Starting today and lasting until October 7th you can go over to the Sun Sentinel and vote for the place that has the best beer selection in South Florida. There are a lot of awesome stores and bars to take into account here so good luck to all.
Head here to go directly to the form.
Name – Breckenridge 471 IPA (Small Batch)
Country – United States
Type – American Double IPA
Next up in my adventure through beer is one I have been very anxious to try and that is Breckenridge 471 IPA. I’ve been wanting to try this one for quite awhile. Even before Breckenridge came down to South Florida. A few people said it’s a great, well balanced double IPA. Well last week I picked up a couple of bottles and now it’s time to finally try it.
I poured it into my Funky Buddha pint glass and it settled in as a mostly clear orange color. It had a very thin white head that was gone pretty quick. But have no fear, it leaves awesome lacing around the glass.
The smell was sort of faint. It was able to pick up some piney hops along with some malt. There was a slight boozy like burn in the nostrils as well. But again these were not very pungent aromas.
At the first sip I was immediately surprised by a nice tangerine flavor to it. It’s not like a tangerine hop profile but an actual taste of the fruit. This was followed up with an extremely well balanced taste of citrus hops and malts. As it warms up you get a little alcohol bit to it but that’s to be expected with the 9.2% ABV.
So people were not kidding when they said it was well balanced. The hops do not stand out too much and at the same time they keep the malt from going overboard.
I did some research on the Small Batch series that Breckenridge does and there were some interesting sounding ones but they mostly seem to be retired. Who knows maybe the next time I’m in Colorado I can come across something new.
But overall this was a very good DIPA to me. I know a lot of people like the super hoppy ones so this may not be for them. If you like well balanced DIPAs then please go out and try this. And if you are in South Florida, be sure to check out all the rest of Breckenridge’s stuff that you can get down here now.
Grade – B+
Name – Maduro Brown Ale
Country – United States
Type – American Brown Ale
I always enjoy drinking a brew from Florida’s own Cigar City and I know Maduro will be no different. I’ve had this one plenty of times on draft and now that 12 ounce bottles are available I just had to pick this up for a review.
Recently a very well know and well respected person in the craft beer community took a pretty public low blow at Cigar City for this beer. He said that it tasted like “dime store chocolate” and that his brown ale was much better. The individual also proceeded to bash Cigar City’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Ale as well. But I won’t get into that. You can do some searching and probably find out about this if you wish.
So I poured the beer into my nifty Cigar City snifter and it came out mostly brown color. There were some hints of very dark red in there as well but brown is the color. The head was a very thin tan head that was gone very quickly.
The smell brings forward scents of oatmeal and cinnamon mostly. But there is some hints of tobacco as well as a slight smokiness to it.
The taste is awesome. A nice rich blend of oatmeal, cinnamon and milk chocolate come out first back by a roasted malt character. There is a small cameo by a coffee taste but not for very long. So all is well to me.
I have to admit this was a pretty easy review for me to do. I’ve had this beer many times before and have loved it ever since the 09 Treasure Coast Beer Festival where I had it for the first time. This is an awesome sessionable brown ale. And while I like the other brewery’s brown ale as well, this one is just fuller in body and flavor.
Florida go out and get your hands on this beer. If you aren’t in Florida and want this beer, let me know. We can try to work something out.
Grade – A