Yesterday, I posted a few brews I enjoyed on my recent trip back to Virginia. Today I’m doing the same thing, finishing out the list while we finish out the month of June. Until the last few days, it didn’t really feel like June in Missoula. Cold temperatures and regular rain wreaked havoc on the garden, but kept the sprinkler system turned off. It looks like it will be a summer without fresh from the garden cucumbers, but the lettuce is loving life. While it is possible to make beer with hot chili peppers, I’ve yet to see anyone do it with an abundance of left over spinach.
Troegs Brewing Company in Harrisburg, PA, has been one of my favorites since I first discovered their brews a fews years back on an earlier vacation. I can’t get them in Montana, so I look forward to finding them when I head to the East Coast. I picked up two this time. First up was Troegs JavaHead Stout. JavaHead is an oatmeal stout that passes through Troegs’ “hopback vessel” on its way to the fermenter. The hopback vessel acts like a french press and is packed full of whole leaf hops and a bed of coffee beans. That’s according to Troegs description, since I don’t happen to have a hopback vessel of my own. Frankly, it kind of sounds like a good name for the Delorean in the Back to the Future movie series. Anyway, this beer is black with a light tan head. The aroma is a bit sweet with some roasted malts and coffee. The flavor is rich and very smooth. I get flavors of dark chocolate mixed with coffee and a coffee like bite to the finish. Overall, the coffee flavor is fairly muted. It compliments and blends with the roasted malt rather than becoming featured. It packs 7.5% abv with 60 IBUs. I thought it was excellent.
Next up from Troegs I tried a bottle of Rugged Trail Nut Brown Ale. Truly nutty nut brown ales are one of my favorite styles of beer. This one hit the mark. It is dark brown with red highlights and an off white head. The aroma is strong caramel sweetness. The initial taste is also a very prominent caramel malt flavor which transitions into a nutty balance along with a slight hop bitterness. What is surprising is the wonderful depth of flavors in a beer that has only 4.4% abv (28 IBUs). Can you say “session beer”? Troegs can.
Lest you think I only picked up beers from the malt spectrum, I took a break from the malt and popped open a beer from Blue Mountain Brewery in Afton, VA called Full Nelson, A Virginia Pale Ale. The brewery is in Nelson County, VA, and I appreciated the play on words. It pours a cloudy, orange-copper color with a white head. There’s a slightly fruity aroma. Light fruity hop flavors dominate, but at 5.9% abv (60 IBUs), there’s a healthy malt backbone, too. The finish was mildly bitter and the brew has a nice balance overall. It was a good brew for a hot day, which it was. Blue Mountain Brewery has its own hop farm with more than 200 Cascade hop rhizomes. That’s worth a future tour.
Finally, (well, there were others, but I’m running out of steam) I rather enjoyed Saranac Malt Brewing Company’s Pale Ale. It has a slight fruit/citrus initial taste and is pleasantly bitter and crisp. I found it to be a wonderful hot weather pale ale that finishes with a bit of bitterness and hop citrus.
