Beer of the Week: Bad Jimmy’s Blood Orange And Honey Wheat Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I always temper my expectations when it comes to beers involving blood oranges. Blood oranges are one of my favorite flavors, but when it comes to putting them into beers, you either get so much blood orange flavor that the beer is completely overwhelmed or so little blood orange flavor that it is barely noticeable. As a result of this, I had some apprehension about trying the blood orange and honey wheat from Bad Jimmy’s. The beer clocked in at a hefty 6.5% ABV and 20 IBU.

The beer pours light hazy pale in color with light notes of honey and blood orange peel with hints of wheat in the background. The beer starts out with a light, slightly astringent, bitterness from the blood orange peel before becoming gradually sweeter, first from the blood orange juice and then from the honey before fading out. There are very light grain and orange notes ion the finish, but the beer is lacking much in the way of actual wheat character which is strangely lost despite the lack of bold flavors from the honey or orange. The beer lacked balance and missed out on the chance to elevate itself with a great paring of ingredients.

Bad Jimmy’s Blood Orange And Honey Wheat Ale harvests just 2 combines out of 5.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Esmeralda Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Sorry for the delay in posting some beer reviews. Seattle Beer Week and a few personal issues kept me from keeping up with the posting. I am back now, so you get to “enjoy” my reviews again.

Having been a member of the MountainBeer club at NW Peaks for over a year now, we are starting to see some of the beers make a return appearance. Since they are only brewed once a year, they warrant inclusion in my beer notes as well as posting here, just so I can compare how the beers and my tastes changed year over year. I posted a review of the Esmeralda Ale a mere 9 months ago and that was actually 5 months after I drank the beer. This time I am posting a review of it just 2 weeks after I drank the 2014 version. I am getting better at timely reviews.

From the NW Peaks Website:

The name. The mountain. Esmeralda is located in the Teanaway River drainage just S of Ingalls peak and SW of Mt Stuart – one of our favorite areas. It’s on the other side of the Teanaway River from its beastly neighbors and is a much easier approach/climb than that of it’s neighbors. The “class 2″ trek to the summit offers some great views of the massive Mt Stuart and the Stuart range and is part of a great loop for a day hike.

The story of two experiences. Because of its popularity from past renditions, we bring Esmeralda Ale back for another late winter mountainBeer. Of course it is always fun (or not) to remember the comedy of errors that was our first batch brewed on our current system (Esmeralda Ale), while now we have everything dialed in.

The Beer. Esmeralda is one of our ‘adjunct’ beers for March. The adjuncts in Esmeralda are corn and molasses that create a unique character. The corn provides a nice sweetness and smoothness and complements the molasses notes. Esmeralda was fermented with an English ale yeast adding a smooth fruity flavor on top. With very little few hop notes, the slight grain sweetness and dark sugar properties are uniquely featured.

Malts: ESB, munich, corn, special B, biscuit, carafa 2. Hops: Apollo and Goldings. Fermented with British Ale yeast. OG/TG 1.058/1.016 ~5.5% ABV

The beer pours light mahogany brown in color with a thin tan head. The beer has a significant up front nose of corn and grain with hints of spice and grass and just a touch of bread. It starts out on the palate with a slight grain and corn sweetness before bringing in a very light hop bitterness that stays until the end of the beer, when it couples with a pleasant note of corn cakes, molasses spice and an almost pilsner maltiness that linger in a crisp, long fade. This is a full-bodied beer and different from almost anything out there, this beer brings hints of fresh corn to the party in a well-balanced and easy drinking way.

NW Peaks Esmeralda Ale travels down the yellow brick road with 4 flying monkeys out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Elysian Trip XV Belgian Buckwheat Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Trip number 15 in the Elysian/New Belgium series brings us a Buckwheat Belgian Ale. It seems like it would be a bit of a strange combination, but I figured what the heck, this is what beer drinking is all about. The beer was from a 22 oz. bottle and clocked in at a healthy 7.5% ABV.

The beer pours deep brown in color with lots of sediment in the glass, producing heavy notes of banana, Belgian yeast, buckwheat and grain on the nose, with subtle notes of dates and raisins. The beer starts out with a hearty and oat profile before moving into deep notes of roasted dates and plums with hints of bitter chocolate before finishing long with a strong sweetness from the Belgian yeast. The beer has some nice bold flavors but some of the more subtle flavors are lost in the mix, causing the beer to be out of balance, especially as it moved through its grain components. Buckwheat is a strong flavor and was complimented nicely with the roasted flavors, but it does produce an oat-like mouth feel and reminded me of a buckwheat pancake with jam.

Elysian Trip 15 Buckwheat Belgian step it up and throws back with 3 O’Tays out of 5.

Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Esmeralda Ale

By Iron Chef Leftovers

One of the best things about joining the NW Peaks Mountain Beer club with a friend (in this case Annie S.), is that you don’t need to decide which of the 2 beers that NW Peaks is producing that month you are going to take home, you just take both. The added benefit is that when they are 2 similar beers, you get to try them side by side. Back in March, they did “adjunct beers”. I know the term, thanks to Budweiser, has a bad connotation, but the reality is that any beer brewed with more than just grain, water, yeast and hops contains adjuncts and many of them are delicious. This project gave us the Granite Oat Ale (reviewed here) and the Esmeralda Ale.

From the NW Peaks website:

The name. The mountain. Esmeralda is located in the Teanaway River drainage just S of Ingalls peak and SW of Mt Stuart – one of our favorite areas. It’s on the other side of the Teanaway River from its beastly neighbors and is a much easier approach/climb than that of it’s neighbors. The “class 2″ trek to the summit offers some great views of the massive Mt Stuart and the Stuart range and is part of a great loop for a day hike.

The story of two experiences. Because of its popularity from past renditions, we bring Esmeralda Ale back for another late winter mountainBeer. Of course it is always fun (or not) to remember the comedy of errors that was our first batch brewed on our current system (Esmeralda Ale), while now we have everything dialed in.

The Beer. Esmeralda is one of our ‘adjunct’ beers for March. The adjuncts in Esmeralda are corn and molasses that create a unique character. The corn provides a nice sweetness and smoothness and complements the molasses notes. Esmeralda was fermented with an English ale yeast adding a smooth fruity flavor on top. With very little few hop notes, the slight grain sweetness and dark sugar properties are uniquely featured.

Malts: ESB, munich, corn, special B, biscuit, carafa 2. Hops: Apollo and Goldings. Fermented with British Ale yeast. OG/TG 1.058/1.016 ~5.5% ABV

The beer pours amber/orange with a fizzy white head. Strong notes of molasses, corn and malt are on the nose, giving this beer an almost syrup like character. The initial taste is slightly sweet with hints of molasses yielding quickly to strong notes of corn before transitioning into a malty finish that lingers and has notes of caramel interspersed. Nicely balanced, flavorful and different; probably not a beer that everyone will enjoy, but it should appeal to a larger audience because of a distinct lack of hop character. This beer is very different from just about anything that is on the market from any other brewery in the Northwest, so I would highly recommend trying this one if it every makes another appearance.

NW Peaks Esmeralda Ale gathers up a crew and skips in with 3 yellow brick roads out of 5.

Beer in Review: Crowning the Best Beer of 2012

By Iron Chef Leftovers

In 2012, I started writing beer reviews on this blog in a semi-regular segment titled “Beer of the Week”. It is a bit of a misnomer since some weeks you got 2 beers of the week (hey, those are good weeks) and some weeks you got none. Anyway, I don’t review every beer I drink and I don’t always post them right after I drink them, so you sometimes end up with beers that are out of season or just not available anymore. What I am most proud of is my 5 point rating system.

In case you haven’t realized, instead of awarding stars or mugs or whatever else, I usually award a rating out of 5 based on something to do with the beer or the brewery. For example, I rated the Diamond Knot Whip Ale 4 out of 5 Silent Lucidities based on the idea that the recipe came from Michael Wilton of Queensryche (get it…Queensryche…Silent Lucidity). Coming up with these can be a challenge sometimes – anything animal or plant related is easy, just use the scientific name. Some are harder and probably not quite as funny. My favorite for the year was when I awarded Firestone Walker Wookey Jack 3 Kashyyyks out of 5. Kashyyyk being the home planet of Chewbacca, Chewy being a Wookie, get it? See how my brain works?

I digress, I reviewed a number of beers this year and several of them score a perfect 5 out of 5 on my rating scale. Several of those were vintage beers, so unless you know someone who happens to be sticking stuff in their cellar for 5 or 6 years (like I do), I figured that I should eliminate them from the running for the beer of the year. That really brought me down to 2 beers for the coveted title: Latona 25th Anniversary Cask by Anacortes and Pumpkin Ale by Reuben’s. It isn’t an easy choice; both breweries are great, both are breweries whose beers I really love and the styles are completely different. I am a shameless hophead and the Anacortes beer really appeals to me, but I also love pumpkin beers, especially ones where you can really taste the pumpkin and Reuben’s really knocked it out of the park with a pumpkin rye, a style which you don’t see too often, giving everything that I love about pumpkin beers with an interesting twist (and if you haven’t tried any of their rye beers, you should, they are fantastic).

So after much debate and locking the judges in a room without food and water until they made a decision (not really, I just spent 15 minutes thinking about who should win), we have a winner.

In a stunning upset, the new kid on the block, Reuben’s Brews wins the coveted Cheapseateats.com beer of the year award for their Pumpkin Ale! I highly encourage you to try this beer when it comes back around next year. It is so good that it is close to replacing Elysian’s Dark of the Moon as my favorite pumpkin beer on the planet, which is no easy feat since I pretty much consider Dark to be the second best beer brewed in Washington, behind Anacortes IPA of course!

Congrats to the wonderful folks from Reuben’s for brewing such delicious beers and keep it up. You will have some stiff competition in 2013 if you want to retain your title.