Style: Barleywine
Menu description: Caramel malts, piney hops, dark fruit.
ABV: 9.6%
Tasting notes: A bitter taste like you’d expect from a darker beer, but still characteristic of a pale ale. Quality!
Rating: 4/5
Tag Archives: bitter
Beer Review #60: Anderson Valley Hop Ottin’ IPA
Style: American IPA
Menu description: Grapefruit, citrus, roses. Interesting flavor, not like anything I’ve tried before.
ABV: 7%
Tasting notes: It starts out sort of sweet, but that taste vanishes so quickly, you’re not sure if you imagined it. Couple that with the fact that you no longer notice it after maybe a fourth of the bottle and it makes for a strange experience. It’s noticeably more bitter than my eternal standby, Sierra Nevada, which I’m OK with. A bit of variety is always nice. There’s almost a sort of spiciness to it as well, which makes it stand out from other IPAs.
Rating: 3.5/5
Beer Review #56: Ruckus Hoptimus Prime
Style: American Imperial IPA.
Menu description: Hint of biscuits, citrus, touch of pine.
ABV: 9%
Tasting notes: Sweetish, yet with bitter after tones. It’s an IPA (more accurately a “double IPA,” whatever that is), so the bitterness isn’t unexpected. Not really anything special, but it’s not bad either. Typical, but with a name like that, you’ve gotta try it.
Rating: 3/5
Beer Review #49: Ithaca Cascazilla
Style: Red IPA
Menu description: Sweet malts, hint of caramel, some citrus.
ABV: 7%
Tasting notes: Good IPA, slightly more bitter than Sierra Nevada, but also with some faint sweet notes. Interesting red color.
Rating: 3/5
Beer Review #19: Drifter Pale Ale
Menu/bottle/website description: None available, since apparently its no longer in production and Widmer Brothers pulled it from their website!
ABV: 5.7%
My thoughts: An interesting taste. This was recommended to me by the bartender at Black Wolf Sports Bar as being similar to the Long Ireland Celtic Red Ale. It is, but it isn’t. It has a bitterness that isn’t present in the Celtic Ale, and is crisp and clean.
Number of times I’ve had it: 1
Rating: 3/5
Location: Black Wolf Sports Bar
This place was in Syosset, until it closed down. I guess the Drifter Pale Ale isn’t the only thing that’s no longer available.
Beer Review #11: Spoetzl Shiner Holiday Cheer
Menu description: Nice sweet malts, strong flavors of cherries and peaches.
ABV: 5.4%
My thoughts: Don’t smell this beer. Seriously, you won’t enjoy it. It’s very odd. Fortunately, the taste more than makes up for it. If you like cherries, you’re gonna like this. It’s a lightly sweet flavor with just a tiny bit of bitter at the end. This is the kind of beer I’d totally serve at a holiday party.
Also, I made it snow in the picture of the beer.
Number of times I’ve had it: 1
Rating: 3/5
Location:
Croxley’s Ale House
Farmingdale, NY
Beer Review #1: Founder’s Dirty Bastard
In the past year or so, I have had 87 different varieties of beer (no exaggeration!) just at this one bar I frequent (Croxley’s Ale House in Farmingdale, NY) that is known for its absurd selection. I’ve had many a new beer at various friends’ houses, other bars, and stuff I’ve found at the local supermarket/beer distributor/stolen from a homeless. It lately occurs to me that I have quite a large amount of content that I’ve written and photographed that’s pretty much ready to go for this site, and I’ve not posted any of it. Let’s rectify that, shall we? Starting right now, I’ll be posting a different beer I’ve tried almost daily, until I’ve caught up with all the backlog. Once that happens, look for the mini beer reviews to become a nearly weekly event as I am at the aforementioned bar nearly weekly. *coughIcanstopanytimeIwantoIjustdon’twanttocough*
Starting things off, here is Founder’s Dirty Bastard!
From the Founders website: “So good it’s almost wrong. Dark ruby in color and brewed with seven varieties of imported malts. Complex in finish, with hints of smoke and peat, paired with a malty richness and a right hook of hop power to give it the bad attitude that a beer named Dirty Bastard has to live up to. Ain’t for the wee lads.”
(I enjoy adding the description from either the beer menu, the bottle itself, or the brewery website because they make the beer sound like a perfectly crafted work of art. I feel like I should have a flavor orgasm in my mouth. This… does not often happen and I usually note when the given description is way off the mark.)
ABV: 8.5%
My thoughts:This is a darker beer that has an almost sweet flavor to it. Maybe its the smoke and peat, but it seems to me like a hint of molasses, similar to Grimbergen, along with some bitterness that I can’t identify. It’s pretty good, although I think the first time I tried it, I wasn’t a fan. I found that it went really well with very spicy wings as that almost sweet flavor cooled my mouth off nicely. Don’t have it with barbecue wings or other strongly sweet foods as that will completely ruin the taste of both the beer and the food! I usually avoid sweet foods with beer anyway, since it usually makes the beer taste odd, but its worth mentioning here because the effect is not only very pronounced, but also seemed to work in reverse and make the food taste bad.
Rating: 3.5/5
Number of times I’ve had it: 2
Location:
Croxley’s Ale House
Farmingdale, NY
