Monthly Archives: September 2014

Shallow Drinker Failure

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electricunicorn

Even the magic of the Christmas mug couldn’t save this guy.

The Specs: Phillips Brewing Co. (Victoria, B.C.) Electric Unicorn White IPA
6.5 per cent ABV, 650 mL, seasonal

It’s a rare, rare day when a truly undrinkable beer passes my lips. You know, the kind of beer where the only proper response is a dismayed face and resolve to get through at least one damn glass of the stuff. For research.

That the first truly bad beer on this blog is coming from Phillips is a shock to me. Phillips’ Blue Buck is one of my go-to craft beers. While I don’t love everything in their lineup equally, nothing has ever led me to believe they’d be capable of… of…

Let me put it this way:

The entire time I was grimacing my way through a glass of Electric Unicorn White IPA, all I could think was, ‘what’s the weird fruity note I can taste alongside all that grass?’

I’m not sure exactly how an electric unicorn differs from the regular type — laser beam eyes, if the bottle label is to be believed — but this IPA tastes exactly like what I’d want to feed to a horse with a horn on its head and undefined magic lightening powers.

What I originally thought might be a grapefruit aftertaste turned solidly pineapple juice after a couple sips. The grassy note, meanwhile, resolved itself into a taste I remember from rolling around in the hayloft of my grandparents’ barn.

Pineapple and hay.

If this sounds better to you than it has to anyone I’ve described it to so far, congrats! Apparently you’re the target audience for this beer.

You and the unicorns.

It probably serves me right for picking a beer simply because its label looked like something that one guy on every university campus who’s still really into Grateful Dead would use decorate his dorm room.

I never have had much time for The Dead.

I should have taken it for the warning it was.

Seattle Cider Summit Roundup

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Seattle's secret: beautiful, sunny summers.

Seattle’s secret: beautiful, sunny summers.

In lieu of a regular post today, I thought I’d give some quick notes on things I tried at last weekend’s Seattle Cider Summit. With 40 tables and several offerings per table, there was no way I could have tried everything, even had I been there the entire duration of the festival. A lot of the offerings were things I’ve seen in local stores, though, so I was able to focus mainly on stuff that was local but new or unfamiliar.

Boonville – Bite Hard: Very very dry, and a little bitter, but medium body and a pretty decent balance of flavors.

Crispin – Pacific Pear: WOW, I love this. Dramatic pear flavor and aroma, quite sweet but still pretty light. The pear cider answer to something like an Angry Orchard Crisp Apple, perhaps. Made completely with pear juice, rather than a mix of apple & pear as many pear ciders are.

Eden Ice Cider – Heirloom Blend: If you like ice wine, or extremely sweet dessert wines in general, this is for you. Extremely concentrated apple flavor & sweetness.

EZ Orchards – Hawk Haus: Crisp, dry, light, sparkling. Slight farm-y aroma.

Grizzly Ciderworks – Bourbon Barrel-Aged: Yikes. Yikes. I don’t know if I’m just not the target market for this cider or if it got too hot and the supply went bad or what, because it tasted terrible. Kinda soapy and kinda gross and entirely yuck. I got nothing in the way of a “barrel aged” flavor.

Liberty Ciderworks – Stonewall Whiskey Barrel: Crisp and dry but a little bitter and musty. Respectable but not my favorite.

Methow Valley – Honey Bear: This is the 3rd year I’ve been to the Seattle Cider Summit and I’ve made sure to get some Honey Bear every time. Love this stuff. Distinctly lovely honey aroma and flavor, and like the Pacific Pear it’s sweet but still fairly light.

Neigel – Pearfect Pie: HELLO YES THIS IS PIE. This is definitely totally a pie-flavored pear cider, and I wasn’t that wild about it just because it was so strongly about the clove-cinnamon aroma and apple-pie-but-kinda-pears taste. I meant to get back to this booth & try another cider of theirs but didn’t have a chance, which is a shame because I really respect & am intrigued by any cidery that’s focusing specifically on pear cider.

Rogue – Fruit Salad Cider: Pretty much what you might gather from the name. A mix of fruit flavors and a general “fruit juice” red/orange color, though they kept it pretty dry despite the fruit.

Sixknot – Purple Sage: I don’t know if this is really what they were going for but I got a distinct vinegar aspect from the taste. I wish I’d written down the description of it, because it said it was an experimental blend of some kind of pomace and some kind of apples. It’s not terrible, but you really better like drinking fizzy vinegary acidic cider.

Shallow drinker success story

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52 Foot Stout

LOOK AT THIS ADORABLE BOTTLE.

The Specs: Barkerville Brewing Co. (Quesnel, B.C.) 52 Foot Stout
7 per cent ABV, 650mL, regular series

I don’t think anyone, anywhere, ever has been as happy to sell me something as the clerk at the liquor store was when I stepped up to the counter with my tallboy of 52 Foot Stout.

According to the clerk, Barkerville’s beers are pretty much impossible for this small private store to keep in stock, and the stout is the best-seller. She assured me I was going to adore it.

With that much hype in the mix, I naturally put off drinking the beer for almost a week out of concern.

But rest assured, reader, this beer is awesome enough that, in contrast to a recent review of Phoebe’s, my notes started out with “oh my god. OH MY GOD. Oh my God!”

You know that moment when you find a beer that hits all your preferred characteristics for its style?

Though 52 Foot Stout has an odd ingredient on its list — in this case “boreal amber birch syrup,” to quote the bottle copy — it’s not a particularly quirky beer.

From my experiences with birch beer, root beer’s love/hate cousin, I’d expected something sweet and even syrupy.

Instead, 52 Foot doesn’t offer so much as a hint of sweetness. The birch beer seems to contribute to a toasty woodsmoke and nature finish that would have been entirely lost in a sugary brew.

With a stout, heaviness comes with the territory, but that campfire-on-a-dark-night note keeps 52 Foot drinkable and never oppressive the way the dregs of a lesser dark beer can get.

And, ok, this is shallow, but we have to talk about Barkerville’s packaging choices, because they’re charming as hell, from the cartoon lantern and the old-timey, hand-lettered fonts on the front to what looks like a moonshine jug printed on the back side of the bottleneck. The brewery’s schtick is solidly  gold rush-era, and they’ve hit a great balance with their bottles.

Assuming the liquor stores around here manage to keep the brewery’s other varieties in stock long enough for me to get through my bottle backlog, it’s safe to say this won’t be the last time you see Barkerville on Bad Rider.

And future stouts are going to have a hell of a lot to live up to.

Finnriver – Lavender Black Currant

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A bottle & glass of Finnriver Lavender Black Currant

A bottle & glass of Finnriver Lavender Black Currant

Today in “ciders I probably should have reviewed earlier in the summer,” this Lavender Black Currant summer offering from Finnriver’s “Elijah Swan Seasonal Botanicals” line. I see a lot of Finnriver around Seattle — I get the feeling they’re doing pretty well for themselves, and rightfully so.

The lavender here comes through mostly in the aroma, though if you’re not wild about the idea of drinking your lavender it may not be to your liking, as it does also come through in the taste with a touch of green herbiness.

The black currant really dominates, though — this isn’t a “hint of fruit” kind of cider, it’s got a lovely rich garnet color and a strong, tart berry/dark fruit taste.

This is a good cider to try out if you want something a little different, but if you’re having it with a meal be sure it’s something that can either hold its own (like, I dunno, a juicy burger — though let’s be real, burgers are my answer to everything) or blend in (like lavender scones).

Finnriver’s Lavender Black Currant has a 6.5% ABV and you can look for it in stores around the PNW or order it direct from them, if you live in AK, CA, CO, DC, FL, MN, OR, or WA.

 

The final throwdown

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blackberry porter

The dark horse of the fruit beer series — in terms of colour, if nothing else.

The Specs: Cannery Brewing (Penticton, B.C.) Blackberry Porter
6 per cent ABV; 650mL;  regular series

The problem with reviewing a really good beer is sometimes all you want to do is yell about the one facet you love.

So what’s the thing I love so much about this blackberry porter?

“It’s purple.”

Well, no, not literally purple, as you can see in the photo. But there’s no other word for me that better describes the taste.

That should be a bad thing. Purple traditionally means cough syrup and grape Tylenol and Grower’s Orchard Berry (which I rag on unduly, considering I want to make Phoebe do a taste test of the stuff one of these days…)

But here purple gets to make up for past sins. This is a beer with a deep, rich purple finish that’s all berry.

Like a raspberry beer, the blackberry is quite tart, but I’d say the berry flavour here is more robust than what I’ve experienced with most craft berry beers — in keeping with blackberries themselves, which I’ve always thought of as more of a punch-you-in-the-mouth fruit than their red contemporaries.

The berry note here is jammy and round, the way fruit flavour might present in a really good red wine. Purple.

It’s a beer that benefits from a slow, considered sipping over conversation, in part because the jam notes will stay distinct even if your palette’s like mine and not that great after the first five tastes.

Unlike most of the beers in the fruit beer throwdown, this one doesn’t need a hot summer day and a patio for maximum enjoyment, either. I can see this being very nice at the end of a long day in late October or November, when you’re looking for a gentle reminder of summers past.

[For those of you wondering, that’s right, the fruit beer reviews are at an end. For the next while I’m going to pick things based on my usual metrics of ‘something shallow about packaging’ and ‘ooh, what’s that?’]

Schilling Cider – Grapefruit

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A bottle & glass of Schilling Grapefruit Cider

A bottle & glass of Schilling Grapefruit Cider

For this review I actually went out and got a Steigl Grapefruit Radler to compare with, even though beer is gross, because I couldn’t quite believe how much this grapefruit cider doesn’t appeal to me.

Turns out Stiegl Grapefruit Radler is not all that bad to an anti-beer person, really. (Which has cued subsequent curiosity for me about whether hopped and yeasty ciders are eroding my hardline resistance to ALL BEERS EVER.)

There’s certainly a lot of grapefruit taste in this cider, even a grapefruit aroma stronger than any aroma I get from most ciders. But it’s not a good grapefruit taste, it’s bitter and sour and tart, with no balance. My original notes on this cider started with “blech.”

Perhaps grapefruit and apple is just inherently a bad combination, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true without additional data points. Instead let’s chalk this up to a learning experience for Schilling, a new local company I’m otherwise fond of — their Oak-Aged is one of my go-to ciders and will show up in a later review.

Schilling’s Grapefruit Cider is a cloudy pale yellow and has an ABV of 6.0%. Schilling seems not to acknowledge that this cider exists anywhere on their site, so I’m not sure where you can find it — in my case, it was at a small deli/convenience store that opened up just down the road from where I live.

Four Fruits, Six Opinions

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Nothing but the classiest taste-testing environs for Bad Rider.

Nothing but the classiest taste-testing environs for Bad Rider.

The Specs: Howe Sound Inn and Brewing Co. (Squamish, B.C.) Four-Way Fruit Ale  
4.4 per cent ABV, 1L; regular series

The question I asked as I doled out plastic cups of beer to my co-workers one Friday afternoon sounded like a simple one: “What fruit do you think is in this?”

And for another beer, it might have been easier to answer. But we were dealing with Howe Sound Four-Way Fruit Ale, so instead I got a lot of…

“Peach?”

“Pear, I think?”

“I’m thinking something more citrus, like grapefruit.”

And, in one case — “Almonds.”

Ok, so that co-worker didn’t hear me say ‘fruit,’ but still…

Four-Way Fruit is a mix of mango, passion fruit, pomegranate and raspberry — a combination that sounds like it could be the basis for one of those Sesame Street ‘one of these things is not like the other’ segments.

As we sipped our way through our samples, I found myself thinking about those grocery store juice blends that are advertised as raspberry cocktail, but mostly contain apple and grape juice concentrate.

In the same vein, Howe Sound’s four fruits fuse together into something completely different from the sum of their parts.

Without the benefit of the ingredients label in front of you, this could easily pass for a peach or pear beer, with an unusual, tropical edge.

But with the cheat sheet some of the truth starts to emerge. Mango is the dominant flavour, and while I’m not sure I ever did taste the pomegranate or passion fruit, but there’s a nice raspberry round off that manages to stay on the right side of the tart/sour divide.

Beyond its mysterious fruits, the brew is very carbonated compared to many of its fruit beer contemporaries, and on the lighter end of the spectrum, which keeps it from becoming cloying or sryupy.

As far as odd summer beers go, I’m calling this one a winner. Since it’s already September I’d advise drinking while you can still feel the rays on your face. Though it’s a year-round beer, I’m betting Four-Way Fruit is at its best before the mercury drops.