The Great Nebraska Beer Fest: Part 1

It is my opinion that, cities like Milwaukee and Chicago notwithstanding, the Midwest was late to the microbrew revolution.

It's the fifth year of the Great Nebraska Beer Fest, my first year attending and proof that they are learning fast, boy.

The great thing about the Great Nebraska Beer Fest (hereafter known as the GNBF because I am freaking lazy, deal with it) is that they bring the Midwest beer out in force.  Besides the major cities in the area, the hinterlands of Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin and Nebraska are well represented.  Some of big breweries from elsewhere have a presence as well, but they are a minority.

It is a celebration of Midwest Brewing.

The other cool thing was the size.  I've been to beer fests in  Idaho and Oregon and they very much bring the crowds.  This means, however that one gets a beer and immediately jumps into the line again for the next one.  By the time they get to the front of the line, it will be time for another beer.

Here, this is not the case.  It's a smaller event then I've been to in the past, but there are more then enough breweries bringing strange and unusual beers to make it interesting and there are rarely any lines whatsoever.

The location has something to be desired.  I have no knowledge of what went into the process of finding a venue for the GNBF, but a strip mall parking lot?  For one it was one of the hottest weekends of the year in Nebraska that weekend and there was probably three square feet of shade, each crowded with pale drunks trying to keep from catching on fire in the direct sunlight.  The blacktop doesn't help.

Anyway, on to the avalanche of beers.

Nebraska Brewing Company, Fathead: A new selection from a brewery I've covered in a previous post.  Very new, actually.  Truth be told, it's not even available for another month, but this is a special occasion.  It has a nutty, dark fruit and red wine aroma.  I picked up licorice, vanilla, roasted nut and a surprising dash of bitter hops.  It reminds me of a bitter scotch ale.  The flavor combination was interesting, but they clashed a bit.

Big Wood Brewing, Morning Wood: Coffee stout, a beer style for those mornings when a drunken haze is the best way to approach a day.  It has a heavy sweet mocha, espresso aroma, but those qualities diminish slightly in the flavor.  It was lighter and watery.  Good but lacking some of the body I was hoping for, I think.

Big Wood Brewing, Bark Bite IPA: This, appropriately, had a woody, pine aroma with a hint of honey.  It was quite sweet and malty at first, and it helped temper the herbal pine hops that followed soon after.

Blue Blood Brewing, Blue Blood IPA: This is a brewery that I just recently became aware of, I found a couple of their brews at the supermarket and included them in the last bottle beer tour.  The aroma carried the promise of citrusy hops.  A promise that was kept, although not to the intensity I expected.  Like the Morning Wood, the flavor just wasn't there, especially for an IPA.  In that heat, it was a welcome and refreshing beer, but lacked something for the style.

Free State Brewing, Ad Astra: Though I had never had a chance to sample their beer until now, I've always had a soft spot for Free State Brewing.  Kansas is a state that gave up prohibition very, very grudgingly... which is strange because you'd thing people would be in favor of anything that makes the state more livable.  Anyway, until 1989, brewing was still illegal in Kansas.  Just to emphasise what we are dealing with, there was a time that Kansas even outlawed any liquor on aircraft crossing Kansas' airspace.  (So next time your flying over Kansas, feel free to raise your drink and a middle finger) When the law was finally repealed, Free State became the first legal brewery in Kansas in over 100 years.

Anyway, history lesson over.  Beer!  The Ad Astra has a very light aroma.  The flavor is nutty, fruity and contains hints of red wine.  Very nice, sweet, malty amber ale.

Free State Brewing, Storm Chaser: Seasonal offering from Free State.  Citrus hop aroma that pretty much follows in it's entirety to the flavor.  The hops are enough to produce a back-of-the-throat bitterness, but there's enough flavor that I didn't find it overpowering.

CIB: Yola: Here's the best description I can offer for CIB Brewing.  Somebody has gone out and started doing legally what Grandpa had been doing in the barn for years.  CIB specializes in 'high alcohol farmhouse ales', specifically beers fermented with wild yeast and bacteria.  That makes CIB the place to go for sour beers, a style so obscure that only Portland or a pack of lunatics in the wilds of Iowa could possible pull it of.   The Yola Artisnal Ale starts off with a fruity honey aroma.  The first thing I noticed on the flavor was a very sour citrus that was followed by some nutty dark fruit notes.  It was one of those beers that took me quite a while to decide whether I liked it or not.

CIB: Cherry: There was some considerable plum and cherry sweetness on the aroma here.  The flavor had much more sour cherry along with some very complex earthy flavors.  It was quite nice, but I don't know if I would drink a lot of it although the complexity of the flavor would have me reaching for another glass.

Left Coast Brewing: Voodoo: One of the few breweries from outside the neighboring states.   This had a roasted coffee aroma.  The flavor has a lot of that coffee along with some dark roasted grain.  There was a heavy dose of herbal hops that showed up and kinda clashed with the rest of the flavor.  I kinda enjoyed this beer right up to that point.

That's the end of part one.  More goodness from the Midwest to follow in the coming weeks.  Cheers until then.

Yes, they even put it in the Beer: Louisville Kentucky

I am, of course talking about bourbon.  Kentucky is kinda known for it.  There's more brewing going on in Kentucky then I think anyone who lives outside the state was wont to expect.  Of course the most popular brew in the area is anything that spent some time in an old bourbon barrel.  But more on that in a minute.

This week, a quick trip to Louisville brought me to Bluegrass Brewing Company where they insist that beer is food.  At least, that's the phrase they put on the shirts here.  Overall not a bad place for a pint or two.  On beers that featured hops, I think they tended to overdo it a tad, but overall not bad.

Summer Wheat: Light on aroma but it hides quite a lot of flavor in there.  It's just a little sweet with a little roasted quality in there as well.  I picked up a hint of citrus and it had a creamy, smooth feel to it.  Interesting body to a lighter beer, but the overall effect was really good.

Alt Beer: Maybe it was a shock to the system after the much sweeter wheat beer earlier, but this one struck be as increadibly bitter.  It was heavy on the medicinal hop flavor to the point I couldn't pick out much else in the flavor profile.  The bitterness faded a little as I went on, but I started picking up a skunky flavor at that point.  Not the best beer I've had recently.

Nut Brown: This beer had a lovely nutty caramel aroma.  The flavor was lighter but it managed to avoid the watery taste of some brown ales.  It's sweet, roasted with some dry, woody flavors to for blalance.

American Pale Ale: Light, spicy citrus aroma.  The citrus flavors on the palate are rather more intense.  Some floral notes follow towards the end that linger and it finishes rather dry.

Dark Star Porter: There was a pretty standard light, roasted aroma on this beer and it pretty much stayed the same in the flavor, although I picked up the same skunky flavor on this beer as it warmed as well.

Bourbon Stout: The smell is pretty much all bourbon and the flavor is dominated with that particular spirit, but it helped with some sweet roasted malty flavors.   Very drinkable for a beer with this kind of body and this kind of alcohol content.

Homewreaker IPA: The aroma is light, but this beer is the definition of a hop bomb.  Its that kind of bitterness that hides any characteristic except for the fact that, 'this is freaking bitter'.   Like punch right to the back of the throat bitter.

Bottle Beer Tour #5: The malted and the hoppy

 It's bottled beer tour time again... er because it's summer and I don't actually go that many places in the summer.  It's random sampling time so I present five beers that I drank.
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...

That sounded more exiting in my head.  Anyway, here we are.

Shiner Brewery: Ruby Redbird: Summer beer featuring grapefruit.  Nice, citrusy aroma with a hint of herbs.  Light, refreshing taste like a light, sweet, carbonated orange juice.  I can see how this would be nice on a hot summer day, but not something I would make a habit of drinking a lot.  Pretty good though.

World Brews: Dieselpunk Porter: Okay, I confess, this is a beer I bought primarily for the label.  It's source is wierd.  The only indication of the brewery is a small note on the label indicating World Brews.  Trying to find any information on World Brews is a bit interesting.  I can't tell for sure, but they seem to be a brewery out of Rochester who's entire buisness centers around brewing microbrews for sale in grocery stores and similar markets.  However Beeradvocate.com has two different listings for this beer, one from California and one from Montana.  There are whispered words among the beer geeks of the Internets that this is actually one of the Evil Empires trying to stick a foot in the door of microbrewing.
There's probably a story in and of itself right there.
Anyway the aroma is very chocolatey.  The taste is has more bitterness with some sharp roasted flavors and coffee along with the chocolate.  The feel is smooth with a semi-sweet finish.  Not bad for a sweeter porter.  Overall, if this is Budwieser or Miller's attempt to try and run with the little guys... meh, okay.

Flying Dog Brewery: Gonzo Imperial Porter: Beer brewed in honor of the late, great Hunter S. Thompson who once said, "Good people drink good beer."  I don't often comment on the label, but this is my all time favorite because... well, Ralph Steadman is damn near the textbook definition of awesome.
Wonderful sweet nose with hints of cherry and rasberry against a kind of herbal backdrop.  The fruit flavors hit first, but softly meld into something more like caramel and chocolate which blends into one final layer of flavor that leaves a hint of liquorice, vanialla and earth notes.  It finishes dry for something that packs this kind of malt bill.

Now let's get the hell out of here.  This is bat country.

Blue Blood Bewery: 1327 Pod's ESB:  Running back to good 'ol Nebraska for the last two.   Blue blood is a beer I've seen pop up in the grocery store just recently.  It's one of the few (but increasing) microbrews that come in a can.  At first, I was skeptical of the can as a conveyer of microbrew, but I've got to say, I'm a heavy convert.  No skunky beer problems, it stays colder and there is a pretty high convenience factor.  I'm just saying...
Anyway the ESB has a piny grassy aroma.  The flavor is has some light malt with just the right amount of hops to add to a refeshing, flavor-filled beer.

834 Happy As Ale: Lighter beer with a grassy, lemony aroma.  It starts with a pretty massive hop bill with lots of grassy, pine and lemon flavors there.  On  the bitterness scale, it gets closer to an IPA then a pale.

New Glarus: A tour in five bottles.

Last time I was in Wisconsin, I brought a few friends back with me.  I've been aware of New Glarus for a while now.  I previously talked about one of their beers that came back with me during the first of these bottle beer tours.  I had the opportunity to acquire a few more of it's cousins for an unofficial family reunion. 

Two Women: A lager brewed in honor of the women of brewing as done by two companies run by women, New Galrus and Weyerrmann malting.  It has a slightly grassy aroma.  I picked up notes of peach and nectarine along with some grassiness from the hops.  I think I detected a touch of vanilla in there as well. 

Totally Naked: This is a beer brewed just as the label suggests.  Malted barley, hops, water and yeast. It is simplistic and it's suppose to be.  It has a light, grassy aroma.  The flavor is slightly malty with almost no detectable hops.  For a beer brewed to be a simple refreshing drink on a hot summer day, it hits the mark pretty well.

Dancing Man: Belgian wheat beer.  It has a heavy clove aroma.  At first, the flavor was really, really intense.  The tropical fruit, peach, clove and spice was almost too much at first, but as the beer warmed and my palate adjusted, I found it to be pretty enjoyable.

IIPA: I had to laugh at the label description for this beer, "More the 85 provocative IBUs reverberate cleanly through this Double IPA.  Local Wisconsin hop saturation from kettle boil to dry hop cellaring dominates this elegant and lustful sensory enchantment.  You hold a deceptively seductive Original Gravity of 20.9 Plato, following the always 100% natural bottle fermentation.  Luscious English Maris Otter malt is the essential heart of this voluptuous Double IPA.  Surrender is inevitable, so enjoy now!

I don't want to alarm anyone, but I think my beer might be hitting on me.

Apparently this a beer where they turn their brewer loose on whatever idea might be floating around his little mind.   This particular idea had citrus and herbs and spice apparent on the nose.  It's smooth, although those hops come on in force.  There's a moment where the malt holds them back, but they are there and they hit the palate hard with a dry, herbal grassy flavor that affect the back of the throat more then anything.  The finish is remarkably clean for a beer like this... though I don't think it's quite the 'lustful sensory enchantment' they claim.   Come to think of it, I don't know what a lustful sensory enchantment is, but I'll have to ask my wife if she's willing to do that.

Berliner Weiss: This is the second example of one of New Glarus' experimental beers.  This is a obscure style that charmed the likes of Napoleon in centuries past.  This pours very pale and clear from the bottle.  Has that wheaty, carbonated aroma of a light pilsner beer.  And the flavor... was not at all what I was expecting.  It is extremely tart.  The light color hides a lot of body, but it's still has a fizzy mouthfeel.  The flavor is refreshingly lemony, like a carbonated light lemonade.  Not bad, but I don't think I'd drink a lot of this.

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.