Brooklyn Blast!

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How else to make a solid case of the Mondays go away than to drink from our stockpile of good beer? Actually, my Mondays aren't too bad... I get some peace while the child is at school and Nathan is at work, get stuff done around the house, and get in a good run. For the most part, I can't complain about Mondays. But they are still a great excuse to drink beer, don't you agree? Mean Girls is playing in the background while Nathan packages a metric fuckton of beer for an epic beer trade. Actually, this is a pretty great night.

I actually really enjoy Brooklyn's beers, despite us only having reviewed two of them to date. They produce consistently solid brews, right down to their lager. This is their "big" IPA offering, which is brewed with both American and English hops because New York City is halfway between the Pacific Northwest and England. Interesting concept.  Coming in at 8.4%, this recently went from being a seasonal brew to being offered year-round.

This pours a beautiful medium golden orange color with a finger or so of white head. The aroma on this is caramel and citrus with some almost grassy notes to round it out. There is also a bang of pineapple in the nose. Taking a sip, it's almost all caramel and it's very malt-forward. The grassy and pineapple notes really come through in the taste, as well as some vague lemon and orange. It is a very well-balanced "big" IPA without a ton of hop bitterness, yet it's not overly sweet. The mouthfeel is well-carbonated and not too sticky.

Overall, I can't decide whether I like this a lot or not. It has been well-documented that I adore hops. But I can also applaud the use of milder English hops to balance out the palate-killers that are most of those from the Pacific Northwest. It's good, but of course, I would prefer it to be a showcase of the hops.

4/5 caps

-Jennie

While Jennie had a mellow day, my day was chaotic and another example of why I need to get out of shipping. For 7 years, I've wasted my life in this position, only to be bombarded at home with packaging 15 twelve-ounce bottles, a sixteen-ounce can, a twelve-ounce can, and 5 twenty-two- ounce bottles thoroughly to survive the long journey of private courier from Columbus, Ohio to Iowa. 39 pounds of beer and packaging, the packaging that represents pain and agony of work. Sigh. At least there's one reward, good beer.

As this has had time to warm up some, there's still a little bit of white head lingering on this golden orange nectar. This has an aroma, at this point, of fresh cut grass, slight caramel with faint hints of citrus and tropical fruits. As I swirl it (FUCK! I'm officially a beer snob!), the caramel comes out more and the other aromas dissipate. The first sip is caramel heavy with some malty stickiness up front, the hops come in about 2-3 seconds later, lending pineapple and citrus flavors. The stickiness fades after the hops come in, and this finishes slightly juicy.

As I listen to the happy bubbling of the fermenting bucket (a soon to be 11%+ ABV Count Chocula Stout), I reflect on the flavor profile of the Blast! It's not the hop bomb I typically adore, but it's not bad. I would happily turn non-IPA drinkers onto this to get them turn to the Hop Side. By the way, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior, Hopsus? The 8.4% ABV on this isn't noticed initially, but with each sip, a nice warming sensation comes over you as the constant 'blub blub blub' of the airlock is pounding in your ear, much like the Tell-Tale Heart. Blub blub, blub blub.... I seem to be rambling and apparently as this warms ups, it still has the same flavor profiles that Jennie noticed when this was cold.

4.1/5 caps

-Nathan-

Cheese pairing: Double Gloucester
Food pairing: Chicken vindaloo
Music pairing: Beastie Boys, "No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn"

Brooklyn Sorachi Ace

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It's been a rough day, but I'll spare you the boring details of caring for my father and the minutia that is taking care of my favorite cancer and dementia patient. Both collided in spectacular fashion today. Nathan and I reside in one another's head enough that we both had in mind to drink the Sorachi tonight, without speaking to one another about it previously, as well as to share with you our opinion of the beer. We haven't done a lot from Brooklyn, and that is nothing but sheer oversight on our behalf. We enjoy their brews, and we do have one more special one stashed, so look for that review to come soon. We also just happen to love the Sorachi Ace hop strain; it's featured in our award-winning homebrew, Sourpuss. It stands apart from other hop strains because of its fantastic lemony and lemongrass-y qualities. When you brew with lemongrass, like we do, it's a natural addition. 

Let's get to Brooklyn's interpretation with this hop. This beer comes with a lot of hype. It's a saison or farmhouse style beer (currently very trendy in the beer world), that features the Sorachi Ace hop. Hell yeah. It pours the color of straw with a large, pillowy, white head. It is fairly hazy, which is expected in a saison. The aroma on this is very faint; I pick up tones of lemon, lemongrass, and straw in the nose, alongside some faint esters from the Belgian yeast strain. One thing I enjoy about many saisons is that they drink a little cleaner than a witbier or hefeweizen, with fewer esters clogging my taste buds and overwhelming my olfactory nerves. In other words, the banana and clove are much more understated in such a style. Taking a healthy sip (there may or may not be some residual head on my nose from accidentally dunking my schnoz into it -- huh? I wonder if beer will clear up that pimple that's growing on my nose?), this is a complex beer that is going to take me a few minutes to deconstruct. There is a strong lemon presence throughout the taste, weaving in and out of notes of cracker, straw, grass, and an ever-so-faint clove-tinged earthiness from the yeast. This is an exceptionally light drinking beer, despite it's 7.6% ABV. It has great carbonation and the body is quite light. It would make a fantastic lawnmower beer, but for its moderate alcohol content and that it's a small batch beer. 

Overall, this is a very good offering from Brooklyn. If you can find some, please do yourself a favor and pick up a bottle. The lemon and the saison yeast work very well together in this. It's a very well-built beer. I've had my eye on this for awhile now, and with some pushing from Jay at Wine & Brew Emporium, I'm very glad we purchased this.

4.7/5 caps

-Jennie

So, reading Jennie's description of this, I'm more intrigued than I was from the get go. I'll keep this short and sweet instead of my initial game plan (because Klansman Jennie won't let me use 'water heads' and 'spastic mongoloids' as descriptive adjectives about my work day. Good job there, Hitler. The sheer dumbstruck look of the nitwit coworkers is one of the reasons I wanted to escape in both beer and literary adventures). 

This has a cloudy straw color with a strong, thick, foamy stark white head. An interesting aroma of straw and lemongrass with backbones of typical Belgian yeast esters (clove and spices). The flavor on this is interesting. Smooth, balanced with the yeast esters with lemon. There's also hints of straw (having worked on a horse ranch, by straw, I also mean the sweet smell of it). The rest of the flavor, Jennie has nailed (hehehe, that's what she said). For a 7.6% brew, this drinks smoother than most American Adjunct Lagers. A creamy mouthfeel with low carbonation makes this a great warmer weather brew. There's a slight stickiness that I notice on the back end that I've only had with Sorachi Ace, it's hard to describe. It's a slight stickiness blended with a light numbing from the oils. Interesting how it pairs with the saison style. And, yes, spell check, saison is a fucking word. 

4.6/5 caps

-Nathan-

Cheese pairing: A block of queso quesadilla

Food pairing: Ceviche

Music pairing: A sassy Latin salsa dance tune