So, Thursday will become, at least on a biweekly basis, beer review night. While I am certainly not the Ben McFarland of British beer reviewing fame, I would like to think that my vast experience consuming beers while living on a desert island and then residing in two fairly microbrew heavy regions will qualify me to give you some form of review that I will do everything in my power to ensure does not suck. I won't be rating these beers-- I've come to the point where I really don't think I could have a terrible beer, they're all fairly decent, but should that happen, I'll let you know.
And without further ado, we will push into things. The first beer we're going to look at tonight is the Lake Placid Craft Brewing "Ubu Ale." The brewery is just off the main strip in Lake Placid and the staff is very friendly. Pouring it into the glass, it has a rich, dark color-- one I'd call a nut brown, but the bottle describes as dark garnet. The head is an amber brown and very bubbly, with a very smoky taste. It has a very hoppy aroma, but not overpowering. The first taste was very porter-y and a little smoky, but that faded and one could definitely tell this was an ale. It was smooth, with a hint of chocolate and no real aftertaste. There was no precipitate in the bottle and the whole thing went down easy. If you like Newcastle, you will love Ubu.
Next is Left Hand Canyon Brewery's "Deep Cover Brown Ale." I used to drink the products of this fine brewery all the time in college, as they're in Longmont, Colorado, and I was attending CU Boulder. The six pack came with a red-left-hand-sticker, which was a fun little reminder of the wierd stuff people will do out west sometimes. If you get the chance, the brewery itself is in town and had a good menu, but that was about 5 years ago, so things could have changed. The Deep Cover was a lighter brown, more like leather or barely stained wood than the deeper brown of the Ubu. The head on this beer was very light and bubbly with a sweet taste. It had a light, sweet aroma in the glass. It tasted very smooth, with no aftertaste and a warm, caramel flavor. There was just a hint of sediment in the bottle, enough to remind me that this is a microbrew, but not enough to have me chewing.
Third is the Pennsylvania Brewing Company's Penn Weizen, a wheat beer. This beer poured into the glass with a beautiful light golden color that became slightly opaque with precipitate as it filtered down.
It had a very light, almost sweet head that was very very bubbly. It had a very subtle, crisp scent-- and really that characterized the beer more than anything; it was crisp, even with the bottle fermentation and precipitate. It was very light, smooth and crisp. This was the sort of beer you could put down three or four pints and only realize it when your darts game begins to suffer. I'm usually not a fan of wheat beers because they come in too hoppy, but this one doesn't have that fault.
Finally, we have the Bischoff Brewery's Doppel Bock. This poured a deeper amber, almost cherry color with a lighter brown head of sweet, fine bubbles. This beer had almost no aroma to me, what was there was overwhelmed by the "beer" smell of the alcohol-- it had a higher content of about 7.5%. The taste was very smooth, velvety; again, it was nearly a pure "beer" flavor that was overwhelmed with the presence of the alcohol. I split this bottle with a friend who likes Doppel Bocks, and he thought the higher alcohol content took away from the overall flavor. I'd almost recommend this beer for later on in the evening, when you've already got a little bit of a buzz and would like to keep it without having to increase your number of pints.
So, that's the four for this go around. We'll see if I do it again in one week or two, and if it's going to be two beers or four. I suppose it depends on how long this Beer of the Month gift runs. ;)
-Ben.
Tags: Beer
