The thing I’m quickly learning about Cigar City with the two beers I’ve had from them, throw out all your preconceived notions and put on your driving gloves for a ride. This time up is Cigar City’s 110k+OT, batch #3. Batch #3 diverges from batch #1 and #2 and dives into the world of big IPA.
Scott strikes again, fresh out of Colorado, my trading buddy sent me a Great Divide 16th Anniversary Wood Aged Double IPA last week. I don’t really want to sit on this one, I’ve been looking forward to this since Adam posted this on BeerNews.org. I’m super excited to try it; Love IPA’s and I love oaked beers, time to see how Great Divide put these together in a beer.
This review is probably just another Three Floyds review to you mid-westerners, but since Three Floyds doesn’t have a wide distribution net in the US, this is going to be a nice (I hope) treat for me. Coming out of Munster IN, most of us know Three Floyds for their annual Dark Lord release, but they also have quite an extensive portfolio of beer that I can’t get in New Jersey, but I’m slowly sampling through beer trades. My Buddy Kevin at the Liquor Outlet in Boonton NJ gave me a Moloko Milk Stout which I’ll be reviewing shortly!
New Belgium beers are hard to come by in New Jersey, so when my I received these two beers in a trade, I knew I had to review them together. The Ranger IPA is one of New Belgium’s latest non Lips of Faith beers. I’ve heard some good things about this beer and it seemed to be in fairly high demand when it was first released at the beginning of 2010. I’m not sure of the age on these beers since there were no legible bottled on dates, but they were sent to me with in the last month, so they should be fairly fresh.
If you have been reading my blog for some time, you know I’m a huge fan of Mikkeller beers and most have impressed me with their flavors and quality. The next Mikkeller beer I’m going to review is a collaboration with De Struise Brouwers. The two most famous De Struise beers are Black Albert (Imperial Stout) and Pannepot (Quad), so what has me very intrigued is how far they are stepping out of what they brew to create a 163 IBU hop bomb with Mikkeller. I have yet to see this in the American Markets; I got this beer from Struise Yeast Store in Belgium with my 2 Westy 12’s!
There are some IPA’s out there that for what ever reason have a lot of cache associated with them, Pliney the Elder , Hopslam, and Nugget Nectar are at the top of most people’s list another one at the top of many lists is Ballast Points Sculpin. I’ve not seen it in NJ for whatever reason, even though many Ballast Point beers are. So, when I saw it at the Whole Food Bowery (NYC) I bought a bottle.
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