Hot Beer Monday (I missed you last week)

Nothing is worst than hot beer, well other than Monday hopefully this will help to ease the pain.Sorry about last week guys here is a shot to make up for it good times at the lake.

If you would like to submit a picture for hot beer Monday please email : 7thdayipa@gmail.com

Brew Your Cask Off

That's right Sweet Water Brewery in Atlanta has got together 80 of their favorite interdependent brewers for their Cask Ale Festival I'll be there...will you?

Titan IPA

Titan IPA
Great Divide Brewing Co. Colorado

ABV 7.10%

This beer was recommended to me by a friend that I consider quite knowledgeable about wine and spirits. So lets give it a go.

Served on-tap in a pint glass. Slightly hazy light orange color with a small white head, obviously due to the tap pour. A little lacing along the glass.

Wonderful smell of candy-like malt sweetness with citrus pineapple fruitiness. As the beer warmed, more caramel notes emerged.

It taste Piny and resinous up front.. Somewhat floral. I can't really taste and citrusy hops that I caught a very light glimpse of in the nose. Finishes nice and sweet with a not-so-palatecrunching bitterness. Its actually a pretty refreshing bitterness. Alcohol is definitely noticeable and this is slightly over carbonated.

All in All I would drink it again but if I were brewing this I would definitely not name it TITAN...

Harpoon IPA Review

Harpoon  IPA
Harpoon Brewery Boston MA

ABV 5.9%

The Brewery website heralds this as their flagship beer. Here's what I though.

Pours a nice slightly hazy golden color with a little more than 1 finger of fluffy white head, decent retention.

Scents of citrus and orange with nice hoppiness. A few notes of bready malt as well.

 The taste is Definitely hop-centric, this is light on the malt presence. A touch of sweet caramel malt, then grapefruit rind and sticky pine. A bit of biscuity malt remains throughout, hiding beneath the hoppy flavor. Finishes clean.Good, enough alcohol presence so you know it's beer, but not abrasive. Right amount of carbonation for and IPA.

All in all this beer won't change your life...but it may make your night a little brighter! Cheers!

Hot Beer Monday

Nothing is worst than hot beer, well other than Monday hopefully this will help to ease the pain.

If you would like to submit a pic for Hot Beer Monday please email submissions to 7thdayipa@gmail.com  

and a very special Happy Valentines Day to all you wives and girlfriends out there....

monday night brewing

This excites me cant wait to try some Ales!!! Check them out awesome concept hopefully awesome follow thru! www.mondaynightbrewing.com

Founders Centennial IPA

Founders Brewing Company Centennial IPA

Stats
ABV 7.20%
IBU 65

Second review of the week I know, but after the commute I had Wednesday I needed a beer(17mile=2.5 hours). You see Mrs Michelle Obama was in town and regardless of your political disposition you would have a bone to pick with her too if she shut down traffic during rush hour in your town, although I hear her outfit was amazing...LOL

So on to the beer, Looks like a pretty solid IPA; very golden coloring with a white, foamy head (lots of it think 3 fingers). Slow dissipation down to white lacing.


Typical Citrus and floral notes of the style but and interesting wet dirt scent is in there is well, earthy would be a better description.

Hops dominate initially with hints of citrus peel and herbs. There are also mild floral notes. Sweet caramel malt then shows up and mixes with the hop bitterness quite nicely. The hop bitterness remains throughout the finish of each sip but not over powering.

All in all this is a decent IPA a little weak but would make a good beer to drink when trying others because the bitterness subtle enough it wont blow out your taste buds.



About the Image: Its from an Awesome artist named Mcglinch he cuts up 6 pack carriers and send them as post cards cool idea along with cool art as well check out his blog

Double Simcoe IPA

Weyerbacher Brewing Companies Double Simcoe IPA

 The Stats:

ABV 9.00%

IBU 153

Brewed using 100% Simcoe(R) Hops, a west coast hop variety created in 2000 by Select Botanicals, Inc. Because of the high alpha acid, Simcoe works well for bittering. It can be used as an aroma hop too.

The Beer:

Pours a deep amber brown with a huge, pale white head that looks like it has been glued to side of my glass. There is a fiery burst of orange that comes through the glass as this brew is held up to light. The head reminds me of root beer foam.

Smells like sweet flowers with a pretty strong malt backbone. Once I get past the strong floral notes, there is some detection of pine and maybe some earthy notes. A lot of pineapple is present.

Great zesty citrus taste bites first thing in side the mouth, sweetness in the back of mouth from malts not subtle but well balanced front to back

This is actually insanely drinkable, mostly due to dry hopping I think. This beer has a ton of hop flavor and aromatics without much bitterness. Beware of the ABV this brew will sneak up on you!

Spring is around the corner....

That's right folks and that means festivals and outdoor tastings will begin, One of the best is Classic City Brewtopia

Myth Busted...IPA Education Tuesday

This article shed some light on the true story on how IPA's came about dispelling a myth I even somewhat believed check it out....thanks to zythophile for all the research!

Myth...George Hodgson invented IPA to survive the long trip to India

No, Hodgson didn’t “invent” India Pale Ale, and 18th century brewers before Hodgson were making beers that could survive a journey to India, and further.
A myth has developed that Hodgson, who brewed at the Bow brewery to the east of London, close to the Middlesex-Essex border, “invented a new style of beer, brewing it to a high alcohol level and using more hops than any previous beers.” There is no evidence whatsoever that Hodgson “invented” or “developed” a new beer especially for the Indian market: no record that he did so, no claim by Hodgson or his successors that he did so. India Pale Ale was not even, in fact, a particularly strong beer for the time, being about 6.5 or seven per cent alcohol, around the same strength as porter.
Despite some modern commentators’ declaration that India Pale Ale needed to be invented because the big-selling beer in the late 18th century in Britain, porter, would not survive the four-month journey to the East, porter was perfectly capable of lasting on board a ship much longer than that, as this passage from the journal of Joseph Banks on August 25 1769, when he was on board the Endeavour with Captain Cook in the South Pacific, shows:

It was this day a twelvemonth since we left England, in consequence of which a peice [sic] of cheshire cheese was taken from a locker where it had been reservd for this occasion and a cask of Porter tappd which provd excellently good, so that we livd like English men and drank the hea[l]ths of our freinds in England.

If a cask of porter could be “excellently good” after a year at sea, there is no reason to suppose any other sort of similar-strength beer would have to be specially invented to last the four-month journey from Britain to India. Brewers before Hodgson knew how to make strong, highly hopped beers that would keep for an extended period: the anonymous Every Man His Own Brewer of 1768 gives a recipe for two hogsheads of October “malt wine” made from the first two mashes off 22 bushels of malt, with six and a half pounds of hops per eight bushels of malt to ensure “a year’s keeping”.
George Watkins, author of The Compleat English Brewer, first published in 1767, said that October ale was brewed at a substantial 16 to 20 bushels to the hogshead, though “those with 20 bushels are too heady and some go as low as 10 to 12 bushels.” Even at 10 bushels per hogshead, or 6 2/3rd bushels a barrel, this would still give an OG of 1140 or more. October beer would be ready for bottling after 12 months, Watkins said, and should be kept in bottle for a further year, making it two years old before it was fit to drink.
Hodgson’s involvement in the India trade seems to be based on two lucky chances. The first was that the docks for the merchant ships that went to and from India, the East Indiamen, were at Blackwall on the Thames, just a short distance via the River Lea from his brewery. When the captains of the East Indiamen went looking for beer to sell in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, alongside a host of other goods from England including everything from china, to hams to furniture, they went to their nearest brewer, at Bow, rather than one of the big London concerns.
What evidence there is suggested that Hodgson made a number of beers, including porter, and an October-brewed “stock” bitter ale, of the kind described by Watkins, and that this stock ale was one of the beers the East Indiamen ships’ captains bought off him to sell in India. The Calcutta Gazette from January 20 1822, for example, contained an advertisement for the “select investment of prime London goods just landed from the HC [Honourable Company] ship Sir David Scott”, including “Hodgson’s warranted prime picked pale ale of the genuine October brewing, warranted fully equal, if not superior, to any ever before received in the settlement.”
The second lucky chance was that on the four-month voyage out to India via the Cape of Good Hope Hodgson’s October stock ale underwent the sort of maturity in cask that would have taken two years in a cellar, and arrived in the East in prime condition. There is no evidence Hodgson planned this from the start or knew it would happen: he was just lucky.
Another myth is that English brewers were eager to break into the Indian market. In fact at the start of the 19th century the market was extremely small, just 9,000 barrels a year, equal to less than half a per cent of the two million barrels brewed in London alone every year. Hodgson probably had around half of the Indian market, but that probably in large part because his brewery was close to where the East Indiamen docked, and because he was willing to allow the East Indiamen ship’s captains extended credit, up to 18 months, on the beer they bought from him.
(Footnote: for more on the true history of IPA, click here for the executive summary.

Hot Beer Monday

Nothing is worst than hot beer, well other than Monday hopefully this will help to ease the pain.

 

If you would like to submit a pic for Hot Beer Monday please email submissions to 7thdayipa@gmail.com 

How Beer Saved the World

Check out this Discovery Chanel documentary on our favorite beverage.

Stone IPA

Today I will be reviewing Stone Brewing Companies' IPA.


The Stats:
ABV 6.90%
IBU 77

      This is a beer that I have often but have never really noted its characteristics.It pours a hazy golden brown and layers an almost bright white head a little thicker than two fingers but quickly dissipates to a less than one finger head with full lacing.
      On the nose you get the typical IPA notes of citrus but with a hint of lemon zest. Stone uses west coast citrus hops and this in apparent on the nose.
     The taste is a hop bomb for your tongue, but over done surprisingly, you have to enjoy hops to have this beer. The bitterness on the tongue is almost stingy, in a good way, and a nice undertone of malt helps balance this out on the back end. I get notes of grass, and sourdough as well. Very interesting. It is a bit sweet which tones down the distinctive IPA bite.
     In my opinion this represents the American IPA style rather well, it would make a great entry level IPA because of the dominant characteristics of the style. This is like the training wheels for the style.
    Stone Brewing Co. is Based out of Escondido CA, they are a clean brewery adding no additives or preservatives to their products.The are famous for their Arrogant Bastard Ale, which I plan on reviewing in the future.

7th Day IPA on Beer Bloggers Conference List

Check it out this site is now listed on the Beer Bloggers Conference site! Awesome group of other beer bloggers and hop heads. So who's free in August to go to Portland? Lets do it!

February is Strong Beer Month

That's right 21st Amendment Brewing & Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery have dedicated this month as strong beer month. 

Magnolia and 21st Amendment are proud to collaborate together once again on strong beer month.  It’s an opportunity to explore the ritual & traditions of brewers commemorating seasons and occasions with special brews, usually strong in nature and intended for sipping and contemplation.  

Well that pretty much sums it up, and I can't wait to try the Promised Land Imperial IPA check out their website: http://www.strongbeermonth.com/

Its a Fucking Beer

So in my Quest for knowledge with this blog I ran across this site, cynically informative, humorous, and dark you have to just check it out to enjoy click to jump----> http://itsafuckingbeer.com the name explains it all.

What the hell is an IPA?

    So you're at the bar with you buddy drinking your generic boring light beer when he orders an IPA. You wonder what the hell is an IPA, but you don't ask him to explain, because you don't want to sound ignorant. Not asking is your first mistake, always ask whether its beer, wine, cigars, cheese, fellatio, ASK QUESTIONS!!! and you'll learn more than any blog visit or  book you can find. First hand experience and discussions has taught me more about the world than any other form of education, Experience is a cruel teacher, but a good one. So back to the question at hand what is an IPA? Well Lets Break it down, IPA is an acronym for India Pale Ale.

Let's start with the Pale Ale part all beer can be classified into either an Ale or a Lager depending on how it is brewed. Typically Ales are brewed with top-fermenting yeast which allows for rapid fermentation at warmer temperatures; Lagers are brewed with bottom-fermenting yeast which ferments more slowly and at colder temperatures.It's not called pale because it needs a tan but because of the malt used in this style gives it a lighter color than say a Porter (another Ale). Ale's are typically higher in alcohol content, and the short brew allows for more of the flavors from the ingredients to hang around making for a more complex taste than lagers. 

So whats with the India part? Well they all come from India and are brought to market on elephants. OK OK you caught me in a lie....its actually a cool story about how the name came about. Basically in the early 18th century East India Trading Co. out of Europe had opened up the trading market with India, the voyages could take months at a time and because of the conditions mostly heat and time...the beer would turn...but our brewers were smart they knew that hops and alcohol were natural preservatives. Low and behold along comes an October beer Brewed by Bow Brewing out of Middle-sex but because of their business practices the isolated a lot of the markets for export,  about this same time Burton Breweries lost theirs export market to Russia so the picked up Bows slack and introduced Burton India Pale Ale which was preferred by the clients in India, and out of this Our strong little Hoppy Baby was born.

Sweet Water IPA

This weeks tasting was a home town hero, Sweet Water Brewing Companies' IPA.

The Stats:
ABV 6.70%
IBU 65

   This beer pours heavy it has a very nice deep gold color and a lacy off-white two finger head that clings to the glass. Slightly less carbonation than I have seen with similar style American IPA's. Once it has settled into the glass this brew will remain hazy because it is unfiltered.

  The Aromas this beer has are quintessential to the IPA world, bold citrus tones hinting of grapefruit, floral underneath with a pine woodsy tone as well.

The taste of this is mostly citrus, grapefruit and blood orange, with undertones of floral, and a very bitter crisp finish that leaves the tongue wanting to start the process over again. With a lingering thickness. 

This is a very drinkable beer in 2009 it won the Best IPA in Country. The brewery has tours this is a very unique and a fun trip to take if your in Atlanta. Overall the is a very good IPA and while its not available nationwide if you can get you hands on it you should give it a go.