Cabin Fever is a Winter Warmer from Boundary Bay Brewing Company in Bellingham, Washington. It’s a 7% alcohol beer that’s lightly dry hopped with Cascades. Appearance: Dark brown and murky-opaque. Light brown head, creamy looking. Smell: Dark fruit and caramel, alcohol (fusel-ish, slightly). Dark fruit reminds me of raisin. Spicy … Continue reading

I’d had a 2005 vintage Alaskan Smoked Porter for awhile and decided it was time to try it. Overall I’ve found Smoked Porter in the past to be an excellent beer, and I wasn’t disappointed with this one. I really need to start buying one of these each year and … Continue reading

The latest offering from BridgePort Brewing is named after the city of Portland, albeit in an unofficial capacity: Beertown Brown. It’s their foray into the world of sessionable Brown Ales, and I think they pull it off rather well overall. It’s an English Brown Ale in style, at 5.2% alcohol. … Continue reading

Every good brewer has a miss now and again, and unfortunately, that’s how I’d rate Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic. It’s tough to do lambic well, even tougher when you’re not actually located in Belgium. So I’ll give Sam Adams props for trying. And, they were brewing this beer as early … Continue reading

Stone Brewing‘s Old Guardian is a serious barleywine: it comes in at 11.26% alcohol and is vintaged by the year it was brewed. I had the "early 2007" release. Appearance: Lighter than expected—a pinkish orange, nice and deep. Murky. Head didn’t last long, but it’s lacing the glass nicely. Smell: … Continue reading

The version of Jenlain Ambrée that I found locally was actually labeled a bit confusingly: "Jenlain French Farmhouse Ale." Unable to find anything definite referring to this online, I was clued in by RateBeer, which had a pointer and a note that it’s an alias of the Ambrée. My assumption … Continue reading

Ah, the elusive, mysterious Josephs Brau Brewing Company… really a front for some of the Trader Joe’s line of beers. I’m sure there’s more of a story there somewhere. But what’s more curious is the source of this particular beer, Josephs Brau Winterfest (a "double dark Bock"); apparently it’s too … Continue reading

Now that’s a mouthful of a name for a beer. The Hefeweissbier Dunkel ("dark hefeweizen") from the Weihenstephaner brewery in Germany is one of the foremost wheat beers of the world from the world’s oldest brewery. Appearance: Light copper, hazy. Head foamed up a lot—it’s light tan. Color is actually … Continue reading

Roots Organic Brewing, Oregon’s first organic brewery, opened up in 2005 in Portland and made a name for themselves brewing up locally-acclaimed beers. I say "locally acclaimed" because until recently (to the best of my knowledge, anyway), the only way to drink any of their brews was to visit their … Continue reading