Spicy and Potent: Samuel Adams Imperial White

For whatever reason, perhaps because it's such a huge "non-micro" beer brewer, I've not sampled many Samuel Adams beers, and we've not had any for Sunday Beer Club. But Deano and I are fast running out of beers to sample and our Liquor store friend Angie just got three new high potency beers in from Sam Adams, so we figured we'd try it.  Dean and I were split on this one: I liked it, he was non-plussed.  I thought the spicy, thick stuff was quite interesting.  He felt like it ought to be retasted on a cold October day.  I'm happy to swill it then too.

Dean and I both thought this beer would be better with food. I think it's sweetness would work nicely against a tomato vinegrette salad with feta and basil, or even a chicken pesto sandwich with sun-dried tomato. I should try that and return and report.

In the video I mistakenly try to identify hops in the taste.  Wrong.  It's not hoppy at all.  I think it was the spices that were confusing my inadequate beer palate.  But that doesn't stop me.


The toast to my my drinking buddy Deano -- who refused to appear on camera but (as of this date) is on our masthead.  I'll be having more of these, but only one or two at a time, thank you.



And her is my somewhat less sober correction:

Mirror Pond Pale Ale

This week we sampled a new beer in the Lindon Liquor store: Mirror Pale Ale. This beer, made by Deuchutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon.  It's a delicious beer, very mild and balanced with a nice hoppy finish.  Dean really loved and it and so did Jim and Roni (that's Roni above).

Here's a fun picture of Roni too. 

We look forward to trying more of these during the week and sampling some of their other beer.  Good things seem to come from Bend, Oregon!

Beer Domino's

"After so many beers a person is happy just to lay down" is I think what the final line says.

Balitka No. 9, No. 9, No. 9, No. 9...

Deano criticized me for not posting since January. I was thinking I'd catch up -- but better he said to just begin where we are. And where are we? Ugh... Russian beer. Baltika.

Today we sampled No. 9 Baltika, a caramel colored, fairly complex, fine headed beer from Russia. It actually had a fairly decent mouthfeel and flavor, until you swallowed it. Then it was dominated by this horribly sweet "splenda-like" flavor, like malted milk balls. Devoid of any sense of hop -- this beer was fairly disgusting. If only they had cleaned up the finish, it would have been quite drinkable. We thought that perhaps paired with something very acidic it could be tolerated... but we won't be trying it soon.

Thanks to Stephen for buying it for us --- but, the Baltika we have left for next week fills us with dread.




and one more thing...

Where The Beer's Are

Two years ago this May, Deano and I began the Sunday Beer Club. It's a club with two hosts, and we generally have to agree on what beer we get and who drinks it with us. And it's every Sunday -- we've never missed a day. And we photograph it and store those photos out on Sunday Beer Club on flickr. We've done that pretty faithfully as well.

But as they say often from the pulpit in these parts -- "I have indeed been remiss..." because, every Sunday or Monday we have not blogged since January. One of our two faithful readers noticed!

We've drunk all the beers and taken all the pictures, we just need to tell about it again here. I tried a couple of times to catch up but the task seemed daunting. Plus there were beers we tried but -- I have little recollection of what they were like. While I try to describe the beer as best as I know how my memory seems to recall in a sort of binary. Good and Bad. I nuance that occasionally with, really good and ok.

So I'm going to try and blog about one beer we drank every day here for the next week or so. I'm not going to go back in calendrical order -- so, I'll just pick the beer "not blogged about" with my memory to guide me until I've caught up. See the beers we've yet to blog about here.

Meanwhile -- it's time for the annual Sunday Beer Club party. We're going to invite a few folks who've come to have a beer on Sunday with Don and Dean -- and we'll be bringing a sampling of our favorite beers from the year.

I'll be sure to try and write something here about the party, both before and after.

And now it's time to do some work.

Scape Goat Pale Ale, from Big Sky Brewing in Missoula, Montana

Today we tried a second beer from the Big Sky Brewing Company in Missoula, Montana. Scape Goat Pale Ale has won a gold medal as the best English style pale ale west of the Mississippi. It pours an apricot, honey color in the glass with very little head. It doesn't have a very strong nose that we could detect. It's taste is reminded me of citrus and dried apricots, some grapefruit and orange. It has a fairly watery mouthfeel, it would be easy to drink a lot of this beer. It has some nice crystal hop flavors on the back end. Dean and I both liked it and plan on doing more of this beer soon. Side note: Back last summer I tried another beer from these folks, Moose Drool. I panned it at the time, but Mikey at Utah Beer made me think twice. I had a glass of this today after beer club and was quite impressed. What made me object earlier this year? Who knows, but I quite like this interesting and tasty brew. Consider me repented.

Utah Beer in the NY Times Travel Section

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/travel/25journeys.html