Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout

My favorite day of the week, beer review day. I can’t lie, I have been looking forward to this beer for two weeks, and I cheated, I have already had a few of these before tonight which is not the norm for me as I usually wait till review night to try the beer. I have grown more and more a fan of anything stout but especially coffee stouts. Well this week is no different.

Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout – Terrapin Beer Co.

It pours really dark and thick, just a little thinner than molasses. At first you think there isn’t going to be any type of head but then a small thin brown head appears. The scent is mostly burnt rich chocolate with a slight hint of booze. The taste has a very rich bite of roasted malts with just a few hints of coffee coming through. The mouthfeel is a light, low carbonated one, not heavy at all for this type of beer. It also hides the 8.1% ABV very well, only leaving a tiny bit of an after taste.

Cheers!

FourBoysBrewPub!

Frambozen - New Belgium

Stop the presses! I made it on a Friday for a change. Not sure what to expect with this beer, it has a label that looks festive but not sure a Raspberry Brown Ale is a festive beer. I guess we shall see now won’t we.

Frambozen – New Belgium Brewing. What is Frambozen anyway???

It had a really weird color as I poured in the glass, and it created a purplish head but when the beer was all in the glass, it was almost black. I can definitely smell some tart raspberry but I get some of the famous New Belgium yeast biscuit smell that so many of their beers possess. The first taste is slightly sweet which can be expected from a fruit beer but then you really get the sweetness quickly followed by a sharp tartness of the raspberries. Almost no sign of a malt backbone which I find odd for a brown ale even if it is a fruit infused brown ale. A thin mouthfeel which helps, not sure this beer could handle something heavy as I think that would take away from the fruit that they obviously want you to experience.

Well, I guess I could see this as a festive type beer, not one I would want to drink more than one or two of but might enjoy with some desert after the Christmas dinner. OK, so my curiosity got the better of me before I could even finish this review, I had to know what Frambozen is, well idiot beer geek, it’s right there on the label, it’s Flemish for raspberry. Oh right, so what is Flemish? Oh, it’s a form of Dutch spoken in parts of Belgium, come on man, you gotta get out some more. Now, knowing all of this, I really see what this beer is, a very close ‘relative’ of a lambic. Don’t start with me on what a lambic is, it’s a Belgium Fruit beer made with wild yeast that is often very sour/tart.

Wow, try and drink a beer and make notes about it and you end up learning even more than just what beer you need for the family Christmas dinner, Flemish, a Dutch language, who knew. Cheers! I’m gonna need more beer after this one.

FourBoysBrewPub!

400 Pound Monkey - Left Hand Brewing

Coming to you live and direct on a Saturday night for the second week in a row, sorry ‘bout that. I would really prefer to review these beers on Friday but sometimes life gets in the way, so here we are. I had this beer planned for last week but then I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the very awesome ‘Bitches Brew’ and couldn’t let that pass. The name on this beer is what got my attention but the style is what really got me to get it. ‘400 Pound Monkey’, now who wouldn’t look twice at that right, but it is an English Style India Pale Ale. For those of you not familiar with IPA’s, America is really the only place they are brewed anymore but their origin is England, way back when they occupied India, they would put massive amounts of hop in the beer so it would not go bad before it got to the English soldiers in India, hence the name, India Pale Ale. Now on to the beer!

400 Pound Monkey – Left Hand Brewing Co.

Standard pour for an IPA or a pale ale, light golden in color with a decent head, nothing out of the ordinary. Scent is really in between an IPA and a Pale Ale, you get the scent of hops but not the ‘blow you away’ hops that an IPA gives you. I must say the taste is almost the exact same thing as the scent, either a hoppy Pale Ale or a light IPA. This is probably the best beer I have tried from Left Hand but still nothing I would go out of my way for, if I were in the mood for an IPA and this were available I would take it, but to be fair, and I have said this before, I’m not a fan of IPA’s, sorry hop heads.

So cheers once again beer friend, take it slow tomorrow cause Monday is just around the corner.

FourBoysBrewPub!