Author: AJ

Beer of the Week: Stoup Brewing Winter Warmer

By Iron Chef Leftovers

untitlasedI both love and hate seasonal beers – I love them because it means that I have something new to look forward to when I go to a brewery and I hate them because when I decide I really like a beer, I know that it will only be there for a limited time. This winter, I went on a winter warmer kick and basically went out of my way to try a bunch of them from various breweries around town. I was happy to see that Stoup made one and was excited to try their version of what is becoming one of my favorite styles. The Stoup version clocks in at 7% ABV and 30 IBU.

The beer pours deep brown in color with hints of amber. Roasted malt dominates with notes of spice and chocolate interspersed. The beer starts out slightly sweet on the initial sip with significant amounts of malt character, followed by a slightly fruity middle of dried cherries and apricots coupled with hints of figs before finishing with a touch of warming alcohol joined with a mild spice (cardamom and cloves) enhanced with more dried fruit in a significantly long finish. The alcohol disappears the further you get into the beer and the sweetness less pronounced. The beer has fine balance and rich character and would be nice next to a fire on a cold winter day.

Stoup Winter Warmer grabs a blanket and a chair and cozies in with 4 roaring fires out of 5.

On a sad note, this is the last review of a beer from my 2013 note book. The book is getting retired to the CSE Archives for posterity. Although you have been reading many reviews from beers that I have had in 2014, this marks the last one that I consumed in 2013. Not bad – this review is making onto the site just shy of 4 months after I actually had the beer.

Beer of the Week: Stoup Brewing Porter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I feel terrible. With my backlog of beer reviews and that I have generally been putting them on the site in chronological order; this is the first time that I am reviewing a beer by Stoup Brewing. That normally wouldn’t be an issue, but they have been opened for 5 months, I am a member of their founders club and they are the closest brewery to my house – a scant 5 blocks away. While this is long delayed in getting posted, I can assure you this won’t be the last time you see these guys getting a write up in this space. The first beer on tap from Stoup is their Porter.

From the Stoup website:

 ABV: 6.5%, IBU: 45, Lovibond: 34

Rich in color and character, our robust porter conjures up memories of decadent chocolate treats dipped in coffee. Hints of dark chocolate, roasted coffee and light malty sweetness are the result of a complex malt profile including chocolate malt, roasted barley, roasted wheat and roasted rye.

untitlasedThe beer pours jet black with a coffee colored head and pleasant notes of chocolate and malt with hints of coffee and vanilla faintly in the background of the nose. The beer starts out on the palate with light notes of coffee before moving into a very pleasant grain middle and finishing long with strong notes of chocolate and malt with hints of vanilla, coffee and toffee. Balanced and flavorful with enough alcohol to warm you up on a cold day, but not so much as it interferes with the pleasant drinking experience that is the porter. As an added bonus, touches of hop character start to show up on the finish as the beer warms, adding another layer of complexity to the beer.

Stoup Brewing Porter cozy’s up to the fire with a strong 3 warm fires out of 5.

Isn’t It Ironic?

By Blaidd Drwg

February 7th was Babe Ruth’s birthday and on that date Dave Schoenfield posted a quick hit about it. He included this wonderfully ironic bit in the piece:

This is also the 100th anniversary of the start of his career. Ruth made his debut with the Red Sox on July 11, starting against the Indians. He allowed eight hits in seven innings and — get this — was removed for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the inning, picking up the win when the Red Sox scored to take the lead.

I just love the irony of that.

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Cask Citra Pale Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

imagesCAAR87MMOne of the best things about Thursday nights is cask night at Populuxe Brewing. They have had a nice variety of cask options from the strange (Smoked tea bitter) to the nice and approachable (Pale Ales and IPA). Pale ales make for really fun casks – they allow you to really give a base for what individual hop varieties taste like and you get a real appreciation for what it is about certain hop varieties that you might like. A recent cask of the Populuxe Pale with Citra really illustrated what I like about citra hops. This beer clocked in at just 4.8% ABV.

The beer pours hazy yellow-orange in color with light notes of citrus and grain on the nose with very mild notes of sugar. The beer starts off slowly with a nice grain beginning accompanied by a mild sweetness, followed by a touch of very pleasant bitterness before moving to a slightly dry finish that smacks you with a burst of citrus. Very easy drinking and well balanced – there are no dominant flavors but the beer is layered and distinct and you can really appreciate the subtle flavors of both the beer and the hops. With well integrated flavors and low alcohol, this is easily a 3-4 pint beer and a good beer to introduce someone to the wonderful experience that is craft beer.

Populuxe Cask Citra Pale Ale rolls out 4 barrels out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Heavy Seas The Great’er Pumpkin

By Iron Chef Leftovers

My love of pumpkin beers is unabashed and I have a particular soft spot for ones that are of a darker style. I feel that pumpkin marries well with the roasted notes in dark beers and there is less of a need to overly spice the beer, so you get more pumpkin flavor out of them. I also like imperial pumpkin beers since they tend to fall into the same category and you can really appreciate the subtleties of flavor in the beer.  During a recent bottle swap, a bottle of the Heavy Seas The Great’er Pumpkin was thrown in because my trading partner knew of my love of pumpkin beers. I thought this was a nice gesture (and has since been reciprocated with a couple of stellar IPA’s back to him) so I was excited to try this beer in an impromptu beer tasting with the rest of the CSE gang (i.e. Blaidd Drwg, Coltrane, Annie S. and Seattle Author). The beer came in 22oz. bottles and runs about $10, but alas, is not available in Seattle, but is available from plenty of places on the East Coast that will ship.

From the Heavy Seas website:

In the most worthy of pumpkin patches and during the silence of the midnight hour, the Greater Pumpkin raises up and pours a rich deep and burnished orange color.  Heady aromas of bourbon, cinnamon, ginger, allspice and clove linger seductively over the thick white head of this tremendous brew.  Its love at first sip as the full malt body, dominated by British crystal malt, brown sugar and pumpkin, slowly washes over your tongue.  Bourbon barrel aging rounds out the flavors with notes of oak, vanilla, and bourbon.  Pairs well with crisp autumn weather, crunchy fallen leaves, and the knowledge that your kids will be asleep soon so you can raid their Halloween candy bags.

 

G-P-259x1024-118x470The beer pours deep orange in color with a creamy head and shows strong notes of bourbon with backing notes of roasted pumpkin and spice – it smells like a pumpkin pie with bourbon added. The beer starts out on the palate with strong notes of roasted pumpkin with mild backing notes of pumpkin pie spices and roasted pumpkin seeds. These flavors linger and are joined at the end by a slightly sweet caramel note and a touch of vanilla from the bourbon barrel without imparting any really heavy bourbon notes. The finish is extremely long and pleasant, making you want to take your time and savor between sips, but without any really harsh notes from the barrel or alcohol, making this a smooth, balanced and easy to drink beverage for such a high alcohol beer, with incredible depth of pumpkin and just a pleasant backing note of spice.

I may have found my new favorite pumpkin beer; I will definitely be shipping some to Seattle in the fall.

Heavy Seas The Great’er Pumpkin raises a massive 5 storm warnings out of 5.

Taking a Chance on Wild Game

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I have to give some props to the Quebecois government. The French speaking part of Canada has the right mindset when it comes to food – they allow the production of unpasteurized milk cheese and allow the import of it (making it the only place that I know that you can legally get it in North America, although you still can’t transport it back across the border), it is about the only place in North America where you can find horse and seal on the menu and now they are allowing a trial period to let chefs serve wild game (critters actually hunted in the forest, not their farm raised cousins) in their restaurants.

From the Montreal Gazette:

…the plan will evolve gradually and under strict supervision by the wildlife and agriculture departments to ensure that no animal species is endangered and that food safety is assured. For now, only white-tailed deer from Anticosti Island in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, home to more than 160,000 of the animals, will be allowed for sale. The squirrel, hare, muskrat and beaver, will come from all over the province, but will be available only for a short period during the fall hunting season. Blanchet said only species whose numbers were not endangered and which are known to be free of bacteria or illnesses harmful to humans were chosen for the pilot project.

There are a small number of restaurants that are participating in the trial period, most notably Toque, Au Pied de Cochon and Joe Beef. For those of you who are not familiar with the Montreal restaurant scene, those are arguably the 3 best restaurants in the city and the chef/owners of all 3 of those places are avid hunters/raging alcoholics/complete nut jobs. They have also long been on the leading edge of localvorism, nose to tail eating and sustainable food raising practices, so why not be on the bleeding edge when it comes to wild game?

You want a good reason for this:

Laprise (ed. Note: chef/owner of Toque) said allowing restaurants, and eventually specialty grocers and butchers, to sell wild game will also reduce waste. He cited figures indicating that only as little as 40 per cent of all meat from the 26,000 to 28,000 wild deer killed during the annual hunt is butchered and cooked. The rest is left in the woods or by the roadside and goes to waste.

Of course, Martin Picard of the absolutely amazing Au Pied de Cochon and head psychopath of the Montreal food scene was already ahead of the game game when he published a recipe for squirrel sushi in his Sugar Shack cookbook:

The sushi dish, he wrote in the introduction to the squirrel recipe, was his way of getting even with the little rodents for all the damage they inflicted at his sugar shack.

It looks something like this:

squirrel-sushi

 

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Brews Blimey That’s Bitter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

xazxA bunch of Seattle breweries got together this winter and decided to go one the road with something they are calling the Hop Mob Road Show (coming to Naked City on March 13th). Each brewery decided to produce a Triple or Imperial IPA. What makes it a Triple you might ask? Well, basically it is a high alcohol (9.5% +), highly hopped IPA, probably made most famous by Pliny the Younger. If I remember correctly (I really need to write these things down), the beer was dry hopped 4 times during the process of making it and clocks in at 10.5% ABV and 80+ IBU. The beer was available (very limited) in 22 oz. bottles, on tap and on cask. This review is for the tap version.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if the name Blimey That’s Bitter might be a play on the name of that Russian River beer…

The beer pours golden orange in color with significant citrus and hop resin on the nose combined with slightly floral hints and subtle grain. A hop monster on the palate, the beer quickly shows tons of citrus and citrus peel up front with just a touch of sweetness before the bitterness sets in. There are big bitter notes, but in a balanced, not palate blowing way, with touches of resin. The beer finishes incredibly long with juicy citrus and major citrus peel with a lingering bitterness and an ever so slight alcohol burn at the very end, not surprising for a beer this big – it is there but barely noticeable and not unpleasant and brings just a touch of heat to the party, cutting the tremendous hop character of this beer. This beer was amazing, making me joke that maybe this should be renamed “Blimey, That’s Fantastic.”

Hopefully you will still have a chance to try Blimey before it goes away until next year.

Reuben’s Blimey That’s Bitter drives on the wrong side of the street and picks you up with 5 black cabs out of 5.

I Saw It In The Window And I Couldn’t Resist It

by A.J. Coltrane

From ESPN:

Seattle Seahawks jerseys with “FAN” on the name plate and the No. 12 are now the 10th best-selling jersey this season, according to sales on NFLShop.com from April 1, 2013, through Feb. 28, 2014.

Thanks in part to a Super Bowl victory, only two jerseys sold better in February on the league’s official online store than the 12th Fan jerseys — those of Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning. The strong month of sales brought the No. 12 jersey into the No. 10 spot…

(The 3:32 mark for those in a hurry.)