This week at the Sun

Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday @ The Southern Sun: Delicious. The Holler's Haze Smoked Porter is new on tap, and it's delicious. Very smooth, the smoke is pretty subtle (i.e. not overpowering the way most porters are), and it's 6.4%.

Cleveland Brown is back on tap too. It's not as good as I remember, but it will probably be better on nitro.

Still no word on whether the Carne Asada burrito will return.

Year in review

It's been just over a year since I started this blog. I posted a LOT more than I thought I would. Also, I apparently dropped the tradition of reviewing beers. So I'll start by reviewing some beers!

Mountain Sun Hummingbird - a strong honey-ale (meade-beer?) brewed with orange blossom honey. Slightly darker than a typical Belgian Golden but similar in style. The beer is mildly sweet but very drinkable. Hmm... there are flavors I should mention but they escape me.

Mountain Sun/Avery Van Diemens - brewed with Tasmanian Pepper Berry, this is a very curious, semi-dark beer. When I first sampled it, I tasted a little bit of pepper kick at the end, but couldn't really identify any other flavors. Yesterday I sampled it next to a burrito with some somewhat spicy salsa. Somehow, since my mouth was already sensitized to spiciness, the flavor I got was root beer (sassafras?). It was... odd. Pretty good, but I didn't end up purchasing a glass.

Moving on to code. I don't know why I haven't mentioned this, but with my discovery of svn, I started uploading my code to the webternets: agpy is my Google Code page and includes a number of useful python codes, especially readcol and gaussfitter, which I have tested and used extensively since writing them. Python is still a long way from a cohesive astrolib code base, but with individual contributions, the STSCI development group, and APLpy underway, we're getting closer.

More beer tastes

Stone Vertical Epic 8: described as an overhopped Belgian, and I think they hit the mark exactly. It was pleasant and drinkable, with a strong hop flavor but weak hop bitterness. 8.6% ABV

Fort Collins brewery double chocolate stout: a reasonable dessert beer. Not nearly as dry as Stone's Oatmeal Chocolate, but not as sweet as Young's double chocolate. Chocolate undertones stayed undertones, which is not what I expect from a double chocolate stout. 8.1% ABV

Avery / Liquor Mart 40th anniversary: Just a hoppy ale, nothing special. Had a stronger hop aftertaste than most, not up to Avery's standard. No ABV label.

Steamworks Kolsch: Very light kolsch. I think it may have had a crisp flavor to it, but it was the last in line and unremarkable enough that my comments on it are untrustworthy. 4.86% ABV.

Also, talked to Bobby again, he recommends St Bernard as a good Belgian. That's on the list.

Boulder Obovoid

Obovoid is another imperial stout - "empirical stout" - and is milder than some of the others I've had lately, but still a touch bitter. Nice but not worth repeating much.

Hebrew Jewbilation 11

Wow... 11 malts and 11 hops, and it tastes like at least 3 different types of beer. There was an ale start and a porter finish to the first few sips, but later ones had a fuller, maltier flavor at the top of the mouth. It has some Irish Stout smoothness too. There's some residual porter-esque bitterness. A lot of depth and complexity that keeps going. Whew.

Delirium Nocturne

Delirium Tremens is a tasty beer itself, I think. I'm drinking Delirium Nocturne right now. It has a cool (opaque!) bottle, plus a pink elephant on the label. At 8.5% it's pretty strong, but very drinkable with no taste of alcohol. It's definitely my favorite Belgian brown now. It still has that wheat-soy-sauce taste to it, but very weakly. It poured with ridiculous head - I could not control it. Overall, great beer, worth the ridiculous price I paid for it, whatever that was.

Guinness and Dogfish Head

First, the Guinness: I'm drinking a Guinness Extra Stout right now. I'm a big fan of the normal Guinness Stout, but the extra stout is bitter - bridging on skunky. I don't like it. It has a sour edge.

Last night, tried the Dogfish Head Midas Touch. It's interesting - lots of flavors, topped by grape juice. It's a champagne-meade-beer. OK, but not spectacular. Pretty drinkable.

Dogfish Head Santo Palo tonight. It's a brown ale that looks more like a stout. I think it needs to mellow - it has an astringent alcohol flavor, but depth once you get further in. It was a lot better when it poured with some head than not. A little chocolate at the end, not much though.

Also tried the Avery "Ale to the Chief" Presidential Pale Ale. A little like an IPA, but really a hoppy pale ale. Not bad, not my favorite.

Those Dogfish beers are too expensive. I ought to stick to Avery and homebrews....

Stone 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Stout

Tried this 9.2% bomber last night, and even drinking it over the course of an hour and a half I could feel my nose not feeling afterwards.

The pour was probably the most exciting part of this beer. It came out an extremely dark, rich, thick motor-oil looking thing with nearly no head. The flavor, though, is of a very bitter and very dry imperial stout. I didn't get much of the chocolate tone, because I only taste chocolate when it is sweetened - bakers chocolate doesn't taste like chocolate to me. I think this beer would have been better if kept a little bit sweeter, much unlike the other Imperial stouts I've tried lately.

World Wide Stout

Last night, had ~4oz of Dogfish Head's World Wide Stout. It was the Nov 2007 batch and was WAY too sweet. Just like the Stone Russian Imperial Stout, it was almost undrinkably sweet, so I recapped it and am going to "cellar" it (at 78 degrees, yikes) for a few months. The Stone brew turned out a lot better on the second try, I hope the Dogfish Head does too.

I also had a bottle of Young's Double Chocolate Stout. Oddly, they don't have it on their website. It has a strong chocolate flavor at the start, but it fades quickly into a generic, strongly carbonated stout - it's nothing special after the first taste.

Mountain Sun

Went to the Mountain Sun, had the Thunderhead Stout and Stone's Levitation IPA.

The Thunderhead Stout is one of my favorites. It's rich, slightly sweet, full bodied. I can't identify any particular flavors, but it's delicious.

Stone's Levitation IPA is dark brown for an IPA. It's hoppy and pretty tasty, but nowhere near as good as the Dogfish Head IPAs.

Explosion

Our "Workie Ticket", which was doing its primary in the carboy, popped its top. It made a mess but should still be healthy... the yeast was going extremely strong at the way-too-hot 78 degrees it's sitting at this morning. It already has a fruity aroma, though, so it's likely that all of our brews are going to be extremely fruity. Bleh.

Our Honey Brown , which was excellent at the start, has gotten a bit too dry and alcoholic. The first few sips have a strong flavor of alcohol to them. However, once you get into the beer, it gains a little bit of depth and isn't too bad... probably the alcohol talking. I think most of the bottles are probably overcarbonated at this point, but we only have a few left. Overall point: Honey beers need to be drunk within about a week of bottling for peak deliciousness; apparently honey dries out very strongly.

Pumphouse Brewery Review

Went to the pumphouse brewery last night and 'tasted' 4 beers.

First, for a brewpub, it's pretty weird to serve tastes in single-sip servings, but that's what they did. They didn't charge, so I didn't object, but it was difficult to get a strong sense for what the beers were meant to be.

Beers:
Cherry Saison: light colored, mild cherry flavor, no sweetness or depth to match the cherry flavor
Ginger saison: strong ginger flavor, no depth or interesting beer flavor. Like a dry but strong ginger ale
Saison: just... average
Copper: Weak flavored reddish beer