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Archive for December, 2010

Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , , on December 31, 2010 | 1 Comment »

In the spirit of end of the year Top 10 lists that are so popular, but without having to compile said list, I thought I would end my year of blogging by presenting you with a review of THE BEST BEER I HAVE EVER HAD EVER tried for the first time in 2010. This beer is so good, it cures colds. It also has the honor of being married to one of the most fabulous women I have ever met ever (ILU, Mrs Bourbon County Stout). See the following*:

Congratulations to the beautiful happy couple!

Basic Info:
Name: Bourbon County Brand Stout (Yes, the “Brand” is part of the name. No, no one I know ever bothers saying it.) (also known as “Donna’s Husband Stout”)
Origin: Goose Island Brewing Co., Chicago, IL
Style: American Imperial/Double Stout
13% ABV, 100% WIN
IBU: 60
I drank this: on tap at Waldo Pizza, KC, MO and poured from a bottle at home

People, this beer is magic, by which I mean it has healing properties, by which I mean that it cured my blargy sinus infection. Like, cured it with the power of awesome. Or, to put it in slightly clearer terms: halfway through this beer my throat (which had been in knife-stabbed pain for a solid week) stopped hurting. The pain didn’t come back at all that night, or the next day, or even the next (or the next or the next), so I can attest to the fact that it was the beer itself that solved the pain, rather than just the wine-level high quantity of alcohol in the beer.

The beer is ebony stygian midnight jet obsidian raven pitch this-is-where-light-goes-to-die BLACK with a mocha-bourbon-colored head. It smells like a batch of the best bourbon balls you’ve ever had, but better and with more chocolate.

It’s also thick. It’s not as thick as the Beer Geek Brunch Weasel (nothing is), but it’s syrupy and wonderful and sort of melts on the tongue like a mouthful of warm ganache. The bourbon is the strongest note, followed by an oaky sort of woodsy note, chocolate, vanilla, a touch of smoke and hints of toffee, coffee and caramel. There’s also an alcohol burn on the tongue and down the esophagus, sort of like you’d expect from drinking actual bourbon (though not so painful-strong).

The aftertaste is absolutely chocolate and bourbon balls. It’s one of those tastes to luxuriate in, the type that will linger on for a good fifteen minutes of bourbon stout happy-induced haze.

Words pretty much can’t sum it up, even though I’ve tried here. It’s amazing and wonderful and fantastic and glorious and one of those things that you should absolutely try, especially if you like bourbon.

*As for the marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Bourbon County Stout, allow me to link you to the Gingerneer’s Story of the Wedding. Seriously, click that link and read that story, as it’s the only way you’ll be able to understand exactly why there is a blingeed picture of Mrs. Bourbon County Stout saying her vows to the Mister. It sums up the fabulous wonder of the Bourbon County Stout more than I ever could. Also it makes me hate that I wasn’t there.

(As a lovely little end note: I have a bottle of the Rare Bourbon County Brand Stout. It’s my birthday present to me, being, at $40 or so, the most expensive beer I’ve ever bought (and proof that certain really amazing beers are capable of turning off any rational thought processes I might otherwise lay claim to). Unless convinced otherwise by a really good reason to share, I am planning on popping it open Sideways-style some random night and thereby making said ordinary random night one of the best of my life.)

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Aviator HogWild IPA

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , , on December 30, 2010 | 1 Comment »

FAO Sarah and other hop-haters: STAY FAR, FAR AWAY FROM THIS BEER IT WILL KILL YOU D-E-D DEAD.*

Basic Info:
Name: HogWild IPA
Origin: Aviator Brewing Co., Fuquay-Varina, NC
Style: American IBU
ABV: 6.7%
IBU: 108 (technically, anything over 100 isn’t really measurable to any sort of real accuracy, so this is probably along the lines of a guess. However, I can attest to saying “yeah, that makes a lot of sense.”)
I drank this: on tap at the Hibernian, Cary, NC

I will start out by saying that this is easily one of the most bitter beers I have ever had in my entire drinking life, and this coming from a confirmed hophead of the past five-plus years. I mean, I LOVE HOPS. I love most bitter things - like Campari for example, a bitter aperitif that makes many of my friends gag (and which myself, my father-in-law, and most of the Caribbean adore). To me, Campari is bitter with a really nice sweet touch to it. From what I can tell, most people don’t notice any kind of sweetness in Campari, so that should serve as an example of just how weird my taste buds are how much I like bitter flavors.

Aviator’s HogWild is too bitter for me.

The best thing I can say about this is that I want a perfume of this beer in the worstest of all possible ways. It smells like this gloriously wonderful combination of pink and white grapefruits and neroli. Heavily citrus with hints of herbal-floral hops. AMAZING.

I often make the distinction between “flavor’ hops and “bite” hops (please note: not technical terms) – the “flavor” hops provide a bitter flavor to the beer (obviously), and the “bite” hops provide a sharp sort of sensation, like the beer is trying to eat its way into your tongue or something like that – it’s a feeling that can be borderline painful when it’s really strong.

I mention this because both types of hop sensations are going on full force in this beer. There’s a ton of extremely bitter flavor – I imagine it’s reminiscent of chewing on a mouthful of neroli – but the hop bite is so intensely painful that I can’t really narrow down any sort of subtlety to the flavor. My tasting notes say “HOLYWOAHCEILINGCATBITTERWTFBBQ!!!1!!!!!!1!!1!eleven!!!” (a phrase which I imagine to be helpful to roughly two of you, but which I’m sharing because I feel it sums up the experience of drinking this beer).

The aftertaste is like upending a shaker of salt over a pile of lemon pith and chewing. And the aftertaste LASTS FOREVER. This was the killer for me. BLERG, I say unto you.

Ultimately, I have to say that I find this beer to be too unbalanced to enjoy. Managing to cram 108 IBUs into a beer is quite a feat, so I’m impressed at their sheer hopping ability, but I don’t feel like there’s enough of a malt backbone to stand up (or even cower before) such intense hoppiness. I assume there are malts in this beer; I also assume the malts are the unpopular teenagers tricked into having a party while the parents are out-of-town, and that they have shut themselves in a small closet, whimpering as their parents’ house is destroyed by the drunken popular kids.

My tongue is cowering in that closet with the malts, wondering how long we’ll all be grounded.

*if you know the reference here, I love you forever.

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Carolina Nut Brown Ale

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on December 29, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Out of the “this was sort of okay, but since I was in NC at the time I’m kicking myself that I didn’t dive for the Duck-Rabbit* when I could get my grubby hands on some” file:

Basic Info:
Name: Nut Brown Ale
Origin: Carolina Brewing Co., Holly Springs, NC
Style: English Brown Ale
ABV: 4.7%
IBU: not listed
I drank this: chez my sister- and brother-in-law’s lovely NC abode

 The Carolina Nut Brown Ale is a fairly clear, auburn-copper-brownish red ale with a thin layer of off-white head swirling around the top. It’s light-bodied with a syrupy but still thin mouthfeel and an aroma of nutty malts.

Flavor-wise, it’s malts and nuts. Specifically, it’s caramelly malts with a sort of nutty flavor that runs towards the peanut edge of the multifaceted nut-flavor spectrum. There are a few hints of chocolate and toffee as well, and a bit of hoppy bite on the tongue. The hop-bite fades quickly, however – it was really strong when I first poured the beer, but pretty much nonexistent within about ten minutes. At that point, it turned to all caramel syrup nutty malts.

The aftertaste is peanuts, butter (*not* peanut butter) and a hint of chocolate and caramel. It sounds like it should be absolutely amazing, like some kind of souped up turtle candy or something, but it’s not really that awesome.

Here’s the thing. There are a lot of hints of good things in this beer, but they’re all just, well, hints. It *could* be a good beer, but it tastes really watered down. Given I think they’ve got the balance right, I don’t want to write off the brewery yet. However, this isn’t anything I’d want to drink again any time soon.

Last: given this is an English Brown Ale, it’s pretty clear they’re going for Newcastle. At the moment, I’d say skip this and go straight to Newcastle, which is a tried-and-true standby.

*I mean honestly, the 6-pack right next to the one I grabbed was a Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout. That has potential to be AWESOME.

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75th Street Possum Trot Brown

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , on December 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

One of my favoritest of favorite brown ales:

Basic Info:
Name: Possum Trot Brown
Origin: 75th Street Brewery, Kansas City, MO
Style: American Brown Ale
ABV: not listed
IBU: not listed
I drank this: on tap at 75th Street Brewery, KC, MO

This lovely beer is a cloudy dark brown with no real head. Frankly, I don’t care about the head on a brown ale – they never have a particularly good texture, so I always end up feeling like it’s in the way of the beer underneath. It smells like malts and toasted nuts.

The flavor of this beer is all nutty malts with a hint of hoppy bitterness running underneath. It’s one of those things where I can taste nuts as a specific flavor, but couldn’t narrow it down to a specific sort of nut – like it’s not really ‘walnuts’ or ‘peanuts’ so much as it is ‘essence of nuts’ or something like that. The hops are there more to balance the ale and keep it from getting too sweet than to try to give it an actual bitter flavor.

The aftertaste is slightly sour (but not, for once, in a bad way), nutty and malty. It lingers for a moment before disappearing altogether, making this a supremely easy beer to drink with all kinds of food.

Overall, this is one of my favorite brown ales ever. Would that 75th Street would find the room to bottle this stuff and have enough room to keep from running out of their stout, which they’ve been out of every time I’ve gone in the past few months, which in turn makes me a sad panda. This brown is absolutely glorious.

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Breckenridge Christmas Ale

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on December 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I have a few much more exciting beers that need reviewing (Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, I am looking at you here), but I figured I should get this review out before Christmas is totally and completely over and this beer is out of date until next year.

Basic Info:
Name: Christmas Ale
Origin: Breckenridge Brewery, Breckenridge, CO
Style: Winter Warmer
ABV: 7.4%
IBU: 22
I drank this: on tap at Old Chicago, Olathe

This is another one of those beers that I can pretty much describe, like I do with Oktoberfests, as “smelling like beer.” It’s an amber-colored ale with a sort of lager-style taste/feeling to it (which weirds me out, frankly, because I tend to feel that Winter Warmers should be heavier/thicker than that – lager styles in general (very much excepting doppelbocks) tend to be quite light-bodied). It pours with a bit of white head that dissipates quickly.

Flavor-wise, this has a distinct root beer note that startled me (probably something with the malts), a molasses sort of note, and lots of caramel-biscuit-y malts with a hop bite at the end but no real bitter flavor. There are also a few hints of coffee, smoke and chocolate running through it. There’s a spicy flavor in the aftertaste, but otherwise this is absolutely a Winter Warmer (smell and lager feeling aside) – it’s very malty and has a noticeable hit of alcohol to it.

Overall, this is a good beer – it’s clearly well-brewed and thought-out – but I’m (obviously, I think) not in raptures over it. I think that lager drinkers would like it more than most ale drinkers – there’s something in the smell and the body that reminds me of a lager-style more than an ale-style beer, like the sort of thing that would make me recommend this to people in love with the Sam Adams Winter Lager more than people in love with the Sam Smith Winter Welcome.* So basically, it’s totally worth having, especially if you’re not overly fond of the same beers I am. Enjoy!

*I still haven’t had a Winter Welcome this year, which I find strange and which I chalk up to trying too many other beers to have much time to revert to  my favorites. If nothing else, this will give me something new to review next year. I won’t be repeating anything unless I know it’s a beer whose recipe changes every year.

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Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on December 26, 2010 | 1 Comment »

If this post is in any way rambly, stilted, or in any other way incoherent, please bear in mind that it’s being written at the airport at 5am. Like, it’s 5am and I’m already at the airport, parked in economy parking, shuttled to the airport terminal, through security and able to post. In other words: I think I’ve had 35 minutes of sleep. Just, you know, bear with me here. This beer has me too rapturous to keep from reviewing it. Also, this is keeping me awake until I can board and fall asleep.

Basic Info:
Name: Beer Geek Brunch Weasel
Origin: Mikkeller, Denmark
Style: American Imperial/Double Stout
ABV: 10.90%
IBU: interesting topic – will ramble about this at the end.
I drank this: poured from a bottle after an awesome Christmas brunch of eggs benedict (thank you, love!) and almond Kringle (thanks, Jen!)

This is an oatmeal imperial stout brewed with weasel butt coffee. Er, civet coffee. Rather than attempt to explain this insanity, I’m just providing you with that link. Suffice it here to say that the harvesting method probably justifies the insane price of the beans (roughly $225 a pound).

Anyway, Beer Geek Breakfast is a beer I’ve been wanting to try forever. When I discovered Beer Geek Brunch, and then discovered that they’d made it with weasel butt coffee, my rational thought processes completely shut down and I bought a bottle ASAP.

So. Was this beer worth its weight in weasel butt coffee?
Answer: YES. (Perhaps even Hell to the Yes, given this is internet land and such sayings are in common currency).

This beer is the thickest beer I’ve ever discovered in my life. When I say thick, I mean thick like thicker-than-extra-virgin-olive-oil* thick. Like, I timed a tiny, tiny bubble of carbonation as it worked its way through the brew – in 10 seconds, one bubble was able to make it three inches. This is so thick that you can swirl the glass and the beer pretty much doesn’t move. It is milkshake thick. Clotted cream thick. There’s a lot of sediment in this beer, so you can see how thoroughly it refuses to move.

IT IS AWESOME.

It’s completely opaque dark, dark brown – the color of black coffee, where there’s that slight hint of brown in the blackness – with a touch of mocha-colored head. It smells like espresso and bittersweet cocoa and toasty malts.

Taste-wise, it is the best bloody mocha you’ve ever had in your entire life somehow combined with the best chocolate milkshake you’ve ever had in your life combined with roasty stout malts and espresso and cream. It’s so thick that it leaves a sort of leftover silken feeling in the mouth, like the aftereffect of drinking straight cream.

The aftertaste is long and lingering, all beautifully done espresso shot.

The thing with the IBUs is that I think they’re enormously high – probably in the 70-80 range (say, standard American IPA with a slightly heavier hop dose than normal), but IBUs are relative. That is to say that the malts and everything else going on in this beer is so overwhelming that it’s pretty much impossible to say whether or not it’s really bitter in a hoppy way, despite what the levels of alpha acid might be (which is what the IBU measure tells you). So the IBU level here could be through the roof and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest. This beer is a malt/coffee show.

*I’m not particularly a Rachel Ray fan, so I feel the need to dispense with the EVOO acronym.

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Santa's Butt

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on December 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

This Christmas Eve, allow me to present to you my review of Santa’s Butt.

…

It’s a Porter. Get your mind out of the gutter. That’s gross.

Basic Info:
Name: Santa’s Butt
Origin: Ridgeway Brewing, Oxfordshire, UK
Style: English Porter
ABV: 6.0%
IBU: not very high
I drank this: poured from a bottle after work on Christmas Eve

Santa’s Butt is one of those beers that, like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I bought because of the name.* Unlike at least a few of those people, I’ve actually drank it rather than let it hang out endlessly among the Christmas decorations.

I would also like to point out that this beer is ample demonstration of the fact that the beer crowd is neither so stuffy nor so mature as the wine crowd tends to come across as being (i.e., I’m convinced much of the beer crowd is made up of overgrown 12-year-old boys).

This beer is dark brown and translucent enough that light shows through auburn when the glass is held up to the light. It smells like – well, it smells like dark beer. Kind of in the same way that an Oktoberfest smells like beer, but with a slighter darker malt profile.

Flavor-wise, this may sound like a cop-out, but it tastes like dark beer. It’s not particularly nuanced – I don’t find lots of embedded coffee or toffee or chocolate or smoke notes the way I do in really good porters – but it does its job. This is darker malts with a slight fruity touch and a nice, if subtle, hop bite on the tongue. There’s no real bitterness here otherwise.

I’d say I was whelmed. I wasn’t overwhelmed – this isn’t spectacular beer – but I wasn’t underwhelmed either. It isn’t bad. It’s supremely easy to drink in that sort of “gulp after a long day” type way.

Maybe Santa would like one after he gets off work. I hear he has a long night tonight.

* The really amusing thing with this all is that Maine freaked out and barred the beer from sale in 2006 out of fear that children might buy the beer. They reversed stance after the ACLU got involved and allowed sales to recommence in January 2007. I bet the liquor store owners were pissed.

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Free State Santa's Helper

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on December 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

I apologize for the end-of-post geekout session.

See, here’s what happened. I ordered a Great Divide Hibernation Ale. I got a very hoppy beer with a back hit of clove/nutmeg. I thought “Self, this makes sense. Most Great Divide beers that I’ve had have been extremely hoppy, so I am not surprised to find that their Winter Seasonal is also, in fact, a hoppy beer.” I enjoyed the beer.

Then I got home and realized that the Hibernation Ale is an Old Ale (read: VERY FEW HOPS). I thought “Self, either you did not have a Hibernation Ale, or Great Divide has no idea what an Old Ale is. However, Great Divide is a fantastic brewery, ergo the fault in this situation is not theirs.” Then I looked at the list of available beers at the said drinking establishment, took a guess at what it was that I had really had, and then went back and ordered a sample to verify that my guess was, in fact, correct, because I want to make sure that I’m not spreading beer misinformation here.

Long story short: this is why I didn’t review this beer for you last Wednesday - I wasn’t actually for sure what the hell it was I’d just drank. Now I know. Here’s your Santa’s Helper review.

Basic Info:
Name: Santa’s Helper
Origin: Free State Brewing Co., Lawrence, KS
Style: Belgian IPA*
ABV: 8.0%**
IBU: 48
I drank this: on tap at Old Chicago, Olathe

Scent-wise, this is somewhere in Cascades Bomb-land, which is sort of funny because there aren’t actually any Cascades hops in the beer. What I mean by “Cascades Bomb” is that this is an intensely citrus-smelling beer, all grapefruit and citrus rind – the type of beer that I’m forever begging to be made into perfume. It’s a cloudy amber color with a quickly-dissipating white head. Basically, it’s an IPA.

This beer has a thick mouthfeel with a sweet kick from the malts and a sort of fruity tinge from the yeast, all of which is almost immediately obliterated by OMGHOPS. The hops are so overwhelming that I had to be thinking about it to notice much beyond them. When I was paying attention, I noticed the sweetness of the malts and a sort of clove hit, along with a touch of spice and something that quite honestly read mostly like root beer at the swallow.

The aftertaste is a strongly resinous hop flavor with a touch of caramel and clove. All told, it’s a good beer – I actually have a line in my reviewing notes that says “OM NOM,” and I don’t usually devolve into lolcat*** (or kitty pidgin****) when writing my notes. So take my incoherence to mean that this beer is pretty kickass awesome and that you should track one down before January if you’re in the KC/Lawrence area.

*This isn’t a style I’ve seen all that much of, but when I saw “Belgian IPA” I immediately thought “yeah, that makes sense.” Belgian yeast always tastes like BananaClove to me, and I could kind of taste that in this beer – every time I mention anything about fruit or spice or clove or root beer, it’s a reflection of the yeast strain that they used rather than anything else they might have thrown into the brewing pot. It’s interesting to see how much the choice of yeast can affect the flavor of a brew.

**I’m not sure when Free State decided that telling us an ABV would be appropriate – it’s more recent than my most recent review of one of their beers. Last I checked, they’d give an OG but not an ABV. I like seeing the OG measure but find the ABV much more useful, so yay to them.

***Admittedly, I assume you know what a lolcat is – you’re reading this on the internet, which means you’re online, which means you’ve seen a lolcat before. But I felt I should link to the site anyway, no matter how circa-2006 it is, because, well, CATS!

****Yes, The Internet IS in fact translating the Bible into kitty pidgin. No, I’m not sure why either. I find the project amusing rather than blasphemous. However, my Master’s Thesis was on controversies surrounding late-medieval English Bible translations (i.e., “Fun With Wycliffites”)(i.e., “we’ve found a witch heretic, may we burn her?”), so I think the whole thing is extremely funny. My amusement means I’m giving y’all a link to the project, which you can click or ignore to your heart’s content.*****

*****I assume you people know by now the sheer level of my geekitude. If you didn’t, this series of footnotes should clue you in. Sorry about that.

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Great Divide Hibernation Ale

Posted in Beer, tagged , , , , , on December 22, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

This beer kicks ass. This is my second attempt to review it. My first attempt to review it involved ordering a Hibernation, enjoying a very hoppy beer, getting home to write the review, and discovering that the super-hoppy beer I had just enjoyed has zero to do with an Old Ale, which is what the Hibernation is. Simply put: an Old Ale and hops (much less HOPS! *jazzhands*) have about as much in common as triremes and velociraptors. So I went back to the said drinking establishment, asked for a sample of the beer I was pretty sure they’d given me so that I could confirm what it was that I had in fact been drinking during the first go round, and then got a Hibernation FREALZ. I’ll review the Other Beer – the Free State Santa’s Helper – next. For now, here’s a real Hibernation Ale.

Basic Info:
Name: Hibernation Ale
Origin: Great Divide Brewing Co., Denver, CO
Style: Old Ale
ABV: 8.7%
IBU: not given
I drank this: on tap at Old Chicago, Olathe

It’s an Old Ale, so it’s malty. Very malty. Also, there’s some alcohol in here. Realistically, that could sum it up, but this is me and we all know by now that I can’t give you a fifteen-word review.

It has a nice, malty scent, but malty in that sort of way that, like with Oktoberfests, I’m incapable of describing it as anything else, so I will leave that where it is.

The Hibernation is a medium-colored malty-caramel-nutty-toasty-malty concoction of malts. The malts are great, but they weren’t what I noticed immediately on first sip – they’re really just the best way to sum it all up. The first thing I noticed when I sipped this beer is that it’s extremely heavy-bodied: thick, syrup-y, heavy-bodied like a champion Olympic weightlifter practically muscled THICK beer. With low carbonation. You know, like drinking syrup. Beyond that, it’s malts, as I said, with a hit of bite on the tongue from the hops, and a lingering (if light) burn of alcohol down the esophagus after the swallow.

The aftertaste provides the slightest hint of bitter hops – pine hops, mostly - which is largely overshadowed by toffee and Nutella tones (Nutella is hazelnut-chocolate spread from Europe and if you’ve never had any spread on a crepe, you’ve never really lived).

Basically, this is perfection in an Old Ale. I LOVE IT. Unabashedly and unashamedly love it. But then again, I love it enough to declare said love on the internet, but not enough to declare it my BFF beer – my BFF beer is still the Hibernation’s cousin, Great Divide’s Rumble. Being that the Rumble is unavailable until next JULY (SIGH AND SADNESS AND REMORSE AND GENERAL GNASHING OF TEETH BELONG HERE), it’ll work for a while. Enjoy one, especially if you find yourself among the hop-haters of the universe. This here beer is one of the maltiest of malt-fests I’ve ever encountered.

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Crispin Lansdowne Cider

Posted in Cider, tagged , , , , on December 20, 2010 | 3 Comments »

More from the “things what can be done with cider when the brewers are feeling adventurous” front:

Basic Info:
Name: Lansdowne
Origin: Crispin Cider
Style: Cider
ABV: 6.9%
IBU: none whatsoever, yo. No one wants bitter cider – not even me.
I drank this: poured from the bottle, provided to me by Derek Bean of Crispin Ciders (thank you!)

This particular version is cider brewed with molasses and Irish Stout Yeast. I think they may have been going for something along the lines of a snakebite? I’m not sure. It’s interesting, though, I’ll give you that.

Freshly poured, it smells like yeast and apples and a bit of molasses, the last of which put me strongly in mind of gingerbread (which sounds awesome right now and would probably be really good with this cider – or any cider - but this is all irrelevant tangent time)(I will get back on subject now, promise). The cider is a medium brown color and cloudy from the yeast.

This is one of those moments where you really, *really* want to get the yeast all mixed up in with the rest of the cider before you pour it. I tried a few sips after carefully decanting the cider to keep the yeast out and was overwhelmed by molasses. Then I swirled the yeast in the bottle and poured it into my glass, and it was measurably yummier with the yeast – like it all suddenly translated into a liquid that made more sense or something like that. So when the bottle instructions tell you to make sure the yeast is in there, follow directions (besides, all the extra vitamins the yeast provides are good for you). The yeast also makes the carbonation lovely. Really. Lovely. Like I’d love to come up with a punchier word to use there, but “lovely” is what came to mind, stuck, and refused to let any other word in. It’s lovely.

Flavor-wise, at first I got yeast on the tip of my tongue, a strong hit of molasses everywhere, and then apples in the back of my mouth and on the swallow. The molasses flavor was stronger than I was thinking it would be, and the yeast wasn’t as overpowering as it was in the Saint. At first I wasn’t a big fan – the flavors seemed too disjointed, like a batch of sauce that needs another four hours of simmering before the flavors meld into something really fantastic. I think it just took my tastebuds some time to figure out what was going on – the cider was better about halfway through. Heavy molasses with apples, brought together by the yeast. Good, especially if you like gingerbread molasses.

Basically, it’s good and it’s really different, but there’s a part of me that wants all these flavors in baked goods rather than liquid form. But I want some to bake with, because this could make EPIC GINGERBREAD CAKE.

ETA: Shaya of Stick a Spoon In It uses Crispin Lansdowne in an awesome-sounding beef stew recipe - check out the link and try the recipe!

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