Our interpretation of a traditional Belgian wheat beer. Brewed with a generous portion of wheat and spiced with coriander and Curacao orange peel, this beer is fruity, refreshing and slightly cloudy in appearance.
From the bottle:
Our interpretation of a traditional Belgian wheat beer. Allagash White delicately balances full flavor with a crisp, refreshing taste and subtle hints of spice. Naturally cloudy. Bottled with yeast.
From my notes:
Pours cloudy blonde with a nice head, good lace, smells of lemons, grass, spice, and some yeast. High carbonation. orange peel and clove highlights the flavor, crisp finish. Very smooth no bitterness.
A great example of a wheat beer: super light but with enough flavor and spice to stand up to whatever foods you want to share it with. This would be an excellent beer to have with what ever it is you’re grilling
A few unmistakable signs tell us when winter has arrived here in Hood River. The waterfalls in the Gorge start kicking out the jams. The snow report for the backcountry regains its hold over us. And the Wassail starts flowing once again. We’ve brewed Wassail every holiday season since 1988, and it’s now as much a part of the festivities as sharing a roaring fire with our closest family and friends.
It’s no wonder this multi-medal winning Winter Warmer is one of our favorite beers to brew. Choosing our ingredients for Wassail is like taking time to choose the perfect gift. Each year we carefully select the best hops and malts to brew this special beer. This year’s Wassail is brewed with a range of caramel malts and dark chocolate malts giving it a deep mahogany color and a full malty body. We used a blend of Pacific Northwest hops for a pleasant hoppy aroma and finish creating a deliciously balanced beer that appeals to both hop and malt lovers alike. In other words, a Christmas miracle.
from my notes:
deep, rich caramel color. with medium tannish head, large bubbles that dissipates quickly, nice lacing. Faint floral scent with hints of apple. When it hits your tongue you taste some malt, and black tea then finishes with roasted hops. Nice balance.
Full Sail’s Wassail wasn’t a bad beer, it was quite nice. But, there wasn’t anything about this seasonal ale that made it memorable. If I hadn’t taken notes at the time I’d completely forgotten about the thing. So, if you see it on a shelf and another seasonal brew you won’t go wrong picking up this one but you might miss out on picking up a great one.
A decadent Oatmeal Stout brimming with cocoa and espresso aromas. Partially aged in bourbon barrels, this beer features a rich, dark chocolate and roasted coffee flavor with a creamy mouth feel and wonderfully dry finish. The addition of U.S. grown fuggles hops contributes the perfect amount of bitterness to this exceptionally balanced beer.
From my notes:
darkly colored with a thick head that color of milk chocolate. Smells of oats, malt, and vanilla. Tastes of chocolate and roasted coffeeto, one of the few stouts to keep the flavor roasted and not burnt, Yay! Some hints of caramel. smooth hoppy finish.
I haven’t had many beers from Firestone Walker; they’re really fond of Pale Ales and I can stand them. I took a risk when I picked up their Winter seasonal and I’m glad I did. This is a very nice, medium bodied stout that tastes great. This is a drinkable stout. Not too thick, so I don’t feel like I’m drinking oatmeal. Not too thin. Not so hopped that all I can taste is the bitterness either. Now, I’m just sad it’s only around a quarter of the year…
I picked this up on the Kindle either right at the end of November or the beginning of December last year. I knew enough from friends and acquaintances that the book heavily referenced video games and 80’s pop culture. I didn’t know much beyond that though. I dove in and quickly discovered just what Ready Player One is all about.
The book tells the story of Wade Watts, a destitute nerd barely ecking out an existence on a dystopic Earth where climate change and government inability to successfully manage a global economy has created vast disparities between people and where a fully immersive internet coupled with an addicting, and free, MMO called OASIS (think Second Life but fun(?)) that serves as most people’s panacea. Life sucks here so zone out and tap into a digital life that has more meaning. The co-creater of this digital utopia has died and left his controlling shares in the company that controls the game to whoever can solve the puzzle he’s designed within OASIS. Wadd Watts with the help of some friends end up claiming that prize and in doing so saves the OASIS from the evil corporation intent on turning the game into a cash cow.
Ready Player One is a fun nerd thriller; is nerd thriller even a genre? It should be one, there are enough of us… That deftly manages to use the tropes of the thriller genre to lead the protagonist and the reader through the mystery at the heart (the puzzles and riddles that need to be solved in order of Wade Watts to win the contest and claim control over OASIS) of the story without boring the reader. I didn’t have any issues with the story line. My complaints come largely from the lavish, and near constant, praise of 80’s pop culture and nerd culture (if it can even be called such a thing…) which quickly overwhelms every other aspect of the book. In fact, less than half way through the book I became suspicious that the whole story was a thinly constructed excuse to nostalgically ejaculate about the 80’s. I was there too, I remember those years. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t amazing either. A perfectly good book ruined by the author’s enthusiasm for a very niche subject area…
[rant]
Final complaint: In the end, I couldn’t enjoy this book because it rewarded someone who wasted their life. It rewards this disturbing kind of obsessive compulsive expertism. That a decent, no, great substitute for making something of your own life is to catalog the minutia of someone else’s. Mr. Watts has no real skills. In this world he can not DO anything. What he can do is tell you, in excruciating detail, all about the songs, movies, and video games of the 1980’s. I have hobbies and obsession too; but, I’m not kidding myself. I’m not deluding myself into thinking that those are a substitute for hard work and useful skills. It’s the latter and not the former that are going to feed and provide for my wife and I. I just seem to have a real issue with these kind of characters.
Maybe, because I see a little too much of myself in them? Maybe, because I can’t delude myself anymore that I’m not wasting my time?
