Beer Club, Volume Five - Imperial IPA's

(This took me WAY too long to finish but at least I got it in before February's Beer Club!)

Much like most of the meetings so far, January's Beer Club was timed around the release of a specific beer. This month that beer was Hopslam from Bell's Brewery.

As I mentioned in my first ever blog post, Hopslam was a different kind of gateway beer for me. It was the beer that sparked my interest in moving from the more popular craft beers like Summit, Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada into looking into the hoppier side of life and harder to find beers. I owed this beer a featured month in Beer Club.

It wasn't a hard lineup for me to come up with because I had several beers that I wanted to have in a Beer Club lineup besides Hopslam, including Ruination from Stone, 90 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head and Un*Earthly from Southern Tier. I added Hop Stoopid from Lagunita's because I thought it was a great beer at a good price (around $5 for a bomber). When Zipps tweeted to me that I should add Double Trouble from Founders, the lineup was set. It was gonna be an epic month.

One nice part about doing IPA's is that the order of the tasting is pretty easy, just do it from lowest IBU to highest. The problem I had with this last time was that the Founders Harvest Ale really blew a couple of beers out of the water that followed it because it was so good. I was hoping that leading off with the highly acclaimed (but low IBU) Hopslam wouldn't have the same effect. Luckily, it did not.

Another thing that worried me was that the two beers I went to Hudson to get (90 Minute and Ruination) didn't appear to be too fresh. I noticed that the 90 Minute had a bottling date of JULY 2009. Luckily for us, it still tasted just fine (and impressive for being a half year old). But I grabbed a bottle that I had bought a couple months ago and it too was "old" so I'm guessing that there's a good chance that I've never had fresh 90 Minute IPA. I guess I have something to look forward to.

The Ruination didn't fare so well however. I don't know if we got a bad batch of it or what the deal was but it really didn't taste like the Ruination that I love and it was the consensus that it was just bad (and confirmed later by two non-beer club IPA lovers who wouldn't even finish the sample I gave them). I opened a bottle that I bought last fall and it didn't have the fresh IPA taste but was still quite good and was further proof that the most recent six pack was just bad and not just old. Damn it sucks to pour $3 bottles of beer down the drain.

The rest of the lineup was awesome though. As expected, everybody loved the Hopslam and while favorites and reviews were mixed, everybody still really liked the Hop Stoopid and the Double Trouble (although I still think the Double Trouble was very good but can't touch the Founders Harvest Ale).

The Un*Earthly finished the night and I was a bit nervous on how it was going to taste. I've had about 4 bottles of this before Beer Club and it ranged from a decent IPA to one of the best things to ever touch my lips. My only conclusion was that this stuff is just very volatile and should be drank as fresh as possible. Luckily for us, this was one of the fantastic bottles and even at a whopping 153 IBU it was still one of the stars of the show and my favorite beer of the night.


Even though imperial stouts have been creeping in as a contender for my favorite style of beer, the IIPA's defended their territory very well and this group of beers reminded me of why I'm such a hop head and did a good job at convincing everybody else why they should be too.

February's Beer Club - Bockfest!

(see the comments section for Becky's notes on January's Beer Club)

Sam Adams Imperial Stout and the weekend review

Saturday night after the Renaissance I had a Hop Juice and then switched to some Bacardi Anejo with a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA as a night cap.

Sunday my only beer of the day ended up being a Samuel Adams Imperial Stout that I've been looking forward to trying for a few weeks now. After how much I've really loved the stouts that I've tried, I figured this one would fall right in for me. I was disappointed.

I was a little bit nervous when I read that anise was one of the flavors in the beer because black licorice is one of my least favorite flavors in the world. I'm not sure if that was what I didn't like about it, but there was one flavor that lingered for me that I couldn't put my finger on that made this not so drinkable for me. I finished it and it grew on me a bit (I started drinking it a bit colder than I ideally should have which probably didn't help) but I don't see myself buying it again.

Here's what I wrote on Rate Beer where I gave it a 2.6:

12oz bottle from the Crystal Liquor Barrel. Poured deep black color, not too thick. Quickly fading light brown head. Aromas aren’t too powerful, slight chocolate and coffee notes. The malted barley really comes through in the taste as does the coffee and chocolate, again in a non aggressive way.

Today the beer of the day was a Bell's Two Hearted Ale. That has to be one of my five favorite beers right now along with Furious, Stone's IPA and a couple others that I haven't thought of yet. I'd like to finish by saying it's good to have a Monday included as part of the weekend review. Life is good.

Weekend Recap

I didn't have too much time spend on beer last weekend because I spent most of the time working in the room where we'll be doing most of the taste testing.

But I did manage to sneak a few beers in. Friday night I tried my first Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. After being underwhelmed by the 60 Minute, I didn't have too high of hopes for this one. I was very pleasantly surprised. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it went down too smoothly for me and at 294 calories a beer, this isn't one to be drinking all night. It was a fantastic brew. My RateBeer rundown (4.1 rating, maybe should be higher):
Golden brown in color with a quickly dissipating head. Prominent citrus hops aroma with a hint of malt. Thick, malty mouthfeel with a subtle but very good fruity hop flavor.

Had a Miller Genuine Draft with my pizza later on to try and purge the fridge of some older stock. Didn't want to rate it because it was probably past its prime but still tasted great with the pizza.

Saturday I shared an Oaked Arrogant Bastard with Paul because I wanted him to try it and give it another chance as well. I definitely enjoyed it more than the first one I had, I'm thinking this one will grow on me. To continue the fridge purge I had a Hopslam for a night cap.

Sunday saw me give the 90 Minute IPA another whirl to see how good it was the next time around. Yep, this one's a keeper. Also had a few Michelob Golden Draft Lights during sand volleyball. Yellow fizzy beers do have their place in the world & a volleyball court is one of them.