In a nutshell: Boulevard continues to please with complex interesting beers, it’s a sweet beer with a great malt character.

Review: The beer pours an amazing brown red, with a healthy head that stays throughout. this isn’t an incredibly aromatic beer. The beer is sweet, fruity sweet. It is probably the date in the beer that does that, and there is a great malt character to it as well.  It does however come off a little boozy with the 10.5% ABV. Still, the body is light, a little syrupy but overall on the lighter side. In the end it’s a beer I would try again in the mix pack but not my personal favorite style.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.

About this beer: Scotland’s Brewdog is one of the most intimidating craft beer companies around. They make the world’s strongest beer, The End of History. (41% ABV) They aren’t just known for making crazy high ABV beers alone, they also have an incredibly wide range of non-coma inducing goodness. For this beer review I choose to step away from the relative safety of trying their highly regarded IPA (Punk IPA) and chose to drink something a bit more eclectic. Having never tasted one of Brewdog’s brews before I decided to go with Dogma, which is a strong ale made with honey, kola nut, poppy seed, and guarana.

In a nutshell: This beer was a tasty experiment that left me pleased. While I didn’t find all of the flavors I was hoping for the honey aftertaste made it incredibly drinkable and something worth buying again.

Review: The beer poured an incredibly dark amber color, with a sweet head that was retained throughout the drink. It had honey notes in the smell that left a wonderful honey after taste. The beer had a full body and great consistency, with a very bready malt backbone but the sweetness from the honey overtook the other tastes, I didn’t get kola nut, poppy seed or guarana. (Or I wasn’t looking in the right places.) The beer was overall incredibly refreshing and pleasant to drink. With how sweet it was It’s good for a pint or two but not something I could drink all night.

3 out of 5: Worth a Try.

About the beer:

Victory Brewing Company’s Golden Monkey is an American adaptation of the traditional Belgian-style strong ale now commonly found around the world. We’ve talked a lot about Belgian-style ales here at Beeriety and there are several themes that make this beer uniquely different than that of its predecessors from across the seas.

The Victory Brewing Company was founded in 1996 by Ron Barchet and Bill Covaleski in Downingtown, PA. Victory Brewing is know for their innovative approach to new-age brewing methods including their commitment to clean, renewable energy  such as the use of solar panels that were recently installed at their brewing headquarters. With over 12 varieties of beer available year-round and a host of seasonal offerings Victory has become an award winning brewery and has established themselves as a staple of east coast brewing.

But back to the beer! This Belgian-style tripel ale boasts a high-octane punch, clocking in at 9.5% ABV.  As the name suggests this style packs triple the amount of malts than a regular ale, which gives this beer its big and complex flavor.  As we’ve previously mentioned Belgian-style ales are also a fantastic alternative to the traditional champagne toast because of their sometimes sweet flavor and high carbonation levels.

In A Nutshell:

The Golden Monkey is a great American take on the Belgian-style but doesn’t come close to the classics. Beeriety 3 out of 5: Worth A Try!

Beeriety Review:

Golden Monkey was one of the first Belgian-style ales I discovered when I first got into craft beer. This Belgian set the stage for future strong ale tastings and at the time it was an eye-opening experience to try such a complex beer that offered so much flavor and spice. At a time in my life it certainly ranked among my favorite Belgians, so you can understand the conflicted nature of my review and my frustration with my own palate.

I really want to love this beer, but looking at it now it really doesn’t hold up against the traditional Belgian greats like Duvel, Chimay Blanche and other Trappist ales. I have a huge affinity for Victory brewing and love their American take on a Belgian strong, but ultimately it is the lingering liquor taste of the Golden Monkey that detracts from the overall offering. There are a lot of strong ale options in the beer world and it’s a shame that the high alcohol content has such a substantial impact on the flavor of this beer. There is still a lot to love about this beer, from the aroma to the spicy notes that weave in an out as the beer warms up. I certainly would never shy away from trying one on tap, I guess I’ve just moved on and discovered better Belgian beers.

Beeriety Rating:

3 out of 5: Worth A Try

What are you drinking? Try a Golden Monkey this week and tell us what else you’re drinking. Tag your Twitter updates, Tumblr posts and Flickr photos of your Beer of the Week with the #mybeer hashtag to tell us what you’re drinking!

Wheat wine is a relevantly young style of beer, having emerged from  bolder American craft brewers over the last decade or so. For awhile there has been a trend among these brewers to experiment with older, less alcoholic styles by creating high alcohol versions; these bold versions are often dubbed “imperial,” a reference to the extremely potent Russian imperial stout. Some of these experiments work better than others. Over time wheat ale proved to be a style which did extremely well at higher alcohol percentages, and the one-off batches made by various brewers across the country took shape as a more cohesive style.

Photo Credit: Mark Pansing

As a result of its young age and development it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that wheat whine is not a very precise category. Generally speaking, wheat wines feature a smooth, velvety mouth feel and a sweet, but light taste. Its strong alcohol percentage, (which can range anywhere from 7-14%) also gives the beer a warming affect.

Unlike other high alcohol or imperial beers, such as the barley wine, from which it borrows the ‘wine’ part of its name, wheat wine remains a nicely balanced beer thanks to the subtle flowery and citrusy flavors the wheat gives it. This makes it perfect for consumption any time of year. Color and appearance tend to fairly widely, ranging anywhere from a clear amber to a cloudy gold.

Ever had a wheat wine? Although it’s still fairly rare there are plenty of great brewers with examples of the style. New Hamshire’s Smuttynose Brewing makes a great one, and be sure to check out Gamma Ray from Terrapin Brewing in Georgia and  New Holland’s Pilgrim’s Dole from Michigan for wonderful wheat wine. Next time you do let us know what you think about it or any other wheat wine by tweeting your beer and adding the ‘#mybeer’ hashtag.

The spicy flavor of hops isn’t the only benefit they provide beer. Hops are also a natural preservative, a quality which lead directly to the creation of the IPA style. During Great Britain’s occupation of India in the 19th century beer would be shipped from England all the way to India for British soldiers stationed there. To ensure the beer survived the long and perilous sea voyage brewers loaded the beers with extra hops, resulting in the hoppy taste that was a hit in India as much as it was at home in the UK and a style was born.

Hops are grown in many regions throughout the world and come in dozens of different varieties which fluctuate in their bitterness, flavor and aroma. Regardless of which hops an IPA features, it can be counted on to feature the spicy bitterness which are a hallmark of the style. Many hops grown in England such as Kent Goldings have a mellow, spicy quality to them, which is reflected in the pale ales of England such as Samuel Smith’s India Ale.

On the West Coast, where most American hops are grown, Cascade is by far the most dominant variety; it’s a style famous for its strong floral and citrus-like qualities. West Coast Brewers, such as Stone, Rogue and Sierra Nevada have experimented with the these hops creating a unique take on the IPA tradition that’s American through and through- the Double or Imperial India Pale Ale.

In craft beer the terms ‘double’ or ‘imperial’ generally refer to a extra strong version of a more traditional (and timid) style. ‘Double’ simply denotes twice as much of something (such as hops) as been used, while ‘imperial’ refers to the Imperial Russian Stout, a particularly strong stout brewed for Catherine the Great (but that’s for another style profile.)

As you might guess, the Double India Pale Ale is a much stronger version of the IPA, both in terms of hops and alcohol (typically ranging around 8-9% alc./volume while a standard IPA is just 5-6%) Rather than simply being a more intensified version of the IPA the DIPA takes on unique qualities all its own.

Serving Suggestions:

Glass: IPAs do well in your standard pint glass, while I would recommend a snifter for DIPAs to take advantage of the intense hop aromas.

Food Pairings: The spicy flavors of IPAs and DIPAs pair great with spicy cuisines such as Cajun, Mexican and Indian. Alternatively, a the sharp hop flavors can provide a nice counterpoint to more savory flavors such as barbecue chicken or pork.

Many of you may be wondering what exactly is “craft beer” and how  it differs from regular beer. For a better understanding of this sometimes loose term let’s turn to the Brewers Association website, which states:

An American craft brewer is small, independent, and traditional.

Small: Annual production of beer less than 2 million barrels. Beer production is attributed to a brewer according to the rules of alternating proprietorships. Flavored malt beverages are not considered beer for purposes of this definition.

Independent: Less than 25% of the craft brewery is owned or controlled (or equivalent economic interest) by an alcoholic beverage industry member who is not themselves a craft brewer.

Traditional: A brewer who has either an all malt flagship (the beer which represents the greatest volume among that brewers brands) or has at least 50% of it’s volume in either all malt beers or in beers which use adjuncts to enhance rather than lighten flavor.

This all boils down to beer that’s made by people who take a hands-on approach to brewing that emphasizes quality over cost. The first American craft brewery as we know it was Anchor Brewing Company, makers of San Francisco’s famous Anchor Steam, who under new management in the early 1970s changed their recipe to only include hops, barley, yeast and water. With this change they became one of the first breweries in Post-Prohibition America to make beer free of additives and adjuncts and since then craft beer has grown to include over 1500 American craft brewers.

Team Beeriety is looking forward to sampling just a fraction of the amazing craft beer the US produces. We’ll be twittering live from the event (#ACBF hashtag) and letting you know what we’re drinking with the Beeriety #mybeer hashtag!