Extreme Beer Fest 2015

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Beer, Beer Review, Boston, Cascade Brewing Barrel House, EBF, Extreme Beer Fest, Funky Buddha Brewery, Jackie O's Pub & Brewery, Kane Brewing Company, Long Trail Brewing Company, Massachusetts, NERAX, Night Shift Brewing, Other Half Brewing Co., Otter Creek Brewing, The Rare Barrel, Tree House Brewing Co.

Last weekend, Boston once again played host to Beer Advocate’s Extreme Beer Festival where some of the country’s best and most innovative breweries come to showcase their talents.  This year’s event was certainly no exception and there was plenty of great beer to be had.  The trend this year seemed to be Wild Ales, which after last year’s gauntlet of barrel aged stouts was a nice change of pace and certainly made for a faster recovery the day after.  While Science and beer historians will have to excuse my lack of detailed notes, there were a few standouts for me that deserve mention.

Individual Beer Highlights

Other Half – All Green Everything: My first beer of the festival and also one of the most amazing.  It beat out even my first taste of Surly Abrasive as my favorite DIPA of the fest.  Fantastic blend of citrusy and piney hops made this one really shine.

Tree House – Good Morning: An awesome Imperial Stout that would be quite the way to start a morning.  Thick bodied with tons of coffee, cocoa, and a hint of maple syrup.  First sip instantly dispelled any disappointment that Tree House didn’t have one of their IPAs available.  Well worth waiting in one of the longer lines for.

Kane – A Night to End All Dawns: Another big Imperial Stout.  Bourbon barrel goodness at its best.

Jackie O’s – Cucumber Ginger Berliner Weiss: Picked this on a recommendation and was very glad I did.  I generally haven’t liked the cucumber beers I’d come across before but this one is definitely an exception.  The cucumbers are a nice mellow presence up against the initial tartness and the ginger blends in quite well into the background.

Cascade – Cherry Bourbonic Plague: Really tart Wild Ale with lot of cherry.  Could have used a bit more of this one to really appreciate everything going on in the beer.

Collective Brewery Highlights

Funky Buddha: We braved one of the longest lines of the fest and were well rewarded for doing so.  Thanks to the good folks pouring at the booth and the event volunteer staff, things moved along rather quickly and efficiently.  We coordinated our samples to try French Toast (Brown Ale), Key Lime Berliner, and No Crusts (a PB&J inspired Brown Ale).  Each beer smelled and tasted right in line with the food that inspired them and they were really cool to try.

Rare Barrel: This brewery stole the show for me.  Went through their modest line 4 times to try each of the Wild Ales they were pouring, Map of the Sun, Apropos of Nothing,  Forces Unseen, and Ensorcelled.  Each was quite good and having them all at the same table was outstanding.  If forced to pick just one, I would say my favorite was the raspberry aged Ensorcelled but there wasn’t a bad choice to be made at that booth.

NERAX: The NERAX cask beer table was a highlight again for me this year.  Night Shift’s SoPool, a sour blend of their Whirlpool Pale Ale and  Ithaca’s Flower Power IPA with grapefruit and dry hopped with Citra and Apollo were both excellent.  Aeronaut’s Bonsoir Quad was also good, though not quite in the same standing as the first two.

Otter Creek/Long Trail: Since casks have been a pretty big part of my beer experiences this year, I should also mention the three available at the booth shared by the festival’s Vermont contingent, Otter Creek and Long Trail.  Otter Creek offered Sunshine Daydream, a festival exclusive cask of their Fresh Slice IPA aged on grapefruit, and Chem Dawg IPA, dry hopped with Simcoe, Citra and Cascade.  On the Long Trail side, their Chateugay Moonshine Bandit Barley Wine cask was also quite interesting.  Very sweet upfront and aged with spruce tips and oak, this was a very well made beer.

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Night Shift Brings Back the Funk’d

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Beer, Beer Review, Funk'd, Massachusetts, Night Shift Brewing

Now that the snow is finally subsiding a bit I’m more eager to venture out of the house and hit up some of my favorite spots.  High atop that list is Night Shift Brewery, and the timing was perfect as my return visit happened to coincide with the release night of Funk’d Blanc, the third installment in the brewery’s Brett fermented Funk’s series. Let’s see how it turned out:

Beer Name: Funk’d Blanc

Brewer: Night Shift Brewing

Style: American Wild Ale

ABV: 8.0%

Description: Labeled as a 100% Brett fermented ale aged in white wine barrels.

Pour Info: 8 oz. pour on tap into a tulip glass

Price: $6 on draft and $16 for a 750 ml bottle.

Appearance: Pours a very light golden color with a half finger white head that slowly bubbles away.

Smell: Smell is subtly tart and funky.

Taste: Tart up front followed by a little bit of bitterness.  Transitions to a sweeter and lightly funky finish.  White fine after taste brings everything together to a satisfying conclusion.

Mouth Feel: On the thinner side of medium and a little bit syrupy.  Pleasant little bubbles tingle throughout.

Hype Factor: Considering how awesome the first two entries in the series, Funk’d Citra and Funk’d Porter, were I knew I had to get into the brewery and check this one out.  We’re also in build-up mode for the Extreme Beer Fest (which was the time Citra came out last year) so I was eager to see what they would be rolling out.

Overall: Definitely check this one out though while it is available at the brewery as it is very unique and interesting.  This was certainly a good beer, but for my tastes it wasn’t a standout.  If you’re really into white wine, I think you would rate this significantly higher.

Taking Flight

To get a sense of some of the other beers that were on tap, I also tried out a flight of some hoppy offerings while I was there.  In the order shown above, I sampled Adams, Neptune, Triton, and Morph.  Adams is a DIPA and the latest installment in another set of beers the brewery has going, their Presidential DIPAs. It pours a cloudy orange and has a nice hoppy citrus taste.  Neptune is a 4.6% Pale Ale made solely with Simcoe hops.  Very piney taste with hints of passion fruit.  Triton is essentially the same beer as Neptune, but with more fruit; specifically guava, strawberry, and pear.  These fruits, and the strawberry in particular, really step up to the piney bitterness from the Simcoe hops and create a really refreshing and delicious Pale Ale.  Closing out the flight was the latest version of Morph.  This one delivered as advertised, very crisp and with tropical fruits and slightly hoppy finish.  Probably the best in the series so far.  All of these were solid, though I would rank them Triton, Morph, Adams, Neptune.  And that’s nothing against Neptune, this was just a really solid flight.  A very well done group of beers.

REG-GIE, REG-GIE, REG-GIE!!!

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Baseball, Book Review, MLB, New York Yankees, Reggie Jackson, Yankees

With MLB Spring Training upon us and in hopes of bringing in some proper baseball weather, I’ve been reading something a little different.  With apologies to those people that come here to read about New England beers, we’re reviewing Becoming Mr. October by Reggie Jackson and Kevin Baker this time around.  I received this as a gift from my dad, who also took to me to Reggie’s Hall of Fame introduction back in 1993.  Long before discovering beer and before I got into Sci-Fi, I was a fan of the New York Yankees and this book gave me an interesting look into a rather turbulent period of their history that occurred just slightly before my time.

The book reads as a casual and reflective conversation between Reggie and his audience.  In it, he tells the story of his transition from a tight-knit Athletics organization to a fractured Yankees clubhouse under the constant scrutiny of the New York media.  The primary focus of the book is on his first two years with the Yankees; the turbulent 1977 and 1978 “Bronx Zoo” seasons in which in-house feuds constantly threatened to tear the team apart despite all its on the field success.  I can imagine some of his accounts and descriptions might be controversial to someone who had followed those seasons, though his thoughts do come off as genuine.  Reggie has never been someone to hold back on his opinions and he certainly has a lot to say about his main antagonist, manager Billy Martin; how he felt unfairly treated by the media; and the racism he experienced during his professional career.

Reggie joined the Yankees following the 1976 season as part of the first ever class of Free Agents in Major League Baseball.  Free Agency drastically changed the way players were compensated and able to control their careers; things that not surprisingly created a number of conflicts as it began.  It was common for tension to arise between players already locked into more team-friendly contracts and those that were able to take advantage of the Free Agent market and sign for what was often significantly more money.  This tension, combined with Reggie’s reputation as being outspoken (or from his perspective, not sufficiently humble for a black player), caused immediate problems in the locker room that the ever present media was eager to pick on.  As a result, Reggie quickly found himself to be a very controversial and polarizing figure right from the start.

Center stage in all of this is the dysfunctional reign of manager Billy Martin, who at the time was battling any number of personal demons, not the least of which was his alcoholism.  Reggie depicts Martin as someone who was combative with many of his players, would purposefully misrepresent events to the press, and allow personal grudges to dictate on-field decisions that hurt both the team and often its players.  Martin’s inability to lead and focus his team is shown to have either caused or exacerbated many of the internal problems facing the squad.  It really has to be read about to be appreciated, but some of the low lights include Martin sleeping off hangovers in his office until minutes prior to game time, pulling position players at key moments as a way of asserting control, and consistently misusing pitchers to the point of ending careers early.  To share a sentiment Reggie expressed, it is incredible for such a situation to have existed back then and impossible to imagine it today with national media and all the money involved.

Despite these hardships behind the scenes, the seasons covered in this book played out well for almost all concerned on the field.  Reggie talks a good amount of baseball and describes key games and moments occurring throughout the course of the regular season and playoffs during the 1977 and 1978 campaigns.  The 1977 post-season is, of course, when Reggie established his place in history and earned his Mr. October nickname by hitting hit 3 home runs (at the time something only Babe Ruth had accomplished) in the championship clinching Game 6 of the World Series.  The 1978 season is also eventful in that it sees Reggie face an indefinite suspension following an argument with Martin as well one of the greatest single games of all time, a one game tie-breaker between the Red Sox and Yankees at Fenway Park to determine the AL East Championship.

Reggie also weaves into the narrative his thoughts about the racism he experienced throughout his career; something that had a significant impact on his outlook as a player.  As a mixed race (part African American and part Puerto Rican) player coming up in the early to mid-1960s, he encountered a great deal of hardship in his early career.  Things like college teammates not wanting to room with him and the Mets organization holding off on drafting him because he had a white (actually part Puerto Rican) girlfriend.  Later on, playing in the South for the minor league affiliates of the Athletics, there were difficulties like finding restaurants that would serve him or places where he stay while playing in Birmingham, Alabama for the Athletics minor league affiliate.  Even when he made it to Spring Training for the major league club in Georgia, he recalls the black players having to stay in an old army barracks outside of town and being discouraged from going out at night for their own safety.  These experiences understandably left an impression on him and often caused him to wonder about how certain situations with certain players and the media would have been different had the color of his skin been different.

As a fan of both the Yankees and baseball in general, I enjoyed this book and liked its conversational tone.  There is a lot of baseball lore and legend surrounding this particular period of Yankees history and reading an account from the perspective of one of the main participants was certainly interesting and perhaps has inspired me to seek out some other accounts as well.

There’s Beer at Trader Joe’s?

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Beer, Beer Review, Minhas Craft Brewery, Trader Joe's

The other day I came home to a most welcome surprise.  In addition to picking up all the ingredients for an amazing dinner, my amazing and thoughtful wife also came home with beer from Trader Joe’s.  The novelty of that alone was enough to get me interested, and the amazing price point certainly got my attention as well.  But how would they taste?  Let’s find out.

Beer Name: Boatswain Twin Screw Screamer

Brewer: Minhas Craft Brewery

Style: DIPA

ABV: 8.4%

Description: Part of the Minhas Boatswain small batch series.  The label describes a pleasant bitterness from the hops and calls it “one big, bold beer.”  We shall see.

Pour Info: Poured cold into a Sam Adams perfect pint glass.

Price: $2.29 per 22 oz. bottle.

Appearance: Pours a reddish/caramel brown body.  There’s a thin lacing at the top but not much of a head can be coaxed out.

Smell: Very little to report here.  There is a faint sweetness and not much else.

Taste: Sweet and malty up front with some hoppy bitterness at the end.  The transition between the two tastes is rather abrupt and they didn’t quite blend together as well as they should have.  As the beer warms the sweetness increases and the bitterness starts to build up on your palette but even then the tastes don’t quite come together.  The taste actually brings to mind a hoppy red ale home brew I experimented with and sampled while it was still a bit too green for bottling.

Mouth Feel: Thicker side of medium but with moderate carbonation.  On style for the most part.

Hype Factor: For the price, I was hoping to like this.  I didn’t expect it to be world class or exceptional, but something in the good to very good range would have been awesome.

Overall: This wasn’t a bad beer, but I wouldn’t call it a good beer.  Factoring in the price, and yeah, I’d say at least give this a try if you’re looking for an economical beer and aren’t looking to commit to drinking a 40 ouncer.  Otherwise, you can find better.

Beer Name: Botswain American IPA

Brewer: Minhas Craft Brewery

Style: IPA

ABV: 6.7%

Description: Another entry in the Boatswain small batch series.  The IPA purports both its maltiness and high hop level.  Best by date on the bottle is illegible.

Pour Info: Poured from a refrigerated bottle into a Sam Adams perfect pint glass.

Price: $2.29 for a 22 oz. bomber.

Appearance: Pours out a coppery caramel body.  There is some lacing up top but again, not much of a head.

Smell: Sweetly malty and slightly bitter.

Taste: Again, malty and sweet.  Very malty and sweet.  In the right circumstances that is not necessary a bad thing, but this is labeled as an IPA and these tastes pretty much dominate the beer.  There isn’t much in the way of a hop presence or bitterness to speak of.  I suppose it could have been a past its prime bottle but if that is the case, this beer really fell off a cliff.  Not good.

Mouth Feel: Medium-plus thickness and a touch syrupy.  Felt it could use a little bit more carbonation for the style.

Hype Factor: Same as the DIPA.  For the price, something even not bad would have been a nice pickup.

Overall:  The beer wasn’t undrinkable, but it I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to call it good.  In general it is mediocre at best.  As an IPA though, I would say this doesn’t quite make the grade as it lacked the bitterness and mouth feel characteristic of the style.  Even for the price, I wouldn’t purchase it again and advise even bargain hunters to steer clear.