For me, 2011 was a fantastic year in beer. From homebrewing to festivals, bottle shares, brewery release events, pub crawls and just sharing a beer with friends and family, it’s certainly one to remember. After an in-depth look back, I’ve narrowed down from over the 500+ unique beers I’ve recorded tasting to my Top 10 of the year.
If you read my reviews you probably know that I normally review a seasonal beer in the season it is for, and I also evaluate it based upon this. There is nothing like good “summer beer” in the summer, or a warming dark beer in the winter. Given this, it may be surprising that I also enjoy drinking beers out of season – it is beer after all.
Three Floyds, the brewers of the famous Dark Lord Imperial Stout, have another yearly release that gets high marks – their Behemoth “Blonde” Barleywine. Shane and Nick take a look at the white-waxed 2011 vintage. Our curiosity got the best of us, as we venture into the “Blonde” Barleywine – a style neither of us recall having before.
Even though the holiday season is over you can still readily find holiday beers in your local store. And while they may have a holiday theme, they still make great beers for the winter season. This happened to me recently when I stumbled upon the Lump of Coal from Ridgeway Brewing. Ridgeway hails from the far away land of the United Kingdom and I haven’t sampled any holiday offerings from overseas (that I can think of), so this was certainly one that I had to try.
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We’ve reviewed a few Evolution beers in the past, all of which are part of their “mainline” offerings. Their Barrel Aged beers, which I’ve had two of so far, are in my opinion in a class above the rest. Courtesy of my friend Matt in Delaware, I have their Fall Migration 2011 which is a Belgian-style Ale aged in Chardonnay barrels with brettanomyces.
