close to it. The closest I’ve encountered. What do you think?

Cheers!

Harpoon Chocolate Stout

ABTV Intro 2012 part 2

Here’s another in the series of east coast ales, filmed in hotel rooms back east, Sixpoint Righteous Ale. I think it’s clear from the video that I had had quite a few beers by this time, but this Rye ale from Sixpoint deserves to be shared! It was a damn good beer!

This is the first of several videos I shot while on vacation on the east coast. I tried to get my hands on some stuff I couldn’t get back here but I didn’t find much, although the beer stores back there are weird as hell.

First up is . I didn’t pick up much pepper in this, but it was still a bad ass porter.

For this really special collaborative brew, La Citrueille Celeste de Citracado, made by Stone, The Bruery, and Elysian, we wanted to do a collaborative beer review! We got Roy Chavoya from Beers in Paradise to review this beer with us!

Now, the story on La Citrueille Celeste de Citracado! This bizzare brew is a 5% pumpkin beer, but it is not brewed with any of the traditional spices that one would use for a pumpkin beers. Instead of the cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger and clove, La Citrueille Celeste de Citracado is brewed with fresh grown organic pumpkins grown in Stone’s gardens, yams, lemon verbana, toasted fenugreek, and birch bark. The result is a very unique and different beer that is really hard to pin down.

You need to grab one of these and try it for yourself!
Cheers

After our last beer dinner which featured North Coast brewing, we pulled North Coast sales Rep Dennis Keller in to talk about North Coast’s top shelf offering North Coast Grand Cru. This is a 12.5% Bourbon Barrel aged beer made with pilsner malt and agave nectar. Dennis was also able to share with us some great tidbits on some of the goings on behind the scenes at North Coast!

After I made plans to homebrew on wednesday for homebrew Wednesday, I watched some of the videos. I was a bit dissapointed to find out that it seemed to be more about tasting homebrew than brewing it, but what the hell, I hit the ground running, right! So this saison has been a bit of a troubled child. We wanted to create a Dryhopped Saison with Golden Raisins, well we dryhopped it after tasting it so, that wasn’t part of the plan from the get go. However, I was so happy from the way it turned out in this tasting that I went to Kenny and had him open a few of his bottles. Much to my dismay, they were all flat. There was a tiny amount of yeast at the bottom, but no where near the amount on mine. We realized that the ones that I kept had been the ones at the bottom of the keg, and thus might have gotten more yeast sediment. We seem to have a bottling problem because these bottles were dead flat even though we force carbonated them. We pulled the rest of the bottles out of the fridge so they could bottle condition, and hopefully the rest of them will carbonate to this lovely standard.

Cheers!