Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Brew Day Beer Review

Today, the ice disrupted my trip to work, so I gave the Wife a ride to her work, waited for her (she was only a couple of hours), and then stopped at the homebrew shop.  I am getting low on my first homebrew, which was awesome.  So I decided to use a similar recipe, but switch up the hops. 

The hop that I went with was the Amarillo; I am hoping for a more aggressive hop bitterness.  A post will be following my brew night.

Tonight, I also thought that I would pop the cap on my Dogfish Head version of the Dogfish Head/Stone/Victory Saison du BUFF.  It is great to think of summer on a cold winter night by drinking my favorite summer beer, a saison.

After getting past a crazy pour, the head exploded, as did the aroma of sage and lemon.  The sage scent starts to dominate as my nose got closer to the glass.  The brew pours a nice cloudy straw color.  The head remains strong, nice and full.

First taste is exactly what is expected.  The sage has a dominant hold on the taste.  Maybe a little lemon, and a slight teaser of hop bitterness.  The wheat malt backbone is prevelent, but is overrun by the sage.  Even though the sage dominates the taste, it is not dominating in an annoying way.  It would make a very nice compliment to a herbal meal (I am thinking Peruvian chicken).

The carbonation is well balanced with the malt.  The 6.8 percent alcohol does not push though, and it is barely there- if you want to look for it.

Overall, this was a very nice beer.

5 comments:

  1. We got the Stone's version over here in the U.K. It's a good but rather strange beer. I don't think you'd be corrected for saying any fruit under the sun, when trying to pick out some tasting notes!

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  2. @GhostDrinker- I was able to try all three at once, and you can actually pick out differences in the beers. I thought Stone's has much more of a herbally flavor, DFH had a bit more of a hop bitterness and Victory's was a balanced between the Stone and DFH.

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  3. I had Stone's and Victory's versions, and I agree with Jay. Stone's was ridiculously herbal with tons of sage overpowering the nose while Victory's was a little less so. Before this beer, I hadn't had anything with that much sage it in, so it was a little hard to get used to, but still delicious.

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  4. I love the way Dogfish are really experimenting with different beers, what goes into them, and making them commercially available, my last beer from them was the Chateau Jiahu which was stunning - totally unlike any beer I've ever had before or probably will again.

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  5. Not really a fan of Stone's version at all. It's pretty typically Stone over-hopped. I would like to try DFH version but I haven't seen it around here. My guess is that it's going to be the best among the crowd of collaboration.

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