435. Goodwood (Louisville, KY) - Goodwood IPA

“Citrus nose with a beautifully dry finish that keeps you coming back for another sip. This highly drinkable IPA clocks in at 6.9% and is sure to please any fan of hops.”

I don’t know if 6.9% qualifies as drinkable, but I kind of like that they think so. I get more of a tropical fruit flavor initially, but it gets pleasantly grapefruity as it warms up. Amy and I were walking around downtown last week, and I saw that Goodwood had gone in where the Ram brewery used to be (which was where Planet Hollywood used to be), so I made a mental note to look for their beer. Found this one at Stoney’s, and I will be going back for more.

434. Yuengling (Pottsvile, PA) - Hershey’s Chocolate Porter

No real description, except that they added Hershey’s chocolate to their regular porter. It has some chocolate flavor, but very little body. At only 4.7%, it’s very smooth and drinkable; but it’s just not interesting enough to make me want another one.

433. Function Brewing (Bloomington, IN) - Odds

“A Mosaic and Citra-hopped Hazy IPA with additions of lactose, vanilla, apricot, peach, and tangerine.”

I tried this one both in the taproom and in a crowler, and it is aggressively fruity up front—almost tart—but with smooth vanilla sugar notes on the back end. Hard to say if I like it or not—but it’s interesting.

432. Function Brewing (Bloomington, IN) - Supplementary

“A Hazy IPA featuring Simcoe and Wai-Iti hops.”

It’s not often that we are in Bloomington at the same time that Function Brewing is open, so I made the most of it on our most recent trip to see Carrie Newcomer in concert. After a day of traipsing around campus and then Nashville in the cold wind coming from the back side of a powerful storm system, we stopped in at Function both to sit down for a drink and so I could get some crowlers to take home. This was one of the crowlers that I took home, and it was pretty good. It’s very smooth and easy drinking, with moderate citrus notes when it’s cold and somewhat more prominent stone fruit notes as it warms up.

Deep Thoughts #276

If you’re able to walk through the gates and into the lobby, then yes, we’re open. The real question is how the fuck your children survived.

Deep Thoughts #275

Would someone be kind enough to alert us reasonable folk before the lunatics completely panic over Omicron? I need to buy some toilet paper.

431. Quaff ON! Brewing Co. (Nashville, IN) - Six Foot Huckleberry Blonde

“Quaff ON! Six Foot Huckleberry Blonde is our popular Six Foot Blonde ale enhanced with pure huckleberry flavoring that creates an intense fruit aroma and adds the bold, slightly-tart taste of huckleberry.”

I geeked out a little bit when I saw this on the tap lists at some of the Big Woods restaurants in the area, because you don’t find huckleberry-flavored…well, anything, really…in this part of the world very often. Amy and I went to Bloomington this weekend for her birthday, to see Carrie Newcomer in concert at the Buskirk-Chumley theatre; and I got a chance to try this beer when we had a late dinner at the Bloomington Big Woods after we got in on Friday night. The server asked me if I had had it before, and when I said no, she said that people had been about 60-40 on it, which I took to mean more of them didn’t like the beer than liked it. I was sort of hoping for something purplish in color, even though the word “flavoring” in the description told me that they weren’t using real huckleberries; but in reality, it’s exactly the sort of straw yellow color you would expect of a blonde ale. The huckleberry flavoring is very powerful on the nose and tongue, and I can definitely understand how it might be off-putting for some. The flavor fades to the familiar Six Foot Blonde base on the back end, but up front this is the most strongly-flavored of any of the Six Foot Blonde variants I have tried. It’s not remotely as good as the huckleberry lager I tried in Montana (from the now-sadly-departed Great Northern Brewing Company in Whitefish, MT), but it’s also not the candy-ish circus sideshow that it could have been.

Deep Thoughts #274

It seems that I do still blog from time to time, and I have no doubt that all of you were waiting on tenterhooks for that huge announcement.

430. 18th Street Brewery (Hammond, IN) - Undercrown

“[O]ur bone-shatteringly juicy 8% Double IPA brewed with Simcoe, Mosaic and Crystal Rye Malt.”

There’s a nice hit of tropical fruit up front, followed by a double whammy of dry pine from the Simoce and Mosaic hops. I love 18th Street’s beer, but a lot of their IPAs are muddled mixtures of flavors that don’t taste like anything in particular. (Which isn’t necessrily bad.) This one is more specific and, perhaps oddly, slightly more satisfying.