Winter Warmer - Upland Brewing Company

    Winter Warmer is a Barleywine brewed by Upland Brewing Company which is located in Bloomington, Indiana. We are definitely out of the Winter Warmer season, but this was sitting in the refrigerator and wouldn't stay fresh through the summer and into next winter. I picked up this bomber at the Upland tasting room in Indianapolis, IN.

    The ale pours a gorgeous garnet color with a decent light-khaki head. There are a lot of bubbles visible in the glass, seeming to hint at a high carbonation level. The beer leaves some light lacing on the glass. A warning to future purchasers: there is a good amount of sediment at the bottom of the bottle, so be careful to decant when pouring!

    Winter Warmer smells strong and sweet. There is surprisingly a decent bit of hops scent to the beer for this style.

    Upland's Barleywine is light to medium bodied with a similar level of carbonation. I'm surprised at how thin this beer is as barleywines are usually thicker than this. There is a nice alcohol warmth to the 8.5% ABV ale.

It warms you from the inside out!

    The Barleywine has strong flavors of an aged ale. Sweet caramel and toffee malts make up the majority of the flavor with a bit of an alcohol hit at the end. There is a slight piney hops flavor at the end of the flavor which sticks around as a bitter aftertaste.

    Winter Warmers are one of my favorite beer types. I love how the warmth of the alcohol is featured in a pleasant way in this style. Upland's Barleywine seems as though it is a bit lighter than others I have had. While the body is somewhat disappointing, the warming properties are done very well in this beer. It's not easy to balance alcohol character with sweetness to the point that the beer no longer tastes like jet fuel. Pleasant sweet flavors are the main feature of the beer.

    There is clearly a bit of fine-tuning needed to make this beer a great, but it's well on its way. I would love to have more of this on a cold winter, or even just rainy, day.

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I Am Alive: Xbox 360 Arcade

    I Am Alive is a Survival/Action/Adventure game developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, and produced by Ubisoft. I Am Alive has had quite a bit of hype around it ever since the project was uncovered in 2003. Rumors of a post-apocalyptic Survival/Horror game with amazing features (for the time) such as dynamic encounters with other survivors swirled around online gaming communities. Eventually, in 2008, information was uncovered about the producer of Assassin's Creed working on a new title which was assumed to be I Am Alive. Any excitement that had died down in the five year drought of information was re-ignited as leaked screenshots from an early build of I Am Alive shot across the internet in 2009. Finally, in early 2012 Ubisoft announced a release date for the game as well as information explaining that I Am Alive would no longer be a full on-disc release, but rather an Xbox 360 Arcade game. The game was released soon following this announcement in April 2012 on Xbox 360 Arcade, PC, and the Playstation Network.

Loft - New Belgium Brewing

    Loft is a hard beer to categorize. Conservatively, the closest style to which Loft is most similar would be a Belgian Pale Ale. This style confusion comes from the fact that Loft is brewed using multiple ingredients which are rarely seen together. Both barley and wheat malts go into the mix as well as a decent amount of hops. New Belgium Brewing (Fort Collins, CO) really worked to defy genres with this one.

    Loft pours a light gold color with a half-finger of white head. The foam leaves a good bit of lacing on the glass. Lots of bubbles are visible in the beer.

    The beer's aroma is mainly hoppy, though the wheat and barley malts can both be smelled as well. The strange mix of barley and wheat creates a sort of confusing scent which makes me wonder what I'm in for as far as taste.

    Loft is medium bodied with a medium-high level of carbonation. The beer finishes lightly, and almost watery.

Talk about a light beer!

    Loft's flavor begins with slightly bitter orange peel hops changing to sweet biscuit malts and finally a grainy, sweet wheat flavor. The aftertaste is that of wheat. The beer's flavor is very light, making for a nice hot-weather drinking beer. I really find the strange mix of malts and hops off-putting, but not disgusting.

    I find myself somewhat torn between my love for ingenuity and a respect for the tried and true. I definitely applaud New Belgium for attempting to make a genre-bending beer, but at the same time I just find the beer to be strange tasting. I don't want to become the sort of person who automatically hates anything different from the norm, so I worry that differences from the traditional styles in the beer's recipe are causing me to dislike it more than the flavors themselves. This is just a beer that you will have to try for yourself to see what you think of it.

    While I don't hate this beer, I definitely wouldn't choose to drink it regularly. Loft is a very easy to drink beer, but the barley and wheat just seem to be at odds with each other when I taste it. This isn't enough to make the beer taste horrible, but it certainly isn't entirely pleasant to drink either.

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Rusty Chain - Flying Bison Brewing Company

    Rusty Chain Vienna Style Beer is an Amber Ale created by Flying Bison Brewing Company which is located in Buffalo, New York. The beer was created in an attempt to promote bicycle culture in Buffalo, and to celebrate life on two wheels. As someone who hasn't been on a bicycle since middle-school, I'm a little worried that this beer won't like me very much...

    Rusty Chain pours a rusty red-amber color with a small off-white head with low retention.

    The beer smells very malty-sweet, toasty and lightly spicy. There is a small bit of a citrus hops presence as well.

    Rusty Chain is light-bodied though the carbonation level is quite high, making the mouthfeel seem larger at swallowing. It's not quite such a high level of carbonation that you feel as though you are just swallowing foam, but it's close. There seems to be a bit of alcohol warmth to the beer, even though it has a low alcohol content of 5% ABV.

The only beer that can give you Tetanus.

    This Vienna Style Beer is dominated by sweet, toasty malt flavors. This has to be one of the sweetest beers I have ever tasted. The aftertaste reminds me of brown sugar, though there is a bit of a nuttyness to it as well. Only the tiniest hops bitterness can be perceived in the beer's flavor.

    I've heard from friends that craft beer culture and bicycle culture overlap in many cities. The unfortunate truth of the majority of my city's "bicycle culture" involves most of the population swerving to hit bicyclists for being hippies (ok not really, but it's close). The only overlap between beer and bicycle culture here is  DUI offenders having to ride to work after losing their license. As the rustychainbeer.com website for promoting bicycle culture in Buffalo now routes to some random Chinese language blog, I'm assuming Flying Bison had little luck with championing their cause.

    Overall, Rusty Chain is an extremely sweet Amber Ale. I'd almost call this a brown ale, except for its red/amber color and light body. The beer is drinkable, though the sweetness gets to be overbearing after many sips of the beer.

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Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga - Xbox 360

    Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga is an Action Role Playing Game created by Belgian developer Larian Studios. The Dragon Knight Saga is a revised version of the 2010 Action RPG Divinity II: Ego Draconis. Released in the US in 2011, The Dragon Knight Saga improves on Ego Draconis's choppy framerate and awkward controls as well as a number of other improvements to the game. It also includes the expansion pack Flames of Vengeance. Many people feel as though Larian's re-release (and re-working) of Ego Draconis saved the game from being doomed to the bargain bin and being missed by many new fans to the series.