Posts Tagged ‘ Mikkeller ’

Let’s make some recycling!

Puzzle fighter, Super Smash Bros, and drinking occurred. I hurt the following morning.

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de Garde Cherry Raz Bu b2: People were a little slow in arriving, so this beer was used to help stretch out the hammies for those who were already here. Tons of raspberry here, with just a hint of cherries. It’s extremely good despite being a little on the acidic side.

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Casey The Low End: Something is a little weird here. It’s not nearly as sour or hoppy as other bottles I have opened. Not sure if this has to do with fresh vs non-fresh, or if this is a bottle variation issue. Still alright though.

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Old Soul The Sauce: Soooo, this Sacramento brewery needs to spend less money on packaging and more money on the beer itself. That being said, it reminded me a lot of Cascade’s coffee blond beer, whatever that thing is called.

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Cantillon Kriek 100% Lambic: Yeah…..I think this beer is a little bit better than the Flora Cherry I had recently. God I feel like such an asshole comparing American cherry sours to their Belgian counterparts, they almost always lose. This beer just has an incredible balance of fruit, oak, and funk.

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Mikkeller Beer Geek Vanilla Shake: I wonder if they make a weasel variant of this, because that would just be fantastic. So much vanilla here, and it doesn’t taste artificial either!

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Upright Provision: MY GOD UPRIGHT WHY DO YOU AGE SO WELL?! This beer was one of my favorites of the night, so subtle and well balanced. This might be my favorite biere de garde ever. I could crush the whole bottle to myself. Some aromatics, with figs, dates, and a tiny bit of tartness. OM NOM NOM.

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So…..I must have switched glasses with someone at some point. Fuck.

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Wait, I found my glass again! YES! This bottle of West Ashely is very similar to batch 2, with very little apricots, but incredible wine barrel finish with lots of funk.

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Ale Apothecary Shirley, you can’t be serious: Ale Apothecary needs to dial back the booze, I just don’t want a 9% sour beer. I don’t. Other than that it tastes great, not a lot of funk, but tons of fruit. This beer is the polar opposite of the bottle of West Ashley we had.

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Rare Barrel Map of the Sun: Definitely the most sour of the last three beers, but it strike the balance between the two, and it was fruitier than batch 1 Map of the Sun. Well done Rare Barrel, I might one day get over your shitty as name.

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Casey Apricot Fruit Stand: Nice apricot flavor here, but the base beer is just too thin. Mouthfeel was lacking and there wasn’t enough of a backbone to support the apricots. Worst of the stone fruits so far.

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de Garde Nectarine Bu: Okay, so this beer is more fruity than Map of the Sun, and just about as sour. I think this and West Ashley are my favorites of the stone fruits. Best thing to do would be to blend them and create a balanced stone fruit sour.

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Nailed it. It was wonderful.

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This bottle of 2013 Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze was sublime.

Binge Weekend.

My buddy from Seattle came to visit to crush some beer, we were able to deliver.

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Still poopy for the first few minutes

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Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout: Still very good, but starting to take on that bell peppery flavor.

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Beer

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Good.

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Better

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Best

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Thank god for lambic palate cleansers

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Goose Island Bourbon County Vanilla Rye: Needs 1+ years before I really like this one.

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Hill Farmstead Birth of Tragedy 2012: Carbonated, and just as good if not better than BCBVS. Top 5 stout for me.

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Mmmm, they blended.

Why not keep going, what could possibly go wrong?

My liver will remember this pain for a long time.

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Dark Horse Bourbon Barrel Aged Plead the 5th: Oh, I like this beer, a benchmark barrel-aged imperial stout!

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Apparently they did a special barrel selection too? Hmm.

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Fifty Fifty Coconut Eclipse: Imagine Almond Joy + an enormous imperial stout. This is good, but way too cloying for me. I’ll take a Proprietors instead.

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Mikkeller skull fucking in a bottle: This was retarded. So awful.

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Fifty Fifty Vanilla Coffee Eclipse: This one was good, but if you put vanilla in a stout, you’re going to get compared to 2010 Bourbon County Vanilla Stout, and then you’ll lose that comparison.

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Cigar City Double Barrel Hunahpu’s: Probably my favorite beer of the tasting, absolutely amazing. Best chili beer out there in my opinion.

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Jackie O’s Farewell my Friends: a 5 year old apple sour? Really damn good, even if I don’t taste any apples here.

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OH THANK GOD A PALATE CLEANSER!

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Fremont Kentucky Dark Star, Coffee KDS, and Spice Wars KDS: Coffee wins.

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Bruery Grey Monday: At around 18%, this was delicious, but probably not the smartest idea to open it last…..

Crap, I hate doing retroactive reviews

Doing reviews after a day or two of having a beer can suck. Details that you wanted to record are lost, and all that you remember is the general “feel” of a beer. Unfortunately, I’ve been caught in a storm of activity over the last few days, so the next few reviews are all written a day or two after having the beer in question. So instead of my typical, “I’m an asshole and drink beer like a snob” type of review, I’m just going to give my general thoughts on it.

Boogoop, aside from being a completely repulsive name for a beverage, is a big wheatwine weighing in at just under 11% ABV. Since it is only available in gargantuan 750ml bottles, I did what any sane person would do and recruited a friend to help me drink it. Said friend lives a hard life, being recruited to drink obscure craft beer with no reward for doing so. Wait, drinking obscure craft beer for free? He needs no reward, because, as a homebrewer, he is uniquely qualified to enjoy these beers with me.

This is definitely an interesting beer, like a barleywine on a diet in terms of flavor, but with emphasized hoppiness to make up for it. It was really enjoyable, but definitely a beer I would have enjoyed more if I was sitting on a porch somewhere warm. Portland? Not so warm, but we make up for our lack of warm weather with generous quantities of rain.

Stout Season is a Coming

Immediately after having that La Parcela from Jolly Pumpkin, I realized that I said I was going to take a break from sours for a while. Since I failed on that front, I decided to make up for it by trying a big barrel-aged stout. Being at Beermongers, I simply walked over to the coolers, grabbed a Mikkeller Black Hole Cognac Edition, and got to work.

Beer: Black Hole Barrel Aged Edition Cognac

Brewery: Mikkeller

Style: Russian Imperial Stout

ABV: 13%

Location: Denmark

Appearance: Black on black on black on black. Also a half finger of coffee colored head.

Aroma: Lots of cognac, holy crap. I was so caught up with the cognac that I almost forgot to notice the coffee, chocolate, and vanilla notes

Taste: Really god damn delicious, people need to age their beer in cognac barrels more. This is a boozy beer, not unlike Bourbon Brand County Stout, but sweet chocolate, vanilla, and mild coffee bitterness more than make up for it.

Mouthfeel: Sticky, and super heavy.

Drinkability: Not that drinkable, I ended up splitting part of the bottle with some of the people at Beermongers

Beer Advocate Grade: A

My Grade: A

This beer is part of a big series of Black Hole Barrel-Aged beers. The others include  bourbon, whiskey, red wine, white wine, rum, and tequila.

I’ve tried the bourbon which was delicious, and the tequila which was not.

Avoid the tequila.