Part of a Samuel Adams Harvest Collection box, I’m reviewing this one a little late, you might have difficulties finding this on shelves now. Pours with a moderately strong head, dark brown with a hint of red. Aroma and flavor of the hazelnut is definitely there, adds a bit of bitter bite too. There’s a pretty strong roast flavor, but not too smokey. It’s got a medium mouthfeel and pretty clean finish but with a lingering bitter. I’m a little undecided on how much I like the strong hazelnut flavor. In the end it’s a pretty decent beer.
Just makes 3 out 4 nutty monkeys.
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Popped into Mojo Tactical to visit Dave after I got back from Japan. He had these KFC parody patches in original color and subdued tan. Image is pretty good, but the subtext is somewhat forced …not particularly clever …okay, lame. Eh, it’s worth several laughs. Sort of makes me want to put a fully loaded plate carrier on one of the Colonel Sanders statues outside a restaurant and take a picture! Definitely can’t put a bump helmet on him unless you gut the foam, since his fiberglass hair is huge. Maybe a keffiyah would be better. Patch has a rude gesture, so it’s after the break… Continue reading ‘November Patches’
Sierra Nevada’s heffeweizen, pours a cloudy medium light amber with moderate head that quickly dissapates. Label claims its the only American open fermentated heffe. Bright and fairly citrusy tone, with a nice spicyness that’s not as strong as say Hoegarten. Pretty crisp mouthfeel but still has a heffeweizen feel. Pretty good stuff!
3 out of 4 yeast monkeys.
What should I find at the supermarket than two new-ish dark offerings from mainstream breweries. Decades ago, it was “Dunk” (heck, that’s so old, it exists only in my memory and I can’t find anything about it online… did it even exist? It had Arnold the Governator in their advertising and was product-placed on some stewardess drama) which faded from popularity, but now darks are back, albeit still on the tamer end of the flavor scale. From Yebisu comes the Creamy Top Stout aimed to compete with the widgeted Guinness, and Asahi Dry Black, a dark lager offering. I actually had the Yebisu Creamy Top Stout on draught at a restaurant in Okayama last year, but this is the first time I’ve tried the Asahi Dry Black. Continue reading ‘Beer is Good – Battle of the Black Cans’
I can just hear Fabio fighting the power! This mild, clear weissbier is produced by the Moortgat Brouwerij (brewery) that brings us Duvel and the various “Chouffe” beers and ales from the Brasserie d’Achouffe brewery. The Vedett name was originally used to market a lager in the 1940’s, but in the 2000’s, the brand was realigned toward a younger, upscale market with the introduction of a pilsener and the weiss I will review here.  The flavor is not as heavily citrussy out of the bottle as some other weissbiers are. There is a hint of bitter over the moderate wheat flavor. The carbonation is low: You can feel a hint of bubbles on the tongue, but there is no head. It is cloudy, as a weiss should be, but has the least amount of accumulated sediments of all the bottled weissbiers I have observed. This weiss is the lightest in flavor that I’ve had so far. That’s not specifically a bad thing, as I’ve had a couple of microbrew or craft weissbiers where they smack you on the head with a hand drilling hammer with the amount of sediment and taste overburden they have. The Vedett Extra White Weiss has a good balance of flavor and body, but is on the crisper, refreshing side of the scale instead of the fuller, “meatier” (meal in a glass) side. Continue reading ‘Beer is Good – Vedett Extra White Weiss’
The teriyaki heritage of this seasonal burger is more pronounced in the cheeseburger version than the bacon version. The mild cheese doesn’t have the saltiness of the bacon or the tang of the mustard to offset the onion ragout and sauce, so the overall flavor is sweeter. Like its other tobikiri bretheren, it shares the same aibiki domestic beef and pork patty. It is good, just not my favorite MOS offering. Continue reading ‘MOS Tobikiri Cheese Hamburger Sandwich’
I picked up some dehydrated apple rings for a snack and not really to bring back, since fruit in any form would probably freak out the Department of Agriculture guys. I got these over some apple chips I saw because there was only apples and salt listed as ingredients, so I figured sulfites wouldn’t be an issue. As-is out of the nearly-impossible-to-open package, they are sweet and firm and have the unmistakable apple flavor. Just for S&G, I tried rehydrating one in hot water, and it nearly returned to its original form – I “S” you not! The skin ends up being a little tough, but once rehydrated, the flesh even begins to brown like a fresh apple slice! Weird! Guess there really aren’t any sulfites to preserve the color. Continue reading ‘Astronaut Apples’
This ji-biiru from the small Oirase microbrewery and restaurant in central Aomori prefecture is somewhat widely distributed in central and East Aomori – I’ve seen it in Towada, Hirosaki, and Aomori city. Oirase is so close to Hachinohe, I’d really be surprised if you couldn’t find it there.  Oirase brewery makes a pilsener, a weissen, a dark lager, and a “half and half”, which is just a mixture of the pils and lager. All of them are 5% ABV, and other than as draughts at the restaurant, they are sold in 300ml screw-top aluminum bottle-cans identical to those Coke and many other soft drink makers use on the JDM. I didn’t really have the fortitude to try all four, and being unpasteurized, they had to be kept under refrigeration which is difficult on a bus and train trip, so I opted for the pilsener. Continue reading ‘Beer is Good – Oirase Beer-kan Pilsner’
This is Kirin’s Pilsener offering. I’ve had it in a bottle before, but didn’t realize it was a mass-market product. It was better on draught, but still on the unremarkable side. It leaned toward the dry/highly attenuated side, but the decoction was weak to the point that it almost tasted like it wasn’t 100% barley malt, but had rice as an adjunct. The hopping was adequate to let you know that it was a pils, but it definitely wasn’t the rich offering that the competing Suntory Malts Premium Pilsener is. Flavor is clean and without any really bad traits, but really is somewhat plain. Whee. Continue reading ‘Heartland Beer’
MOS crafts some really good Japanese-style hamburgers. They aren’t modified from a Western recipie to conform to Japanese tastes: They are built from the ground up for domestic consumption – that’s probably why they bombed when they opened two stores in Honolulu decades ago. The Tobikiri hamburger is no exception to the domestic tastes rule. That’s not to say that if you aren’t Japanese, you won’t like this burger – it just isn’t the plain salty charred meat slab hidden beneath ketchup and mustard that you are used to. The patty is made from a mix of beef and pork (aibiki) and is topped with a thick slice of Hokkaido-produced bacon and sauteed onions with a bacon-shoyu sauce. They pride themselves on domestic sourcing, so the beef, pork, bacon, and onions are all domestic. This is reflected in the price, since the burger alone is 420-yen (around $5.38 USD). If you go to their website, they have a breakdown for the sourcing of ingredients on the product page. Continue reading ‘MOS Tobikiri Hamburger Sandwich “Atsugiri Bacon”’