I hit up 5 Seasons Brewing Prado location for dinner the other night and got to sip on a great IPA. Their house brewed IPA is called Hopgasm. It is a big IPA that is mellow on the bitterness and it can easily be sipped or slammed depending on your mood. It was Memorial Day weekend and the pigs were rolling deep in my neck of the woods so I chose the former drinking method. The brew pub has a good selection of beers brewed in-house as well as a couple of other craft brews on tap from time to time; but I am usually stuck on the Hopgasm because it is so tasty. For dinner I had the Ropa Vieja which is a marinated skirt steak with vegetables and avocado/lime mashed potatoes. The whole meal was great (probably the 3rd time I’ve had it) and I love the mashed potatoes so much that I have made them at home (I added some fresh jalapenos to mine). If you are looking for some good brews and a solid meal head on down to 5 Seasons Brewing. Oh and try the beer cheese soup too!
Monthly Archives: May 2013
Burnt Hickory – Inaugural Wednesday Tasting
BHB kicked my ass and I liked it. What a great way to start off Wednesday brewery tours and tastings. Burnt Hickory has been rocking very successful Saturday tastings for a while now and this past Wednesday was the first weekday tasting event. Many good people showed up to support the brewery and to drink heady beverages. The line up was great, not a beer on there that I wouldn’t want to drown my pallet with. A few beer highlights where, well, all of them. SERIOUSLY. You gotta make it to a tasting and try them all. They are all Big Beers but don’t be scared cause they are tasty. I’m a huge IPA fan and I post about them a lot so let me tell you about something different for a change. Fighting Bishop is a beast of a Belgian style tripel; brewed with green peppercorns this beer has a wonderful complexity of spice, citrus, and fruit flavors. It is a big ass tripel that goes down way to easy. Think a high-gravity summer time poolside slam it down in the heat goodness kinda beer (that all makes sense in my head).
If you happened past the bar you may have noticed the line up of Burnt Hickory beers all bottled up. This was just a nice “teaser” line up of beers that you can not take home with you unless you find a growler store selling BHB beers on draft. Hopefully one day in the not so distant future we will all be able to have a line up of BHB beers like this in our fridges. One of the best parts of the day was the brewery tour hosted by head brewer Will. He was an entertaining and informative tour guide that at the end of the tour was kind enough to share one of my favorites with all the tour patrons… Noggin Knocker! Fuck yeah! This is currently my favorite beer. It is DAMN good. Here is a picture from my point of view.
So that glass right there made my day. Maybe it’ll make yours too, you’ll have to head to the brewery to find out! Burnt Hickory does tours and tasting Wednesdays and Saturdays. To be sure they are doing a tour on the day you want to go check out the breweries Facebook page.
Surfs Up
A perfect beer for a rainy day. Port Brewing‘ s Board Meeting Brown Ale is a medium bodied dark brown ale full of chocolaty goodness. It looks more like a stout than a brown ale but doesn’t have a stouts full body. With one whiff it is very apparent that this beer is brewed with coffee and cocoa nibs. The coffee lends a nice roast to the beer but the chocolate is really the star of the show here. The more the beer warmed the more it tasted like a glass of rich and dark melted chocolate. I enjoyed this brew on a cool, dark and stormy day yesterday and it was quite fitting for the occasion. I will be hunting down another bottle of this beer very soon.
The Last Minute
I couldn’t let this beer sit in my fridge any longer. Yesterday I came home from work, opened my fridge and was accosted by this beer that refused to let me walk away until I consumed it! I have been thoroughly enjoying the “Enjoy By” series from Stone Brewing Company. These big bad double IPA’s are meant to be consumed fresh and have a recommended drinking date that is about a month after the beer has been bottled. These beers do not make it to every market that Stone serves so if you see one sitting on your local retailers shelf feel lucky and pick one up. Here in Georgia we have had the benefit of receiving a couple of the beers from this series. This particular version of Enjoy By had a great combination of pine and citrus going on in the nose and palate. Man it was tasty. I wish they would release one of these beers for every single day of the year. I would love the obligation of having to drink one every day.
Grow your own!
The hops are all finally sprouting. I have been growing two of these plants for three seasons now and they luckily keep coming back each year. My hops are grown in containers since I currently have no yard; before winter they are cut down and brought inside to hibernate with out freezing. It still surprises me when they actually show back up each spring. My two older plants are Chinook and Cascade and they grow completely differently. The Chinook is a thicker vined plant with large broad leaves that get as big as my hand and it grows relentlessly. The Cascade plant grows thin delicate vines with small leaves that don’t get much bigger than a couple of inches across. I am interested to see how the new plant Columbus does. In addition to the hops at my place I’ve got a few rhizomes growing up at friends houses in the area. Hopefully I’ll be brewing a fresh hop beer with locally grown hops come fall. I’ll post more pictures as they grow. BTW, you can still find hop rhizomes online for purchase so it is not to late to grow them this year.
Another Double? Why not.
IPA’s and IIPA’s rock. That’s a fact. So I thought I’d pop up another one that you should be drinking right now. Founders Double Trouble is a crisp and easy drinking IIPA. This brew smells and tastes wonderful. When you pour it up you get a nose full of grapefruity goodness. The flavor follows up with more of the same but with a bit of tropical/mangoishness (yep, mangoishness is a word) to it. It is a smooth DIPA. It should be on the shelves of your local beer store so you should head on down there when you are done reading this sentence.
Mountain Top Treats
I love beer. Oh, and the woods too! A couple of friends and I did a mid week backpacking trip last week and we made sure to haul along some good beers to enjoy fireside. Our little trek covered some miles through the mountains of Georgia and Tennessee and we ended up atop Big Frog Mountian.
Among the many beers that weighed me down on the hike one of my favorites was Gubna by Oskar Blues Brewery. This is a robust Double IPA that is tucked away nicely in a can for convenient transportation. Some people might refer to this beer as an “Onion Bomb” and I would be one of those people. But I mean that in a good way! This beer has a nice dank & oniony hop profile going on and I love it. It is refreshing but with some meat to it. It may sound intimidating or gross with my description but it’s fucking tasty so stop being a wuss and pick up a 4-pack.
And what ever you do, don’t touch my dogs beer. Cheers. PACK IT IN, PACK IT OUT!
Hate to see you go but I love to taste you leave.
MMMmmm… Everyone loves a Hopslam. This big ass double IPA is brewed with some honey that knocks down the bitterness and adds the tiniest bit of honey flavor. The brew drips of hoppy citrus and pine flavors. It’s one of those beers that are becoming a pain in the ass to get your hands on(I’m looking at you KBS) with the craft beer scene blowing up the way it is. Maybe im just greedy for wanting to stock pile cases of this heady brew. Alas, I have finished my last bottle of Hopslam and have already donated its processed remnants to the sewer system, lucky sewer, I’m sure it still tastes of hoppy honey goodness on the way out. Any who, this is a beer that I’m sure you have heard of and that you definitely need to taste. It is one of those beers that has become a living legend and is highly sought after. This is a once a year release that comes out around Jan/Feb each year. BUT! It is American Craft Beer Week this week so you just might be able to find it on draft at an event near you! There is hope! If you run accross it in ATL please drop me a line so I can pour it in my face hole. This is one of those rare beers that actually lives up to the hype that it is surrounded by. It is a bucket list beer. You should be drinking one right now.
I’ve got a six pack of the Mondays.
Monday Night Brewing has been contract brewing for a while and now just started brewing and bottling at their NEW facility in Atlanta, GA. One of the three flag ship beers they produce is the Eye Patch IPA. It is a balanced(slightly malt forward) IPA with a spicy and mildly citrus hop profile. The bottles that I tried seemed to be heavy on the carbonation compared to their draft counter part.
Destroyed in April
A few highlights of the destruction that happened in April.
- Brew Free or Die IPA by 21st Amendment Brewing Company. This is a nice hop forward IPA leaning towards the west coast style.
- Lower De Boom Barleywine by 21st Amendment Brewing Company. A big beer in a little can. This a great format for a beer of this caliber abv. This beer tastes somewhere between an American style and English style barley wine. It has a nice hop bite with a bit of sweetness.
- Freckle Belly IPA by Back Fourty Beer Company in Gadsden, Alabama. Balanced IPA, nuttin crazy.
- Insanity Oak aged barley wine by Weyerbacher. It’s a big one!
- Heresy Imperial Stout aged in Whiskey Barrels. Some tasty shizzz.
- Hops Session an ?Anglo-American? IPA by White Birch Brewing. This was kind of a malt bomb for an IPA, I was surprised.
- Up the Creek IIIPA by Thomas Creek. This thing is big a sweet like an English barley wine.
- Mosaic single hop red rye IPA by Terrapin Beer Co. is smooth and slightly sweet with a hint of blueberry on the nose.
- Hopzilla by Terrapin Beer Co. Big hoppy mofo.
- Lowryeder IPA by SweetWater Brewing Company. I bombed several of these with wet citra hop cones. They then exploded with hoppy goodness in my glass.
- So Fine Red Wheat Wine 16 Anniversary beer by Sweet Water Brewing Company. If you like a big sweet barley wine or wheat wines then you need to try this tasty treat.
- Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale by Stone Brewing Company. This is a ballsy timeless classic from the west coast.
- Enjoy By 05.17.13 IPA by Stone Brewing Company. Fresh pine and dirty dankness beat up your pallet when you sip this bad boy. You need to get on this Enjoy By biz cause its so good. Hurry up and drink ’em if you got ’em because they will self destruct on the 18th!
- Ruthless Rye by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company.
- Celebration by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. I love this fresh hop IPA.
- Bigfoot Barley Wine by Sierra Nevada Brewing Company. Another one by Sierra Nevada that I can’t get enough of. If you haven’t tried it, you need to. Seriously.
- Gangway IPA by Red Hare Brewing Company. This beer grew up when the brewery started canning it because that is when they started dry hopping the beer and it really stepped this balanced IPA up a notch.
- Gubna Imperial IPA by Oscar Blues Brewery. This oniony IIPA will kick your mouth in the nuts!
- Lagunitas Sucks by Lagunitas Brewing Company. Lagunitas doesn’t suck cause they brewed this badass west coast style IPA. Maybe a IIPA? it’s on the cusp.
- Maximus IPA by Lagunitas Brewing Company.
- The Big DIPA by Heavy Seas Brewing Company. This is a smooth, malty, earthy, oaky, spicey, herbal treat. This taint no west coast IIPA.
- Curmudgeon’s Better Half by Founders Brewing Company. Old Ale Brewed with Molasses and Aged in Maple syrup Bourbon Barrels. This was fanfuckingtastic. I can only hope to try this one again if it makes it back my way. It went awesome with my breakfast btw…
- Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS) a Chocolate and Coffee Bourbon Barrel aged breakfast stout by Founders Brewing Company. Dude, do I really need to say more than KBS?
- Breakfast Stout by Founders Brewing Company. This is my year round pre-noon goto stout. You’ll have to stock it up tp make it year round yourself though as it is only a seasonal. Double Chocolate, Coffee, Oatmeal, Oh my.
- Backwoods Bastard by Founders Brewing Company. Another Barrel aged winner from the fine folks at Founders.
- All Day IPA by Founders Brewing Company. I have been drinking the shit out of these. They go down way to easy. Light body and citrusy hop flavor.
- Russian Roulette Black IPA by Evil Twin Brewing. It was a big roasty black IPA.
- The Corruption IPA by DC Brau Brewing.
- Racer 5 IPA by Bear Republic Brewing Co. This was a little maltier than expected being from the west coast but it was damn good.
- The Bollocks IIPA by Brash. A malt forward IIPA.