Millions of Peaches, Peaches for me

First off, a big congratulations to Upland Brewing Company for their win at the Indiana Brewers Cup. They won pro brewer best in show for VynoSynth Red and they also won pro brewer of the year and the Grand Champion Brewer! Great job! Keep the sours coming!

According to the Presidents of the United States of America, peaches come from a can, but Upland Brewing Company in Bloomington, Indiana is proving that peaches can come in a bottle too. Upland makes a base lambic, and then age it in barrels. They have barrels that are more than a decade old sitting in their cellars. Each bottle of lambic that you drink is a blend of different aged barrels and fresh lambic to get the right level of sour determined by their head brewer, Caleb. That blend is then aged in a barrel with a whole lot of all natural fresh fruit. Upland is big on sustainability and sourcing locally for everything they can, so the fruit they use is important to them. Often though their sour lambics are so tart that its hard to find the fruit. I was pleased with the peach, not because it was a heavy peach flavor necessarily but because it did a good job of adding to the big sourness of the beer.

The Peach Lambic pours out a very light orange color with just a bit of haze and sediment and almost no head. All the lambic style beers by Upland are bottle conditioned with wild yeasts, so they have some floaties in the bottles. When pouring a beer like this, make sure you don’t pour the last inch or so out of your bottle. That lets you leave most the yeast and some of the heavier sediment in the bottom of the bottle instead of your glass. The beer has big, acidic-sour aromas with just a little bit of peach in there. The flavor follows it nicely. Huge tartness, and I mean huge. Upland makes these guys sour enough to take the enamel off your teeth, but in a good way. The fruit mellows the sour out just enough to make it incredibly enjoyable.

At this point I’ve had just about all the lambics that Upland makes and the Peach is by far my favorite. The hints of sweet peach fruit flavor compliment the sourness of the lambic so well. I encourage you to get your hands on any of these sours— this one most of all— but sour newbies beware.

I give it a 5 out of 5

Recently, Upland formed the Secret Barrel Society (SBS), a reserve club that gives members better access to these amazing beers. Members are helping the brewery ramp up their sour program and add more barrels of this amazing beer to their warehouse, so in the future bottles can be on shelves throughout Indiana. If you’re interested check out their website to learn more about the SBS.

Scarlet Lane Brewing Launch and Dorian Review

Scarlet Lane Brewing  located in McCordsville is one of many breweries opening this Summer around Indiana. Deticated to brewing high quality, yet humble beer, SLB got a jump on things this past Wednesday and with their official launch party at Fire by the Monon (ahead of their brewery opening sometime soon). The event featured 3 of SLB's beers: Saison de Silas (Saison), Dorian (coconut stout), and making it's debut was Vivian (Red IPA). All 3 beers are solid and indicate a promising future for SLB; my personal favorite was Dorian, which you can read about in detail below.

The event itself was fantastic despite a couple soaking rain showers (ironic considering the event was rescheduled to avoid rain). The SLB crew was making the rounds and it's always exciting to talk to the people behind the beer. There was also free SLB glassware, snifters in fact, which is always an intelligent choice. Despite the rain, Fire by the Monon was packed with people enjoying all things SLB and overall it's a good sign of things to come. 

Dorian Review

As mentioned above, my favorite SLB beer was Dorian, so much so that I made a point to go to Tomlinson Taproom for a 32oz bullet fill of it. 

From the growler into a snifter, the beer pours a deep reddish brown with a very thin khaki colored head. The pour off draft that I got had a more appropriate 1-2 finger head, so this is a growler thing more than a beer thing. 

The beer gives off aromas of cola, roast grain, and light coconut; the latter gets stronger as the beer warms. The taste is similar, but the coconut picks up and a note of semi-sweet chocolate shows up; cola note is still present, but there isn't a real sharp roast grain note. The body is on the lighter side, with some prickly carbonation, but there's a sense of creaminess in the mouthfeel; the finish is really hear nor there. 

The best way to describe this beer is a mounds candy bar in liquid form. Usually "coconut beers" don't have enough coconut, but this does and it still strikes a nice balance with the malt character. A very approachable stout and the strong coconut note makes this an appropriate summer stout. SLB is a fan of stouts as am I and if they keep making them like this I'll be a big fan of SLB. 4.5/5

The Big Guy: Scarlet Lane have been great friends to the blog for most of this year, and my worst nightmare was that I would like them as people but hate their beers. Thank God that this beer is outstanding! I was lucky enough to try a sneak peak before they ramped everything up to production scale. I was nervous that the small scale beer would be better than the full scale version, but the full scale brew was even better than the home brew version. The beer is dark and roasty with a nice chocolate malty sweetness. The coconuts are perfectly balanced to give you great aroma and a really nice light flavor on the back end. I couldn't stop thinking about my favorite Girl Scout cookies, Samoas. The beer is basically a liquid dessert, without all the heaviness that you get form a typical dessert beer. You can have as many as you want without getting the gut rot that some sweeter beers give you if you drink too much. At their Launch Humdinger I tested that theory and had as many as I could drink. I also give it an enthusiastic 4.5. This could easily become a new local favorite.

Pilgrimage: New Glarus Brewing Co.

Being a sales guy takes me all over the place. Normally I stay around Indianapolis but sometimes I get pulled to other areas of this great country.

I had the pleasure of going up to Wisconsin recently. If you haven't been to Wisconsin in February, it's a beautiful place, but its freaking cold. I mean a bone freezing, face numbing finger falling off kind of cold. The good thing is, nestled there in the middle of a few snow drifts is the town of New Glarus.

Although there isn't a whole lot going on in the town, there is a nice little brewery, New Glarus Brewing Co.



Being a bit of a trader and general beer conoisseur, I've really been impressed with some of their fruit beer offerings, so I was really excited to see what they had going on. El Duque was not as impressed with what he brought back a while ago, but I had faith.

For those of you who don't know, New Glarus used to distribute to states outside of Wisconsin, now they don't. They pulled back to better service their local customers in WI, and service them they do. Although you have to venture to the great white north just to get a taste of there brews, once you enter Wisconsin you can find their award winning beers at liquor stores, grocery stores and even gas stations. The station across from my hotel had an end-cap display full of 750s of their fruit beers. This is insanely cool, in a world where everyone is struggling for national prestige and recognition, these guys have taken their beers the oposite direction and really put a focus on their local customers.

Their brewery is in the middle of nowhere. Beautiful countryside and rolling hills surround this place that looks like an old style farm house. Once you're inside, it's anything but old school. Their brewery is bright, clean and modern. I took the brewery tour and had a nice time seeing all the details. The facilities are gorgeous. It's obviously a show piece for guests coming through. Tours are going around the clock and their tasting room has four or five beers on draft, including one of their fruit beers. These guys are probably most well known for their Spotted Cow in WI, but around the trading world their fruit beers are second to none. In fact a few of their fruit beers just got recognized by ratebeer as the best in the world in their style. I got to try the Raspberry Tart.

Raspberry Tart is an amazing fruit beer. It pours out a fairly clear and clean ruby red color with about a half inch of light pink head. It smells like raspberry fruit juice. Your first sip is sweet, like honey and fruit blended together in perfect harmony, but it's followed up with an awesome tartness from the raspberries. There's enough tart that it could easily be confused for a very light sour, and would probably go head to head nicely with a fruit lambic. For a beer that has such strong raspberry flavor, there was an impressive depth. Everything really seemed to meld together but still highlight the fruits. I give this one a lip smacking 4.

If you're ever up in Wisconsin make sure you take a little drive out to New Glarus. You will not be disappointed by the friendly people, beautiful facilities and awesome beers. I may have gotten a little carried away with what I brought home, cheers!

Oudbeitje, You betcha!

I've put a lot of sour things in my mouth.

For example, in summer camp as young lads, we would spend all our money at the canteen on sour warheads and see who could hold the most in their mouth without spitting them out, crying, or suffering from acute organ failure.  Despite burning off the lining of my cheeks and rendering all camp food tasteless (which was for the better), I still have an affinity for sour things.  Chocolate bars are great, but my preferred candy boon are sweet tarts and their ilk.

With the previous anecdote illuminated, it should be no surprise that from my first taste of a lambic, there has always been a special place in my heart and digestive lining for sour beers.  Ironically, I picked this up right after Prof. Beer and I had a discussion about how he feels like a more sour beer is just over the horizon and nothing really has accepted the challenge of his ambitious palate.  Literally twenty-four hours later and boom, this little unassuming and hard to pronounce strawberry lambic (or aardbeinenlambiek) is staring back at me from crowded Dutch style shelves, whispering soured black magic and making my poor, scarred cheek lining glisten with anticipation.

Have you ever been punched in the face?  It really sucks the first time, but after that, it's never as bad as the first time.  That is until you met Mike Tyson and he left you with a shattered jaw and negative three teeth.  I processed Prof. Beer's words as I poured out this strawberry blonde ale.  I smelled its acidic barnyard nose with strawberry buried deep, and I was excited to pucker and smack, but then all thought was washed away in what felt like a tidal wave made of fireworks, if those fireworks were made from the boot of every all-powerful god that smote men like ants.  So yeah, Mike Tyson.

This deceptive strawberry lambic sounds unassuming, but is one of the more powerful lambics I've had.  This is not for the sour faint of heart.  The strawberry is buried deep in the grassy lemon peel/apple vinegar, very similar to Upland's strawberry lambic.  I served it chilled.  You should definitely serve it chilled.  As it warmed up, the flavors opened up, including the sour funk.  Don't get me wrong, I am in love with all these things, but this is sipped, not thrown down like the girlishness attached to its strawberry moniker would make it seem.  I suggest breaking out the champagne flutes with some friends on this one.  Quality, not quantity.

Summer camp taught me a lot about extreme tastes, hazing, and dehydration, which are all things that have helped me survive my career as a formidable drinker, which is exactly how I would describe Hanssen's Artisinal Oudbeitje.  Formidable.

I puckered up and gave it a 4 out 5 heads

Bourbon Barrel Aged Coconut Porter

Congratulations to Great Crescent Brewing Company in Aurora IN. They turned five years old last week and threw one heck of a party at their brewery in Southern IN. We haven't really highlighted Great Crescent here before, but its not because their beer isn't good, its because they're so close to Cinci its hard to get to them on a regular basis and they don't distribute much in the Indy metro area, because they go through Starlight distribution. They are little bit easier to find down in Bloomington at the main Big Red.

One of my friends, Parker, had been looking for the Bourbon Barrel Coconut Porter since they brought some to the CANvitational. Since I was driving into Cinci for work, I decided to take a few minutes and stop by the brewery to see what I could get. There were three cases left, and I took half of them to bring back to Indy folks.

The standard coconut porter is 5.6% abv, but this bourbon barrel aged version has been jacked up. It comes in at about 9.5% abv with a big imperial porter flavor. It pours out dark as motor oil with a nice short sticky tan head. It smell like roasty, vanilla, oak and just a bit of nice toasted coconuts.

The flavor is super sweet and malty upfront. This could be a dessert all by itself, and that's totally what I'm looking for in this kind of a beer. My favorite part of this beer is how the coconut is perfectly balanced. It's nothing overpowering or fake tasting but its definitely there adding a nice roasted note to a great porter. One of the biggest problems I had with the Stone Coconut IPA was the lack of coconut flavor. The coconut in this beer delivers a nice light nuttiness that really hits the spot. It blends perfectly with the big bitter chocolaty notes of the beer. It reminds me of a bitter sweet almond joy.

This guy was pretty hard to get but well worth the effort. Great beer, and I give it a solid 4

Voodoo Doughnut: Chocolate Peanut Butter and Banana Ale

After trying Rogue's Bacon Maple beer that really was NOT good, I wasn't interested in doing this one, but it's just too crazy of an idea not try it if you can. Like the Bacon Maple this is another collaboration with Voodoo Doughnut. The folks at Rogue tried to make a dark ale that tastes like a Chocolate Peanut Butter and Banana sandwich, ala Elvis "the King" Presley.

The beer poured out very dark with a lot of really tan head. The head was probably bigger than it should have been, but it released a ton of banana aroma. There are some other chocolate malts and maybe some peanut butter...maybe, but the bananas overwhelm everything.

This beer suffered from the same problems as the Bacon Maple beer. The banana flavor was overwhelming and it didn't even taste like natural banana. It was like eating handfuls of just the yellow banana Runts... I hate banana Runts. There was a solid cocoa flavor from some nice roasted malts in there, but it took a back seat to the banana. I had a tough time finding any real hint of peanut butter. Really in my mind if you are going to make a tribute to the King you can't slack on the peanut butter. It finished with more chocolate malt that helped counter the banana flavors.

It's really cool that Rogue, a very established brewery, is willing to do these crazy flavor combinations, but I think they are trying too hard. A nice rich chocolate stout with a little bit of Belgian yeast providing some banana flavor would have been great. Whatever fruit they infused was just too potent for me. Although, I didn't love this one, it was better than the last attempt.

I give this beer a 2

HE'BREW Origin Pomegranate Ale

This is one of my all time favorite chillin beers.

It has a wonderful malty taste that is full and rich for an amber ale. The pomegranate is just enough to give it a refreshing edge, and it finishes with just enough hops to give it a slight bite. The nice thing is, it doesn't have some of the heavy handedness of other high proof beers that can make it hard to drink more than one at a time.

If you are planning on having people over for some food, this is an outstanding beer with a nice vinegary or spicy pulled pork. If the BBQ is too sweet, it may be overwhelming.

Buy the bomber (22 oz bottle) because you are not going to want to drink just one.

I give it a 4 1/2