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Let's Learn Beer!

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Spanish beer

other choices of tree

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I had a thing a few days ago, and I felt that the best thing would be to have a beer from Madrid. Since both FM and Mad Brewing are now out of action, we can only go to the outskirts. Yes, La Caníbal is in Mad Brewing’s old space, but I haven’t seen them canned and waiting in the stores. That leaves Península and Oso, although Cibeles could have been a ringer. Surprisingly, it’s a little hard to find things when you have specific names in mind, and moreso now that it’s vacation time in Spain. Finally, I did get a cheerful citrus beer from Oso, called, fittingly, Citrus. It looks pretty bright and tickly, although the back label warns of an “explosion” of partying fruits. This one does include orange and lemon juice, as well as Citra hops, so I think it might be NEIPAier than recent NEIPAs.

It pours out bubbly and stays bubbly in the glass, with relatively large spheres clinging to the sides. The head does not look very compact and vanishes quickly. It certainly has a citrusy color, lemony specifically, and gives off just a touch of lemon aroma. I was led to believe by the can that there would be a much stronger scent, but maybe they’re saving it for the taste. It is strongly flavored, and citrusy, more of a bitter orange than lemon. There is some feeling of natural lemonade in there, too. It’s surprisingly robust in mouthfeel, not thin and ephemeral like you might expect a lighter beer to be, but this has a roundness and hop leafiness that leaves you feeling like you have had a mouthful of something. Although this Citrus isn’t as powerful as I expected, I think it is appropriate for the season. It’s not bad to have something more subdued that you can quietly enjoy every once in a while. Not a NEIPA, in the end, but no regrets.

Supplier: La Buena Cerveza
Price: €5.50

say it three times

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Although I am not the biggest fan of sours, sometimes something in the ingredients, or the name or the label convince me to pick one up. This is one of those times. It’s Pyrene, a reliable brewery, so good start. And it’s covered in creepy monsters, so another point in its favor. And finally? Those monsters come from … BEETLEJUICE! No, I won’t repeat it twice more, I need to get down to drinking.

It’s leaping to escape the can, so much that it can’t even ruffle up a good head for itself. It does fizz so it kind of lean towards a soda more than a beer. The typical sour gassiness comes off it when you take a sniff, but it’s a very faint aroma this time. While it has good color, it’s almost pastel peachy, not a saturated red or pink. It has a delicate flavor, sweet, a little melony and strawberry, kind of a shaggy texture, but not spikey. This is very much a summer drink at first sip! It stays consistently fresh-fruity, not going sour, bitter, or syrupy. A very enjoyable sour, if I do say so myself. It’s a good choice on days when the street is like an oven, in triple digits Fahrenheit (a little more impressive than the double-digit Celsius measurements).

Supplier: Lambeer
Price: €6.50

all good things

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It’s time for bottle number three from my gift pack, the only one that appeared to have its full volume. This is the pale ale, “Smash” pale ale, although the name makes you expect the typical lager. As far as I know, cerveza rubia has been in the lager style at least since lagers were introduced. All of the labels had some subtle and slightly surreal designs on them, but Rubia clearly shows a guinea pig on one side and a cat on the other. I do not know the reason. There isn’t even a quirky name to point to a fairy tale or weird ass children’s show.

Once again, extremely fizzy and well-headed, lovely golden color and subtle but standard beery aroma. It hits hard on the tongue with its carbonation, but the taste is right up the alley of any ale fan. It’s in-your-face bitter, but with a little garnish of grain to keep it floating. Like the weiss, it has a bigger, bolder body than I associate with the style, but it’s still a smooth and happily drunk brew. It is, perhaps, even more summery than La Balluca’s weiss, with a somewhat simpler profile and a less layered flavor experience. A little time brings out some sourness and turns down the bitter, leaving a more candied feel to the whole business. Of course, I will turn my eyes to darker horizons after this, but it was a nice little interlude of local beers that I wouldn’t have come across otherwise. The beer stores of yore will be missed, and sorely.

harvesting

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I didn’t see any leakage on the bottle, but this La Balluca Weissbier also had a lower level of liquid than you would expect to see. I’m going to trust that it is also still in drinking condition, having been kept from light and heat (for the most part). It looks like a pretty standard weiss, very short ingredient list, all natural. Things are really heating up these days on the street, so it would be nice to have something to cool down with on an August evening.

Yep, not quite regulation level

A little hissy under the cap, but looks good pouring and has a little wheaty tang to the smell. The head is fluffy, white, and does collapse into a manageable amount within half a minute. The beer is clear gold, showing off a lively amount of carbonation. The taste is stronger and heavier than I would expect from a wheat, with a little graininess but a big dark bitter spot. It has a crafty feel thanks to that roughness, not as sweet and effervescent as more industrial or at least bigger brand wheats. It’s less summery and refreshing than many of them are, but it’s true that a lot of wheat beers do have some pretty hefty body to them. There is a little sediment in the bottom, so the last bit of pouring should be done with care.

exploded

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Sometimes people like to help you in your hobbies. When your hobby involves food and drink, it’s always easy to pick up a little something on a trip as a gift. Even now, there are local microbreweries and craft breweries working along steadily, supporting local hop farms and bars. I have not heard of La Balluca, maybe if some of the old beer stores were still open they would have had a few bottles. As it is, a pack of three bottles was gifted to me by a friend who was taking a trip through Guadalajara. They all looked like pale ales at first, but on opening the package I saw that there was an English brown, a wheat, and, yes, one pale ale. The brown and the wheat seem to have had some mishap occur; both of them were missing some liquid and the brown had some residue around the cap where some leakage must have happened. In spite of the loss, it’s mostly there, and probably still perfectly fine, so into the shitty fridge with 5 Maltas brown!

Uh oh
Hmmmmm
Seems a little low, yep

It is certainly a brown ale, cloudy with an off-white head, and a sweet-and-sour aroma. It’s like a lemon glazed cinnamon roll. The head dies back pretty quickly, but not completely, leaving a little cap. It has a strong malty flavor, with a little bit of gritty texture. The sourness is also there, very light, just balancing the bready, grainy taste. It has the hallmarks of its style, the warm roundness, the tingles on the tongue, it hits high notes for summer and low notes for times of less oppressive temperatures. As expected, the shitty fridge did not cool this beer way down, even in a bottle over a couple of days, but it works well with the style. It’s a soothing beer for the evening, probably not one that would take center stage, but it’s a welcome accompaniment.

a toast, to the past and future

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Number two stout from my last foraging, Basqueland’s Seven Minute Siesta. It sounds more like some kind of IPA than the Imperial Pastry Stout is claims to be, but we’ll see if there isn’t a surprise in the can. It might be that an 11% beer is just the thing to knock you out for seven minutes. This is part of their 10th anniversary series, one of the two stouts in a sextet of other ales, including a black IPA. For some reason, it seems to me like Basqueland ought to be even older than 10, but we must remember that the 2010s was the high point of establishment of Spanish craft beer. 2015 is a solid year to be born. Actually, it’s my nephew’s birth year too, so it must have been a year for crazy creative things to come into the world.

Again, very appetizing going into the glass, with a very fluffy mocha colored head and more tiny bubbles than I was expecting. As the head dies back I take a whiff of a cakey, fruity, chocolate syrupy beer. It has the aroma of the best kind of pastry stout, the one that has sweetness but isn’t a sugar bomb. A deeper sniff brings up some toasty maltiness too. The mouthfeel is surprisingly thick, much more robust than I thought it was going to be. The sweetness is well-balanced, strong but not overwhelming. It’s something akin to dark chocolate, doing away with the bitterness of stouts without drowning the flavor in lactose or sucrose. While filling, it was not very sticky at first, although there is some build-up in the mouth over time. It doesn’t leave much of an aftertaste, just the sensation of having your tongue varnished. And not shitty cheap stuff either, high-class celebratory shine for the ages. Happy birthday to you, Basqueland, may you keep your quality and your market for decades to come.

Supplier: La Mundial
Price: €8

popped off early

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How hot is it? Hot enough to explode beer cans! No, actually it isn’t today, I’m not sure what happened to Samhain. Maybe it just isn’t a summer beer in any way. I was told it was something akin to barleywine, with a lot of spice and a heavy body to it, a specialty beer from its northern brewery. I assumed it was Galician, since it has that Celtic touch, but it’s actually Reptilian Brewery of Cataluña. It wasn’t quite chilled in the fridge at Hidden Beers, but that just means it wasn’t hit with a big temperature difference on the street, where it swelled out the top of the can and popped a hole in it. Fortunately I was close to home and I didn’t lose much. An hour in the shitty fridge here and we’ll see what this does.

As expected, extra frothy, but still spicy and autumnal in aroma, nothing unpleasant about it. It’s a good dark amber color and a nice light beige head, which does calm down eventually. It’s a thick and robust feeling beer, yet smooth. I was expecting it to be a little rougher, maybe like that Australian ale, but it has almost a pumpkin pie filling feel to it. It also has a little bit of pumpkin spice taste, which makes it a shame I couldn’t hang onto it until October. Chestnuts and habañeros are in the ingredient list, but for the life of me I can’t pick out any heat. The wood aging is also not clear to me, although I don’t know what kind of wood was used. Apparently not one that had been infused with other alcohol. The chestnuts might be part of the nutty pie filling sensation. Since it isn’t thoroughly chilled, the candiness is evident in the flavor, not as overwhelming as some pastry stouts, but definitely in the realm of a dessert beer, or perhaps just a sweetish snack.

Supplier: Hidden Beers
Price: €4.54

surprisingly safe

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I’m not the biggest fan of pale ales, especially with an unreliable fridge. But, the label swayed me this time, as many another time in the past. It’s so focused, so determined, so much a beer that wants to kick itself down your throat. Plus, it’s Australian pale ale, so that’s something unusual up here. Bomb Squad is the name, but there’s also a little tagline at the bottom that resonates in these times: There Is No Tomorrow. Hits a little harder than that carpe diem crap, doesn’t it? Oso Brew does not have a particularly dour image, quite the opposite, but maybe it’s meant to be a call to action. I hope it doesn’t blow up in my face, after being shoved around in that fridge.

It is indeed a pale ale, straw colored, almost glowing white foam. The aroma comes in like a double decker bridge, with a strong whiff of fruit on top and a piney woodiness chugging in on the bottom. That bridge in Sydney isn’t a double decker, is it? Not like our beloved Gummint Bridge. I can’t quite see trains being bright and tropical at this time, since I don’t think they’re bringing in fruit these days. Somebody else must know a breezy pineapple bridge somewhere. There isn’t a lot of fruit in the flavor, it’s almost more of a rind or even grassy taste. This could be what you get when you eat dirt in an Australian football game. A pale ale is not an IPA, so you don’t expect it to be overwhelmingly hoppy, but it’s not a lager either, so you shouldn’t expect too much sweetness. This is a much more powerfully flavored pale ale than I’ve had for quite some time. It’s not quite what I expected, but I get to like it more with each sip. It might not be to everyone’s taste, especially in the summer, since it’s not especially easy-drinking. It’s rough around the edges and with a low and foresty flavor, not light and airy like other pales. Those traits make it feel like a get-up-and-go beer, though, not a sit-back-and-sleep one. Good for an early afternoon, in the on-street seating, ready to attack the rest of your obligations right after. If I’m not mistaken, 4.1% fits in the mid-strength category, so I guess it’s one Ozzie Man might recommend.

Supplier: Be Hoppy
Price: €5.50

coincidences

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New place and new surroundings…not especially impressive for me. Who knows, though, I didn’t like my old neighborhood when I first moved there and when I got kicked out I was sad about it. Maybe I’ll come to enjoy Las Tablas. In any case, I have a metro station to take me to my beer stores, and this time it took me to Be Hoppy. I hadn’t read the story of the French artist when I bought the beer, so it’s just by coincidence that I have the preening sheep and the embarrassed Statue of Liberty. Garage might have some better connections to France than I do. You might expect a dark beer, given the circumstances, but this is an IPA, a DIPA in fact. It’s Pacific Trifecta, named for its three hops: Centennial, Idaho 7 and Simcoe. Classic.

A little happy to leave the can, maybe thanks to the weak fridge. Unsurprisingly hard to pour smoothly, I something like one of those Czech pours with all the foam at first, and it’s pretty resistant head too. It looks appetizing, with a distinctly golden color and clean white head on top. The aroma is IPA all the way. I get a little bit of rubber as an undertone, though. The flavor starts with an arrow toward bitter, but quickly swivels to fruity with a mild sweetness and a velvety feel. It would be more refreshing at a lower temperature, but it’s still bright and delicious, with essence of hops wrapped around it. I can complain about a lot of things, but I can’t really complain about this beer.

Supplier: Be Hoppy
Price: €6.45

make you smile

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It’s summertime, for fuck’s sake. Streets are baking, heads are sweating, beers are calling. I even saw my first heat mirage! I’m not sure why I haven’t seen one yet in this town, I’ve been here through many a summer, and even hotter temps than these days. Must be something about the road composition in different neighborhoods. Since it is hot, hot summer, I relent on my stout obsession for a West Coast IPA. It’s national, though, from Caleya, a reliable brewery. And also, how can you resist Mola Lisa? Just look at that smile! She belongs in a museum.

Bright and golden looking, abundant and clean white head, firm but delicate tropical fruit aroma. It feels like a blend of whatever’s in season, it’s hard to pick out a particular one. It’s not more citrus or peach, for example, it’s just like walking past a fruit store. Does it translate to the flavor? Not quite, it’s a little sweet and hoppy at first, but suddenly you’re rolling through a pile of grain. There’s a strange distance between the light sweetness and the heavy, toasted base. After a bit, you start to get a little sourness, just for some variety. The flavor is stronger, and I would say more forceful, than the aroma, and while not quite what you expect from West Coast IPAs, it has a wildness that you might associate with the area. The pine isn’t very noticeable, that pine you might expect from a West Coast, but it’s scratchy and rough, a forest of a beer. There’s even something a little punk and/or New Wave about its sneakiness, with the whispered aroma and the punch of taste. A surprise, and a pleasant one.

Supplier: Más Que Cervezas
Price: €4.27

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