Alaskan Brewing Tasting Notes

While traveling around Alaska I have had the opportunity to try several of the Alaskan Brewing Co range of beers.  They have not disappointed, that for sure!  Here are a sample of my tasting notes, some more in depth than others J

Amber

Amber with a cream head, smells sweet, almost milky.  Bitter taste to begin followed by a creamy sweetness.  This is one of my faves and I love that my ship has it in our crew bar while we are in Alaska!

White

Yellow in colour and slightly cloudy with almost no head. A biscuit aroma with citrus and freshly baked bread.  White has a clean taste, a little biscuity with a fresh citrus background.  This is a good session beer for me.

Pale

Light gold with a foamy white head.  A nettle aroma, almost spicy.  This has a nettle and citrus taste, some grapefruit and a toasty aftertaste.  Pale’s aren’t my favourite type of beer but this is definitely very drinkable.

IPA

Before I tried Alaskan’s IPA I thought I didn’t like them.  They are too bitter for me.  Then I sipped this beauty.  It has just the right combination of bitter and fruity with that slight nettle taste.  It must be the glacier water!  Now I am finding IPAs that I like all over, but I think Alaskan will always be my favourite one.

Oatmeal Stout

Dark in colour with a tan head this beauty smells strongly of coffee and tastes like it too.  A real sipping beer with full flavour and a burnt aftertaste that is pleasant.

Raspberry Wheat

I am so glad I found a bottle of this, especially after I found out on my brewery tour that is sold out twice!  I am very picky about my raspberry wheats as they have to have the right balance of fruit against the beer flavour.  This one did not disappoint, of course!  I only wish I had been able to get more than one bottle!

Smoked Porter

I was very intrigued by this brew, unsure as to whether I would like it or not.  After getting a taste for fruitier, sweeter beers I was worried that savouriness of the smoke might put me off.  I was wrong.  The smoked taste is very pleasing and balancing well with the dark flavours of the porter.  Another good sipper.

I’ve also tried their Cream Ale rough draft and the APA at the brewery, both of which were good – the APA in particular.  And let's not forget Summer which is a fave of mine but I haven't had chance to make notes on it yet! Now I’m on the look out for Baltic Porter and Winter Lager before I leave in three weeks – here’s hoping I can get my hands on some!

Alaskan Brewing Co, Juneau, Alaska

The Alaskan Brewing Co is one of my favourite breweries of all time, no lie.  It was one of the first craft breweries I encountered when I began drinking beer and opened me up to a world of flavour.  This season I was determined to visit the brewery despite my busy schedule.

You are picked up by a shuttle bus in downtown Juneau and taken out to the Alaskan Brewery at the beginning of your tour.  It’s a nice little drive and the driver gives you some background history to the sights as you go.  Look out for eagles as you get closer to the brewery.

Alaskan Brewing is a little site but very interesting.  It is right next to a glacier, which is where they get the water to brew the beer with.  In my opinion this is why it tastes so good and I am very pleased that they don’t brew their beer anywhere else because of this.

The brewery itself is home to founders Marcy and Geoff Larson’s collection of beer bottles.  They began the collection themselves and visitors to the brewery have helped them along the way.  The English beer bottles are over the bar and I noticed a few of my favourites missing.  I will have to find out their address so I can send them some.

You get given a talk at the brewery about the beginnings of Alaskan while sitting in the tasting room, which is the original site of the brewery before it began to expand.  Through windows into the brewing floor you might capture a glimpse of the brewers hard at work.

You can taste up to 6 samples while you are on the site.  I had to go back to work later that day so my tasting experience was cut sadly short.  However I was happy to try a “Rough Draft” that they had on tap.  Rough Drafts are brews in the testing stages.  Mine was a cream ale.

Though not the longest tour, I found visiting Alaskan brewing very informative and I enjoyed meeting the people behind one of my favourites and seeing the site itself.  Keep up the good work guys!

Next week, I’ll share my Alaskan Brewing tasting notes.

Alaska!

I love Alaska.  I love the views, I love the weather (even the rain!), I love the atmosphere, I love the people.  I particularly love the beer and the fact that I can get my hands on a bunch of craft beers that I haven’t tried before.  Some aren’t necessarily from Alaska but here are a few of my faves from the state:

CoHoHo Imperial IPA, Midnight Sun Brewing Co

Brewed with juniper berries this is a dark malty IPA with a good balance of maltiness and sweetness.

Galaxy White IPA, Anchorage Brewing Co

Corked with a champagne cork (fancy!) and has that good fruity IPA aroma and flavour.  The one I had was labeled up as Batch #2 April 2012 so I think it could be aged.

Skilak Scottish Ale, Kenai River Brewing Co

This is a smoky little offering with a good malty sweetness which paired well with chocolate.

Spruce Tip Blonde, Skagway Brewing Co.

Brewed with actual spruce tips this beer has a serious fruity taste that is refreshing and satisfying.  I’m going to be really sad when I drink my last one this season.

This small selection doesn’t even include the incredible range from Alaskan Brewing which we will come to shortly….. watch this space!

Beer House, Estonia

Beer House is a microbrewery in the medieval town of Tallinn in Estonia.  It has a good selection of beer brewed on the premises and boasts a tradition honey lager and a premium lager supposedly endorsed by a Prussian king.  The story goes that the Prussian king was passing through the town and tried Beer House’s Premium and deemed it the best beer in the land so it was brewed under his royal seal.  It is a pretty good beer, an instant fave with me for its sweetness.

Beer House also offers a great selection of food – their pizza is pretty good – and a great atmosphere with old style wooden benches and tables and an inside back patio set up like a medieval village.  The wait staff are even in period costume with buxom wenches and lederhosen clad fellas

If you are in Estonia you should definitely go check it out.  I’m only sad I may never get the chance to drink some BH Premium again!

Check out their website here

Beer 200!!

On the 1^st August I tried my 200^th beer!  Since 2008 I have now tried 200 different beers and the list is going to continue to grow.

My 200^th beer was Hop In The Dark by Deschutes Brewery in Oregon. It was an interesting blend of a dark ale and an IPA that they named a Cascadian Dark Ale.  It incorporated all the best elements of the two types – the grapefruit aroma and bitterness of an IPA with the sweet maltiness of a dark ale. A good choice for my 200^th!

I’m thinking I should aim now for 225 beers before I leave Alaska, what do you think?  

The Heineken Experience - Amsterdam

While I was in Amsterdam back in April I visited the Heineken Experience.  This is more of a museum and activity center than a brewery tour as Heineken hasn’t been brewed in the old brewery since the 80s, but it is still worth a visit for those of us interested in beer.

Half of the Experience is about how the company was built through four generations of the Heineken family and how they developed the world renowned beer we know today.  The second half of the Experience explores the marketing side of the company, which has played a huge part in its success.

I was very interested to learn that currently the company is owned by a woman, Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken.  She gives you a little speech via video part way through.  When you get into the old brewery proper with the mash tuns and old equipment on display you get a chance to taste the wort made from the ingredients Heineken brews with.  I didn’t realize how sweet and like warm cereal it would taste!  I also had a go at stirring the wort while wearing traditional brewers garb.

One of the activities you can take part in is being brewed.  You are shown a video discussing the brewing process while standing on a platform that moves.  It shakes and mixes you while the temperature in the room also changes and you get sprayed with water!  I apparently now know how malts feel.

There is of course the obligatory beer tasting at the end of the Experience.  With your ticket you get a wrist band with three tokens on.  One token is good for a half pint.  You get a half pint in the tasting and then at the very end can get more in the World Bar. 

Overall I found the Heineken Experience interesting, it is definitely a different approach to a beer tour.  A lot of the information is about the company and its marketing process however so if all you really want to know about is the beer and the brewing process, that side is a little light.  I still think it is worth seeing though, but you definitely have to be a beer or business enthusiast to really enjoy it.

Beers in Europe

Hello! Welcome to A Woman’s Brew. I started this blog to record my adventures with beer as I travel around the world… unfortunately work got in the way and I haven’t had chance to really get stuck in.  So let’s try again!

There are so many things that I want to write about yet so little time to do it. However, I am drinking beer and trying new styles all the time.  So maybe the best place to start is my tasting notes.

Back in April and May I was in Europe and got to sample some new brews while I was there. I had the usual suspects such as Sagres in Azores and Heineken in Amsterdam (more on that later) but I also got a few more enticing numbers:

Weische Witte

Drank this complex brew in Amsterdam after a day visiting the Heineken Experience. I enjoyed it a lot as there wasn’t too much clove but some fresh citrus flavours to refresh the palette.

Pilsner Urquell

Though I didn’t get chance to go to its homeland, I tried this beer in the crew bar of my cruise ship.  I felt it had a chewy mouth feel and good biscuity taste.

Lapin Kulta

This native of Helsinki, Finland went really well with my chicken and garlic pizza – a slight lime aroma with a citrus alkaline kick.  It is golden in the glass with a slight foam head and bitter biscuit and lime flavour.

Rostocker Pils Premium

While in Warnemunde, Germany, you can’t get much more local than this.  However, I wasn’t too impressed with this brew.  It has an astringent, lemony aroma that continues into the flavour and unfortunately reminded me of dish water. I had a Krombacher to wash the taste away and was much happier.

So, there’s a start to my beer travels.  Keep an eye out for more about the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam and a blog post all of it’s own for the beers I tried in Estonia!