A Tenacious New Year

Thanks Hop & Soul! I'll try the Curious
Traveler Shandy ASAP, I promise.

Happy 2013 DLAA readers! This New Year's Eve, I decided to try Tenacious Traveler Shandy based on a suggestion provided to me by our new friends at Hop & Soul. (Actually, I'm a big fat liar. They recommended Curious Traveler Shandy but the nice man at the liquor store checked the back room, and only found this one. Oh well, I'll try anything once.)

Fun Fact #1: Tenacious Traveler Shandy is brewed by The Traveler Beer Company, formerly known as The House of Shandy Beer Company.

Fun Fact #2: The Traveler Beer Company follows Drink Like an Adult on twitter. Go ahead, follow them back. We don't mind.

Fun Fact #3: The Traveler Beer Company's logo is a man with a sweet mustache. This clearly makes the beer all that much more appealing. Seriously, who doesn't love a good stache?

The beer was a light orange in color and had a decently thick head at first (although the head dissipated fairly quickly). It had a distinct sweet smell of honey. The very first thing I could taste was the ginger. It reminded me slightly of a really good ginger ale, but was also sweet and citrusy from the honey and lemons. This beer was also pretty carbonated, which made it easy to drink and made me feel even more like I was just drinking a glass of soda.

Overall, I absolutely loved the Tenacious Traveler Shandy. I've been telling everyone who will listen to me for long enough about how much I enjoyed the ginger and sweetness. I even drank ginger tea for the entire next week just to remind myself of the taste of what may be my new favorite beer. Sure, it only has a 4.4% ABV and only got a 25 from ratebeer.com, but I loved it, so I hope you'll give it a shot.

My new shirt!

*Side Note: Thanks again to Hop & Soul for the suggestion, support, stickers, and my free shirt. You guys are awesome.

Winter Shredder

I'm not going to lie to any of you, I picked this beer since there's an awesome snowman surfing on the bottle. Cisco Brewers Nantucket's Winter Shredder is an "ale brewed with natural spices".

This ale's appearance is a copper color with a very obvious opacity. There was a lush, dark, 1 finger head after the pour that quickly dissipated. It did not leave much lacing. 

The smell is spicy and malty with a vanilla hint. The taste is an interesting blend of sweet and spicy. Mixed tastes of nutmeg, and brown sugar with a bitter finish. It was a medium bodied, slightly dry ale. 

It was a pretty good winter ale, but not one of my favorites. I haven't had any other beers by this brewer, but I'd certainly be willing to try others. While doing my research I found it unusual that on their website Cisco Brewers did not mention this particular beer on their list. 

Lastly I'd like to apologize for my absence on the blog. Holidays and my birthday mean much more beer drinking than beer reviewing. But I have a bunch of beers in my fridge to review, and will be posting much more frequently. 

From Russia with Love

It's been cold out lately - really cold. While my local weather is a bit mild in comparison to Scandinavia or Siberia, it's still pretty damn cold. Luckily, I have beer to keep me warm. No, I don't recommend you heat up your beer and drink it like it's a hot cocoa (that's just silly), but I do suggest you look into North Coast Brewing Company's Old Rasputin - a Russian Imperial Stout renowned for its flavor and warmth. It's probably my favorite thing ending in "putin."

Please don't kill me, Vlad. - Image courtesy of Reuters

This beer is dark and poured easy into one of my snifter-like glasses I like to use for these reviews. With a dark beige, one inch head (that eventually settled into a quarter inch head) and a thick lacing that just wouldn't cave into gravity, this brew looked like it was trying to model for the camera; it just would not settle. I immediately picked up a beautiful variety of aromas - vanilla, toffee, brown sugar, roasted malts, the slightest hint of fruitiness and a definite boozy alcohol smell were there. The flavor of the Old Rasputin was tremendous. The first wash over your tongue brings tastes of chocolate, roasted malts, and a hint of coffee while leaving you with a bitterness not usually seen in these darker beers. As the beer moves past the mouth and down the throat, you're left with a warmth that you'd be more likely to find in a wine or a whiskey. This also drinks very easily due to it being full-bodied and not very carbonated. While I don't find this is a beer you can pound down in a couple of gulps, it's much easier to drink than other similar beers.

Don't mind the photographer in the reflection

At a not horribly imposing 9% ABV , this beer wants you to think it's twice as strong as it actually is. While this might put some beer drinkers off, Old Rapsutin an absolute delight and should not be overlooked. Garnering similar sentiment on Beer Advocate and Rate Beer, this beer aims to please. It's keeping me warm on a chilly day off and I would hope it does the same for you.

Such a Procrastinator

Hey folks - my apologies for not posting in quite some time...I should probably do less tasting and more writing, but hey, at least I'm enjoying myself.

This review was long time coming. I think I tried this one before the new year, before Christmas, even before the trip to the Outer Banks...that's how long it's been. Today I'm bringing to you Saranac's Chocolate Orange Porter, part of their High Peaks series.

From the Brewer:

Saranac Chocolate Orange is a limited edition small batch brew from our "High Peaks" series, a line of beers that are bigger, more complex and flavorful.  Brewed as a full-bodied robust Baltic-style porter with five different hops and four different malts, this beer pushes the porter style to a new level.  We start with generous amounts of chocolate malt, and then add blood orange peel.  In fermentation, the finest hand-selected, purest cacao nibs are added to enhance the chocolate malt flavor.  Look for a dark chocolate roasted flavor finished off with a unique surprise from blood orange peel, making this an extra special treat!

Sounds delicious, right? Well, I must say that this was actually quite disappointing. Weighing in at a decent 9% ABV, the pour on this can only be described as "straight up like motor oil", rich, smooth, and almost black in color. The head is an astounding dark brown color, and long lasting. The nose lends to the chocolate malt, as well as a roasty-toasty smell with some sweetness to it.

The excitement pretty much stops there. I hardly picked up any orange whatsoever - at least not a citrusy orange. They use Orange Peel and Chocolate Malt, but it's more of an orange blossom flavor, if anything at all. its full-bodied and creamy, but the orange is severely lacking. I'm sure it's more aromatic and fruitier on tap, but this was just a bit disappointing for me. I know Mike liked it a bit more than I did. This was worth trying, but I'm probably not going to buy it again. I expected so much more chocolate-orange deliciousness. The malt overpowered the beer and the orange just wasn't there. But hey, at least it's pretty.

How this beer made me feel.

Womp womp.

I know there are other Chocolate Orange porters and stouts out there, perhaps I'll try another one and won't be as sad afterwards.

Any suggestions from the crowd out there? Comment below or tweet at us @DrinkLikeAdults.

Cheers!
-Maggie

He'brew Origin Pomegranate Ale

Courtesy Of Shmaltz Brewing Company

For the holidays I received an excellent addition to my beer collection, the Shmaltz Brewing Company's 2012 Holiday Gift Pack. It came with 8 excellent beers, which were supposed to be consumed during Hannukah. Unfortunately I was unable to do this. Instead I felt it would be necessary to at least try one on Christmas. The lucky brew was the Origin Pomegranate Ale, which was excellent. Being a big fan of pomegranate I was very excited to try this one and see how they worked this pomegranate flavor into this ale.

Shmaltz He'brew Origin Pomegranate Ale

I was unable to get my hands on a decent glass to pour this into so I had to drink straight from the bottle. While it wasn't the most ideal thing to do it made my life easier. It appeared to be a light amber and reddish color with decent carbonation. There was a sweet and somewhat potent scent from what I could smell emerging from the bottle. The flavor was nothing too overwhelming or exciting. There was a slight hop to the flavor initially which eventually turned into a nice and surprising pomegranate and tart flavor that went down very smoothly. It definitely did not taste as potent as it is at a whopping 8% ABV. It tasted more like a mild 4% or 5% ABV session beer.

As a whole this was a beer I certainly enjoyed and would get again, but not one that I would go out of my way to find. I feel that the ratings it has been given on various beer review sites do not do it justice though. I look forward to trying the rest of the box and will hopefully review a few.