Tag: centennial

Beer of the Week: Port Brewing High Tide Fresh Hop IPA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

port-brewing-company-high-tide-fresh-hop-ipaIt is strange that I had a bottle of fresh hop beer sitting in my fridge for several months without having opened it or even realizing it was there. That is what happened with the my 22 oz. bottle of Port Brewing High Tide Fresh Hop IPA. The beer was fresh hopped with Centennial and Simcoe hops and came in at 6.5% ABV. Because it had been sitting for a while, I figured that I would have pretty low expectations of the beer, and honestly, figured that all of the hop flavor would have been dead by this point. I am happy to report, I was wrong.

The beer pours golden in color with a hint of orange and an off white head. There is significant hop character on the noes with strong notes of citrus and citrus peel with light notes of grain and resin. A major citrus bomb on the palate – the beer starts off with a slightly tannic dryness before quickly switching to hops, and lots of them. There are strong notes of citrus peel and grapefruit before finishing off with more citrus peel and a pleasant lingering bitterness on the front of the tongue that keeps going for quite a while. Well balanced and higher alcohol than most fresh hops, it goes down smooth while displaying nice character.

Port Brewing High Tide Fresh Hop IPA cycles in with 3 ebb tides out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s Randall Red

By Iron Chef Leftovers

untitled2Randalls are a fun way to infuse flavors into beer without having to brew an entire batch of beer with those ingredients. It means you can use fun stuff like fruit or obscure hops to get some additional flavor in the beer without being intimidating and making it a cask beer. Reuben’s has started its randall project thanks to their new employee, Thor (yep, that is his name), who comes to them from Fremont Brewing where he was responsible for their randalls. One of the first randalls that Reuben’s had was a simple one – their Red with centennial hops.

The beer pours deep ruby in color with a creamy, light tan head with light amounts of hops and grain on the nose. The beer has a light sweetness at the front, joined by a mild fruitiness to start before moving into pleasant grain middle and finishing with a nice light bitterness/hop character that lingers with the grain in a fairly long finish. Nicely layered and a nice progression of flavors, this beer is balanced and the subtleties are not overpowered by hops.

Reuben’s Randall Red storms into Valhalla swinging 4 Mjolnirs out of 5.