Author: Professor Good Ales

Mythical poster at The LTS Good for What Ales You Beer Journal. Loves good beer. Hates same old, same old. Muses that Bud and Miller might as well be brewed in urinals. Drinks lagers too, if they are complex and interesting.
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Beer Profile: Victory Helios

Profiled by Maria Devan

Looks so good. I never rate a beer’s appearance that high but this beer is perfectly clear, has a thick creamy white crown that lasts and leaves a film and ring on top. Body is sunshine yellow. Golden.

Nose is sumptuous but fun with lots of fruity citrus, a plentiful hops herbal that is whimsical with pepper and a malt sweetness that is a touch of white bread with honey. Taste is sultry and heady with lemon, the bright lemon peel, the spontaneous herbal.

The hops herbal in this beer is like hay or dried grass but it also has quite a bit of pepper. A perfect tartness that makes the mouth water and a dry and bubbly finish that lets that pepper really tickle. Smooth and at 7.5% it’s on the high side for abv but you will find it a pleasant warmth in the swallow. There is a bitterness in this one and it’s welcome because of the slightly higher abv. It balances out that alcohol sweetness and bit of extra body perfectly and lets the beer reside in the aftertaste as plentiful in flavor as it was on the palate.

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Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”

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_____________________________________Beer HERE

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mdMaria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is a great beer writer. That’s Maria in the middle. The other two are not, but they are lucky to have her as a friend.

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IPAs Are Giving You Man Boobs

Image courtesy drinks.seriouseats.com500

 

Not many people know this, but those hops in your favorite IPA are actually wonderful medicine for insomnia and menopause, thanks to their high phytoestrogen content. These same phytoestrogens, however, might be less desirable for men, as indicated by the common condition known among brewers as Brewer’s Droop.

Yes, you read that right: Hops are giving men man boobs.

Want to read more? Please click…

HERE

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Craft beer is booming in Charleston — but how big can it get?

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Charleston, she loves to drink. But with 10 craft breweries in the area and at least nine more waiting in the wings, even some beer snobs are starting to wonder: How many breweries can this town really support?

Timmons Pettigrew, a City Paper contributor and co-founder of CHSBeer.org, has given the question some thought, and he thinks the industry’s growth is healthy for the time being. But even Charleston has her limit.

“I think the simple math would tell you that yes, there is a point at which a town of X people can’t support Y breweries,” Pettigrew says. “The question is, what is Y?”

The consensus among the current brewers is that Y is still a long way off. Many of them point to the example of Asheville, N.C., a significantly smaller town that nonetheless supports 20 craft breweries in its area.

Want to read more? Please click…

HERE

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Mark Phipps on Bacterial Spoilage

mark phipps

 

As it does with almost all brewers, the opportunity to get a taste of your creation is like seeing your newborn child for the first time. Well, maybe not that severe, but it’s well up on the podium of importance. Just imagine as you bring the beer up close to your nose to take in what you believe will be the fresh aroma of a job well done, the smell drives your head back. You ease back in just to try a sip … what you experience are the spoilages of your efforts. Your day is officially ruined by bacteria that decided to make home in your brew.

With such a relatively opportunistic struggle among brewers and bacteria, we reached out to Mark Phipps, the technical director, and a brewmaster himself, at Alltech Lexington Brewing and Distilling Company, to shed some light on bacterial spoilage and prevention measures.

BM: Why do breweries deal with bacterial spoilage issues in their beer?

Want to read more? Please click…

HERE

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Beer Profile: Future Ancestor, Wiseacre

FutureAncestor_poster_web

Profiled by Ken Carman

Pure white pillow head with fast rising legs. Yellow on paler side. Slight haze. Head fades fast to nothing. Light yellow/gold. Great legs.

Fruity aroma with slight corn (grits?) Just a hint of sweet: candy sugar-ish. Pilsner malt behind that.

Mouthfeel: slightly sweet. Almost an ale version of Bud/Miller, only with a sightly sweet-ish pilsner/pale malt sense. Malt on light side medium, at best. Pale malt and pilsner-like malt coat the roof of the mouth but fade fast. Slight sulfur lager yeast.

Taste: malt with slight sugary sweet, no hops. A bit corn-like, but not DMS. Grits, I suspect.

This is a fine,lighter side of medium, lager that has little to none of the defects common in lagers: too much yeast driven sulfur sense, often boring. This is a step above that. A sweet, slightly DMS/corn-ish (lager/grits), brew.

If this is what you prefer, or if you want something American lager-ish, but better, go for it!

No rating yet, BA, or Rate Beer.

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Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”

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_____________________________________Beer HERE

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By Ken Carman
By Ken Carman
Ken Carman eats gerbils for breakfast and wasildorfs for lunch.He NEVER eats dinner, Instead he drinks BEER!

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Beer Review by Maria Devan

This beer pours with a purple tinted creamy head on an opaque eggplant colored body.

The nose shows you a good malt . caramel ,bread-y, some dark fruits. It also shows you a hint of smoke which I was not expecting and a lovely sweetness from the elderberry juice. There is a brief and cursory scent of sour and a faint vinegar note. No alcohol on the nose or palate.

The beer is a juicy beer with lots of middle. The bread is underneath and the hops come up surprisingly strong in this one to offer a crisp bitter that does not exceed the malty finish nor the touch of sour. The mouthfeel is fullish. The smoke is on the palate and that puzzles me a bit. It seems to lend texture to the beer. The sour aspect is just mouthwatering and as you drink it seems to mix with elderberry stems and a faint nuttiness that I would describe as nutshells or nut skins. It is not too strong though and does not compromise the other flavors. I don’t know what to think .. .yet.

(No score as of yet.-PGA)

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Beer Profile: Mad Tom IPA by Muskoka Cottage Brewery (Bracebridge, Ontario)

madtom

Profiled by Maria Devan

Beer-Profile3Nose opens up with earthy grapefruit some bright fresh orange and a slight hops herbal. Sweet touch of biscuit and honey from malt.

Color is hazed golden orange amber with yellow sunshine hues. A white head that fell fast but kept refreshing. Minimal lace.

Mouthfeel is a lighter side of medium. The herbal on the palate steals the show in this one. It has such a good strong green with not too much sweetness and a hint of spice. The orange is subtle but resides on the palate gently as a moderate and pretty clean bitter takes the finish to show you a bit of sticky honey on that biscuit and that fresh orange to linger.

Balanced,tight and very well done.

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Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”

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_____________________________________Beer HERE

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mdMaria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is a great beer writer. That’s Maria in the middle. The other two are not, but they are lucky to have her as a friend.