New Beer Thursday: Jolly Pumpkin Weizen Bam

A day late, but not a dollar short.  This week's entry into New Beer Thursday comes from a brewery that I am incredibly excited is now in Texas, the great Jolly Pumpkin brewery out of Michigan.  Jolly Pumpkin is known far and wide for making awesome barrel aged sour and wild ales.  They've been doing it for a long time, well before it became THE thing to do.  Not only that, they do it extremely well.

This particular beer is a traditional farmhouse hefeweizen made with local wild and sour cultures and aged for a time in oak barrels.  Now a traditional German Hefeweizen pours a cloudy yellow, with a thick thick white head, and has notes of clove and banana on the nose and palate.  So with that in mind, I poured the beer.

It pours a bright golden sunshine color, not very cloudy at all.  Its capped by a thin white head that quickly dissipates into a thin film covering the surface of the beer.  The first whiff of the beer brings a hint of cloves and banana, the second brings a souring tartness, hints of barnyard, that one should expect from a beer like this.  The mouthfeel is thinner when compared to a traditional hefeweizen.   Good amount of carbonation, very bright flavors, tart, sour, barnyardy.  Some white pepper, and other spices appear as the beer warms.  Maybe cloves?  No banana.  This is a good beer, very enjoyable and drinkable, but what hurts it for me is calling it a hefe.  Right or wrong I have some expectations when I hear that, and this beer as good as it is, doesn't meet the definition of a Hefe for me with its flavors.  Good sour beer though.

New Beer Thursday: New Republic Whipsaw

For this week's edition of New Beer Thursday, I reached for a Texas Brewery that is relatively new to the Houston market.  The beer however, is very new as I believe its only been available for a week or so.

New Republic is from College Station, and Whipsaw is their Double IPA offering. The first thing I notice about the beer is the label and all the great information on it.  For example, ideal serving temp: 54 degrees, parings: carrot cake, late nights, and good friends.  ABV: 8%, IBU: 84.  The final piece of info was the hops used.  There were 4 hops used in total and they were:

Columbus: a very typical hops for DIPA's, with high bittering potential.  Sharp and pungent.

Cascade: gives aromas of floral, citrus, grapefruit and pine needles.

Centennial: A high buttering hops with floral and citrus notes.

Magnum:  High bittering hops, with spice and citrus notes.

The beer pours a reddish copper with a thick taupe colored dense foamy head.  The nose is of pine resin, orange peel, marmalade, white pepper, a sticky smell if that makes sense.  The mouthfeel is medium bodied, but creamy.  It tastes almost sticky, coating the tongue, grapefruit, orange marmalade, tangerine.  Some slight toasty notes from the malts, but this is all hops.  Peppery, spicy, almost a funky astringency at the finish.  Incredibly hop forward, this one is a must to drink fresh as I have to think after the hop flavors go, its going downhill fast.  The finish is a slightly off putting to me, but not something that I wouldn't recommend looking out for.  Good solid DIPA.

New Beer Thursday: Odell Fifty-Niner

Now that I am slowly, but surely getting back into blogging, one thing I am going to start instituting is a weekly (hopefully) New Beer Thursday post.  This will be an opportunity for me to write and review either a beer new to me (maybe a classic beer, that for one reason or another I have never gotten around to drinking), or a beer new to the Houston area.  For the first one, it will be the latter, a beer new to the area.  In fact its  a beer from a brewery that is relatively new to Houston, although one that I have been enjoying for quite sometime, Fort Collins, Colorado's own Odell Brewing.  I can't tell you how excited I was when I heard that Odell was finally coming to Texas.
This particular beer, Fifty-Niner is part of Odell's Cellar Series and celebrates the great Colorado Gold Rush of 1859.  The beer weighs in at 10% ABV, is aged on oak staves and is 100% bottle conditioned with brettanomyces.  Before I get into my review, I need to make a quick comment.  After I had this beer, I was doing some reading of other reviews and many mentioned disappointment over the beer not being sour.  I tend to think there is some confusion from folks when they see the term Brett Beer.  Brett beers are NOT sour beers.  They are two different things (note that brett beers can be sour beers, but that is not due to the brett).  Brett beers are traditionally funky, and dry, not tart, sour, etc.
OK, enough of that onto the beer.
Serving Vessel: Ommegang Chalice.
The beer pours a deep copper color with a thin white head that quickly dissipated into a thin lacy film sitting atop the beer.  The nose is fruity and funky, a bit of pineapple, a bit of barnyard.
The mouthfeel is medium bodied, a bit syrupy.  Sweet up front, almost cloying.  Pineapple, vanilla, hay, again a hint of barnyard or horse blanket (or what I imagine horse blanket to taste like as I've never stuck one in my mouth).  A hint of lemony brightness, before a dry somewhat oaky finish.  I keep going back to that initial syrupy texture and the cloyingness.
This beer really has me struggling.  There are parts of it a I really enjoy.  The beer struggles and sometimes succeeding in finding a balance, but then the next sip is full of cloying syrup.  I really like the finish of the beer, but the up front its just so sweet.  Odell's is a brewery I love, but this one disappoints a bit.  Its OK, but it should be great.  I'm going to buy another bottle and give it a year to see what that does.  I think there is good structure, and with the residual sweetness and ABV, this one should age well.