Oktoberfest Festbier

Sierra Nevada

Chico, CA

The beer pours with great head which is maintained throughout the session.

Great mouth feel and good color for a festbier. Coming in a 6% and with 32 IBUs the beer smell and taste great!

This is a Collaboration wiht a Bravaian brewery, Hoppebräu which is in Waakirchen, (pronounced Wa Kir Chen) Germany. They opened in 2019.

While being on the higher end of fiest bier style in both ABV and Hops this beer is a great example of the style. ( Introduced in Munich during the 1970s and 1990s to replace Märzen at the festival. It is paler, less heavily toasted, crisper, and designed to be more refreshing for long drinking sessions.)

Brewed with Munich, Pilsner and Two-row Pale malt with Cascade and Hersbrucker hops. Made with Lager yeast. This is a great warm weather beer.

If you like Oktoberfest or Festbiers than this is one for you. I highly recommend it.!

Pic

Trooper West Coastr IPA

Lagunitas Brewing Co.

The beer pours great and maintains head throughout the session.

You can smell the Krush hops as soon as you pop the top. It pours with a slight hazy yellow color. Think waves of grapefuit, resin and dankess.

The taste is just as it smells, all juice hops. I grade this on the "New" definition of "West Coast IPA"

They say up front that this is their version of a West Coast IPA. The roots of the West Coast IPA trace back to California in the late 1970s and ’80s, when a handful of renegade brewers decided they wanted more punch from their pale ales.

Sierra Nevada’s iconic Pale Ale in 1980 cracked the door open with its bold Cascade hop profile, but it was breweries like Stone, Green Flash, Firestone Walker and Russian River that kicked it wide open in the ’90s and early 2000s. Their IPAs—clear, bitter, and loaded with pine, resin, and citrus—became the blueprint for what we now call the West Coast IPA.

In the last decade, hazy New England IPAs stole the spotlight with their juicy, soft, low-bitterness profiles. For a while, it seemed like the crisp, clear, bitter West Coast IPA might fade into the background. But craft beer has a funny way of circling back and in this case the seem to bring the Hazy, Juiceness with them.

I graded this on the current standard but make no mistake, I am an old brewery who much prefered the old orignial West Coast IPA flavor and look. Which type do you prefere?

Queen Bee Honey Pale Ale

Texas Beer Co.

The beer pours great with good head which maintains throughout the session. It smell fresh and full of honey.

In this case they tell you up front it is made with honey and they mean it. The honey is up front and stays the entire session. Its on the hoppier end of Pale Ale.

For me and the crew who tasted with me we found that the honey was way over powering. It was just to sweet!

If you like sweet and you like honey here is your beer!!

Water Melon Wheat

Galveston Bay Brewing Co.

The beer pours great and you can smell a watermelon ish aroma when you pop the top. But that is where it stops.

I had high hopes for this beer. The name sounded refreshing and it smelled good but then the watermelon left the building. What you are left with is a bready wheat taste and a strange feeling on the tongue.

The Brew Chief and Daughter both tried this one and we all had the same impression.

Now this could have been the can we had and I would love to try this on tap at the brewery.

Of which I hightly recommend going to the brewery as they have a large selection of beer and great food along with a nice outside seating area and a large ACed inside.

Dandelion Honey Kolsch

K. Spoetzl Brewery & Distillery

We had high hopes for this beer but they were quickly rubbed out.

Made with 2 Row, Munich Wheat malts, Nugget. Mittelfruh, and Hersbrucker hops and the Spoetzl in house Lager Yeast this beer had all the makings of a great beer!

I should note that the Brew Chief and youngest daughter where present for the tasting and approached it with eagerness.

The beer pours great and has a immedate flower smell. Then the taste follows through with flower, flower with a bit of honey on it. I will say it is true to its advertising but why, just why?

None of the tasting panel finished their sample.

Perhaps if we had liked the flavor of Dandelion we might have had a different experiene but lessons where learned and palets where eduacted.

If you try this one and liked it let me know.