NEW ADDITIONS LATE 2012

Adding the following beers to the list:
MORE TO COME! I'M DRINKING THEM FASTER THAN I CAN ADD THEM!

Rogue Brutal IPA
Yard's Wet Hop Ale
Yard's/Prohibition Hoppy Lil' Hudson (Cask)
Sixpoint Redd
Moonglow Weizenbock
Port Hop IPA
Pretty Things White Fluffy Rabbit
Satin Solstice Imperial Stout
Magic Hat HIPA
Long Trail IPA
Old Forge IPA
Neshaminy Creek Brewing County Line IPA
Honeymaker Dry Hopped Mead
Lawson's Finest Maple Nipple
Wolaver's IPA
Shed Mountain Ale
Otter Creek Black IPA
Nodding Head 60 Shilling
Nodding Head 700 Level
Mikkeller/Brewdog I Beat You Double IPA
Rodenbach Grand Cru
The Bruery 5 Golden Rings
Wolver's Alta Gracia Coffee Porter
Evil Twin Blind Eye IPA
Lost Abbey Gift Of The Magi 2011
Sly Fox Christmas 2007
St. Bernardus 2007
Russian River Pliny The Elder
He'Brew 15:15
Kona Pipeline Porter
Emelisse Triple IPA
Homebrewed Geuze
Trois Dames Victor
Blue Genie Putting Out The Fire Wit
Dark Horse Cascade Hop IPA
Goose Island Pepe Nero
Maine King Titus
Gouden Carolus Noel
Stegmaier Winter Warmer
Ballast Point El Dorado
Flying Dog Imperial IPA
Flying Dog Oyster Stout
Homebrewed Oyster Stout
Homebrewed Marzen
Flying Dog
Terrapin Samurai Krunkles

Hop Karma Brown IPA vs. India Style Brown Ale

Can you spot the difference? This is the stuff you've got to look for as a beer hunter. This is essentially the same beer, but there's one striking difference; the name. One may wonder, Do they taste the same?

Let's find out...

Hop Karma Brown IPA came before India Style Brown IPA. As a matter of fact, the Hop Karma was the first beer I ever had by Terrapin Beer and I was immediately hooked. On the label reads, "Peace, Love, and Hoppiness". You've got that right, god dammit.

Hop Karma Brown IPA

Sticking your nose into the Hop Karma, you get the immediate sensation of going-against-the-grain. After all, who in their right mind would try to marry a brown ale and an IPA? It's a good thing they tried because it works wonderfully, and everything you would expect to be present is. Nutty brown, and medium amount of hops. 

Tasting it brings your senses on a level playing ground. Taste, smell, and mouthfeel, all realigned. Screw ginger before sushi, drink this if you want your shit in line. 

Toasted nuts, brown ale, notes of chocolate (not cocoa), bitterness, and slight-slight coffee trickling it's way into the sidebands. I managed to get weird a draw a diagram of what's going on:

NOTE: It's very hard to reference nuts and sweetness while looking at the diagram of a tongue. You've got to be daring. You've got to get weird. Be daring to keep your bearing(s). That's the motto tonight. Don;t like it? Good, move your mouse to the top right or left depending on your operating system, and click the red X. Ok, now that the riff-raff is gone, let's continue: 

Think about the creator of DragonBall Z, or the creator of the website PenIsland.com. These people are up with the times. Sometimes you have to hurt someone (or yourself) to help many. 

At the very back of the tongue rests the watchdog hoppiness. It's WATCHING, not managing, the rest of the operation. Moving forward is the toasty nuttiness. THIS is managing everything else. I'll elaborate in a minute.... 

The alcohol layer is there to let you know that this is indeed a beer, and a damn good one at that. Simply put, the sweetness up front fades into the alcohol which fades into the nutty and then into the hops. Here's where things get interesting. NORMALLY, the hops and the alcohol rest in the back together and they cancel each other out. That's why you hear people say, "Wow! This is a great IPA!" -- Because it's BALANCED. 

Terrapin has managed to toss in the nuttiness and brown ale layers at JUST THE RIGHT amount to add to, but keep everything balanced. An incredible feat, if you ask me. 

Imagine someone juggling bowling pins, and someone tosses an axe in for good measure. Pretty frigin cool, huh? That's the best metaphor I can give at the moment.

The hops are keeping watch while the brown ale layer keeps everything in line. It's coursing through the whole thing like some kind of swirl in your whipped cream. Oh, it's present, and it's here to stay. Get used to it. 

The sweetness (and this is going to sound weird) I can relate to carrots. You know that little sharp spike of "vegetable" that you get from carrots? Well take the sweetness from a really sweet carrot and take that bit of sharpness/bitterness and that's what you'll get on the front end of your tongue. It's weird, I know. I'm not saying that there's carrot juice in here, I'm just saying that it's very similar. What ever they did, they did it right. It;s different and that's what you want, right? Probably why you're reading this write-up. It's what I have personally coined, "The Unorthodox Beer Review".

India Style Brown IPA

Well, the've done it. They have reproduced the beer without compromising anything. It's the same, save for it tasting fresher because it is newer. The Hop Karma held up very well. I am surprised how well because I had that beer back in I believe LATE 2008- EARLY 2009 and Terrapin was still using gold bottle caps. The India Style Brown IPA also had a gold cap but it's still newer. The difference? More fresh. 

Enjoy.

NOTE II: I had a MUCH longer write-up written about this whole thing but google decided to flip some switch somewhere and I lost 90% of the article, thus I had to re-write everything. I must add that I had quite the ramble going -- I managed to hit that sweet spot where the fingers flow as quick as the thoughts and everything was conveyed beautifully. Like I said, I had to rewrite it all.... or try to for that matter, replicating what had been. Let it be known: I am pissed. 

Flying Dog || The Fear

Buttery smell [weird!]. I am blown away at the no-brainer contained in this bottle: Instead of taking an ale and adding the usual pumpkin spice, Flying Dog decided to take a BROWN ale, and toss in some subtle pumpkin spice and some hopiness. This beer deserves lots of attention for setting itself apart from the others. On the bottle, the last sentence in the description is: "...Only then will the true artist in you rise up."

Get this beer!!

Sprecher || Cream Soda

Hey I can review beers so why not soda too? (THE SODA IS FROM A BEER BREWERY) so I had to try it, of course.

Made with Wisconsin honey. 2 servings, 60-something grams of sugar and carbs. Hey, it's up there but wow is it worth it. This soda will make you smile blatantly and instantly. You dive in and smile -- that's it. Immediate satisfaction. Fuck. ... Ok ok back to reality: ! Digest the information at hand: DELICIOUS. If you EVER see this, buy it.
They also make root beer, ginger ale, and, of course, cream soda.
A++++++->

Iron Fist || The Gauntlet

Tastes just shy of a barleywine. Once again I have picked one of "these". Luck? Not so much I guess. Well it's freakin delicious despite the love/hate.

Goose Island || Pepe Nero

Very very similar to a black IPA. Hoppy, slight bite -- probably about 50-60-something IBUs if that helps. Smooth isn't the best word for this, but it definitely applies. It's a sipper, but don't nurse it. If I catch you, I'm taking it from you for myself.

Dark Horse || Cascade Crooked Tree

Hoppy. It's basically in IPA. BASICally...... An IPA.

A.

Also... After a tri-pork soup, it became more of an accessible beer. It took on some sweetness and some pilsner quality, but still retained its hop bite. Intriguing. I'd get it again easily.

SEPTEMBER'S NEW ADDITIONS

Have a hop load of new beers added from the following breweries....

Rodenbach
Mikkeller / Brewdog
Longtrail
Old Forge Brewing Company
Stegmaier
Brooklyn Brewing Co.
Elysian
Nodding Head
Uinta
Ithaca
Wolaver's
Clown Shoes
New Belgium
Stone Brewing Co.


This is all within September! Am I an alcoholic? I hope not. O yeah, that's right. The beer is a tom thumbaholic. I'm safe. Well, read on... I added descriptions to a lot of them but not all of them. Some I just didn't take notes on at the time...!

Also, I will now be featuring the best beer of the month and the worst beer of the month. When I say worst and best, I mean that it's the one I enjoyed the most and the one I enjoyed the least. I will be starting with the month of September.

[Go up top to the "AMERICAN BEER LIST" tab or" FOREIGN BEER LIST" tab]

Goose Island | Matilda

If you want a Belgian... You got one. WOW. Hats off, Goose Island.

Slightly sweet and made with that "belgian water" I always refer to. A slight bite compliments this one. YES. Rings in @ 7%, if yr interested, and with that comes a slight alcohol heat. It's there but you have to search. "It hits the back of the nose".

Abita | Vanilla Doubledog

Little bit-a 'nilla wafer. Little bit-a dark ale. Little bit-a Abita.

Additions!

Stone - 16th Anniversary IPA
Bad Attitude - Bootlegger
Fort Collins Brewery - The Incredible Hop

Even more updates

Clown Shoes! , Geants! , Sprecher! , Ballast Point! , Dark Horse! , Flying Dog! , Wild Onion! , Twisted Pine Brewing Co! , Dogfish Head! , Brasserie Des Géants!!!

Yet another massive update!

Added a bunch of beers from trips to Austin, TX, Philadelphia, PA, Detroit, MI, and Atlanta, GA.

Do the ol' CONTROL + F // COMMAND + F, depending on yr operating system and there you go.

Atwater Brewery || Vanilla Java Porter

It smells like a dank dirty northeast PA basement with a damp wet dirt floor. Think about changing the water heater! Now the taste, well... That's something completely different.. Not a lot of coffee at all but the vanilla is there but not overpowering. It's actually a very well balanced porter if I may say. It's great. What a review, huh? It's light too. There, now I believe I covered it all.

MASSIVE UPDATE!

Just finally added a bunch of new beers to the list... See if you can spot 'em. I had a list to import here sitting since about April. I added about 15-20 new ones. A lot from New York TAP Festival as well.

This site is best used for the purpose of looking up a beer to see what I thought of it. Say for instance that you're in the store and you see one. Get on my site, open the list page up and do a search. See what I thought of it. Hopefully it's one with a review so you can get a better idea of what you're getting yourself into. ENJOY!

Brasserie De Géants || Goliath

Goliath | Bottle | A+> | Aurants - Duryea, PA | 10MAY12

 I love this beer. I love tripels. 

Rogue Brewery || Yellow Snow IPA

Yellow Snow IPA | Bottle | A+> | Anthracite - Wilkes-Barre, PA | 11APR12

Tons of small floaters; confetti. It's a party and yet the bottle/label looks so docile/proud/triumphant/proper/stern. It's as if the depiction on the LABEL is the post party or victory whereas the BEER is the pre-, or "during" what happened to cause the label mood. I can't help but feel like by opening the beer and pouring it out, I let out the chaos that had just finally been contained. I just opened a prison and many lives were lost in vain. I feel like everyone involved in capturing this thing walks out from behind stage, takes a bow and the audience erupts in applause; it was all in good fun. At the first taste I feel like I'm at a Furthur show or RatDog show. The explosion of that-kind-of-hop is amazing. I don't know how they captured it. It's PURE HEMP and it tastes so damn good. In fact, I was able to envision myself searching for a case of this ASAP. It's bitter, oh yes it is, but the sweetness dives through a hoop like the dog on the label. It had such a fresh and clean refreshing taste; think "Terrapin So Fresh, So Green". These both have the same fresh cut grass on a hot humid morning in summer. Chewy. As with Rogue Dead Guy Ale, these both have a quality that I cannot put my finger on. It's different. It's probably the hops used... Amazing.
I raise my fist to you in peace, Rogue. This is my second interaction with this and I enjoyed it way more this time for some reason. Maybe it's the good company... 

Patch Block || Cabernet Sauvignon 2008

Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 | Screw Cap | C+ | | 07APR12

Going in, I knew that this wasn't going to be anything special. To tell the truth, I didn't even realize that it had a screw cap until I got home. Knowing that prior-to, I wouldn't have gotten it. Anyway, as I said, going in I wasn't setting the expectations high. Pouring looked quite similar to the others of this type: Deep red, and purple at the edges that fanned out to and eventual transparency. Upon the first sip, there was NOTHING UP FRONT.... NOTHING!!! At the back was a bite and some nice berries. I almost didn't even have anymore. Literally, it tasted like water up front. It was such a weird thing. Intrigued, I left the cap off to get some air in there and sure enough it helped bring out the up-front over time. Now I was able to say some more. I was getting hints of butterscotch at times, but it was ever-so-slight. It was quite different and I did like that. As for the rest of it, it was kind of hard to drink... Not the worst and CERTAINLY not the best. 

Would I buy again? NO. Not unless there wasn't anything else available.

Unibroue || Terrible

Terrible | Bottle | A | Wegman's | 05FEB12

Looks like "cola" and definitely the same mouth-feel save for carbonation (which was definitely present, just not as prominent). Upon first smell, there's a Gushers candy rush that eventually [as delta "t" would govern] becomes unripe/green banana, (getting wierder) confetti-popper party favor smoke, slight sour cherry/blueberry-brawling. There's a TOUCH of mojo-hand, or black pepper up front that's very hard to detect... I definitely got lucky in that I got it. The flavors immeditely exposed are sour berries and their respective juices. It all seems to rest upon some type of wet wooden foundation. Not jungle, but more like a wood shack in the moist rolling grren hills of somewhere-Belgium; genuine. With that being said, that familiar "Belgi-american" water is present, but this time it's more Belgian than American. The lees are directly connected to every drop (which is a good thing). This beer is chaotically aromatic yet contained in the bottle. To Unibroue: Good job taming/capturing this feral beer. 

Brouweri'j Brouwkot || Kalle