Beer Review, a pair of Ports

For the first free Monday that we've had since... um... April??? Kriddy and I finally got to watch our favorite Monday Night TV shows. The first is Chuck, man, we've got a lot of catching up to do on that one. That is followed by Heroes. I've been watching that on Hulu, so I know what's been going on, but Kriddy hasn't been able to watch, so she probably doesn't even know who half the characters are.

I took over two of the Rob provided beers for the evening, both by Port Brewing, High Tide Fresh Hop IPA and 2nd Anniversary. High Tide was the first drink, and went with Chuck. It was a yellow, orangey, hazy beer. The foam clung to the glass and made nice Belgian Lace. The thin head stuck around for a while. It smelled of citrus hops, there was also some grass and pine. It felt thick and syrupy.

The beer's initial taste was BITTER, is bitter a flavor? After getting past the initial bitter shock, there was some sweetness in the flavor, also some pine. Exploring further, I found a bit of caramel sweetness and also some chocolate flavor hiding in under the pine needles.

Wow, this was a great IPA, it had some potent, powerful hops in it.

The next beer was the 2nd Anniversary beer, which is listed as an Imperial IPA.

This poured a brown-yellow-orange. It came out of the bottle almost completely flat, but then some bubbles came up out of the bottom. It looked like a cask ale. It smelled piney, floral, hoppy, and a little like black pepper. It felt flat and runny-ish, it had a mid-level thickness to it. It almost felt creamy.

It tasted of pepper, pine, a bit of caramel, and ... surprisingly, hot sauce.

It was a pretty darn good beer. I've never had a beer that felt like a cask ale come from a bottle, I'm not sure if it was intended, but it came out pretty cool.

Again, thanks to Rob for this shipment. Yours will be heading back that way sometime next week.