STONE JAPANESE GREEN TEA I.P.A.

Beers A-Z

Indistinct 2011 collaboration between Stone, Japanese brewer Baird, and Guam brewmaster Toshi Ishii promotes Tsunami relief but lacks firm theme. Heavy yeast sediment clouds amber-hazed dry body. Advertised green tea influence lost between bitterly lemon-seeded Aramis hop dryness and honeyed ginger sweetness, recalling earthen herbal crisping and tea-leafed bittering of an English ESB by forgoing expectant citric-fruited tenacity of typical American IPA. Tertiary pineapple, grapefruit, and peach illusions merely warble across dark-spiced nicety. Not bad, but inessential.

Japanese Green Tea IPA (Second Edition) - Stone Brewing - Untappd

(ATLANTA) LAUGHING SKULL AMBER ALE

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Indistinct, but not unwelcome, stylistic changeup, rich for its class, but completely desolate up-front. Bittersweet apple-skinned naval orange, pink grapefruit, peach, and cherry tartness evaporates above chewy caramel buttering. Minor vegetal-wafted fungi sourness befits tertiary celery, rhubarb and spinach musk. Frugal flavoring stays at back of the throat. Under Red Brick banner (2013), leathery tobacco-roasted minerality brought dryer rye-breaded ESB-like profile to the citric-slighted fore.

Red Brick Brewing Company 'Laughing Skull' Amber Ale Beer, Georgia | prices, stores, tasting notes & market data

IRON HILL AFTERNOON DELIGHT IMPERIAL COFFEE PORTER

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Lusty mahogany-shaded prune-hued dry porter with rich Nicaraguan and Sumatran coffee bean intrigue plies cedar-burnt hop char and nutty mocha continuance to bourbon-wined molasses sapping. Chocolate milk, vanilla bean, cocoa nibs, soy, and black cherry subsidy rounds out ashen wood-smoked backdrop. Cappuccino, espresso, and dark chocolate elevate extremely penetrative coffee roast finish. An incredible nightcap.

OMMEGANG APHRODITE

Beers A-Z

‘Ethereal’ dry-bodied fruit ale plies lactic brettanomyces yeast funk to tart white-peppered raspberry vinaigrette sourness, bubbly champagne-like fizz and brimstone limed salting for interestingly complex, burgundy-hued, pinkish-headed, pilsner-malted lightweight. Oaken cherry, green apple, green grape, grains of paradise and Japanese pear nuances given vinegary solvent-like pucker and woody barnyard parch to punctuate sour ale tendencies.