Founders is quickly becoming one of my favorite breweries for several reasons.  First on that list is that we share the same philosophy – ordinary beers are to be avoided.  You can taste this point of view in just about every beer Founders brews, as each is bold, memorable and delicious.

Founders takes this philosophy to the next level with Nemesis, a Maple Bourbon Barrel Aged Wheat Wine.  Let that sink in for a moment:  Maple.  Bourbon. Oak. Wheat. Wine.  That’s an unusual combination and Founders embraces it.  After all, the label proclaims, “every batch diabolically brewed to decimate ordinary-average-run-of-the-mill tasting beer.”  And they succeed here.  Boy do they succeed!   

The pour is a radiant golden amber, with a short tan head that dissipates quickly. There’s a bit of haze in there, but you can see through to the other side if you really try.  Pulling the glass to your nose reveals some familiar and wonderful aromas, typical of a bourbon-aged brew from Founders, but with a couple of twists.  There are dark dried fruits and the promise of boozy delight, but there’s also a hint of cherry and a general sweetness there as well, probably due to the wheat.

The first sip attacks your palate with many sensations at once in the way a really special brew does.  This beer begins and ends with a heavy bourbon flavor. In between, it treats you to a sweet and hearty wheat base, a touch of maple and a smoky bubblegum flavor that’s spot on.  The finish is a bit peppery, as the bourbon content in this brew makes itself known.  If you love whiskey, this is the brew for you. If you don’t, then save then these for someone who does – because it’s the bourbon that’s calling the tune here.

I’ve been told that Nemesis is a tough beer to get a hold of and I can see why.  It’s pretty special.  I was lucky enough to get a couple of 12oz bottles from one of the only cases to trickle into New Jersey.  It’s good to know good people in good places.  If you happen upon a bottle, snatch it up and you will not be disappointed.  This is certainly not your ordinary-average-run-of-the-mill tasting beer and it’s certainly not one to miss, especially if you like your beers big and barreled like I do.

So I’m not really sure why this brew is called Hairy Eyeball, but it definitely needs a better name…

The pour on this ale was a rich brown color with a creamy tan head and amber highlights in the glass.  The head never got really huge, but it was always there and left a lot of lacing on the glass as I drank it.

The nose on this brew was promising.  It had a lot of malty sweetness, but was balanced out nicely with a pungent hop bite.  There wasn’t much else here, a pretty straight forward beer.

The flavor is where this brew shines.  It started out with a sharp bite to the tongue with a very bitter quality but then turns to a big malty sweetness, all the while with an incredible creamy mouthfeel.  The overall flavor was actually a little complex with the creamy mouthfeel, the change in flavors and a surprising dry and clean finish that waited until I was almost finished with the brew until there was any residual flavor on my palate.

I just want to go on record here that I really appreciate the fact that I could enjoy this brew cold.  It seems like lately with all the stouts and porters I have been drinking that you need to let them warm up to enjoy the full flavor and mouthfeel of the brew.  This had it straight out of the fridge, and coming into the warmer months I appreciate a beer that drinks well cold with a great mouthfeel and big flavors below 40 degrees.

So to recap, I don’t get the name, this is a great beer with a great mouthfeel, and has lots of flavor cold!  I think this is a winner for me.  I’m buying it again.  That is two for two from this west coast brewery.  I’m looking forward to my next Lagunitas brew.

-Don

Usually a beer label will turn me off if it’s too cutesy or if the beer has a pun for a name (looking at you HE’BREW).  For some reason, I feel if they’re trying so hard to grab your attention with kitsch, the beer inside must not be that special.  It’s a stupid way to look at it (I just saved you the trouble of saying that in the comments, Don), but it does influence what I reach for on the shelf.

In the case of New Holland’s Night Tripper, the label just plain scared me.  Let’s face it, a jester is just an old-school clown, and clowns are scary as hell.  Especially ones with bulging eyes.  Anyway, I bought this beer despite the label, and I’m glad I did. 

It was an easy decision to make actually, because it was sitting next to its cousin on the shelf, New Holland’s excellent Dragon’s Milk, the beer that started me down the road to my current obsession with all things aged in barrels.

Night Tripper is not the world’s most complex beer, rather it’s a great example of what an imperial stout should be; dark, big, bold and chocolaty.

The pour was (wait for it) very dark, with a delightfully fluffy tan head.

The aroma was a straight forward blend of dark toasted cocoa and sweet malt.

The taste followed with bitter chocolate and lots of malt and not a lot else except maybe a hint of alcohol to support this beer’s imperial moniker.

This is simply a really solid Imperial Stout, and at $8.00 a bottle, another great value from New Holland.  It’s the perfect thing if you’re in the mood for a classic.  Just make sure to let it warm up a bit so you can enjoy the fullness of its character.

All that said, there were no real surprises to be had in the flavor, so why the devilish jester on the label?  Well in the end, this 22oz imperial imp did have a trick up its sleeve, as I thoughtlessly followed it up with a couple other 12oz imperials and woke up the next morning feeling a bit woozy.  I failed to notice that this beer has an ABV approaching 11%, as the alcohol was so cleverly hidden. Stupid clowns.

Next time I’ll know to proceed with caution when I see a scary jester on the label of a beer bottle.  You simply can’t trust a clown.  Words to live by, kids, words to live by.

It just so happens that the beer I chose was so awful, I had to pour it out. Wanna know who brewed this clunker?  Head over to THFB and check it out!

And if you haven’t had the pleasure, you should go to their site and become subscribers, because they are awesome fellas and the amount learning you can do there is immense. Your beer IQ will forever be increased.

Thanks guys!

When Jim and I first started this blog I began my education by going to many Bourbon and Whiskey blog sites and forums.  One inparticular I like a lot is www.bourbonenthusiast.com.  Bourbon Enthusiast is a great web forum to discuss all things bourbon, and as I was learning about all the great things there was to know about Whiskey, I realized I have a very limited selection here in Idaho as it is a control state and a board decides what liquor can be bought or sold within the state.  This leads to higher prices and less selection.  As I was pining about this problem, out of the blue one of the forum members sent me a bottle of Old Fitzgerald Bourbon, because he said life is too short not to be able to enjoy good bourbon.  I know there are a lot of similar stories out there of kindness and generosity that have been spawned from our relationships with craft beer and whiskey.

So here is an opportunity to reflect and share your stories.  Let me know when you had an opportunity to meet some of the people that you might correspond with on a day to day basis and it was great.  Let us know about the kind and generous acts that have come as a result of this online world.  Now’s our chance to remember and thank those that have been kind or good to us along the way in our journey.

I know, I know the Bud is a little overt here but you get the point.

-Don

So you can take this little analogy several ways.  First it was great that there were craft brewery delivery trucks there at all.  It shows that the small guys are starting to make some inroads into the local market, and have made great strides over the last decade or so.  Or you could say that the cream is rising, and Deschutes is more popular than Widmer, and that competition is compelling and leading to better breweries getting larger.  Or you could look at it like I did, and say that with all the strides that craft beer has made, and is making, that we still have a long way to go before we topple the King!

-Don

There’s two ways I can see to approach it.  Either make up for lost time by leaning towards whiskey or high ABV brews, or play it like a responsible grown up and go light on Saturday night so Sunday doesn’t come to quickly for your booze addled brain.  Of course you could just ignore it and do what you usually do, which will probably work, too.

For me, it’s going to be shootout weekend.  I have Founders KBS and Oak Aged Coffee Yeti in the fridge – who will win the crown of supreme barrel aged coffee stout?  I also have Founders Old Curmudgeon Ale and some Weyerbacher Insanity – which is the best barrel aged ale?  And I have some Knob Creek to help ensure I don’t remember the answers and have to do it all again another time.

So how about you?  Any grand plans for the weekend that involve whiskey, beer or even *gasp* wine?  Are joining our pals over at Thank Heaven For Beer for their Sip With Us Saturday?  Anyone brewing their own or enjoying the fruits of their obsession?  Let us know below!

What I wasn’t prepared for was to really enjoy a stout that was in so many ways inferior to the big bold and thick brews I had mentioned above…

Indeed this stout was pretty thin.  It poured almost like an ale it was so thin, but had a HUGE amount of carbonation!  The head was ridiculous!  After I snapped this shot I kept pouring and the head actually came up about an inch over the rim of the glass!  It was pretty cool, and had great retention.  Left a lot of lacing as you might expect too.

The nose was pretty interesting for a stout.  Obviously there was a lot of roasted malt and I could pick up on coffee and chocolate, but there was also a lot of hops.  Very intriguing for a stout.  I love hops, I’d eat hops if I could, I love them that much, so having hops appear in the nose of this stout was a real treat.

But what about the taste?  After all that is most important right?  Well it was interesting.  I had the kind of typical flavors you would expect from a stout chocolate, roasted malt nuttiness, and a little coffee flavor as well, but the finish had those hops making an appearance, and this wasn’t just a cameo, they were a full on co-star.  The mouthfeel was thin, but not watery, kinda medium bodied.

So how does this stack up, well it isn’t going to rock the stout world, and it doesn’t taste like you just drank liquid licorice, but it has a very nice flavor, and a really good serviceable quality that makes you think this is pretty good.  It is like the other Sierra Nevada brews, solid and good.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

-Don

What happens when you drink a single barrel bourbon, you take a gamble.  See somewhere out there is that elusive “Honey Barrel”, and that is what bourbon drinkers are searching for when they take a chance on single barrel bourbons.  Well, I thought I had it nailed, a sure thing with my latest bottle of Evan Williams Single Barrel…

As you can see this Bourbon was almost 10 years old, so it was nicely aged, and it was from Barrel number 7!  That is right lucky number seven, I though what are the odds that I would get a bottle from barrel number seven.  I even looked at the other bottles on the shelf, and the were both from barrel number 41.  What is lucky about the number 41?  Nothing.  So I had to get this one, I thought based on Vegas odds this was a shoe in.  If the Liquor store had the lotto machines I would have picked up a powerball ticket I was that sure of this bottle.

As you can see the color was great, a rich deep golden hue that I was so greatly anticipating.  The time was right, and I cracked the wax seal and poured a glass of this 86.6 proof or 43.3% ABV bourbon.

The nose on this bourbon was very promising.  It was a combination of apples, pears, and cherries, with a mild oakiness and just a touch of alcohol.

As I swirled this around my glass it had a great legginess to it, with lots of the little translucent drips falling back into the glass from the wet sides.

Then I took a sip, and it had a very nice flavor.  Sweet with pears and apples up front with a good kinda slick mouthfeel and some cherries and a little bit of caramel from the barrel char bringing up the rear.

The finish was decent and could be felt around mid chest for around 30 seconds, but where was the burn?  There wasn’t any!  I kept sipping expecting that there would be a glimmer of beautiful burn that all us bourbon drinkers long for, and it never appeared!

Well lets do a quick review anyway.

Neat

Good flavor Blah blah…No Burn!

On the Rocks

This actually brought out more of a pronounced finish which was surprising to me as ice usually tames the beast, this one flared up a little when cooled.

With a Splash

It was good, but it was a little like drinking a bourbon flavored Kool Aid.  It opened up the barrel notes with a more caramelly flavor which was great, unfortunately this barrel missed a very critical element in the overall bourbon experience which left me a little jaded and somewhat frustrated with the whole Single Barrel concept.

-Don

But I digress.  Right now I have everything I need to finish the brew except for one critical component – the whiskey.  So what kind to use?   

Now, brother Don knows his bourbons and I’ve asked him which whiskey I should use for the beer, but Don’s never brewed before.   But I know lots of you guys and gals have, and I suspect you’ve had some experience with infusing whiskey flavors into beer.  My main priorities are taste and finish – I’m going to have a lot of time invested in this beer, and I’d like it to be as pleasurable as possible to drink (as soon as possible as well – don’t want to have to wait six months for the whiskey to mellow in the bottles).

The recipe calls for 16oz of Maker’s Mark.  Have you ever brewed with that stuff before?  Is there something better?  Does it even matter?  Please let me know below – this is a critical part of the brew and I want to get it right.  Thanks!!

-Jim

The moment I got home, I decided to pop a bottle into the freezer for ten minutes to slightly chill its murky contents. I think I only managed to wait nine minutes before I decided it was cold enough- it was time to see what all the fuss is about.

Let me start by saying that this is my kind of beer.  It’s a strong stout brewed with coffee and chocolate and a hint of vanilla, and then aged in oak bourbon barrels.  The only thing it’s missing is bacon, which would make it the perfect food source.  It has an ABV of just over 11%, so you know it’s going to make an impression when it hits the palate.  And it does.  It surely does. Q9GG8C8YSD6T

But let’s start at the beginning.  The pour was inky brown with a finger and a half (at least 1.5 of my skinny fingers) of gorgeous tan foam.  The nose was malty, figgy, and a little boozy, with hints of vanilla and oak.  I couldn’t smell any hops, but maybe they were being elbowed out by the less subtle aromas.

The first sip took a moment to process- there’s a lot going on here all at once with this beer.  The thing that instantly came to mind was a well made Irish coffee.  There’s bourbon, coffee, and a sweet chocolatey maltiness that all play wonderfully together, making this beer a really satisfying treat that is suspiciously appropriate for St. Patty’s Day.  After the tastes fade, you are left with a dry finish, with a touch of bitterness left on the palate and the lingering vapors of bourbon.  This stuff is really, really good.

If I were you, I wouldn’t waste a minute.  I’d head right down to [location withheld] and ask for [name withheld] ([nickname withheld]) and get you four bottles of Founders KBS before this stuff hits the shelves (if it ever does – I have a feeling that this is one of those beers that’s gone before it’s stocked).  You can tell him [blog name withheld] sent you – this way he won’t get mad that I couldn’t wait to talk about this wonderful treat!

I’m not sure what role we all played in this, but I’d like to think that we did our part to pressure these crazy companies into doing the right thing.  There is one problem still, however.  They still have their arcane policy against shipping beer.  Why this is, no one can say, certainly we have discussed and hypothesized about it  numerous times throughout the week, but truth be told nobody knows where it came from, no one knows why it is there in place, and really I doubt anyone is attempting to fix the bigger problem!  That said, this is a victory albeit a small one.  We helped to get a business that deals in craft beer back on track with a major bureaucracy…No easy task.  So thank’s to everyone who commented, left messages, called UPS, e-mailed them, and tweeted about this issue.  I think we made a difference.

I’d like to give special thanks Katie Pizzuto at Gonzo Gastronomy for both her very passionate post about this issue, and for letting me rip off her cool little FedEx and UPS logo dudes!  Thanks Katie, you rock!

-Don

See, I wasn’t prepared to have a brew that is a hefty 13%, to be sure, and have that kind of firey mouthfeel or the kind of burn that it produced in my chest and face.  I guess I was expecting something a little more like beer, and a lot less like bourbon.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved it!

Lets start at the beginning (that is usually where I like to start).  The pour on this brew was like motor oil!  It was thick and black, and I thought it wouldn’t form any head at all, so I got really aggressive on my pour to try and get some bubbles to appear.  There was about a one finger cocoa brown head that quickly dissipated.  Most of the carbonation went with it too.

The nose on this brew was a typical stout.  It had a ton of maltiness, and a little leafiness to it like almost a grassy undertone, which was reflected in the flavor.  Lots of roasted nuts came through and finally a little caramel.  Very complex nose, so I was hoping that this would be a good sign of things to come, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The flavor of this brew is incredibly balanced and smooth. While there is a burn it is actually quite mellow, and just adds yet another dimension to this complex and tasty stout.  It begins sweet and malty with a big roasted malt flavor, then it is spicy and the heat comes in, and here you can taste the flavor of the bourbon, and the finish is warm but with a unique grassiness that I really wasn’t expecting.   I suppose it is the hops but it tasted like I went out to a field of lush green Kentucky bluegrass and pulled out a blade by the root and chewed on it.  This was a very well balanced and extremely complex brew.  But not just complex for complexity sake, but each flavor has its place in making this a superior stout.

The mouthfeel on this brew was amazing as well.  Full and creamy, almost chewy it was a treat for the senses.  I kept expecting to find little shards of the Kentucky bluegrass I was tasting on the brew.  Very unusual, very complex, and very delicious.

This bottle was from 2008, so it had quite a bit of conditioning on it.  I would expect that if it were younger it would have quite a hop note to it as well.  As it was it was almost perfect.

-Don

“I have bad news … It’s illegal in all 50 states to ship spirits and it is expressly prohibited by both UPS and FedEx to ship beer or spirits direct to you as a consumer. Even though its illegal and even though their policy prohibits it they obviously allow it to happen so you have to come to one of two conclusions. Either they have a policy they can’t enforce therefore they should change it or so long as you have a contract they just don’t care. Either way this is a major problem that puts hundreds of businesses around the country at risk of being shut down at a moments notice.

Let me give you all a bit of background on how exactly all this happened. When we set up our UPS account back over a year ago we told the customer service rep exactly who and what we were and that we would be shipping beer direct to consumers. She said no problem just select adult signature required on every package to make sure no one underage can get the delivery. Done.

Everything was fine until this past October when we had a package damaged and UPS discovered that there was beer inside. They called us up and told us that we couldn’t ship beer unless we had a beer and wine contract with them so we said fine, send us a beer and wine contract. They said they couldn’t do that it would have to be generated by our sales rep. Well in almost of year of business this was the first time we’d ever been told we had a sales rep so we asked for his phone number or email address only to be told they can’t give that out but they would send him an email and ask that he call us. Weeks pass with no contact from the rep and we repeatedly attempt to contact him.

In November we opened our holdiay store near the mall and arranged for daily pick ups by UPS in the store. On the front of our store is a great big sign with the name “Brewforia Beer Market” in giant red letters, the store is stocked with 400 different beers and we would ship out 20 to 50 packages containing beer every day via UPS when their driver would come inside and pick them up. We continued like this until early February when UPS told us we were shipping beer without a contract and that we were cut off from shipping any more.

I spent the next two weeks calling anyone I could get a number for at UPS and asking that we get this resolved but every person I spoke to gave me a different answer and no one was interested in helping get it resolved. Finally I’m told by a supervisor in Salt Lake City that they would not extend a contract to us because we had attempted to decieve UPS by shipping beer without their knowledge. This was when I lost it. So according to them when we set up the account using our company name with the word beer in the name or when their driver came in every day for 3 months and picked up packages in a store filled with beer and talked with me about the beer in the packages that we were shipping they didn’t know we were dealing in beer because we were attempting to decieve them so they would not offer us a contract.

Right now there are hundreds of companies shipping beer and spirits via UPS in violation of their policies yet they operate uninterrupted while we are being punished and risk being put out of business because we were upfront and honest with them about what we were doing. Had their customer service and sales team actually made an effort a year ago to contact us and provide us with a contract all of this could have been avoided. Now, UPS has opened a can of worms that I don’t think they are at all prepared to deal with.”

We will keep up to speed with this issue as new developments and opinions present themselves.  Thanks Rick!

-Don

As you know, some very nice places to buy beer online have been hit with a really unfair policy from FedEx and UPS, who are now refusing to ship beer to places they ship wine.  It’s a ridiculous policy and it needs to be changed.

There’s a Facebook Page up that’s been designed to put pressure on UPS and FedEx to allow beer lovers the same access to their favorite beverage that wine lovers enjoy.

Here’s a link: http://tinyurl.com/yzpz6gf

Please check out the page, become a fan and help spread the word.  Let’s do our part to make sure the joys of craft beers can be freely shared from sea to shining sea. Thanks!