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Featured Beers - January 2015
Featured Brewery & Beer |
The U.S. Microbrewed Beer Club
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The U.S. and International Variety Beer Club
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The Hop-Heads Beer Club
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The International Beer Club
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The Rare Beer Club®
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4 styles: 12 bottles |
4 styles: 12 bottles |
3 styles: 12 bottles |
2 styles: 12 bottles |
2 styles: 2, 4 or 6 btls |
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Weyerbacher Brewing Company - Tango | |||||||||||||||
Vliegende Paard Brouwers - Préaris Quadrupel | |||||||||||||||
Coniston Brewing Company - Bluebird Bitter | |||||||||||||||
Salopian Brewery - Entire Butt | |||||||||||||||
Fordham Brewing Company - Copperhead Ale | |||||||||||||||
Fordham Brewing Company - Rosie Parks Oyster Stout | |||||||||||||||
Clipper City Brewing Company - Powder Monkey | |||||||||||||||
Clipper City Brewing Company - Loose Cannon |
Unmatched Variety by style, brewery & country
Choose from Five different Beer Clubs offering unmatched variety by brewery,
country of origin, and beer style to suit your specific tastes.
- Style: English Porter
- ABV: 4.6%
- Serving Temperature: 53-58° F
- Suggested Glassware: Pint Glass, Mug, Goblet
- Country: England
A Silver Medal winner at the 1999 Great British Beer Festival’s Beer Champion Awards, Entire Butt is brewed with an astounding 14 different malts. So it’s fitting that the term “entire butt” bears a secondary meaning similar to “everything but the kitchen sink.” Expect a dark, cola-like brown beer with garnet highlights capped by a billowy thick tan head. The nose presents a very engaging and complex array of malty characteristics.
- Style: Belgian-style Dark Ale with Cherries
- ABV: 10.6%
- Serving Temperature: 49–57° F
- Suggested Glassware: Goblet, Snifter, or Bordeaux glass
- Country: United States
We were especially fond of how this release from Weyerbacher came together—that smooth and seamless addition of cherries into a Belgian-style framework. The fruit flourish serves as a natural match to dark ales of this sort, which already tend to exhibit estery fruitiness, along with complementary notes of cola, caramel, and brown sugar. There’s a rich cherry character here, for sure. But it could possibly go unnoticed as a full-on cherry...
- Style: American IPA
- ABV: 7.25%
- Int’l Bittering Units (IBUs): 45
- Serving Temperature: 45-50º F
- Suggested Glassware: Pint Glass or Mug
- Hops: Cascade, Warrior, Simcoe, Palisade, Citra, Amarillo
- Malts: Pale, Munich, Caramalt
- Country: United States
Heavy Seas’ flagship beer pours a lightly hazy golden-copper color with plenty of sticky foam that drops nice lacing as you empty your glass. Whereas Powder Monkey, our other Heavy Seas feature this month, is an English-style pale ale and offers a similar appearance, one whiff of Loose Cannon unabashedly declares itself an American IPA. Look for big citrus notes which lean toward tangerine and grapefruit, accompanied by piney-herbal notes...
- Style: American Amber Ale
- ABV: 5.4%
- Int’l Bittering Units (IBUs): 19.4
- Serving Temperature: 45-50º F
- Suggested Glassware: Pilsner Glass, Flute
- Hops: Bravo, Select, Tradition
- Malts: Caramunich III, Caramunich II, Wheat, Pale
- Country: United States
Fordham currently calls this an American amber ale (which is a very broad category), but we think its prior designation as an altbier is on target. While Germany is known for lager beer, altbier is an older ale style hailing from Düsseldorf. The beer receives lengthy conditioning, helping smooth the beer out and delivering an almost lager-like finish. On the pour, Copperhead looks great with tons of pillowy foam and brilliant clarity. The hops...
- Style: Stout
- ABV: 5.4%
- Int’l Bittering Units (IBUs): 26.3
- Serving Temperature: 50-55º F
- Suggested Glassware: Pint Glass or Mug
- Hops: Bravo, Glacier
- Malts: Caramunich III, Torrified Wheat, Carafa Special, Pale
- Country: United States
Originally just a term for the stouts served alongside oysters in English pubs, “oyster stout” has evolved as a style over time. 19th century brewers began using crushed oyster shells as a clarifier, but eventually they began adding the shells to the beer as it boiled—imparting a slight salinity and minerality to the beer. At some point early in the 20th century, some brewers started adding whole oysters to their stouts, but Fordham brews...
- Style: Pale Ale
- ABV: 4.8%
- Int’l Bittering Units (IBUs): 13
- Serving Temperature: 45-50º F
- Suggested Glassware: Pint Glass or Mug
- Hops: Progress, Fuggle, East Kent Golding
- Malts: Pale, Caramalt, Crystal, Munich
- Country: United States
On the pour, this English-style pale ale offers up an attractive copper hue with nice clarity and a sizeable crop of off-white foam. Expect a prominent caramel malt character on the nose, overlaid by an interesting and decidedly English hop profile: herbal, somewhat woody tones, with a softly floral note accompanied by a citric hint and a bit of spice. Too many pale ales that we sample have barely-there malt profiles; we liked that the malts...
- Style: English Bitter
- ABV: 4.6%
- Serving Temperature: 53-58° F
- Suggested Glassware: Pint Glass or Mug
- Country: England
The version of Bluebird Bitter that Coniston exports is a slightly different recipe than the U.K. version, boosting the ABV from 3.6%, which is common for English session ales, to 4.2%, which undoubtedly helps its longevity as it travels. Pouring an attractive amber color with a persistent head of off-white foam, Bluebird is a looker in the glass. In the aroma, Challenger hops offer their unique mix of tea and wood, offering a bit of a cedar...
- Style: Quadrupel
- ABV: 10%
- Serving Temperature: 50–57° F
- Suggested Glassware: Goblet, Tulip, or Bordeaux Glass
- Country: Belgium
The appearance on this is textbook. A rich and dense caramel color doesn’t let much of any light through, and the foam might as well be meringue. The latter’s light tan, with essentially microscopic bubbles, and even a delicate pour kicks up a generous froth. It sticks around for the duration, the lacing thickly coating the interior of its glass when tipped: basically perfect. (This conjured up other fantastically pouring beers from the past...
We’re so proud of our featured beers, that we list them going all the way back to 1995
No other Beer Club can claim the same. Check out what we’ve been up for the last 20+ years. We know you’ll be impressed enough to see what’s coming next month.
See past selectionsUnmatched Variety by style, brewery & country
Choose from Five different Beer Clubs offering unmatched variety by brewery,
country of origin, and beer style to suit your specific tastes.
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