Another day, another cask review from our friends at Populuxe. Populuxe, the beer to drink if you are looking to drink cask beer on a Thursday night. This time they decided to double dry hop their IPA with, well, I don’t remember what they hopped the beer with because I forgot to write it down in my notes.
The beer pours hazy orange in color with hops and citrus (mostly grapefruit) dominating the nose. The beer is surprisingly mild to drink – fruity wish very little bitterness up front before moving more toward a solid foundation of grain and then gravitating back toward citrus – reminds me of juicy fruit gum. Smooth with just a hint of hop bitterness and burn, reminding you this is an IPA but it is by no means palate blowing. Smooth and easy drinking, a great version of an IPA that you could easily find yourself having more than one.
The Populuxe XTRA Dry Hopped Cask IPA is gonna move ya with a happy 4 packs of gum out of 5.
If you are free on Thursday nights, you should join me at the Populuxe Brewery for their weekly science experiment known as Cask Night. Most Thursdays, they tap a cask of something delicious and interesting for your drinking pleasure and, in most cases, those beers are fun. One of their experiments was with a dry hopped saison. Not a beer that you would normally associate with a cask beer, which meant that I needed to try it. The beer clocked in at 7.3% ABV and was dry hopped with horizon.
The beer pours hazy orange in color with plenty of grain on the nose coupled with lemon and passion fruit accompanied with light hop notes. The beer is dry on the initial taste with lots of grain before transitioning off to a pleasant hop middle coupled with citrus and lemon, before finishing slightly tangy with long notes of passion fruit and citrus. The classic saison earthiness/grassiness runs throughout this beer, but there was a touch of alcohol burn at the back of the throat on the very end of this beer which, while not unpleasant, did distract from the finish.
Populuxe brings in back home with their Dry Hopped Saison, carting in a strong 4 musty barns out of 5.
Reuben’s has temporarily gotten away from its cask program, and that is not a good thing since their beers generally do well with a cask treatment, revealing an incredibly deeper flavor that you don’t get on their regular versions – it is not to put down the regular versions of the beer, but the cask seems to take the fantastic regular version to a completely new level. One of the last casks that they did was their Imperial IPA dry hopped with Citra and Amarillo. If there was ever a beer that was screaming for the cask treatment, it is this one.
The beer pours heavy orange-brown, almost the color of tea with an in your face citrus nose with notes of grain on the background and just hints of resin interspersed. The beer builds slowly at first with citrus peel and grapefruit gaining traction on the palate for quite a long while before transitioning into a somewhat tea –like profile with a slightly tannic finish that is enhanced with a mild bitterness that lingers for a few seconds before fading away. For a high alcohol cask beer, there is no alcohol burn and the beer is clean and smooth with great balance and layers of flavor that evolve as you get further into the pint. The beer goes down almost too smooth and, despite the significant hopping, isn’t a palate killer, giving you the chance to actually move on to a different beer, but honestly, if you are drinking this one, you probably aren’t going to consider anything other than ordering a second pint of the IIPA.
Reuben’s Cask Imperial IPA with Citra and Amarillo dances into the picture with a graceful 4 Texas two-steps out of 5.
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.
Kolsch is a style that you normally would not find done in a cask, so when Reuben’s decided to give it a shot, I of course had to be there to try it.
The beer pours pale yellow in color and surprisingly cloudy – reminds me of a hefeweisen, with lots of grain, slightly floral notes and hints of grapefruit and citrus on the nose. The initial taste yields a significant amount of very mild grapefruit with hints of spice and grain playing hide and seek among the hop flavors. The beer fades in a long and subtle finish with very little bitterness and just a touch of sweet grain and yeast character. Very easy drinking and smooth, probably more hoppy than a light beer drinker would enjoy but a pleasant hop character coupled with the subtlety of the kolsch make this a beer which you could be happy with drinking all day on a warm summer afternoon.
Reuben’s Cask Kolsch surprises with a refreshing 4 summer winds out of 5.
The Cask Imperial Rye on the left and its sibling, the regular Imperial Rye on the right.
By Iron Chef Leftovers
I keep all of my reviews in a notebook, which is why you see reviews for winter beers posted in the middle of spring – even posting 2 reviews a week; I have a backlog of about 30 to post. I usually write them in the order that I drank them, unless I have a bunch of beers from the same brewery; then I will break them up. On a rare occasion, I will drink something that is just so good that the review jumps to the front of the queue. This is one of those reviews.
I have written about Reuben’s Brews several times in this space. The short version – I really like their beer. They have been doing a weekly cask series – taking one of their beers and putting one of them on cask, usually dry hopped. It has led to some interesting variations of the beers that they are doing. This event usually takes place at 3 PM on Saturdays (check their FB site for details). Recently, they did a Double Dry Hopped Imperial Rye IPA on cask. Being a fan of the Imperial Rye IPA, I had to try this. Like its regular sibling, the beer clocks in at a hefty 8.4% ABV and 90+ IBU. Unlike it sibling, the second dry hopping was exclusively with citra hops.
It pours hazy orange in color with a pure white head. Intense hops permeate the nose with a strong background of rye and hints of grapefruit and citrus in the background. When you take a sip of this beer, it takes a second for the flavors to hit you, but when they do, it is like getting smacked by an oncoming truck. The beer starts out with a light bitterness before quickly yielding to strong rye and grain flavors with notes of toasted rye bread and a slight dryness. After lingering for a few seconds, the beer almost magically transitions into a burst of citrus peel and grapefruit in a very long and pleasant finish. There is some slight bitterness in the beer, but it complements the intense flavors that are present and aids the long transition between the flavors, acting as a bridge and helping this beer be extremely balanced; you could easily forget that you are drinking an 8.4% ABV beer.
I tasted this side by side with the regular version of the Imperial Rye, a beer I dearly love, and honestly, the cask version blew the doors off the regular version. After tasting the cask version, the regular, a fantastic beer in its own right, didn’t have the same level of intensity as its sibling. I am going to go on the record here as saying the cask version of the Imperial Rye IPA is one of the 10 best beers I have ever had and quite possibly in the top 5. Yes, it was that good. Next time it makes an appearance, you should be waiting in line for this beer when it gets tapped.
Reuben’s Brew’s Cask Imperial Rye IPA steps up to the podium with a perfect 5 pedestals out of 5.
I would have scored this beer a 6 out of 5, but since I really don’t do that, I leave you with this from This is Spinal Tap.
The Cask Imperial Rye on the left and its sibling, the regular Imperial Rye on the right.
By Iron Chef Leftovers
I keep all of my reviews in a notebook, which is why you see reviews for winter beers posted in the middle of spring – even posting 2 reviews a week; I have a backlog of about 30 to post. I usually write them in the order that I drank them, unless I have a bunch of beers from the same brewery; then I will break them up. On a rare occasion, I will drink something that is just so good that the review jumps to the front of the queue. This is one of those reviews.
I have written about Reuben’s Brews several times in this space. The short version – I really like their beer. They have been doing a weekly cask series – taking one of their beers and putting one of them on cask, usually dry hopped. It has led to some interesting variations of the beers that they are doing. This event usually takes place at 3 PM on Saturdays (check their FB site for details). Recently, they did a Double Dry Hopped Imperial Rye IPA on cask. Being a fan of the Imperial Rye IPA, I had to try this. Like its regular sibling, the beer clocks in at a hefty 8.4% ABV and 90+ IBU. Unlike it sibling, the second dry hopping was exclusively with citra hops.
It pours hazy orange in color with a pure white head. Intense hops permeate the nose with a strong background of rye and hints of grapefruit and citrus in the background. When you take a sip of this beer, it takes a second for the flavors to hit you, but when they do, it is like getting smacked by an oncoming truck. The beer starts out with a light bitterness before quickly yielding to strong rye and grain flavors with notes of toasted rye bread and a slight dryness. After lingering for a few seconds, the beer almost magically transitions into a burst of citrus peel and grapefruit in a very long and pleasant finish. There is some slight bitterness in the beer, but it complements the intense flavors that are present and aids the long transition between the flavors, acting as a bridge and helping this beer be extremely balanced; you could easily forget that you are drinking an 8.4% ABV beer.
I tasted this side by side with the regular version of the Imperial Rye, a beer I dearly love, and honestly, the cask version blew the doors off the regular version. After tasting the cask version, the regular, a fantastic beer in its own right, didn’t have the same level of intensity as its sibling. I am going to go on the record here as saying the cask version of the Imperial Rye IPA is one of the 10 best beers I have ever had and quite possibly in the top 5. Yes, it was that good. Next time it makes an appearance, you should be waiting in line for this beer when it gets tapped.
Reuben’s Brew’s Cask Imperial Rye IPA steps up to the podium with a perfect 5 pedestals out of 5.
I would have scored this beer a 6 out of 5, but since I really don’t do that, I leave you with this from This is Spinal Tap.
One of the reasons I like Brouwer’s Café in Fremont is that they tend to have the occasional short production, experimental beer from a local brewery that, if you blink, you will miss. That was the case recently when I was in for lunch and I saw the Dark Star with Lavender and Rosemary from Fremont Brewing on cask. Curious, I had to give it a shot, although, I have to admit that lavender tends to overpower beer and I am not a great fan of Dark Star to begin with.
Dark Star is, as you would expect, a very heavy, dark stout with just a hint of light able to penetrate its murky depths. Lots of roasted malt and smoke on the nose, with a serious lack of any floral characteristics of the lavender (this is a good thing). Heavy chocolate and roasted flavors appear of the front of the palate with just a hint of oatmeal, giving way to a slightly woody sensation (not really oak, more like chewing on a twig) with hints of rosemary. It finishes long and heavy with a subtle lavender background, but in a very pleasant way.
The restrained use of lavender was nice (it did not remind me of soap as so many lavender beers tend to do) and the beer overall felt like I was drinking a liquid Theo Chocolate confection. I was very surprised that the flavor profile did not change as the beer warmed.
Dark Star was a pleasant experience, but I don’t know that I would order more than one – it is a really heavy beer and didn’t pair too well with any of the food we had. Still, Dark Star with Lavender and Rosemary manages to score 4 Nibirus out of 5.
Another day, another cask review from our friends at Populuxe. Populuxe, the beer to drink if you are looking to drink cask beer on a Thursday night. This time they decided to double dry hop their IPA with, well, I don’t remember what they hopped the beer with because I forgot to write it down in my notes.
FlatbreadGarden 