Hayes Bomberpalooza, Part 1

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law hosted a backyard barbeque this past weekend.  Somewhere in the planning stage, my brother-in-law, Pat, decided that this would be a good opportunity to turn it into a beer sampling event.  Good call. Between all the guests, we ended up with somewhere around 16 high-octane beers for sampling with NO duplicates.  Impressive. 

The crowd was very well mixed and drew lots of varying opinions of the brews sampled.  Included in the crowd: a handful of entry level beer nerds like myself (please know I mean that as a compliment since we were all eager to try new beers but also all enjoyed mocking the BeerAdvocate geek posts we referenced during the tasting), a few beer moderates, some Bud Lighters, and some adventurous Midwestern grandparents (my parents).  Please note that the pictures of the beers do not accurately represent the way the beer looks when poured as Pat had a fast and heavy hand (this happens when you're the host - I get it) and was not pouring the beers delicately (to word it nicely).

Because there were so many beers and I was given a strict deadline of Monday morning at 9am to have the blog updated (apparently some people need things to do at work other than work...) , I'll have to break this blog into separate posts.  However, it will be chronological and will mirror the order of the beers consumed.  The comments included for each beer are random and not my own.  I do not know who said what (except in some rare cases) as I was mainly attempting to capture all the various babble as everyone tasted each beer.  Plus, I'll keep this anonymous.


Alright, enough preface.  Here goes..

Beer #1:   Columbus Hops - Single Hop Series (7% ABV) from the Hermitage Brewing Company in San Jose, California

Beer #1

This beer was not labeled or marketed as an IPA but it was definitely an IPA style beer.  It was not bad and it was cheap (ringing up at no more than $3.99) and purchased at BevMo.

"Strong hop start but dies off with virtually no after taste.  It's like no other beer I've had before..."

"Eh....not bad"

"Floral and very flowery taste"

This wasn't a bad beer, but I didn't really consider it a good beer either.  It was just a beer.  It was a tough way to start the beer tasting though.  Overall, it was not a crowd pleaser.







Beer #2:  Citra Hops - Single Hop Series (7% ABV) from the Hermitage Brewing Company in San Jose, California

Beer #2

For some reason, we all read the orange label Citra and expected to be greeted with a CITRUS flavor.  I'm not sure why - it was really an interesting social experiment in marketing.  Needless to say, after the first taste, we were all disappointed and left confused.

"Smells like a brewery..."

"Earthy"

The Husband enjoyed this beer.  I was shocked.  I really couldn't get past the smell of this beer enough to decide if I liked the taste.  I found the smell offensive, disgusting and indescribable.  As such, I didn't like the beer and dumped it over the fence into the park (hope that's OK Pat).


Quick side note - if you are a blog reader - this brewery will be familiar to you.  This is not the first beer we've sampled from Hermitage (also somehow affiliated with Tied House but the relationship is confusing, at best).   I once purchased three of these "Single HOP Series" beers at once.  We sampled one and the review is here.  The previous beer we had was absolutely terrible.  So much so that I e-mailed both the brewery and the store where I purchased the beer to let them know that there was something VERY wrong with the beer.  The brewery promised to send me a gift card but that was 3 months ago and I have yet to receive anything from them other than empty promises.  Go figure.


Beer #3:  Hop Stoopid Ale (8% ABV) from Lagunitas Brewing Company in Petaluma, California

Beer #3

We switched gears to a more well-known and definitely better brewery.  This beer was quite the change up from our first two beers as I heard many other people remark also.

A majority of the crowd thought this was the best one yet, which isn't really saying much considering the first two beer choices were pretty strange and mediocre.

"Remarkably un-bitter for having 102 IBUs"

I think that I overheard someone remark that this beer had a light basil aroma, but I can't be sure.

Also ringing in at $3.99, this beer was a much better bang for your buck.  I didn't catch anyone dumping this beer out over the fence and into the park.







More to come soon...