Tag: River Horse

Draught Diversions: 6 Beers of Christmas Future (2017)

Draught Diversion

Draught Diversions is the catchall label for mini-rants, think-pieces, and posts that don’t just focus on one beer here at The Tap Takeover. We hope you don’t grow too weary of the alcohol alliterative names we use…

So here we are with part two of my Twelve Beers of Christmas duology. Why twelve beers? Well, that’s fairly obvious since beer comes in six-packs and many, many breweries will distribute 12-pack variety packs featuring multiple seasonal brews like Samuel Adams, Dogfish Head, Saranac,  and Sierra Nevada to name the most prominent ones. Whereas the previous Christmas 2017 Beer post shone the light on beers I’ve had and enjoyed during past Winters and Christmases, today’s post features a half dozen Christmas/Holiday/Winter beers I’d like to try in the future, as in this year for at least a few of those beers. I suppose the fairest way to highlight these beers is alphabetical by beer name, so here goes…

Belgian Freeze (River Horse Brewing, Ewing Township, NJ)
A brewery I haven’t written about very often, especially considering how much I enjoy the majority of the brewery’s portfolio coupled with having visited the brewery is New Jersey’s own River Horse Brewing. River Horse is one of the original New Jersey Craft breweries (they started in 1995 and were reinvigorated in 2007). The one beer from the Ewing Township brewery I’ve highlighted on the Tap Takeover is their Summer Blonde (my favorite summer ale). The “sister” or complementary seasonal offering to that is, Belgian Freeze which is considered a Belgian Dark Ale. This is a beer that’s always around bottle shops, but for whatever reason I never picked up a six pack or even a single in the mixed six packs at Wegman’s. I’ve liked nearly every beer from River Horse, so a beer that plays to the Belgian styles I’ve been drawn to more recently should be a beer I enjoy.

Holiday Ale (Two Roads Brewing, Stratford, Connecticut)
As readers of this blog may be aware, Two Roads is one of my favorite breweries. As all the posts at the link to the left where I at least mention Two Roads demonstrates. They are a relatively new brewery, only about 5 years old (starting in 2012), and I’ve enjoyed most of what I’ve had from them. I’ve yet to try their Holiday Ale, the style Two Roads went with for their holiday offering is a very obscure style and I can only recall trying one in the style previously: Biere de Garde. This beer, according to Two Roads, is a Biere de Noel, a holiday take on the French style of beer. France is not a country that comes to mind when I think of beer and brewing traditions, but the fine folks at Two Roads are experts on all styles so I expect this will be a tasty, malty brew.

Lovely, Dark, and Deep (Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, NY)
Ommegang brews mostly in Belgian styles, but seeing something slightly askew from their typical line of brews can be welcome. Such is the case with Lovely, Dark, and Deep, an Oatmeal Stout listed on their Web site as a “Winter Ale.” Outside of the Game of Thrones Take the Black Stout, I don’t recall Ommegang making many (or any) stouts. Makes sense since there is no true Belgian Stout style, just a “Dark Ale.” That said, I remember seeing this last year and passing on it, but I think I’ll go for a six at some point this year. I really like oatmeal stouts (in fact, River Horse’s Oatmeal Milk Stout is one of my favorite stouts) so this one seems like a no-brainer for me.

Santa’s Private Reserve (Rogue Brewery, Newport, Oregon)
This seminal Christmas beer from Rogue seems to have changed up the recipe in 2017. In past years, I recall this being an Imperial Read, which makes sense considering Santa’s attire. I don’t typically gravitate to Red Ales, their hop profile isn’t to my usual liking. I may have even had an earlier version of Santas’s Private Reserve years ago, but I can’t recall. This year; however, Rogue lists the beer Belgian Strong Ale with Cherries & Raspberries which sounds wonderful. This beer is available only in 22oz bombs and probably on draft.

St. Bernardus Christmas Ale (Brewery St Bernard, Watou, Belgium)
Having tried Delirium Noël / Christmas for the first time last year, I think I need to try one of the other Belgian Christmas classics. Going through my untappd account feed, people seem to hold St. Bernardus Christmas Ale in just as high regard, in terms of Belgian Christmas beers. I even saw some comments to the effect that if folks like Delirium Noël, then they should try St. Bernardus Christmas Ale. This one is even darker than Delirium and is listed on Beer Advocate as a Quad at 10% ABV. I had and really enjoyed St. Bernardus Prior 8 earlier in the year, which is a classic Belgian Dubbel so I expect the Christmas Ale would sit well with me, too.

10 Lords a Leaping (The Bruery, Placentia, California)
The Bruery is a very high-end Craft Brewer out of California who only seems to distribute their beer in 750ml bottles and on draft. They’ve been working a long game, in terms of brewing projects – The Twelve Beers of Christmas. When I got deeper into the Craft Beer world a couple of years ago, I discovered this line of beers with the eighth installment, 8 Maids-a-Milking which I loved. I may have enjoyed the 2016 installment 9 Ladies Dancing even more. I’m really, really looking forward to the 2017 installment and tenth beer 10 Lords a Leaping which they call a dark wit and includes, appropriately enough, 10 different spices. I can’t say I’ve had any dark witbiers, but this sounds delicious. FWIW, untappd lists it as a “Belgian Strong Dark Ale.”

So there you have it. 6 beers I hope to try this Christmas and Winter Season. Don’t know if I’ll get to all of them (hopefully a couple of the 12 oz bottles are available at my local Wegmans so I can “craft my own six pack“), but I expect to have at least a few of them.

Draught Diversions: Summer Beers (2017)

Draught Diversion

Draught Diversions is the catchall label for mini-rants, think-pieces, and basically non-review posts here at the Tap Takeover. We hope you don’t grow too weary of the alcohol alliterative names we use…

Bring back the old label!

Memorial Day is upon us, and with it, the unofficial launch of summer. However, by the reckoning of the brewery releases, summer has been going on since late March / early April as the yellow labeled beers were appearing on shelves. That’s a Diversion for another time, but summer brings to mind lighter beers and for me, wheat-based beers. I’ll feature the big four that seem to be the most prominent summer beers (at least distributed in my area of Central New Jersey) then touch on some others. Once you’ve made it through the post, feel free to call out your favorites in the comments.

The elephant in the room is Boston Beer’s Sam Adams Summer Ale, as it should be since 2017 marks the 21st year Jim Koch’s Boston Beer has released the seasonal favorite. Summer ale is brewed with wheat, lemon zest and “grains of paradise.” For my palate, a is very refreshing beer that all other summer beers were compared against. For years, that was my go-to summer beer and my favorite of their regularly released beers. It is still an enjoyable beer, but over the past few years, other breweries have latched on to the trend by the market leader.

The other elephant in the room, especially if you tune into the Major League Baseball channel for more than five minutes, is Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy.  Quite a few people will look down their nose at this beer and style, but it is certainly refreshing. The style is a call-back (like many styles, natch), to the Germans and their Radler style of beer. So named after the German word for cyclist, the beer is traditionally a 50/50 mix of beer and lemonade given to bicycle messengers/delivery people to refresh and rehydrate in the heat. Leinenkugel started the trend in the US and quite a few breweries are selling this refreshing style of brew during spring/summer, many tweaking the flavor profile with blueberry, watermelon, ginger, pumpkin (in the fall), and grapefruit (the most disgusting fruit).

Sierra Nevada brews a special pilsner for distribution in the summer season, Summerfest. Pilsner is a very popular style, but is especially suited to summer-time consumption.  The style is very crisp and on a hot day extremely refreshing. I think it was first released in 2001. At least that is when the venerable Beer Advocate added it to their beer reviews.

The pilsner style is great for summer and the craft brew innovator smartly capitalized on that years ago. I try to get at least a sixpack of this every year and with my growing predilection for Pilsners, I think I may have more of this one over the summer months.  This one is available in both cans and bottles.

My favorite place to enjoy a beer, my pool

Last but not least, the fourth of the big Summer Beers (at least in the Northeast), would be Yuengling Summer Wheat.  For years, Yuengling stuck by a relatively consistent portfolio of beers, but in 2014 they launched Summer Wheat, which is their interpretation of a German Hefeweizen. Frankly, for a brewery as old as Yuengling is, it took them a surprisingly long time to release such a traditional style. In my opinion, the wait was worth it. Hefeweizen is one of my top 2 or 3 favorite styles of beer and the fine folks at Yuengling have crafted a fantastic interpretation of the style.

When my wife and I visited the brewery in late April in 2015, they had tapped the first keg of the season that day, so that was quite fortunate timing. The only thing Yuengling needs to do with this beer is distribute in cans.

A trio of summer beers in my cooler for our annual 4th of July party last year

Two other local NJ favorites are River Horse’s Summer Blonde, a crisp, blonde ale and Flying Fish’s Farmhouse Summer Ale, the Jersey craft-stalwart’s take on a Saison. One state over, Victory brews Summer Love for the summer months, a golden ale.

Breaking away from those specific beers branded as “Summer,” pilsners make for solid summer beers, some great ones include Two Roads Ol’ Factory Pils, Founder’s recently re-released PC Pils, and what many consider the flagship pilsner of American Craft Beer – Victory’s Prima Pils. All of these beers are available in cans, which makes them easier to transport, keep in coolers, and trash. There’s something about enjoying a crushable beer in a can that just feels right when sitting by a pool.

Get accustomed to Sully, my dog will likely be featured in some of these pictures

Wheat beers also work well in the summer, a very popular Pale Wheat Ale is Bell’s Oberon Ale. The style is similar to Sam Adams Summer Wheat, but the beer has a more orange hue and more of a kick of spice at the end of the beer. Unfortunately, Oberon Ale has limited availability in New Jersey. I’m lucky enough to be friends with a co-worker who lives in Pennsylvania who gave me a couple of bottles. I’ll be posting a review of it in the near future.

I could also easily pass a summer afternoon throwing back a classic German Hefeweizen like Weihenstephaner’s Hefeweissbier or one of Schneider & Sohn’s many variations on the Hefeweizen. For American interpretations of the classic German Style, the pillar of American Craft’s take on it is Widmer’s Hefeweizen.  Sierra Nevada’s Kellerweis is a fantastic interpretation of a Hefeweizen, once a seasonal release but now year-round.

Victory is smartly releasing Kirsch Gose in 6-packs as of 2017

The last style I’ll touch on is Gose. A recently “rediscoverd” style, Gose (pronounced Go-zuh) is unsurprisingly an old German style, with a sour/salty flavor profile. The pop of flavor on a warm summer day is really nice, and especially when a brewery like Victory throws cherries into the mix for their Kirsch Gose, or Long Trail throws cranberries into their Gose.  Westbrook makes two wonderful Gose beers, their standard Gose and their more seasonal and more difficult to find Key Lime Pie Gose, too. The balance of sweet, tart, and sour, plus the typically low ABV, fits well with warm weather beer drinking.

Ciders are also great for summertime consumption, but that could be an entire Draught Diversion itself and this Diversion has probably reached its limit of keeping your attention.

So, what do prefer to throw back during the warm summer months?