Smuttynose IPA

When I first got into IPAs, I was drawn to unbalanced, hoppy ales. I have since come to appreciate malt-hop balance in my IPAs. Some breweries, notably Dogfish Head, changed course to strive for more balance in their ales. Smuttynose was not as hoppy as I remembered in aroma and flavor, but it is very well balanced. 

Smuttynose has a strong malt backbone. It's balance is evident in the nose which smelled of earth, spice, and orange rind. The flavor followed through on the aroma's foundation and, like an orange rind, was slightly sweet followed by a bitter resin flavor. Smuttynose has always been very bitter, and that hasn't changed. The bitterness is the only unmuted aspect of the flavor, which is otherwise balanced and subtle.

 

Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA

I've drank this beer on many occasions and was never very enamored with it. 90 Minute is a 9% Imperial IPA with a flavor driven by malt. It's a big beer dripping with malt complexity. It's continuously hopped for 90 minutes while it's brewed, but it doesn't come off insanely hoppy in actuality. The hops are masked by a "ridiculous amount" of English Two Row barley. As a result, 90 Minute's flavor gravitates toward an English IPA with a jacked up abv. The nose smelled of spiced bread that reminded me of Christmas. The body has a thick, chewy texture. There is a sweetish, Toffee character in the flavor and the finish has a deep bitter quality that is coffee like. 

Like I said earlier, I was never big on this beer, but that was before I tried it with food. I drank one with steak and now I see what all the hype is about. It's amazing with steak, which complimented and rounded the deep malt complexity. 

Mikkeller Big Worse Barley Wine

Mikkeller Big Worse is aptly named. The label features what looks like a mug shot, and at 12% abv I can understand the choice. This beer is very heady, and a mellow but heavy buzz becomes apparent after a few sips. The coloring is deep maple. It's very malty with a spicy fresh baked bread aroma and flavor. The body features a long flavor, and a chewy aspect that brings the phrase liquid bread to mind.


There are a couple qualities of this beer that make it unique. For one, it is not very sweet. This is an oddity considering the amount of malt it contains. Beers this big are usually boozy or slightly pungent. It is also very dry. Combined, these facets mean almost all of the available malt sugars are converted into alcohol during fermentation. Thus, Big Worse is an extremely well crafted ale.

Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar

Rouge's Hazelnut Brown Nectar is Frangelico in beer form. Frangelico is the amazing hazelnut liqueur with a bottle shaped like a woman, kind of like a bottle of Aunt Jemima. However, I was taken aback when I read Frangelico's label the other day. It turns out that the figure I so admired in a liqueur bottle is a monk's body. Not a nun's body, not even a woman's body. All I can say is the monk's robe looks like a matronly dress, and Frangelico is a girl's name. Apparently, I've been duped by a lady man once again.


Rouge's Hazelnut Brown Nectar comes with no such trickery. The bottle is not shapely, nor is the pictured man wearing a dress. It's still a very appealing beer. The best way to describe it is Frangelico dressed up like a beer.

Clipper City's Heavy Seas "Hang Ten"

Another beer in the 'Heavy Seas' series from Clipper City in Syphilis City, Maryland, is Hang Ten. It's a Weizen Dopplebock and it means my friend the pirate is back. I'm not positive but I think a Weizen Dopplebock is a Double Bock brewed with a portion of wheat in lieu of being an all barley malt ale. This beer is paying tribute to the style made famous by Aventis of Germany.

Hang Ten has a sharply acidic yeast nose with hints of sour lemon. It's coloration is browish red and puts heads to bed with it's 10% a.b.v. One can't tell there is so much alcohol in this beer from taste alone. The body is fairly thin where it should be heartier, ala Loose Cannon. The flavor has a yeasty tang tempered by a hefty malt flavor with hints of fig. A good beer, it pays tribute to Aventis fairly well, but if you want the perfect representation of this style I would recommend Aventis.

Apparently Clipper City is trying to drive me crazy with it's Heavy Seas labels. They have a penchant for pairing good beers with ridiculous labels. The pirate in the Seinfeld shirt from 'Loose Cannon' is back. Once again: he is oblivious to the danger he is in, the bird refuses to fly and I'm left wishing something in the picture would just kill them both already. If the shark would just bite off the pirate's hand, maybe he would stop drawing these labels. Beers of this high caliber demand better labels. This is probably the same pirate who walked into a bar with a steering wheel on his crotch and when the bartender asked him how the steering wheel got there said, "I don't know but it's driving me nuts."

Bell's Two Hearted Ale

Two Hearted Ale is a fantastic IPA from Bell's brewery in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This brew starts with a citrus hop aroma close to grapefruit but also lemony. It's really hoppy and the aroma is sharp and powerful. The hop aroma carries over into the flavor. There is a firm malt body, adding a balancing force to the strength of the hops. The label is great as well. For whatever reason, most beers don't have labels that are so suggestive of a way of life. It would be funny if Natty Light did. Picture a Natty label with a college guy standing in a kiddie pool. He is under a waterfall of beer that sloshes around his calves and has a huge grin that implies he would rather be nowhere else. That would be a nice label.

Not So Metallic Steel Rail

Berkshire Brewing Company's Steel Rail Extra Pale Ale was a pleasant surprise. I attended a wedding in the Berkshires this past weekend (Congrats Byron and Steph) and desperately needed a drink after a long drive from D.C. I downed a couple of Jim & Gingers first; it was a wedding after-all. Then I saw an unfamiliar name at the bar and asked the friendly bar keep about Steel Rail. He said that if I liked a malty beer with some hops then I would probably like the local beer brewed right down the road. I said, "feed me." Well, he was right, I did like it. A lot. It's no great beer, but it's good. So refreshing. I should mention that I had it on draft. The beer was indeed malty, but I did not find it as hoppy as I was told. Boy did it go down easy. Unfortunately, the wedding bar did not have any other Berkshire Brewing beers available for my consumption, but you better believe that I checked out their website as soon as I got home (sadly, no time to find/visit the brewery). Berkshire Brewing's website identifies the Steel Rail E.P.A. as its "flagship product that has a full malt flavor and is balanced with a pronounced hop flavor and bitterness." Pretty sweet label too. I like trains.

Clipper City's Heavy Seas Loose Cannon Hop3 Ale

The Clipper City Brewery of Baltimore, Maryland offers several brands of beer, most of which aren't very good. The lone exception is their Heavy Seas series that features high alcohol, robust beers. Loose Cannon is the shining star of the series. It is called a HOP3 (cubed) Ale because it is hopped three different ways - in the kettle, on it's way out of the kettle, and during fermentation. Anyway, HOP3 is just a fancy way of saying it's an I.P.A.

Of greatest concern to me is the label. It features a pirate looking the wrong while his cannon fires and knocks a bird overboard. Just in case the viewer has cognitive problems understanding pictorial scenes, the artist was gracious enough to add dialogue saying, 'Bird Overboard.' What never ceases to amaze me is why the bird is so resigned to it's fate? It can fly, why does it look so suprised? A better label might depict the cannon accidentally backfiring and blowing up both the pirate and the bird. It's Natural Selection: If the pirate can't see and the bird can't fly then they both should die.

The label is the only detail about this beer that I do not appreciate. Loose Cannon is an excellent beer with a strong hop aroma that is fruity without being specific, possibly suggesting fresh grapes. At 7.25% it has a healthy amount of alcohol but you would never know it from the brew's body. The body is quite thin and smooth, making Loose Cannon a beer you can drink and drink more of without feeling like you need to make more room for beer by burping. On the palate, this ale provides an excellent balance between crisp maltiness and hop flavor while finishing dryly with a slight bitterness. This beer is a great choice, don't be fooled by the label like I was - it gives you something to bristle at while you drink your beer.