Peace Tree Brewing, Hop Wrangler and Rye Porter.

Me holding a Peace Tree Rye Porter

After taking an exciting tour at Peace Tree Brewery Friday, which you can learn more about at my other blog My Brewing Adventure, my friend Logan Woster and myself thought it be appropriate to do this weeks tasting on two beers from Peace Tree. We bought a Growler full of their Rye Porter. A Growler is a 64 oz jug that you can refill. We also used the last two bottles of a six pack of their Hop Wrangler an IPA. Both of these can be bought at your local Hy-vee or at a some beer shops within Iowa. So we took our two beers put on some Tom Petty and went away.

Hop Wrangler

First a little bit on the style. IPA's or Indian Pale Ale is a style that dates back to pale ales from  the early 17th century. IPA's started out as an pale ale that was being shipped to India, the ale was heavily hopped and became very popular in India. The ale then started becoming popular in Great Britain. Fast forward to todays craft brew scene and you will see brewers making IPA's with intense hoppiness. So now we will talk a little bit about Peace Tree's Hop Wrangler. First of all the the guys over at Peace Tree do a hell of a job on the logos for their beers, as you can see in the picture the logo is interesting, slick and eye catching. When we poured the Hop Wrangler it came out as the typical golden honey color that most associate with IPA's or at least I do. There was a light frothy head that formed on top, but slowly faded away. The beer was lightly carbonated and clear when trying to look through it. The smell was fairly hoppy but didn't have a super strong aroma. Then we took the first sip. At the very begining of the taste you don't get much of the hoppiness. The hoppiness grows the longer the beer is in your mouth, but not until you swallow the beer does the hoppiness finally come through. It lingers in the back of your mouth even after you are done drinking the beer. I felt that this beer was a little easier to drink than other IPA's mainly because the hoppiness doesn't come through till the end and it wasn't as hoppy as some IPA's. Logan on the other hand didn't feel like he could drink multiple beers of this, but I thought it could be a very sessionable beer. Overall a great beer made right here in IA.

Rye Porter

Next was the Rye Porter, porters are very dark beer that usually don't have a lot of hoppiness. They get their name from the river and street porters in London that drank the beer. They are a beer that has evolved into stouts which originally were called extra or double porters. We poured the porter into a glass and it was a typical dark almost black color. Or as Logan put it, It was darker than the inside of a coffin on a moonless night. I had to agree with him to an extent it was pretty dark, with a light head that was fairly frothy and pretty light in color. You could smell the chocolate malts and Logan thought you could even smell the rye. It had a very creamy mouth feel and you could taste the chocolate malts throughout from beginning to end. It almost left a smoky flavor that lingered in your mouth. Logan and myself both thought that it could be a very good beer with smoked food. Possibly ribs tor  brisket that had a sweet BBQ sauce on it. We both agreed that it wouldn't really be a beer pong get drunk beer. But I proved myself wrong when I finished the growler later playing various drinking games and intensifying my drunk. Overall a great beer that I would definately try again.See ya next time for the Barely Legal Beer Tasting [_]}

Logan Woster holding the Hop Wrangler

The First Sip, Hazelnut Brown Nectar, and Nigh Stalker

Bear Sorenson and myself holding up the Hazelnut Brown Nectar

 This is the first installment of the Barely Legal Beer Tasting. In this one I'm not very organized and barely have an idea of what I'm doing but we'll give it a shot. We didn't have any method to the two choices of beers that for this weeks tasting more than the bottles looked cool and I liked the companies.  I chose to try Rogue's Hazelnut Brown Nectar www.rogue.com/beers/hazelnut-brown.php  an English Brown Ale and a Imperial Stout by Goose Island appropriately called Night Stalker www.gooseisland.com/pages/night_stalker/94.php .

Hazelnut Brown Nectar

We started out with the Rogue first because we knew it would be lighter of the two beers. When tasting multiple beers especially of different styles its important to go from what you think would be the lighter of the beers to the darker ones. We poured the rogue into a couple of glasses that I had bought at Target for $13 that will serve as my beer glasses until I can afford something better. The color was typical of brown ales, hence the name it was a medium to dark brown in color with a light head that formed around the edge of the glass. The smell obviously had a very strong nutty smell, even more than previous browns that I had tried in the past. This could be from the actual use of hazelnut extract, where other browns just have nutty characteristics. The first sip doesn't really attack you with flavor just a calm sense of the maltiness and a slight bitterness. You can really taste the nuttiness or what we (my friend Bear and I) attributed to being nutty right in the middle of the tasting and it finishes with a strong malty flavor that lingers in the back of your pallet. Overall we enjoyed this beer and decided that it could be a beer we would drink regularly. It was fairly easy to drink although our two female friends sitting in with us Jenny Sorenson and Nella Thomas didn't quite think so. Maybe they aren't quite ready for craft beers yet.  

Night Stalker

The second beer was an imperial stout by Goose Island called Night Stalker. This was the first stout that Bear had ever tried and the definitely the first stout like this that I had tried. It like most stouts was very dark in color and a had a brown frothy head on it. We both decided that it smelled very chocolaty, like a dark German chocolate. The first sip was like a lightning bolt had came down and smacked us right in the mouth. As soon as this beer entered your mouth your pallet was assaulted with a bitter taste like not other. In the middle you get slight burnt taste and it finishes out sweet and smooth. This beer is a force to reckoned with, I was completely thrown back by this beer. It was more bitter than other stouts that I had tried before and definitely had a lot of different characteristics. Bear completely hated this beer, bad enough that he couldn't finish it. I didn't know how to take it, for me it was too bitter, but that is a matter of opinion. In all it was definitely not a beer you could drink on a Saturday night but one that would have to be appreciated like a fine wine with small tastings. See ya next time for the Barely Legal Beer Tasting [_]}