Pints at the Station: Baltimore, Maryland

Way out on the East Coast and Baltimore this week.  I was banished to the suburbs this time, but it put me close to a nice little restaurant and brewpub that might normally be too far out to make the trip worthwhile.

The Redbrick Station is mostly a grill and bar type restaurant.  I don't know if beer is really their specialty, it was good, but it didn't seem to be the focus.  It was good, but not spectacular.  The beer was more or less what you would expect from the styles although they did have a cask conditioned beer available, so that's a pretty big mark in their favor.

I would both recommend and warn against the fish and chips here.  They are awesome.  At the same time they pile the plate high with french fries and big-old cuts of battered fish.  If you missed lunch, like I did that day, you might be tempted to eat the whole thing.  It was delicious, but it did create a gastronomical adventure later in the evening.

I guess, what i am saying, enjoy in moderation.

Now, the beer.

Honey Go Light: A light honey ale that makes the honey known in a very pleasing aroma.  The dry, sweet flavor is fairly prominent off the top followed by bread flavors and a fizzy mouthfeel.  As light ales go, this was pretty good.  Probably not something to reach for everyday, but refreshing when summer starts cranking the heat up,

Avenue Ale: There was a very light citrus aroma here.  I could detect the hops in the aroma, but not nearly as much in the flavor.  There was some slightly roasted, bread and malt flavor.  The citrus was there but overall this beer just didn't have the flavor I like in a pale.

Something Red: No aroma I could detect here.  The flavor was first dominated by malty flavors with hints of dark cherry fruit.  Pine and floral hops started very, very light and slowly climbed to give the beer a dry, bitter flavor.

Cask Conditioned Red Ale: The same beer as above served just below room temperature and naturally carbonated.  This really brought out a malty aroma that just wasn't there before.  There was a little bit of caramel sweetness with the malt and dark cherry in the flavor.  There was more sweetness here, but the hops still managed to cut through it at the end.

Daily Crisis IPA: Just a hint of citrus in the aroma.  As far as IPA's go this was a bit different.  First there is lots of light malt but almost no hops.  You have to wait a bit.  Give it a few seconds.  Keep waiting... hold... there it is.  Pine and floral hops eventually show up almost after the rest of the flavor has already passed.  I enjoyed it to a certain degree but I think those who really, really like an IPA would find this disappointing and they would probably be right to think that.

Spooners Stout: Intense coffee aroma here.  Kind of a drier Guinness clone although I did get hints of chocolate peaking out from the creamy roasted grain flavor.

Scotch Ale: This packed a hell of a hop wallop for the style. Sweet roasted malt with light cherry fruit carried most of the flavor but there was a very distinct pine bitterness.

The Bounty Part 2: The Others

Okay, so I wasn't quite done with Layffette Brewing Company.  As I said last week, their beer is pretty much awesome and it is plentiful.  However, if for some reason some person were to glance up at their beer board and dismiss it with both a 'phooey' and maybe even a 'pesha' you do have options.

Oh so many options.

Since I already drank my way through what they had to offer, I went back to wade farther into Indiana beer. 

Sun King - Sunlight Cream Ale: This was the last of Sun King's regular brews I hadn't gotten my hands on.  I talked about the Osiris IPA and the Wee Mac in a previous post.  I picked up a sweet lemon grass aroma.  True to the nature of a cream ale, it had some extra body and a good dose of sweet cream flavor.  There was maybe a hint of citrus in the back, but mostly pretty much what you would expect from the style.  Not bad in any sense, but lacks a bit of complexity.

Triton Brewing Company - Rail Splitter: A flagship IPA from another Indianapolis brewery that appeared on my radar.  I picked up citrus hops on the aroma and really, really picked it up in the flavor.  The floral and citrus was pretty intense but is was tempered to a certain degree by some caramel malt.  Hoppy IPA, but not so much that it can only be enjoyed by someone who can check the IBU's in their bloodstream.

Flat 12 Bierwerks - Pogues Run Porter: A regular brew from another Indianapolis Brewery that appeared on my radar (The damn things must be breeding somehow). The name of this porter tips its hat to the British working-class origins of the style.  The name and label also appear to be a shout-out to Shane McGowen of the Pogues.   I'm not a hundred percent sure but I'll let you be the judge:

If nothing else, a reminder to floss regularly.

Anyway, I liked the licorice, coffee aroma on this beer.  Lots of that same bitter coffee as well as some chocolate make this a pretty typical porter.  A decent amount of wood and pine hops add just a hint of complexity that give it a something extra. A typical porter with a kick, you might say.

And with the above image forever burned into your brain, that's it for Indiana for now... I swear.  At least for a week.  Maybe more.  We will see.

Cheers.

Founding Fathers: Washington D.C.

So we're in our nation's captiol this week.

Okay, I lied.  We're on the outskirts of the D.C. area on the Maryland side of the city, but from what I can tell from the news, there is abolutely nothing going on in the middle of this city worth paying attention to.  Mostly a lot of men in suits figuring out new and exiting ways to screw a lot of people over and steal a staggering amount of money.  It's probably better for everyone involved if we find a quite place to sit and weather the storm with a pint.  And I have found such a place.

Franklin's Brewery, Restruant and General Store is... well it's a little out there.  Both in scope and brewing style which is just kinda awsome.  I think the best way to describe this place is, it's like the Cracker Barrel for lunatics.  They've got a nice restruant, an attached gift shop with all sorts of eclectic wares and enough beer to keep the voices quiet for a few precious minutes.  The whole place has kind of a relaxed art house feel which is kind of cool.  That same style translates into how they brew beer which leads to some fun when it comes time to sink a few pints.

Old Miser: A winter ale with a light fruity aroma.  It's quite malty with some rich, maybe just slightly tart cherry fruit with some earthy woody notes and a slight pine bitterness.  Slightly unusual beer but excellent one. It's packs quite a bit of body but it has a very drinkable quality about it.

Highland Hugh:  No real aroma on this scotch ale.  The flavor is intently fruity with a slight rum flavor right off the top.  As the flavor continued to work through the palate I picked up some leather and some and a slightly bitter finish.

Broken Gnome:  This is a darker belgian ale with a light Bananna aroma.  The flavor contains leathery, spicy notes that kind of start out and fade into a light bed of tropical fruit that's quintessentially Belgian.  It's takes the imbiber to a weird place for a minute before returning them home a little confused but overall very pleased with the experience.

Private IPA: Typical citrusy aroma.  It's very hoppy but its one of those beers that has enough hop flavor and malt to balance the bitterness, something that I seem to be finding more and more.  Maybe it's me and the hopheads of the world are finally wearing me down. 

Hop Zen: A hoppy beer that's closer to a bitter amber ale.  Similar hop and flavor profile as the Private IPA  with a flash of caramel and toasted grains that help manage the hop bill.

Black hop down: I'm sensing a pattern in the aroma.  The dark beer qualities, black roasted grain coffee, appear in the background and serve to prop up the hops.  

Farewell to Farms: I pick up a lot of floral aroma here with a hint of caramelly sweetness.   In the flavor the sweetness and the floral hop qualities really play well together.  It's not overtly sweet but just a nice, flavorful lighter beer.

Bending Tradition part 2: Baltimore Maryland.

I broke this piece up into two parts for a couple reasons. First, I really did spend an unusual amount of time at Pratt St. and it just seemed that one post would be too long. Second, my next stop was Palm Springs California. This is where old millionaires go to die. There is nothing in the way of craft booze. There's nothing in the way of craft anything. The whole place is filled with just enough entertainment to distract their elderly patrons from the grim reality of their own mortality. So... back to Baltimore.

3 Spires Ale: I very rarely find a beer that just doesn't click with me. This is one if them. The aroma was nice, it was sweet smelling with a fruity cider aroma. I went to take a drink, made a face and wondered aloud if they meant to do that. It was like a hoppy apple cider. In my mind the English herbal hops they used just didn't go with the slightly sour taste that comes from the malt. I am assuming here that they didn't have an infection in the keg.

Ironman Pale Ale
Time to go back to basics, and thus is about as strait forward as they come. Except for a slight citrus flavor at the top this is about as classic an English pale as exists. Clean with herbal, grassy hops. Fairly dry. Nothing special but good for a pale session beer.

Coventry Cream Ale: I think the best part of this beer was watching them pour it. It came out an opaque straw color with a rich foamy head that resembled a nitrous stout. It had a very light fruity aroma, but was way hoppier than I could have imagined. There was some slight sweetness that was quickly taken down by a whole lot of herbal hops.

Cask Aged Vanilla Oatmeal Stout: Pratt street offers selection of rotating cask aged ales. This was one of thier selections. It has a very strong chocolate and coffee aroma. The vanilla really comes out in the flavor to the point that it overpowers the rest of the beer. True to the nature of Oliver Brewing, it ended with a generous amount of English hops. It wasn't overpowering, but it did seem out of place.

Back to the Midwest next week. Cheers!

Bending Tradition part 1: Baltimore MA

There is something inherently authentic about Pratt St Ale house in downtown Baltimore. Partially it the location; the bar is in an old brick building just far enough away from the harbor to avoid a lot of tourist traffic, but close enough for convenience.
Its partly because of its unassuming nature. Their beer clearly follows a traditional English theme, but it doesn't beat you over the head with that fact.
Most of all it is a traditional bar for the same reason a dirty dive bar named McLeary's is more Irish than the big Irish-themed bars with Guinness cocktails and waitresses wearing plaid skirts. It's traditional, not because it tried to be. It just is.
I had the rare opportunity to make this bar my home for the better part of three days. Normally time constraints only allow me enough time to stop by for a single evening, have cross section of interesting beers and wrote up some pithy comments that make it sound like I know what I am talking about.
This time I a actually got to spend quite a but of time and, it should be noted, I still didn't have time to wade through all of their creations. Pratt Street Ale house is not a brewery per se, rather they serve beer from Oliver Brewing Ltd. The also pour a great deal of beers from other local breweries. What I am saying is that there is quite an extensive menu to get through. So grab a beer and let's get started.

Merry SOB

I started with a seasonal beer known lovingly as the Merry SOB. It's actually a cooperative brew with two other local breweries, the Brewers Art and Stillwater. This is a dark Belgian style holiday beer. It starts rich and malty with a lot of tropical fruit, citrus and raisin flavors. It tries to blend that with slightly spicy bitter hops. It finishes a little dry and the combination leaves a strange aftertaste. Not bad but I don't see myself drinking a lot of it.

Pagan Porter:
Not a lot to say about this one. Light roasted malt aroma. Malty and roasted off the top and finishes dry with bitter English hops. Very simple beer, but it's everything a porter needs to be.

3 Lions

3 Lions: In the porter they went for simplicity, in their English Brown Ale they... er... didn't. It had a very sweet,, nutty aroma. Flavor starts with caramel and light fruit, like apple or pear. The hops add a touch of balance with some pine, herbal and some liquorice flavors. Medium bodied drinkable beer. I liked this one.


Daft Punk: This ale is "American as it gets.". The idea is that they took an American IPA and, as Americans are want to do, made it bigger stronger and faster... or at least hoppier.  It has hops during the boil, hops added after and hops during fermentation.  Let it be known that while I enjoy IPA's, when brewers start adding hops as if it were an Olympic event, I usually have to bow out.  From the description provided by the bartender, I was pretty sure this was going to be one of those.  The aroma suggested something different.  There were, of course, Northwest hops in the aroma, but they were very slight.  The flavor was pretty well balanced.  Though I am not sure if this is the quintessential American IPA that they advertised that it was, it was pretty good.  It started off with Northwest citrus hops and slowly blended to spicier English hops towards the end.

I am going to leave this as it is for now.  More to come later.  Cheers.