The Random Acts of a Hopped up Drunk.

In my travels, I don't always end up in a microbrewery.  I mean I do.  I do a lot.  Just not all the time.  Sometimes I just find myself in some bar.  Sometimes that bar has a decent enough selection that I can find something interesting.  So, I write some notes and wait for a slow week to throw them all together in a erratic, random post.

So enjoy four random beers.

This is one of those.

Victory Brewery: Golden Monkey: A Belgian Tripple with the expected light bannana aroma.  Smooth, creamy, a little on the sweet side with a bannana nut flavor on the top.  Hops kick up in the back and leaves something woody and lightly floral.

Leinenkugles Brewery:  Leinies Honey Wiess:  Another lighter drinkable summer beer from The giant of Chippewa Falls Wisconsin.  It had a lemony aroma... but that was likely from the lemon wedge the bartender insisted on putting in.  The beer itself was lightly grassy, malty and... of course, lemony.  Very drinkable and it finished just slightly dry.  Not complex, it isn't suppose to be is it?

Wynkoop Brewery: Saision De Colfax: Found a beer from an old friend.  I visited Wynkoop brewery a couple years ago and was impressed overall.  What they failed to tell me when I first ordered this beer is that it's a little different from your normal saision.  For one, it's not usually as black as Guiness.   It had no aroma to speak of, but the flavor was rich with port wine, fruit and chocolate notes swirling around.  I'm not sure what this actually has in common with what is typcially a light, summer, farmhouse ale, but what the hell, I like it either way.

Dry Dock: Apricot Blonde: Another Colorado native.  The aproicot flavor is very pronounced.   It's quite sweet with lots of fruit.  Probably won't appeal to those who are dead set against fruit beers, but it was a nice refreshing drink either way.

Odell Breweries: Mycenary: Yet another from Colorado, guess what state I was in when I compiled this list,  It has lots of nice citrus hops in the aroma.  The army of bitterness is held at bay with a decent amount of malt.  The balance is very nice and it leaves the light, floral, citrus hop flavors in tact.

He's a Lumberjack and he's IPA: Flagstaff, Arizona

Sorry for the title.  I recently aquired "He's Not the Messiah, He's a Very Naughty Boy," and I'm afraid the image of an elderly Michael Palin performing the lumberjack song will both haunt  and amuse me for some time.

And it is related to this week's post.... because Flagstaff is a lumber town...  And there's kind of a lumber mill theme at Beaver Street Brewery... which I will be talking about soon...

Look I'm sorry about the pun, okay?  I just couldn't help myself.

Okay?

Okay.

Beer?

This is the last stop on the oddyessy that was my trip through the Southwest, and when it comes to the brewpub, we're getting back to basics.

Well, basics, but upped a notch all the way around.

The food is your basic pub fare... except well more so.  I went with their basic 'Beaver Street Burger' and I've got to say they push the limits of the awesome you can achieve with ground beef and a bun.
There was something, I dunno, quinteccential about their beer selection as well.  I can't pinpoint it and maybe it's a product of a mind that's spent entirely too much time watching little yellow dots go by, but they have two IPA, a couple wild cards and nothing even remotely resembling Budweiser.   That's a brewpub.  Or, at least, it's the kind of brewpub a city like Flagstaff should have.

Lumberyard Amber: This seasonal selection had a nice citrusy, earthy aroma to it.  The flavor packs a lot more hops then one traditionally finds in a amber but it's not right there in front ready to give you an alpha acid punch to the palate, it's sorta sneaks up on you.  It's like biting into a chile pepper.  There's a slow build-up of floral citrus hops until that's all you taste and you become afraid that it is all you will ever taste again.

Lumberjack Red: I didn't pick up an aroma on this beer as much.  The flavor was of light, roasted, earthy flavor.  It was very drinkable, but was flirting dangerously close to 'watery' in character.

Red Rock Rasberry: Some day I'm going to put all the rasberry beers I have tasted into two catagories.  One catagory for your typlical light, sweet, fruity, dare I say... 'chick' beers and another catagory for people who Don't Like Fruit Beers!  Then I will make those two groups fight.   Anyway this beer would be fighting for the latter group in this case.  The rasberry aroma is there and in force, but the melds into some dry grassy flavors.

Balgian Tripple: This Belgian comes with all the associated belgian flavors and aromas; clove trpolical fruit, bananna and the like.  They are not overpowering, as can so often happen when these kind of esters get heavily involved, and it remains highly drinkable.  One thing that I did notice was a dry, warm alcohol flavor dancing around in there informing the drinker of the punch that is hidden within the malt.  I think a few of these would put me on the floor before I knew what happened.

R&R Oatmeal Stout: Lost of rich coffee and mocha on the aroma with just a hint of either wood or leather... I couldn't really place it at the moment. The beer is very drinkable and contains dark chocolate and earthy notes and finishes just slightly dry.

Cascading IPA: This is an American-style IPA that gets close to 'hop bomb' territory.  The citrus, floral hops are intense at first, but they mellow considerably as it moves through the palate.  By the end, the hops linger just slightly and some light roasted malt peaks through.

Lumberjack IPA: This would be Cascading's smaller, quieter brother.  It shares a lot of the same qualities without the intense hop kick-to-the-teeth.

Old Santa Fe: New Mexico

I talked a little about Santa Fe in my last post, but it really is one of of the few truly unique places in America.  So one more stop before we venture farther down this Proud Highway.  This little microbrewery is located right smack dab in the middle of downtown, the Blue Corn Cafe and Brewery.  It's a cool place, tucked away into the Plaza Mercado building in the picture above. 

Honestly, I was more impressed with the food then the beer.  It wasn't bad, but no particular beer really had any terribly unique flavor.  They were all pretty standard; your standard wheat beer, standard blonde, standard brown, standard IPA... etc.   I guess what I am saying is that I'll remember the blue corn tacos (highly recommended, I might add) longer then I'll remember the Roadrunner IPA.   But, again, they weren't bad and this is a beer blog so here we go:

40K Wheat: I think this is what they give to those people who come in asking for a Budweiser.  It has that grassy, malty aroma.  It's a little sweeter, but it's a pretty basic light beer.

Atomic Blonde: I picked up some light fruit aroma here and it pretty much stayed in the flavor as well.  I picked up a hint of floral hops in the back, but very little else.

Czech your English: Similar to the blonde. A little darker and a little sweeter.  This one packs a bigger body and brings some caramel and strawberry sweetness to add to the flavor profile.

Atalaya Amber: I picked up a little citrus in the aroma.  The flavor is light, sweet and toasty with the same citrus floral hop character in the back.  It struck me as watery and a little bland.  I would have liked to see a little more  

End of the Trail Brown: Brown ales are almost terminally light and watery, in my experience.  They can be good, but there is something about the style that invites a kind of emptiness in the flavor profile.  This is a good example of that... well 'good' being a loosely used term there.  It had a nice chocolaty aroma.  The flavor was sweet at first with a little mocha character and it had a rather nice but surprising dry bitter finish.  Overall, though the flavors could have been ramped up quite a bit.

Gold Metal Stout: Light coffee aroma.  I picked up a lot of coffee, sharp roasted barley flavors and a hint of unsweetened chocolate.  It finished dry.

Oaked Swartzbier: The aroma and flavor were both very light.  I picked up the buttery oak flavor among the chocolate and caramel malty flavors that dominated this beer.  There were no detectable hops.

Roadrunner IPA: I picked up some citrus and floral qualities on the hops in the aroma, but those same characteristics were buried under an avalanche of alpha acids in the flavor.  In the great IPA battle that balances the delicate flavors of the hop with pure brutish bitterness... yeah flavor got it's ass kicked.