Iron Hill & State Line Events

So if you read the last post, you would know that yesterday there were two beer events being held locally, One was the Cask and Ye Shall Receive event at Iron Hill Brewery, and the other was a Sierra Nevada tasting at State Line Liquors.

We headed over to Iron Hill for lunch, where they had a number of hoppy beers from around the area on tap. This included IPAs from Sly Fox, Victory, Flying Fish, Troegs, Stewarts, and Yards, as well as a IIPA from Iron Hill at their Newark Location. Although we didn't get to try every beer, I thought the highlights of the trip were the Iron Hill IIPA and the Stewart's IPA. The Iron Hill beer was a creamy hop bomb, and the Stewart's offering was toasty with a strong bitter backbone.

After lunch, we killed a few hours of time, then headed over to State Line

for their Sierra Nevada event. This was a side-by-side tasting of the Northern and Southern hemisphere harvest ales, the Estate Harvest, Celebration, and all 4 30th Anniversary ales. These are the Charlie, Fred & Ken Bock, Fritz & Ken Imperial Stout, Jack & Ken Barleywine, and a Grand Cru. I did find that the 3 harvest beers and Celebration all tasted fairly similar, almost like they recycle the same recipe with slight variations. The Bock I thought was almost undrinkable, being cloyingly sweet with medicinal qualities. The stout was in my opinion the best of the series, being a strong and flavorful example of the style, and the black barleywine held plenty of interest as well. The Grand Cru was ok, but certainly didn't seem worthy of the "best of the brewery" title the Sierra Nevada rep gave it.

We finished the evening at Dan's with 2 beers I had been looking forward to. One was a bottle of Sam Adam's kriek that he picked up at the brewery while at the Belgian Beer Fest, and the other was our own bottle of oak-aged imperial brown. I was thoroughly disappointed by the Samuel Adam's beer, as it was supposed to be a cherry lambic, but didn't have any of the sour, tart, or lactic qualities normally associated with a buggy beer. Instead it tasted very similar to a spritzer, the sweet carbonated drinks I used to get as a kid. However, our oak-aged beer was incredible, with the bourbon and oak smoothing out some of the alcohol heat we had found in the original version. Considering the alcohol content, it was easy to drink and absolutely delicious.

- Adam