Nøgne Ø / Jolly Pumpkin / Stone Special Holiday Ale

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!



It's been tough to blog lately, I've had a ton of "real-non-beer-job" year-end stuff to deal with, but I recently purchased the collaborative brew from Nøgne Ø / Jolly Pumpkin / Stone.



This seemed quite different from what I remember of the 2008 batch. This year's seemed to be more about the spices than anything else. It actually reminded me of one of our early (and terrible) homebrews where we through WAY too much spruce into a stout. I think that's why I didn't enjoy this one as much as the previous year. But it was still good! Go try it for yourself.



Hopefully I'll cram in a post or two more before the new year, but in case I don't, thanks for following and here's to a craft beer filled 2010!

Dogfish Head & BeerAdvocate Collaboration - Smoking the Malt!

This is a cool little video from BA showing how they're smoking malt for their upcoming collaboration brew, exclusively available at Extreme Beer Fest in Boston, MA.

Allagash 2009 Interlude

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of trying this offering from the great minds at Allagash Brewing Company. I would say that 90% of the time Allagash hits it out of the park, but I found this to be a SLIGHT misstep. Although, full disclosure: I had this entire 22oz bomber by myself, so it may have been a bit too much for just one mortal human. That aside, I found this Wild Ale to be a bit too bitterly sour, whereas something like Russian River's Consecration or the Ithaca Brute hits the sour level perfectly. Not the greatest drinkability here.



A brief perusal on BeerAdvocate shows that some people seem to agree with me. But delving deeper, it seems the reviews for vintages of this are much better. Perhaps they switched something in their recipe this year and it didn't quite work as well? I don't believe I've ever had it before, so I can't compare.

Space Beer

The week(s) from hell continues here in the non-beer-related work world. Forgive me. In the meantime, check out this video about beer made with barley grown in space!

Christmas Beer Tree

Stupid regular non-beer job is killing me this week. Must find time to blog. In the meantime, here's something that's way better than a regular old Christmas Tree: