Yes I am still here!

If anyone is still reading this blog except myself I just need to inform that our New England Beer Trip 2008 will just start in a couple of hours.

Hopefully I will have access to some kind of network and hope to make at least some comments about the trip.

It will start tomorrow (actually in a couple or hours) with going over to Boston, MA and end on July 30th.

We will probably not finish everything as planned but here is at least the main plan and where you can check were we probably are on this little beer trail.

Bistro Double IPA Festival

The yearly Double IPA festival has been held once more over at Bistro, San Fran, California.

And as normal I which I had the time to actually be there, sigh!!

How about something new?: Laughing Dog Brewing

Sometimes you feel just to promote new breweries that you discover and hopefully something that might be coming to a pub close to you. Small breweries are something that you as a beer geek always need to promote.

So if you ever see a beer from Laughing Dog Brewing you should definitely test it out. This is a tiny brewery that we discovered during this years GABF and the brewery is located in Selkirk Mountains just outside of Sandpoint Idaho and in the city of Ponderay. They produce a full range of beer style as; pale ale, IPA, Stout and ESB. The bottles all come with the Laughing Yellow Lab that appears on all of their brews and is Ben their family dog. The full range of beers looks like this;

1. Laughing Dog Pale Ale
2. Laughing Dog India Pale Ale
3. Laughing Dog Cream Ale
4. Laughing Dog Sweet Stout
5. Laughing Dog Crotch Sniffing Bastard (ESB)

And they also do an Imperial IPA called; Laughing Dog Devil Dog Imperial IPA.

All great beers, where my personal favorite was the pale ale, which a very hoppy aroma pale ale and balanced perfectly with a great mixture of malts. As a pale ale this is a perfect beer that is not too much of everything, simply a very balanced beer, but still with the citrus hop kick you want in a beer.

So remember this, if you see the beer, let them a go. Just saw that the beers are available over at; Belmont Station in Portland.

So when can we expect this beer over at Oliver Twist or Akkurat??

Danish & Norwegian beers in Portland?

The Belmont Station beer blog reports the following new beers to be sold at the beer store in Portland.

If you do not know it already Belmont is a great beer shop in Portland that is famous for the amount of beers and a genuin beer interest these guys have.

They also demonstrate with the list below that they have a big beer knowledge, they really know their business. It is always impressive to check out the latest beers they provide and you are really jealous for the beer that you can actually get over at Portland, wish I could have the same amount of great US-beers that they provide over here in Sweden.

New Danish Beer:

Norrebro Bryghus - North Bridge Extreme: North Bridge Extreme is the brewers gift to Anders on the 1 year aniversary for the opening of Nørrebro Bryghus.

Norrebro Bryghus - Skargaards Porter: An authentic Porter at 6% ABV.

Mikkeller - Stateside IPA: Mikkellers tribute to american micro-brew.

Olfabrikken - 100 Gram IPA: This is the second in a range of Ølfabrikken special ales.

New Norwegian Beer:

Nogne-O - Saison: Saison fra Nøgne Ø er flaskemodnet, dvs. upasteurisert og ufiltrert.

Nogne-O - Batch #100 Barleywine: A celebration of Nøgne Ø achieving batch #100.

Nogne-O - IPA: 17,5 degrees P, 60 IBU, 7,5 vol% alk. : Semi-dark, malty and very bitter ale.

Nogne - O - Dark Horizon 1st Edition: Dark Horizon is a ’hybrid’ - an ale that pairs the roasted bitterness of coffee with a wine-like complexity.

Haandbryggeriet - Norse Porter:

So the big question here is; When will we see a bunch of Swedish beers over at Belmont???

Seems that both the Danes and the Norwegians have found a way, but that the Swedes have not yet understod the interests of quality beers in the US.

One personal idea is maybe that most of the breweries as above are what I could call "US-inspired breweries", i.e. American IPAs, American Pale Ales, DIPAs etc, and that the Swedes are not in to that, at least not at the same level that the Danes like Mikkeller is playing around with.

QUICK TAKE: Blue Point No Apologies Imperial IPA

Tasted at the Stockholm Beer 2007 in a cask version. What can you say?, simply this is my cup of tea. Sampled this amazing DIPA already in May over at Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn, New York during our short New York beer trip.

Based on the fact that we already thought that this was the best beer during that trip it was really exciting to actually drink the beer again on cask in your own backyard.

I know this is a extreme beer, but the name says it all!, here is a beer that is a hop monster extreme and with no apologies to be anything else. Simply this is something that I can enjoy and will continue to drink.

The beer has a very cloudy orange body topped by a thick, off-white head that lasts a long time. Flavor is really one-dimensional with a extreme piney hop bitterness, but you can actually feel the maltiness so in that sense it is at least a bit balanced and together with the orange touch it makes a great mixture. Probably not drinkable for most people, but for me it is a hit and a very drinkable beer, yes I know I am bit destroyed on these kind of beers.

For being a no apologies DIPA it is a sure winner, not the most balanced one but I guess that it is not the idea here, and with 10% ABV it is best served in small gobles and is a great last beer of the night.

It will make a appereance on my personal top list because now I have tasted the beers at least 3 times, :-D, and it is time for some changes after the festival.

The beer served at this years Stockholm Beer

Regarding Blue Point this is a local brewery in Patchogue (long island), New York state. Started by 2 beer geeks (Pete & Mark) on Long Island. They also produce the great IPA in the form of; Hoptical Illusion.

Finally a very large thank you to Jugge, for actually getting this beer all the way over to Stockholm. It is always fun to sample the beer you bring home, how would the Stockholm beer scene look without your help?