Review: Imperial White

Imperial While is from Samuel Adams' sort-of new Imperial Series. They're brewing four bigger beers year-round and selling them in four-packs.* The beers are: Imperial White, Imperial Stout and Double Bock. They also make a seasonal Imperial Pilsner, though they don't consider it part of the Imperial Series. All of these are very good beers and are some of SA's best. I'll post reviews of the other beers in the future.

I bought this four-pack at the Publix on University Parkway in southern Manatee County. That Publix has one of the grocery chain's best beer selections.

Check out this post for background on witbiers, or wheat beers. Basically, they are like German wheat beers -- meaning they are brewed with wheat as well as barley malt -- but also have coriander, orange peel and other spices added.

The review

It pours a cloudy copper in color after swirling the final ounces in the bottle. The head is thick, but not huge. It has a light banana and clove aroma, which are aromas typical of this style of beer.

The taste is very good. Big spice flavors like clove mix with sweet malt flavors and yeasty notes to make a super wheat beer. It's like a hefeweizen, but jacked up. The high alcohol is quite noticeable in the fusel flavors.

The body is also great: Smooth and creamy and slick.

This is a very good beer and one of Samuel Adams' best. I highly recommend it. Seek it out.

*Each four-pack sells for about $10, which is fine except that SA used to sell their Double Bock for the same price as their regular beer (about $7) in six-packs back when they only brewed Double Bock seasonally. Dollar, dollar bill, ya'll.

Review: B.O.R.I.S. The Crusher Oatmeal-Imperial Stout

This is the third of three Hoppin' Frog beers* I bought recently, seeing as they are new in Florida.

As I've written before, imperial stouts were originally brewed in England and shipped to the Russian court. They are a lot stronger than regular stouts. Hard drinkers, those Russians. B.O.R.I.S.** is 9.4 percent alcohol and won a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2008.

Pours all black with a chocolate-brown head that almost instantly reduces to just a ring in my glass. It has a light aroma of roasted malt and alcohol. The taste is creamy and chocolaty, with big alcohol flavors that are overpowering the malt. A very nice body, no doubt thanks to the oatmeal and high alcohol.

This is a decent imperial stout, but there are better -- and cheaper -- ones out there. Check out North Coast's Old Rasputin and Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout (that's only a winter release, though) for excellent examples.

After trying all three Hoppin' Frog beers, my opinion is their beers are very overpriced at $9 to $12 a bottle. This 22-ounce bottle was $10 at Total Wine & More.

*Check out my reviews of Mean Manalishi Double IPA and Hoppin' To Heaven IPA.

**Hoppin' Frog says B.O.R.I.S. stands for Bodacious Oatmeal Russian Imperial Stout.

Review: Bolita Brown

When I see Cigar City beers in stock at a store, I pick one up: They bottle in very limited amounts and when something's gone, it's gone.

I picked up a 750 mL bottle of Bolita Brown, one of Cigar City's seasonal beers, for $10 at my go-to beer store, Total Wine & More. I find myself going there a lot more than to Whole Foods, even though that store is right near where I work. For one, Total Wine's prices are usually better than Whole Foods and they have a larger selection, though Whole Foods frequently has beers Total Wine doesn't.

According to the label, the name of this beer was decided by a contest and refers to the old Ybor City lottery game called bolita, or little ball. The illegal game was often fixed, they say.

Back to the beer. From my notes:

Almost black, this beer lets just a bit of deep ruby light through. It has a nice light brown head. A big aroma of roasted malt: coffee, toffee, caramel and chocolate. The taste is super creamy, like a nutty, roasted malt-coffee shake, but not as sweet as that sounds. It's just really good. The high alcohol level is almost totally hidden. A wonderful body: glassy and slick.

The second Cigar City beer I've had. This one is excellent. I enjoyed it a bit more than their 110K+OT. I'm looking forward to drinking my bottle of Improvicasion, which Cigar City calls an oatmeal rye India-style brown ale.

Waiting for World of Beer

I drove by the soon-to-open World of Beer off University Parkway in southern Manatee County today after visiting Total Wine & More.*

Looks like they still have a ways to go; I didn't notice much progress since my last visit a couple of weeks ago.

And a source within Sarasota's craft beer community tells me that World of Beer may allow smoking inside if they can't get approval for their patio. Let's hope the place can be nonsmoking: A nonsmoking beer bar will be a big hit with all the beer fans who would never go to a smoky bar. Perhaps one day Florida will follow other states and ban smoking in all businesses.

*I went there to buy my wife some Saranac Root Beer, a great root beer that she loves. I told myself I wasn't going to buy any beer, since two weeks ago I spent almost $80 on a few 22-ounce bottles (see my post on Hoppin' Frog).

I decided to walk past the beer shelves to see what was new so I could blog about it. Well, they had a new Cigar City beer, Improvicasion ($9.99), and Dogfish Head's Sah'tea ($13.99), which was the beer they brewed while being visited for an article by the New Yorker.

So my willpower snapped and I bought a bottle of each and hope the Dogfish Head Sah'tea is better than their Theobroma.

And I see that my footnote is now longer than the main post. Great.

Beer haul: Cigar City, Stone, Hoppin' Frog and Bell's

After being alerted on BeerAdvocate that Stone's 13th Anniversary ale was in stock at Total Wine & More, I had to get some. (Remember, Stone calls this the "hoppiest beer we've ever brewed.") Sure enough, a phone call confirmed that they had 22-ounce bottles in stock for $7 each. So I headed over on today.

Not only did they have the anniversary ale, they also had Stone's Cali-Belgique ($6), their take on a Belgian IPA.

I also picked up a new Cigar City beer: Bolita Brown ($10 for a 750 mL), their double English brown ale that's 9 percent alcohol. Cigar City beers sell fast, so get them while you can at your favorite beer store.

I also bought three bottles of Hoppin Frog, an Ohio brewery that's a new arrival here. Pricey stuff for 22-ounce bottles: I hope they're good. The three: B.O.R.I.S. the Crusher Oatmeal Imperial Stout ($10), Hoppin' to Heaven IPA ($9) and Mean Manalishi Double IPA ($12!).

Finally I bought a 12-ounce bottle of Bell's Sparkling Ale, a Belgian triple that they compare to champagne. And no, we're not talking about Miller High Life.

All these are new beers for me. Exciting stuff.

Review: Theobroma

Dogfish Head likes to brew "high concept" beers. Like Pangaea, which uses ingredients from all the continents, including water from Antarctic icebergs.

Here's their description of Theobroma:

This beer is based on chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras which revealed the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink used by early civilizations to toast special occasions. The discovery of this beverage pushed back the earliest use of cocoa for human consumption more than 500 years to 1200 BC. As per the analysis, Dogfish Head’s Theobroma (translated into 'food of the gods') is brewed with Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs (from our friends at Askinosie Chocolate), honey, chilies, and annatto (fragrant tree seeds).

I love beers like this and have always been impressed with Dogfish Head. So I had to pick up a 750 mL bottle when I saw it at Total Wine & More. It was $14, expensive.

So I opened it tonight. I'll spare you my detailed review, which you can read here.

After drinking about eight ounces, I was getting a bad feeling in my stomach and did something I've never done before: I poured the rest of the glass down the drain.

I hate to give a bad review to a beer from such a great brewery, but this beer was bad. The flavor is mainly of bad chiles and a bit of cocoa.

I'm thinking of trying to get a refund from Total Wine. But I think the beer was exactly as Dogfish Head intended it and not spoiled. Should I just chalk it up to experience?

Review: Z Lager

Fort Collins is a new arrival in Florida. Total Wine & More stocks several of their beers. I had to pick up the smoked one, Z Lager.

Smoked beers are a fairly old style, since historically all grain was malted over wood fires, imparting a smoky flavor to the grain. The first time I had a smoked beer (Rogue's Chipotle Ale) I thought it was the worst beer I'd ever had. But the smoky flavor grew on me and now I love the style. The level of smoke flavor varies from brewery to brewery.

My notes:

This pours a nice copper/mahogany in color with an off-white head that reduces to a thin layer of foam.

Its aroma is lightly smoky.

The taste is also lightly smoky, with a nice malt flavor. It's balanced and not a big smoky mess.

Smooth and creamy body.

Overall this is a nice smoked beer that's subtle enough to be a beer to drink regularly and introduce people to the style.

Review: Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale

Fresh hop beers are relatively new. Instead of using dried hops, brewers use hops right off the vine, which gives the beer a more resiny and floral hop aroma and taste. You have to be quick, though, because hops degrade rapidly in a few days if they aren't dried. I've seen more western brewers do fresh hop beers, I'm guessing because American hops are grown in the west, particularly Washington. Rogue has brewed a fresh hop beer, Hop Heaven, where the hops were picked only hours before being thrown in the brewing kettle.

Fresh hops are only available in the fall. But Sierra Nevada decided to do a fresh hop beer in the spring/summer. To do that, they went to the southern hemisphere. They use fresh hops from New Zealand in this beer. Hence the name: Southern Hemisphere Harvest Fresh Hop Ale.

I don't consider this a true fresh hop beer because Sierra Nevada dries the New Zealand hops before shipping them to their California brewery. On the 24-ounce bottle's label, they said the hops were picked, dried, shipped and used in a little over a week's time. But still, the hops are dried and aren't truly fresh.

This is the second year Sierra Nevada has brewed this beer.

From my notes on the 2008 brew:

An almost-glowing copper in color with a large foamy head that is rock-solid.

The aroma is all about the hops: It smells of citrus, and, well, hops.

The taste is nice and bitter and hoppy, with just enough malt flavor to provide a slight amount of balance. If you aren't a hophead, though, this might be a bitter bomb.

The body is fine -- possibly even a little light.

Overall, this is a fine fresh hop ale. Probably for hopheads only, though.

I think the 2009 "vintage" isn't quite as bitter as the 2008 brew. It has a real depth of hop flavors and bitterness, but it isn't shockingly bitter. But then, my taste buds may have been further ruined by a year's worth of drinking primarily hoppy, bitter beer.

It's still a lovely hoppy beer. And the 24-ounce bottle looks like a bottle of malt liquor, albeit one that costs $5.49 at Total Wine & More.

Review: Leviathan (Imperial IPA)

I picked this up at Total Wine & More the other day: $3 a bottle. It's great to see more Harpoon brews in Florida. I thought we were fated to only get their hefeweizen and IPA.

Leviathan is a rotating release from Harpoon. Each iteration is a different extreme beer. They have also brewed a Baltic porter, strong pilsner and quadruple. This is the first Leviathan I've had.

My notes:

Pours a nice golden/copper in color with a big foamy off-white head.

Big citrus hop aroma.

The taste is sweet, bitter and hoppy. Surprise! This is a sweeter double IPA than most others. It is also more balanced: Instead of being a huge hop bomb, it's a large hop bomb. The sweet, almost sugary, flavors offset the bitterness.

The body is light but slick from the alcohol.

This is a fine beer, but at 10 percent, I'd only have one.

Review: LongShot Cranberry Wit

This is the third of three beers in Samuel Adams' LongShot six-packs this year. As I've written before, LongShot beers are the winners of Sam Adams' annual homebrew competition.

I've been slacking on this review. I'm so late, it's probably not in stores anymore. I didn't see any at Total Wine & More on University Parkway the other day.

A witbier, or wheat beer, is similar to a German hefeweizen. Both beers are brewed with malted wheat, in addition to the regular malted barley. Witbiers are a Belgian style that also use spices like coriander and orange peel. German beers cannot use spice because of their famous purity law, the Reinheitsgebot, which prohibits the use of anything in beer other than water, malted grain, yeast and hops. I totally respect the German law, because it means you won't have junk like rice or corn put in your beer without your knowledge, but it prevents German brewers from making some really interesting beers with fruit, spices, honey, etc.

Wheat beers are almost always unfiltered and therefore cloudy. Yeast and other perfectly safe sediment will settle at the bottom of the bottle. You are supposed to pour two-thirds of the beer into a glass, then swirl the remaining beer in the bottle to stir up the compacted sediment, and finally pour that into the glass. Without the sediment, the typical wheat beer flavors are greatly subdued.

What are wheat beer flavors? Banana and clove, primarily. And these flavors don't come from bananas or cloves. Instead, they are esters (flavors) imparted by the yeast.

A lot of wheat beers in restaurants and bars are served with lemon or orange wedges. I avoid garnishes because the citric acid can kill the beer's head and garnishes mask the beer's flavor. Whether to garnish or not is a hot topic among beer geeks.

My tasting notes:

A cloudy straw-colored beer with a big, white foamy head. Lovely.

It has a spicy aroma of cranberries and earthy yeast.

The taste is lightly spicy and sweet from fruit flavors, yet it has the classic witbier esters of clove and banana. I also notice the grains of paradise that appear in other SA beers. It's very easy to drink.

This is my least favorite of the three LongShot beers this year. But that sounds a lot worse than it is. This is still a very good beer. It's light and fruity and refreshing. It's good for all the hot days here in Florida.

Like its two brethren, this beer should be added to Samuel Adams' regular lineup.

Deal or no deal?

A friend told me about a deal on beer at a local store the other day.

His news reminded me that sometimes deals on beer aren't deals at all. Occasionally beer is put on sale because it's old and past its prime. And while some strong beers can be aged, about 99.99 percent of beers are meant to be consumed within a couple of months after being brewed.

BeerAdvocate Magazine recently wrote about this topic. They have some tips to detect old beer.

The first is obvious: Check for a best-by or brewed-on date. For brewed-on dates, don't buy beer that's much more than three months old.

If beer doesn't have an easily-readable freshness date (I think all beer should), a clue that it's old is dust on the bottles.

New beers at Total Wine

I wrote earlier about Anderson Valley beers coming to the Sarasota Whole Foods. Today I went to Total Wine & More near Interstate 75 and they also are carrying the brewery's beers. I bought a six-pack of Hop Ottin' IPA.

There were some other news beers there, too: Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Sierra Nevada Kellerweis, Lagunitas Hop Stoopid and Harpoon Leviathan.

I've had the Stone beer before and it's good. The Harpoon, Lagunitas and Sierra Nevada brews are new to me. I bought some and will review them soon.

One of my favorite beers, Bison Organic IPA, was back on the shelf. (All links take you to BeerAdvocate's pages for each beer.)

It's easy to spend way too much money on beer these days.

Review: Little Sumpin' Sumpin'

A co-worker gave me a bottle of this beer from Lagunitas Monday night. She bought it on sale at Whole Foods in downtown Sarasota. And it was cold, so I just had to drink it after the shift.

Lagunitas, from Petaluma, Calif., generally makes beers with pronounced hop flavors. They're the perfect example of a West Coast brewer. Their beers are also known for the crazy notes printed on them and on the six-pack holders. As a copy editor, the notes can drive me crazy since they read like stream-of-consciousness drivel. Anyway, I'm not going to fault a brewery for that. The real issue is that they brew some mean beers.

Lagunitas describes Little Sumpin' Sumpin' as "way smooth and silky with a nice wheaty-esque-ish-ness." I see.

My notes:

It's a bright gold in color with a sticky head.

It has a great hoppy aroma. Huge citrus and sweet notes bombard my nose.

The taste is all about the hops. Herbal, grassy and citrus flavors all mix with a good bitterness, but not in a hit-you-over-the-head way. Thryn said this reminds her of a lighter Hopslam, and I agree. I can't detect the wheat malt in this.

The body is light, slick and oily.

I like this beer. It's a good hoppy beer that could lead people down the dark path toward my favorite style -- Double IPA.

The king of pale ales

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was on sale today at my Publix, so I bought two six-packs. Drinking one got me to thinking about American pale ales, which are usually hoppier versions of British pale ales. They combine a nice malt flavor with a good amount of hop flavors and bitterness.

Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale is the standard by which all other pale ales are judged. They essentially created the style years ago with their flagship beer.

Some of my notes -- from 2004!

Pours a nice amber/copper color with a beautiful head that reduces to just a layer of foam. There's a bit of hop aroma, along with some malt smells and some weird things I can't identify.

The taste is good and well-balanced between sweet and bitter. Not being an IPA, it isn't bitter.

The body is good, too. Not too heavy but far from light.

This beer is available just about everywhere and you can't go wrong with it. It's a good beer for both beer geeks and newbies, and can be a great gateway to hoppier brews.

Cigar City and Anderson Valley at Whole Foods

To follow up on my previous post, I went to the Whole Foods in Sarasota today and they also had Cigar City's 110K+OT in stock. $13 for a 750 mL bottle.

They also had four beers from Anderson Valley Brewing Co., a great California brewery. They've been making beer for years but are a new arrival in Sarasota. Whole Foods had Hop Ottin' IPA, Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema, Brother David's Abbey Double and Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout. The IPA and stout are very good; I haven't tried the others.

I was also very happy to see that Whole Foods still had some of Terrapin's excellent Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout in stock. A four-pack of 12-ounce bottles are $12. Here are some of my notes on it:

It's a lovely black with a nice deep brown head. The smell is great. Big coffee and chocolate notes.

The taste: Wow. This totally lives up to the hype. It's creamy and sweet, but not cloying. The coffee flavors are big, but there are no tannin notes of bad coffee. I just realized that this is a stronger stout. Its strength is very well-hidden. There are no notes of alcohol or solvent flavors.

Overall this is a fantastic stout and one of the best I've ever had. Seek it out: You won't be disappointed.

The beer scene in Florida continues to improve.

Cigar City beers at Total Wine

Fellow BeerAdvocate member JAA posted on the site that Total Wine & More on University Parkway in southern Manatee County has 750 mL bottles of Cigar City's 110K+OT on the shelf for about $12 each.

Cigar City changes this beer each year. This year, according to their blog, they have called the beer IRIS:

"which stands for India Russian Imperial Stout. Yes, that's right, we are just making styles up! I.R.I.S. is heavily hopped to begin with, but gets a further dry hop treatment with Mt. Rainier hops, which adds a nice licorice note. It is also aged on toasted Spanish Cedar, but at lower levels than what we normally use. We'll also be bourbon barrel-aging I.R.I.S."

From other BA reviews, it seems like a monster of a stout at 11.5 percent. Sounds like something to drink with friends. The last big bottle of stout I drank, Brooklyn's Black Ops, put me in the hurt locker.

Cigar City tasting room is open

According to their blog, Cigar City Brewing's tasting room is now open for business. Cigar City, Tampa's only microbrewery, has been making beer for a few months but had delays in getting their brewery tasting room ready. I haven't had any of their beers yet, but have heard very good things.

It is open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. They're at 3924 W. Spruce St. Suite A, Tampa, FL 33612. The phone number is (813) 348-6363, Ext. 206.

You can buy growlers at the tasting room.

What's a growler?

It's a glass jug that a brewery fills with beer from the tap. In Florida they must be 32 ounces or less or 128 ounces or more. Traditional growlers in other states are 64 ounces, which are illegal in Florida. Growlers are pretty rare here.

A growler is great for parties. The downside is each time you open it you lose carbonation. They're good for a day or two before going flat.

Stone 13th Anniversary Ale is coming to Florida

Hopheads, take note:

I spoke today with Scott Sheridan, Stone's Southeast regional brewery representative, and he said Stone 13th Anniversary Ale (see my previous post), which they call their hoppiest beer yet, will "most certainly" be coming to Sarasota-Manatee and the greater Tampa Bay area.

Whole Foods and Total Wine & More are two of the local stores that will have it, possibly by June 29, he said.

I asked if the beer would also be available in kegs. He said there would be a few kegs in the region, about six or seven, at select bars. He mentioned Mellow Mushroom, Brass Tap and Oldsmar Tap House as likely places.

Samuel Adams LongShot, get it while you can

LongShot is a pretty cool idea. Homebrewers from across the country submit their beers and the Boston Beer Co., maker of Samuel Adams beers, brews the best and sells them in limited-edition six-packs.

There are three beers in the packs, two of each.

• Cranberry Wit, a wheatbeer brewed with (surprise!) cranberries and other spices.
• Traditional Bock, a German lager.
• Double IPA, a stronger and hoppier India Pale Ale.

The Wit and Bock were the 2008 winners. The Double IPA actually won in 2007, but wasn't brewed until this year because of a hop shortage. It has seven types of hops in it, and boatloads of them, after all.

I've been enjoying these beers so much, particularly the bock and double IPA, that I bought a case. It's still available locally. I've found it at the Total Wine & More off University Parkway near Interstate 75.

It may be a Total Wine pricing thing, but LongShot is $6.99 a six-pack, which is cheaper than regular Samuel Adams beers at my local Publix, and a steal for beers of this quality. They're easily good enough to be added to the brewery's regular lineup.

Look for my reviews of all three beers here in the near future.

World of Beer update

In response to another one of my e-mails, Matt LaFon said the upcoming World of Beer will be nonsmoking and feature a large patio.

It will be great to have a nonsmoking beer bar in town.