Recently in Belgian IPA Category

Baltimore's Union Craft Brewing continues to be an underrated gem. They don't put out a huge variety of beers, but their Duckpin Pale Ale and Double Duckpin are both fantastic go-to beers that aren't too difficult to track down. The single Duckpin, in particular, is an underrated beer that deserves more attention. Or not, because I like being able to reliable grab some anytime I'm in the Maryland area.

This is one of their one-offs, a Double IPA made with Columbus, Mosaic, Citra, Amarillo and Simcoe hops and fermented with a farmhouse yeast strain to give it a little Belgian kick. Not my favorite mashup of styles, to be sure, but it's always nice to change things up from time to time and hell, that farmhouse Rooster on the can has a crown on its head and thus deserves some semblance of respect. Or at least a review:

Union Royal Farmhouse Double IPA - Pours a mostly clear golden orange color with a finger of big bubbled white head that sticks around for a while and leaves lacing as I drink. Smells very nice, big citrus and resinous pine, hints of musty Belgian yeast. Taste hits those Belgian notes harder than the nose, some spicy phenols, but a nice fruity ester character that matches well with the citrus and pine hops, finishing with a nice bitter bite. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, well carbonated, relatively dry, with just a hint of boozy heat. Overall, I've never been a huge Belgian IPA guy, but this is good. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 8/27/16.

I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to find more Union beer to review. I always grab something during my periodic pilgrimages to State Line Liquors in MD, but it's hard to pass up the Duckpins, so I rarely branch out. I probably should!

For a long time, I kept a running diary of quicky notes for every Tired Hands beer I drank, resulting in epic recaps of hundreds of beers. Given that they put out a few new beers every week, this was obviously not sustainable, especially once they opened the Fermentaria (their new production facility). However, I am a part of the Believer's Club, so I've kept up with the bottle releases pretty well (the cans, uh, not so much, since those releases are during the week and, you know, I have a job and all that). As a result, I've had some notes piling up for a while now, and I thought it was time to do a quick recap of the past half a year or so's worth of releases, starting with one of my favorite Tired Hands beers (and definitely the best thing to come out of the Fermentaria yet):

Freedom From the Known - This beer was a revelation when it appeared on tap, like pure sour cherry juice mixed in with Tired Hands' house saison style, it was brilliant. After bottle conditioning for a few months, it loses some of that fresh fruit juice feel, but it's still phenomenally delicious. Pours a striking pinkish hued orange color with a finger of white head. Smells great, oak and vanilla, saison spice, and of course, those cherries, though perhaps not quite as powerful as when this was fresh. Taste starts off with that saison spice, gathers some richness from the oak and vanilla, finishing off with sour cherries. Again, though, the cherries aren't quite as intense as they were when this was fresh. When it was fresh, it felt a lot like straight up cherry juice with some saison mixed in. This actually feels more balanced though, and the cherries still come through very strong right now, actually moreso than most cherry beers. I suspect further aging will reduce their impact, but this is still great. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, medium bodied, a pleasant acidity towards the finish. Overall, this is different than it was when fresh, but it's no less delicious, and it's the best beer they've released out of the foudre so far. A

Beer Nerd Details: 7.2% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a flute on 10/24/15.

Sticky Drippy Crystals - An oak fermented honey saison. Pours a bright golden yellow color, maybe hints of peach peeking through in the right light, with a half finger of slow-forming white head (nice looking carbonation when you swirl) that quickly resolves down into a cap that then sticks around for a bit. Smells very nice, vinous fruit, oak, yep there's that honey, definitely some Tired Hands house saison character, spicy with some funky earth. Taste starts off very sweet, lots of vinous fruit and honey, just a bit of that spicy saison yeast, with a tart, lemony finish. Mouthfeel falls down a bit in the carbonation arena; there's enough that it's still quite good and drinkable, but perhaps with some age, the carbonation will perk up a bit. I am, as always, overly sensitive to this sort of thing, so make of this what you will. Otherwise, it's quite bright and medium bodied, a little too sticky (though again, that's probably a carbonation thing). Overall, this is a pretty solid saison, reminds me of hanging out at the brew cafe (though I guess why wouldn't it?), and it's quite tasty. I'm thinking this could be fantastic with some age on it. For right now, B+

Beer Nerd Details: ? ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a wine glass on 11/7/15.

Pourison - So Tired Hands takes their standard SaisonHands, bottle conditions it in green bottles and calls it Ourison (see below). This beer is SaisonHands conditioned atop Peaches and then bottled in their more standard 500 ml brown bottles. Pours a hazy but radiant straw yellow color with a finger of white head. Smell has that Tired Hands foudre character, oak and funk, some stone fruit too. Taste has a light funk and fruit feel to it, breezy and tart, vinous fruit pitching in here too, finishing off with those peaches. Mouthfeel is light bodied, crisp, mild but pleasant acidity, quaffable. Overall, this is a nice little number, perhaps not quite Emptiness levels awesome, but still worth the stretch. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 4.8% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a flute on 11/29/15.

Corallet - Pretty standard foudred saison setup here, with some rye and wheat. Pours a pale straw yellow color with a finger of white head. Smells funky, a little saison spice and earth. Taste has some tart fruit going on here, maybe sour cherry, but very light, hints of funky earth and maybe a bit of oak. Mouthfeel is crisp and light bodied, very slight acidity, quaffable. Overall, a solid little foudred saison, but not much to separate it from the pack. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 5.3% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a flute on 12/25/15.

Ourison - Basically bottle conditioned SaisonHands. Pours a hazy yellow color with a finger of white head and a little lacing. Smell has a strange, almost skunky aroma going on along with the more typical saison spice and tart fruit. The skunkiness fades a bit as I drink, but it was there. Not sure if this was intentional or not (it's bottled in green glass), but I'll have to check out another batch or something as most reviews don't seem to mention this. Taste is sweet with a little yeasty spice, and a nice, light tartness (no skunky character here). Mouthfeel is medium to low carbonation, very light, quaffable, and dry. Overall, not sure about that skunky note, but otherwise this is good. B- or B?

Beer Nerd Details: 4.8% ABV bottled (750 ml). Drank out of a teku on 1/1/16.

Oat Potion - Saison brewed with oats and NY wildflower honey, a collaboration with NY's Other Half. Pours a cloudy straw yellow color with finger of white head that leaves a bit of lacing. Smells of vinous fruit, white wine, oak, and funk. Taste starts off sweet, hits those vinous fruit notes hard, then oak, followed by some earthy funk and finishing with a tart note. Mouthfeel is crisp, light, well carbonated, very light acidity. Overall, this is actually the best bottled Tired Hands beer in a while. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 6.3% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a flute on 1/24/16.

Parageusia47 - Typical trippy backstory for the Para series, but this is basically a Mosaic dry hopped saison/IPA hybrid aged in Vin Santo barrels with Para microflora. Pours a cloudy yellow color with tons of fluffy, bubbly head, good retention, and even a little lacing. Smells great, citrusy American hops are all over the nose, along with vinous fruit, sweet candi sugar, maybe hints of funk and oak. Taste feels oddly muted, but all the components are there. Sweet, fruity, with those citrus hops hitting pretty hard, but not as much in the way of oak as expected, a light tartness in the finish. Mouthfeel is light bodied, crisp, and dry, yet it retains a sizable acidity. Overall, I can never really seem to get on board the hoppy sour train, but this works ok enough. It just doesn't really stand up to the other Parageusia beers. B+

Beer Nerd Details: [unintelligible symbol from the future] ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a flute on 1/24/16.

Phew, that just about covers it. I'm sure many good things to come from Tired Hands, so stay tuned. Also, if you're going to the Fermentaria Anniversary, give me a shout...

I've been woefully neglectful of Alaska's Anchorage Brewing on the blog for reasons unknown. It's not like they don't play in areas I find delicious, like oak aged beers dosed with Brett, and while they're not ubiquitous, bottles do show up in the area with regularity. At some polite prodding on twitter, I decided to snag one of these Bitter Monks, a Belgian DIPA brewed with Apollo, Citra, and Simcoe hops and aged in chardonnay barrels with Brett.

I do love that artwork. It somehow manages to evoke a bunch of nerdy stuff from my childhood, like that episode of G.I. Joe (you know the one), or pouring through Dungeons & Dragons manuals, or that martial arts movie I saw on TV where they used flowing robes like weapons (ok, that doesn't narrow it down, but still). As per usual, it's not what's on the bottle that counts, but what's in the bottle, so let's dive in:

Anchorage Bitter Monk - Pours a hazy golden yellow color with a finger of fluffy white head. Smells amazing, lots of citrus, grapefruit, vinous fruit, and the like, some oak, plenty of musty, earthy funk, and maybe some spicy phenols kicking around. Taste is very spicy up front, with the funk kicking in at the middle along with some citrus hops, vinous fruit, and oak, followed by a tart note balanced by lots of hop bitterness in the finish. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, medium bodied, spicy, a little boozy too. Overall, a damn tasty wild ale. On the higher end of B+

Beer Nerd Details: 9% ABV bottled (750 ml caged and corked). Drank out of a tulip glass on 8/15/15.

These guys seem great at wild ales, but I'd love to try one of their non-wild barrel aged beers, like their barleywines or something. In the meantime, I'll just have to suffer through these piddly world class Brett beers...

Beer club was last Thursday! I started to write this recap when I got home, but I didn't get very far. As has been established frequently, I am the worst. But I'm here now to make amends. For the uninitiated, beer club is a monthly gathering of like-minded coworkers at a local BYOB for good food, optional libations, and general merriment. This time we checked out the newly opened West Chester branch of The Couch Tomato, a rather fine pizza establishment (in a sea of pizza places, this has immediately established itself in the local upper tier with America's Pie). I had a rather fine stromboli (called the "Italian Stallion") whilst imbibing the usual beery wares:

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For the sake of posterity, some thoughts on each are below. Since it's been a few days, these thoughts will be even more unreliable than normal, so take them with a giant, asteroid-sized lump of salt. In order of drinking (not necessarily the order in the pic):

• Evil Genius Stacy's Mom - Has moderate amounts of goin' on. Citra hops come through a little, but it's not particularly accomplished compared to its Citra-based brethren. B
• Jailbreak Welcome To Scoville Jalepeno IPA - Definitely a peppery beer, but not a ton of heat, which is nice. On the other hand, I feel like whatever hops it has going on are sorta canceled out by the pepper character. B-
• Flying Dog Mexican Hot Chocolate Stout - Now this one has some heat to it, but it's a very well matched heat that matches better with the roasty chocolate notes of the base stout than an IPA. That being said, it wasn't exactly blowing me away. B
• Alaskan Smoked Porter - I get the impression that sometimes people bring beers they bought but realized they don't actually want to drink a whole bottle of. I'm as guilty as anyone, and this is one such example. I don't mind the occasional smoked beer, but really haven't been in much of the mood for this sort of thing lately. As Smoked Porters go, this is a pretty great example. Still not exactly my thing though, and I'm glad I shared. B
• Stone Enjoy By 02.14.15 IPA - Tastes about 5 days too old. Oh snap, breaking the law! Just kidding, it was fine, despite not following the rules on the bottle. It's a decent beer, and it's definitely grown on me, but I've never gotten the absolute love some folks show for this (and yes, I've had it fresh before too). B
• Ballast Point Dorado Double IPA - Ah now this is the stuff. One of my contributions and a rock solid citrus and pine bomb, well balanced and tasty. B+
• Armstrong Ales Bold Thady Quill - A pretty nice take on an Irish Dry Stout, roasty and light bodied. Not going to melt your face, but it'd make for a nice session. Also, probably not the best setting for this kind of beer. Would still love to try more from this local upstart. B
• Kaedrin Trystero Barleywine - I feel like my keg should be empty right now, but it appears to be bottomless. The keg feels nearly empty, but I just filled up this 1 liter growler with no problem. Need to finish off that keg so I have somewhere to put an IPA! The beer itself is doing well enough. I do feel like I perhaps dosed it with a bit too much in the way of bourbon, which cuts down on some of the fruitier malt characters in the beer. Still good though. B+
• Prairie Bomb! - Another of my contributions, I have to admit that I didn't realize this was a coffee dosed beer. I was really excited to try it, then initially disappointed by the coffee character. Still, I ended up drinking more of this than usual, and it grew on me. Rock solid and I can see why it's so popular, but it doesn't really approach my top tier. B+
• Victory Moving Parts 03 - Technically, we'd left beer club and moved the party over to a local bar, which was having a Victory event. This was our initial pour, a Belgian IPA. Nice enough on its own, but nothing particularly eventful here. B
• Victory Deep Cocoa - On cask with vanilla and something else that I don't remember. It could have been that I was just drunk at the time, but I kinda loved this. Deep, rich chocolate, vanilla, full body, really delicious stuff. Have not tried the regular version but this cask was hitting the spot, so let's give it an A-

And there you have it. Attendance was a little low, so I probably drank more than normal this time. Also, we didn't get to the Nugget Nectar, mostly because we've all had it several times already this year (even out of the can, which is, yes, very nice) but also because there were less of us there that night than normal. Crazily enough, some people didn't come because it was just super cold out (not snowing or anything, just really cold, low-single digits). I don't know what their problem is. Maybe I'm not the worst after all.

Tonight was beer club, a meeting of beer minded individuals from my work who get together once a month to share good beer, a good meal, and good company! We typically congregate at a local BYOB to share all our brews and wines and whatnot. As per usual, much merriment was had by all, lots of beer and wine and good food. It ended up being a rather small gathering by our normal standards, but still plenty of fantastic beer shared by all.

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For the sake of posterity, some thoughts on each beer are below. Standard disclaimers about the fact that I wasn't in a sensory deprivation chamber whilst tasting these, and in a lot of cases, I was only sampling rather small pours, but whatevers. Take these descriptions with a grain of salt if you're really concerned, but you really shouldn't be, because I'm pretty awesome. Or not. Whatever. Here's what I had (in order of drinking, not necessarily in order of the picture above):

• Kaedrin Abbey Dubbel - My homebrewed abbey dubbel style beer seems to still be conditioning, though it's getting better every week. Right now, it's quite tasty, if a bit boozy, and the carbonation doesn't seem to have fully taken hold of the brew. This is actually somewhat expected, given that the brew came in much stronger than I had originally intended. I suspect this will be drinking fabulously in a few weeks or so... I wll refrain from rating right now, just cause I want to give it some more time to mature...
• Turkey Drool Homebrew - A friend of a friend of a friend contributed this homebrew, which actually seemed to fall a little flat, especially when compared with other brews we had tonight. There didn't seem to be any off flavors, per say, but on the other hand, what was there was very subtle if not non-existent. From the ingredient list, I was expecting much more out of this. Again, not the worst thing evar and certainly drinkable, but also completely forgetable. C+
• New Belgium Snow Day - A strange, but mostly enjoyable brew. BeerAdvocate classifies it as an American Black Ale, but I would say that it's more of hoppy red ale than that implies. Maybe some winter warmer base here, but quite a nice hop character to it. Overall, very drinkable stuff, a nice hop presence, but it's not going to light the world on fire either. B
• Great Lakes Christmas Ale (2011) - Kaedrin friend Dana procured this last year, and has held on to it since then. Apparently a highly sought after beer, this is a very light colored winter warmer style offering, reminiscent of a deeper English pale ale that doesn't quite contain any of that diacetyl character I associate with it. Sweet, a very light spiciness, flavorful, but not quite blowing me away either. I can see why this is a prized holiday brew, but it's not something I go out of my way for... B
• Westmalle Trappist Tripel - A classic, which I have already reviewed in detail. For the most part, it's as good as evar. On a personal level, I've cooled somewhat on the tripel style, though I still quite enjoy one every once in a while... A
• Kona Pipeline Porter - Holy coffee, Batman! This is apparently a porter, but it's heavily influenced by coffel flavors all throughout, sorta light a lighter Founders Breakfast Sout. I'm not really a fan of coffee or porters in general, so it's pretty amazing that I didn't tink of this as the worst thing I've ever tasted. It's actually pretty solid and goes down easily. That being said, I don't think I'd ever really seek to try this again... B-
• Weyerbacher Winter Ale - Another beer I've had and reviewed before. For the most part, my feelings remain unchanged. It's a fine beer, a pretty standard winter warmer, but I'd like to see more complexity and flavor out of this one. B
• Monk's Café Flemish Sour Red Ale - One of my contributions for the night, this is one of those beers often recommended to sour newbies, and it actually did seem to go over really well with the beer club folks, even those who don't go in for normal beertastic stuff. A nice malt backbone and sweet fruit character followed by a very slight sourness that nevertheless cut through and made this one of the more flavorful brews of the night. Overall, definitely a nice beginners sour beer, something I'll probably try again at some point as well... B+
• Nebraska Hop God - Reserve Series Aged In French Oak Chardonnay Barrels - Yet another of my contributions for the night, this one turned out to be interesting, if not quite what I expected from a beer called "Hop God". Hops certainly play a role in the flavor profile, but it's mostly defined by that oak Chardonnay character, with some booze peeking through as well. It's really quite nice, though I wish I had a better palate for white wine. B or B+
• Victory Storm King Stout - Once again, we get a beer I've had before. It's a beer I've come to appreciate more and more over the years, but I still wouldn't rate it among the highest imperial stouts. Still a solid stout with a big hop presence. B+
• Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout - My last contribution for the night, this is just as good as it was the last time I had it. Beer club peeps seemed to enjoy, though there were a couple that don't particularly enjoy those bourbon flavors, and thus didn't care for this. Me, I'll leave it at an A.

And there you have it. Another successful outing, as per usual. Alas, we didn't get to all the beers we brought (I was particularly interested in Lancaster's Winter Warmer, but I'm sure I'll catch up with it sometime). Already looking forward to next month and some more holiday brews...