REVIEW: Cincinnati Beer Week 2013 Embree's Northern Dark Baltic Porter

My friends! Beer Week is once again finally upon us! That reminds me, with Beer Week here, I'm reminded that a few of my earliest posts dealt with last year's goings on. I totally glossed right past my one year anniversary! So let me take this opportunity to belatedly thank each and every person who has checked in here every other day over the past year. It's so cool and totally gratifying that people get a kick out of this stuff. It's also cool because it makes that 'est. 2012' up in the masthead look slightly less preposterous. Stay tuned, because I have zero plans of shutting this thing down any time soon. There's way too much beer that I haven't had. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, back to Beer Week and more importantly, this beer. Last year to celebrate the inaugural Beer Week all of the local brewers got together at Mt. Carmel to produce a big, monstrously hopped barleywine. A beer that I was able to try and thoroughly enjoy. But also a beer that I am kicking myself to this day for not grabbing a six pack of. I imagine it would've aged amazingly. If anybody was forward thinking enough to lay a few bottles of that down let me know how they turned out! For this year's version Rivertown handled the brewing and bottling. There were also a few more cooks in the kitchen on this one. But in this case, that is categorically an advantage, as it just means that there are more Cincinnati breweries throwing their two cents in. Collaborating on Embree's Northern Dark Baltic Porter are Blank Slate, Christian Moerlein, 50 West, Great Crescent, Listermann, Moerlein Lager House, Mt. Carmel, Rivertown, Rock Bottom, Samuel Adams, and Triple Digit. Phew! I can't imagine there are too may cities in America that can boast too many more great craft breweries than that. OK, I've rambled enough. Let's see what we've got here. To the beer!

REVIEW: Samuel Adams Merry Mischief

Merry Christmas Eve, folks! The season of Christmas beers is almost at an end but not quite yet. And I'm going out with a cool one. This one was actually the first Christmas beer I bought this year. It was back in like October. That's no time to be drinking a Christmas ale, but my fondness for Sam Adams' limited releases ought to be well documented by now. And a gingerbread stout?? Come on! How am I not going to buy that? Also, I like to see a Christmas ale full of seasonal spices built on top of a big hearty stout. I'm excited about this one. To the beer!

REVIEW: Samuel Adams Thirteenth Hour

I'll admit it. I totally fell for the marketing on this one. Can you really blame me though? That big, weird shaped, corked and caged bottle really jumped off the shelves. But when I got closer and saw that what drew me in was a barrel aged stout brewed with Belgian yeast I knew I was taking this one home. Now a stout is not a traditional Belgian style, far from it. But what's to stop an enterprising brewer from smashing a big dark roasty beer together with a funky fruity Belgian style ale. Color me intrigued! To the beer!

REVIEW: Samuel Adams Fat Jack

I suppose I've put it off long enough. Time to finally get into the pumpkin beers this year. Pumpkin ales are a bit of a point of contention among beer drinkers and I feel like there's no real middle ground either. It seems folks either can't stand them, or can't get enough of them. Mark me down firmly in the second camp. Today's brewery is also a point of some contention among beer geeks. Some criticize Samuel Adams of playing it too safe. If you've been reading this here blog for a while you know that I've taken a bit of a shine to Sam Adams' limited release brews. I quite enjoyed both the Cinder Bock and Norse Legend, you can check out those posts by checking out the Samuel Adams tag here.This one is an imperial pumpkin ale brewed with Samuel Adams two-row pale malt blend, caramel 60, special B, and smoked malt, East Kent Goldings and Fuggle hops, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and 28 pounds of pumpkin per barrel. Sounds good to me! To the beer!

REVIEW: Samuel Adams Norse Legend

This beer has been sitting in the back of my fridge for a while now. I've been busy drinking a lot of summery beers and IPAs lately which taste awfully good in the hot weather we've been having lately. But the heat seems to have finally broken. Gone are the 100+ degree days and oppressive humidity. The weather has gotten a bit cooler. It's not fall yet, but it's certainly on it's way. Now, I'm not ready to get into Fall seasonals and pumpkin beers yet. I'll get there, be patient. So with the weather beginning to change it's time for some different styles of beer. Today's beer is a sahti. Now sahti is a beer style that you're probably unfamiliar with. It's a traditional Finnish beer style and is among the oldest beer styles still being brewed. In recent years craft brewers have begun to look back at the style. The only one that I've had prior to Norse Legend was Dogfish Head's Sah' Tea, a combination of a traditional sahti and a chai tea. It was incredibly tasty. Today's offering is a bit more of a traditional take on the style. To the beer!

REVIEW: Samuel Adams Cinder Bock

Lets keep the bock train rolling. I'll be honest. A lot of the time I overlook Sam Adams. I'm always on the lookout for new, interesting, weird beers. Most of the time that leads me away from Sam Adams. Which really isn't fair. I view Sam Adams is the old reliable in the craft beer world, not the new and fresh. There is a reason that Sam Adams has become ubiquitous: they brew damn good beer. I don't think I've ever had a bad beer from them. But for whatever reason I still often pass them up. I found myself at Kroger the other night perusing the beer aisle and saw this bobmer sitting there beckoning to me. I was already in a bock mood so there was one tally in the win column. But when I got closer and saw that it was a smoked bock? That's it. This beer was coming home with me. To the beer!