Full Circle Kölsch

If you all remember your beer style lessons, you''ll recall that a Kölsch is a beer style originating in Köln (Cologne) Germany - a hybrid of ale and lager styles - brewed with top fermenting yeast, making it an ale, but lagered, i.e. set aside to cool and age, which you do with lagers. Technically it's a Kölsch-style, since you have to be brewing in Köln to call your ale a Kölsch. 

Full Circle pours a cloudy, very carbonated, golden hue, with a short white head. There's subtle aromas and tastes of pear, white grape and honey. It's pretty light, so it's a good fit for the still-hot days of late August, early September. Not bad.

Dragon's Milk Bourbon Barrel Stout

Yes, yes, I know it's not the correct season for Ill-Gotten Booty to be drinking stouts, let alone Imperial stouts, and forget about Bourbon barrel Imperial stouts...but I was so intrigued by the new offering on the shelf that I had to pick up a four-pack.

Pours a really, really, really, deep brown, almost black that just sucks up the light with an invisible head. The bourbon comes through even before the first sip, as the aroma tantalizes the olfactory nerves. The name suggests that it might be a milk stout, a.k.a. a sweet stout, and it certainly has a creamy sweetness to it, as well as some nice vanilla notes. There is just a smidgen of chocolate and coffee, but not much, although I'm catching some dark fruits (fig, date, raisin) as it warms up. The consistency is a bit thin, but the taste isn't. Please sir, may I have another?

The Ogden Belgian Style Tripel by Goose Island

The name comes from William Ogden, who opened Chicago's first brewery, the beer is part of Goose Island's "Imperial Series", the style is a Belgian Tripel. The Ogden pours a hazy gold, with a frothy white, three-finger head. Citrus aromas tickle the nostrils right off. Some pepper, honey and a little coriander. It's not as whiskey-maple-syrup smooth and dark as I've come to expect from Belgian Tripels and even dubbels, but a little research showed me that golden is the traditional color of the style. The IBU level is 35, about what you'd expect from a pale ale and the ABV is 9%, right in the money for a tripel. This is as smooth, light and delicious as Goose Island premium brews usually are. You won't be disappointed. 8.75 on the IGB scale!

Sam Adams Harvest Saison

Part of the 2014 Harvest Collection, Harvest Saison pours a delightfully hazy ripe pineapple hue with an short eggshell colored head. Sweet to the taste, made with barley, oats, rye and wheat, this saison delivers on the Belgian style very well. Banana, bubble gum, pineapple and pear all vie for the attention of the taste buds. Similar in some respects to a hefeweizen, or even a dunkelweizen (sans the dark color of course) but with a character all its own. Great addition to the annual Harvest Collection.

Ad Astra Ale by Free State Brewing

Pours a coppery bronze color with a teensy little beige head. Getting some toast with the first few sips. Some honey and peppery notes as well. Just a hint of peach on the back of the tongue as it warms up. Not a bad autumn brew...even though it is freakin' hot outside!

New Belgium Abbey

First of all, I can't believe that I have never had one of these before. I've tried many different varieties of New Belgium brews and reviewed most of them, but somehow missed Abbey. Billed as a Belgian Dubbel, Abbey pours a deep mahogany with ruby highlights, with a  tan, one-finger head. malty sweetness, with a symphony of dark fruits: raisins, figs, plums, black cherries and dates. Lots of maltiness and even some subtle piney hops hiding out behind the scenes. Great representative of the style.

New Belgium Tour de Fall Pale Ale

Pours a coppery amber color, with a beige three-finger head. Clear, with no sediment apparent. Bready taste right off the bat, with some floral notes floating around waiting to be discovered. Hops are fairly mild, with none of the obvious pine or grapefruit that you sometimes get, balanced nicely with the malty caramel sweetness. One thing that I've noticed about New Belgium is that they don't just beat one style to death, or tart their beers up with exotic flavorings (usually!) but just make good solid brews. I've reviewed several of their pale ales in this space and they're all a little different, starting four years ago with Mighty Arrow. Tour de Fall is a keeper...have another one on me.

Modern Monks Fox Hole Pivo

Fox Hole is a bar in Wilbur, Nebraska and pivo is Czech for beer. Pouring a clear pale golden hue with a towering four-finger head that quickly recedes to one finger, this Modern Monks creation is billed as a Bohemian style pilsner. However it's not as hoppy as I'd expect a pilsner to be; more like a Kölsch if I had to hang a label on it. The under 4% ABV makes it very easy to drink more than one, but really, the taste is smooth almost to the point of blandness. Nice try though.

Beer Styles

When I first started getting interested in craft beers and micro-brews a few years ago, I focused a lot on the differences and similarities among the different beer styles. I did research on the internet and at the library, collecting various charts and beer "family trees", trying to make sense out of the traits that defined each style. And since we don't have a reinheitsgebot here in the U.S. (or anywhere other than Germany for that matter) brewers can pretty much call a beer whatever they damn well please! While it appears to me that in the early days of American craft brewing, brew masters attempting to brew "true to style", whether that meant a traditional or regional style, or a resurrected  type of beer that had long disappeared. As more an more micro-brews sprung up, engendering more and more competition (as well as other market forces) naturally we saw more innovation with a bewildering array of beers flooding the market. the counterpoint to the huge number of beers and breweries we saw that certain beer styles had a coolness factor that couldn't be ignored. One of these was the IPA. IPA stands for India Pale Ale, a designation given during Britain's colonial days to beers that had to stand up to the long trip by ship to India, necessitating a lot of hops and a lot of alcohol, both which served to act as preservatives. (Some research indicates that this may be a myth, however)

Within the modern brewing community, "IPA" became synonymous with "really hoppy" and many breweries designated their hoppiest beer as an IPA. This resulted in a wide variance in IBU's (International Bittering Unit - a measurement of hop derived bitterness) from brewer to brewer and region to region, with the Pacific Northwest gaining a reputation for being a center for hoppy beers.

With the popularity of IPA's has come the phenomena of branding anything that is even slightly hoppy as an IPA. You have your Black IPA's, Red IPA's, Belgian or White IPA's, Rye IPA's ad infinitum. There is some disagreement among the craft beer community about whether or not this is a good thing. If you are one who believes that craft brewing is a sacred calling that should be outside the realm of crass commercialism, then sure, it's bad. But if you recognizer that it's a business like any other, you see that "IPA" has become shorthand for "hoppy" and leave it at that.

Another appellation that has achieved critical mass is the term "Imperial". Originally used only as part of the style Imperial Russian Stout, a specific style of stout that received its name due to it being brewed in  England for the Russian Czars,"'Imperial" has come to mean "a really large amount of alcohol" when appended to an existing beer style, like "Imperial Porter", or "Imperial Amber".

The bottom line is that what a brewery calls its beer may or not be a helpful description of what is actually in the bottle. Read beer reviews, sample when possible and do your research. there's a lot great beer out there!

Tommyknocker Pick Axe IPA

Quite a bit lower on the IBU scale than IPA and A Half, but the hop bitterness seems more biting than that 80+ IBU beer. Pick Axe was formerly named Pick Axe Pale Ale, but it seems anything that's not a porter or a stout gets called an IPA these days. Pick Axe pours a light copper color, with a small, one-finger head. Piney character to the hops, with some pineapple and mango rounding things out. Pretty decent brew, although I'd still call it a pale ale!

Tommyknocker IPA & A Half

To any and all IGB fans out there, I apologize for no beer reviews for the last six weeks. I invested in the last of the Boss Tom's Golden Bock, so I wasn't doing much experimentation. And anyone who has found themselves de-friended from Facebook, it's nothing personal and I'll explain in person!

Well, after all of that I decided to visit my go-to beer store today and came across this little jewel in the seasonal/mixed 6 door. Check it out: 87 IBU with a 7.3% ABV. Nice.

IPA & A Half pours a hazy apricot hue with a fluffy white three-finger head. Very hoppy, with grapefruity hops predominating, balanced well with some tropical fruit sweetness, and maybe some honey overtones. Despite the high IBU, the hops does not overwhelm and, unlike some super-hopped IPA's and double and imperial IPA's, there's no sense that the hops are "too much". I'd give this an IGB rating of 8/10. Enjoy!