Wednesday, February 23, 2011

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


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