Midnight Sun Brewing Co.- Obliteration VIII

Midnight Sun is a brewery that I definitely wish I saw a lot more of down here in San Diego. To my knowledge, there are only a handful of bottleshops in Southern California that get their beers on a regular basis. Luckily for me, I happened to be in one of them shortly after they received a new shipment and I was able to get the newest in Midnight Sun's series of experimental IPAs- Obliteration VIII.

Obliteration VIII pours a beautiful dark golden color with a one finger off-white colored head. I picked up some huge notes of citrus hops along with some hints of white pepper.

The taste is chock full of hops. Big, sticky, chewy hops with a bit of caramel and orange thrown in for good measure. I didn't taste a ton of malt here, but it didn't bother me too much. This is an absolute hop bomb and one of the better ones out there. I have to find more of this.

Final Grade: A

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery - Tweason'ale

By this point, I think I've pretty much talked up Dogfish Head about as much as one beer blogger can humanly talk up one brewery. In case you didn't know: I love Dogfish Head! Their newest beer, Tweason'ale, certainly continues their quest to keep trying new things. It's a gluten-free beer that uses sorghum instead of barley or wheat and is brewed with strawberries and buckwheat honey. I'd been wanting to try a gluten-free beer for a while, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Tweason'ale pours a clear pale golden color with a thin cream colored head that quickly recedes to a ring around the top of the glass. The smell has a touch of the strawberries, but it comes across as a tad artificial- almost like those strawberry hard candies with the wrappers that make them look like real strawberries. I also picked up a touch of musty grain, a bit of sweetness from the honey, a perfume like flowery aroma and a touch of sourness that reminded me of wine.

The taste opens with some tart strawberries and lemons along with a bit of pink grapefruit flesh. The beer was highly carbonated which (when coupled with the light, fruity flavors) made it almost taste more like a cider than a beer. Still, this was an extremely refreshing and pretty tasty beer that didn't seem to be lacking anything due to its gluten-less ingredients.

Final Grade: B+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34

New Belgium Brewing - Lips of Faith-Cocoa Mole

If you know me, you know I love all things chocolate. So when I heard that New Belgium's newest Lips of Faith beer was called Cocoa Mole, I got pretty excited. A beer brewed with chiles AND chocolate? Game over. There was absolutely no way I wasn't trying this one. I found a bottle last week at Texas Liquor and opened it about two minutes later at home.

Cocoa Mole pours a dark brown color with a thin but long-lasting cream colored head. The smell was really incredible. I caught a lot of cinnamon and unsweetened baking chocolate along with some brown sugar and a slight hint of chile.

The taste opens up sweet and smooth with some notes of dark chocolate and a bit of earthiness from the chiles. Right around the middle, I got a good hit of heat from the peppers. The heat lasts through the finish and the chiles leave a bit of dryness on the tongue. My biggest complaint about this one was that the mouthfeel was a bit thin. Other than that, this was a pretty well executed experiment.

Final Grade: B+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34

Jester King Craft Brewery - Black Metal Imperial Stout

Up until very recently, I would have thought that the terms "craft beer" and "Texas" went together about as well as the terms "Lindsay Lohan" and "sobriety." But I've started hearing more and more about decent craft breweries popping up in Texas and I finally got my first chance to try one of their beers last week.

Black Metal is a Russian Imperial Stout brewed by Jester King Craft Brewery, just outside of Austin, Texas. The beer has one of the best labels I've seen in a while- a pissed off looking dude in full on KISS makeup. Bad. Ass.

Black Metal pours a deep black color with an incredibly dark milk chocolate colored head. The smell was a bit faint, but I picked up some roasted malt, black licorice, molasses and dark chocolate, with some subtle hints of plum.

The taste opened with a big hit of roasted malt and milk chocolate. The middle brought some flavors of espresso and the finish brought some faint hops and charred grain husk. The mouthfeel was very smooth but a bit lighter than some of the big Russian Imperial Stouts out there. Overall, I was pretty impressed with this beer and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what Texas is able to produce in the future.

Final Grade: B+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34

Alpine Beer Company - Melonhead IPA

One of the great things about drinking a lot of craft beer is that it's pretty much impossible to run out of new things to try. Brewers are constantly experimenting with new styles, barrel aging programs, and even new hop varieties. Recently, a new hop variety was created by Select Botanicals Group called HBC (Hop Breeding Company) 342. While a more catchy name has yet to be announced, this new hop has already caught the attention of a few breweries, including one of my favorites, Alpine. Their new IPA, Melonhead (referring to the "melon-like" characteristic of HBC 342), is the newest addition to their lineup and I was able to find it on tap at O'Brien's.

Melonhead IPA pours a clear, golden color with a very thin white head. The aroma had a good amount of citrus hops along with some grapefruit, a touch of pine, hop resin, hints of watermelon, and a sort of musty smell that I can only describe as horse feed. Luckily the musty smell was masked well by the other elements.

The flavor opens with some grapefruit and a slightly chalky citrus hop bite. A touch of bready malt is present briefly before a sweet and drawn out caramel finish takes over. I was hoping to pick up some of the watermelon that I had smelled but it never really showed. At 6.75% ABV, this is significantly lighter than most of Alpine's other IPAs and the taste is significantly more mild. But it's still a refreshing and very tasty IPA and one that I hope they continue to brew. I doubt that this will ever be bottled, but keep an eye out for it on tap around San Diego.

Final Grade: B

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34

FiftyFifty Brewing Co. - Imperial Eclipse Stout- Elijah Craig 18 Year

You would think that aging beer in bourbon barrels would be easy enough to do: Take a decent base beer, throw it into a bourbon barrel, forget about it for a few months and then take it out and bottle it. But, for a variety of reasons, it's not quite that simple. First of all, you can't just take any beer and throw it in a bourbon barrel. If the base beer is crappy, aging it in bourbon barrels isn't going to make it not crappy. You also need a beer whose flavors will be complemented and enhanced by the bourbon. Some beers work with bourbon and some beers don't. But few that I've come across work as well with bourbon as FiftyFifty's Imperial Eclipse Stout.

FiftyFifty is a brewery from Truckee, California, whose beers pretty much never show up in San Diego. However, they have a pretty good reputation, largely based on their Eclipse series. This series of beers began a few years ago when FiftyFifty aged a stout called Eclipse in Pappy Van Winkle Barrels. The next year, they released three different barrel aged versions of it, and this year they're up to seven different versions. I ended up with the Elijah Craig 18 Year version (also called Elijah Craig 20 because the barrel is 20 years old). A big thanks to my friend, Andrew, for finding this beer for me.

Eclipse pours an oily black color with a thin, light brown head. The head might not have been too impressive, but the huge amount of lacing this beer left down my glass was. The smell was, in a word, incredible. One of the best smelling beers I've ever come across. There were rich aromas of coconut, milk chocolate, bourbon, toffee and fudge. It's not uncommon for a barrel aged beer to smell like whatever was in the barrel (in this case, bourbon), and that's it. But the bourbon was almost an afterthought to the other rich and sweet smells here. I could have spent hours just smelling this one, but I couldn't wait to have a taste.

The taste opens with a lot of coconut and chocolate sweetness (almost like a Mounds bar), then changes to flavors of honey, roasted malt and a touch of coffee. The bourbon is there, but it blends into the other flavors so seamlessly that you don't detect any of the heat you get from a lot of bourbon barrel aged beers. This may be the best bourbon barrel aged beer I've ever had, and it's without a doubt one of the top ten beers I've had, period. If you can snag a bottle of this (or of any of the variations of Eclipse), you have to do it. Amazing stuff.

Final Grade: A+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34

De Struise Brewers - Black Albert

I wasn't planning on doing anything special for Friday the 13th (maybe "special" isn't the right word). Then I saw an idea on beeradvocate that was too good to pass up- drinking a 13% beer to celebrate (another poor choice of words. "Mark"? "Commemorate"?) the day. What a great idea? And what was even better: I happened to have a 13% beer that I had been aging for over a year, just waiting for the right occasion to open it. The beer is called Black Albert.

Black Albert is a Russian Imperial Stout from the De Struise Brewers of Belgium. Clocking in at exactly 13% ABV, it's not exactly the kind of beer you should take on if you're in the mood for something light and refreshing. Luckily, on Friday the 13th, I was not.

Black Albert pours an oily black color with a beautiful 1 1/2 finger mocha colored head. The head showed great retention and left some trickles of lacing down the glass. The smell really lets you know you've opened up a monster. Huge notes of raisin and dark chocolate jumped out of the glass right away and were pretty much all I could smell until the beer warmed up a bit. Once it did, the complexities in the smell began to emerge and I started to get notes of espresso, fudge, some dark fruit and a little bit of oak.

The taste is rich, complex and very, very dark. Lots of dark fruit and espresso hit the palette first and are quickly followed by notes of rye bread, raisin, black licorice, charred malt and just a bit of milk chocolate sweetness. For a beer this big, it actually hides its alcohol surprisingly well and the slick and velvety mouthfeel goes perfectly with the complex flavors. It's definitely not a beer for everyone, but if you like your stouts about as dark as they come (like I do), this beer is about as good as it gets.

Final Grade: A

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34