Re: Alesmith Yulesmith
I completely forgot to report my weekend beer trip. So this past weekend at Hop Devil Grill in NYC, they had their Daze of the Devil Strong Ale festival, where they featured over 15 beers with 8+% ABV. They offered 4 and 12 oz. servings of the heavy hitters. They had quite a bunch of rare stuff that generally isn't available in the New York area, so it was a little slice of beer heaven. The beer I most looked forward to was Kuhnhenn Raspberry Eisbock, which is made in Michigan and is only sold in 6 oz. bottles. Apparently, the keg at the bar was one of the only two ever made. I won't be rating everything I tasted, because quite frankly, I don't remember many of them. I'll give you two: Russian River Pliny the Elder and the aforementioned Kuhnhenn Raspberry Eisbock.
Pliny the Elder is an Imperial IPA from Russian River out in California. This was the only beer I had a 12 oz. serving ($8, 8% ABV) of because I was drinking it with lunch. I’m not much of a hop head, but I figured I wouldn’t be seeing a beer like this on tap in New York for a while and I should be developing my tastes anyway. It had a nice golden hue with some creamy white head. Pleasant aroma of pine and grapefruit. The taste was more on the grapefruity side. Though I’m not much of a fan of grapefruit itself, I did enjoy this particular flavor. Plenty of hop bitterness to go along, as was expected. Didn’t catch much alcohol in the taste though and the bitterness didn’t linger too long in the finish; both pluses. It seemed very well-balanced to me. In my very limited experience, this is a really good IIPA and would love to have it again. [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]
I only had a 4 oz. serving of the Raspberry Eisbock, which went for $6 (10.6% ABV). They must put some kind of effort into making this bad boy for that price. Had a reddish-brown color with no head in the tiny glass. I couldn’t believe what I smelled: chocolate-covered raspberries. Simply amazing. And the taste...boy did it ever deliver. Just wonderful. Again, a nice melding of chocolate and raspberries with some caramel hints as well. It also had that port feel that the Aventinus Weizen Eisbock had. It felt very silky and thick on the palate and the alcohol wasn’t very discernable. The finish was predominantly raspberry. This is definitely a dessert beer...hell, it could easily be dessert too. I don’t care how much it cost for the sample, it was totally worth it. As close to perfect as I've tried, so for the time being, Kuhnhenn Raspberry Eisbock gets a full [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]
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