it.  Three Floyds Brewing, of Munster, Indiana, may

well be the best, complete-line brewery in the United States of America.  I’ve had a lot of stuff from a lot of different places.  But from no brewery have I said “wow” at every sampling I’ve had. (Disclaimer: Dogfish Head isn’t exactly super-available here in Wisconsin, but I’ve heard the same

them)

After betting with my wife’s uncle on last year’s Hoosiers/Boilermakers basketball games (a couple darned good bets) where I put up a 12-pack of New Glarus if the Hoosiers won against a 12-pack of Three Floyds if the dreaded Boilermakers won, I came out with a lot of Three Floyds.  GO HOOSIERS!  Granted, it took almost a year for the beer to arrive, but c’est la vie.  (To be fair, I also put up a 12 on the Old Oaken Bucket game in November…bad bet).

So after taking delivery of a 12 of Pride & Joy, and a 6 each of Robert the Bruce and Alpha King, I decided these need to be…professionally dissected.  And since I just made and tasted my very own first mild, I decided to start with the Pride & Joy Mild Ale.

Appearance: (4.5/5) This is a nice-looking beer.  That deep, copper-red sitting beneath a thick, foamy, pure-white head is something to look at.  That head hangs around a while, and laces a bubbly, foamy lace down the glass as the copper stuff disappears.  Eventually it disappears.

Aroma: (4/5) Probably the weakest point of this amazing beer.  It’s…not mild.  It’s actually noticeably fruity and hoppy.  You don’t get much malt in the nose at all like you should.  But you get plenty of citrus, and a little pine.  It’s a very pleasant aroma.  It completely misses the mark on style, but I think Three Floyds kinda does that on purpose.

Taste: (5/5) Style be damned, this is good.  This simply isn’t a mild ale.  It just isn’t.  It’s a slightly-more-malty pale ale.  There’s that hoppy, citrusy, fruitiness combined with just a little sweetness from the malt.  This beer floats up your nose as it works its way down.  Though the 42 IBUs (hop bitterness) is almost double the style standard, I just can’t help but…hold on, I need another sip…

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (5/5) Hold on, I’m still drinking…  Seriously, though, the balance in this beer is unexpected.  An over-hopped mild…still balanced?  They do it.  Like I say, though, it drinks more like a pale ale than a mild.  There’s body to it, but enough effervescence to keep it light on the palate, and in the gut.  It would be easy to accidentally drink four or five of these.

Design: (3.5/5) I’ll be frank.  There’s too much design.  And that’s Three Floyds’ calling card.  As a matter of fact, “too much” is what Three Floyds does on everything.  But they always manage to make it work.  But this is a very busy design that makes it difficult to see what it is you’re getting.  The dark greens (despite the glitter/foil finish) are difficult to read against the black background, and I have no idea what is mild about a clown.  But I guess that’s just me.

Overall: (22/25) By the numbers, this is far and away the highest ranked beer I’ve done on this site.  And there’s only one beer in my fridge that I think goes even more beyond the greatness that is Pride & Joy and, guess what…it’s another Three Floyds.  I’ll get to that one before long.

Honestly, I’m going to go ahead and question the concept behind putting a bunch of hops in a style of beer that is intentionally supposed to not have a lot of hops at all.  That’s like dropping a Chevy 350 V8 in your Toyota Prius.  But then again…how fun would it be to drop a Chevy 350 V8 in a Toyota Prius?  Did I just solve my own conundrum?

The post Pro Brew: Three Floyds Pride & Joy (Mild Ale) appeared first on The Midwest Guy.

So I’ve had several of these since I bottled them about a month ago.  I just haven’t had a chance to officially sit down and “taste” it.

Several guests had one of these at our “First Ever Friendsgivingmas” party we threw a couple weeks ago, and reviews were generally favorable, though I don’t know how much of that was out of politeness, and how much of that was genuine.  Maintaining my role of “harshest self critic,” these are the thoughts that roll through my mind.

As a quick overview, I’ll just say this:  This beer disappointed me.

Not because it wasn’t good.  But because it doesn’t taste at all how I hoped it would.  That said, it still is pretty good.  Here’s the lowdown on my first self-written recipe.

Original Recipe/Brewday

Appearance: (3.5/5) A very thin, bright white head bubbles at the top of this darkish-gold brew, but then quickly fizzes away, never to be seen again.  No lacing, no residual bubbling, nothing.  This is the clearest beer I’ve made, which was expected considering this was the first time I’d tried Whirlfloc (a tablet-ized Irish moss, a fining agent meant to remove haze and other effects of excess proteins in beer).  But it’s still hazy.  And considering the amount of flaked oats and wheat in the grain bill, I’d figure this beer would have more head to it.  But…it just doesn’t.  Lots to learn as I go about this.

Aroma: (3.5/5) Crisper than I’d expected.  A hint of banana, a hint of toast, a very mild hint of cinnamon.  I wanted more cinnamon.  I wanted more toastiness.  I didn’t want any banana.  That’s a sign of botched fermentation (in this case).  There’s a little fruitiness from the little bit of hops added, but not much.  It doesn’t smell at all like Christmas cookies.  Not in the least.  But it still smells good.  So while it’s a failure from the point of view of my goals, it’s still successful (mostly) as a beer by itself.

Taste: (3.5/5) Once again, it doesn’t taste much at all like I’d hoped.  In hindsight, I should have styled this as more of a low-hopped brown ale than as a mild.  It needs more robustness.  Theres no cinnamon flavor at all.  The little bit you get in the nose is completely gone by the time it reaches your palate.  A little tiny bit of toastiness, a little tiny bit of fruitiness (probably a product of the Belgian Special B malt).  But it’s bright.  It’s a bright little beer.  And as disappointed as I am in it…it’s not bad.

Drinkability/Mouthfeel: (4.5/5) Here is the main highlight of this beer.  You can drink it all day.  Heck, you can two-fist these.  It’s easy on the palate, it’s not too heavy, it’s not too thin.  Despite the lack of visible effervescence, it’s not as flat as I expected.  Still needs more bubbles, but this isn’t bad at all.  Very approachable, and with a few tweaks, could make a pretty darned good, standard mild.

Design: (4/5) I’m just going to go ahead and say it.  This is one of my favorite designs I’ve come up with.  I like the fonts I found to use.  I like the color selection (especially that minty green).  I like the way all the colors play together.  I like this design.  I like it a lot.  It’s not perfect, but nothing is.  But this is awful darned close, especially since it looks even better on the bottle.  It just looks like a Merry Christmas…and that’s the point of this beer.  Well…it was supposed to be the point.  But at least it still looks like it!

Overall: (19/25) Despite my disappointments with the final execution of the concept I aimed for, this is (by the numbers) far and away the most successful beer I’ve made yet.  But the style of beer was all wrong for this concept.  More malt, more color, more bubbles were all needed to execute what I was after.  And that’s what I’ll go for next year when I make another attempt at it.  But I’m going to take what I learned from this one, and make it into more of a traditional mild.  Because, frankly, it’s still a good beer.

The post Tasting: Kekse Christmas Cookie Mild appeared first on The Midwest Guy.