I despise pumpkin beers.. Octoberfests/marzen/VMOs on the other hand are amazing.. I buy at least 4 cases worth of a local brews Octoberfest. They don't tend to release it until Septemberish.. Are pumpkins even ripe for picking this early? I hate Sam Adam's way too early releases of their beers.
On a homebrew front, we had this big family get together a few weeks back and had about 4 beers readily available to drink. Two were brand new additions, a Caramel malt forward dry hopped Red Ale, sitting at a heft 7.3% and 55 IBU (pictures coming soon hopefully). And the other, which happened to be a big hit of the party, an amped up Cream Ale.. The recipe I found online called for a ~4% ABV easy drinker. I knew we could get much higher than that and still have the drinkability..
Double Cream Ale
6.6% ABV ( 1.060 OG.... 1.010 FG)
Recipe called for quite of a bit of flaked corn, minute ice, and some basic 2 row, with minor vienna malt additions.. Just an all around very light pallet beer. We didn't have minute rice, so we used some uncooked jasmine rice and let that sit in the mash water for a little bit... We followed that up with some Northwest yeast, which has a bit of a fruitiness to it. In all, drinkers of all walks of life loved it. It had the dryness of a pilsner with the corn and rice taste, with just a hint of fruitiness towards the end.. 18 IBUs allowed the hops is really stay in the background. The rice and corn flavor is definitely present in the taste of the beer. It did have a bit of that macrostyle taste initially. The hops are obviously higher than the traditional light lager, and the yeast helped. So this one had the looks of a lightweight, but imho a taste of a heavyweight.
The Caramel Red Ale was a bit more special. Crystal 80 and 120 allowed this one to be darker in color than a traditional red. With 3 types of hop additions, plus dry hopping. This one was a bit closer to an IPA or Red IPA than anything we've tried before. Dry Hopping adds a killer aroma to a beer. We may try to dry hop a pale ale next.
Both were quite high in ABV, yet no one really said anything about the booziness. Maybe because it was free? In all, the cream may be the best tasting beer we have done so far.. Sadly within just 14 days of tapping the keg, 100 gallons ran dry. So we never got to taste it as it matured.. The Red is within days of being gone, so Ill need to try and get photos ASAP.
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I threw out internet review scores for the day Friday and went to a few obscure out of town breweries.. Drinking beer on draft yields almost any beer, good or bad, to be 100 times better. I ended up drinking two 4.7% 50 IBU stouts (again, can anyone make a bad stout?), and a 100 ibu 6.3% black IPA, which was a bit more of a hop bomb than I anticipated. Review scores would say otherwise on a few of the ones I liked, but I liked them. I guess I ignore reviews? Lol
The other place I visited had about 7 beers on tap. Beers I have seen at the beer store for years and ignored. Each one was solid.. I ended up liking their imperial stout so much that I ended up with a case... I guess I should've hid my wallet. 3 beers later and your mind isn't where you think it is..