Brew Dudes

This week Jason from Ohio sends us in to two amazing stouts. One of which won first place at the Ohio State Fair!

Both stouts were amazing simply sitting in their glasses. The aroma from the glasses was super prominent. The Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, Cacao Nib, and Bourbon stout was incredible complex. Each time I sampled the aroma I was bouncing back and forth between the coffee, the chocolate, and the Bourbon. Very dynamic and complex. Super enjoyable. The flavor was equally complex yet balanced. No heat from the Bourbon, but a great vanilla based barrel like character. The chocolate and coffee played very well with the roast malts in the stout. Medium to high body contributed to a very smooth body.

The smoked stout was equally complex but with fewer components. There was a sweet malt aroma to pair with the smoke. The smoke quality was in perfect restraint. Some smoked beers can have a bacon aroma. This beer is not bacon like. Thankfully, it still tastes like a stout but with a cool balance of smoke. I swear that there was some lactose in this stout because it seems like a sweet stout. I’m sticking to that. The body was medium and provided a basic smooth stout backbone.

Without the recipes to go on it was tough to really dissect the beers. However, that created a really cool experience of simply evaluating the beers based upon the enjoyment factor vs. pushing against a defined style guideline. Truly two very very nice beers and a great stout drinking experience. I could sit and enjoy another pint of either one of them. I could go on and on tasting these and digging into them.

Thanks much Jason from Ohio!!
BREW ON!!!

Waimea SMASH beer!!! John keeps rolling along with grinding out great SMASH beers for us to explore these hops. Waimea hops were part of our online voting poll that didn’t make the early cut.

NO LONGER!!!

Waimea SMASH Beer coming at you! Check it out!

Waimea Hops come from New Zealand and are listed as dual purpose hops. Primarily the breeding focused on bittering properties but, there are some unique aroma/flavor properties as well.

My first impressions on this hop was aromas of white grape and subtle blueberry floral qualities. Not very strong aroma presence for sure. Flavor was slightly different with tangerine and melon like qualities. Again neither was terribly strong and something that was easy to pin down or identify.

The commercial descriptors were focused on tangelo?!?!? What is a tangelo? Sort of a melon and tangerine mix, I suppose. There are also mention of pine needles and citrus.

An intriguing hop but I think it doesn’t have a distinctive enough character to be a showcase hop in your beer. We think this is a best reserved hop as to be blended into the a hop profile that fills in the gaps between maybe a couple more star player hops. I could see this working well with some Mosaic or Galaxy hops.

Have you brewed with Waimea yet? What’s your thoughts and do they agree with our assessment?
Let us know in the comments.

BREW ON!

This week John brings out a nearly two year old Russian Imperial Stout. He has two version of the beer. So we pour them both side by side and put my palate to the test.

October of 2015 we first time for this Russian Imperial Stout Tasting.

It was good then but as with all Imperial Stouts some age may do wonders for it. So John stashed away some bottles and this week he pulled out one of the last bottles of this version. Version? Yes there were two versions here. Some bottles have been quietly conditioning in the beer fridge. Sheltered from the mild swings of Johns basement temps. Another set of bottles were stored ambiently in the basement without active temperature control.

Upon first pouring both beers there was a wonderful chocolate and coconut aroma coming from the beers. Further inspection led to reveal that the cold stored version was the one with the real magical aroma. The ambient stout had a dulled roast note backed with some dark bread type of aroma. It was the cold stored beer that really sang in aroma with milk chocolate and coconut. The same differences held up in the flavor profiles.

The ambient beer is still a good stout. It was drier with less body. It was less sticky on the palate. The flavor was certainly more straight forward roast. A little aggressive actually. There was also a clear boozy quality to the ambient beer. The cold stored beer had a softer roast character with more chocolate and coconut. The body was bigger and more chewy. It ha d a complexity that was devine.

Hopefully, if there are any bottles left, the complexity will continue to improve and age out. Sadly there are probably no bottles of this left aside for some smaller format bottles for competition perhaps.

Oh well. I was surprised to see such a wonderful change in this stout. If one had simply aged the whole batch at ambient temps it would still be a great stout. Without the cold storage version however, you would have totally missed out on something very special.

BREW ON!!!

Last video of the year!!! This week we hit some highlights for us from 2016.

Beer, Mead and Cider we hit them all this year.

Some of the bigger accomplishments caught on camera this year were: More SMaSH brews with the latest hops on the market. Johns venture into kegging homebrew. Home brewer swaps!! Swapping beer with out readers, tasting them on camera and giving commentary.

We’ve been posting videos weekly for three years!!! Its still an evolving process as we figure out new content and play around with our audio/visual skills.

Please stay with us in 2017. We are planning more beer swaps, changes in A/V and more.
Got something you want to see more of? Less of? Let us know via email or with a comment below.

BREW ON 2017!