Tag: Berliner Weisse

  • Beer Review: Boat Drinks – Pina Colada Berliner (Crosstown Brewing Company)

    Boat Drinks: Pina Colada Berliner by Crosstown Brewing Company from Memphis, Tennessee

    I know I said I was going to do the flight I had at Tattered Flag, but I’m pushing that off til tomorrow (when I’m off). Its late, its cold, and I worked all day, went to the library, stopped at Sheetz, and currently am drinking some cheap crappy malt liquor I picked up there on a whim (Johnny Bootlegger Beverage Company). They had a couple different “bootlegger” / “mafia” themed ones, and I’m a sucker for anything Mob related (loved Mario Puzo’s novels, The Godfather movies, Goodfellas, Scarface, anything done by Scorsese, …really looking forward to seeing The Irishman, hopefully on Friday the 22nd me and my friends will get to see it). So I’m not really finding myself in the mood to do the massive 5-beer flight review. So I’m doing a bit of a simpler one in the meantime. So, sorry for anyone who read my Cox Brewing Company’s 556 Stout review where I said I’d do the Tattered Flag flight review – that will have to wait til tomorrow. (Early in the day though, so it won’t be too much longer.)

    I had this Berliner Weiss from Crosstown Brewing Company last night while typing up the review for the 556 Stout. It was a nice easy breezy drink (fitting for its name), so I figured I’d do the review. I’ve never had anything from them before, and had gotten the beer in a trade through the mail.

    According to Crosstown Brewing Company’s Untappd page: ” When you eat, sleep, breathe, and drink beer like we do, average just won’t do. Every detail has to be considered. Grain, hops, water and yeast have to be delicately balanced to achieve the desired flavor. We’ve been working on these recipes for years to get them just right. Now that we’ve got these beers ready to go, we need someone to share them with! Let us bring the exciting flavors we’ve developed to you. At CBC, we know you can find pale, fizzy beer just about anywhere. If you’re like us, though, full bodied and flavorful beer is worth searching for. We’re proud to provide Memphis with a local source for beer that we can all be proud of. ” They have 61 unique beers and a global rating of 3.64.

    Let’s take a look at this beer:

    Beer: Boat Drinks: Pina Colada Berliner
    Brewery: Crosstown Brewing Company
    Style: Sour – Berliner Weisse
    ABV: 4.5%
    IBU: None
    Untappd Write-Up: Berliner weisse brewed with pineapple and coconut .

    This is certainly not a November – oh my god its freezing so bad that parts of my body are falling off – kind of beer. But, when have I ever done beer at a normal or right time? (I’m the guy sitting outside and doing yard work with a 16% Stout in 94 degree weather.)

    Appearance is a light yellowing brownish hue. A normal sour, or berliner weisse style coloring. Not a fruited sour or a thick milkshake or thick smoothie sours, but just a general weisse light brown and yellow color.

    Aroma smells like a pina colada. Shocking right? It would be a bad thing if it didn’t! But thankfully it does. Heavy pineapple and coconut aromas abound with this one.

    Taste is definite berliner weisse, a nice sour tartness, with notable flavors. The coconut and pineapple fight here, kinda with neither taking prominence but both being there, and neither being as prominent as I wish. They are definitely there though, just seems muted or subtle when it should be more upfront on it. This is meant to be like the beer name suggests – a boat drink, a nice summer beer, relaxing on a beach or on the deck of a boat, or even in your backyard rather than mowing. Drinking it then would probably up it a bit in rating, just due to how the mind works, but its still not a bad beer.

    My Untappd Rating: ***.75
    Global Untappd Rating: 3.42 (as of 11.13.19)

    And don’t worry folks, I promise to have that Tattered Flag beer flight review up tomorrow! Until then…. keep drinking and rating and commenting and liking and following and subscribing and sharing and doing all kinds of other cool people social media stuff!

    Cheers.

    -B. Kline

  • Beer Review: Kettle Sour Series (Raspberry) (Natchez Brewing Company)

    Natchez Brewing Company’s Kettle Sour Series – Raspberry, bottled and sent from the source.

    A bit ago on the local trades forum at The Beer Advocate as well as a trade forum on Home Brew Network, I set up a few ‘locals for locals’ trades. The home brew network one was is a ‘pay it forward’ style one (I send a package, and then I’ll get a package from the next guy, who will send it to him, in a chain). The beer advocate trade was a local for local, the person I traded to living in Mississippi had access to Parish, Southern Prohibition, and Natchez.

    My beer mail packaged I received last Wednesday on the 14th after coming home from Antietam.

    My package contained two 22oz bombers from Southern Prohibition, Ghost in the Machine by Parish, Bloom by Parish, two Reve coffee stouts from Parish, a kettle sour from Natchez, and Good Vibrations (can) from Southern Prohibition.

    I traded some Boneshire Brew Works, Tattered Flag, and Troegs beers. Now its time to catch up on all these great beers I haven’t had yet before, from breweries I haven’t had yet.

    Decided to start light and work my way in, with the Natchez Kettle Sour Raspberry. Since it was a super hot, muggy, night here, and I had a long day working the dice table and then stopping at the library, I figured, a nice, tart, refreshing sour would be the perfect place to begin. And it sure did!

    A nice refreshing, tasty tart beer on a hot evening night in August.

    So as you can see, after I got home from the library after working a long hard day, I decided to enjoy myself by reading and tasting a fantastic fresh raspberry sour. I even started this beer review (and finishing now that its gotten dark and the crickets are chirping, and thankfully all the mosquitoes are done sucking me dry of my blood, who needed that anyway?).

    Beer: Kettle Sour Series – Raspberry
    Brewery: Natchez Brewing Company
    Style: Sour – Fruited
    ABV: 4.5%
    IBU: No IBU
    Untappd Write-Up: (Blank)

    According to Untappd, Natchez Brewing Company is a microbrewery from Natchez, Mississippi. They have currently produced 68 unique beers for a global Untappd rating (as of 8.19.19) of 3.68. Their earliest posted beers on Untappd are dated 4.12.14 and consisted of four beers (a porter, a blonde wheat ale, a pale ale, and an IPA).

    This is a Kettle Sour, and as the bottle says its part of a series (Untappd lists different variations); this particular one – the raspberry one – was released on July 2nd, 2019. The bottle lists it as a Berliner Weisse but Untappd has it listed as a Sour – Fruited.

    Pouring it, it looks exactly as a sour and tart berliner weisse should look. Light, gentle, fruity colored, see through, and with a good carbonation and fizz. The color is a nice light amber color.

    Aroma is very fruity, very raspberry and berry perfumed. You can hear the fizz and crackle of the head popping as it starts to subside.

    The taste is wonderful, refreshing, tart on the tongue and the palate, nice gentle raspberry berry flavors and overall refreshing taste. Nothing lingering or off, nothing to disrupt the nice gentle sippable and session crushing ability of the brew. And at 4.5% it’d be easy to sit around a pool or to mow and to crush a six-pack of these bad boys.

    This has definitely made me interested in looking up other Natchez Brewing Company beers, as well as look forward to the rest of my beer mail (Southern Prohibition and Parish; especially the Ghost in the Machine).

    My Untappd Rating: ****
    Global Untappd Rating: 3.85 (as of 8.19.19)

    I would like to thank Brooke Ball for the beer trade, and really hoping she’s enjoying her Boneshire, Tattered Flag, Troegs, and Pizza Boy beers.

    In the upcoming days should see the backlog of my blog posts slowly trickle out here into the interwebs, so make sure you stay vigilant, alert, and on the look-out for all the great posts! (Follow, bookmark, like, and comment, to make sure you see the posts as soon as their uploaded!)

    Until next time, keep on keepin’ on and keep on drinking that sweet nectar of the Gods.

    (And just because I know the bookworms out there are trying to see what the books are… and I know they are… because I do the same thing…. the books are:
    * Learning How to Learn
    * Star Wars: Master and Apprentice
    * Things My Son Needs to Know About the World
    * Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam

    All checked out from the Hershey Public Library.)

    -B. Kline