Moylans IPA and Thirsty Dog Leghumper Porter

Friday was typical. I left the house with a plan, just to watch it blow up in my face. Not that it was the worst Friday ever. There have been plenty worse. But Fridays in the beer business have a way of being busy. It's just the nature of the beast.

My last stop of the day was at my local watering hole (not as dumb as I look), the Rivertowne Inn. Rivertowne Inn is a great pub located in Verona, PA. An oasis for this side of town with great, affordable food, and great beer on tap.

I was in the mood for something hoppy, so I chose a Moylan's IPA!

Moylan's IPA: Light copper-colored appearance. Malty nose accentuated with plenty of herby hop spice! Hits the mouth with big malt flavor, balanced beautifully with resiny hop bitterness. Finish rides out, getting more bitter by the second, while continuing to hold onto the big malt flavor. And then . . . the bitterness keeps coming . . . Wow! An excellent American IPA!! This beer is 6.5% ABV, but drinks MUCH bigger-Full Flavored!

As delicious as that was, I decided to move on to something else . . . After all, I do have a blog to write. I went a different direction, and ordered a Thirsty Dog Leghumper Porter.

Thirsty Dog Leghumper Porter: Dark brown in color. Chocolate and coffee in the nose . . . all malt. Full bodied and filled with tons of chocolate, and roasted bitterness, yet surprisingly smooth and milky. Finishes nice and dry with chocolate and roasted bitterness. This is a very nice robust porter!

Check back on Monday. Each new week brings new adventures!

Unibroue Maudite and Trois Pistoles

Thursday was a long day that found me working on many different things. But at the end of my day, as I was driving into the Lawrenceville section of town, I found time to stop into my favorite Lawrenceville bar, Remedy. My buddy, Tony, who owns the place, wasn't around, and there was no need to bother him with a call. So, I sat down and ordered a Unibroue Maudite on tap. A staple around those parts.

Unibroue Maudite:
Amber in color. Big malty, fruity nose with lots of spice. Malt pummels the palate with ripe fruit and spice, then coats the mouth with cognac-like flavors. The finish rides out for minutes, but begs you to come back for more. Dare I call it a session ale?! Maudite drinks dangerously clean and easy for an 8% ABV ale. This is a wonderful belgian amber-styled ale that delivers.

After finishing the Maudite, I decided to stay for one more. And, with the taste of Unibroue in my mouth, I went for another. Only this time, I ordered a bottle of Unibroue Trois Pistoles.

Unibroue Trois Pistoles:
Dark in appearance. Cocoa and dark fruit on the nose . . . mysterious. Hits the palate malty, with flavors of cocoa, plum and blackberry. Lengthy finish with nuances of raisins, dark fruit, and port. One of Unibroue's finest.

Check back tomorrow to see where my travels lead me. I don't even know where that might be, and what I might find.

Blue Point Pale Ale and Great Divide Hades Ale

My travels Wednesday found me at Mad Mex-Robinson looking for lunch. With Spring in the air, I grabbed a Blue Point Pale Ale on tap. A fitting selection at any time, but especially when the daffodils are poking up out of the semi-frozen soil.

Blue Point Pale Ale: Light copper color, Great malt backbone with a nice green hop bitterness that lingers for minutes after swallowing. An exceptional Pale Ale in the hay day of IPAs. If you are a hop head, this is a Pale Ale that you need not steer clear of . . . A wonderful session ale with enough greeness to satisfy.

For lunch, I decided to order the Casa Salad: Leaf lettuce, cherry tomatoes, red onions, blue cheese crumbles and pepitas, dressed with Lime-Cilantro Vinaigrette, and a small order of wings with San Fran sauce.

San Fran sauce: honey, garlic, and red pepper. This is the best sauce Mad Mex offers in my opinion.

The beer I was pairing with these wings was a no brainer whenever I spotted it on tap: Great Divide Hades Ale.

Great Divide Hades Ale is golden in color, and has a wonderfully delicate malt nose with hints of spicy bitterness. A beautifully clean malty sweetness followed up, without hesitation, by a crisp spicy hop assertiveness that immediately leads to a wonderfully dry finish that leaves the body of the beer coating the inside of the mouth. An underrated beer from one of the best breweries I know.

As expected, the Great Divide Hades went extremely well with the Mad Mex San Fran Wild Wings. The malty sweetness of the Hades mixed well with the underlying honey in the San Fran sauce. When swallowed, the Hades' maltiness initially muted the spiciness of the San Fran sauce, then the hops immediately accentuated the garlic and red pepper of the San Fran sauce, leading new a beautiful mesh between the spiciness of each. A wonderful pairing!! Those who can think past a hoppy option, for the moment, will be rewarded with this pairing. Why pair spice with excessive hop bitterness, anyways?! It's like adding hot sauce to an already properly spiced dish.

5th Annual Hell with the Lid Off Barleywine Festival

This past weekend, February 21st and February 22nd, marked the 5th Annual Hell with the Lid Off Barleywine Festival held at Kelly's Lounge on Penn Circle, here in Pittsburgh. This is one of my favorite events! A four hour session, each day, with limited seating, and servers delivering barleywines tableside that are ordered ala carte. Ticket price was $35 before the day, or $40 at the door, and the selection consisted of 31 different barleywines, with 10 of these barleywines also available in 3-5 vintages, dating back to 2003.

I hear that the Saturday session got a little crazy, and that's why I attended the Sunday session. The Sunday session was awesome! A sold out session that consisted of very mature drinkers. If I didn't know any better, and didn't have a wonderful menu of barleywine sitting in front of me, I would not have known that I was at a beer festival, not to mention a four hour barleywine festival . . . Nobody bumping into you, spilling beer on you . . . No lines to wait in, while people funnel to a table like cattle heading for the barn at feed time . . . No obnoxiously loud, ridiculously drunk people acting as if they have never had a beer before. Just mature drinkers, in no hurry, enjoying some awesome barleywine, in a great setting.

Some highlights from the Sunday session:

I shared my table this year with two good friends; Brad Scanlon, Bar Manager at the Mad Mex Robinson location, and, Rick White, Film Maker, former Bar Manager for various Big Burrito locations here in the local Pittsburgh area. Both have stamina, and more importantly, something to say about the beer that we are enjoying. The following opinions were compiled during group discussions at our table.

We enjoyed a few great flights worth mentioning. Please excuse the brevity of the descriptions. Notes were taken immediately at the table as the flavors hit our palates, and I see no reason to edit the descriptions. Rather, I would like give you the descriptions, as they came to us, as we were drinking each.

Not sure if it was our experience that led us right to the first three breweries' offerings, or random chance, probably a bit of both, but we decided to start with three vintages of Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot, Stone Old Guardian, and Bell's Third Coast Old Ale.

Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot:

'06: super soft, mild caramel flavor, dry

'05: toffee, vanilla, white pepper, round, full

'04: fig juice, hints of cognac, supple

Stone Old Guardian:

'07: nutty, ripe fruit, round, semi-dry finish

'06: ripe fruit, dry bitterness from hops, hop bitterness left malt cling nicely

'05: super soft, pepper, dry, soft caramel

Bells Third Coast Old Ale:

'06: nice complex nose- burnt sugar, a little hot.

'05: much softer nose and mouth feel, nice hop bitterness

'04: slight coffee roastedness, hints of chocolate, heavy toffee, semi-dry finish

All three of these previously mentioned breweries' beers ranked high for us the remainder of the day, with the oldest vintage of each being most memorable for the each of us.

Green Flash Barleywine 2008 was another favorite of ours, and seemed to be the crowd favorite. A great modern representation of the style, hop forward, hop middle, hop finish, lending to a nice rich, full-bodied beautiful barleywine.

Brooklyn Monster Ale:

'06: surprisingly light at the beginning, opens up with nice fruit, finishes dry with fruitness

'05: super clean, dry, refreshing. Nuances of good english tea. Is that a hint of lemon zest?

'03: hints of chocolate, raisins, hints of orange, soft, dry, beautiful

Rogue Old Crustacean

'04: big nutty, ripe fruit, hints of chocolate. Clean, hop bitterness in the finish.

There were plenty of great barleywines to choose from . . . Some other worth while notables included:

Sierra Nevada Big Foot '05,

Dogfish Head Old Skool '04,

Anchor Old Foghorn '06

Surprises:

Mendocino Talon '06-Mendocino Brewing Company, considered "Old Hat" around these parts, had a wonderful offering with the 2006 Talon. The Talon was drinking very mature, smooth, and nice.

Moylan's Old Blarney Barleywine '08-listing this under the Surprise Section might be surprise to those who know what a great brewery Moylan's is, but I list it here, because the 2008 Old Blarney that we enjoyed drank like a 2 or 3 year old barleywine. It was so unbelievably round and smooth, that it shocked us all! Kudos Moylan's!! You are a truly great brewery.

I'm gonna call it quits with that. I hope that you were able to make it to the end of this blog. If you were, I'm gonna give you the same reward the people that stopped reading early received:

Freedom until tomorrow . . .

Make sure that you make it to next year's Hell with the Lid Off Barleywine Festival. Don't make me tell you about it again.

Cheers!

Green Flash Imperial IPA and Moylan's Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale

Welcome! First, I would like to thank you for visiting my blog, The Daily Mash. What can you expect from The Daily Mash? The Daily Mash will cover beer and beer-related occurrences that cross my path on my daily travels as the Craft Specialist of the wholesale beer distributor, Galli Distributing Company.

This is the first post for The Daily Mash, and it will cover a couple of beers that found their way into my hand (then mouth) on Friday, February 20, 2009.

The first of the two beers is Green Flash Imperial IPA. One of my favorite restaurants, Kaya, located here in Pittsburgh, is currently pouring this wonderful beer on draft! Green Flash Imperial IPA . . . super piney, resinous, bitterness, with hints of tangerine, leading to a beautifully, full-bodied Imperial (Double) IPA! This beer is special, and typically only available in 22 oz bottles, so get down to Kaya and grab one before it's too late!

The second beer I would like to mention today is Moylan's Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale. A stop to another local favorite spot of mine, Brillo Box, produced a memorable experience. I ordered the mac n' cheese: Farfalle pasta with smoked gouda, and topped with crisped shallots . . . Paired with a Moylan's Kilt Lifter Scotch Ale . . . Now you're talking! The Kilt Lifter had more than enough body to stand up to the smoked gouda mac, and the crisped shallots accentuated the bread crust and mild brown sugar notes of the Kilt Lifter beautifully! I found this to be an All Star pairing! The mac n' cheese and Kilt Lifter are both awesome by themselves, but together, they were in full blossom. Get over there and check them out!

Check back tomorrow. I'll be talking about the good times had by all at the 5th Annual Hell with the Lid Off Barleywine Festival!