Archive for the tag “SoCal Beercation Edition”

28 Aug 2013
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Melrose – Beachwood Brewing

Beachwood_mel_bttlSoCal Beercation Edition

7.1% ABV
Purchased at Bottlecraft in San Diego ($8.75/22 oz. bottle) and poured into lowball hotel glasses.

Long Beach-based Beachwood’s complex and quaffable Melrose IPA pours a clear, light-honey gold with a wee off-white head and a fair amount of bubble agitation in the body.  The nose rockets out of the bottle upon the crack of the cap – magnificent, flowery, frosted-hop aromas, a little grass and funk, and melon zest aromas make you want to dive right in.  Pine and leaf flavors dominate the first swallow, fading into a restrained, rind-like bitterness that combines melon and grapefruit. This well-balanced beer offers more citrus on subsequent swallows, including unripe oranges and a little lemon, but it is a cracker-dusted grapefruit flavor that eventually settles on the palette.

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Melrose

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Posted in Beer Review, IPA and tagged , , , , , , , ,
21 Aug 2013
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Stone Farking Wheaton W00tstout – Stone collaboration with Fark.com and Wil Wheaton

w00tstout-bttlSoCal Beercation Edition

13.0% ABV
Purchased at Fathom Bistro, Bait and Tackle in San Diego ($7/10 oz. pour) and served in tulip glasses.

This collaboration between San Diego kingpins Stone, Fark.com founder Drew Curtis, and actor/homebrewer Wil Wheaton pours ebony with an enormous but quickly dissipating light brown head.  Wood, fresh roasted nuts, cola, and black licorice greet you on the nose, along with a small dose of hard alcohol courtesy of the partial barrel-aging.  The first swallow is a mind-bending mouthful – nuts, coffee, and chocolate on the front end melt into vanilla, wood, and bourbon flavors on the finish.  Only a quarter of this sublime brew was barrel-aged, so you get bourbon notes without any residual alcohol heat.  The lasting impression on the tongue is of nuts, almost certainly due to the addition of pecans.  This is a flat-out brilliant beer – complex yet compulsively drinkable, with a relatively light mouthfeel.  More coffee ground flavors come in as the beer warms, and the beer’s decadent breadiness gives it an overall impression of a boozy pecan pie chased by black licorice.

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Woot

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Posted in Beer Review, Stout and tagged , , , , , , , , , ,
19 Aug 2013

Bois – The Bruery

boisSoCal Beercation Edition

15% ABV
Purchased at The Bruery Tasting Room ($7/4 oz. pour) and served in mini-snifters.

This barrel-aged offering from The Bruery pours a muddy brown with a tight eggshell white head, and a surprisingly subtle nose of alcohol, vanilla, and touches of brown sugar and coconut.  It offers an eye-opening taste of hard alcohol on first swallow, but without the residual throat burn, instead fading into flavors of pineapple, brown sugar, and vanilla beans.  The alcohol burn eventually comes in on the finish, but there are also some bread, spice, and molasses notes in the picture to capture your attention.  Bois is not a beer for timid palettes, and it’s almost too intense to be fully appreciated at present (a couple years of aging should take some of the edge off), with the alcohol beginning to overwhelm the subtler flavors after the first few sips.  That said, if you’re looking for a big beer, they don’t get much bigger or more flavor-packed than this one, with everything from nuts to tree sap to unsweetened maple syrup making an appearance on the tongue.

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bois

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Posted in Beer Review, Old Ale and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
13 Aug 2013

The Roustabout – Societe Brewing Company

Screen Shot 2013-08-12 at 8.09.41 PMSoCal Beercation Edition

9.3% ABV
Purchased at Societe Brewing Company tasting room ($2/4 oz. serving) and poured into taster glasses.

This Double IPA from San Diego-based Societe pours a completely clear straw yellow with a minimal white head.  The Roustabout is a prototypically big SoCal DIPA with a prominent nose of hop flowers, pine, grass, hay, and some citrus zest, not unlike rolling in a country field.  It offers an absolutely immaculate candied hop flavor on first swallow, followed by waves of grass and pine, and finishing with sweet biscuits and oily tree needles. There is a surprisingly light mouthfeel here for such a dank beer, and the hop flavors are absolutely brilliant, perhaps perfect.  Societe has produced a beer that definitely takes the drinker on a journey, as myriad types of IPA tastes dance across the palette (even cracked pepper makes a cameo), never straying too far in any one direction.

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Societe

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Posted in Beer Review, Double IPA and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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