foam – Let's Learn Beer!

T(welve)-4

by Ceit
January 4, 2023January 4, 2023

On the fourth day of Beermas I went and bought for me

Four miles of nowhere

Three tropical tree eggs

Two staring wings

And an icy raven looking needy

Ok, this one is pretty close to the song, although the birds aren’t seen actually calling. And there are only two, but the other two are just out of frame I’m sure. And they are birds! Probably calling their friends a long way off, in that desolate landscape. Gekko Brew’s The Other End of Nowhere looks like it should be some dark beer, for a depressing sipping session, but it’s a NEIPA, so at least visually it ought to be pretty cheerful. Some of those NEIPAs are a little abrasive though, and so strong they might leave you in a place you have to memory of going to. This one is a pretty standard 6.5%, so I don’t think we’ll go that far. If by chance we do, I guess there will be some calling involved.

This is one of those very juicy looking NEIPAs, with its cheery gold color and light cap of lacy foam. It has kind of a zesty aroma, orangey but with a little something extra. Caraway or some other spice maybe. The juice is echoed in the taste, although the beer is a slender and healthy feeling one, not an overwhelming mouthfeel, very light in body. It kind of evokes the hopelessness of the label, a sensation of being in complete solitude without even a beer to weigh you down.

central spain

by Ceit
December 9, 2022December 12, 2022

It isn’t a real holiday today, but it is the middle of the week and bookended by holidays. It’s almost a holiday by default, but some people take Monday and/or Friday to have long weekends and kind of begrudgingly go to work a single day of the week. Not everybody has the luxury of an “aqueduct”, as the Spanish refer to this extra-long weekend (a normal long weekend being a “bridge”). For a working day, we seem to have a normal working beer, Guineu’s Latitud 41 lager.

Activity begins as soon as the cap is unsealed, but there’s no foam overflow. The beer pours out with a sour-grain scent and a very fluffy head, settling into the glass with a very clear, slightly ruddy light lager color. The glass gives off a little metallic aroma too, making me wonder if the beer has gone off in the bottle. The flavor is at first strongly bitter and tinged with bread, a stronger flavor than I expect from a lager, but the aftertaste also has that metal and green bean bite. The beer tries to override that bit of weirdness, and it seems like it really is a fine lager, but the aftertaste is a little distracting.