Review: Pumpkin Series (Pt. III) – Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale

A Spice/Herb/Vegetable brewed by
Shipyard Brewing Company
Portland, Maine USA

ABV: 4.5%

Glassware: Pint Glass

Pours an light brown with hints of orange. The aroma is spicy and there is some cinnamon and nutmeg that comes through. The taste is of pumpkin but it is noticeably watery. The taste is good and better then most but the body is just not there. The best part of this beer was the aroma.

Ratebeer.com score: 3

Review: Pumpkin series (Pt. II) – Saranac Pumpkin Ale

A Spice/Herb/Vegetable brewed by
Matt Brewing Company
Utica, New York USA

ABV: 5.4%

Glassware: Pint Glass

This pours a ruby or amber color with a very small head. It smells like powdered cinnamon. It tastes of vanilla and spice and cinnamon. It is OK but not good. As it warms it does start to get a bit better but then again I think most beers do.

My ratebeer.com score: 2.9

Review: Pumpkin Series (Pt. I) – Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale

Editor’s Note: If my stomach can handle it I hope to review as many pumpkin ale’s as possible before Halloween. I have about three in the bank now that I will be posting soon. This is the first.

A Spice/Herb/Vegetable brewed by
Smuttynose Brewing Company
Portsmouth, New Hampshire USA

ABV: 5%

Glassware: Pint Glass

I normally love all Smuttynose but this one just missed the mark. It smelled like pumpkin and spices. The taste is where it looses me. I normally like a good pumpkin ale but this tastes like you were eating dried spices – literally. It felt like I had herbs and spices in my mouth that I was chewing. maybe I had a bad one? I’’ll have to go back to this.

Ratebeer.com score: 2.1

Offbeat News: Beer goggles for real this time

 

If you’re going to splurge for those pricey craft beers, you might as well quaff them from glasses that do them justice.

And German glassware maker Spiegelau recently launched a line of brew-specific glasses to help. The company’s Beer Classics Collection offers beautiful glasses designed to enhance three common styles of beer.

The company’s 17-ounce lager glasses, for example, start narrow and broaden to a wide mouth. Spiegelau says the shape helps present “the aromatics of this style of beer and showcases the color, clarity and carbonation of good lagers.”

The other sets include 14-ounce stemmed pilsner glasses and 17-ounce wheat beer glasses. And while the glasses feel light and delicate, all are dishwasher safe.

Column: A good beer festival in Connecticut, say it is so

Readers of this column have often asked me to speak about how bad the beer scene in Connecticut is. An event coming up this month in Waterbury turns that assumption upside down.

 

The Brass City Brew Fest will be held in Waterbury on Saturday, Sept 13 and is just what the beer loving Nutmegger has been looking for.

I went last year for the first time and went home more then impressed. You want to get there early and pay the $10 extra dollars to get into the Belgian beer tent. There is one place you can get pretty much every Belgian beer that crosses Connecticut’s borders, plus some.

The four-hour festival is set at Library Park in Waterbury, just across from the courthouse and under a beautiful clock tower. For all you hear about Waterbury it was a beautiful setting with plenty of grass to mosey around in.

The American selection is mostly from the Northeast but you get the big guns there such as Dogfish Head, Boston Beer Co. and Allagash. The west coast sends over Anchor Steam, Ballast Point, Eel River, Lagunitas, North Coast and Sierra Nevada.

You also get to sample the best beers from this so-called poor state for craft beer. Connecticut will put its best foot forward with the outstanding Cambridge House, BruRm@Bar, Carlson Craft Brewery, Cottrell, Farmington River, John Harvard’s, New England Brewing Co., Olde Burnside, SBC (Southport Brewing Co.), Thomas Hooker and another Connecticut great brewer the Willimantic Brewing Co.

Tickets are $30 in advance and can be purchased at http://www.brasscitybrewfest.com/ or $35 at the gate. The event only runs from 1 to 5 p.m. but that is more then enough time to sample everything you want. I would suggest getting there early and beating the crowds.

 

What I have had and liked this month

 

Review: Captain Lawrence Captains Reserve

 

An Imperial/Double IPA brewed by

Captain Lawrence Brewing Company

Pleasantville, New York USA

ABV: 8%

Glassware: Tulip

Had the Captain Lawrence Double IPA on tap at Delaney’s In New Haven. It pours a dark yellow or off orange – it is hard to put your finger on this color. The head is amazing and the lacing is sick. The lacing literally follows you down the glass to near perfection. It smells hoppy but not in a way that will blow out your senses because it appears to be well balanced in both aroma and taste with a nice malt and citrus backbone. This is probably one of the smoothest Imperial IPAs I have ever had. It is bitter but that malt backbone keeps it from ripping your taste buds apart. Outstanding.

Beer Advocate food pairing suggestions: Cuisine (Barbecue) Cheese (peppery; Monterey / Pepper Jack, sharp; Blue, Cheddar, pungent; Gorgonzola, Limburger) Meat (Game, Grilled Meat, Salmon) 

My ratebeer.com rating: 4.2

Jerrod Ferrari is editor of The Stamford Times and Wilton Villager. He is also the operator of It’s The Beer Talking blog at http://beertalking.wordpress.com/

Review: Woodstock Inn Pemi Pale Ale

An India Pale Ale (IPA) brewed by
Woodstock Inn Brewery
North Woodstock, New Hampshire USA

ABV: 5.7%

Glassware: Pint glass

Pours an amber color with a nice head that dissipates quickly. It has a nice sweet smell with hints of carmel and citrus. It also tastes pretty sweet but with a slight bitter kick at the end. It is has a nice sweet caramel malt, slightly grainy with a light grapefruit hop touch. It was a decent IPA but not sure I would seek it out. I would like to try it on tap.

Beer Advocate food pairing suggestions: Cuisine (Curried, Thai) Cheese (peppery; Monterey / Pepper Jack, sharp; Blue, Cheddar, pungent; Gorgonzola, Limburger) Meat (Poultry, Fish, Shellfish, Salmon)

My ratebeer.com score: 3

Offbeat news: Beer run gone wrong

An Illinois man who police say held five people hostage in a motel in Fort Madison, Iowa, was arrested after he sent two of his hostages on a beer run.

Police say 33-year-old Jason Slagel of Moline is charged with five counts of false imprisonment and going armed with intent. They say Slagel pulled a knife during an argument Tuesday night with another man and told the people in the room that they wouldn’t be allowed to leave.

Police say Slagel eventually got thirsty and sent two hostages out for beer.

News: Guinness stout is hot in Africa

 

The Associated Press is reporting that  Diageo PLC, the world’s largest producer and distributor of alcoholic drinks, posted a small rise in full-year net profit to meet its earnings targets Thursday, but cut its forecast for the current year amid the global economic slowdown and rising production costs.

The maker of Johnnie Walker whisky, Guinness stout and Smirnoff vodka reported net profit of 1.52 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) for the year ending June 30, up 2.7 percent from 1.48 billion pounds a year ago.

Revenue rose 8 percent to 8.09 billion pounds ($14.9 billion), from 7.48 billion pounds, underpinned by sales of scotch in Latin America, beer in Africa and premium brands in North America.

Sales of Diageo’s trademark Guinness stout rose 6 percent, with more than 50 percent of that growth coming from Africa.

Review: Weyerbacher Hops Infusion

An India Pale Ale (IPA) brewed by
Weyerbacher Brewing Co.
Easton, Pennsylvania USA

ABV: 6.2%

Glassware: Tulip

This is very hoppy for a standard IPA but follows the trend that Weyerbacher likes. This brewer has now started to grow a lot of his own hops in Pennsylvania. The IPA pours a nice amber color into a tulip glass from the bottle. It has a great head that sticks a round with some really nice lacing. Hop heavy aroma as I said above. Tastes a bit like you put a very bitter pine tree in your mouth – in a good way. Taste is citrus, undoubtedly cascade in the mix with a subtle malty flavor. I like it but not up there with the great hop monsters but better than half way.

Beer Advocate food pairing suggestions: Cuisine (Curried, Thai) Cheese (peppery; Monterey / Pepper Jack, sharp; Blue, Cheddar, pungent; Gorgonzola, Limburger) Meat (Poultry, Fish, Shellfish, Salmon)

My ratebeer.com score: 3.6

News: The hop business is a good business

David Kesmodel of The Wall Street Journal reported this morning how the ‘hop shortage’ has create some good business opportunities.

Last fall, South Dakota businessman Steve Polley was scouting for ways to make some extra income when he saw a news headline: The price of hops was surging because of a global shortage.

At the time, Mr. Polley knew little about hops, the flowering plants that give beers their distinct aromas and bitterness. Now, helped by a state agricultural grant, the 67-year-old is preparing for his first hops harvest on a small plot on his neighbor’s land in Spearfish, S.D.

Mr. Polley is among a small but rising number of newcomers to attempt to grow hops on a commercial scale outside the Pacific Northwest, America’s haven for hops. One of the most obscure crops in a long line of agriculture commodities to enjoy a recent price boom, hops are sproutin

g in numerous other locales, from Colorado to Wisconsin to New York. The growers aim to capitalize on hop prices that are as much as sixfold higher than a few years ago, as well as the nation’s boom in small-batch “craft” brewers, like Colorado’s New Belgium Brewing Co. and Odell Brewing Co., which are thirsty for locally grown hops.

“I’m convinced we have a chance to do something to help out the craft brewers” and make some money, says Mr. Polley, who also runs a legal-research firm.

you can read the full article, and I do mean FULL, here.