Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Brews Cream Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I personally think that anything new that Reuben’s puts on tap is worth trying at least once. Usually the beers are somewhere in the very good to outstanding range, so there is very little disappointment. At the beginning of August, they debuted a few new beers in their lineup, one of which is their Cream Ale. The beer comes in at 17 IBU and 5 % ABV.

The beer pours very pale yellow, almost transparently so. Note of cream and grain with hints of what smell like English yeast permeate the nose. The beer builds slowly – it starts out with pleasantly mild yeast and a slight dryness before moving into a slightly fruity realm with some light sweetness before exploding into a long, slightly sweet, mild caramel finish. The finish was unexpected and was much less pronounced on a separate occasion where I had the beer. The second time there was more of a dry, yeast finish with very mild notes of the caramel. The caramel was also more restrained the further I made it into the pint on the first go around. The beer was a little more fizzy than I would have liked (personal preference, l like cream ale on nitro – hint to Mike and Adam), but it was a very enjoyable beer, crisp and refreshing, a nice beer if you are looking for something not terribly hoppy and perfect to be sipping on a warm summer day, especially if you are looking to have a couple.

Reuben’s Brews Cream Ale delivers with a strong 4 milkmen out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Kassik Brewing Moose Point Porter

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Raise your hand if you knew there was a brewery in Kenai, Alaska. Raise your hand if you know where Kenai, Alaska is. Well, there is a brewery there called Kassik Brewing and they produce some pretty tasty beers, which happen to be available in Seattle. A little about Kassik from their website:

Kassik’s Brewery is housed in a small warehouse, nestled in a clearing in the woods, adjacent to the Kassik’s home in Nikiski. Frank’s passion for brewing began when his wife Debara, bought him a home brew kit for Christmas. Frank was hooked and soon became a proficient home brewer. They built a 36 X 50 shop in hopes to someday have a brewery. In May of 2005 Kassik’s purchased a used seven barrel system, and then remodeled their building to accommodate the equipment with the help of family and friends. The brewery opened Memorial Weekend 2006 with their first brew Beaver Tail Blonde, their Moose Point Porter was on tap a few weeks later.

I cracked open a 22 oz. bottle of their Moose Point Porter, which ran about $5 and happens to be their flagship beer. It is available at most good bottle shops and the occasional mega mart (I believe I have seen their beers in Fred Meyer).

The description from their website:

ABV 5.2% – Silver 2011 World Beer Championship

A delightfully deceiving signature brew!

Moose Point Porter has a dark and heavy appearance with a surprisingly light and clean finish.

The beer pours on the dark side for a porter with light malt and hints of roast and chocolate hidden on the nose. The initial sip is slightly hoppy (and surprisingly so) with notes of caramel and toffee yielding to a slightly sweet but long finish. As you make it further into the beer, light notes of vanilla and sassafras start to appear, reminding me of a root beer or a cream soda. For being a dark beer, it is surprisingly approachable without any dominating flavor profile, making it a complex and well integrated beer.

Kassik Brewery’s Moose Point Porter saunters in with a strong 3 Alces alces out of 5.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Sloan Stout

By Blaidd Drwg

I love stouts, especially when the weather is cold. To me, they are the beer equivalent of hot chocolate – hearty and flavorful, warming the belly and feeding the soul. Needless to say, I was excited when NW Peaks released 2 stouts as part of their mountain beer collection, Sloan and Stuart. It was a fun experience drinking them side by side to compare them (Stuart was previously reviewed here).

From the NW Peaks Website:

The mountain. Sloan Peak is a prominent-looking mountain situated all by itself just off the mountain loop “highway”. It’s a great, distinctive mountain that appears to be falling over, depending on your vantage… The Beer. We used the same yeast used to make Guinness and tried to mimic the water profile of Dublin, Ireland to create our own interpretation of a dry stout, a style that Guinness has made ever so popular…

The beer pours predictably dark. Notes of coffee, toffee and chocolate permeate the nose with the coffee leading the assault. The beer starts off on your palate pretty light, giving way to a pleasantly mild astringency (think black coffee) before hitting you with a tidal wave of flavor. Coffee and chocolate dominate before leading into a long, sweet and slightly smoky finish. Sloan was much more robust than I was expecting and it becomes more so as it warms. It was like drinking a Guinness on steroids.

I case you are wondering, here is what I am referring to in the rating.

Sloan Stout was a wonderful interpretation of a dry stout and best of all, is still available in growler according to the NW Peaks website (you may want to call ahead and confirm). If it is, treat yourself to one of the better stouts available in the Northwest.

NW Peaks Sloan Stout stumbles into the brewery with an ethereal 4 St. James’s Gates out of 5.

And now a word from our sponsor…

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Greetings mortals.

It occurred to me as I was sitting at Reuben’s the other day drinking a Cream Ale, that I have a horrible backlog of beer reviews. It is so bad that I realize by the time I get around to posting my Cream Ale review, the beer is going to be long gone. It an attempt to post some more seasonally appropriate reviews, I decided that there are going to be 3 “Beer of the Week” posts instead of the normal 2, just until I can catch up on my backlog. You will still get the same witty banter about sports, games and food from our award winning writers Blaidd Drwg and AJ Coltrane, but with more Iron Chef Leftovers thrown into the mix. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the show, just with more beer. In the immortal words of Monty Python:

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Brewing Populuxe IPA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

It is the Northwest, so it is almost suicide for a brewery to not have an IPA on their tap list. The list at Populuxe, the Ballard nano-brewery, is no different. At any given point, you will find some combination of their IPA, Double IPA or CDA on tap. Since I have already reviewed the CDA (here) and the Double IPA (here), I should complete the trifecta and finally write my review of the Populuxe IPA.

The beer is orange in color with a white head. There is lots of citrus on the nose with some grain and green hop notes. When you first take a sip, you first notice the grain, which a bit of a surprise since most northwest IPA’s tend to be very hop forward., before getting to the major burst of hoppy citrus and then finally settling into a slightly sweet, slightly bitter finale. The beer is hoppy enough to keep a hop-head like me happy if I am looking for an IPA, but not so hoppy as it is a one and done hop monster that will blow out your palate for the rest of the evening and kill your ability to taste anything. The beer is really pleasant to drink and goes down easily – a smooth and consistent brew with lots of distinct character and no alcohol burn, and could easily make for a 2-3 beer night. The beer is 6.4% abv.

On a side note – Populuxe recently released a cask version of the IPA, dry hopped with Crystal and Sterling. I didn’t take notes, but it was a something that I would have had no problem spending all day drinking. They are doing a cask on most Thursdays, so check out their Facebook Page for details.

The Populuxe IPA pays off on the trifecta with a strong 3 betting slips out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Stone Collaboration Cherry Chocolate Stout

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Finally the last of the Stone Collaboration Beer reviews. This one had been hiding in my notebook, so that is why I missed it. I love stout, I love cherries and I love chocolate and when you put them together well, it can be an out of body experience. Stone got together with Troegs brewing out of Pennsylvania and a couple of San Diego home brewers, Jason Fields and Kevin Sheppard, to produce this beer. From the Stone website:

The rich, smooth stout was brewed in late April, with a blend of dark-roasted specialty malts, Callebaut chocolate liquor, vanilla beans, and 9000 pounds of dark and tart cherries. “Seeing how much the recipe was blown up to brew it on this system is amazing,” Jason chimes in. “And getting to work with everybody… it’s been so cool.”

Single 12-oz bottles
Available in: AK AZ CA CO DE FL IL KY MA MD MN NC NJ NM NY OH OR PA SC TX VA VT WA
7.3% abv, 37 IBUs
2448 cases produced

I paid $4.99 for my 12oz. bottle.

The beer pours jet black with a mahogany head. Copious amounts of roasted malt on the nose with hints of cocoa nibs and a very small amount of cherries if you go looking for them. The beer starts out slightly sweet before quickly transitioning to the roasted malt and finishes long with hints of cherries during the fade. As you make it further into the beer, the cherries become more pronounced and the roast is replaced by a pleasant milk chocolate finish – it reminded me of a Theo Chocolates cherries and almond bar and I was looking for the roasted almonds when I was drinking it.

This beer was fantastic and I really wish that they would brew it again.

I cannot tell a lie, the Stone Collaboration Cherry Chocolate Stout coms in swinging a 5 Cherry Trees out of 5.

A Beer Afternoon on the Kitsap Peninsula

By Iron Chef Leftovers

A few of us recently went on a brewery tour of the Bainbridge/Poulsbo area to celebrate loyal blog reader Annie’s birthday. We hopped the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge and left the driving to the guys from the Peninsula Brewery Tour company (more on them later) and hit 4 breweries – Bainbridge Island Brewing, Sound Brewery, Slippery Pig Brewing and Valhalla Brewing. We did have a dog on the trip (except for at Bainbridge and I forgot to ask about their 4 legged friend policy), so I can rate the breweries on that also.

Bainbridge Island Brewing – They have a very nice looking brew pub a few miles from the ferry terminal in a strip mall/industrial park. Their next door neighbor is a winery and there is a distillery across the parking lot, so you could possibly make a destination out of just this one location. Bainbridge has a nice selection of beers, both light and heavy that will keep just about any beer drinker happy, and offer 2 tasting flights – one with their light beers and one with their darks. The light beer drinkers in the group gravitated toward a very nice Kolsh (although I personally thought their Saison was the best of the lights) while the hop-heads seemed to enjoy the Hoptopus double IPA. I personally thought that the best beer in their lineup was their Battle Point Stout – which had great malt character and a pleasant smoky/chocolate finish with notes of coffee. The pub itself is large, with seating on both the first and second floors, a rolling garage door that opens up the brewery and a small patio out front with additional seating. Oh – they also have a barrel aging project going on.

Ratings:

The Beer – 4 ferries out of 5. I didn’t have anything that I didn’t think was at least drinkable and most were very enjoyable beers

The Atmosphere – 5 gentle breezes out of 5. Beautiful building and an interesting brewing system. Nice place to hang out and have a few beers. They have a few snack items, but no food to speak of.

Dog Friendliness – No Rating. Not sure if you can bring the pooch inside, but you can probably grab a seat on the patio and have Fido there.

*Updated from Annie S: when I called them prior to the trip they said “bring the pooch they are allowed and you don’t have to be outside and she was super nice about it.

Sound Brewery – The brewery I was most looking forward to seeing based on what I said on this article. Located in a warehouse off a main road in Poulsbo, it isn’t the prettiest building you have ever seen, but they do have a small tasting room and patio with the brewery taking up most of the space. Their beers tend to gravitate more toward Belgian styles and/or hops, so you won’t have a ton of choices if you are looking for something that is in the kolsh vein. If you like hops, the Humulo Nimbus is an outstanding double IPA, their Endendre beers are fantastic beers using Chimay yeast and if you want to go to the dark side, their Ursus beers are incredibly good. We also got to try a sample of their Belgian Quad aging in a whiskey barrel – it was amazing and I would make a trip back just for that. My one disappointment was that they did not have Mayan Cave Bear on tap – I have wanted to try that and we missed it by about a week.

Ratings:

The Beer – 5 foghorns out of 5. I didn’t call them one of the 5 best in the state for nothing.

The Atmosphere – 3 mechanics out of 5. It is a neat tasting room, but it feels like it is in a warehouse (maybe because it is in a warehouse). It is pretty small space for drinking but the patio is a nice touch.

Dog Friendliness – 5 squeaky toys out of 5. No issues bringing the pooch inside.

Slippery Pig Brewery – Perhaps the oddest place on the trip for many reasons. It is located (literally) on a farm at the end of a dirt road, just minutes from Sound. Their brewing space was probably about the size of the bus we were on and their “taproom” wasn’t so much a room as a covered shelter. Then you have the beers. While most breweries will brew an occasional “off the wall” beer, Slippery Pig doesn’t do anything mainstream. Leave your preconceived notions at the door and order up a sampler of their beers. I really liked the White Chocolate Sour Cherry Stout (lots of subtle white chocolate with hits of cherries), the Blueberry Saison (not overpowering like most blueberry beers) and the Porkapolypse – a pale brewed with spices and hot peppers, this was the first time that I had a pepper beer that the pepper really played a background role without overpowering everything else. It is easy to see why these guys win at Strange Brew every year. There were a few misses, but you have to expect that when you are dealing with beers this off the wall. They are definitely worth the trip to visit.

Ratings:

The Beer – 4 Gonzos out of 5. Strange combinations that mostly work, so there is nothing wrong with that.

The Atmosphere – 4 sties out of 5. A great outdoor space on a nice day with a nice farm setting around you and a good spot to have a picnic as we did. Probably not a great place to hang out in the winter. The only thing that kept them from getting a perfect score was their lack of bathroom facilities – they have porta potties.

Dog Friendliness – 5 fetches out of 5. A big open space to hang out with Fluffy.

Valholl Brewing – Valholl is a beautiful location on top of a hill overlooking the water in downtown Poulsbo. The tap room is gorgeous, open with lots of wood (and tables made from driftwood) and a sizable brewery in the back. There is a small patio out front, but overall this place is pretty small. The beers were solid, with a wide range of styles to make just about any beer drinker happy. While there was nothing that was undrinkable, there was also nothing that stood out above the rest of the beers – not that this is a bad thing – the beers are solid and you could easily spend all day drinking in this place without a complaint. My favorite of their lineup was the IPA, but I don’t think that there was a beer I tried that I wouldn’t recommend. They don’t have any food (like all of the other places we visited), but you are close to town center, so there are options.

Ratings:

The Beer – 3 longboats out of 5. A solid lineup but the lack of anything truly outstanding keeps them from making it from the very good to the great category.

The Atmosphere – 5 Valkyries out of 5. I am pretty sure that this is what a drinking hall in Valhalla would look like. I kept expecting to see a Viking walk through the door the entire time we were there.

Dog Friendliness – 3 belly rubs out of 5. Not a ton of space and Fido needs to be outside to enjoy a brew with you.

A word about Peninsula Brew Tours – These guys were great, especially putting up with 12 fun loving beer drinkers like our group. They have a comfortable bus that seats 14 and will pick folks up at either the Bainbridge or Bremerton Ferry terminals. The two owners, who also act as your tour guides, know their beers, know the breweries and were fun to hang out with for an afternoon. Since we had most of the seats on the bus, we were able to dictate the stops, but they do have a tour of both the Poulsbo and Bremerton areas they run for $35 a person, which is a steal considering you don’t have to slog a car onto the ferry from Seattle (or drive around to the Kitsap Peninsula), you don’t have to worry about driving brewery to brewery, their bus is much more comfortable than your car, they know the brewers/breweries so they can get you a tour that you wouldn’t otherwise get on your own and you can load up a growler and drink on the bus between stops.

If you are planning a brewery tour (or even a winery tour) to the Kitsap Peninsula, give these guys a call. They are located on the web at http://peninsulabrewtours.com/ or can be reached by phone at 360-275-8200. These guys will give you a better experience than you will probably have putting it together on your own. For that, I rate them with 5 Huge Thanks for a Great Afternoon out of 5.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Granite Oat Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

When we think of beer brewed with adjuncts, we think of the mass-produced American Lager like Bud – flavorless and lacking any real character. By definition, a beer brewed with anything besides water, yeast, grain and hops is an adjunct beer and most can be delicious if not outstanding. NW Peaks Brewing did an adjunct beer (two actually) as part of their Mountain Beer series in March. The first of the two to be reviewed is the Granite Oat Ale. The beer contains about 20% oats and is not a dark beer (which is where you will usually find the addition of oats).

From the NW Peaks website:

Granite is the second ‘adjunct’ (oats) beer for March. Granite ended dry and crisp with oat notes. The oats added some silkiness to the mouthfeel as well. However, the featured character is the NZ Saaz hop that we used, which creates a nice floral character in the finished beer.

The beer is orange-amber in color with lots of oats and malt on the nose and slight hints of hops interspersed. The beer is very oat forward on the palate with a slight umami feel in the mouth from them. The long oat backbone slowly fades into a slight malty sweetness with a slightly bitter hop profile before transitioning into a long malt finish. As the beer warms, the oat presence becomes more pronounced and the complexity is increased with a touch more sweetness, a slightly floral character and a bit less bitterness from the hops.
Definitely an interesting and well-executed oat based beer which you should run out and try next time it makes an appearance.

NW Peaks Granite Oat Ale follows the trail and leads with a solid 3 horses to water out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Black Raven Brewing Schwartzeit Black Lager

By Iron Chef Leftovers

There are times that I think Black Raven is one of the best breweries in the state and others that I think “WTH are they doing over in Redmond?” Schwartzeit Black Lager lends itself more to the former than the latter sentiment. In case you are not familiar with Black Lagers, Wikipedia comes to the rescue:

Schwarzbier, or “black beer”, is a German dark lager beer. It has an opaque, black colour and a full, chocolatey or coffee flavour similar to stout or porter.
Schwarzbiers are bottom-fermented beers, though originally top-fermenting yeast was used in brewing them. The alcohol content usually ranges from 4.8%–5%. They get their dark colour from the use of particularly dark malts in brewing. The malt in turn gets its colour during the roasting procedure.

The roots of the Schwarzbier lie in Thuringia and Saxony; the oldest known Schwarzbier is Braunschweiger Mumme (“Brunswick Mum”) brewed since the Middle Ages (the first documented mention is from 1390[1]) in Braunschweig. The earliest documented mention in Thuringia is of Köstritzer from 1543, a popular Schwarzbier still produced today. The East of present-day Germany has many unique varieties of this style from regional breweries. It is often served with dark, chunky breads with cream cheese. It also pairs well with marinated meats like brisket and is an excellent companion to German Sauerbraten.

I had the Schwartzeit in a 22oz bottle which ran about $7 and clocked in at 5.9% ABV.

The beer pours dark and slightly opaque with a generously fizzy tan head. A great deal of roasted malt appears on the nose with hints of chocolate and coffee – this beer could easily be confused with a stout on smell alone. The similarities end with the nose though – a slight sweetness starts you out, followed by a pleasant light grain flavor. That fades very quickly into light roast and chocolate (the chocolate is more pronounced as the beer warms) with a very mild bitterness from the hops at the end. The beer won’t win over light beer, drinkers despite being a lager, but it is balanced and delicious and should appeal to those who like a dark beer, but don’t want to go for full bore into the realm of stouts and porters.

Schwartzeit is a seasonal beer for Black Raven and one of the few that they actually bottle, so pick up a couple next time you see it in your local bottle shop.

Black Raven Schwartzeit Black Lager goose-steps in with a stellar 4 Achtungs! out of 5.

Beer of the Week – Reuben's Brews Cask Conditioned Auld Heritage

By Iron Chef Leftovers

It is a gutsy move in the Northwest to put out a beer style that you don’t normally see and it is even gutsier to put that style out in a cask, but that is exactly what the guys from Reuben’s did with their Auld Heritage Ale. Auld or Old ale is defined as follows (from Wikipedia):

Old ale is a term commonly applied to dark, malty beers in England, generally above 5% abv, also to dark ales of any strength in Australia. Sometimes associated with stock ale or, archaically, keeping ale, in which the beer is held at the brewery.

Reuben’s version clocked in at 8.7% alcohol and 58 IBU; not exactly a small beer.

Auld Heritage is mahogany brown in color. There is lots of malt and caramel on the nose with hints of toffee. The beer builds slowly as you drink it, starting off with little fanfare before showing lots of toffee then transitioning into burnt sugar and caramel before finishing off with a slightly alcoholic and sweet with notes of toffee, caramel and dried fruit. The finish is long – several minutes after taking a sip, you still get light notes of toffee, caramel and dried fruit, and it is not a bad thing. The beer is like enjoying a nice toffee or hard candy and the caramel notes made me thing of eating a confection and wanted a sprinkle of sea salt (salted caramel is one of my favorite flavor). For a moderately IBU beer, any of the hop character is lots in the deep flavors, but I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.

If you are an advanced drinker or just someone who wants to try a new style of beer, you should head down to Reuben’s to have an Auld Heritage when it is on their tap list, and doubly so if they have it on cask. Because of its alcohol and deep flavors, it is a heavy beer and not one that everyone is going to enjoy, but it is different than most Northwest beers and you should at least give it a taste.

Reuben’s Brews Auld Heritage crosses the pond and collects 4 family heirlooms out of 5.