Craft Beer Collective

Test Flight – Marzen Madness 2012

More tasting notes on O’Fest beers. Here we have an all American line up

Stoudts – Oktoberfest
The First lady of American Brewing, Carol Stoudt, makes a number of traditional beer styles with this on target Oktoberfest being one of their best. Lighter in body then some of the others on this page with just the right balance of hop and malt working well together.

Lakefront Brewing – Oktoberfest
The smell and taste of bready malts and lager yeast fills the senses in this glass of fest beer from Milwaukee. Amber color and full bodied taste make this drinker a must find for fans of the style.

Left Hand – Oktoberfest
This fest bier from the brewers at Longmont, Co boasts a lagering period that lasts a full two month. A typical amber lager, bready nose with lingering sweet malt on the tongue.

Magic Hat – HEX Ourtoberfest
While this beer is a made with ale yeast instead of a lager yeast, that doesn’t stop Ourtoberfest from being a perfectly quaff-able hybrid of a classic style featuring all German ales yeast, malts and hops. The label for Ourtoberfest forsakes the Bavarian themes in favor of Halloween witchery!

Highland – Clawhammer
One of the cleanest lagers around comes from one of North Carolina’s longest running brewers. Named for a nearby mountain in the Smokies, Clawhammer hits all the style notes in color, body, nose and taste. Could easily go up against the well made Sam Adams Oktoberfest.

More test flights and more of this style go to the TEST FLIGHT PAGE

Test Flight – Märzen Madness

Once again I take a flight with seasonal brews from around the world. And once again I find myself trying to compare a style with very little variation from one brand to another: Märzen or Oktoberfest Beers. No ratings for this solo Test Flight. Just some informal drinking notes. One a day, starting on October 15th. Here they are in order:

Saturday – OLDE HICKORY OKTOBERFEST
Highly recommended drinker from Hickory. Enjoyed several of these last Saturday at the Flying Saucer in Raleigh. Looking forward to the bomber in my fridge.

Sunday – HARPOON OKTOBERFEST
Enjoyable amber colored brew from New England brewers. First tried this is on my New Hampshire trip last September. In my opinion this is true to style.

Monday – WOLTERS FEST-BIER
Mercaptan, or green glass effect ruined this beer from Germany. Really disappointing skunk smell overpowered the room after opening.

Tuesday – THOMAS CREEK OKTOBERFEST LAGER
Slightly dry chalky finish compared to others in the style but we have here a much drinkable offering from South Carolina.

Wednesday – HACKER-PSCHORR Oktoberfest Märzen
Classic example of slightly sweet, toasty malt in a highly quaff-able brew from Munich.

Thursday – BROOKLYN OKTOBERFEST
Lighter in body and hits all the traditional marks in color, smell and taste.

Friday – THIRSTY DOG BARKTOBERFEST
Nice amber color, heavy yeast scent on the nose, slight starchy finish similar to Thomas Creeks offering.

Want to read about more Fest Biers? Here is last years line up: Test Flight – Märzen / Oktoberfest

Dave

TEST FLIGHT: Beer Camp

Have you ever bought a mix 12 pack and there was one style in there you just didn’t like at all? Beer Camp from Sierra Nevada certainly had the potential for a lot of duds. Well, I was pleasantly surprised with the four varieties in this box.

So here they are in order of preference and a few comments:

Weizenbock The surprise favorite was this Weizenbock: cloudy in color, citrus and malt on the nose and tongue. It’s just not a commonly crafted beer in the US and it was great to try this one.

California Common is the beer style that made Anchor famous and is every bit as enjoyable. Possibly even more full bodied then the classic we all know and love.

Juniper Black Ale Well balanced and full of flavor. Juniper flavor was not over powering and worked well with the dark malts here.

Double IPA This beer was great, however not surprising that they made a good double IPA… in fact I would expect Sierra to do just that as they’ve done with the Hoptimum DIPA released earlier this year!

As you might know, the Sierra Beer Camp series are beers conceptualized and brewed collaboratively by journalists, homebrewers and others under the guidance of Sierra Nevada brewers. I just wish the packaging included some info about the people who put together there beers in this twelve pack.

Best Double IPA Poll

Tonight at 6pm at The Raleigh Times you’ll have a chance to try four great Double IPAs in a flight. Sierra Nevada Hoptimum, Bell’s Hop Slam, Founders Double Trouble and Green Flash Imperial IPA!

After you’ve taken your flight I invite you to come back here and vote for your favorite using the poll below!

FINAL RESULTS Green Flash takes it

Sierra Nevada Hoptimum 3 votes 10.7%
Founders Double Trouble 6 votes 21.4%
Green Flash Imperial IPA 12 votes 42.9%
Bell’s Hopslam 7 votes 25.0%

Revere Beer Week

The Raleigh Times Presents Revere Beer Week. 5 nights of events leading up to the World Beer Festival in Raleigh.

On Monday the Fourth The Raleigh Times & Craft Beer Collective will give you a chance to taste four great Double IPA’s side by side. You’ll have a chance to vote for your favorite and while you’re there and decide which Double IPA of the four is the best! See below for the line up.

Other events include the debut of the Mother Earth / Carolina Distillery brew, Baltimore’s Brian Stumke of Stillwater Ales, the all North Carolina Cask night and Bell’s Expedition stout vertical.

14 E Hargett St, Raleigh, NC (919) 833-0999
raleightimesbar.com‎

TEST FLIGHT: Double IPAs

Very ambitious blind taste test with no big surprises.

One of the highest rated categories on any beer rating website is the Double IPA / Imperial IPA style. While putting this flight together I knew I wanted to have some of the most sought after brands in the line up. Russian River‘s Pliny The Elder, Founder’s Double Trouble and Bell’s Hopslam. After the planets aligned the and the postman arrived the main ingredients we’re in place. I wanted to include Sierra Nevada‘s new offering called Hoptimum plus each of the other judges wanted to contribute a bottle to this tasting.

Nine Double IPAs in all. Would the big names rise to the top among nine beers? Would our taste buds survive? Was this a little too adventurous of a panel to give these beers a fair shot?

As luck would have it we had a bartender among us and he volunteered to serve the judges. This way we could we wouldn’t know what beer we were getting or in what order we were being served! That’s right – blind taste test!

Here are the results in order of ranking:

Bell’s HopSlam
Russian River Pliny The Elder
Founder’s Double Trouble
Sierra Nevada Hoptimum
Widmer Brothers Deadlift
Boulevard Brewing Double Wide
Two Brother’s Hop Juice
Mission Shipwrecked
Dugges Never mind the Bollox!

There was a discussion immediately after the final beer was poured to determin the winner. While it looked like Founder’s Double Trouble had the lead the numbers do not lie. While this contest had many contestants the results reflect popular if not unofficial opinion after all. I want to thank twitter followers @beerandracing, @emily, @auntgorgeous, @hopheadho for judging and @weesebot for serving!

Double IPA test flight

Test Flight: Brazilian Beers

For this edition of Test Flight we sample a series of Brazilian brews.

Hoppenator was lucky enough to smuggle some cans of Brazilian beers back to the US for this one. Let’s just say they were mostly awful with a few surprises hidden in the mix. 7 beers ranked by 5 beer drinkers!

Without further introduction here are the results with a few comments added!

Itaipava Pilsen
Light, slightly lemony, super carbonated – HopZilla
light, easy to drink – Gorgeous

Score: 23

Itaipava Malzbier
slight coffee smell, taste like diet cola – HopZilla
Toffee tasting soft drink – CraftBeerNC
Sweet port wine with a hint of Coke – Hoppenator

Score: 24

Bohemia Pilsner
Lemony beer flavored water – Gorgeous
flat water – Hoppenator

Score: 27

Caracu
smoked bacon, sweet – HopZilla
sweet and malty – HopHeadHo
Smoked Malt Dark Ale – CraftBeerNC

Score: 30

Skol
fizzy, kinda just barely there – CraftBeerNC
slight wheat flavor – HopHeadHo

Score: 24

Schin Munich
Slightly sweet faint skunky smell – HopZilla
soda like fizzy, skunky smell – CraftBeerNC
slight skunky sweet at beginning, bitter finish – HopHeadHo
skunk taste – Hoppenator
when you’re driving down the road and smell a skunk – Gorgeous

Score: 22

Xingu
good! Malty, smooth – Gorgeous
favorite of flight! – HopZilla
smooth, rich hands down winner – CraftBeerNC
bitter, malty, well balanced – HopHeadHo

Score: 41

Out of a possible score of 50

The one surprise of the bunch was Caracu and it’s slightly smoked malt taste. It was a welcome flavor to the mostly light or soda-like beers we tried. Xingu was the stand out winner by a large margin and there is a reason that this beer is widely found in the US!

TEST FLIGHT is where we put together a group of beers in any number of ways… style, region, brand … and rank them as a group. Purpose here is to promote discussion and self education … and drink a few beers!

Test Flight – Märzen / Oktoberfest

For this Test Flight we went with all all Märzen line up with @beerandracing. A fall favorite of mine, I rounded up a random sampling of bottles and enjoyed an early fall evening in the back yard.

While I was not able to find any Helles or Dunkles Märzens in bottle we were treated to a what I’d call your straight up textbook Oktober-Festbiers!

We agreed that there is not a lot of variation on this traditional German style we did find one overall winner. Here are the results:

Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen Score: 10
Flying Dog Dogtoberfest Märzen Score: 8
Brooklyn Oktoberfest Score: 7
Paulaner Oktoberfest-Märzen Score: 7
Saranac Oktoberfest Lager Score: 6

Out of a possible 10

Test Flight: Oktoberfests!

More about this style from BJCP Style Guidelines

TEST FLIGHT is where we put together a group of beers in any number of ways… style, region, brand … and rank them as a group. Purpose here is to promote discussion and self education … and drink a few beers!