Category: beer

On the way home from work this afternoon I stopped and traded a couple of used (but still good) Schwalbe Racing Ralph 29×2.4″ tires to Paul (Jlr13) from the MMBA Forum. One of the beers he gave me was Red Horse Beer, a Filipino beer that he said tastes like being a teenager. Except this was a normal size bottle, not the 500mL more commonly drank by youths.

This is much tastier than a typical 8% malt liquor, and I’m enjoying. It’s cold, somewhat sweet, and fizzy. I like it. It’s what I thought Baltika 9 should have tasted like. I can’t help but be amused at the About Red Horse Beer section of the brand’s home page:

“Red Horse Beer is your extra strong beer that brings you that pure alcoholic experience. It is not your ordinary beer – rebellious and flavorful yet bold and intense. It is sweet and bitter smooth, giving you a fueled kick. Excite yourself with this deeply hued distinct tasting beer.”

Yes… that pure alcoholic experience.

Danielle wants me to use up the special beers that have been sitting in the fridge for a while, so tonight after a ride on the trainer I opened up this bottle of Kuhnhenn Brewing Company‘s Solar Eclipse. This is a barrel aged imperial stout, aged from 2009 to 2012 before being sold. My good friend Brian gave me this bottle a while back, and I’d been saving it for a special occasion. I guess that was tonight, to celebrate a nice weekend with friends.

At 18% I’m sipping this slowly (it was opened at 9pm and isn’t gone nearly two and a half hours later), but that seems appropriate for a beer like this. As it warms and sits the flavor changes, and I’m enjoy it the whole way through. This really is good, and something I’d like to get more of. Thanks, Brian!

Here’s the glass of Short’s Brewing Company’s Controversius Maximus Double IPA that I drank this evening. My friend Erick gave me a six pack of this in exchange for some bicycle stuff that I no longer needed (a 26″ trainer tire originally detailed here). I really like this beer, but it’s definitely the sort of thing which one has occasionally, sipping it over an extended period of time.

After purchasing a six pack of New Holland’s The Poet a couple days back I noticed that the font used inside of the caps has changed. It’s gone from the distressed font seen on the right (to and ing) to something much more boring (Tulip, done, and earthy).

Judging by the change to the markings on the plastic cap liner I suspect that the cap supplier changed as well. Perhaps they had greater restrictions on the fonts used for printing the inside of caps. Oh well.

After trying the Magic Mirror I had one bottle of Grimm Brothers Brewhouse beer from Erik and Kristi left, a bitter, smoked wheat beer of a style known as Grätzer (lots more history here).

This is pretty tasty, and has me thinking about trying to do some sort of smokey beer with wheat for my next beer. Maybe just something like a lighter wheat beer with a bunch of smoked grain for steeping… The two flavors go together much better than I’d expected. Not that I anticipated this beer being anything other than great (everything I’ve had from Grimm Brothers has been great), but this is really hitting the spot.