Surly is Delicious

Last Thursday I finally got to dig in to the beers from The Bearded Brewer. At our monthly pre-meeting meeting for the Indiana (PA) Home Brew Club (read: tasting/BSery), I broke out both Surly offerings, Bender and Furious. I was excited to try both, as they've both received some hype on Ratebeer.com. That, and I love hops.

Here's the Nitty-Gritty

Bender

16 oz. can courtesy thebeardedbrewer shared with the exec board. Pours brown with small, khaki head. Nose of chocolate and roast with a touch of hops. Ok, a lot of hops and some coffee. Lots of roasty, burnt flavor with some chocolate. Good bitter melds with the roast. Good beer. Stone XI-esque. . . kinda.

This was an interesting interpretation of a Brown Ale. Not as malty as I had envisioned, more porter-esque in my mind. Whatever it was supposed to be, it was a pretty solid beer. I like when brewers try to meld styles.

Furious

16 oz. can courtesy thebeardedbrewer shared with Exec. Board. Pours amber red with off-white head. nose of grapefruit and grass, some sweet resiny notes. Taste is huge hop flavor, grapefruit, resin, pine and grass. Decent caramel malt backbone. Great IPA. Good Balance.

Furious definitely wasn't as complex as Bender, but was just a great example of a standard American IPA. Big bitter and big American Hop flavor balanced out by a nice caramel backbone. Nothing tricky, just done well.

On the home brew tip - The Missionary Position is bubbling away still. This is expected - and welcomed. We don't want another stuck fermentation.

As for the future of Muckney Brewing, we're planning on doing a classic American Pale Ale. We've brewed a lot of big beer recently, and nothing close to a session beer. So Justin and I agreed on doing an APA before we went crazy on our next project, which is going to be the Stone Soup Porter, which just got crazier. Beside using only leftovers in this batch, we're going to pitch it on the yeast cake from TMP. It's definitely not going to be to any style. Were thinking of shooting for an even bigger beer than TMP. I mean, we have all of those hungry yeasties in there, might as well feed them. There are some ideas being tossed around, and I'll post them as they become more solid.

Keep checkin' in.

Cheers,

Dave