Beer Week Pint Night With Left Hand, Founders, and Mouco

Folks, I'll be honest with you. I had an entirely different post lined up for today. I reviewed a very tasty beer the other night and I was all set to post it for you. It appears that life had other plans. Don't worry, you'll see the review eventually, this is way cooler.

I usually spend every Thursday night at the Cock and Bull English Pub in Hyde Park. It's one of my favorite beer bars in Cincinnati. They always have a fantastic craft beer list (60 taps!) and great food (Their fish and chips are the best in the city, hands down). Thursday is pint night. My friends and I always meet up, grab a beer or two, and head home with the glass. I have amassed quite the collection over the past few months. Tonight was something special though. As a part of Cincinnati Beer Week the Cock and Bull brought in the big guns: Left Hand, Founders, and some of the best cheese I've ever had from a cheese company in Colorado called Mouco.

OK, so usually on pint night they have one featured beer. You go in, you order the Stone Arrogant Bastard, they bring you the Stone Arrogant Bastard in the special glass, and you go on about your business. A good time and a cool trinket for sure, but routine. Tonight was something special. I had read online that tonight they were featuring a lineup of beers from Left Hand Brewing. Awesome, I love Left Hand, great beer! Then I also read that they were featuring Founders Brewing's All Day IPA, their new session IPA, double awesome!

With that in mind my good friend and fellow beer nerd James and I headed down. We arrived a bit earlier than usual and I was surprised to find the place awfully busy. It eventually became evident what all the buzz was about. I started off with a Left Hand Fade to Black vol. 3, their pepper porter. A beer that I've been excited to try since I heard of it a few months ago. It was pretty damn good but more on that later. The Cock and bull was also offering tasting flights of Left hand Beers along with a cheese sampler from a Colorado cheese maker. I thought it sounded pretty tasty but we had just been panning on getting a couple beers and heading home. But then people around us started getting the cheese samplers, which looked amazing, and I overheard that a one of the Left hand beers was brand new and that one of the others was one that they only brew very occasionally, my plans for a typical pint night were shot.

Whenever I go out I always do my best to try beers that I've never had before, with that in mind I ordered up the beers you see in the photo above. From left to right:

Left Hand Widdershins Barleywine 10.00% Alc. by Vol
Left Hand Polestar Pilsner 5.50% Alc. by Vol.
Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro 6.00% Alc. by Vol.
Left Hand Ambidextrous Oak Aged Imperial Milk Stout 10.20% Alc. by Vol

The three cheeses are, left to right,. Mouco's Camembert, ColoRouge, and Truffelo. All three were soft cow's milk cheeses and all of them were tremendously good. The two on either end were brie like, the one in the middle was a muenster variety. They also paired amazingly with the beers. Joshua Beck, a cheese maker from Mouco, came by our table and talked to us for about 15 minutes. He told us about the cheeses and how they started at Mouco focusing on pairing their cheeses with wine but have over the years drastically shifted more towards pairing with beer. We talked about the respective beer scenes in Colorado and Cincinnati and the upcoming Cincinnati Beer Fest, which both he and Left Hand will be attending. Super nice guy! Also, you can order these cheeses from their website. Absolutely worth checking out. www.mouco.com

So, with all of these new beers and delicious cheeses in front of me, I knew I had a responsibility to you readers. Quick hit reviews!!

Left Hand Fade to Black vol. 3 Pepper Porter
This beer pours black with some deep brown and dark red highlights around the edges. The aroma is of roasted malts with a slightly smoky chocolatey character. Fade to Black starts off with a nice medium body with the roasty coffee and chocolate flavors that you expect from a porter, but then things start to get weird, in the best possible way. The star of this beer is the peppers. It starts off as a good perfectly good porter but the pepper character is what makes it unique. The dried ancho, smoked serranno, and brown chipotle peppers impart a really pleasing smoky character to the beer. The heat from the peppers hits you in the back of the throat on the way down and mingles beautifully with the spiciness of the hops.

I found a very cool video on youtube from Left Hand talking about the creation of this beer and how the worked with a local spice shop to source the peppers. Definitely worth checking out. It can be found here.


Left Hand Polestar Pilsener
The Polestar pours a clear golden straw color. This is a really clean, bright tasting beer with a nice spicy hop finish. A very drinkable refreshing beer. The delicate malt sweetness mixed pretty well with the cleansing hop bitterness.


Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro

The Milk Stout poured black with some ruby red highlights when held to light with a dense, light tan head that will not quit. Aromas of roasted malts. Holy crap is this beer smooth! I've had the Milk Stout from a bottle and it doesn't compare to when poured off a nitro tap. This beer reminds me a lot of Guinness, but with the flavor turned up a few dozen notches. It has really nice roasty smoky flavors, some dark chocolate, and hints of espresso. This one was my favorite of the beer and cheese pairings. The milk stout and the Truffelo brought out these amazing earthy smoky flavors in each other that were not immediately evident when enjoyed alone. Really really delicious.

Left Hand Widdershins Barleywine

This beer wins the award for prettiest of the evening. It poured a gorgeous clear ruby red color. Widdershins has some intense aromas. Spicy oily hop mixes with dark fruits and berries. This beer has more of a traditional barleywine taste than some of the more hop forward varieties that I've had lately. Avery's Hog Heaven and the Cincinnati Beer Week Barleywine ae both very good beers but really have more in common with an Imperial IPA than with a Barleywine. Not the case with Widdershins. This is one complex beer. Tons of fruity flavors are evident up front including grapefruit and pear. The hops take a backseat to the robust malt here and you can definitely feel the warming from that 10% Alc. by Vol.

Left Hand Ambidextrous Oak Aged Imperial Milk Stout.

This beer is very similar in color to the standard Milk Stout. The aroma of roasted malts is also similar but the slight alcohol on the nose is not. This beer starts of with a nice oily hop kick which leads you in to the more complex flavors to follow. The oak aging imparts a lovely caramel smoothness. Ambidextrous has a big mouth coating flavor, similar in character to the Barleywine in many respects, with some light fruity flavors.

One fantastic plate full of cheese and beer. But wait! I'm not done yet! I mentioned earlier that Founder's was also there featuring their brand new All Day IPA. There has been a bit of a buzz in the craft beer blogosphere that I've noticed looking for more sessionable craft beers. Beers that you could have a few of over the course of a day or evening and not end up passed out drunk. How does Founder's offering come out? Darn good, I am pleased to say.


Founders All Day IPA

The beer pours a very pretty golden honey color. There is no question from the aroma that you are holding anything but a big American IPA. Big intense aromas of herbal piney hops. The excitement I felt from the aromas is only backed up on the taste. It has a great clean, bright taste, full of that lovely oily spicy hop flavor which backs into a really nice almost creamy maltiness. There is no doubt that this is a true IPA. When I heard session IPA figured that in order to keep a light flavor and 4.7% Alc. by Vol. that it would really be closer to a pale ale or that it would taste watered down and ineffectual. Not the case at all. The hops are here in force: big, flavorful and aromatic, but not overpowering. This is a pretty darn great beer. I look forward to testing out just how sessionable it is by drinking quite a few of them in the future.

So there you have it folks. The Cock and Bull pulled out all the stops to put on a great Beer Week event, an incredible pint night, and a fantastic kick off the the Beerfest weekend. My only regret is that fellow beer nerds Grant and Alex couldn't attend.

Coming next week: CINCINNATI BEERFEST!!


HD