A Happy New Beer Year...

We had a nice calm New Year back home and of course with a bunch of great brews from my "beer cellar". Hope you all had a great time, what ever you did and I wish all the best for 08.

Our beer menu for the evening event consisted of the following components and order;

New Years Beer Menu:
1. 2*Nøgne Ø Pale Ale 2006
2. 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze 2004
3. Cantillon Rosé De Gambrinus 2003
4. Shipyard Longfellow Winter Ale 2006
5. Great Divide Fresh Hop Pale Ale
6. Great Divide Hercules Double IPA
7. Smuttynose Smuttonator
8. Drakes Imperial Stout
9. Oskar Blues Ten FIDY (can)

Consumed but not part of the actual menu, mainly brought to the party:
10. Ridgeway Bad Elf Winters Ale
11. Rochefort Trappistes 10
12. La Trappe Dubbel
13. Anchor Steam Beer
14. North Coast Red Seal Ale
15. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Bottle)

And yes we also had a full dinner during the beer menu and actually wine was consumed during the main course!

Regarding favorites, well then it must be the OB and the imperial stout, pours like motor oil, a amazing beer on can that I hope we soon can find at the fridges over at OT, plus the GD fresh hops which was a newcomer for me and a really fresh and hoppy pale ale that all of us enjoyed. And of course you can not forget the Cantillon that in this stored bottle from my "cellar" was dry as a dry Champagne counterpart, which worked very well with the starters.



Cheers!

GBTD-07 (GABF): The Great Divide Luncheon

Before the festival had actually started we where invited through the good friends at OT to a special get together early party over at the Great Divide brewery.

At 12.00 sharp on the Thursday av bunch of happy beer drinkers got together and could enjoy the great bears of GD within the brewery itself.

It is always fun for a beer geek to actually get the opportunity to have your favorite beers at the actual source and also meet the creators of these wonderful products.

[Original picture removed on request] [140513]

We had a great lunch and got the possibility to help yourself through out the brewery. It interesting to see that such a great brewery and a brewery that you see as quite big is housed in such a small complex in central Denver (quite central anyway).

Simply you can say that you do not need much space to create great products. As it was free we sampled a lot of the different brews available both at the party inside the brewery and also at the nearby tap room (DPA, Titan, Hibernation 07 (heard they also had H06 but did not see it available), barley wine, belgian IPA, samuray, the lot).

Best beer?, the oaked imperial stout and the new fresh hop beer (had earlier already bought a bottle to get home an enjoy for myself!, seems that the concept of "fresh hops" is quite in right now.)).

The Tap room at GD

We also met some interesting people during this event, among them our good friends of OT and Akkurat, a guy also from Sweden with the name of Marc who is working for Galatea (a big beer distributor in Sweden), Jim from last days brew cruise and also Ray McCoy (Beer drinker of the year 2003) and his wife Cornelia (also a beer drinker of the year winner!).

So as a summary this was a excellent way to enjoy beers early in the day and a very good start for the rest of the festival and something I am glad I could join.

Cheers

A beer vulcano at GD?

QUICK TAKE: Southern Tier Backburner Barleywine 2007

Sampled at Oliver Twist last Saturday after a good dinner. Southern Tier is a personal favorite and also a favorite by Oliver Twist is seems.

It is difficult to say why, but you at start feel that this is typical Southern Tier style beer. So in one way it is a bit difficult to say what kind of beer it is when you first feel the Southern Tier taste, meaning that it takes a couple of seconds to say if it is a DIPA, Barley or something else. That is not a bad thing, I really like when a brewery has distinct taste in all their beers.

This is a "american" barley wine from the Southern Tier Brewing Company in New York, 22 oz. bomber, 10% ABV, 85 IBU.

It has a mahogany color and with some ruby shades. It has a sweet smell with some caramel, citrus & alcohol. And for me it is more a English type barley wine, i.e. it has not the massive amount of hops that you normally feel in the american style version.

Does not mean that it is not a hoppy beer, it comes with 85 IBU so that say something about the experience. Taste is toffee and slight roasty. Basically it is very balanced compared to other rivals from the US, but more English then you could expect from Souther Tier.

It is not a favorite beer from Souther Tier or a favorite barley, but it is decent stuff and something that you can drink without being kicked out of the seat when you talk about alchohol and the hop level.

So on my american barleywine toplist you still find;

1. Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine Style Ale

2. Great Divide Old Ruffian Barley Wine