A Microbrew Review of Lancaster Brewing Company's Winter Warmer

The holidays are just around the corner and for any microbrew and craft beer lover, this season is always met with excitement. I love Christmas beers and winter warmers. The winter beer season is officially upon us and I'll be reviewing microbrews of the wintertime ilk for the next several months.

Tonight, I reached in the fridge and pulled out Lancaster Brewing Company's Winter Warmer. Lancaster Brewing Company (an eastern Pennsylvania microbrewery) offers some great beers and I was looking forward to trying their Winter Warmer offering eagerly.

Pouring the beer into my unchilled beer glass, This beer pours a dark ruby, mahogany color with a mild creamy tan head only about a finger deep and quick to subside to a meer corona of froth on the outer walls of the glass. Nice color and virtually opaque with only the slightest hint of light passing through when held up to the kitchen fan light.

Classified as an Olde Ale, this beer's scent is warm and fuzzy, sweet and caramelly with a hint of spiciness in the nose. Toffy and scotch eminates from the surface with a butter cookie background.

First sip is smooth on the tongue with a sharper alcoholic bite in the swallow. Winter Warmer is a very sweet and sticky microbrew leaving a ring of lollipop stickiness around the lips. It's rich and malty and almost a meal in itself. A slight toffy presence can be detected. The beer became even more sweet and sticky as the beer warmed in my glass. There was no lacing on the glass whatsoever as the microbrew disappeared slowly. This one is definitely a slow sipping kind of craft beer.

Overall, I can definitely recommend Lancaster Brewing Company Winter Warmer for one of those upcoming cold winter's evenings around the fireplace. It's a holiday style craft beer that is worth a try and I will be sure to be picking up several more Winter Warmers before the holiday beer season is over.

One other recommendation is to drink this beer with respect. Lancaster Brewing's Winter Warmer is a bit dominant when it comes to the alcohol level. When it comes to alcohol content in beer, this winter ale boasts a hearty 8.9% alcohol by volume rating and having more than two in a sitting is probably going to invite trouble.

So there you have it. First holiday style beer for the Christmas season and Lancaster Brewing Company's Winter Warmer is a hit in my book. I'm giving it an 8.0 out of 10.00 beer rating points for my microbrew review. Get your hands on Winter Warmer if you have a chance this winter. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
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Great Lakes Brewing Co Nosferatu Stock Ale - My Microbrew Review

Great Lakes Brewing Co Nosferatu Stock Ale - My Microbrew Review

I just had to grab a couple bottles of Great Lakes Brewing Company's Nosferatu Stock Ale at my local six pack shop tonight. I couldn't resist. Friday night, late September, a chill in the air and Halloween just around the corner, Nosferatu really caught my eye. Great Lakes Brewing Co a Cleveland, Ohio brewery, has been known to produce some really great microbrews and craft beers and some really great bottle labels too (in my opinion anyway).

Nosferatu follows suit by featuring what almost seems like a still shot movie clip of the famous vampire himself. Striking, chilling and spooky, yet entertaining all at once. And with Halloween coming soon, this beer and its label image fits the bill.

Pouring the chilled 12 ounce bottle into my standard, unchilled glass 10 ounce beer mug, this beer forces a strong, billowy light almond head straight to the brink of the mug and almost right over the edge. Two fingers and looking quite handsome, this head is creamy as it gets and doesn't go anywhere anytime soon. It stuck around a good four or five minutes before never really disappearing altogether.

Beer aroma is strong an bitter. Slight licorice notes are blended nicely with the sticky sugar malt sweet smell but never really dominates. A hint of clove and raisins also came to mind. Not really strong in its scent, but interesting enough to make me want to take a sip and right quick!

First sip provides a very strong and somewhat surprisingly hoppy punch. Alcoholic tints bite and swirl from front of tongue to back, burning just a bit as it goes down. Bitter hop bit stays on the tip of my tongue well after swallowing the microbrew. I notice as the glass warms the alcoholic tones actually dim a bit and a richer velvety mouthful proclaims its presence.

Viewing the beer in my mug, I noticed immense lacing all the way down through the mug. Sticky, clinging webs of bubbles and froth clearly mark the status of this beers comsumption right straight through to bottom of the glass. If you take a sip every minute, you could tell exactly how much time you spent drinking the glass of beer just by counting the frothy rings.

This beer looks awesome too. The liquid is a vibrantly, strong mahogany/rust in the glass. Carbonation is good and healthy but not too vigourous. Nice, miniscule,lazy bubbles drift in spirals up and about feeding the foam at the top just enough to maintain a good foam breadth throughout.

Great Lakes Brewing Co Nosferatu is a very good craft beer. I'd almost venture to say it is great. It's definitely enjoyable throught the glass and actually improves as time goes by. Thick, rich and satisfying and a real for hopheads too if you're into the hoppier bitter beers. There's a nice malty backbone but it just helps to balance, not sweeten the beer.

I'd recommend Great Lakes Brewing's Nosferatu to anyone who's into craft beers of all types and into hoppy beers in particular. The label adds to the seasonal autumn feel to it an I'd love to be able to throw a Halloween party next month and feature a bushel barrel of iced down bottles of Nosferatu to all of my guests although the 8.0% alcohol content of beer would make the party rather interesting if everyone sampled more than two.

I'd give Great Lakes Nosferatu Stock Ale an 8.25 out of 10.00 points for my microbrew review rating. This is an excellent beer and one I think many folks will enjoy and look forward to fall after fall.


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Flying Dog Brewery Snake Dog IPA - A Microbrew Review

I haven't seen alot of microbrews from Flying Dog Brewery around these parts here in Western Pennsylvania until just recently. In fact, my favorite craft beer bottle shop has started stocking three or four offerings lately from Flying Dog Brewery and I was excited to give Flying Dog's Snake Dog India Pale Ale a try, so I grabbed a bottle this evening.

Flying Dog Brewery started out in 1994 as a small Denver, Colorado based microbrewery that's since relocated all of it's beer brewing production to their Frederick, Maryland brewery (where they'd been brewing a good portion of their beer since purchasing the second brewery in 2006).

The Flying Dog Brewery bottle labels are famous for featuring the eclectic artwork of Ralph Steadman of Hunter S. Thompson Gonzo fame. This bottle of Snake Dog IPA literally jumped off the shelf at me with its eye catching labeling. I couldn't pass it up.

Cracking open the bottle and pouring the 12 ounces of chilled libation into my glass, the head of this beer was fantastically aggressive, billowing up into an overwhelming 2 finger eggshell white, fluffy head that stuck a good several minutes before begrudgingly dissipating to a more managable drinking level. Color was nice, shimmery and coppery with lazy bubbles of carbonation sauntering upwards to the surface.

The aroma wasn't quite as aggressive though. A little bitter and astringent with piney scents taking the front scene of the beer's smell. There's definitely hops in there and I'm going to get them!

First couple of sips boasted a deliciously crisp brew. As with most IPA's, this beer was bitter but not to a fault. It was nicely balanced with just enough malty sweetness at the swallow but that familiar bitter hops presence stayed with the aftertaste for a while. Flying Dog Brewery has produced a balanced beer with a good mouthful of flavor. I detected a mild hint of smokiness in the beer that nicely complimented it's royal hoppy bite. Snake Dog IPA has a distinctive liveliness to it, it's very zesty for lack of a better word. Not a lot of that often grapefruity flavor however, which I found to be a good thing.

The alcohol makes its presence known and becomes progressively noticeable in a burning sensation as the beer warmed in my glass. Checking the bottle label, I notice that this craft beer clocks in at a hefty 7.1 percent alcohol by volume which is approaching an imperial IPA level. It's not overbearing to the beer flavor however, but the ABV is something to bear in mind if you're sampling Snake Dog IPA and plan to partake in more than a couple servings. This microbrew will bite you if you're not careful!

All things being equal, I must say that I love Flying Dog Brewery Snake Dog IPA. Everything in this beer I thought went well altogether. The cool looking label artwork, the quirky story and themes behind the brewery itself and of course the well put together beer inside the cool bottle. While nothing stood out as incredibly shocking or groundbreaking with this beer's flavor, no characteristic took anything away from it's excellent India Pale Ale attributes.

Flying Dog Brewery Snake Dog IPA has definitely bit me and I'll be getting off the porch and running with the big dogs right back to the bottle shop for a few more of these before the day ends tomorrow. I'd recommend Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA to any microbrew lover especially if you favor the more hoppy Pale Ales and India Pale Ale style beers. Get some today!!

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Post on Post Road Pumpkin Ale

Ok, ok, it's been a few weeks but I'm back and ready to share something new of hops and malts. Very little on the hops however when it comes to speaking about this next craft beer.

Yes, it's November. Yes, Halloween's already past (two weeks now). But, so what? It's still Fall and what's coming up next? That's right, Thanksgiving. And while Halloween is all about Tricks or Treats and carving pumpkins, Thanksgiving is all about eating pumpkins (typically in the form of pie but in this case, I'll be reviewing the liquid version).

So enough of the small talk. Let's get to this week's feature sampling. I've been able to find and sieze a reasonably $33.00 priced case of Post Road Pumpkin Ale. Post Road is essentially a spin-off of Garrett Oliver's Brooklyn Brewery. If you are somewhat familiar with Garrett and his Brooklyn beers, you know that high quality, flavorful and innovative microbrews are what you'll get in just about anything offered there. Here with Post Road is not all that much different.

I tasted this one first at about 55 degrees in a standard 16oz. pub glass, nothing fancy here. This brew ended up pouring out with a coppery/burnt orangy color with not a whole heck of a lot of head. I'd say about 3/4 finger and quickly extinct. Kinda disappointing right off the start there. Well, I'm here to drink it not to stare. Good thing for me.

Tasting it was just as pumpkiny (is that a word) as I thought and hoped it would be. Very, very good pumpkin flavor. I liked it, I liked it alot. Just a twinge of nutmeg/cinnamon poking out in the background but overall, I could very easily tell this was a traditional pumpkin ale and not some holiday spice wannabe.

I really liked the way this one smelled. Overall, I thought that it essentially smelled as close to pumpkin pie as just about anything I'd ever tried (other than actual pumpkin pie that is). Sure it had some spicieness to the aroma but predominantly, I smelled pumpkin. So often in many pumpkin beer offerings from microbreweries, everything seems overwhelmed in spices, spices, spices. Pumpkin sometimes seems an afterthought. Not so with Post Road. Pumpkin rules the day here.

The carbonation seemed right on to me for the style. Drinkability is fair to good but I think this description doesn't do it justice because in my opinion, pumpkin/spiced ales just don't have alot of high drinkability in many cases (meaning I'd probably try one and not want another, even if I liked it). Too much of a good thing to continue? Maybe, maybe just too rich for my taste.

Anyway, I really did like this beer and I think many looking for a good, true pumpkin flavored beer will enjoy this also. Again, you'll probably try it, like it, maybe have another and that's it. You'll be done. It's just not all that sessionable. But it's good and I'll have it again (I've got 23 more in my fridge now and only a week and a half til Thanksgiving to finish it!

One negative I will point out is that, for me, in the background, beneath the strong pumpkin sensation, I perceived this subtle taste that kept bugging me just a little. It reminded me of Yuengling lager. Yes, Yuengling lager. When I got that taste in my mouth, for whatever reason I got the idea imbedded in my brain that this was a beer, first and foremost, with pumpkin flavoring added. You know that whole "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" thing? It just gave me a subtle impression that all in all, everything just didn't result in a seamless integration of everything put into this beer.

My overall summary is, this beer is good. Above average I would say for the style (pumpkin ales being a niche style of their own). I did enjoy it. Very, very much...I would say no. But again, who's going to sit down and drink pumpkin beer all day, even on Thanksgiving. Nobody me thinks. But it is a very good representation of the style, and very good for the price I paid. Whether the case is gone by Thanksgiving or not, I just don't know, but I will continue to enjoy it, one Post Road Pumpkin Ale at a time.

My humble opinion will give Post Road Pumpkin Ale 6.50 out of 10 points. At a little over 5.0 alcohol by volume, this is a respectable craft beer for the style and one I would recommend to someone who is into microbrews and wants to try something different (remembering pumpkin ales just aren't for everyone) so I'd expect a widely varying range of agreement/disagreement amongst the masses).

Cheers!

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