About: Craft beer isn’t exactly the first thing one thinks when one thinks of New Jersey. There are however a number of fine craft breweries in the Garden State. Today we’re going to take a look at a brew from River Horse Brewing Co. out of Lambertville, NJ.
Beer of the Week: River Horse Hop Hazard
Tuesday, July 26th, 2011Southern Tier Crème Brûlée Imperial Milk Stout
Tuesday, July 19th, 2011
Every trip I take begins with the mapping out of local breweries. This week I am vacationing in Chautauqua Lake, located in Western New York, with my fiancée’s family. Along the road-trip from Boston to Chautauqua lie two of the east coast’s greatest breweries Southern Tier and Ommegang. This week I will focus on the prior.
Beer of the Week: Full Sail Old Boardhead Barleywine ’09
Wednesday, July 13th, 2011
About the beer:
For a guy who knows an appreciates craft beer I admittedly know very little about barleywines. For the most part barleywines have always been selected for me or given as gifts, with this week’s Beer of the Week selection being no exception. Over the weekend a selection of the Beeriety crew had the opportunity to pop open an Old Boardhead Barleywine by Full Sail brewery. The 22 oz., which was gifted to us by friend of Beeriety Meg Whyte, had been aging since 2009 when she had resided in Portland, OR. Since it was a rare treat for the east coast Beeriety team you can bet expectations were high, given the aging and anticipation of trying this new (to us) barleywine variation.
Beer of the Week: Great Divide Oak Aged IPA
Tuesday, July 5th, 2011
About the beer: Great Divide Brewing Co. has to be one of my favorite breweries. Based out of Denver, CO, it’s rare to find a beer that’s bad from them (only once have I really disliked one of their brews). Today we’re doing the little dance with their Rumble Oak Aged India Pale Ale. They claim the beer is a, “gently aged on French and American oak resulting in a wonderful balance of bitterness, caramel sweetness, vanilla, and undertones of pine and citrus.”
In a nutshell: All I can say is, it’s not bad.
Review: When you first take a sniff, you definitely get some really nice, hoppy smells that are balanced out by the woody undertone brought in by oak barrels. In my ever so humble opinion, I don’t think the smell really matches what you’d expect in taste. You definitely get the barrel flavor in there, but it almost overtakes the hops, to the point of not being able to taste them much at all. I know that barrel aging a beer like an IPA helps round out the flavor and mellow out the beer as a whole, but I feel like this isn’t the best attempt at producing a fantastic result. It doesn’t taste as great as some of their other beers (my favorite being the Titan IPA), but it’s way better than their Double Wit. I don’t get much of the vanilla, pine or citrus from the taste, though the caramel and bitterness come in just fine. And as I sit in my 80 degree apartment drinking this, I realize it’s not the most refreshing option to beat the summer heat. This would probably be really great in the fall time.
Rating: 3 out of 5
