[BW] Beer Blog

I’m going to deviate from my normal format and instead do a few quick reviews of some awesome brews I had last weekend.

Casked Deschutes Fresh Hopped Mirror Pond Pale Ale
This cask-conditioned ale I had at Deschutes’ new Public House in the Pearl District of Portland. As a huge fan of cask-conditioned ales, this didn’t disappoint. Much, much smoother than regular Mirror Pond with a way higher floral aroma. I could have drank this all night if I had the opportunity. A colleague of mine also enjoyed it, which was surprising since he doesn’t really like regular Mirror Pond.

Block 15 Chocolate Porter
Block 15 is a brewery and brew pub in Corvallis, OR that I haven’t even remotely written enough about. Block 15 has quickly become one of my favorite breweries period and definitely my favorite brew pub. Their Chocolate Porter was exactly what it claims to be. Very similar to Rogue’s chocolate stout offering, yet just a tad thinner in body. Definitely grab a pint while it’s still available.

Block 15 Ridgeback Red
Ridgeback Red is one of Block 15’s standard offerings and has claimed quite a bit of success as a beer almost everybody will enjoy. This red takes the standard west coast twist on reds in that it leans much more towards hoppy than malty. I had the opportunity to enjoy this from a pony keg that Josh from The Oregon Wine Blog brought to a recent show our rock band played. If you want to play it safe visiting Block 15 for your first time, then perhaps consider ordering a pint of Ridgeback Red.

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Brewery: Bearded Brewing
Style: ESB/Pale Ale (loosely)
Serving: 12oz Bottle

Northwoods Ale is the second ale sent to me by Eric over at Bearded Brewing. This one intrigues me as its both organic and sounds truly unique.

This beer is brewed with maple syrup and wild rice. The rice gives it an interesting taste. Its a fairly light ale, but I don’t really have a category for it. I kind of based the recipe off a British Bitter, but it turned out much lighter and I also use a fairly standard American yeast

Let’s see what this light, British, earthy ale is all about!

Appearance - Eric warned me about the possibility of a ton of head pouring with this one, but my results left a healthy finger’s worth of white head. The color is a light gold and fairly translucent. A healthy amount of bubbles are apparent as well.

Smell - Somewhat yeasty, yet also sweet. This is probably due to the maple syrup. For some reason I’m also smelling a little citrus coming through, although I don’t know if that was intended or not.

Taste - This took me a sec, but I think I’ve got it. At first it tastes like a fairly carbonated light ale, but then the brown rice reveals itself as one is left with a slightly earthy taste as it dissipates off the palate. This sensation is probably most similar to Rogue’s Morimoto Soba Ale if that helps at all. The maple syrup is only apparent as the very last 1% of it finishes going down the hatch.

All in all this is a very tasty brew and I think Eric is onto something, but I think he could experiment by adding even more brown rice to see how far he can take the earthy hue without it being overpowering. This is not to say that this brew can’t stand on its own as it is very refreshing and I can easily see this stuff disappearing in an instant at a bbq/party/etc. Yet another excellent brew from the Bearded Brewing Company.

As a huge thanks to Eric for attempting to send me three of his brews (one broke in transportation), tomorrow I’ll be sending him a package with the following:
-Bison Organic Belgian (22oz)
-Deschutes Organic Green Lakes Amber Ale (22oz)
-Roots Organic Island Red Ale (22oz)

Overall I’d say this experiment was a huge success. We’ll definitely have to do it again some time.

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Brewery: Oskar Blues
Style: Pale Ale
BeerAdvocate.com Rating: B+ (Community), D+ (The Brothers)
RateBeer.com Rating: 3.75 (95th percentile)
Serving: 12oz aluminum can

Note: What you’re about to read may lead you to disregard all credibility you may have given me in the past. I promise I’ll try my best with the next few reviews to aid in recovering my credibility as a respected beer reviewer. Enjoy!

I’m breaking from my regular review format because, well, this isn’t about a regular beer. Recently I noticed that my local beer store started carrying Dale’s Pale Ale. What’s the big deal about Dale’s? It’s in a can!

So why am I breaking from my standard review process? I believe it has something to do with the can. In short, Dale’s itself is a very delicious, slightly hoppy pale ale that any brewer would be proud to brew. By no means is it very unique in taste, but it hits the genre spot on. However, through my journey of drinking beer I have associated cans with session drinking. Well, to cut the crap, cans mean I’m doing to get drunk. I’m not going to pour this stuff into a glass, I’m not going to tell you how it smells, and I really don’t care if the hues change as it warms. I probably should, but I don’t. Brew this stuff in a bottle next time and I’m all over it, but that’s not the case. So, for the first time on BobWoodshed.org I’m going to share with you my journey through a case of Dale’s.

It was Friday night and my two friends and I had a fridge full of delicious beer. To entertain us through our journey we had the opportunity to borrow the video game Rock Band for the first time. For those of you not familiar with Rock Band, it’s a video game where you have two fake guitar controllers, one fake drum set controller, and a very real microphone. The idea is that up to four people can play together as a band; three playing fake instruments and one actually singing into the microphone. Here’s kind of how the night went:

8:00 - Guitar, bass, and drums are called for. Microphone isn’t even plugged in.

9:00 - Plugged in microphone just for fun to see how it works. No actual singing.

10:00 - Still no singing

11:00 - Friend 1 picks up the microphone and sings the first song. Man this guy sucks!

11:30 - Other friend begins to sing and damn, he sucks too.

12:00 - Wow, my friends can’t sing worth shit. Looks like I better save the day and play the vocal assassin on the mic. I’ll have a lot more time to sing now that I’m out of beer.

1:00 - I’m the greatest lead singer of all time.

1:15 - Pass out.

You see folks, without Dale’s Pale Ale I would have never found out that in my opinion I am an amazing singer. Sure I could have gotten drunk enough to think I’m awesome with any beer in the world, but it’s Dale’s that gave me the confidence to loudly slur “Creep” by Radiohead and I owe it all to the fact that they brew craft beer in cans. Oskar Blues really has something unique going on with their idea to exclusively bottle in cans. Pick some up if you get the chance, but please, friends don’t let friends sing drunk.

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Brewery: Mateveza
Style: Vegetable Beer / Pale Ale
BeerAdvocate.com Rating: 81
RateBeer.com Rating: 2.94 (39th Percentile)
Serving: 22oz Bottle

Yerba mate infused beer? Sounds interesting to me. But first, let’s consult my favorite infallible source of all information, Wikipedia, for a little biology lesson.

“Yerba mate / Erva-mate*, Ilex paraguariensis, is a species of holly (family Aquifoliaceae) native to subtropical South America in Argentina, eastern Paraguay, western Uruguay and southern Brazil.

The yerba mate plant is a shrub or small tree growing up to 15 meters tall. The leaves are evergreen, 7–11 cm long and 3–5.5 cm wide, with a serrated margin. The flowers are small, greenish-white, with four petals. The fruit is a red berry 4–6 mm diameter.”

Also noteworthy is that yerba mate is caffeinated to an extent slightly less that coffee. I don’t know about you, but I feel much smarter.

Appearance - Very cloudy and orange/amber in color. Only a very small, white, and quickly dissipating bubbly head appeared when poured.

Smell - Smells like a mildly hoppy pale ale. There’s also a slight citrus hue.

Taste - Hmmm…definitely unique. What surprised me is almost all of the taste occurred in the back of my throat area. At first I exclusively tasted what tasted like a mild pale ale. The citrus hue is there too. Other reviews I’ve read have described yerba mate as “tea-like” and I guess that does a decent job of describing it. I’ve also found this is much more enjoyable when you let it sit for a bit. I’m about half way through a pint glass right now and it is quite refreshing.

I’d suggest this to anybody who wants to try something totally different. I suppose the only turn offs would be if you despise anything that tastes like cascade hops or is made from yerba mate.

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Style: American Pale Ale
Availability: Summer seasonal
Beeradvocate.com rating: 84
Ratebeer.com rating: 83

My Thoughts:
Pretty mediocre. I’m not going to write up a full review because in my opinion there isn’t much to talk about. While I didn’t personally enjoy it very much, this seems like an attempt to bring in people who usually drink macro beers.

That’s not a bad thing.

I doubt this was Deschute’s intention, but I can see myself suggesting it to friends who would normally drink crappy macro brews. Would I buy it again? Probably not. Would I suggest it to most of my friends? Definitely. It’s just I prefer much darker, richer brews while this is lighter and more bitter for my taste.

-Rick

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