Prohibition Ale - Speakeasy Ales and Lagers

    Prohibition Ale is an American style Amber Ale created by Speakeasy Ales and Lagers which is located in San Francisco, California. This beer came in my second shipment of beers from my craft beer club.

    The ale pours a dark amber color with one finger of cream colored foam on top.

    Prohibition Ale smells very malty. There is just a tiny bit of hops in the smell, but the beer's scent is mainly sweet.

    Speakeasy's Amber Ale is medium-light bodied and has a mid-level of carbonation. The hops leave a slight oily film in the mouth after swallowing. With an alcohol content of 6.1% ABV, the Amber Ale has no hint of an alcohol warmth or flavor.

N'yeah see!

    The beer's flavor is actually somewhat surprising from what one might expect from the smell. Lots of roasted, malty sweetness is present as the scent of the beer suggests. Unexpectedly, there is actually a good amount of hops flavor and bitterness in the beer as well. This bitterness sticks around long after the malt flavor has subsided, creating a somewhat unpleasant aftertaste.

    The real problem with this beer is not its flavor or character, but what it turns you into. After drinking a bottle of this American style Amber Ale, I had to be stopped from running around the apartment with a Nerf gun screaming "You'll never take me alive coppers!!" I was finally stopped by my wife when I attempted to make our cat an offer he couldn't refuse, with just one caveat, that he send our other cat to the "big litterbox in the sky." She hadn't been paying her protection money after all!

    Prohibition Ale is a decent Amber Ale though the hops come through a bit more than I think they should. This hop-heaviness doesn't stop the ale from being an easy-drinking beer, however.

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Little Big Planet - Playstation 3

    Little Big Planet was released exclusively for the Playstation 3 in 2008. Developed by Media Molecule, LBP garnered a large amount of excitement previous to its release due to the unique nature of the game.

    Little Big Planet is mainly a platformer, a genre of games characterized by levels filled with obstacles and jumps to be navigated by the player. What makes the game unique, however, is the level editor included on the disc. This editor gives simplified tools which allow users to create their own challenging levels and share them with their friends for free over the Playstation Network.

Never Summer Ale - Boulder Beer Company

    Never Summer Ale is a Winter Warmer created by Boulder Beer Company. Boulder Beer Company is unsurprisingly located in Boulder, Colorado. I received this beer in the first shipment of my craft brew club.

    As a style, Winter Warmers tend to be heavy on the malts and sweetness. The style likely takes after the German Doppelbock; full-bodied, heavily malted beers preferred in the wintertime for their almost full-meal value. In the past, such beers have been called "liquid bread" due to their nutritive value when fresh grains might not be available. It's fairly common for a bit of alcohol warmth to come through when drinking a Winter Warmer, for that extra cozy, warming effect.

    Never Summer Ale pours a dark copper color with barely any head to speak of, though that might have been my fault in pouring it too cautiously.

The rare Winter Warmer in its natural habitat.

    The Winter Warmer smells very sweet, toffee and caramel malts dominate the aroma. Very little hop scent is perceptible. There is also no hint of alcohol in the scent.

    Never Summer Ale tastes very sweet. Roasted malts and a taste similar to toast are the main flavors in the ale. There is very little bitterness to the ale, though a bit of hops flavor does come through. What bitterness there is becomes sharper in the beer's aftertaste. There is no alcohol warmth to the ale which is disappointing for a Winter Warmer. At 5.94% ABV, the lack of alcohol warmth is not surprising.

    The Winter Warmer is actually somewhat thin-bodied, though a medium level of  carbonation works to enhance the mouthfeel of the ale.

    Overall I was somewhat disappointed in Boulder Beer Company's Never Summer Ale. I was really looking forward to enjoying the qualities of a Winter Warmer. After all, at the time of this writing, it is winter, and I could use some warming. I was definitely expecting more of an alcohol warmth to the beer as well as a bit thicker body. Never Summer Ale doesn't taste unpleasant at all, but it just doesn't have the characteristics that a good Winter Warmer should.

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Abbey Belgian Style Ale - New Belgium Brewing

    Abbey Belgian Style Ale is brewed by New Belgium Brewing which is located in Fort Collins, Colorado. This ale falls into a category of Belgian style ales called Dubbels. Quite commonly throughout history monks living in abbeys throughout Europe have brewed beer to sell as a means of income to support their religious activities. Abbey Belgian Style Ale seeks to imitate the popular style of Belgian ales crafted by these monks.

    This Belgian ale pours a dark caramel color with a small bubbly head.

    The ale smells strongly of Belgian yeast, which can be likened to the aroma of bananas. A sweet smell follows the powerful yeast smell as well as notes of clove and other spices.

A beer best enjoyed in introspective silence.

    New Belgium's take on an abbey style ale is medium bodied, with a medium-high level of carbonation that seemingly increases the body of the ale. Overall the ale makes for a pretty smooth drinking experience.

    Abbey Belgian Style Ale features a strong flavor of Belgian yeast. This yeast has an almost fruity quality to it; again, likened most to the flavor and scent of bananas. There is little to no bitterness to the ale. Sweet, bready malts are the main flavor on display with slight hints of spices.

    I make no claims of verity, but I bet monks throw one heck of a party. I mean, think about it, a bunch of guys studying hard nearly 24/7, brewing beer in the back of their house, rooting for their team over the evil team; we're just a few steps away from this abbey being a fraternity house! I bet Friday comes around and Brother Joseph (or Broseph) cracks open a cask of the abbey style ale and the party starts. Next thing you know, Brother James is wearing his rosary beads on his head and Brother Carlos is bobbing for apples in the holy water.

    Semi-offensive monk jokes aside, New Belgium's Abbey Belgian Style Ale is quite a good representation of the style. I personally am finding that I do not enjoy Belgian style beers as much as some, though I definitely can see their appeal to fans of sweeter ales.

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Mojo IPA - Boulder Beer Company

    Mojo IPA (India Pale Ale) is made by the people at Boulder Beer Company which is located in Boulder, Colorado. This beer was a part of my first shipment from a craft brew club that I was given a membership to as a Christmas gift.

    Mojo IPA pours a bright golden color with just the slightest bit of a foamy layer of head on top.

    The IPA smells somewhat of yeasty bread as well as citrus and piney smelling hops. The scent of the beer is more on the malt/earthy side than the hoppy/fruity side. The beer still smells pleasantly floral.

    Mojo is a somewhat thin-bodied beer with a medium carbonation level that keeps the beer feeling refreshing and creamy on the palette.

mmm IPA goodness

    The beer's flavor includes the expected presence of a lot of hops. A sweet malt backbone really does its job well in balancing out the bitterness of the hops, keeping their flavor enjoyable and not too overpowering. Mojo IPA has a sneaky alcohol content of 7.2% ABV that is not at all perceptible behind the great hops flavor. Some notes of citrus fruit can be tasted as well as a slight piney, resinous flavor which sounds unpleasant, but isn't.

    As usual, I find myself wondering as to the naming of the beer. When thinking of the word mojo, images of someone with a huge personality, or a lot of charisma come to mind. IPAs, as a style of beer, definitely fit the huge personality category when it comes to other styles of beer. I suppose that this is where the name comes from, though I prefer my own explanation, that this is the favorite beer of the cartoon character Mojojojo, even though it kind of dates me as well as hints at the cartoons I used to watch...

    Overall Mojo IPA is a well-balanced India Pale Ale. The lighter body and medium carbonation make for a very easy drinking ale that still offers a large amount of flavor. Mojo doesn't really do anything wrong, but then again, doesn't really stand out from the myriad of other IPA brands. While Mojo falls short of being a great IPA, it is still quite a good, refreshing beer.

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Nippletop - Lake Placid Craft Brewing Company

    Nippletop Milk Stout is made by Lake Placid Craft Brewing Company located in Lake Placid, New York. I received this beer as part of a craft beer club shipment. Lake Placid states that this is the sweetest Stout that they brew, citing the lactose used in the brewing process as the source of the sweetness. The inclusion of lactose is also the reason that this style of beer is known as a Milk Stout.

    The Stout smells slightly sweet with notes of coffee and roasted malts. There is also a slight bitterness to the smell.

    The beer pours a dark coffee color with a finger of khaki head that dissipates relatively quickly.

    Nippletop is much thinner bodied than I would have expected from a Stout. It is also contains a much higher level of carbonation than I would have liked.

Not recommend for children under 21.

    The Milk Stout has definite notes of coffee and chocolate in its flavor. There is only a very slight lactose sweetness which is surprising and somewhat disappointing. Roasty malt flavors hold up the back-end of the Stout. There is a surprisingly pronounced bitterness to the beer which I find extremely unpleasant. The lactose leaves a slight film in my mouth after swallowing the beer.

    At 4.9% ABV, Nippletop falls on the far-low end of the alcohol content spectrum when it comes to Stouts. There is absolutely no trace of an alcohol flavor in the beer.

    To be honest, the name of this beer weirds me out a bit. I get the joke with the beer being a Milk Stout and all, but still, what do they expect? My overactive imagination just takes things way too far ending up somewhere that nobody wants to be, let alone anything that anyone would ever want to drink.

    Overall, strange name aside, Nippletop is a pretty mediocre Milk Stout. With some flavors actually coming across as unpleasant as well as a carbonation level that is much too high for this style of beer, Nippletop ranks medium-low on my list of beers that I would choose to drink regularly.

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Dawnguard DLC - Xbox 360

    Dawnguard is the first DLC expansion to be released for 2011's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Interestingly, a large amount of the content found in Dawnguard, as well as in future DLC episodes for Skyrim, was first conceived of when Bethesda Softworks gave their employees a week of creative freedom. During this week, employees were instructed to let their imaginations run wild and create whatever they wanted using the game's engine. A video showing some of the results of this week-long experiment can be viewed here.

    Dawnguard's storyline begins with a rise in vampire activity across Skyrim. Previously, vampires were known only to attack unwary travelers that ventured into their underground lairs with the few exceptions of single attacks on villagers. Dawnguard sees more brazen attacks on entire cities by vampires in broad daylight. In order to combat this new fanged threat, the DLC's titular faction, the Dawnguard, begins recruiting aspiring vampire hunters.

Halo 4 - Xbox 360

    Halo 4 is actually the seventh game in the Halo franchise to be released, though it is only the fourth part of the Master Chief storyline. Halo 4 is unique in that it is the first Halo game in the series to be made by 343 Industires after the series was handed over by the IP's creator Bungie. As such, the gigantic Halo fanbase was quite worried about how the new developer would handle the game. Luckily the company has proven to be more than worthy to continue the Halo series.

    Halo 4 sees the return of Master Chief, a super-soldier trained physically as well as psychologically from a young age to be part of the Spartan-II program. This program created soldiers with almost super-human size, speed, and strength. The children chosen for the Spartan-II program were molded into true soldiers, with little but combat on their minds from an early age.

Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro Bottle - Left Hand Brewing Company

    Left Hand Milk Stout is made by Left Hand Brewing Company located in Longmont, Colorado. An entire case of this special version of the Left Hand Milk Stout was brought back to Indiana by some good friends of mine after holiday break.

    I usually don't spend more than one or two sentences on how a beer pours, but this Stout is special. Unlike most canned or bottled nitro pour beers, this bottle has no weird plastic widget or wand inside to assist in the smooth pouring of the liquid from the bottle. Instead, to quote my good friend, you "pour it like a three-year-old" into a glass and it pours perfectly. I have heard that Left Hand Brewing Company will not divulge any information as to how they manage to make the beer pour so well without a widget. I'd try to find it out myself, but I'm afraid that if they told me, they'd have to kill me. Either that, or force me to bottle all their beer by hand (any homebrewer knows this punishment would be a fate worse than death.)

     After a rough pour, the beer begins to cascade beautifully. The nitrogen bubbles slowly collect at the top of the glass to form a creamy tan head that is incredibly dense. This has to be the coolest pour of a beer that I have seen so far, hence the video.

 

Try pouring any other beer like this and you'll have a major mess to clean up...

   Once I stopped watching the beer cascade and prepared to drink it I found that the Milk Stout smells chocolatey with a good bit of coffee roasted malt scent. There is a slightly sweet aroma to the beer as well.

    The first flavors to hit the tongue are sweet and lightly coffee-like. I was not surprised by this mix of flavors after smelling the Stout. There is only the slightest bit of bitterness in the beer. The lactose sweetness sticks around after swallowing the beer, making sure what bitterness there is does not stick around as an after-taste.

    At 6% ABV, I expected there to be at least a little bit of alcohol warmth to the beer, but no warmth nor alcohol taste is perceptible. The tiny nitrogen bubbles used to carbonate this beer make it such a smooth and creamy experience. After experiencing the nitro-pour version of this beer I'm afraid I could never try the CO2 carbonated version again.

    Overall I would say that the Left Hand Milk Stout is a great example of the style of beer that it represents. I tend to be turned off by Stouts that taste too much like coffee, but this Stout comes out just right. I have had the non-nitro version of the beer and while it is still good, the nitro-pour makes this beer so much better.

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Special Thanks to Drew and Whitney Sayer for bringing me a case of Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro Pour from Colorado!

The Vixen Chocolate Chili Bock - Samuel Adams

    Of all the offices in all the buildings in this city, she had to walk into mine. I'd seen her type before; tall, dark, and beautiful. She was the kind of girl who knew how to play a man like a violin to any tune she wished. I knew I was in for trouble, but against my better judgement I took her job. Now it's just me, my .38, and whatever luck I have left against whatever filth this case throws at me. This is one hell of a dirty city, but it's my city. That Vixen was just one more player in this macabre circus I call a job.

    The Vixen Chocolate Chili Bock is brewed by the Boston Beer Company located in Boston, Massachusetts and is part of their "Small Batch" series. I received this 22oz. bomber as a gift from Santa along with a few others.

A pour almost as dark as the human mind.

    The Vixen pours a dark, black coffee color with a finger or so of a thick, khaki head on top. Just pouring it I can tell  that this is going to be a sweet beer. The bock's smell just strengthens that prediction with sweet malty notes along with the slight smell of alcohol.

    The Chocolate Chili Bock is medium bodied with light carbonation. The beer tastes of sweet dark chocolate and slightly of coffee. There is  a slight warmth from the alcohol, which at 8.5% ABV isn't surprising. Unfortunately there is very little spice warmth from the chilies supposedly used in brewing the beer.

    Overall this was a very sweet beer. As a chocolate bock, this sweetness is not surprising. What was surprising however was the fact that there was little to no spice from the chilies. I had very high hopes for this beer. I was excited to taste it thinking that the bock would taste something like Mexican hot chocolate. The spice would have been such a good counter-balance to the sweet so prominently displayed by this beer. As a chocolate bock alone, this beer is quite good.

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Dragonborn DLC - Xbox 360

    Dragonborn is the third released downloadable content (DLC) for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Dragonborn introduces an entirely new area for players to explore, complete with new locations, quests, characters, and skills. While the main quest of the expansion is relatively short and anticlimactic, Dragonborn's other features make this expansion very much worth the money paid for admittance.

    Dragonborn begins as the hero of Skyrim is attacked by a group of cultists. Upon defeating the cultists, our hero finds a letter on one of the cultists which explains that they were under contract to find and kill the one calling himself "The Dragonborn." It appears as though someone from Solstheim, an island located just off the shore of the province of Morrowind, was paying the cultists to complete this contract. In order to unravel the mystery of the cultists, the Dragonborn must travel to this island and investigate the recent occurrences. During the investigation, the Dragonborn will uncover the secrets of the first Dragonborn, find ancient treasures hidden on the island, as well as fight through a plane of Oblivion which one of the Daedric princes calls home.

Rye'da Tiger - Three Floyds Brewing Co.

    Rye'da Tiger is a Double Rye India Pale Ale created by Three Floyds Brewing Co. in Munster, Indiana. I picked up this 22oz. bomber on a special birthday visit to the 3Floyds Brewpub. The menu at the brewpub explains that this new December release is dedicated to the late Ronnie James Dio. The beer's name likely refers to a phrase in the song Holy Diver.

    The beer pours a  hazy amber color with a tall white head. It smells slightly malty with a strong presence of citrusy hops. As expected, there is a faint, peppery rye scent to the beer as well.

    The ale is medium bodied and smooth with a moderate level of carbonation.

Rye'da Tiger pours like a rainbow in the dark.

    Rye'da Tiger's ABV is not listed online, nor is it listed on the bottle. If I had to chance a guess based on flavor and style however, I'd say that the ABV is likely around 7.5-8%. Surprisingly, the higher than normal ABV is not noticeable in the beer's flavor. As for the beer's flavor, sweet caramel malts and citrus fruits prevail with a tiny hint of the rye's spiciness at the end. I find Double IPAs to be sweeter than their single batch counterparts, and this one is no different.

    I have heard rumors that Rye'da Tiger is actually a double batch of Rye'da Lightning, a Rye Beer created by Three Floyds for Record Store Day 2012. I have not tried that limited release beer though, so I'm not sure how credible the rumor may be. Either way, I love the two beers' names. I'm hoping that Three Floyds's next creation will be Rye'da Dragon or Mead'a Dragon, but then maybe that's because I've been playing too much Skyrim.

    Overall, Rye'da Tiger features lots of great hop flavor while balancing the bitterness with its sweet malt backbone. I have found that Three Floyds Brewing Co. tends to balance their beers well in this manner, with a few exceptions. I expected there to be more rye flavor in the ale than was present however. This Double Rye IPA is definitely a decent ale, but may not be the best representation of a rye beer.

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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Xbox 360

    As the title might suggest, Skyrim is the fifth entry in the Elder Scrolls series, and the second of the series to appear on the Xbox 360. Just as the previous entries in the series, Skyrim can be categorized as a Western Role-Playing Game (WRPG). The Elder Scrolls V is created by Bethesda, which is arguably the best producer of WRPGs of all game studios. Skyrim has something to offer everyone that enjoys the fantasy/RPG genre. The game especially excels in what may be the most important aspect of a WRPG, that is, that players are highly encouraged to put themselves into the game as the main character.