We Drink Craft Beers: An Adventure in Home Brewing
Follow us on our journey through home brewing and our "market research" as we drink and review lots and lots and lots of beers.
Expect Mary to post dazzling reviews with poorly lit cell phone pics and expect Cindy to post half-assed reviews with semi-pretty cell phone pics (or nice photos if she has the time and energy).
twitter.com/CindiasaurusRex:
<3, c.
Brewing Company: Cigar City Brewing; Tampa, Florida
Name: Cubano Espresso
Style: American Brown Ale
ABV: 5.5%
Serving type: draught
Price: $5
Aroma: Straight up smells like chocolate espresso.
Appearance: Nice head, slight retention. Dark, clear brown. Some light comes through the bottom.
Taste: Nice, sweet taste, good balance. Nice feeling on the lips, but not as foamy as I’d like. Not as thick or milky as I’d like either. Medium carbonation - goes down a little bubbly, but in a nice way.
Finish: Tingles in the throat. Beer-ish coffee aftertaste, slightly bitter. Filling. Feeling a buzz.
The smell alone is worth getting a glass.
Rating: 3.5/5
Recommended.
Brewing Company: Cigar City Brewing; Tampa, Florida
Name: Peppermint Maduro Brown Ale
Style: Brown Ale
ABV: unknown (probably around 5.5%)
Serving type: draught - cask
Price: $4
Aroma: Smells like peppermint bark. Candy. Delicious.
Appearance: No head, small retention. Medium/dark brown, light shines through.
Taste: Tastes like warm peppermint bark. Light, refreshing, mild. Goes down easy. Okay balance. Smells better than it tastes.
Finish: Super sweet aftertaste of malt.
Pretty good but not awesome. Slightly underwhelming. I think I’d like it more if it were a stout.
Rating: 2.75/5
Meh.
Last year, my forestry professor invited me and a bunch of the forestry students out to the Brewz Crewz in Lakeland, Florida. Despite its unfortunate name (and despite that fact that it took place in Lakeland of all places; Christ!), I forked out the $35 with the promise that I’d get unlimited beer samples from a wide range of beer vendors, many of them Florida brewers. I was not disappointed! Besides all that, I got a bunch of free food, too. Oh, and I even got a free cigar, but that was simply due to my wily charms when it comes to older rich men.
Anyway, when the Brewz Crewz rolled around this year, I was of course set on going. The event was two weekends ago (February 19th), and I bought tickets for myself and two of my girl friends from Gainesville. Due to a pregnant horse giving birth, they were unable to make the drive down from the ‘ville and I found myself with three tickets to the festival about four hours before it started. However! I was fortunately able to finagle my friends Clay and Sarah into coming with me (but really — with the promise of free beer and free food… it wasn’t that difficult).
Now. I brought a notebook with me to make note of which beers I enjoyed and which ones sucked. What I should have done was sit down at my computer the next morning and immediately translated my progressively incoherent babble into blog format. However, I obviously didn’t do that, and now my then-clear notes look like a bunch of drunken scribbles. Oh wait — that’s exactly what they are.
Let’s begin:
Beer 1: Amber Beer from Palm Brewing (I don’t know where this was brewed; they have like a bazillion breweries).
Not-yet-drunken notes: ”Meh, I’d drink this at a summer bbq but it wasn’t something amazing. Not exactly complex. Nice and light.”
Translation: This tasted like bud light.
Beer 2: Red Ale from Orlando Brewing Company (Orlando, FL)
Not-yet-drunken notes: None. I was too busy talking to the owner.
Translation: THIS BEER IS AWESOME. Okay, well — the beer itself wasn’t exactly mindblowing, but it was really good. The cool thing about this brewery is that it’s totally organic. It is, in fact, Florida’s only certified organic brewery. Kudos.
Beer 3: Milk Stout from Left Hand Brewing Company (Longmont, CO)
Not-yet-drunken notes: None. I’ve had this beer several times and apparently didn’t see a need to write about it.
Translation: YUM. Come on, it’s called a Milk Stout. It has to be good.
Beer 4: Longfellow Winter Ale from Shipyard Brewing Company (Portland, ME)
Getting-a-buzz notes: ”CJ - black IPA.”
Translation: Clay, who attended the festival with me, mentioned that he thought this tasted like a black IPA. I think that’s what that my note means anyway. I just remember talking about black IPAs when we tried this beer. I don’t even know what a black IPA is.
Beer 5: Prelude Special Ale from Shipyard Brewing Company (Portland, ME)
Getting-a-buzz notes: ”A little metallic in its aftertaste. Dark and floral.”
Translation: *rolls eyes* That is so vague. I have no idea what this tasted like.
Beer 6: Jai Alai IPA from Cigar City Brewing (Tampa, FL)
Getting-a-buzz notes: “Now for an IPA it’s good, but don’t we all know that I don’t like IPAs! It’s not too overwhelming. But I mean everything from CCB is so good anyway.”
Translation: None needed. The beer’s good, ya’ll.
Beer 7: Porter from Red Brick Brewing (Atlanta, GA)
I-shouldn’t-be-driving notes: “Possibly the lightest porter I’ve ever had. Good! Not my fave but hey I like southeastern breweries.”
Translation: Uuhhh, possibly the lightest porter I’ve ever had. Red Brick is a good brewery but they aren’t superb. However, as my drunken notes stated, I dig southeastern breweries. And I usually have a Red Brick when I visit home in Birmingham.
Beer 8: Brown Ale (?) from Terrapin Beer Company (Athens, GA)
Okay-I’m-drunk notes: ”Yes well it tastes like a brown IPA. Actually it’s better toward the end.”
Translation: It tastes better toward the end? The end of what? The end of the sip? The end of the beer itself? None of that makes any sense. I don’t even know if it’s a brown ale or an IPA. I can’t find either on Terrapin’s website.
Beer 9: Turbodog Dark Brown Ale from Abita Beer (Abita Springs, LA)
Drunken notes: ”Sweet chocolate toffee flavor. Oh my god this is phenomenal. It tastes like dessert!”
Translation: All of that is true. It’s amazing.
Beer 10: Strawberry Harvest Lager from Abita Beer (Abita Springs, LA)
Drunken notes: ”Okay this tastes like a strawberry cookie. I want this everyday.”
Translation: This beer tastes like a light lager with strawberry flavoring. I don’t actually want it everyday.
Beer 11: French Saison from Southern Brewing (Tampa, FL)
Drunken notes: ”I am sad this isn’t in stores it’s my fave so far! Sour and beautiful.”
Translation: Okay, Southern Brewing is not actually a brewery. It a beer and wine brewing supply store in Tampa, and it’s actually about 10 minutes from my house. Anyway, they made about four brews and brought them to the festival. The French Saison, though I took atrociously vague notes on it, was excellent. It was a wheat beer and it was perfectly sour. I loved it.
Beer 12: Cookies and Cream from Southern Brewing (Tampa, FL)
Drunken notes: ”This was run through actual cookies and cream. Okay. I take it back. The Fr Saison is not my fave THIS ONE IS! This tastes basically like fermented cookies and cream.”
Translation: Even though it sounds like I drunkenly made it up — it’s true: They had this one on tap and they were actually running the beer through crushed up oreos or something. It was ridiculous. I loved it. And it probably was actually my favorite beer that night.
Beer 13: Berry Cider from Ace (Sebastopol, CA)
Drunken notes: ”Basically it’s like Woodchuck Cider but with berries. I approve.”
Translation: Thaaat about sums it up, actually. Cider’s cool; whatevs.
Beer 14: Special Golden Ale from Holy Mackerel (Ft. Lauderdale, FL to Greenville, SC)
Drunken notes: None. I have no recollection of drinking this beer.
Translation: According to the review on Holy Mackerel’s website, this seems like a beer I’d really like. ;-)
Beer 15: Mack N Black from Holy Mackerel (Ft. Lauderdale, FL to Greenville, SC)
Drunken notes: ”I only want”
Translation: Apparently, I really enjoyed this beer.
Boom! Fifteen beers in one evening. I think I did pretty well. (Now it may be good to note that these were all four ounce samples. Otherwise my lightweight self would have been admitted to Tampa General for alcohol poisoning).
xo, Mary
![Brewer: Cigar City Brewing, Tampa, FL
Beer Name: José Martí American Porter
Style: Porter
ABV: 8%
Today I left work at 3:30, went to the beach, watched the most spectacular sunset on the waters of the Bay, ate dinner at La Teresita’s, and then came home to have this beer.
I have had several José Martí porters, and each time I drink one, I remember my past life as a Cuban revolutionary and fall in love with everyone in my life all over again.
I’ve been wanting to review this beer for awhile now, but I get so overly emotional when I drink it that I was scared I’d come off sounding a bit loopy when I wrote the review. So I apologize in advance for my bleeding-heart rambles.
This beer smells wonderfully of roasted malt and dark chocolate when you first pop off the cap. A scent of raisin comes through underneath all of that, and if you close your eyes and remember childhood, then you even catch a nostalgic fragrance of an earthy cedar warmed by the central Florida summer sun. Now Beer Advocate tells me that this brew is made with Pacific Northwest hops. I don’t even know what that ultimately means, but I will say this: I adore how these hops smell — their scent interplays with the chocolate and I think that if I saw them in real life, I’d like to make a wreath of them, place it in my hair, and go climb a tree.
The porter pours an enticing black with a fluffy head of foam. The foam is the color of coffee with way too much creamer in it, and it looks like something you’d eat with a spoon. It’s not a tall head, necessarily, but the foam itself is quite thick, if that makes any sense. And it dissipates nicely to a thin coating of foam that leaves a tasty alcoholic film on my lip when I drink it. Even though the beer is black at first glance, you can hold it up to the light and catch a seductive red glint the color of garnet in the corner of the pint glass. And it has lots of pretty pieces of light colored sediments floating around it, asking you to drink them. On top of all that sexiness, it leaves a really spectacular ecru lacing around the inside of your pint glass.
The first sip of this beer is really just a dark chocolate faerie dancing on your tongue with some lovely roasted malts. And I get a taste of kona coffee that I didn’t necessarily get in the smell, which makes for a decadent flavor combination. And interestingly, those flowery hops are right there on the top. But they aren’t too bitter; their unruliness is kept in check by the more mature coffee and chocolate flavors underneath, making for a really superb balance of flavors. You know that feeling you get when you smell the remains of a campfire the next morning? Cedary ashes that leave a lingering scent of what is now behind you? Somehow, Cigar City Brewery took that feeling and mixed it into the aftertaste of this porter. Which is quite appropriate.
But besides the tastes of coffee, dark chocolate, cedar, and roasted malt… this tastes like home. It tastes like every person I’ve ever known, and every idea I’ve ever had, and every poem I’ve ever read. It tastes rich, it tastes poor. It tastes like Ybor, Birmingham, Jackson Hole, and the Outback. It tastes like I want to cry whenever I drink it.
The perfect amount of carbonation leads to a sweet union of tongue and porter, making for a really lovely mouthfeel. I’d be happy to have this brew linger on my lips for as long as it takes me to sort out every flavor it has to offer me.
As for the porter’s drinkability, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn’t enjoy drinking this. However, having more than one in an evening might make you weep with longing for lives passed and lovers lost.
Photography, as always, compliments of the multi-talented and reptilian Cindiasaurus Rex.
Yo quiero salir del mundo por la puerta natural: en un carro de hojas verdes a morir me han de llevar. No me pongan en lo oscuro a morir como un traidor: yo soy bueno, y como bueno moriré de cara al sol.
I wish to leave the world By its natural door; In my tomb of green leaves They are to carry me to die. Do not put me in the dark To die like a traitor; I am good, and like a good thing I will die with my face to the sun.
-A Morir [To Die] (1894), by José Martí
xo, Mary](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxlnp6l7gE1r9k8x3o1_250.jpg)
por la puerta natural:
en un carro de hojas verdes
a morir me han de llevar.
No me pongan en lo oscuro a morir como un traidor:
yo soy bueno, y como bueno
moriré de cara al sol.
By its natural door;
In my tomb of green leaves
They are to carry me to die.
Do not put me in the dark
To die like a traitor;
I am good, and like a good thing
I will die with my face to the sun.
xo, Mary
