Grand Teton - Bitch Creek Extra Special Brown

Tonights review is from Grand Teton.  A well known and respected brewery out of Colorado.  Dunz and I have been reviewing these guys and enjoying their beer since the start of our blog.  We are continually impressed with our experiences as we try the Grand Teton brews that are new to us.  Tonight, GTs take on the "ESB" is new to me.  Lets see how it fares.

ESB is generally an acronym for Extra Special Bitter.  Grand Teton has taken this and bastardized it in the only appropriate way a craft brewery can!  This Extra Special Brown is a deep dark amber with a voluminous tan foam.  A pungent aroma of citrusy hops plows full sails ahead in front of any malt characteristics you would have expected with a brew this dark.  Any remaining aromas are back-filled with toasted bread and caramel malt.  The flavors represent the aromas to a 'T'.  Plenty of American hops to go around.  A solid, creamy and smooth base malt of toffee, toasted bread and light chocolate support the massive hop explosion in my mouth.  The bold citrus flavors that are well known in West coast IPAs somehow find their way into Bitch Creek.  Its unexpected, but certainly welcome.

Overall - Bitch Creek threw me off a bit.  It took me a bottle or two to get used to the unusual amount of hops within this brew.  American Brown Ales are mostly hoppy but this one is taking it to the extreme.  I like it!  The name Extra Special Brown is earned here.  Plenty of bitterness to go around while also keeping the beer balanced and easily drinkable.  I believe this is a year round offering so be sure to grab a sixer next time you are in the mood for a solid American Brown!

Grand Teton Brewing - Pursuit of Hoppiness

Grand Teton Brewing has this awesome brew that I tried for the first time about 1 year ago - I haven't seen it on the shelves for a long time, but found this 750ml bottle last week and jumped on it immediately.  There is a cool little historical expose on this brew on Grand Teton's website that gives some background and statistics.  This is part of their Cellar Reserve beers, so it is bottle-conditioned and can be aged, although Grand Teton recommends it be drank while fresh to maintain it's hop bitterness. 

The bottle shows the brew was bottled on 11/11/10.  The beer pours a nice creamy dark red/orange with half an inch of light head.  The aroma is awesome - caramel malts are present, along with pine and some earthy citrus hop fumes.  Also some floral notes present in there. 

The beer tastes a little different than I remember.  Very bitter hop profile that bring the aromas to the taste buds, pine and some grapefruit seem prevalent.  There is also some sweet maltiness that comes through in the middle, followed quickly by some alcohol solvency.  It finishes fairly clean, but the alcohol is too big of a player.  Each drink I take, the alcohol shows up and takes over more than I would prefer.  The body is thick and kind of chewy, warming, and well carbonated.

Overall Rating (3.1 out of 6.0)  This beer wasn't nearly as good as I remember it being last year.  The big hop profile is great, but the sweet malts and heavy alcohol presence make this a mediocre beer for me.  

Grand Teton - Lost Continent Double IPA

Happy New Years!  Have a fun and safe evening everybody!

This is the the second of Grand Teton's seasonal brews, Lost Continent Double IPA. The recipe is clearly crafted with the IPA's origin in mind.  Hops acted as a natural preservative for the Brit's beer which allowed them to take it as far south as India when Britain occupied the territory back in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The British troops obviously acquired a taste for this hoppy brew and produced it long after their occupation of India ended.  The English still make IPA's today (obviously) but they are a lower ABV and much less hop-packed as the American version of the style.  America, being awesome as always, saw something the English did that was good, stole it, and made it better.  Our versions of IPA have so many hops in them you can practically taste the stickiness of the lupulin in your beer.  Most of the time there is hardly a malt backbone to support the massive amount of hops.  But who cares about malt!  This is a friggen Imperial IPA we are talking about here.


As expected, the first whiff of this brew is hops, hops and more hops.  Mostly floral notes come forward as the dry hops make their presence known.  Surprisingly enough I smell a hint of malt in there.  I like it!  This beer is a cloudy orange which shows off its dry hopping and lack of filtration.  I can already tell this beer will dance on my taste buds.  My first sip... delish, but I feel as though something is missing.  I was all excited for a powerful hop, bitter, malt tsunami to hit me but I was left with a glass that disappointed a bit.  Don't get me wrong, the hops are there along with the malt backbone as I had expected.  But for some reason I feel as though there could be more.  I don't think this beer captured the hoppiness that it portrayed in the nose.  I did enjoy the finish.  Nice and clean with a dry, bitter finish that wasn't aided by alcohol.


Overall, I'm at a barely-there 4.0/6.0.  I wanted to put this in the 3's but I don't think I would have done it justice.  The beer is good.  It comes in a four pack and I could easily drink them all without hesitation.  I think I may have set myself up for failure on this one since the aroma of the beer got me all hot and bothered.  Seeing as though this is technically their summer seasonal I could also see age playing a factor in this brew.  I will see if I can find this beer fresh and revisit this review when I do.  My recommendation at this point -> if you find it fresh, go for it!  If you see it on the store shelves in January you may want to hold off until the summer when it gets re-released.


Here are some specifics for Lost Continent:


Original Gravity: 18 Plato (1.072)
Malts: Idaho 2-Row Brewers, German CaraHell & Vienna
International Bittering Units: 90+
Hops: Galena, Columbus, Centennial, Amarillo & Simcoe, Dry hopped with Summit, Columbus, Simcoe & Cascade
Alcohol by Volume: 8.0%

Grand Teton - Black Cauldron Imperial Stout

Alrighty... lets do this. My partner in beer reviewing crime just posted a great review of his Boulevard Smokestack Series. Yes, another imperial stout on the same night. Our bad... deal with it. Upcoming nights will prove to be more diversive. And no, thats not a word... but eff Microsoft Word and eff you Webster elitists!! Back to the point... Dunz's beer review is one beer that I have been looking to buy for a while now and from his review I think Ill be picking up a bomber or two to age and see how this beer tastes some time from now.

BUT, thats not why I'm writing. Lets see what this Grand Teton - Black Cauldron Imperial Stout has in store for us.

Grand Teton brewery is the original brewery of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. They have been brewing craft beer for patrons of Yellowstone since 1988. Along with being Wyomings first brew pub their flagship amber beer at the time, "Teton Ale" is what set them on the map. Since then, Grand Teton, formerly known as "Ottos Brewing" has been producing 10,000 barrels of craft beer annually. You can find more information about this brewery in the following link.

http://www.grandtetonbrewing.com/Main.html

Appearance - Pitch black with a deep brown head. After the pour, a foam ring lingers around the edge of your pint reminding you of the alcohol level that comes standard with the imperial stout characteristics that you would expect to assault (own, pwn. dominate?) your palate. Try holding this one up to the light... good luck seeing through it.

Aroma - Bring on the molasses! While not overpowering, a sweet aroma comes forward with a subtle hop aroma bringing up the rear... heh... rear.

Taste - Here is what me thinks... I think this is a very unique, big stout. I love the roastiness that this beer doesn't emphasize. Its there, but its not the primary characteristic. Its a background flavor in this imperial stout. However, with that, the roast thats in this beer helps accentuate the smoke thats prominent. Its not a campfire smoke that you expect from your "smoke" labeled brews... its a nice accent (yet again) to this imperial stout. You have a solid sweetness up front from the residual sugars left behind in the fermentation process which unfortunately doesnt go away in the finish. Plus, you get your standard raisin and fruit notes from your good imperial stouts.

Mouthfeel - Smooth like silk. Enough carbonation to hold up the light body. But with an 8% abv we are looking at a slightly less bold mouthfeel than your typical 10-12% craft imperial stout.

Drinkability - At 8% I wouldnt want to drink to many of these on a Tuesday night. But I wouldnt be opposed to it on a Saturday. At this abv ill have a few but with the sweetness of the beer and the mildly cloying finish I wouldnt be one to drink more than a few in a sitting.

Overall (3.9 out of 6) - Not quite something that I would rush out to buy but definitely worth giving a shot. Comes in a four pack so you are looking at a little more dollar for your beer-buck but I would recommend it. The flavor justifies the boldness of the beer. You will need to enjoy a sweeter stout in order to appreciate this four pack. Its not going to knock you socks off but it will provide a nice deviation with its subtle smoke characteristic and provide for a good, unique imperial stout experience.

Specifications
Original Gravity: 20 Plato (1.080)
Malts: Idaho 2-Row Brewers, CaraMunich, Carafa Special & Beechwood Smoked
International Bittering Units: 43
Hops: American Chinook & Styrian Goldings
Alcohol by Volume: 8.0%