Beer Profile: Daydreamer by Ithaca Brewing
Profiled by Maria Devan
Hi, everyone and cheers! Today I am drinking Ithaca Beer’s first seasonal release of this year. Daydreamer. They called it a “Kolsch” and so I bought it but when I got home I noticed that the beer is 7 %. Gee. 7%? Now the Imperial Kolsch may sound impressive but the style is actually defined by a low abv and I hope to tell you why .
The style guidelines define not only the nitty gritty measurable characteristics of the beer but also the spirit of the drink as well. To me the kolsch beer style means elan, finesse, restraint and the understanding of brewing. It’s character is subtle and delicate yet it’s pretty vivacious. It is breadier than you might have guessed from the way enthusiasts talk about it, and the the beer showcases the “ester” from yeast by showing you it’s delicate yet pertinent begining. That’s all it is in the beer. An almost imperceptible fruity sweetness. Like a white wine twang. This beer is subtle. All of the beers character, all it’s identity rests on the fact that it is low alcohol. 4.5%. The pils malt in the kolsch is bready but is more a golden sweetness. Fine flour that has been toasted golden. And different brewers will evoke subtle differences in that malt . It’s soft and seems to just melt on the tongue and is dry. Also because it has no wild rampant flavors to carry you away you can sometimes taste a mineral quality or a yeast character that gives the beer a slight pucker in the finish. A ‘tang” if you will.
SO – as a low abv style it is going to be crisp. A higher abv adds sweetness, and body to a beer. It also can be anti-crisp and complicate things further by augmenting flavors.
Ithaca’s beer is 7% alcohol. And while it is acceptable to use up to 20% wheat in the kolsch Ithaca has added Vienna malt. Some recipes for kolsch allow for up to 15% vienna malt. I would say already that it is not a kolsch. Hmmmmm . . . Lots of brewers do variations or interpretations on a style. Put their “spin”on the traditional beer. Ithaca has made two other kolsches according to Beer Advocate and both had an abv above 6%. However I am pretty sure this is the first that they have bottled.
Daydreamer pours a a darker shade of yellow gold than the average light or pale straw color. The addition of Vienna malt has given it a rather orange hue and in indirect light the beer is pretty orange. Slight haze and a fingers worth of white creamy foam that lasted.
The nose is very strong. Apple, pear & white fruit. Heavier graham cracker and some breaddier malt and some earthiness. A sweetness from alcohol and a bit of hop floral (or maybe that floral is from the alcohol) to lift that up even more.
Taste is fruity. Pear, apple and white fruit. Ithaca said pineapple and my son said banana peel. Cloying sweetness. Esters from alcohol and a sweeter breaddier malt that tastes of graham cracker. Finishes with a slight taste of hop herbal and no hop bitterness. The kolsch should be dry and it is but it also has a dryness from alcohol on the tongue that does not belong in the kolsch. It’s too fruity, it’s too sweet, it’s too rich it’s too heavy. It does not drink like a kolsch and because it is 7% (which is on it’s way to tripel) it will sit in the glass and open up plenty.
(2.8 but the professor decided to average it out to 3.)
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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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, New York with her son. She writes great reviews for PGA and other web sites, reviews brews on the web and You Tube with other homebrewers and craft beer lovers from all over the country. Maris also gets a LOT of great exercise walking up, and down, up, and down, up and down, the hill near where she lives!
Gather No Moss – Inside The Alchemist’s Heady Topper
John Kimmich, the mastermind behind The Alchemist brewery and Heady Topper double IPA—the world’s number 1 beer (according to Beeradvocate.com)—has little interest in joining discussions about hypothetical differences between IPAs or Double IPAs brewed on the East Coast and the West Coast. “I’ve got to say, I think that [East vs. West] is outdated at this point.†However, the “best IPA†debate does provide context for something more relevant—the effect that yeast selection has on hops aroma and flavor, particularly when it comes to the new “impact†or “flavor†hops.
Kimmich acquired the Alchemist house yeast strain, known as “Conan†as well as VPB1188, when he worked at Vermont Pub and Brewery. Over time it evolved into his own, just as Vermont Pub and Brewery founder Greg Noonan made it his own after acquiring it from English sources. Kimmich particularly likes the apricot and tropical fruit aromas that this strain produces, a combination of the esters that result after yeast creates alcohol and the hops-derived aroma compounds that evolve during the fermentation process (called biotransformations by brewing scientists).
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HERE
Sunday Sour Sessions: Jolly Pumpkin’s Baudelaire Saison
Written by Franz Hofer for A Tempest in a Tankard
Brew it and they will drink.
Mixed-culture fermentation has a long history in North America stretching back to the days prior to Prohibition. Brewers with British roots arriving in the great port cities of the east fanned out across the continent, some of them continuing the tradition of tart, oak-aged stock ales. German immigrants also left their mark, not only in the form of Pabst, Coors, and Anheuser-Busch. In the late nineteenth century, Baltimore was a thriving center of Berliner Weisse production.
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HERE
Elysian and AB/InBev: Greed, Overweening Ambition, and the Whoring-Out of a Culture
This post could probably run on to book length, with as much as my stunned brain – abruptly informed of the sale of Elysian Brewing to AB/InBev yesterday as I was busy with something else – has churned up in the hours (many of them sleepless and dead quiet) since I received this…this gut-punch.
Seattle’s Elysian Brewing has been sold to the Great Satan of the beer world, Belgium/Brazil’s AB/InBev, a soulless, bean-countin’, avaricious, cut-throat, amoral international conglomerate that has gobbled up many of the world’s great breweries and now has its sights set on the craft beer movement here in the US.
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HERE
Gose
Brewers Gone Wild: Taming Unpredictable Yeast For Flavorful Beer
This is Allagash’s coolship — an open, spontaneous fermentation tank with wort rushing in. When the Maine breeze passes over the liquid, wild yeast in the air around the brewery will begin to ferment the wort to make beer. ‘
Crack the vast menu at any self-respecting beer bar, and you’re bound to run into a scientific name among the descriptions: Brettanomyces, affectionately known as Brett.
I’ve heard American brewers and beer geeks utter “Brett” in hushed, reverent tones before swooshing aromatic liquids made with it across their tongues. But this mysterious, mythic and increasingly popular strain of wild yeast also strikes fear in the hearts of brewers and microbiologists in the industry.
First, let’s review. Beer at its most basic is made up of four ingredients: water, barley malt, hops and yeast. Each one contributes to the overall taste and character, and they fuel the brewer’s creative palette.
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Beer Profile: Highland Brewing’s Razor Wit
Profiled by Ken Carman for PGA
This is a rather simplistic quaff that’s worth try if all you’re looking for is wheat, a slight Belgian sense. If you REALLY don’t give a damn about safety drink this while mowing a lawn, for this pretty much is what some call a “lawnmower beer.”
Light yellow with small bubble head that fades fast. Good clarity. Very slight Abbey yeast sense. Nose is a tad candy-ish. No wheat in nose but very strong on in taste. Pillow head. Slight carbonic bite. No phenols except maybe the slight bubblegum/candy sense, no hops.
Body is heavy side of medium. Light carbonation for style but about right, though “Belgian” may be considered a qualifier by the brewer. Not accurate, but I’m guessing that would be the reasoning.
The mouthfeel is fuller than it actually is due to wheat. A murky light yellow, despite overall clarity. Puts a sheen on the glass.
(Were you in my house licking my glasses again Charlie Sheen?)
Looking for complexity? Go elsewhere. Hey guys, you’re good brewers. Couldn’t you have done a tad more with this?
79@ BA. 72 and 89 at RB.
3.5 but I’ll do 4 glasses for those seeking simplicity.
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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Ken Carman was born of a deity named Bill many moons ago when his wife Winnie was fermenting well at the time. He is a beer judge, beer writer and reviewer of brew-based business, beer commentator and BEER GOD. Do not challenge the one who ate too many hops one year, hence the green pigment you see to the left!
Beer from MMSD wastewater? Engineer’s ‘Sludge’ brew has people talking
There are disturbing aspects to Theera Ratarasarn’s home brew.
The name: Activated Sludge. The label: That is a radiation symbol. The ingredients: It’s brewed with purified Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District wastewater plant effluent.
But it tastes great.
To Ratarasarn, making beer with water that hasn’t gone through the final cleaning process was a mission.
“I wanted to get people talking,” he said “There’s a potential use for what we discharge into lakes and streams.”
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Beer Profile: Leinenkugel’s Cranberry Ginger Shandy
Profiled by Ken Carman for PGA
Nose is obvious cranberry with a pillow head and a few big bubbles. Very sweet on the sweet high side of cranberry. Almost candy cranberry as per that. Hint of pale3 malt. The mouthfeel is actually tad sweet lemon tart with almost no pale malt behind that,. Sweet is on the top.
This is a very sweet, light, quaff, with cranberry and sweet up front. Not bad at all. Pale malt just about perfect fir sweet, cranberry focus.
Just a hint of haze, light yellow/gold.
Lemon backs up cranberry perfectly.
Great beer. A great shandy with nice, good, strong cranberry in second Light, yet firm, carbonic sense in carbonation as in very slight bite. Slightest hint of ginger. Lite bo, lite carb. Slight haze.
Personally I’d only buy this to show quaffers what you can do with beer, especially a somewhat unofficial, frowned upon, style called shandy. It’s well balanced and enjoyable, but kind of a one trick brew.
I tend to prefer more complexity, but what I prefer is not the point.
73 @ Beer Advocate, but they apparently add a different fruit each year so no cranberry-specific rating found.
16 and 42 @ Rate Beer, but same non-specific comment applies. Hey, RB, not THAT bad!
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
Ken Carman was born of a deity named Bill many moons ago when his wife Winnie was fermenting well at the time. He is a beer judge, beer writer and reviewer of brew-based business, beer commentator and BEER GOD. Do not challenge the one who ate too many hops one year, hence the green pigment you see to the left!
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