Posted: September 24th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Beer Reviews, Strong Ale, Wit/Wheat | No Comments »
Post-wedding madness and a busy week led Kathy and I to flee to Oceanside, OR for a weekend of rest on the Oregon Coast where we could frolick in the sand and eat fresh crab. As luck would have it, it also meant tasting a couple of new-to-me beers.
A friend gave us a bottle of Rogue’s Double Dead Guy as part of a wedding gift. Most excellent choice! I love the regular Dead Guy and it’s caramel-malty flavors. Double Dead Guy weighs in at 9% and thus is a heavier drink. Kind of a dessert beer, if you will, without being sweet. Rogue suggests you pair DDG with pork, so perhaps it also works with pork barrel politics. This beer will numb the pain of the election season and ensure you have a happy Fall.
Then, while perusing beer at the Tillamook Fred Meyer, I spotted Rogue’s Mom Hefeweizen. That sounded like a delicious pairing with the fresh crab we’d garnered at an oceanside dock! It’s a gorgeous pale honey colored beer with a bit of wheaten haze. Brewed with coriander and ginger, it has a lovely crisp wheaty flavor and a zesty ginger finish. It tastes like summer in a bottle! Forget the $700 billion bailout plan, we should just send everyone a Mom Hefeweizen and their troubles will melt away just like their financial stability.
So forget so-called mavericks, stick with the well-known Rogues!
Posted: August 13th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Chit Chat, Wit/Wheat | No Comments »
I hate to say it, but I think I’ve lost my taste for Belgian Wit style beers. I used to love the yeasty, bright, coriander and lemon flavors and aromas of the style, but lately I order a Wit and just don’t love what I’m drinking. None of the Wits at the Oregon Brewers Festival were awesome, and even the Allagash White I had last Friday at the Green Dragon fell flat on my tastebuds.
Luckily, there are lots of other beer styles to enjoy! Let’s just hope I can keep my Wits about me in the future.
Posted: July 8th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Beer Reviews, Pale Ale, What's that in your fridge? | No Comments »
Finally, a pigskin I can enjoy!I can’t imagine that anything from “Beer Valley” would be bad, so I bought a bottle of
Beer Valley Brewing’s Pigskin Pale Ale since it’s 90 degrees out and a refreshing beer sounded pretty good and I’d never seen this beer before. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical, since “pigskin” = football, and football = crappy beer in my experience. Maybe just I’m scarred from childhood Seahawks games full of adults spilling Budweiser on me.
Still, I like to support and Oregon brewery, and the price was right. I couldn’t help but notice that, in the bottle, the beer seemed a little uncharacteristically cloudy for a pale ale. On pouring, it looks more like a hazy amber or a kolsch – pale coppery and hazy. Funny, since the brewer’s site claims it’s a pale yellow beer. The head is minimal, but it does retain a little foam over time.
Fresh from the fridge, I notice the floral hops aroma first, but there’s little bitter hops aftertaste. As the beer warms, the floral character mellows and allows the malty flavor to come out. It has a nice velvety bubble to it that makes it rather easy to drink. We had spicy burritos for dinner and the Pigskin pale held up perfectly against the spice and the heat of the day.
I have to say that, surprisingly, this beer was exactly what I wanted today. It’s refreshing, malty but not sweet, hoppy but not bitter or overly floral, substantial without being heavy, and all-around a perfect fit for a summer day. I’ll definitely buy this again and look for it on tap.
Posted: July 7th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Duvel, Homebrew | 7 Comments »
The first batch of duvel — the weirdly quick to ferment one — is now in the bottle and seems normal. Only taste will truly tell! In my mad rush to make tons of wedding beer I am now running out of bottles to put beer in. Anyone in Portland want to save their non-screw top bottles for me? Rinsed before storage, if you please 
As for my second duvel, it’s pretty much done fermenting, right on schedule. I’ll have to wrangle some more bottles for that one.
Next up: another batch of kolsch because, well, I’ve consumed much of the last one. Oops!
Posted: June 13th, 2008 | Author: Stacy | Filed under: Duvel, Homebrew | 4 Comments »
The duvel I brewed last weekend is behaving normally, and took about 5 days to develop any fermentation activity. Whew, just as I’ve come to expect! I think that the previous batch started fermenting earlier because I pitched the yeast when the wort was at around 74 degrees. For the second batch, I pitched the yeast at 68 degrees. I used the same brand of yeast for both. What a difference pitching temperature makes! Now I’ll have to see if the flavor and quality of the beers are different.