Category: Beer

Profiled by Maria Devan for PGA

Victory has made a hefeweizen and called it a winter beer. Now that’s a surprise. This is one beautiful beer. Hazy, turbid and yellow. Soft pastel lemon yellow. A cream colored head of foam sits atop this beer and lasts and leaves lace.

It’s subtle and has an overall softness to the nose and to the palate. There is a delicate hoppiness to the middle of the beer that is a mere touch of lemon citrus, and what I can only call hop succulence. Dry crisp wheat with it’s golden sweetness, a crisp cracker. Light banana, soft clove, light bubblegum. The mouthfeel is creamy and there is a slight bite form carbonation. There is lemon grass here and rather than become green with herbal it seems to stay yellow and drier with the lemon grass. The finish is spicy and has a touch of mild white pepper with a nice maltiness to linger. It’s only in the very last moments of the beer that you notice a faint bitterness from hops. Again, perfectly soft, perfectly subtle and 100% under control.

Gosh I like this so much more than all that cinnamon in the other “winter beers.” I also like the subtlety of this beer. It does not crowd the palate with over ripe fruit or with too much citrus so that you would question it’s true nature as a hefe. This beer would compliment a variety of holiday cookies and cakes and that was one of my first thoughts.

4.5

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.”

____________________________________________Beer HERE

Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is frequent reviewer of beer and a beer lover deluxe.

Written by Ken Carman for Professor Good Ales

Hoppin Frog
1680 E Waterloo Rd, Akron, OH 44306
(330) 352-4578

  Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay, Clarksville Carboys and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 15 years.

The Topic: Time to Hop Over to the Frog!

 Millie and I were headed south from her vacation at our place in Beaver River, NY, and after my 3 months hermitage there. I go there once my northern tour is over. After visiting my tour bus in northeast Ohio we were driving through Akron, Ohio; home to one of my fav breweries: Hoppin Frog. I suggested we stop by and check out the Frog. Oh, I’d been there many times before: stopping by to buy bottles for my Beaver River Beer Tasting every year. But I’d never had time to check out what, to me, was the “new” Tasting Room.
 Before the Tasting Room quaffers stopped by a quick paced brewery and bought a bottle from employees who were also busy brewing, bottling and trying to avoid being tickled to death by the giant golem named Gus the Gross who lives in the cellar. I kid about the golem, of course. But stop by shopping couldn’t have been the best of on site brewery marketing methods. So Fred Karm created the Tasting Room. Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

that’s the one that SHOULD work

Profiled by Ken Carman for PGA

I have had this several times and looked back at it, wondering, what was that like? In days where craft brewers push styles into new territory this is a forgettable beer. Caramelize malt sense, a bit Maris Otter and Munich-ish malt-wise with a hint of molasses and raisin. A slight bitter. The nose is exactly the same.

Great clarity through brown-ish quaff and foam head that lingers slightly the walks away. SRM about 12?

Slight molasses like sweet caramelize malt dominates. Hops seem a slight afterthought.
There’s nothing defective about it. It’s perfectly drinkable.

83 and 75 on Beer Advocate, 88 and 94 on Rate Beer.

Sigh.

UBU just offers me nothing to make me want to come back. With a hint more hops, oaking and maybe a slight sense of rum barrel aging, this would be one hell of a platform on which to build a great beer. But as it is? Just a good foundation crying out to be built on.

3.5

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.”

______________________________Beer HERE

Ken Carman is actually Fredric Brown reincarnated. Only the fetal fluid was too much St. Patty day beer like, hence the green color.

Profiled by Ken Carman for PGA

85% on Beer Advocate, 77 Rate Beer.

Bordering on being a Pale, but still an IPA, Legacy is splendor in a glass. The clarity is superb with jewel like light yellow highlights. SRM about 3. Fine bubble head mixed with pillow it seems to linger forever.

Aroma: pale malt way in background with hops dominate… light pepper spicy. These are not pepper-like phenols: hop driven, and not strong in any sense. Hint of malt sweetness.

This presentation is Utica Club-like, but the taste is that of a fine ale yeast, pale malt: light, and solid hop bitter. A hop focused light ale, yet the malt supports that as the perfect platform. A fine quaff for sure. Smooth, easy to down as one admires a remote Adirondack lake.

Impressive in its perfection.

4.5

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.”

____________________________________________Beer HERE

Ken Carman, on the right, is an obnoxious man who smells like over roasted Fruit Loops and who just happens to own PGA. Don’t like it? Tough bananas baby.

Profiled by Maria Devan for PGA

Pours a hazy pastel orange with subtle honey hues in it. A fat head of tan foam that is slow to fall.

Nose is malty. Brown crusty bread. Rich dry malt that is expansive on the nose.

As the beer warms a hint of chocolate comes forward. Light caramel sweetness underneath There is a dark fruit presence. Some prune, raisin and a faint whiff of alcohol. Taste is malty and rich. bread-y malt, dry and crisp. The middle of the drink is fruity. The edges have some grassy hops in them and the finish has a touch of medicinal alcohol. The alcohol dries out the palate and the malt lingers with a light bit of that caramel sweetness. A bit of bitterness comes from grass and from alcohol to finish this one dry. Lighter mouthfeel than some dopplebocks but medium and full enough. Slight warming from alcohol.

4.

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.”

_____________________________________Beer HERE

Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is frequent reviewer of beer and a beer lover deluxe.

 Well, I wasn’t eaten.
  Are you surprised?
 Disappointed?
 Hungry?
 Well, I’m NOT on the menu, or at least I wasn’t that night.
  Being the only person on a lake: miles away from any house, I still wonder. By morning it was obvious that someone, or “something,” had an issue with the on site outhouse door with heavy springs that probably kept them out, or kept slapping them on the posterior. Who, or what dragged a rock and then put it between an outhouse and its door? At thirty minutes past midnight? At a campsite half way around a lake that’s not even the main part of said campsite?
 Was it someone desperate to bring me a late entry but decided to dump it?
 Someone who passed by several outhouses past midnight to do a different kind of dump far off the beaten path?
 Who “beats” these paths, and do they complain? Call 911? Should I have called 911?
 No cell phone service.
 Or, was that what’s considered the “caviar,” or “sirloin tips” of late night snacks for bears?”
 OK, when I lived here they fed at the dumps, so… maybe?
 Gross.
 Anywhosie…
 I arrived at The Back Door early and my judges were right on time. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: The Old Forge Old Ale Competition, Part 2”