July 27th, 2009
I sure hope this candle lasts for another 1400 pages... FML
Let me first preface this review by saying that my room is bare with but one piece of furniture: a chair. I will assume that the reader’s deductive tactfulness is sufficient enough that I need not declare where I am while both typing this and drinking my beer in solitude. My bottle of Lost Abbey ale is half-full — but that is only because it is a massive 27 oz. beast, a formidable quantity of beer for any small Asian man to consume by him- or herself.
Onto the review. The beer is a “belgian”, which means I am automatically going to buy it. After a long day at work bubbling gas through a solution, I find the color to be eerily satisfying through its familiarity: its dark mahogany / brown hue is highly reminiscent of my failing and flailing experiment back at the lab.
NO MATTER.
Being bottle-conditioned, it is very fizzy upon first pour. I let it settle in my glass before imbibing and give it a loud sniff — this is to ensure that my ostensible beer snobbery can be made public to all zero inhabitants in my very empty room, save for my childhood stuffed frog. It smells of dates and dried peaches: nothing like the description on the bottle.. FUCK. Are my allergies acting up? Did the beer-Zyrtec combo do more ill than good? Is the mold in my apartment finally taking a toll on my body?
I finally let it enter me. Tart, with lingering alcohol on the back of the tongue. Not quite as fruity as it smells. Not really malty or hoppy. In fact, I have trouble characterizing this as an ale, let alone a Belgian ale. This might be because my alcohol tolerance is waning due to age and that I have already drank half a bottle by myself in the wee hours of the morning.
What comes after taste? I let it sit out for a while so it probably won’t make me burp too much (not that I could). Overall, this is a pleasant beer with more of a bouquet than a palate. Is it worth buying again? Probably not. But if the images of a lonely old monk scribing something in candlelight really stir your genital juices, Lost and Found is certainly worth trying for that specific, lone reason.
Score: four sharks out of five
Tags: Belgian, Fruity, Lost Abbey
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January 30th, 2009
Nuts. Brown. AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH
This is a fantastic beer—part because it actually tastes better than your average $0.30 / can Keystone Ice (the coveted Elixir of Life described by the Ancient Chinese themselves*), part because any phrase with the words “Nut”, “Brown”, and “Nectar” is automatic comedy gold.
This is a beer you would want to enjoy after a good stare at the supermarket beer aisle, trying to grab the last six-pack of a beer you chugged in the haze of drunken loneliness in a gay bar in Hillcrest but can’t purchase because some jackass thought it’d be a good idea to make his own six-pack with who knows what five other shitty bottles he decided to throw in there, in preparation for a last-minute party your white-friend-who-thinks-he’s-black-because-he-grew-up-in-the-ghetto-of-Santa-Monica-,-of-all-places-to-have-a-ghetto wants to have in the garage with a makeshift Beirut door, iPod speakers, and a bunch of ethnically undiverse minors dressed up in costumes that start with the letter “E” (think Eve, E.T., Erections), who, when reading the B.Y.O.B. memo, decide that three cases of Coors Light is the best thing since slicing sliced bread into more sliced bread. By the way, this didn’t happen to me.
In any case, the nectar from this brown nut tasted like heaven, but more robust. Slightly sweet finish—one could even say: “nutty”—after a medium-bodied, slightly bitter initial note.
tl;dr
Smooth, nutty, creamy, brown. All good adjectives.
88/100
*not really
Tags: brown, hazelnuts, nectar is such an awesome word, Rogue Brewing Co.
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January 21st, 2009
I use the age old trick of adding a “(s)” at the end of lambic in the title of this entry because I believe, although different in many ways, all the Lindeman’s lambics can be reviewed in one fell swoop. Okay, let’s get on with it…
Lindeman’s has created a group of beers that not only gets you drunk (as all good beers do eventually, even Budweiser), but also tantalizes your taste buds with the sweet and tart flavors of black cherry, raspberry, black currant, apple, or peach. Personally I wouldn’t have included the peach in this review because, yuck, but I want to be all-inclusive.
Anywho, this beer makes for a great appetizer, dessert, or entire meal if you’re nasty. It is best enjoyed out of a tall, skinny glass, although I’m not sure exactly why. Ladies love this one, guys love it too, but usually are a bit slower to admit it.
I give this beer’s aroma a 9.5 out of 10. The only thing that would make it better is if there was a hint of meat aroma with the fruit, but you can’t win them all. At the risk of sounding fruity (hah!) these beers are visually stunning and I like to just pour a glass and look at it for a while.
Overall, the Lindemans series of lambic gets a rating of…
Kriek 9.0/10.0
Framboise 8.5/10.0
Cassis 8.0/10.0
Pomme 7.5/10/0
Peche 2.5/10.0
In summary, these beers are like a fruity, “get ya drunk faster” Budweiser, so drink up and enjoy!
Tags: foreign shit, fruit, girly-beer, lambic, Lindemans
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December 5th, 2008
Truly, this beer is the Champagne of Beers of the gods.
Dogfish Head once again does some really interesting stuff here. Open the beer and smell it: muscat, or mead if you’re into mead. Taste it: dessert wine, then cheap beer, then honey, in that order. They say there’s saffron in there too, but I must be enough of a Philistine that I can’t taste it. Oh well.
You won’t want to drink more than one or two, even if you like it, but it’s pretty neat work in a bottle of beer.
Tags: Ale, Dogfish Head, Muscat, Phillistine, Saffron
Posted in Beer, Good Beer | 1 Comment »
November 30th, 2008
You could go to Fort Collins, CO in the winter. You could. But I’ll just get a bottle of 2 Below instead.
This is a cool beer. (Haha.) It fits in the “wintery spicy beer” category but all the flavors seem to come from the hops. Really good idea, New Belgium. Riding around cold-@$$ Fort Collins on a red beach cruiser has done you some good after all.
Tags: cold, Fort Collins CO, New Belgium, red beach cruiser, spicy, winter beer
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November 24th, 2008
If you can’t find the Younger, you still can’t go wrong with his uncle the Elder. An Imperial/Double IPA, this beer wreaks of hops and packs quite a strong punch to the palate. At 8% this will also punch your liver.
Pliny was a man of science, being the first person to reference hops. However this curiosity was also his demise, as he insisted on viewing the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in person. If he were alive to partake of the fine nectar that holds his name he would be thrilled in the exquisite use of aromatic and bittering hops.
So drink up! Because who knows when we too shall meet our demise… (In Southern California this may come sooner rather than later.)
Among these things, one thing seems certain – that nothing certain exists and that there is nothing more pitiful or more presumptuous than man.
-Pliny the Elder
Tags: Double IPA, Eruption, Russion River, wiseass
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November 24th, 2008
Ahhhhhahaaaahhaaahhhh. That’s the music that accompanies the holy hand grenade of antioch, and ought also to accompany this beer. When your local bar gets this on tap, you ought to go immediately. It ought to sell out that night.
This triple IPA is another one of those beers with so so many flavors, all of them good. It’s amazing how complex the flavor palette (palate?) can be without any of the flavors stepping on each other. They each come at you at a different time. Incredibly good stuff.
Also, you know how you get a different kind of drunk off of swequila? That can happen with this stuff too, though it tastes ever so slightly better than Jose Cuervo Gold, or even Moctezuma.
Tags: philosophy majors can't get jobs without going to law school, Pliny, Russian River, triple IPA
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November 24th, 2008
Jeez. This is the only ale I’ve had stronger and more flavorful than the Dogfish Head Palo Santo, and to make it North Coast didn’t even have to import a $150,000 barrel made of rare wood from South America so strong you can shoot it with a gun and it just hurts the bullet. (Check out the New Yorker article on Dogfish Head – fun stuff.)
I couldn’t begin to count the myriad flavors in this malty beast. Ok, I’ll try: caramel, roasted nuts, molasses, that dark hoppy flavor you get when a hoppy beer is malty enough to keep up with itself… You get the idea. It has the dark flavors, not the bright flavors.
It’s pricey, but if you find this, buy it, and I’ll pay you back for it. I’m good for it, I swear. They say you’ll want to age some to see how the flavors change but that’s ridiculous. If you drink one of your four-pack, you will drink all four of your four-pack, and it won’t take you very long to do so.
Tags: four-pack, North Coast, strong ale
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November 24th, 2008
Wow. This is like 70 or 80 Budweisers in one bottle.
If you get in trouble, and your mom says “Goeltzy, you can only have one bottle of beer this morning,” this should probably be the one you choose. It’s roasty, malty, full of a wide spread of flavors, and really strong (12%). If I had to criticize one thing about it, I’d say it had too much caramel flavor, but if I didn’t have to criticize one thing about it, I wouldn’t say that.
I actually prefer it straight out of the bottle rather than in a glass. Try it, and see what you think
Tags: brown ale, Delaware, Dogfish Head, strong ale
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