Sunday, June 13, 2010

A pair of Fight Night Beers

As I do from time to time, I settled down Saturday night to watch some fights on TV. Nights like this are also a good excuse to pop open some new beers (well at least new to me) and last night was no different. Two breweries I'm very familiar with, but beers that I'd never had.
New Belgium Eric's Ale: Now I have actually had this beer, well at least a sample of it waaaay back in 2008 at GABF. This is part of New Belgiums ever expanding Lips of Faith, beers that are usually oak aged, and focus on traditional Beglian brewing methods. This one in particular is named for NB's brewer and is an oak aged sour made with peach juice. It weighs in at 7% and pours a pale pinkish color with a thin bubbly head. The nose is of the barnyard, hay, sourness, peaches, white fruit, grapes. The mouth is effervescent and medium bodied. Tart and sour, notes of cherries, vanilla, oak, reminiscent of a Cherry Sprite. Barnyard notes, hay, funky horse blanket. Peaches, peach bellini. The label says this is a sour beer for those that don't like sours and a fruit beer for those that don't like fruit beers. I gotta say I really dig this one. I do like sour beers but am not a huge fan of fruit beers and this has me wanting more. This one gets a strong A from me.
Boulevard Tank 7: Next up was this farmhouse ale from Boulevard brewing one of their outstanding Smokestack Series of beers. This one though is made with a ton of American hops which raised my eyebrows in interest almost immediately. It weighs in at 8.0% and pours a cloudy straw honey color with a thick dense head of white foam. The nose if of pale malts, grapefruit, and bready yeast. The mouth is vibrant, medium to full mouthfeel. Hoppy, full of grapefruits, pale toasted malts, bready grain, yeasty, chewy, slight peppery notes. Very yeasty, can a beer be doughy? Its good, but I want a little more oomph in this one. This one gets a good B+ from me.

1 comment:

The American Don said...

whoa whoa whoa. It sounds like you are a beer blogger that's a UFC fan. Let us know next time you'll be a Lucky's or something for the fight and we'll try to come through.
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