Recently in Southern Tier Category

Southern Tier 2XIPA

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I've only had a few beers from Southern Tier, but damn, they really seem to like making sweet beers. Sometimes this really works for them - their Creme Brulee Stout is amazingly flavorful, for instance, and something of an inspiration for my latest homebrew attempt (though it's not even close to a clone, their beer emphasizes the same things I wanted to emphasize with mine). It's also tremendously sweet, and drinking the entire 22 ounce bomber by yourself is not recommended (splitting it 3 or 4 ways would be ideal). Their Unearthly IPA actually manages to balance its huge sweetness out with massive helpings of hops... though again, I'm not sure drinking the entire bomber is an advisable option. Unfortunately, they can't all be winners:

Southern Tier 2XIPA

Southern Tier 2XIPA - Pours a clear golden color with a finger of fluffy head. Smells very sweet, with some pine and hop resin apparent. Tastes extremely sweet with just a little bitterness apparent in the finish and aftertaste. Carbonation is good and the body is full, but the overpowering sweetness makes it too syrupy and slick. It's not the worst beer ever or anything, but the sweetness quickly gets cloying, and the lack of bitterness to offset it is a bit weird for the style. It comes off as complex but unbalanced. Who knows, maybe I got an bad/old bottle or maybe I just was in a bad mood or something. I should probably try it again sometime, but quite frankly, I don't see it happening anytime soon. C+

Beer Nerd Details: 8.2% ABV bottled (12 oz.) Drank out of a tulip glass on 8/1/11.

I do look forward to trying more of their beers (on the short term radar: Gemini and Pumking), and I also keep a bottle of the Creme Brulee Stout around, just in case I want to wow some friends who think they don't like dark beers because they're too bitter and/or roasty.

Decembeer Club

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Towards the beginning of every month, a bunch of friends from work and I meet up at a local BYOB and bring some new/interesting beers to try. This month's haul:

Decembeer

It was a mostly holiday ale theme. Conditions aren't exactly ideal for tasting, so take the following with a grain of salt, but here's what I thought of each:

  • Affligem Noël: My contribution and one of my favorites of the night. Much like their dubbel, but a little spicier. Great beer that I plan to revisit in more detail this holiday season (I have another bottle on my shelf).
  • Anchor Special Christmas Ale 2010 - My other contribution, I've already written about this, but it went over well with other folks too...
  • Delirium Noël: Raisiny and sweet, another popular beer and something I want to revisit in detail.
  • Ridgeway Insanely Bad Elf: Super boozy red ale. Not terrible, but the high alcohol overpowers everything. I'm not sure I could drink a 12 oz bottle of this, but it's interesting nonetheless...
  • Ridgeway Reindeer's Revolt - Not as dark as the Delirium, but it shares that certain raisin smell and flavor, a little syrupy sweet too. Not bad.
  • Ridgeway Reindeer Droppings - Doesn't sound appetizing, but a solid light flavored beer (technically an English Pale Ale). Not a favorite, but a decent session beer.
  • Ridgeway Warm Welcome: A reasonable brown ale, I think this one was overshadowed by some of the above beers.
  • Southern Tier Unearthly IPA - Solid DIPA, but not the top of the line (like Dogfish 90 Minute or Stone IPA)
  • Ridgeway Lump of Coal Stout: I suppose this is a reasonable stout, but there's nothing special about it and there's no holiday style to it either. Not offensively bad or anything, but not especially noteworthy either.
  • New Belgium Fat Tire Amber Ale - Nothing really holiday about this, but a solid session beer (I assume that this is someone's Yuengling Lager style beer).
  • Unibroue La Fin Du Monde - A first time beer club attendee brought this. Hard to fault him for that, as I love this beer.

Well, that about covers it! Again, not an especially rigorous tasting session, with the palate cleansed by a burger and fries, but still, as always, a really good time. After beer club, a few of us hit up the local beer distributer. It being PA, we could only buy a full case of stuff, but someone became enamored with Anchor's Christmas ale and bought a case of that, and four of us went in on a St. Bernardus variety pack (each of us got 6 St Bernardus beers, which is pretty awesome). As usual, I'm already looking forward to next month.

Best Worst Double Feature

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Well, I'm cheating here. Two nights, two beers, and three movies. Not quite a double feature, but close enough! Or maybe not. The point of the beer double feature is to compare two beers of similar style, and the two beers below couldn't be more different. On the filmic side of things, it's a weekend of Trolls. One of the documentaries released this year that I've been really interested in seeing was Best Worst Movie. It's about the movie Troll 2, once crowned as the worst movie of all time, but which has somewhat recently undergone a resurgence as a cult classic (a "so bad it's good" kinda thing). Best Worst Movie was recently released on DVD, so in addition to adding it to my Netflix queue, I wanted to check out the movie itself... and Troll 2 is only available on a double feature disc of its own (with the original Troll). Intriguing, as those two movies have nothing to do with each other. Well, let's just say that the movies are all just about what you might expect .

The original Troll is actually a pretty interesting movie. Terrible, of course, but very watcheable. Plus, it's got midgets, a troll-filled musical number, and, I shit you not, a boy named Harry Potter who learns magic in order to defeat the trolls (seriously, Harry fucking Potter!?). Troll 2 is... hard to explain. I don't really think it deserves the title of worst movie ever, but it's certainly in the running. There are so many nonsensical components to the movie that I don't really know where to start. There are no trolls in the movie, only goblins (perhaps a pedantic distinction, but the lack of trolls is part of the movie's charm), and they all live in a town called Nilbog (that's goblin spelled backwards!). They lure people to their town, turn them into trees and plants, then eat them (you see, the goblins are vegetarians! Yes, the movie is an attack on vegetarians.) But it's so earnest and completely ridiculous that it's almost endearing (and most certainly funny), and so the cult that's grown around the movie makes some sort of sense. Best Worst Movie chronicles that cult and it's rise throughout the naughts. The documentary is made by Michael Stephenson, who played the little boy in Troll 2. There are some interesting parallels between the film's popularity and the way the actors view the film - they are as aware as anyone of the inadequacies of the film, but even they come around as the cult grows. The film gets a bit repetitive as it goes on, but that's also part of the point. Even the actors start to get sick of the screenings and repeating the lines over and over again ("You don't piss on hospitality!") and attending weird horror conventions and the like. It's an interesting bit of filmic nostalgia and I greatly enjoyed it, along with some beers!

Saison Dupont

Saison Dupont - The saison style of beer has apparently been somewhat endangered, but in recent years it's had a bit of a resurgence, led by the likes of Ommegang's excellent Hennepin, and also Saison Dupont, which was named by Men's Journal as "the Best Beer in the World" a few years ago. Pours a slightly hazy golden color, nice fluffy head with some lacing as I drink. Smells great. Perhaps a bit of fruit in the nose, lots of spices (coriander? clove?), but nothing overpowering. Taste is sweet, citrusy and a little tart, with a full body, lots of carbonation and a bit of a harsh mouthfeel (as I've already established, that sort of harshness isn't necessarily a bad thing). There's a bitterness, but it's not hoppy. Is it the best beer in the world? I have a terrible time choosing favorites and picking bests, but I could certainly entertain the notion, which says a lot. A

Beer Nerd Details: 6.5% ABV bottled (750 ml, caged and corked bottle). Drank from a goblet (get it, goblin? goblet? Ha!).

Southern Tier Creme Brulee

Southern Tier Creme Brulee (Imperial Milk Stout) - Recommended to me by Kaedrin regular Sovawanea, I have to admit that part of the reason I wanted to try this was that it's got such an evocative name. It just sounds like a perfect match. Pours a deep black color with a very thin, beige head. Smells very sweet, lots of vanilla and caramel. Usually the nose tapers off as I drink a beer, but not in this case - aromatic to the very end (even the empty glass gave off a strong scent). I didn't notice it, but the bottle says to drink it chilled out of a snifter, and that makes sense given the great aroma this stuff gives off. That vanilla and caramel shows up pretty strongly in the taste as well, but it's tempered by the roasty malt sweetness in a decidedly, well, creme brulee fashion. It's not as roasty as other stouts I've had recently (either that, or the sweetness is overpowering the roasted flavors). I found myself drinking quite slowly (it lasted longer than the documentary), but that's probably a good thing given the 10% ABV! Even so, it's perhaps a bit too sweet for one person to drink an entire 22 oz bottle of this stuff. It gets a bit cloying towards the end... (apparently I'm not the only one who recently tried this and felt that way) Nevertheless, it's an excellent and unique beer. It would make a nice after-dinner dessert to share with someone, and it's also something that showcases the amazing variety of flavors that beer can have (it could be a decent gateway beer in the right scenario). B+

Beer Nerd Details: 10% ABV bottled (22 oz bomber). Drank out of a pint glass (apparently shoulda been a snifter though)

So two pretty different beers, but both are pretty great.

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Hi, my name is Mark, and I like beer.

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This page is an archive of recent entries in the Southern Tier category.

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