Archive for the 'Left Hand' category
Left Hand “Black Jack” Porter
Linda just don’t stop! After her time in CO, she apparently rode the Porter wagon all the way home, coming back with not only the Great Divide porter from yesterday, but this Left Hand offering, as well. Again, I’m all too happy to review any brews that my friends bring back for me…
This one pours an extremely dark brown – nearly motor oil black – with a coarse caramel head that flairs up and dies very quickly. In the nose, there are light chocolate and toffee hints here, but the flavor is altogether not too powerful. In the mouth, however, this beer comes alive! In contrast to yesterdays brew, this one displays a bit more meatiness and a lot more refined sweetness. The mouthfeel is generally a bit lighter and more fleeting than the Great Divide offering. The flavor begins sugary sweet, moving into a smokey pork flavor around the center of the mouth that still generates some sweetness, almost like a sugar-cured ham. On through the mouth, a bit more chocolate comes into play, finishing off with a flavor that is predominantly chocolate and toffee with just a light smoke that sticks in the back of the mouth. I’d say this is generally more typical of a porter than yesterdays tasting, though it’s hard to say if it’s better or worse. The flavor is certainly complex here. However, it’s also a bit more quirky, and some may not like it as much. As for me, I think this is pretty good, though it tastes a bit coarser and ‘cheaper’ than the Great Divide, for lack of a better word. This is rich and sweet, but the level of refinement just isn’t there to the extent that it was with yesterday’s porter. So, while this is a good brew, and better than a lot of porters out there, I gotta throw the silver medal to the Black Jack in this instance.
Left Hand “Terra-Rye’zd” Black Rye Lager
This is a collaboration between Left Hand and Terrapin, two breweries I like very much. But I must admit that I have been ducking and dodging this beer for quite some time. The name, label art and ingredients scream “abrasive” and I just really don’t want to taint my favorable impression. But I’m tired of opening my fridge and having this beer stare back at me so here goes…
This beer is a very deep, dark, brown; almost black. It has a roasted malt and mild chocolate aroma that is very different from what I had imagined. I expected a sharp, earthy smell but that just isn’t the case. The taste is just as surprising. It has a very round mouthfeel and there are a lot of chocolate notes that coat the tongue. The earthiness I expected in the smell does evolve in the taste as the liquid pass through the mouth. Again, the initial taste is very rich but then it separates and exposes floral flavors that tickle the side of the mouth. Oh, but we’re not done. Then this taste disappears for a split second before the aftertaste rears its smokey head. It’s like they created a stout/porter hybrid with some hop characteristics. I wouldn’t say it’s on my list of favorites but I will say it’s on the list of beers that have impressed me. It is very complex and well balanced, all while using some unorthodox ingredients. Well done Left Hand and Terrapin, I look forward to your next venture.
Left Hand “Widdershins” Barleywine Ale
Despite the fact that I have Left Hand stickers plastered all over my beer fridge (thanks, Jon), I’m generally not that wild about Left Hand beers. Don’t get me wrong, they make some tasty brews, but they also make some that I find sub-par. So, let’s just say that I find Left Hand to be pretty hit-or-miss. Nevertheless, this sounds like a rather interesting beer – a barleywine ale, 50% of which is aged in oak barrels.
The pour of this is murky brown with light hints of ruby and a thin off-white head. The aroma of this is rich and biting. There are hints of licorice, spice, dark fruit, and a light metallic tint. In the mouth, this is quite a big beer. Initially, there is a bite on the tip of the tongue full of bitter spice. As the beer moves down the tongue, the complexity increases with tastes of dark cherry and a bit of grape. There is also a licorice contribution and some apricot sweetness, all co-mingling with the ever-present bitterness. The aftertaste is all bitter fruit, and it lingers for several seconds after the beer is gone. Truthfully, there is more going on in this beer than can easily be described. And, to be honest, it’s a bit much for me. I like a complex beer when it is refined and the boundaries of the various flavors are clear. However, this beer comes across as muddled and confused to me. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good flavors here, but it’s just too much for my current tastes. So, it’s a good beer – not great.
Left Hand “Deep Cover” Brown Ale
Third up for this month’s Beer of the Month Club selection is the “Deep Cover” Brown Ale from Left Hand. I’ve had a lot of Left Hand’s beers. In general, however, I don’t get terribly excited about brown ales unless they’re some crazy Belgian variety or have some bizarre cask aging or some other such abnormality. So, for this reason, I never grabbed this off the shelf. Thanks to BOMC for forcing me to cover my bases here.
This beer pours a relatively clear medium-dark brown with just a hint of debris. There is a short but rich caramel head on this that laces up and down the side of the glass. The aroma of this beer is rich and heavy with toffee. The predominant scent is all sweetness with just a hint of nutty bitterness. In the mouth, this beer is truly a lot more than I expected! It seems fairly unassuming at the tip of the tongue, but an explosion of nuttiness hits shortly thereafter. Through the mouth, this beer maintains a richness that is seething with nuts, toffee, and some full dark malts. As the beer empties out of the mouth, it washes the palate clean and leaves us with an exceptionally refreshed and crisp feeling in the mouth. There isn’t a clinging aftertaste, but just the lightest hint of the malty sweetness. Overall, this is a great brown ale, and one I’d put right up there with the industry standard, Newcastle. This carries a similar flavor to Newcastle, but washes considerably cleaner and generally has a crisper affect. Good job, Left Hand!
Left Hand “Warrior” IPA
This is probably the last review of a 2007 hop season fresh/wet hop beer for me. If a fresh/wet hop beer has not reached this part of the country yet, it probably will not.
Poured from the tap into a tulip glass the beer was a clear amber in color. The head was roughly a finger and produced a strata of stickage as the beer went down my gullet. There was a light floral hop presence in the nose, but the majority of the smell was of citrus/grapefruit. This grapefruit maintained its presence in the taste, but there was a hint of lemon at the front of the tongue. The bitterness of the beer seemed to be omni-present (the warrior hop is an american bittering hop) in the mouth, with a slight bite at the back. The malt had a tough time coming through and it only barely did. I have had bigger hop bombs, but I have also had more balanced IPAs. This beer seemed to fall somewhere in-between. Interesting to try, though I did not have a second round.
Left Hand Sawtooth Ale
I’m not entirely what type of beer this is – the bottle doesn’t give away very much information. However, judging from the look of it, I’m saying it’s a pretty standard golden ale. So, this’ll probably end up being a pretty short and standard review, as Left Hand hasn’t given me too much to speculate with here.
The beer pours a darkish amber color with no debris. There is a fairly resilient white head to the beer, and an aroma with a bready quality, a bit of hop bite, and just a hint of licorice. In the mouth, it isn’t quite as standard as I expected. Rather, this beer turns out a bit more flavorful than the average golden ale. The flavor is a solid melange of malt and hop – nothing too fresh tasting, but more of a musty hop bitterness combined with a rich bready flavor. It is fairly complex, for a small-bottle brew in its price range, but it certainly isn’t overbearing or inaccessible. Honestly, I’m more impressed with this than I expected. I think it’d be a great beer to sit around and drink over a nice BBQ or whilst watching the ballgame (football, not basketball – it’s not a basketball beer). Bottom line is that this won’t blow your mind, but it is a very solid and tasty beer.
Left Hand 2007 Oak-Aged Imperial Stout
Sometimes I feel like once you’ve had one Imperial Stout you had just about all of them. There are few beers from this genre that rise above the typical qualities and grab my attention. I would say the Terrapin Wake and Bake is the only one thus far that “suited my tater.” So why do I continue to try them? For one, I wouldn’t be a good beer reviewer if I stuck to one category or only drank the beers I knew I would like. Secondly, I still hold out hope that one day I will come across that one stout that absolutely knocks my socks off. Unfortunately this isn’t that day, but Left Hand has created a beer I can appreciate and enjoy occasionally.
This beer has a deep, dark, black hue through which very little light can pass. The frothy, caramel head ascends to the top of the glass like a cake on the rise and for a moment I am very excited about what I am about to experience. It smells heavy of liquorice with a hint of dark chocolate. There is also a sweet cherry-like aroma which I would attribute to the oak-aging process if I had to venture a guess. At this point all is well and good, while there is nothing outstanding about this beer, I also haven’t discovered any flaws. The taste evokes disappointment, not because it is bad but because it isn’t different. It has the same mixture of coffee and chocolate flavors and little hop presence. It’s smooth and less abrasive than most but it isn’t exuding the boldness that its name is tauting. The flavor is rich and the high alcohol content is masked and while on paper this seems like an exceptional brew for some reason “it just doesn’t have that yo!”; to quote the great Randy Jackson. Don’t get me wrong this is a good beer, not one that I would shun if it were placed in front of me, but after 4 months of drinking stouts with the same qualities I am growing increasingly tired of tasting the same thing again and again. If you are a huge fan of stouts you will love this beer but if your palate is longing for the crisp brews of spring and summer buy a bottle of this stuff and save it for next winter.
Left Hand Haystack Wheat
For some reason, I have Left Hand Brewery stickers all over my beer fridge. Actually, that reason is because Jon put them all over the fridge one night – not sure why – the man just had a sticker fetish one evening. Regardless, it’s a discrepancy that I have so many stickers adorning my fridge, but so few Left Hand reviews on the website. In fact, I really haven’t tried many Left Hand beers. Hopefully, I’ll be able to partially remedy that over the next few days, as there are now 2 new Left Hand bottles sitting in my fridge.
The first of these is the Haystack Wheat. I generally love a good wheat beer, especially if it’s a hefeweizen in the Bavarian variety. The smooth and sweet wheat flavor with just a hint of citrus always refreshes. However, I sometimes get turned off by the American attempts at such beers – they can often lean towards the metallic and musty, which just doesn’t suit my tastebuds near as well. So, I was a bit nervous when I picked up this bad boy, because the bottle doesn’t really tell us what style it is brewed in. Fortunately, they went for the German…
This beer pours a very dense and cloudy orange color with very little head. The aroma is smooth and fairly sweet, with a subtle lemony zest to it. In the mouth, this beer is quite refreshing – you can definitely taste the sweetness lent by the yeast. This sweetness traverses the palate, and there is that citrus flavor that actually leans a bit more towards orange in the taste. Other than these two factors, there isn’t much going on. But, that’s not a bad thing – this makes for a simple and refreshing brew, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that. While nothing really sets this apart from the myriad of other Bavarian-style wheat beers on the market, I think this would be right at home on a hot day, and I would gladly drink it again.
Left Hand “St. Vrain” Tripel
Well, it’s no secret that I’m a sucker for tripels. And, I get really excited when I taste American brewers doing excellent renditions of this Belgian style. As far as Left Hand brewery goes, I’m lukewarm on them. I’ve had some great beers from them, and I’ve had some very mediocre beers. I’m mildly pleased to say that this beer falls about in the middle of those two bars.
This beer pours a cloudy golden, as one might expect from the genre. The aroma is spicy with evidence of candi sugar and alcohol – overall, rather pleasant. The taste is very typical of a tripel. It begins with a light burn that moves to a spicy sweetness given by the sugars. On through the mouth you can taste a hint of bitterness, but very slight. And, in the aftertaste we receive another blessing of the candi sugar that leaves us with a sweet aftertaste and slight bit of residue in the throat.
Now, when I started this review, I had every intention of ending it by saying that this beer is much like other tripels I have tasted, except that the taste seems muted. However, as I have moved through this bottle, I notice that the liquid at the bottom is notably ‘kickier’ than the early portion of the bottle. Now, normally, I’d try to avoid mixing the trub residue at the bottom with the rest of the beer, as it often throws off the taste. However, in this case, it seems like as I get towards the cloudier bottom third of the beer, the flavor is really turning up a notch. So, this leaves me unsure how to review this. I can say that my first impression was that this beer is tasty, but a bit weak. Now that I’m towards the bottom, I gotta say that this portion of the beer has been quite potent and very delicious. So, all-in-all, I suppose I’m being left with a good last word, so I must give this a thumbs up. But, if you take my word for it and pick one up, be sure to drink it to the last drop before dissing my review!
Left Hand XXXmas Ale
I’ve been on a bit of a run drinking Christmas ales over the past couple of days and, to be honest, I’ve been waiting to taste one that really blows my hair back. I had kinda given up and just popped this Left Hand offering because it only costed me $1.99 at the Weinhaus in Asheville. However, unexpectedly, I think I’ve found the jewel of the bunch! This stuff happens to have all of the pizzazz and balance that the other offerings have lacked – good job, Left Hand!
The beer pours a hazy ruby color that indicates it is lightly filtered and bottle fermented. The aroma of this beer is rather strong with ginger and contains some underlying spice. In the mouth, this beer really pops. Again, the real highlight of the beer is a strong ginger flavor. It starts off with a subtle malty sweetness on the tip of the tongue, but then smacks you with a big ginger flavor on the middle of the tongue that pushes its way on up to the nasal cavity. While the ginger sticks around in the nose, the liquid brings a heavier malt flavor at the back of the tongue that remains through the aftertaste. All in all, it’s a pretty complicated brew. The use of ginger as a defining ingredient in specialty beers is a trend I’ve noticed in recent months, and it’s a trend I really like, especially in darker beers. Winter beers can often get bogged down with excessive maltiness, and the freshness of the ginger tends to cleanse the palate and really balance a beer out. So, hats off to Left Hand on making this great beer. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why this stuff is on sale so cheap in Asheville. However, if I see it again at such a bargain, count on me to pick up a few bottles.
Left Hand “Twin Sisters” Double IPA
I gotta be honest with you – I haven’t really had much to do with the Left Hand Brewery in the past. While they seem good enough, and I have a few of their stickers on my beer fridge, I just haven’t been drawn to purchase many of their offerings. However, whenever I set eyes on a new IIPA, I can’t help but check it out. Fortunately, this one doesn’t disappoint. Named after the Twin Sisters peaks in Colorado, this beer pours a rather hazy medium-brown. The aroma is of floral hops – not exceptionally sweet, and not terribly bitter – just very fresh. In the mouth, the first sensation is of the heavy hop bitterness of this beer. It has an interesting traversal over the tongue, as it starts bitter, mergest into a slight malty sweetness, and then subsides back in to a sharp bitterness on the back of the tongue that lasts throughout the aftertaste. To be honest, I would say that this beer doesn’t go to the extremes of flavor that I have found in other IIPAs. However, it is quite well-balanced, and their choice of hops is superb. It’s a great sipping beer, and it is perhaps mild enough not to scare off amateur IPA fans.
Left Hand Goosinator 2005
Left Hand usually makes a good beer so I had high hopes for the Goosinator. It is my understanding that the ingredients of this particular brew change every year so this review cannot be universally applied to all Goosinators. The 2005 is an amber colored ale that, when poured, appears crisp and thirst-quinching. It smells hoppy and slightly fruity but tastes malty with hints of coffee and carmel. The problem with this beer is that the flavor dissipates before it reaches the back of the throat and thus leaves the drinker feeling disappointed and a little cheated. I wouldn’t say this beer is terrible but, for the price, it isn’t worth the money spent. That being said I’ll give the 2006 a chance before I totally write this beer off, hopefully it will be better…
[Ed. Note - I can't find a picture of the Goosinator, damnit!]
