A Brew in Every Port
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The Double IPA at Marble Brewery in Santa Fe, New Mexico is incredibly delicious. Insanely hoppy, a touch fruity, all without the dry aftertaste. I dare say it goes down very easy.
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It’s rare that I’ll do two entries on the same visit, but Steamworks really brings it. The Conductor Imperial IPA is seriously one of the best beers I’ve ever had. It has all of the initial hoppiness of a good IPA with a peachy, sweet finish of a wheat beer. At 9.1% ABV, it’s practically a date rape drug with this flavor.
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Steamworks Brewing Co.
The Steamworks Brewing Co. In Durango, CO has a lot of inventive house beers. The Mexican Coffee Stout, for instance, packs a coffee heavy punch (with a hint of cinnamon). The craziest beer, however, is the Prescribed Burn - a 5.1 ABV possible pilsner flavored with habanero, poblano and green chile peppers.
As a fan of spicy foods, I love it. The burn lingers on your lips, but not the tongue, as the beer seems to quench the taste buds. It’s a supper for sure, but worth the burn.
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When in Canada, drink as Canadians do. While I was in suburban Toronto, Ontario for work, we stopped by Earl’s Bar & Grill in Woodbridge.
I tried Muskoka Brewery’s Cream Ale, from a brewery in northern Ontario.
This hearty ale has a fall taste, though it’s a year round brew. Not especially creamy, a bit more pale ale esque, hitch made me like it more. And is it me or does a pint look bigger here?
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Bengal Gold IPA
The Triumph Brewery in Philadelphia has an amazing IPA, the Bengal Gold, I tried for the first time tonight. It’s a Gold Medal winner at the American Beer Festival, and it is easy to taste why.
It’s an extremely smooth IPA, fruity, not overly hoppy and way too drinkable. At 6.8% ABV, it packs a bit of a punch, albeit secretly.
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Last night I got to try a new (to me) IPA that’s somewhat local to my home base in D.C. Tunnicliff’s Tavern in Capitol Hill had Eight Point IPA from Devil’s Backbone Brewing Co. in Roseland, VA on tap.
The Eight Point is an American-style IPA that’s really light in color - I thought I was given a Miller Lite by accident. The ABV isn’t what I expected, only a 5.9% (compared to the Golden Monkey of a few posts back, that’s kid stuff).
The Verdict: Meh. The beer had a great smell - very fruity, floral - a hint of hoppiness to come. It really didn’t seem to have much of a distinctive flavor to me at all. It was, in short, merely ok.
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MY friend Julie, who lives in Cincinnati, is an IPA fanatic - she seriously will not drink anything else - so it’s always a treat to stay at her house because she always has a new one in the fridge.
On this particular visit, I tried the LuckyU IPA from Breckenridge Brewery in Colorado.
It’s a standard, American-style IPA with a 6% ABV. It’s a very drinkable IPA, sweet enough, with a hop finish - you could easily put away a sixer on a night of porch-sitting. That said, I found it kind of average. Good, but vanilla.
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While in Cincinnati, OH for a baseball game over my birthday weekend, I revisited an old favorite among brews - one I haven’t had in a long time - while awaiting a dinner table at Lavomatic in the city’s re-emerging Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. If you’ve never had the Golden Monkey from Downington, PA-based Victory Brewing, you are missing out. This Belgian-style Tripel is an ass-kicker of the highest degree. It might be light in color, but that’s about it. It has a bold, fruity-but-strong flavor and at 9.0% ABV, it packs a helluva punch. You don’t need too many of these to kick-start a night out. It turns out our table (at a nearby restaurant) was ready earlier than planned, so I had to down the last half of this beer in a hurry. I thought I might die. (Worth it)
