Left Hand Brewing Company's Milk Stout

Tonight I'm enjoying a beer from the Left Hand Brewing Company. Check out the website it's looks to be a good one. Watch out for the crazy verify age page before you can access the site. It's extremely difficult to beat. I believe you simply click "YES." It's very tricky. Left Hand Brewing Company is out of Longmont, CO which is just outside of Denver I believe. Right in the brewery breadbasket that I described from my summer travels. Anyways Left Hand has a really cool story about how they began. I would check it out.

It looks a little flat with no head but I probably poured it wrong

The point of all this of course is to discuss the Milk Stout. This style is kind of similar to the Imperial Stout I discussed the other day but much less intense. The official style is termed a Sweet Stout. Here are the stats from Left Hand's Website:

Style -- Sweet Stout
Color -- Black 47 SRM
Body -- Full-bodied
ABV -- 6.00%
IBU's -- 25
Plato -- 16°
Pkg -- 6-pack, 12-pack, Keg and Nitro Keg
Malts -- Pale 2-row, Crystal, Munich, Roast Barley, Flaked Oats, Flaked Barley and Chocolate
Hops -- Magnum and US Goldings

Another cool thing about Left Hand's website is that it has meal pairings and food/sauce recipies using each of the beers that they brew.

This is a good stout. Like I said I've been getting into stouts lately. Jenny doesn't exactly share my love of the style. She's more of a wheat and IPA kind of girl. With this brew you get some of the coffee like taste. It leaves a little of that taste in your mouth as well. The difference with this beer is that it is a little sweeter, most likely from the milk sugar added in. This is different than the sweetness of the Imperial Stout due to the bourbon taste/smell. All in all it's a good one. Any Stout is better than Guinness haha.

ENJOY!!

Hoegaarden!

If you are a fan of wheat beers than I highly recommend Hoegaarden. Hoegaarden is a Belgian White or Wit (pronounced Vit) beer. They are a Belgian creation much like the waffle. However although being similar to American and German they are their own style. Wikipedia's definition for Witbier goes a little something like this:

Witbier, or white beer, is a barley wheat top fermented beer style started in Belgium. It gets its name from the suspended yeasts and wheat proteins that give it a cloudy look when poured into a glass. These beers are flavored with a blend of spices most notably is coriander and orange.

I love this beer. I was first introduced to it while I was still wondering the world of American mass produced cheap light beers (they are fun to drink though). Jenny was the one who showed me the light. Last summer I got even more familiar with it while I was in Europe for the summer. It was available everywhere! Here in the US you usually have to find a specialty beer shop but it is getting more popular especially with Anheuser-Busch being absorbed by InBev. Here's some beer facts from the Anheuser-Busch site:


Hoegaarden is brewed using natural ingredients – mineral spring water, unmalted wheat, barley malt, hops, yeast, coriander and Curaçao orange peel. Hoegaarden is unfiltered, giving the beer a soft body, cloudy white appearance and thick, frothy head. Hoegaarden is 4.9 percent alcohol by volume (ABV).



Anyways its a great summertime beer. It is light and spicy. Very refreshing on a hot day. It is similar to a blue moon but the spices work better. It is also lighter and less orange tasting.

Jenny in Belgium with the 0.5 L Hoegaarden Glass (it weighed a ton!)

ENJOY!!

The Dogfather

Tonight I'm enjoying the Dogfather. The Dogfather is an Imperial Stout from the Laughing Dog Brewery where the make "Fetchingly Good Beer." Laughing Dog is based out of Ponderay, ID. They make six unique year round beers which include mostly Pale Ale's and India Pale Ales. They make two seasonal beers both seem to be fall to winter seasonals. Then they make two Reserves. This is where the Dogfather fits in. The other reserve is the Devil Dog IPA.


An imperial stout (or imperial Russian stout) is a style of brew is a strong dark beer with a high alcohol content. The style began in the 18th century in England. The English brewed the beer to export to Catherine II and the royal court of Russia. The beer needed to have a higher alcohol content in order to protect the beer from freezing on the trip through the Baltic Sea (see Wikipedia article for the entire article on stout brews).

Laughing Dog uses this to describe the Dogfather:

“I've got a brew You Cant Refuse”

The Dogfather is one of the biggest brews we have made.
Weighing in at a hefty 11% percent, the Dogfather has 7 malts and 4 different hops giving it a complex flavor profile.

Over 11 months in the making some of the Dogfather is bourbon barrel aged.

Stats for the Dogfather
11% ABV 71 IBU’s
7 different Malts 4 hops

What do I think?

The stout that most people are familiar with is probably Guinness. This is nothing like that. Where Guinness tastes mostly like burnt water or coffee, the Dogfather still has a hint of that taste but more sweet. You definetely get a bit of that bourbon taste from the barrel aging. Its a good beer to have with a meal or if you are just sitting down for a hockey game (like me right now). It comes with a hefty price however so grab a friend and share or have one sparingly. It's about $8 for a 24oz bottle. But since it's alcohol content gives it the kick of 2 regular beers, it's about the equivalent of 4 beers in one. The imperial stout is becoming one of my favorite styles because you get the hoppiness and that smell/taste of bourbon. I would recommend one. It's label is way cool as well.

Enjoy!

Peace Tree Brewery

We thought it was appropriate to start our beer blog with a few brews from our home state of Iowa. Peace Tree Brewing Company in Knoxville, Iowa is fairly new as far as I know. Their beers come in unique bottles with detailed and creative labels, which adds to the microbrew experience. We haven't been to the brewery itself yet, but we are excited to make the trip this summer! It's about 45 minutes southeast of Des Moines.

Peace Tree Hop Wrangler

Type: IPA

ABV: 6.25%

Notes: Extremely hoppy and aromatic beer. I wish I knew the IBU's (hoppiness rating) for this one.

Peace Tree Red Rambler

Type: Red

ABV: 5.8%

Notes: Slightly hoppy but very smooth. Beautiful amber color. IBU's around 35 according to the Peace Tree website.

*** This brewery has limited availability as of right now. Distribution is limited to cities and towns in Iowa. It has become much more available just in the last year. Until last fall I had never even heard of Peace Tree but one of my friends tried the Cornucopia, a seasonal beer made from Iowa Sweet Corn, at a local bar. Since then I found it in a specialty beer store down town called John's Grocery. Now it is available wherever there is a good selection of beer or where organic beers are sold.

Welcome to the Brewski Experience

The blog that follows is Jenny and my trip through the great experience of beer and everything that goes with it. We were mostly inspired in our trip to Europe last summer. Not only were there tons of great beer that you could purchase anywhere, but we were also able to go to several breweries while we were there. When we got back from Europe we made the drive from Iowa to Denver, CO, ground zero for at least five breweries including the Coors and New Belgium breweries. Coors isn't exactly what we are going for in this blog but it does have its place in the beer drinking world. Most notably football tailgates, camping trips, and I guess just if you are valuing quantity over quality. New Belgium was more what we were after. New Belgium was started by a beer enthusiast who also took a trip to Europe. He started in his basement providing some good home brews to his friends and now New Belgium sells beers all over the United States and is getting bigger all the time. This trip didn't make me love beer, I did already, but it did make me appreciate that there is a ton of great beer out there you just have to find it.

With this blog Jenny and I are going to critique some of the beers we have tried and the beers that I cook up in the house. Hopefully they all turnout. I've had some mixed results lately.

I hope you enjoy it.

Cole