Breckenridge 471 IPA Revisited + A Trip to San Francisco

This is perhaps a first for this blog… revisiting a beer previously reviewed! A friend of mine recently gave me a six-pack of the Breckenridge 471 IPA (really a double IPA, at 9.2% ABV!) and I was curious what I thought of it before. It wasn’t as hoppy as it seemed to me the last time I had it, so I wanted to give a new set of impressions. Read my previous review for more of the basic background info on this beer.

The aroma is crazy. The first blast I got right after pouring was of tangerine. Grapefruit is really dominant, but this time I was catching a lot of tangerine aroma, too. Flavor is all grapefruit. Good lord! It’s like a glass of grapefruit juice! Not that hoppy?! What was I thinking when I reviewed this beer initially! It’s a definite hop bomb.

To me, 471 is a “calibration beer.” What I mean by this is it’s a great beer to learn what a specific flavor tastes like in beer. For example, I never REALLY understood what “toffee” tasted like in a beer until I had Ommegang Abbey Ale, then it was like being hit over the head with a hammer… a hammer made from toffee! Another example for me is the coriander flavor of Blue Moon. Not the greatest beer, not the worst, but if you wonder what coriander in beer tastes like, Blue Moon will “calibrate” your taste buds/brain and you’ll know.

For me, 471 is a good calibration beer for hops, just in case you are really new to beer and don’t know what hops taste like! Specifically the bright, citrus-y and especially grapefruit-like hop profiles come through really strongly on this beer.

It’s a great beer, very bitter, which I love, and now that I think of it, one of my favorite double IPA’s because it isn’t offset by so much obvious malt. My biggest complaint of double IPA’s is that they tend to be really sweet, and not as hoppy as some regular IPA’s to me. What I love about 471 is that it lacks some of the balance that other DIPA’s have, not being weighed down by cloying sweetness and really just letting the hops rip full blast. Yum!

In totally unrelated news, I am traveling to San Francisco for a couple days this weekend and will have an opportunity to get some beer in. I won’t have a car, which is a disappointment, and I plan on doing the usual tourist stuff and really walking and getting some photos in, but I also have a stop planned at the world-famous Toronado and food + beer planned down the street a ways at the Magnolia or Alembic (or, hell, maybe both!). I want to try to get most of my beer-related goals met on Friday, then spend more of Saturday doing other things, but I’m really looking forward to the trip. Will have things to write about afterward, so stay tuned!

Leffe Blonde Abbey Ale

The history of Leffe beer goes back to the abbey of  Notre Dame de Leffe in southern Belgium, founded in 1152. Like most abbeys of the day, the monks of the abbey brewed beer. The abbey had a rough history, destroyed by fire, flood, overran by troops in multiple wars, etc. The French Revolution saw the brewery destroyed and the abbey deserted in 1794, but the monks returned in 1902.

In 1952, production of beer was continued with the partnership of a Flemish brewery. This brewery was purchased later by Interbrew (now InBev), and the Leffe brand is now brewed at the Stella Artois brewery in Leuven.

Leffe Blonde is 6.6% ABV and it is recommended the beer be served in a chalice glass, which I did have on hand (albeit, a Schlitz chalice, but a chalice none the less!).

The style of “blonde ale,” as well as that of “abbey ales” are somewhat of a catch-all term, but for the most part, blondes should be yellow to gold in color, clear and be mostly malty (but still light) in flavor. There should be light hop flavor and from the esters that are found in this style, some fruity undertones. “Summer ales” and kölschs have some common links to blondes, too.

Leffe Blonde has a light aroma… “Belgian-y” in character with some yeasty and bready components. It poured a nice light golden, perfectly clear color with a fair amount of carbonation.

The carbonation carries through in the mouthfeel, too, with enough CO2 to be a little prickly. This would be a good thirst-quencher and could stand up well to some light to medium- fatty foods, too.

The beer has a yeasty, slightly bready flavor with light hoppiness (more of the resiny type of European hops than any grapefruit dominant West Coast hops). It has a nice, full mouthfeel, which was a surprise for me for what I thought was going to be a very light beer. The light bitterness of the hops extends into the finish, which is is fairly dry.

I know it’s popular to hate all InBev offerings, but I think Leffe Blonde is a solid beer. It had more complexity than I expected. In this category, there are LOTS of others to choose from, and at 6.6% it’s not quite a session beer, but this is a good beer and would pair up great with some cheeses, chicken or fish dishes, making it quite versatile. For me, personally, if I’m going to drink a beer like this I would probably gravitate more toward a witbier or something along those lines, but this is one of the better “blonde ales” I have had.

Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout

Boy, it sure has been a long time since I posted! Trying to lay off the beer as much as possible while I am losing weight. In any case, let’s get on with the review…

For some reason, I have always avoided Samuel Smith’s beers at the bottle shop. I don’t know what it is (maybe their wide availability, the fact that they are imported and I’m worried about the long trip here, who knows), but for whatever reason I’ve just never made the investment. A friend recently gave me a 4-pack of the Oatmeal Stout, though, so here goes.

I drank this beer at “room temperature” which for me is around 62°, although I think the bottle was still a bit cooler than that. I poured it into my large tulip glass and it was black with the slightest red highlights. The head poured a tan color and there was a lot of it, but after about 5 minutes of sitting it had all but disappeared.

Aroma is roasty with maybe a hint of something like raisins in it. I couldn’t get much else out of the aroma.

The mouthfeel is a little lighter than some oatmeal stouts I’ve had lately, and despite the ig head during pouring, it still has enough carbonation to be a little prickly. The beer has a nice, light roasty flavor to it as the dominant flavor, and I still pick up something that reminds me of raisins on the aftertaste. It has a slightly unpleasant taste VERY early in the sip that disappears right away, but I can’t really put my finger on it… I think it might be the hops and how it interacts with the rest of the flavor profile? Not a dealbreaker by any stretch, but it is a little off-putting.

Overall, this is a decent beer. It is light, both in body and flavor profile, so it could be a good alternative for people who like Guinness or are looking for a gateway to stouts. With a 5% ABV, it makes for a decent session beer, since it’s not too heavy tasting or feeling. That said, it is a little lacking in some of the darker, roastier, coffee and chocolate type of flavors I really look for in a stout, so I can think of better examples of this style, which is one of my favorites.