Making, tasting, reflections and repartee on Beer, Wine, Hard Cider, Kombucha and Spirits. Includes asides on fermenting foods, coffee, and tea. Look for Craft beer buzz on teh tweets: @one4ethanol
Nie color and froth preceed a thin volitile (ethanol) aroma, with mild hops and a surprise mild hoppy, balanced nearly sweet, distintive nice malt flavor. Very drinkable, like a full flavored, Belgian Bud. I'd order 2 before 7 to pocket the discount.
Goose is artful and awesome as par usual. Get you there, brosephines.
One thing I recall of the
visit was the speed metal, and the Irish guy at the bar, talking quite a bit, and between songs, asking John and
Phil behind the bar to change the music to something mellow so many time that I even started thinking: "get some purple pills, bro", to which, they cranked
just ignored the request and just rocked to something on par with Metalica. 
The Scotch Ale was bready, malty and somewhat smokey making it a stand out to my taste. 
Aside from the pissed off native venting about the stinky bay and beaches to his chum at the curve of the very well appointed classy build out, the beers are a home run, even if Pete Rose or the basketball fans can not catch an Fing break. 
I am the alpha king, I can do anything. This beer and this bar are epic, so F U. What?
Color and head are nailed down like a PA barn.... wait. No. But nailed nonetheless. It tastes like these guys do it the old fashon way too... with real pine needles.
In fact, I think this beer may be made with Squonk's tears. Any major dude would tell you, right? But seriously, the aroma is astonishing. Pine forest (not the bathroom cleaner kind) and followed by a well balanced bitter pine flavor with a rich mouth feel. Outstanding showing from two dudes rocking out in the Quaker state.
This beer will shake up your session like a Jamaican pole dancer... in a forest. Whatever. Just give you it a try.
This stout is outrageous. Guiness is sweating like it's the third shift at the Mustang Ranch.
Two standard deviations by every measure. I'm thinking that The Map Room remains a museum of well curated extraordinary beerses.
(I know, that sounds a little lord of rings)
What more do you want? Look at the color. See the head?
Served the way it's supposed to be served, as Austrians would have you have it, yoh?
Hopped well and malted hardy and served with high regard. Two standard Ds from the mean on all counts.
Aroma 5
Color 5
Froth 5
Flavor 5
Mouthfeel 5
Done and done. Drink this on tap here!
You can curse teh NAFTA all you want, but a few good things beyond tar sands have come from it. It's and outstanding, well balanced, exotically sweet and sour ale that is sure to have you shouting "zoot allurez".
Real live English cider "cyder" from Suffolk, lightly sweetend, carbonated citric and floral aroma, light straw color, high gravity at 7% but you'd never know it. And that could mean trouble if you don't hydrate.
It's very like a wonderful, white wine that wistfully whispers all those things you forgot that moment when your prom date took her dress off in the back seat of your barrowed car.
Yeah-- it's that good and randy. So keep calm and carry on if they pull one of these for you at Hopleaf.
I saw measure for measure at The Goodman and it was maybe even more oustanding than this cyder, but it would have been great to drink one of these there... alas.
Chicago's own Virtue Fench style dry, thin, nicely carbonated with strong vanella presumably imparted from French oak. Very nice and refreshing.
Dark, frothy, crisp yet creamy, well balanced porter trip out of the can at Trench Bar on Damon, which is a cool spot for a cocktail culture infusion.
Froth color and aroma fit the bill, but nice and thin and mouth feel is consistent with light roasted malt flavor. It's good news for stout fans and Small Bar is an outstanding tiny beer hall with wide selections on Division street near Wicker Park; so go see, hear smell and taste the awesome there.
Evanston was once a very dry city.
Few's owner Paul Hletko, is single handedly putting a big dent in that idea with a full line of fancy pants hand crafted, mouth tested spirits ranging from "white dog" moon shine (white whiskey) to gin to bourbon and rye. And the dent is kind of big and intentional when you look at it.
In fact F.E.W. are the initials of a an American prohibitionist from Evanston, who may have made it rough for Hletko's grandfather to ever re-establish a brewery here after leaving what's now the Czech Republic under Germany's tyranny, when 37-40 of his relatives were slain. Alfred Dube did go on to become "the father of modern dinnerware" in the ceramics biz, if my googling is correct, while his grandson Paul has gone full speed back the other way in tribute to Dube (to the booze biz, after a career as a Patent lawyer).
FEW's products are relatively low in corn (60%), high in wheat and or rye, barely and botanicals. And one can taste that on first sniff through last gulp. "Smooth" is what most folks on the tour report. Not much heat or bitter spice toward the back of the mouth here. Even Few's shine is sweet and most active up front on the tip of tongue's tipit.
So what Hleltko is pouring out from FEW are great examples of high quality sipping spirits, not so much the kind of low grade, cheap rail hooch most suitable for mixed drinks that were designed during prohibition to mask the foul flavors of more readily available Bathtub gin, if not make drunk women and men puke outside bars on those Northside curbs for not being able to taste ethanol's bite over sugar profiles of these sweet coacktails on their way down (both the booze and the drinkers).
The soap in the B Room at Old Town Social on North Ave is so strong that I can't taste anything about the Bell's. But after fixing the problem with the old "rinsing your nose" trick, I can taste something more than the milled soap extracts from the B Room.
First of all, the head fell flat on me, suggesting trouble behind the bar... taps, lines, glasses, gases... don't know but maybe it ain't The Map Room up in here.
Bready, expansive, comforting an beautiful like and well beyond "flavorful, amazing and or delisheous".
Nice soapy froth, cloudy light golden color, mild clove aroma, nice balanced malt with a back of the mouth bitter hop flavor. Mouth feel is grand for white beer. Well made and well served here at BCT on Belmont off the Brown line. Awesome giant plasmas above the bar too.
Better than good place to watch the Cubs while peeps freeze out at Wrigley.
"The Pour House" at Maker's Mark in Loretto, KY is the oldest package store in America. It's a national landmark. And the still is of course something to see.
One of the gents who taught me distilling (a West Point grad) was one of their microbiologists, so I'm a little biased about this place, but it's well worth a stop on KY's Bourbon trail.
They will take pains to remind you that Maker's Marks, which is made with 71% corn and the balance with wheat, is bottled by taste, not age, in order to retain the delicate flavors and aroma of wheat based whisky. So, honestly: would you ever learn such a thing from your bar tender?
Now why not just get you in the car and go see where American shine is made with good, clean (and also purified), high calcium, limestone water?
Mini photo essay of Maker's Mark "Whisky", which is a Scottish spelling to honor the Samuels family heritage, as our tour guide explained it.
Who burned the coffee? Not Lucus, but he serves it right at Louisville Beer Store.
And what a beer! Big, bold, balanced with a sour burned flavor like Starbucks with less sugar than say, a 15 year old would add for lunch. High gravity, dark, frothy, burned-hoppy aroma. Dont know if it's CO2, but nice bubbles on top.
This beer is an "expedition" indeed.
Zoot Allures! Big flavors, high graity, beauteous froth, aroma and color, backed by smooth mouth feel and of course Tony's storied hop story, all of which makes this beer rock out with its hops out with flavor for all. So get it fa da flavaz, playaz.
The PUBlicity bar is real nice too, tucked right in a West Nashville shopping mall, next to Nashville Music institution and legit school of rock, country and or westren, WORLD MUSIC, where you can buy authentic Kala ukalalies. Their lines and glasses are clean and clear, the service is excellent and the bartender's beer knowledge is very good (she likes the high gravity stuff).
Also, this place has classic, retro, hipster Schlitz "TALL BOYS" on menu.
Turned my head and the froth was gone. Flavor was good, but not too far and away from Dublin's own. I imagined a rougher mouth feel, like Sweet potato pie. But none to be found on this pour, which I EXPECT IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE. More like the coffee with which you'd wash back the pie. To be fair, she offered me a substitute. Don't know if there's trouble with the lines the glass or co2. 1 of these things made this s beer #meh here.
Beautiful froth, color and aroma on introduction. Citric notes without the clovey, wheat beer baggage. Almost floral, like good French milled soap. Very well balanced creamy malt to bright, bitter hops. This is an outstanding bitter beer for bitter men everywhere. Very nice "more than one" beer overall that's being produced in Atlamta, GA, poured well at Broadway Brewhouse in Nashville. They offer 60 beer on tap, including New Belgium's full lineup.
Yazzo, Jackalope and Hap and Harry's are the three local beers. Sweetwater's is worth the stretch to Atlamta.
Nice froth, color and aroma. Full flavor, with well balance malt to hops makes this local Nashville production brewery well worth a try, and could very well be more than FAD ("fabulous", "amazing" and "delishyaous").
Spinach Parsley, chili pepper, Aloe Vera juice, Tamarin, Lemon, Kale, Apple and Blackcurrant juice. Wonderful fresh innard cleaning aroma, flavor and smooth mouth feel.
Here's to your health.
