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A lot of new beers have been hitting the liquor store shelves lately, so let’s take a quick look at them here.
I’ll start with a pair of new beers from Magic Hat. I don’t drink Magic Hat beers as often as I used to, but they are one of the breweries that I cut my beer geek teeth on.
First up is Pistil, which is only available in the 2012 Summer Scene Variety Pack.
The Pistil is kind of a unique beer, in that is brewed with dandelion leaves. It is also relatively light at 4.5 percent ABV. It is also light in color, but it has actually has a fair amount of flavors. I’m not sure if the dandelion leaves causes the slight sourness, but this is an easy drinking beer. I’d drink it again.
The other new summer seasonal is the Elder Betty. The Elder Betty is a wheat beer brewed with elderberry. I have a love/hate relationship with fruit beers. I love a really good fruit beer, but most fruit beers I taste tend to taste fake.
But, I liked the Elder Betty. The elderberry is sweet, but not cloyingly so. It went down extremely easy. It has a good, full-body and lightly carbonated. It comes in at 5.5 percent ABV. One of the better Magic Hat beers I’ve had in awhile.
Next up is the three beers in the LongShot mixed pack from Samuel Adams.
If you don’t know, the LongShot is an annual homebrewing contest, and features three winning beers – two from fans and one from an employee. Typically, I enjoy two of the beers from the pack and find one lacking. This year was no different.
My favorite of the pack is the Five Crown Imperial Stout, brewed by Joe Fromanek. This 8.9 percent ABV imperial stout drinks like it is 8.9 percent, meaning there is a big alcohol warmth to it. That does not detract from the chocolate/coffee roasted notes, and relatively creamy body. There is just a little hop bitterness to balance this all out. A very solid stout.
I also really enjoyed the A Dark Night in Munich, a Munich dunkel lager created by Corey Martin. This tasted exactly what I would like from the style, a little bready doughiness, medium body, full-bodied with just a hint of hops. I could drink this often.
The only beer from the pack that I did not enjoy was Derf’s Secret Alt, created by Samuel Adams Fred Hessler. This is a sticke alt, coming in at a hefty 9.3 percent ABV. Maybe this beer would benefit from aging, but I found it to be a sweet, boozy mess of a beer. I have a second bottle that I’m going to lay down for awhile to see if things improve.
Next up is the Bottleworks 13th Anniversary Ale. Bottleworks is a well-regarded beer store in Seattle, and each year they work with a different brewery to create an anniversary beer. This year, the beer was brewed by Stone Brewing Company.
This porter features 13 hops and 13 malts and comes in at, you guessed it, 11.4 percent ABV (it was supposed to be 13 percent ABV, but it didn’t quite reach that level.)
I expected this to be an extremely hopped porter – almost expected a black India pale ale – but the malts in the beer take as much of a stage on your taste-buds as the hops.
There are plenty of hops – you will taste some piney and citrusy hops – but the roasted malts, with slight tastes of caramel – balance it out nicely. It is also very smooth and way too drinkable for such a big beer. It is absolutely phenomenal.
The final beer I’m taking a look at this week is the Cottrell Brewing Company’s Perry’s Revenge Ale.
I’ve liked everything I’ve tried from Cottrell, finding them to be very good examples of the particular styles. Perry’s Revenge Ale is no different. This 8.5 percent wee heavy ale is spot on for the style. Creamy, malty with hints of dark fruit coming through. It’s a slow sipper of a beer, perfect to enjoy on these still cool nights.
Now go buy some of these beers and let me know what you think.
