Founders Rübæus
Rübæus, from Founders Brewing Company, is everything you would hope to find in a raspberry beer.
If you’re looking for a sweet beer with just the right tang of tart raspberry, Rübæus is your perfect match. Founders knows how to make a good dessert beer.
If you’re only drinking one beer a day, and if you aren’t a fan of fruit beer — well, let’s just say I can forgive you for taking a pass on this one.
Either way, if you want to try this beer, you’d better grab a bottle quickly. Word is Founders will no longer brew Rübæus, due to the rising cost of raspberries.
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Raspberry & Chocolate Weekend
Starting tomorrow, we’ll have a mini-theme on BeerADay.net in honor of the Valentine’s Day holiday.
Here’s the lineup:
For a preview of the Choklat, check out this great review by 52BREWS.com:
http://52brews.com/2009/02/southern-tier-choklat/
Do you have a favorite chocolate or raspberry beer? What will you be drinking on Valentine’s Day weekend?
Sierra Nevada ESB (Early Spring Beer)
We could all use an early spring. (To hell with that Pennsylvania groundhog and his stupid shadow.) Today I grabbed a bottle of Sierra Nevada ESB (Early Spring Beer).
Here in New England and around much of the United States, we’ve had a bit of a respite from the bitter cold that has been plaguing us all winter. Some of the snow has begun to melt, and where I have plowed walking paths with my snow blower I can actually see, for the first time in months, what’s left of my decimated lawn.
It must be for occasions like this that Sierra Nevada releases its ESB in January, calling it an Early Spring Beer. While ESB typically stands for Extra Special Bitter or Extra Strong Bitter, reader John D. pointed out in a Forum post recently that many breweries take liberties with the initials — consider the Elvis’s Special Bitter that has been brewed in the past by Laurelwood in Portland, OR.
For some background on the ESB style, I turned to BeerAdvocate.com:
ESBs are essentially more aggressive and more balanced Bitters, both in alcohol and hop character, but nothing overpowering. Color range will be similar, though leaning towards the darker end of the scale; dark golds to copper. Low carbonation. Malts tend to be more pronounced, often toasty and fruity, with maybe some notes diacetyl. And despite “bitter” being in its name, ESBs are not really all that bitter. The key to an ESB is balance.
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Harpoon Munich Dark
Harpoon holds a special place in my beer drinking heart, as I explained in my very first entry. So despite the atrocity inflicted upon my taste buds by the Harpoon Chocolate Stout, I believe Harpoon deserves a chance to redeem itself with me.
Its first chance at redemption came last weekend when I carried a bottle of the Chocolate Stout to a party, asking a few beer drinkers to tell me what they thought. We cracked it open and passed the glass around. I couldn’t drink it of course, but I took a big whiff. Every artificial, syrupy element seemed exactly the same. Still, the reviews were mixed. One person found the Chocolate Stout undesirable, another was on the fence, and a third really enjoyed it. But I’ll let her review speak for itself — it was, essentially, “Mmm — it tastes like artificial chocolate sweetener!”
Yeah, we’ll call that a wash.
Tonight’s attempt was far more successful. The Harpoon Munich Dark (or, as the label reads, the Munich Type Dark) is a fun brown ale, complex and extremely pleasant to drink.
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Schneider Weisse Hefe-Weizen
After a week of extreme beer and curious ingredient lists, I’ve decided to retreat to the religious rigidity of the Reinheitsgebot.
Really.
The Reinheitsgebot, you may already know, is the “German Purity Law” that specifies only three ingredients for beer: water, barley, and hops. Such stringency means that if the law had not been repealed in 1987, somewhere in Bavaria you could find a post office with Sam Calagione’s “Wanted” poster.
Reader Scott suggested a couple of weeks ago that I try out Schneider Weisse, a German Hefe-Weizen. And as luck would have it, I stumbled across a bottle of Schneider Weisse during a beer run recently and tucked it away.
And let me say — it’s a very enjoyable beer.
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Last Consumed:
My wife and I usually select a Christmas Tree during the weekend after Thanksgiving, and we were thrilled to discover the farm down the road from us is selling trees this year. She and I stopped by the farm while walking our Boston Terrier, Caesar, who helped us sniff out a good one. After my wife and I dithered over the best tree for several minutes, Caesar weighed in with his selection by lifting his leg on a plump Fraser Fir.
I hope that means he liked it.
The tree went up on my shoulder, I carried it home (drawing chuckles from several people driving by), and our Christmas season officially began. We’ve been listening to Christmas music, drinking hot chocolate, and generally sickening all humbugs spying through our windows.
So it should come as no surprise that I’ve selected the “Hoppy Christmas Ale” from Belgium’s Brewery De Ranke. The beer — Père Noël (imported by Shelton Brothers) — intimates the reason for Father Christmas’ jolly cheeks and rosy nose; the label depicts Santa embracing the frothy, 7% ABV Strong Pale Ale.
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