Beer of the Week: Double Mountain Kolsch

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Double Mountain Brewing out of Hood River, Oregon has been around since 2007, but is a recent newcomer to the Seattle beer market. The have a small lineup of beer that are available year-round in bottles at your local bottle shop and can occasionally be found on tap at your local watering hold. Loyal reader Annie S. was kind enough to bring over a bottle of the kolsch a while back and share it with me.

From the Double Mountain Website:

In Cologne, many a brewery produces a light-bodied ale with a delicate fruitiness and rounded maltiness, attributable to the unique yeast strain commonly used. Our Kölsch is unfiltered and more generously hopped than its German cousin.
Brewed with Gambrinus Pilsner and Munich malt and
Perle hops. 5.2% ABV, 40 BU

The beer pours hazy yellow in color with strong notes of lemon and yeast, supported by touches of grain and malt. The beer starts out dry and crisp with traces of sweetness up front and a short grain finish in the back. Notes of lemon hide at various points in this beer, providing a nice contrast to the grain and adding a touch of hop character to the beer. This is a pretty easy drinking beer with no remarkable flavors, as it should be for the style, but just a touch more character than what you normally find in a kolsch.

Double Mountain Kolsch builds up a solid 3 cathedrals out of 5.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Easy Peak-an Nut Brown Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

The second of the seasonally themed Mountainbeers from NW Peaks is their dessert beer – a nut brown ale made with the inclusion of actual pecans, basically setting you up for the end of the meal.

From the NW Peaks Website:

The name. The mountain. Easy Peak is not so much a mountain, but the high point on Easy Ridge, the ridge located on the other side of the Chilliwack river from popular Copper ridge. While the payoff is stupendous one must ford the Chilliwack river and ascend 3,000 feet back up to the ridge. On the ridge, I don’t know if there is a more beautiful, easy-going, completely back country experience in the N Cascades, including the hike up to the high point.

The beer. Last year we did Spickard Spice for Thanksgiving dinner, this year we moved towards Thanksgiving dessert. We brewed a nut brown as the base – a medium bodied, malty brown with a nice nutty hop (and malt) character. Per our desire to make a Thanksgiving beer, we added some pecans and pie spices, but just enough to give it a perceivable note. The result was a nut brown that dominates the character with a nice pecan note and a barely perceptible spicy note. With a nice brown color, the beer even has the color of a typical pecan pie, so we’d like to believe that it’s just like pecan pie in a glass. Maybe not “exactly”, but it goes down “easy as pie.”

The beer pours amber brown in color with hints of spice and nuts on the nose. The beer starts out on the palate with a nice mild sweetness before building into a slightly spicy nutmeg middle and then moves into deeper brown sugar and pecan nuttiness before finishing with a long, pleasant roasted pecan flavor. The beer has a small amount of perceptible pie spices, but they are definitely background flavors and work wonderfully supporting the deep richness of the nut flavors. This beer is really as close to a liquid pecan pie with great flavors of roasted nuts and I would love to see how this beer did if it got a short aging in a whiskey barrel (hint…hint). One note to add – when we drank this beer, we inadvertently left a small amount in the growler and ended up trying it a room temperature. The spice become the dominant flavor in the beer at that point, so I would say if you enjoy the nut flavor more than the spice, drink it around 45-55 degrees. If you want more noticeable spice flavor, go 55+ with your temp.

NW Peaks Easy Peak-an Nut Brown goes crazy with a spectacular 4 Carya illinoinensis out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Elysian Oblivion IPA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Thanks to the ever-changing tap list at Elysian, there is always a new beer to try, and I am especially happy when that new beer happens to be an IPA. This was a big beer, clocking in at 7% ABV and 70IBU, but considering that Elysian makes some of the more solid IPA’s around, I gave it a whirl.

The beer pours hazy golden orange in color and is brimming with hop character – I could smell this beer from over a foot away. Closer inspection yields light notes of grapefruit and citrus, light green hops and grain. The hop character dominates the front of the palate with significant orange peel with notes of grapefruit and a pleasant light bitterness than carries throughout the beer. These notes are then joined by moderate grain middle before finishing slightly sweet and grassy with those mild bitter notes. There is no obvious alcohol burn despite its ABV and the beer has a nice progression of flavors without being one note. Oblivion is more hop forward than most of the Elysian IPAs, but not so much that it will blow your palate.

Elysian’s Oblivion IPA races toward destruction with a brave 3 perils out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Cask Beer Snob Brown

By Iron Chef Leftovers

If you are free on Thursday nights, you should head down to Populuxe Brewing for their cask night. Yes, you will see a number of pale ales and IPA’s on tap with a variety of different dry hops (and they are fantastic), but the guys at Populuxe aren’t afraid to give the cask treatment to their other style of beers. A few months back, the Beer Snob Brown was the candidate – not too many NW breweries do a brown and even fewer do it on cask (this one was done with Crystal hops), so this was definitely a must try beer.

The beer pours a nice solid brown in color with really nice chocolate on the nose and just a hint of citrus from the hops (think a chocolate bar with orange peel). The beer starts out with a pretty heavy dose of coffee and chocolate before yielding into the addition of hops – slightly floral and citrusy/orange. The beer then fades quickly in a burst of chocolate, coffee and malt before disappearing completely off the palate. Giving the Beer Snob Brown the cask treatment highlights the deeper roast flavors in the beer, almost turning it into a liquid chocolate confection without the sweetness. My only complaint about this beer is that the hop character starts to disappear the deeper you get into your pint and is overpowered by the darker flavors in the beer – it does not cause the beer to become unbalanced at all, but it does lose that layer of the flavor.

If Beer Snob Brown makes another appearance in the cask rotation, you should drop what you are doing and head down to Populuxe.

Populuxe Beer Snob Brown on cask thumbs its nose at you with a solid 3 silly English Kn-iggits out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Anacortes Galaxy Pale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

The final beer in the DNA project is another pale ale, this time by Anacortes Brewing using Galaxy hops. Galaxy hops are described as “Australian high alpha dual purpose triploid cultivar with a marked and unique hop aroma, described as a combination of citrus and passionfruit. The initial aromas and flavors are quite intense, but these moderate as the beer matures.” The beer clocked in at 5.5% ABV.

The beer pours hazy yellow in color with strong notes of passion fruit and grain on the nose, reminding me a bit of Sam Adams Summer Ale without the lemon notes. Lots of citrus up front on the palate of this beer, dominated by lemon and passion fruit. The hops show well and linger for a long time before yielding to a slight malt sweetness as the beer fades on the palate with very little bitterness. Easy drinking, a beer that is perfect for the back deck on a warm summer day.

Anacortes Galaxy Pale jets in with a solid 4 Milky Ways out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Grapefruit IPA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

One of my favorite things about IPA’s is the grapefruit/citrus character that the hops bring to the party. I absolutely love the balance that it brings to the beer and delivers an extra layer of flavor. A few months back, Reuben’s did a grapefruit infused IPA. I was a bit skeptical about the beer since most of the other grapefruit based beers were a bit disappointing to say the least. Given Reuben’s track record with IPAs, I figured that this one was worth a shot. The beer was based on their Wheat IPA and then double dry hopped.

The beer pours hazy yellow in color with lots of wheat character on the nose supported by light hop and grapefruit notes. The beer drinks milder than you would expect, starting out very light up front with a grain forward flavor before moving into some pleasant bitterness with notes of light grapefruit that build into a stronger bitter citrus peel flavor. The beer finishes with a tinge of harsh, acidic bitterness on the first couple of sips before mellowing out the further into the beer you get. It isn’t overpoweringly bitter, and it is more acidic bitterness of grapefruit than hop bitterness and it takes a few sips for your palate to adjust to that before you don’t notice it, making the beer feel slightly out of balance at first, before it corrects itself. Despite that fact, this beer was probably the best grapefruit based beer I have had and shows much more depth than previous ones I have consumed.

Reuben’s Grapefruit IPA firmly plants itself with 3 citrus orchards out of 5.

Beers of the Week: Dick’s/Harmon Pineapple and Macadamia

By Iron chef Leftovers

Pineapple and Macadamia are two flavors that are more reminiscent of Hawaii than things you would find in beer, but that is what Dick’s and Harmon Brewing drew for the Iron Brewer competition. The challenge here is how do you get a fairly mild flavored nut to pair with a very sweet fruit and still find balance in the beer.

Dick’s – the beer pours hazy golden, almost orange in color with strong notes of pineapple and just a hint of nuts in the background on the nose – it reminded me of a pina colada. The beer does the complete opposite when you taste it – the nuts dominate almost right from the start. The pineapple starts to appear on the back end of the beer, but more as a background flavor to the grain rather than a dominant flavor. The beer finishes with light grain and hints of pineapple and sweetness. It had pretty good balance considering the ingredients and I would have thought nut brown ale if I had tasted it blind.

Dick’s Pineapple and Macadamia greets you with 3 leis out of 5.

Harmon – The beer is unexpectedly jet black in color, which seemed strange for the ingredients, with strong notes of molasses and chocolate with notes of nuts and pineapple in the background on the nose. The first sip of this beer tastes like a chocolate bar – toffee, chocolate, roasted grain, nuts, sugar and pineapple, and possible hints of coconut are all there in various degrees progressing through all of the flavors and producing a long, consistent finish. This is a bold and daring beer which is not short on flavor. It does an excellent job of showcasing the flavors of the ingredients and I would love to order this one again.

Harmon Pineapple and Macadamia says hello and goodbye with 4 alohas out of 5.

I thought that Harmon was the better beer and the crowd agreed with me on that, declaring it the winner.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Spickard Spiced Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

The Mountain Beers from NW Peaks in November had a decidedly seasonal tone to them – Thanksgiving dinner. There was a pecan pie beer (review forthcoming) and a beer that invokes the flavors of stuffing – the Spickard Spice Ale. You don’t see too many beers that use savory (herbs) rather than sweet (nutmeg, cinnamon, etc.) spices, so I was really excited for this one.

From the NW Peaks Website:

The name. The mountain. Spickard is juxtaposed to Mt Redoubt (the namesake for our red ale) and is a great alpine destination, although accessibility is limited to put it mildly. To get to Ouzel lake located at the base of Spickard, you have to travel through Canada and then hike back into the US to Depot cirque. The waterfall en route is one that might not be matched by another in the N cascades. Truly a splendid location.

The Beer. While many breweries are doing pumpkin spice beers in October, we decided to wait until November. And instead of using Halloween spices (pumpkin), we went towards Thanksgiving spices/ingredients. We started with a base that includes more than 25% maize giving the beer a thicker, sweeter flavor. We then added some spruce, rosemary, and thyme that give the beer a flavor reminiscent of thanksgiving stuffing. A great beer on its own and a perfect accompaniment to Thanksgiving dinner.

The beer pours and amber reddish brown with a cream colored head. The nose is dominated by strong notes of rosemary and sage with hints of corn and grain supporting the herbal character. The beer leads off with solid herb flavors of sage and thyme with supporting notes of wood (not oak – think tree branch) and rosemary (probably the spruce in the beer), before moving into a slightly sweet middle, supported by grain and a mild corn character before finishing long with notes of yeast joining the herbs and corn. The finish is long and all of the flavors integrate perfectly, forming a liquid cornbread stuffing beer. The beer drinks well on its own but it truly shined with a traditional thanksgiving meal where its depth of flavor truly stood out when paired with turkey and stuffing.

NW Peaks Spickard Spiced Ale makes a glutton out of itself, rolling in at 4 turkey induced comas out of 5.

Beer of the Week: North Sound Vanguard Lager

By Iron Chef Leftover

The second of the 3 DNA project beers comes from the guys at North Sound Brewing in Mt. Vernon. If by chance you have never heard of them, you should make a stop by their brewery next time you are up north – they make some of the most under the radar beers in Washington. They drew Vanguard hops for their beer, which are “Slightly flowery, mild. Similar to Hallertau Mittlefruh and saaz in aroma. A gentle hop for subtle bitterness, aroma, and flavor.”

The beer pours pale yellow in color with a slightly hoppy, almost pilsner like character on the nose. The initial sip is surprisingly hoppy with a slight sweetness before yielding to a long floral hop backbone with notes of resin and grain before moving to a place with a light grapefruit and bitterness and finally finishing off with a pilsner like finish. The beer drinks like a hoppy pilsner, but is described as a lager with very littler lager character. The beer allows the hops to shine and has enough layers of flavor to please any discriminating palate.

The North Sound Vanguard Lager sends out an advanced force with 4 beach heads out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Kolsch

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I am not a big fan of kolsch. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with the style, it is just one that I tend to find a bit plain and boring, even when it is done correctly. I tend to want something with more depth of flavor and character when I am drinking a beer unless the weather is warm and I want something that is a background beer. Populuxe took a stab at a kolsch with some pretty good results.

The beer pours pale yellow in color with lots of yeast and grain on the nose with hints of lemon in the background. The beer starts out on the palate softly with subtle grain before moving into more pronounced flavors from the yeast. The beer starts out slowly and has a long build of floor without being overpowering before finishing crisp and clean with a very slight sweetness from the grain. The beer lacks a dominating flavor and is an excellent example of how the style should be done, making it an easy drinking beer perfect for a warm day.

Populuxe Kolsch rocks in with 3 hammocks under the tree out of 5.