Underhill-Lounge

The Nøgne Ø Pale Ale is another beer club beer.
The nice thing about the beer club we belong to is that they include a little sheet with information about the beer and tasting notes.
As a Norwegian, I found the story of this beer really interesting.
The founder of the brewery, Kjetil Jikiun was a long haul [...]

What can I say, sometimes on a hot day it’s nice to sit on the back porch and have a good, relatively simple beer. Especially, if you’re maybe a bit hung over from the night before.
Mirror Pond is fairly generously hopped for a Pale Ale, with lots of malty goodness. I suppose perhaps [...]

Who could resist a beer with a label like this? Pirate cat on the label? I’m in!
Ran across this beer at the Harrison Street Whole Foods. They are also carrying Jolly Pumpkin’s Oro de Calabaza Ale. This is the first time I remember seeing Jolly Pumpkin Beer in California. Quite [...]

I can’t say that this was the best beer I’ve ever had, but the view from the deck certainly made it a lot more enjoyable.
Anyway, yes, vacationing for the last week.
We now resume our regularly scheduled posting…

Interestingly, according the the document which came with this beer club release, this beer was originally brewed under contract for “an Irish musical group.” Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out which musical group.
It is brewed in Belgium by a tiny microbrewery called Achilles. The documents call it a Irish Red Ale [...]

Normally, I quite enjoy the beers of the Anderson Valley Brewing Company. Really enjoy their Boont Amber, Deep Ender’s Porter, and Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout. All are fine examples of California Beer Brewing.
But, boy I did not like this 20th Anniversary Imperial IPA.
It’s an OK Imperial India Pale Ale. Not particularly out there [...]

I got home at about 1:00 on Saturday morning.
It might have been late, but I’d been serving drinks to people all night. I was hot, sweaty, and thirsty.
Quite some time ago, I had tried Firestone Walker’s Double Barrel Ale and not really cared for it. To me it tasted kind of like unmalted [...]

Out with friends last night at Alembic Bar here in San Francisco, I was thrilled to see Russian River’s Pliny the Younger on tap.
Pliny the Younger is a triple IPA (India Pale Ale) Russian River only brews in limited amounts, once a year. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to try [...]

Russian River Brewing makes some of my favorite beers. Pliny the Elder, Blind Pig IPA, Pliny the Younger, and others are among the best beers brewed in Northern California.
But, where they have set themselves apart are brewing Belgian Abbey style ales. For this type of beer, Russian River seems to capture more of [...]

Certainly featuring Lagunitas Brewing often enough on this blog!
Lagunitas make a couple strong beers every year around the holidays. Brown Shugga usually shows up around Thanksgiving. The story with that beer, is, one of the Brewer Assistants mis-read the amount of Brown Sugar called for in their Barley Wine style Ale recipe, Olde [...]