Amber

Boulevard's Amber Ale is nearly upon us! Well, nearly upon the good people of Omaha and Lincoln at least. The rest of us will have to be content with finding bottles of Amber packed into samplers for the time being. The official launch of Boulevard's amber is next week and they were nice enough to throw a couple bottles my way on the eve of Memorial Day Weekend. This is a beer I've had before, on a number of occasions... I may have had this beer more before it was officially released than Tank 7... which was on tap at some places for several months before the bottles hit shelves. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I like what Boulevard has done with their Amber Ale.

Boulevard Amber, the beer no one was begging Boulevard to make, is nearing completion and slated to hit store shelves around mid-June. Boulevard will be sneaking this beer into 12 pack samplers at first and release dedicated six packs later on. There doesn't seem to be much fanfare around this beer, I can only assume that's because it's an Amber. That's right, it seems Boulevard has made just about every interesting style of beer already so in an effort to round out their portfolio they're releasing an Amber. But seriously, it's an under appreciated style I enjoy more than I like to admit, so I'm genuinely excited for this beer.

The Christmas seasonals are starting to hit the shelves so I thought it was the perfect time to pick up a bottle of Redhook's Late Harvest Autumn Ale. As the name would imply, this is Redhook's fall seasonal. This beer is not a Märzen like most Oktoberfest seasonal beer, this is much more of an Amber. The Late Harvest does have a number of Märzen characteristics, which makes it an interesting Amber. Make no mistake about it this is definitely an Amber. The first thing you'll notice when you take a sip of the Late Harvest is the hops. The hop flavor is a bit different than the dry, spicy Amber flavor you'd expect. The Late Harvest has a much more grassy flavor like you'd expect in a Pale Ale. What sets the Late Harvest apart from other (early harvest?) Amber beers is the rich, warm malt flavor. The malt really takes the edge off of the hops and balances the beer out nicely.

This is a good example of an Amber beer done right. Black Dog Ale is the kind of beer that makes you wish you had a bowl of pretzels to go with it. I must admit that I was a little hesitant to pick up a bottle of the Black Dog Ale, for some reason I was convinced that Spanish Peaks is just a microbrew front for a larger multinational beer concern. I'm not sure why, but something about their packaging and their website just seems to say, "I'm really a wholey owned Budweiser subsidiary and drinking this beer acknowledges compliance with everything that is wrong with the state of beer in the world today." I don't have any hard evidence to back this up, other than the curious case of where Spanish Peaks Brewery is actually located... You see, on the bottle it proudly states they were founded in Bozeman, Montana. Fine, I've never had a beer from Montana... that sounds kinda exotic I guess. When you flip this bottle over and check out the fine print it says it's brewed in Wisconsin. Well, that's not too far from Montana I guess. Further investigation online indicates that their headquarters is in California. Uh, what?

Breckridge's Avalanche Ale is a good beer, but it's boring... Unless this is the first Amber style beer you've ever had you'll know exactly what to expect when you take a drink. This beer is reddish-brown in color with a thin white head that hangs around until the glass is empty. The body is a little less red in color and a bit cloudier than I was expecting. None of this really all that important, if the beer looks awesome and tastes like crap then know one will care... The Avalanche Ale has a pretty pleasant flavor. It's pretty mild all around. Lightly hopped, generously malted, and just a little dry on the tongue. Just about what you'd expect from a proper Amber style beer. There's nothing wrong with that, or this beer... but that's all there is. The Avalanche Ale seems to just stop short of being exciting. If there were something a little more to this beer it'd stand out a bit more from the pack. As it stands now, the Avalanche is good but not great...

I had high expectations for Ommegang's Rare Vos. All I've ever heard about this brewery is that they produce stellar beers that are true to the Belgian originals. So when I picked up this bottle of Rare Vos I was expecting it to be the next best thing to setting foot in Brussels. Perhaps I was setting this beer up for failure, I mean, it'd have to be really good to live up to my expectations. But, that's how the stage was set - with me expecting a perfect beer as I popped the cork on this bottle and poured it into my tulip glass. I do have to say, my first impressions weren't so great. For starters, I couldn't get a read on this beer's aroma. It had a special sort of spiciness that I couldn't identify. Not that that was a bad thing, I enjoy a good challenge... the problem was what I didn't smell at all. Where was the sour, where was the corriander, the citrus and all those other telltale aromas that define a Belgian beer? I couldn't find them and considered it 'strike one' for the Rare Vos.

I thought I knew what I was getting into with this beer when I saw it at the store. It's an amber, a style I'm familiar with - and it's got a German name, a country I'm familiar with. That should have been the tip off that something wasn't quite right. The Germans don't make amber beers... at least not the kind of red and hoppy ambers we've got in the states. I was surprised when I went to pour a glass of this Fischer Traditional Amber when I noticed the fine print on the label... it's from France, not Germany. Nothing bad about that, the French make some good beers. This beer is from the Alsace, a particularly German area of France so maybe the name wasn't deceiving so much as it was coincidental... Well, the surprises didn't stop there.

I was expecting a run of the mill Asian rice lager when I picked up a single bottle of the Hitachino Nest. The label on this beer looks like a trippy 70s Anime cartoon (I guess the kids call that a Manga...). So what does the label have to say about this beer? Well, there are some bits in Japanese... but other than that I just see the name of the beer and the importer's sticker. Red Rice Ale isn't a terribly descriptive name, but then neither is Hitachino Nest... unless that means something in the Japanese home market. After drinking this Red Rice Ale I'm convinced the Hitachino is a bird known for being slightly fruity, rich in flavor and it's red-orange color.