Empyrian Dark Side Vanilla

Behold the great Nebraska Porter.

Well folks it's been awhile, and I've been holding onto these notes for quite some time, so I figured its about time I threw down and wrote a review about a beer that I like to drink every now and then. Now this beer won't win any awards for it's groundbreaking flavor or flawless style, so it might be a little outside the scope of this blog so far. But Empyrian Dark Side Vanilla Porter is probably one of the easiest go to beers if you're craving a solid dark beer.

Empyrian is a brewing company located in Lincoln Nebraska. Their history is a fairly predicable one for a small local brewery. Guy opened a restaurant, served some of his beer there, demand grew, started brewing more and more, and now he's shipping his beers through a 4 state area in the midwest. Humble beginnings with a pretty happy ending(?) if I've ever heard of one. They offer the usual stable of ales and porters as well as a few seasonal offerings. Nothing especially interesting or ground breaking, but I've never had a beer from them I didn't like, so Empyrian get's points for that.

So how is it?
Humor me for a moment and allow me to shorten my usually long winded review process. Dark Side is a good, smooth, if not unspectacular dark beer. I enjoyed the heck out of drinking it, but would never shout out the rooftops about how great it is.

There. That's the gist of it. I'm putting the conclusion at the middle. Why? Because that just about sums up my whole feelings on this brew.

It pours out as black as midnight. Leaves a slightly thin head, and puts out a pleasant aroma that reminds me of roasted nuts. When you taste it you'd probably find that it's a fairly 'by the numbers' porter: smoothly flavored like cold coffee, vanilla, and a hint of chocolate with a slight hazelnut bite at the end. I can personally drink 3-4 of these down with ease due to the smoothness, so if you're a big fan of porters but don't want to tread on extreme grounds this should be a favorite of yours.

And there you have it.
An unspectacular review for an unspectacular beer. If you catch it on sale at your local supermarket, I recommend picking a 6er up for testing. This beer easily falls into the good but not great category.

New Belgium Dig

I'm due for a spring beer review.

It's spring time people. Here in Nebraska the temperature has been reading from 50-70 degrees daily, the robins are back, and my damn lawn is plotting to start growing an inch and a half every 35 seconds. Now with spring comes lots of good things: Birds chirping, warm weather, sunshine, trees flowering and all that other nature crap. But besides good looking women dressing in progressively smaller wardrobes my favorite side effect of spring has to be the national brewers seasonal offerings. New Belgium's Dig just so happens to be one of the best ones I've tried in quite a while.

New Belgium Brewing company is definitely interesting to say the least. According to their website the company was commercially founded in 1991 in Ft. Collin's Colorado after 3 years of basement brewing to great reviews from friends and family. From the get go they claim to have stuck to their initial values and plans for the company, and NB makes good enough brews to be distributed somewhat nationally, so obviously their business plan works. Most interesting to this guy though is that they switched their entire brewery around in 1998 to run solely off wind power. These glorious beer making bastards were green before it was even cool. Gotta love that.

Now without going too far into the review I feel I need to discuss the classiness of New Belgium beers. They call their regular brew Fat Tire which is a pretty tasty, if not generally standard "Get noobs to try Craft Brews" Amber Ale. I mention Fat Tire because it was my first taste of NB, and almost every other beer has a particular taste that is strangely reminiscent of that beer. It could be the water they use, the casks they brew in, or just the Colorado air. Heck I don't know. Because of that New Belgium gets a classiness rating of a guy that just moved out of the trailer park into his first house that's equipped with solar panels and high efficiency appliances. Classy, but still down to earth.

Quit Rambling and get on with the review.
So anyway I tried Dig almost by accident. I swerved my slightly buzzed ass into my local shithole bar, got greeted by one of my more favorite bartenders, and she poured me up a small sample of what she called her "new stuff." Most of the time when I sit down in said bar I just drink their token special for the night because I usually walk in that door in order to get hammered, but I was so impressed by this beer I ordered 3 before switching to the tasteless macro-brews.

Proof I don't always drink at home.

Dig pours up fairly light for how dark it looks in the glass, and builds up a fairly thick and frothy head quickly. It carries a fairly strong hoppy and earthy smell that isn't shy at all. You can practically catch a whiff of this stuff sitting two chairs down the bar. When you get done circle jerking about the aroma like I'm prone to do and actually try the stuff you'll be welcomed by a slightly atypical, but excellent, spring beer. For those that have no idea what that means: You'll be drinking a fairly hoppier and sharper than average beer. What makes Dig a step above most of the other spring beers in my eyes isn't just the flavor, it's how New Belgium's brewers managed to cram so much of it in while keeping this beer light and entirely refreshing.

The Final Verdict.
New Belgium's Dig is an excellent seasonal spring beer. The flavor might be run of the mill - and the alcohol content won't knock you on your ass like some of my favorites, but you could easily choose worse if you're looking for a light and refreshing beer to remind of you better seasons. Some light beer drinkers might be turned off by the hopiness, but if you're experienced in the ways of drinking obscure beers it's nowhere near offensive. Try Dig. You'll like it.

P.S.
This is by far my longest beer review, and I wrote it a grand total of 2 weeks after trying this beer. Funny how notes, a good memory, and a habit of using creative language gives you such a long article.

The State of the State

Good Question LOLcat.

If you haven't noticed I've been slacking on writing this blog, and I feel anyone that's reading this deserves an explanation. It all boils down to this: I'm not drinking right now. Basically speaking I'm giving myself a couple months off (with a few holiday exceptions) to dry out, get prepared for a couple races, and lean down for the summer. I know a good number of you guys are probably saying "WTF Man shut up and drink more beer and tell us about them!". But this is a good thing, and I'll tell you why.

Reason 1: I've still got a couple beers to review.

Good ol' functional alcoholics like myself drink a crapton of beer. I've got notes on 2 different beers that I'll be giving little write ups on over the next couple weeks, so my activity on here won't be completely barren.

Reason 2: I'm looking for bigger and better beers to review later.

Being as irish as the sky is blue of course I will be drinking on St. Patty's, so I'll be sure to throw out a couple reviews about the one of the many tastes I try that day. Otherwise I've been keeping my eye open for some more interesting beers, and here's a little list of what I know will come in the future:

Arrogant Bastard Ale - Has a beer critic score of 95, glowing reviews coming from everywhere, and shit the name practically writes a review for itself. How could this one go wrong?

Rogue Double Dead Guy - Dead Guy Ale with extra alcohol. This one will be written in belligerent idiot.

Unibroe Maudite - Why the fuck would I review another Unibroe? Because Reddit told me to that's why. Like any good internet child I must obey the hivemind.

Harp - My token St. Patty's day beer. Not particularly fancy, but at least I'm not dipping down into reviewing Miller Light.
Lucky Bucket Certified Evil - Looks promising, Lucky Bucket is a small brewery in Omaha and Certified Evil is their high taste high alcohol content. Yall should know how much I like my high alcohol content.

Of course this list will just keep growing over the next couple months. So if the kindly readers don't give up on me I won't give up on writing about my favorite elixir.

Reason 3: I'll be improving the layout.

After sending this site into Reddit's /r/beers the programming heavy reader-base told me I needed to fix the layout, so that's the main thing I'll be working on over the next couple months with this site. Hopefully I can keep everything inside Blog Spot for simplicity, but who knows at this point in time?

So there you have it, I explained my soon to be absence. It sucks and all that I'm taking a break this early in this project's life, but that's just how the cookie crumbles.

Older review news you guys should know:

Chocolate Ale: Boulevard is offering a refund on batches of their Chocolate Ale this year. Basically speaking I got to try that beer for free. There's nothing sweeter than free beer.

Unibroue (In General) brews Trader Joe's Vintage Ale. So I can't be as hard on them next time. Damnit.

Unibroue Ephemere

Wherein Bob tries something completely different.

Now having a template to go by in reviews is a good thing, but this time around it needs to be broken. I'm going to get straight to the point: this is the first beer that I completely hated in a long time. A side effect of starting the blog is the increased drive to try new and interesting brews when I found them. So after picking up a sixer of Dead Guy I spotted this neat little bottle in the cooler and figured I'd give it a try. The label looks interesting, for 7$ for a two pint bottle it's in a accessible price range, and heck the idea of a Green Apple mixed ale doesn't seem bad by itself either. Who can blame me for being suckered in?

Seriously folks, this is the image
 Unbroue's "Brewmaster" chose to
represent himself

Unibroue is a French Canadian brewing company that's been around since 1990. If you visit their website you'll spot a lot of self indulgent horn tooting in their history, story, lexicon, and "Medals won". To be completely honest the whole thing looks flat billed frat boy douchey. This kind of alleged brewing superiority is the stuff that makes me want to drop craft beer for life and stick with predictable old Bud Light. Being proud of your beer is one thing, but having a circlejerk about how great you are on your own website is something entirely different.

So back to the beer at hand:
I got Ephemere home and chilled it out in the fridge for a day or so. After popping open the brown bag I was just a little disappointed to find that the alcohol content of this concoction is at a very modest 5.5%. I know I can't get drunk with EVERY new beer I try out, but at least a buzz would help. Anyway I poured up a glass in my slightly-classier-than-average german beer mug, took my token "IKnowHowToTryBeer" smell and got introduced to a pretty strong citrusy-tart fruit smell. Being unafraid of outlandish flavors I took a taste.

Token Beer Picture

So what does it taste like?

Just imagine for a minute that cheap white wine took beer out for a drink or two. Now beer wouldn't normally hang out with white wine, seeing as how they're from different crowds, but white wine was being awfully persistent over the last couple days and beer eventually caved. After the 2nd drink beer got up to take a piss and white wine dropped some roofies into beer's drink. White wine promptly took advantage of beer's out of mind state and date raped beer back in his apartment, letting his buddy Green Apple join in from time to time. That's pretty much what Ephemere tastes like to me. Date rape and sadness.



Enough hyperbole Bob, just review the Beer.
Anyway when you try a sip it whacks you with a light bodied, but very wheaty and green appley taste. None of this is subtle, each flavor pretty much beats it's predecessor down to assault your tongue. At the end of this overly sharp roller-coaster of flavors you'll pick up a slight spice note at the end, followed by a lingering aftertaste characteristic of old cheap beer. To top it off this stuff is carbonated heavier than Diet Coke, so after a half-pint you'll either be burping constantly or uncomfortably stuffed with the gas. If you couldn't tell by now - I don't like Ephemere.

This is an obvious niche beer maker though, so in all fairness I might not be the intended audience for this one. Maybe there's someone out there that can enjoy the overly sharp and ununified flavor of this beer, but that person is definitely not me. All in all if you spot this interesting looking bottle on the shelf somewhere, I'd say save your money. I would rather drink Keystone Light than this blasphemy.

Rogue Dead Guy Ale

This isn't a Review, It's a love letter.

I really wish I could adequately put into words how much I love this beer. This Ale truly is my first MicroBrew love, and like all first loves, it's the Ale I compare all others to. It's a German Maibock style Ale (and don't ask me what that means, I don't have a clue) and this particular recipe has won the World Beer Cup Silver Medal three years in a row between 2005-2007. It didn't win by accident. This is probably the best Ale I've ever tasted. Honestly a review of this beer is unnecessary: If you haven't tried it, you should.

But what's the point of a redneck beer review blog without the review?

Fine, I twisted my own arm. I'll write a review just for smiles and grins. I ran into the beer for the first time in a little bar called the Brass Monkey. I had dabbled in craft beers for awhile at this time, but the majority of my intake went off to good old Anheuser-Busch. My buddy pulled me in the place, which had just been renovated and was going through new ownership, and we walked in to observe a row of taps in a pretty small bar. After ordering up a plain old Boulevard Wheat and talking to the owner for awhile I asked about the cool looking skeleton guy sitting on a tap, and he highly recommended that I try it. I bought 3 pints that night, and had a hard time leaving.

So how is it?

The Dead Guy at my workstation.

This beer pours light, and as you can see in the picture to the side- it has a very light head. If you smell it you might be able to pick up hints of malt and hops, but it's incredibly subtle. You really need to take in a big nose-full to get much more than a "yeah that's beer" aroma. Describing the flavor is difficult for me. Mainly because when I take a sip it's akin to riding my first bike, or wrecking my car, or the first time I got completely wasted on rumplemintz and got picked up by the cops. Needless to say I have a really hard time pinning down the flavor. This beer is familiar to me, I'd have a better chance describing how air tastes.

The best I can do for you Good Reader is tell you that this beer walks the perfect line between the extravagantly flavorful but obnoxious India Pale Ales and the absolutely tasteless American Style Light Lagers that dominate beer sales in the United States. It's Malty without being too thick, hoppy without feeling like you just chewed on a pot leaf, and smooth enough to drink a ton of it but bitter enough to warn you of the repercussions. That and the bottle is really fucking cool, and serves as a decent conversation starter in the right company.

Verdict = Perfect right?

For me? Oh hell yes. Rogue Dead Guy Ale is the perfect beer for this guy. Honestly I'd drink one every day if I could, but unfortunately economics get in the way. With anything perfect there is a "well yeah but......" hanging on at the end, and for Dead Guy it's the price point and availability. Here in Nebraska it runs 12-13$ for a sixer, and about 4-6$ for a 24oz bottle. On top of that there aren't a whole lot of bars that stock it, due to it's obscurity in my market and the fact that kegs run a pretty penny as well (I've heard it's much more affordable in the West Coast where it's brewed though). But besides the astronomical price I've picked it up whenever I've found it and had the extra cash. If you're reading this you should too.

Trader Joe's 2011 Vintage Ale

A beer lover's dream

Now this is a beer I can write about.
If you guys haven't heard of Trader Joe's I suggest you Google it immediately, and then get out more. This place is awesome, it mixes healthy food with random snacks crap that 20 something bachelors love, as well as being the only grocery store I know of that brews it's own beer. I was originally hooked on their Name Tag lager (which I'm not going to talk about on this blog, it's hard to sell a $2.99 six pack as "classy") and found out about their Vintage Ale in 2010. After picking up a couple bottles then, and drinking it over the year I fell in love with this particular "Limited Edition". So today I'm going to talk about their 2011 Version

Now this beer is classy. On a scale between drinking Old Milwaukee in front of your trailer to sipping on Scotch and discussing building railroads I'd put it probably around wearing a V-Neck sweater and telling your neighbors how you acquired a bear skin rug. While Joe only brews this for a limited time, it's not exactly hard to find. All you need to do is walk into Trader Joe's around X-Mas and they should have a display like above full of the stuff. Now I fully recommend picking up at least 2 bottles, because the stuff ages pretty well. If you're a bit more of a connoisseur of finer alcohols (or like to pretend to be) you'll notice that the ale picks up a different profile as the months go on. This year the cute little cashier told me she was sitting on a 4 year old bottle, and was planning on popping it open fairly soon. Regardless I've had it brand spanking new and a few months old, and I can honestly say that each is it's own experience.

Seeing a Pattern yet?

So what does it taste like?
Well first off lets talk about how it pours and smells. This stuff is high gravity. So it pours pretty thickly and builds head quickly. A nose full will give you an almost obnoxious spicy odor, but don't worry: It smells stronger than it is. When you finally take a sip you should enjoy a fairly malty and distinctly spice flavored beer. I'm not chef or baker, so I can't tell you if it's Cinnamon, Nutmeg or Ginger. But it's pleasant and reminds you of a nice lazy winter day sitting by the fire and muttering about those damn kids half a block down.



Now before you run off and try to commit suicide for missing this delicious brew the last couple years I should say this - This Ale is far from perfect. Like a lot of the Higher Gravity drinks the flavor can be a little rough to swallow after a while, and the spice makes this particular beer seem one sided. Unlike some of the more subtle drinks I've tried this is a one note beer. It's flavor doesn't evolve as you go down the bottle, and the aftertaste is about the same as the second it hits your tongue. Of course as long as you accept that enjoying this beer is pretty easy. A whole bottle wont get you tanked (damnit), but by the end of it you should have a warm buzz not unlike what you get from sipping a glass of Gentleman Jack (without the wanton anger of course).

The final verdict.
Trader Joe's 2011 Vintage Ale is pretty good, if a little one sided. Considering the fact that it runs $5 for a 2 pint bottle I strongly recommend it for the experience of trying it. I have personally fallen in love with the stuff, and will probably pick up a case next year to introduce friends and family to it. Is it going to win any beer awards? Probably not. But you could do much worse for the price.

Boulevard's Chocolate Ale

This is the Beer that started this whole experiment.

Ahh Boulevard. Thank you for giving me a beer to start this whole shindig off. This is the beer that could establish my beer snobbery. Seriously folks after drinking this beer I could go into a long tirade about how Budweiser is evil blah blah blah and I'd hop onto my single speed bike and ride away into the wind muttering "you've probably never heard of it". But I'll be damned if I do.

Anyway if you've missed the buzz behind this creative concoction here's a quick rundown: Boulevard teamed up with some renown chocolate guy to make an ale brewed with cocoa. Now many a brewer has made chocolate porter's and stouts, but Boulevard is the only company to try an ale (so far) and beer geeks have been going nuts over this thing. It's a limited run released right around Valentines Day and last year they sold out within the hour. To combat the demand Boulevard tripled the production and people lined up like Black Friday for the stuff. To say the least, this brew is hyped, and I got pulled into buying 2 bottles of the stuff.

So it's hyped to shit? How the fuck does it taste?

So I Tried it.

And by tried it I mean I waited all fucking day to drink this stuff. Picked it up around 2, lovingly placed it in the fridge, studied some ancient hieroglyphic programming shit, and went to class at 6. Spending all of 4 hours in class listening to a teacher drone on while fantasizing about how STUPENDOUSLY DELICIOUS this beer should be. I rushed my way home and poured up a pint. Took a nice wiff of the glass and enjoyed it's odd aroma. Lemon-y with a dash of cocoa. With my first sip I understood the hype. This ale is good.

What does it taste like?

Picture if someone took a glass of boulevard wheat, took the lemon zest down a hundred notches spiked in a bit of hazelnut vanilla and cocoa. The ale does not have the kind of flavor that punches you in the mouth. It's smooth and slow with several different layers. Honestly I felt like the glass I was drinking it out of didn't really do it justice, but I'm not about to start sipping my beer out of some fancy flute glass like some over-classy dickhead. As good as the beer is the novelty of the flavor got old after I downed the first half of the pint, but by that time the 9.1% ABV content kicked in and my attitude to this beer changed completely. All in all I drank all of a 9$ Bottle to myself and got a pretty decent buzz, with only the 2nd quarter of the bottle being less than great.

The final Verdict?

Boulevard Chocolate Ale is good, but I have the strong feeling that a good chunk of it's following stems from it's relative rarity. I'll be picking up another bottle next year, but I wouldn't bother adding this to my stable of regular beers if it were available year round. Regardless if you can find a bottle now, pick it up. It's worth it.