Archive for the 'Butternuts' category
Butternuts Beer & Ale Heinnieweisse
After a slight change with a New England Brewery offering and then a retro-beer, I have come back to a Butternuts Beer & Ale brew. This time it is their Heinnieweisse beer, which has a great can logo of wheat stalks surrounding a hop cone.
The beer, poured into a Weizen glass, had a quickly dissipated finger of white head. The body of the beer was a hazy yellow-orange with a nice amount of bubbles rising at a moderate pace from the bottom of the glass. The aroma of the beer was of slight black pepper, heavy clove and yeast, and a fair touch of lemon to round things off.
In the mouth, the beer’s body was light in feel with some bubble action on the tongue. For taste, the clove and yeast hit pretty hard towards the front and middle of the mouth, with a sour lemon taste following towards the back.
Though I found the clove and yeast to be a little bit much, I found this to be a pretty fair beer. I have had better hefeweizen, but I have also had worse. I could see myself enjoying a can of this around the grill or after a nice hike during the warmer months.
Butternuts Beer and Ale Porkslap Pale Ale
Continuing with the canned beer theme, and moving on to another Butternuts Beer and Ale release, I come to Porkslap Pale Ale. This is a beer brewed with ginger spices. Now I find ginger can be a tough spice to work with so lets see how this beer pans out.
A nice one finger of white head formed when I poured the beer into a pint glass. Very little stickage on the glass as the head receded to a thin covering with a few islands of big bubbles. The body of the beer was a nice clear copper color.
The nose of the beer was full of… at first I could not place it. It was neither malt nor hops, which are the ‘typical’ aromas of a pale ale, so I was a little nervous I got a bad beer. Unfortunately there was no information on the can about the beer, so I needed to hop on the Butternuts Beer and Ale web site. There I learned this pale ale is brewed with ginger spices. Now the aroma makes more sense. Along with the heavy aroma of ginger there was some bread aromas following it. I still did not notice any hop notes with the ginger taking center stage for my nose.
The taste is similar to the nose with ginger attacking the front and middle of the tongue. The end had a nice sweet/sugary bread flavoring to it which was quite nice. For some reason the taste seemed to get a little “watery” by the end of the beer. I’m not sure why and I know “watery” is not the most descriptive term, but that was the first description that popped into my head while tasting the beer.
Overall I enjoyed this beer, after I figured out I did not have a bad one. I think this is a case were the brewer would be advised to put a little more information about the beer on the can. I’m not sure I would take it as a session beer, because the ginger is quite strong, but I think it would be great with some spicy food (I’m personally thinking Thai, but anything with some good spicy kick should do). I would definitely pick up another six pack for a spicy food occasion.
(It probably goes without saying, but if you do not like the taste of ginger, I would advise passing on this beer.)
Butternuts Beer and Ale Snapperhead IPA
To start beer can week off I decided to go with Butternuts Beer and Ale‘s Snapperhead IPA. Butternuts actually has a few canned beers and I hope to review them through out the week. The “mascot” for this beer is a rather retro looking snapper fish. The fish seems to be wearing wrap around shades and listening to a Walkman. Interesting.
Anyway, poured from the can into a pint glass the beer was a amber orange with a slight haze to it. There was a single finger of head but it rapidly dissipated to a thin white covering. There was a heavy husky grain note to the aroma of the beer. Along with this huskiness, there was some hop notes with a slight lemon rind scent. In the mouth the beer had some nice bitterness to it, but there was also the overwhelming husky grain flavor predominating most of the mouth. I sensed some of the lemon towards the back of the mouth but nothing seemed to get past the grain flavoring.
I personally like my IPAs hoppier then this. The art of a good IPA is a nice balancing act between hops and malts, though if the balance gets skewed I’d rather it be skewed towards the hops. The malts in this brew just seemed to over power the hops with a grain taste. If you enjoy your IPAs more on malt side of the boarder, this beer should be right up your alley.
