White Birch Brewing - Quad

In an earlier post I mentioned that Wally Liquors is carrying White Birch Beer. You didn't think that I just noticed that and failed to pick some up, did you?

This time around I grabbed their Quad. It's a Belgian Ale, but not in the intensely sour way that some Belgian beers are. This is well balanced, with a bit of the Belgian funk, but more hop and caramel character than anything. Sioux's entire review of it was "It's good. . . A little malty at the end, but still good" and if you knew how much Sioux dis-likes malt you would know that this speaks volumes.

The Quad is malty. It's also hoppy. Mostly it's flavorful. Flavorful, and strong. In fact another testament to it's flavor (and the power there of) is that you don't really notice the 11% abv until the very end of a sip, and then the alcohol burn is mistaken for a clean almost minty flavor. ( or perhaps I swallow too much mouth wash . . .)

This is a meat beer. Rich flavorful steaks. With steak sauce, and garlic mash potatoes. and a cigar. I'm going to have this again and pair it with a cigar . . . but now I'm going to go to bed. This is one bomber (22oz bottle) that will get you bombed.

I'm going to rate this a 4.7, and recommend that you try some soon. They only made 900 bottles of this batch . . . and I can confirm that there are not more than 899 left.

CAO Black - one of my top 5

So the Epicurean and I were sitting on the back porch at work - gotta love small companies - when we both decided that a glass of Ardmore Highland Single Malt, (non-chill filtered, peated, 46% alcohol by volume) and a cigar would be a good thing. Now the Ardmore is an unusual combination of sweet in the nose and front of the tongue, fire from the alcohol, and smoke from the peat. Not as smoky as one of my beloved Islay malts, but very enjoyable nonetheless.

I reached into my copious coolerdor and fished out a couple of 5" CAO Black cigars (apparently named "Storm") with their cedar sleeves still intact . CAO Blacks are a top-5 for me for three reasons: a tremendous consistency from cigar to cigar, medium bodied smoke with hints of cedar and leather, and an ability to stay smokeable down to the nub. It features a Connecticut-seed Ecuador-grown wrapper, with habano filler from Nicaragua and Mexico. It's got good solid flavor throughout.

But this cigar won't destroy a newcomer to cigars. In fact, it would be a lovely way to descend into this particular vice. When smoked slowly, it is very mild. The Epicurean thought it was a decent smoke too, perhaps a bit light for him, although he shredded the wrapper pretty fast on this one. At least he didn't eat it.

For me, a must-have in the humidor. 4.5 out of 5!

The Great Divide Mix Pack

Normally Sioux and I don't keep a lot of bottled beer in the fridge. It's generally whatever is left over from the last event. We have beer in the kegerator, and some 22oz bombers of specialty beers that we want to try. (We actually go through the beer in the kegerator slower than we do beer in bottles... we're too lazy to make sure we get a full pour.)

This weekend was different. We were going to the first ever "Jay Lane Summer Games"--a cook out with bracketed tournaments for the three B's (badminton, bocce and bean bag toss) and as such we were going to need more portable beverage choices.

Tap that keg (of wine?)

The tradition of drought beer grew out of beer being shipped in casks. Those same casks are were often used to ship, store, and age wine... So why don't we see wine in kegs?

I'm guessing that it has a lot to with the romance of opening a bottle of wine, and that while most beers don't "lie down" well, wine continues to improve in the bottle over time, so there is value in the additional step of cellaring it.

However apparently that is changing. Debbie (Geoff's wife) found a story on boston.com about serving wine from kegs. It actually makes a lot of sense. It's faster, easier, cheaper, and more ecological to serve a beverage out of a keg, and nobody ever gets that 3rd glass of wine out of a bottle that's been open for a day (or two). That's assuming of course that the restaurant cleans their taps.

Still, I don't think you have to worry about dirty taps for a while. A normal tap system would turn every wine into a sparkling wine, so to serve keg wine you are looking at a price in the 5 digits to get started. That ought to keep your favorite dive bar where you have to drink fast moving bottled beer from jumping in the game.

Ardmore & Cohiba Pairing

Geoff and I only made it until Wednesday this week before we broke down and had a, um, strategy meeting.

We accompanied our musings with a couple drams of Ardmore Peated Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, and a Cohiba Cigar.

To be honest as a pairing these two particular vices don't exactly complement each other, but taken separately they are both recommended. Let's start with the Scotch.

Keep that Damn Fruit Out of My Beer

I hate fruit in my beer.

Seriously.

Beer has a flavor. Drink it for what it is.

That said I have never had a beer call out for lemon quite the way the Harpoon UFO White does.

First let's take care of some house keeping: