method of hoperation...

Modus Hoperandi - I just had one for the first time thanks to hopregister or prescription - whatever he goes by now.

one word - BIGAWESOMENESSOFCITRUSHOPFLAVOR!

see Hamster's review from September 2009 for more and better details...

TOTAL STRANGERS GOT THEIR HOMEBREW EATING INTO MY BUDGET

here goes my hamsterian take on the three 2008 SAM ADAMS' LONGSHOT WINNERS:

CRANBERRY WIT

first off, i don't mean to be sexist, but isn't it a bit cool when the ladies win the sam adams' homebrew competition? i'm not sure why that's so exciting to me. maybe it's because, other than ashley brock and e sue young and faith scott, i have not met many female beer geeks. so when carissa sweigart wins with a cranberry wit, of all things, i feel my power - my woman-power - bristle on the edges. 

okay, enough politics: let's get to the beer. this cranberry wit pours unfiltered and cloudy. very light with deep pink hues enlivened by a constant and steady stream of carbonation bubbles, looking like prom night on speed. a thin, fully laid white cap covers the top of the glass, through which no significant aromas pass. i'm sniffing for fruit, tartness, some spices, but i get nothing. the first sip is pure wit beer: light and spiced on the edges. the bottle declares "cinnamon, orange peel, coriander and grains of paradise," all before a "touch of cranberry." the first sip only reveals cinnamon in the background, like a box of red hots accidentally fell into the mash. after a little bottle-swirling, in an effort to agitate all those spices and yeasts in the bottom, the beer looks like a glass of grapefruit juice: dark pink fleshy-juice and thick cloudy yeast haze. more complex flavors shine through now. orange peels and coriander are mostly prevalent. little sign of cranberry, even tartness. however, some small wash of brightness does flow along the sides of the tongue, mellowing out the overt spiciness and making this wit extremely light and more drinkable than most beers in this genre. although i would never buy a sixer of this, i like having these two bottles for the trial. 

NOTE: my second bottle was much better. this is a very exciting beer, an amusement park of spices and fruits all crammed and roller coastering around in one glass. i told my dear friend, sir jason scott, that this beer is like a good m. night shabalabahonda film: too much to take in the first time. bright, spicy, refreshing, cloudy and full-bodied - yes, ma'am, i would definitely buy this beer in sixers and serve it at dinner parties.

DOUBLE IPA

so mike from california says he tossed in "over six pounds of hops per barrel" in his double-IPA (9% ABV). i'm not sure if that's a lot or not, but the aroma is as hairy as liquid sasquatch. smells like a walk in the northern woods: lots of pine, lots of earthy pitch, lots of tree-sap and bursting green. this is a transcendental aroma in a beer that wants to jump out of the glass and live as deliberately as thoreau. first sip: whitman whiskers! this thing is mowing me down. thick, thick biscuit bottom under a spicy, piney hopped top. this is a great double IPA: not too much, but definitely earning its 9% alcohol ranking. i would buy sixers and twelvers of this. hound it and hide it in my little cellar closet down here on the first floor. my hat is off to mike in california - this beer is lovely.

TRADITIONAL BOCK

unfortunately, i've had my fill of german beers around these parts. and, equally unfortunate for alex drobshoff from california, texas has depleted its ideal cool evenings where such a thick and heavy beer stakes claim. still, i will come with open olfactories and taste buds. pours dark leather brown. very little head or carbonation: nothing's alive on the inside. plus, i'm not getting any aroma here. even sniffed the coffee in the kitchen to double check my sniffer, and it works, but i can't smell anything on this beer. (same as shiner bock). the first sip of drobshoff's traditional bock (6.8% ABV) weighs in syrup heavy. also, it's sweet, sweet, sweet and more sweet. lots of malt, with small gushes of cherry. why anyone would brew (or drink) a bock is beyond me. they are heavy, sticky, chewy beers. the beverage equivalent of creamed corn, without all the lumps. i'll be giving the extra bottle of this to marky-mark pepe-guzman who just loves-loves-loves him some bock. he be german, i suppose.

ALL YE WHO ENTER VERMONT ABANDON HOPE: THEY DITCHED CIDERS FOR A DANTE WORTHY DESCENT INTO THE NINTH LEVEL OF RUSSIAN IMPERIAL HELL-A-STOUT

so my friends ryan and kelly urban came over tonight and we're being really cool and saying stuff that regular people wish they could say on a totally awesome day but they can't but we totally just mouth-off like it's nothing cause we're awesome even on mediocre days and stuff like that and whatever, man, yo.

then we decide to have dessert. so ryan and i drive over to the mart and talk about the UNDERWORLD films which are awesome if you love them. and then at the store all the blue bell pints, which are usually $3 a piece are $1 a piece, and me and ryan totally flip. so we buy four of them. i can't remember all the ones we bought cause we were so jazzed at the time that my memory was blitzed. 

then we got home and busted open some ice cream. then i popped the top on some otter creek russian imperial stout (10.6% ABV / 65 IBUs). the bottle boasts that otter creek brews their russian imperial with "double the malt and four times the hops of regular stouts, this ale offers a robust and intense flavor experience." all crafts breweries love to throw junk like that on their bottles: whether it lives up to the hype is another matter of tastes altogether. to find out, i poured myself and ryan a (room-temperature) draught in wine glasses, and then we started sniffing. 

the otter creek russian imperial stout pours oily black, darker than big-rig engine drool. the stuff allows zero light, a liquified spelunking expedition top-side and glass-tamed. it also pours thick, more like plasma than liquid. the head holds the darkest brown cap i have ever seen on a stout, more kin to a fudge brownie than most of the frothy-cappuccino tan heads i have normally seen. this beer screams the absence of hope.

ryan swears, right off the bat, that the stuff smells like olives - and green olives at that. oddly enough, his wife confirmed the aroma. i never noticed a single olive whiff in the whole batch. after a few more sniffs, ryan declared a significant molasses aroma, cooked and maybe smoky. in the meantime, i immediately smelled raisins and anise - and tons of both. this thing smelled like a licorice bomb with a burning fuse. there may have been hearty rummagings of fig and prune notes wolloshing about in there, as well. we both agreed that this aroma was huge and somewhat threatening.

the first sip, for both of us, was overwhelming and ash-trayish. all the possible complexities and enjoyment were burned out by an intense throat-bottomed alcohol burn. ryan suggested flavors of smoked gouda lingering in the aftertaste. i agreed, but maybe more out of concentration than actual taste-budderings. 

my overall verdict for otter creek russian imperial stout is that this may be a fantastic cellar beer. those uber-hops, as declared by the label, may need 3 or 4 years to mellow out. i'm sure that in time, seasoned in dark and discipline in someone's basement, this beer could eventually emerge as a beautifully enjoyable celebration stout. however, until then, this bottle is not worth the required $7. it did not even pair well or simmer its offensiveness next to cookies-n-cream ice cream. as a result, ryan and i both agreed that this beer tasted more like a punishment than a treat. otter creek russian imperial stout lived up to its bottle-printed claims (more than i could have expected) and left me feigning for a bright and fizzy pale ale: something on the lighter side, for heaven's sake. 

in the meantime, i'm chomping at the bits to break into the 2008 sam adam's longshot sixer, newly released in these parts. that review will come very soon. 

I SHOT A WHALE WITH THIS BEER: edited for mixed gender viewing

if you need me, i'll be at mike's house. upstairs. at the dining table with latonya and sarah. mike is already in bed. he has to open the coffeeshop tomorrow morning. he will need to put the key in the door by 4:54 a.m. so that he can dim the alarm by 4:57 and hit "store open" on the computer by 4:59. that's his job. that's how he gets the dough to run me to the price chopper in liberty, missouri, allowing me to purchase a sixer of sierra nevada torpedo extra pale ale. and then we sip the sixer, talking about bigfoot and werewolves and God and oscar wilde and my own take on politics as evolved since the last time we discussed my take on politics. 

i told mike i voted this past year. he was surprised. rightfully so.

shit. this sierra nevada torpedo extra pale ale (7.2% ABV / 70 IBUs)  is good. really good. sierra nevada has never made a bad beer. seriously, i cut my hopped-up mandibular bilateral tori on sierra nevada pale ale, and i will love this company forever for that fact alone. sierra nevada, unfortunately, makes very few over-the-top beers to write about on websites late at night on vacation. their bigfoot barleywine comes to mind as kingish and kongish, as well as their harvest ale something-something style ale (the latter was hoppy as fruit rind, but i can't remember the full profile), but that's about it for big beers. sierra nevada saddles up next to several good american craft breweries with a consistency of okay beers and the occasional gleam of and excellent beer. 

"Utilizing the 'Hop Torpedo,' our unique method of dry-hopping, we harness precious oils and resins to showcase the complex citrus, pine and herbal flavor and aromas that hops have to offer." - as quoted from the barn-door ends of the Sierra Nevada Torpedo sixer package

did you guys know that i work at the writing center in a local community college? yes'r, i do. and there is an english teacher there that hates the word "utilize." she says, "come off it, and just say 'uses'." honestly, i can see her point. why say, as a fiction writer, "bill said emphatically . . . " when you could just say, "bill said . . . . " and then write better dialogue? it's a good question. one to consider. so it makes one wonder, when a craft brewery uses words like "utilizes," are they trying to compensate for something lacking in the magnitude of their torpedo? 

personally, i do not see that sierra nevada's torpedo lacks anything in girth of flavor. this is a big flavor beer, flushed with gushes rustic pine and citrus rinds. i like the grapefruittiness. i like the bitterness. i like the mouthfeel and the exclamation of outer-fruit cores surrounding the edges of every sip - heavy in the front, loaded in the back.

my dear and beautiful friend, sir jason scott, made my ear sweat with his description of this ale. i liked it from that conversation on. however, we do not get the biz down in bryan-f'bombing, tejas. tonight, finally, i got my taste of sierra nevada torpedo, and it was well worth the wait. i'm sad that mike is passed out for the night, and the ladies are unapplying their days make-up and hair together: this is a beer to share, a book to tote in a small nylon bag, a story to hold out extended to friends and say, "no, really, devour this, as if your life depended on it, even though you have the luxury of it not."  

i would like to sip this beer all night long, even in my sleep, and then, if i were lucky, instead of waking up with dream-dragon-poo on my tongue, like my morning breath usually lays on me, i'd wake up with this beer, solidified and blanketed across my palate, like firmly baked cheese, and i would taste this beer, naturally, in my own mouth, all f'n' day long. such an extravagance would feel like my birthday come early.

i think i will go watch DANCE OF THE DEAD now.

STONE IN ANY HOPPAGE / STRAIGHT TO THE GUT / PUNCHES ME IN THE PALATE / KNOCKS ME ON MY BUTT - sandi patti

i am here to talk about stone brewing company because i have a paper that i am procrastinating and also because i love talking about stone beers. moreso, i love drinking them. in fact, ooooh, what's this? i am drinking a stone beer as i type! yes'r! YES'R! i am a prince! i am bulletproof for the rest of today!

honestly, i have never sipped a stone beer that was not grand. some craft breweries (new belgium, boulevard, sierra nevada, bridgeport, bear republic) set their par at good and occasionally beat their own odds with something extraordinary. other breweries (stone, bells, pabst brewing company) set the par at great and seldom deviate. yes'r, stone is just such a brewery, and everything is write-homeable.

however, there is an odd conundrum that i've discovered with stone. and it is this: stone's pale ale is a finer, more solid, more drinkably hoppy ale than their regular IPA. schyea, i know: that's crazy talk. that's why breweries build pale ales and IPAs, to build a hoppy medium in the pale and then imperialize it in the IPA. but stone seems to be an exception to this rule. (i've also found a similar phenomena with the laguintas brewing company between their new dogtown pale ale and their regular IPA. but that's a different post). 

first and foremost, when chatting up stone and hops, the place to begin is the STONE RUINATION IPA. this is stone's imperial IPA, and it's the muthaload. weighing it at a pithy 7.7% ABV, this sucka boasts over 100 IBUs felt on every inch of the tongue. huge citrus. huge bristling fruit peels. huge mouthfeel and blistering burn. i love this beer. and i'm not shooting for anything eloquent here, i'm just bragging that i've had one and maybe you haven't. if you can only taste one more beer before getting slammed by a bus, make it the RUINATION. this is a beer to prolong martyrdom for, if even just once. after a ruination, everything else tastes like a shiner. 

secondly, STONE IPA, for all purposes, is a great ipa. again, this company does not make a paltry beer. running up close behind the ruination, stone ipa bubbles with a 6.9% ABV and boasts over 70 IBUs. not a small ale by any means. still, this is not an ipa that i run to. there is something overly floral and perfumey in the stone ipa, something not quiet balanced. i find myself half way through a pint of stone ipa always thinking, "shite, i wish i liked this more, even half as much as the pale or a quarter as much as the ruination." that's right: i think in fractions. i taught beginning math at sylvan learning center for over three years. the numbers get into you like those little ear wig thingies in STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN. anyway. so, yes, this is a good ipa, but i can think of half a dozen ipas that i would put above the stone ipa. don't ask me what they are right now. 

thirdly, STONE PALE ALE takes the gold for, hands down, the best pale ale i have ever tasted. bringing up the rear with a 5.4% ABV and a mere 41 IBUs, stone's pale ale, by the numbers, is stone's weakest hop optional ale; however, that is not the case on my palate whatsoever. i love this beer. and, upon several occasions recently, i reached for stone pale ale over stone ipa at the liquor store and pint shop. this is a good beer. big and burly. balanced on all sides, but still aggressively hopped in all the right places. i find this beer a frustrating single-bottle-beer: i want several of these right in row. the first sets up for the second, sets up for a third and reason to confess to my brothers in the community. i've not experienced such a thing with a pale ale before. usually, i turn to pales when IPAs are not available. not in the stone case. it's just good. damn good. cuss words and soapy candy good. 

this has been my stone brewing company hoppy beer run down. thank you. 

PS. on the STONE RUINATION and STONE IPA, look down the ratebeer page for "hamsterglory." that's me. i left those reviews. haven't gotten around to STONE PALE. will do. just pimping my old reviews.

A 16-IPA SHOOTOUT IN KANSAS CITY: PRESENTED BY SIR SCOTT

We needed to do a proper IPA shootout.  Not a “tasting”, but an actual shootout.  How is that done?  

Step 1: Gather some hopefully worthy brews.  Check.  We even managed to sneak in an elusive (for Kansas, anyway) Three Floyds Alpha King.  

Step 2: Gather some beer nerds to taste and subjectively judge.  The beer nerds part is easy. The four nerds for this shootout are all avid homebrewers… a combined 35 years of brewing experience, and a collective 5 trips to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.  The “subjectively judge” part would be the hard part.  For this shootout, we’ve rated in a very unorthodox manner, and it exposes some of our personal biases. We’re familiar with the traditional beer rating system, where you take things such as nose, mouthfeel, and appearance into consideration.  That’s all fine and dandy.  But for me (and the friends in this shootout), there’s really only ONE thing that matters most in the end… DID WE LIKE THIS BEER?  A really nasty beer could have a GREAT mouthfeel or appearance.  But why rate it high on those fronts if I think it sucks and I have no intention of buying it?  With that in mind, we decided on an arbitrary scale of 1 – 100.  100 is the best beer the world could ever produce (there were none given), and 1 is an undrinkable beer.  50 is the “utterly average” mark.  It’s that beer that just makes you wonder why they even bothered brewing it.  So typical, so average, it just doesn’t move you, but at least isn’t BAD.  Anything below the 50 mark gets on the verge of nasty, and anything above 50 is where you start to consider buying the stuff. 

Perhaps the most important part of this scale is that helps us get a handle on the overall “greatness” of the beer.  For instance, if a beer comes in 3^rd place, that doesn’t tell us much.  Was it a distant third, or was it a photo finish, where you can’t go wrong with ANY of the top-3?  Our system helps quantify that. 

The 16 beers were blindly poured, so during the tasting, we only knew a beer by number, not name.  This removed any possible chance of bias for (or against) a brand name.  There are very valid concerns that a lot of hops kill the taste buds.  We also tried to combat this by having each of the four judges start with a different set of four beers.  This way, if later tastings tended to judge a beer more harshly (or favorably), it would all average out in the end.  Furthermore, we had water and crackers to help cleanse the palette between tastings.  Finally, this wasn’t a “run through once and rate” type of thing.  After the initial tasting, we went back to re-taste similarly scored beers to further hone the scores.  In the end, every one of us had ratings that were very accurate.  I then averaged all of the numbers to come up with the final results.  Some might surprise you.  Averaged scores are in parenthesis.  Here goes:

 

16^th Place: Southampton IPA (45) – Unanimously voted the worst of the whole bunch, and by a pretty good margin.  I think it was the only beer in the tasting where every person either coughed, gasped, or had some type of negative comment about it.  All malt and devoid of any hop character.  I wouldn’t buy this for $1/6-pack, simply because I wouldn’t enjoy drinking ANY of it. 

 

15^th Place: Three Floyds Alpha King (57.5) – This was a shocker, and I hope it doesn’t offend some of the Three Floyds faithful here.  Again, this was a totally blind taste test done by some knowledgeable beer nerds.  Overall, this one just didn’t have what it takes.  Some specific comments from the tasting… “Is this even an IPA?  Tastes like a British Pale.”  “All malt, no hops.”  “No hop smell, too dark, too malty.”  DISCLAIMER – This beer was 8 months old.  In my opinion, NOT old enough to noticeably detract from the flavor profile, but if anyone wants to mail me a fresh one, I’ll gladly taste it. 

 

14^th Place: Bear Republic Extra Pale Ale (61.25) – Granted, it’s not even fair to throw a pale in with a bunch of IPAs and expect it to do well.  I think this one must have been on sale for it to make this group.  Regardless, the fact that this mere pale beat out two other IPA’s says something about how weak the last 2 places really were. 

 

13^th Place: Pyramid Thunderhead IPA (66.25) – Not much to say about it.  Nothing offensive, but nothing that stood out as overly memorable.

 

12^th Place: Dark Horse Crooked Tree IPA (66.75) – Comes in at the lower end of our scale, but it’s worth noting that ONE judge ranked this as his #1 beer (giving it a 94).  Think about what a 94 does to the average of this beer.  By the other three judges, this one was given a score of 45, 60, and 68.  It was not well-received.  Why the division?  The taster who gave it a 94 admitted that he loved the nutty, malty taste.  To which everyone else responded something to the effect of, “We aren’t rating nut brown ales here!!!”  In the end, he admitted that as an IPA, this one was WAY off the mark, but as a tasty brown ale, pretty darn good.  Just don’t go into this one expecting hops. 

 

11^th Place: Mojo IPA (67) – We’ve rated this one in the past, and our opinion hasn’t shifted too much.  Just doesn’t carry enough hop “BAM” for our tastes. 

 

10^th Place: Mongoose IPA (67.5) – We had LOW hopes for this one, mainly because a bomber of it was only $2.99, but overall, it wasn’t a bad IPA.  “Crisp start, bad finish”.  “A solid, if average, IPA.”

 

9^th Place: O’Fallon 5-Day IPA (70) – Here’s where we really start getting to some of the solid IPAs.  This one didn’t have many noteworthy comments, but all judged it fairly well.

 

8^th Place: Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye (72.75) – Noted as having a “peppery” taste, perhaps due to the rye? 

 

6^th Place (tie): Anderson Valley Hop Ottin IPA (73.75) “Great smell, excellent hop bitterness at the end.” “Clean color, crisp taste backs it up.”

 

6^th Place (tie): Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA (73.75) – I’ll admit that I’ve always been biased AGAINST this company because I think the pencil-scratched labels make it look cheap.  However, they actually backed it up with a solid beer that I’d gladly buy again.

 

5^th Place: Bridgeport IPA (74.5) – This was, for me, the gold standard of IPAs at one time.  I still think it’s a fantastic IPA.  It’s just been eclipsed in recent years by some real hop bombs.  Crisp, citrusy, drinkable.

 

4^th Place: Boulevard Singlewide IPA (78.5) – This was my personal second-favorite of the shootout.  Stunning when I consider the fact that I’ve had this beer before, and was underwhelmed at the time.  But when blindly put side-by-side with some of the kings of IPA’s, this fared VERY well.  Universally liked.

 

3^rd Place: Bell’s 2-Hearted Ale (83) – It’s all been said before on this one.  “Best smell of all beers here.” “Well balanced malt and hops.” 

 

2^nd Place: Sierra Nevada Torpedo (85.75) – One taster’s hands-down favorite, while ranking 3^rd – 5^th by others.  Not a citrus bomb like the 2-Hearted Ale, but a DEFINITE hop bitterness that stands out as unique in this crowd… not an easy task when you look at the sheer number of competitors. 

 

1^st Place: O’Dell IPA (90.25)  - Shocker here.  It won our last IPA shootout with only 3 other competitors.  Apparently, adding 12 more competitors can’t de-throne this king.  I realized on this tasting that I’ve mistakenly called the hops “grapefruity” in the past.  It’s not grapefruit.  It’s pine.  All pine.  One taster couldn’t keep his comments to himself when he stumbled upon this one… “Smelled like I’ve walked into a Nordic pine forest!” “Most unique beer of the day… tastes like a pine tree.” “Good color, aroma.” “A unique standout in this crowd.”

 

What I actually find great about these overall results is that the O’Dell IPA and the Sierra Nevada Torpedo couldn’t be more different.  This isn’t a “citrus hop” bias coming out, or anything like that.  These two beers simply manage to stand out dramatically from a lot of the others, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to do that in the crowded IPA field.  Feel free to talk amongst yourselves, berate us as judges, condemn our scoring system, or do anything else that helps you feel better about a beer that you wanted to score higher.  Most importantly, cheers to whatever beer you personally love. 

KISSING HOPS WITH OPEN MOUTH

for the record: i fumbled my way through a 12-pack of schlitz, with the help of felix landry, this past weekend. and it was good. and it made me feel as classy and upper-crust as the schmoe in that pic up there. and i do not regret giving my tastebuds to schlitz or for asking the kiss-of-the-hops into my gullet. if you like corn, you'll like schlitz. if you like smooching slight hints of hops, you'll like schlitz. if you like purchasing 12 beers for the price of 6, you'll like schlitz. if the current economic depression is depressing you but you'd rather stop eating food than drinking lagers, then ask schlitz into your gullet as well. you will thank me and milwaukee.

GUEST POST-MASTER, SIR JASON SCOTT, WITH A BLIND IPA TASTE-TEST AND SOME FLAVOR FROM THE FARM

I've attached a picture of the contenders for this one, along with the pours of each so that color can be compared. (You'll note a lonely bottle of Tallgrass IPA in the background of this... though not officially a part of the tasting, I'll comment on this later).

So obviously, on the far right, we have the two double IPAs... Mojo Risin' and Boulevard Doublewide. We considered it fair and prudent to pitch these against one another AFTER completing the tasting of the other four (5, including Tallgrass). Even though OUR review saved the doubles for last, I'll begin with them, because it's a pretty darn easy one, with unanimous results among the four tasters in the room. The winner? Mojo Risin'. The loser? None. They're both remarkable. But they're HUGE beers. Beers this large and this malty are actually difficult to infuse with enough hop to overcome the malt, and in this respect, Boulder has outclassed Boulevard with ease. A much more pronounced hop character, which makes it easier to drink than the Boulevard (though neither is what I would call an "easy drinker").

That's it for the doubles. We loved them both, but Mojo Risin' takes the crown due to better hops.Now for the not-so-easy to judge.

This was a true blind test. Beers were poured by a non-participant, then photographed as attached. The beer bottles were then moved to another room, and tasting began. A few of the more noteworthy comments from the tasting (and I will attribute the comment numbers to the rightful owner in the review:

1) Smells like grapefruit juice... not a bad thing at all.

2) This is a meaty mess (a bad thing)

3) This tastes like horse dick

And now the results. I hope it's not a cop-out to have a tie for first place. We went through the line-up 3 times, trying to judge a clear winner. It simply didn't happen. There are two beers that were so neck-and-neck... so amazingly and deliciously equal, yet with different characteristics.

Third place was a VERY close third place (one of our testers ranked it #1, actually), and fourth place was condemnable. Dead last and easily pushed to the back of the table with authority by every tester. The final results stunned me.

FIRST (and second) PLACE: O'Dell IPA and Bell's Two Hearted Ale. These beers both pull off an amazing balancing act. They pack a nice 7-ish percent alcohol level, but remain drinkable and, dare I say, refreshing. They are the two happy hop monsters, but they have a different hop profile. O'Dell garnered comment #1 above. If you like a grapefruity/Amarillo hop, this is your beer. If your preference leans toward a more generic or lime-like citrus, Two Hearted Ale is for you. In the end, we decided that the better beer simply depends on your mood. In fact, I know from a recent 2-hour phone call with the hamster that in a similar side-by-side comparison, I declared O'Dell the victor over Bell's. In this blind test, my notes gave the nod to Bell's over O'Dell. You simply can't go wrong this these. There is ONE factor that could make the O'Dell a clear-cut winner for me... price. At the liquor store I went to, the Two Hearted Ale was $10.99 a six-pack. Ouch. Very ouch. O'Dell was a comparable bargain at $8.99.

THIRD PLACE: Sierra Nevada Torpedo. One taster's favorite, hands-down. It's drinkable. It's not too heavy. It oozes hop presence from every CO2 bubble that escapes the surface. For all but one of us, we found the hop character to be a bit more like "hop concentrate" than actual hops. That is, you get a concentrated whallop of hop BITTERNESS, but not necessarily the nose that you might expect. Kind of like a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on steroids. A universally-liked beer, but with the citrus hop-heads in our taster panel, this one didn't have a chance.

LAST PLACE: This pains me. Boulder Beer's Mojo IPA. I smell a conspiracy. For a couple of years, the hamster and I have wondered if the bean counters at Boulder Beer are handcuffing brewmaster David Zuckerman's hands. Hazed and Infused just hasn't tasted the same as it did when it first came out. After this IPA shootout, I seriously wonder if Mojo has fallen victim to the bean counter. It's no secret that hops are pricey. The temptation to cut back on these vine-ripened cones of perfection has to be powerful for the accounting dept. This beer was the unfortunate recipient of comments 2 & 3. It should be added that the taster who proclaimed comment #3 grew up on a farm, so I suspect he knows what he's talking about. This beer was the third one that each of us tasted. We would taste the first beer, then leave the glass in place. Taste the second beer, and either move it slightly forward or rearward of the first, thereby indicating its relative rank against the previous beer. When every one of us got to the Mojo, it was slid with forceful disgust to the back of the table. Now let me qualify these comments. It's not that Mojo is a bad IPA. It is not. We all agreed that it is not a bad IPA. But this test was supposed to be one of our "best of the best" shootouts. We had a lot higher hopes against the other competitors.

So where did it fail? Hops. Or the lack thereof. The thing tasted of malt, and almost exclusively malt. In the company of the other three beers we were tasting, you would have had a hard time convincing me that the Mojo was actually in IPA. We really tried to give this one a fair shot. We even mixed them up and tried the whole thing again, and with the same result. Mojo was simply out-classed and out-hopped at every blind sip we took. The irony of the taste test is that I've always considered Mojo to be a grapefruity hop king. They pile the Amarillo hops into this thing (supposedly). As I took this blind taste test, I got to the O'Dell IPA and, upon smelling the fragrant grapefruit, already proclaimed it to be Mojo. Which made me really scratch my head at what that awful #3 beer had to be. So when the curtain was lifted and Mojo turned out to be the dog, I was a bit crushed. Further irony came from a drunken e-mail that I sent Hamster one night saying that I would defend Boulder Beer to the death and beyond, since they are like family to me. After this tasting, I can no longer do that. Will someone please tell me that I got a bad 6-pack of Mojo? Will someone repeat a similar tasting and tell me if your panel is as unanimously turned off by the lack of hops in Mojo?

DISHONORABLE MENTION: Tallgrass IPA. This one was thrown in as a joke. As a proud product of Lawrence, Kansas, I've come to learn that the very best thing to ever come from Manhattan, KS is mediocrity. Unfortunately, Tallgrass couldn't even achieve mediocrity with their "IPA". Let's not try to kid anyone though... this is not an IPA. Or at least it's not an India Pale Ale. It could quite certainly be an Interestingly Pungent Amber. Perhaps an Insulting Pale Ale. But if hops supposedly kept IPAs fresh on the long ship voyage to India, I predict this beer would have gone sour about 2 miles from the English shore. This is about as hoppy as a Mai Bock. I don't know how a brewer could ever produce something like this and have the gumption to call it a Pale Ale, much less one fit for a trip to India. Laughably horrendous, this has to go down as one of the worst IPAs I've ever tasted. 

So, there you have it. Our results of a blind, 4-way taste test. Your results may vary, and I'll look forward to what you think. Take care, sirs.