Welcome to my first installment of The Weekly Brew! This will be an ongoing series at Beard + Bloom where I take a stab at writing quick, less intensive beer reviews that will usually include 1-3 beers.
In these posts, I won’t spend nearly as much time dissecting the beer. Instead, you’ll get a very basic rating, a little backstory that may or may not be related to the beer, the availability of the brew, the tasting notes, and a brief explanation of why I recommend it.
Check back weekly and feel free to give me feedback in the comments below!
Imperial Blueberry Pancake Milkshake Stout
Rochester Mills Beer Co.
Rochester, MI
Style: Imperial Stout
4.0 / 5.0
Some Back Story:
A few years back, a friend of mine brought over a beer that promised to be flavored like blueberry pancakes. I was a little unsure about it, given that I hadn’t really ever had a beer that was supposed to taste like pancakes. I had other beers brewed with blueberries (the excellent Tres Blueberry Stout from Dark Horse rings a bell) but never anything that promised to taste like pancakes. A few sips in and I was amazed. The initial sip was rich, sweet, and somehow tasted perfectly like pancake batter and finished with just the right amount of blueberry sweetness. I was floored. How could a beer so perfectly mimic the flavor of blueberry pancakes?
This is how Rochester Mills first hit my radar. Since then, I’ve had a number of beers from the brewery and purposely sought out more cans of Blueberry Pancake whenever I found myself in Michigan. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they are now available in Indiana, having arrived just in time for Christmas.
Availability:
This one will be tough to find.
The only place you could get a can of the Imperial Blueberry Pancake Milkshake Stout was in the 12 Days Of Christmas sampler pack. This was meant to be drank as a beer advent calendar but, truth be told, I kind of forgot I had most of them squirreled away in the back of my fridge when we were constantly making room for all of the Christmas cooking and baking we did over the holidays. These have been sold out over town since December.
So how is it?
This is a brew that has a smell that is legendary. Cracking the can, you are immediately hit with the unmistakable aroma of blueberries, pancake batter, and light roasted coffee. You’ll smell it long after the brew is finished and silently wish you could candle its essence.
Much like its lighter base beer, Imperial Blueberry Pancake hits you first with a light roasty flavor that swells into a sugary sweet creaminess that is like the gooey center of a pancake. It is truly amazing how spot on their use of lactose sugar can provide you that perfect pancake familiarity. Once the batter flavor starts to fade, you get subtle chocolate notes that replicates the flavor of that pancake that may have had too much time in the pan–its roasty and almost tastes slightly burnt. This continues and gets slightly sweeter the longer you let it rest on your palate. Finally, the blueberry sweeps over your mouth, causing the beer to start to finish sweet before progressing back to a light roasted coffee flavor. In the Imperial version of this brew, there is noticeably less blueberry and more chocolate and coffee on the back end. Both brews have incredibly similar uses of lactose to mimic the pancake batter body.
Would I recommend it?
Unfortunately, you probably won’t be able to find the Imperial Blueberry Pancake around town anymore. The sampler packs have long been sold out and I honestly wouldn’t recommend the sampler pack anyway. I had more misses than hits on the 12 beers that were included, with this brew being the real star of the show. However, there is a good chance that the regular Blueberry Pancake will pop up in the near future and is not to be missed for those craving a decent dessert stout.
Scrumpy Organic Farm Cider
JK’s Farmhouse Ciders
Flushing, Michigan
Style: Organic Farm Cider
3.5 / 5.0
Some Back Story:
So what’s a Organic Farm Cider? I’m going to allow J.K.’s Farmhouse Ciders to provide the explanation:
All we can say is that our ciders are the real thing. They’re not a “made using” or “contains” product. They are real cider with real ingredients. Pure, natural and uniquely flavorful. We grow, harvest, and press the apples right here on the farm. It is time consuming, labor intensive process and worth every bit of what it takes to make it.
Our cider is not only natural, it is truly organic. It always has been. It’s simply a fact of what we do – and how we do it. We use no insecticides in the farm orchards. Rather, we do what generations before us did. We have a large flock of guinea fowl that wander about and eat the bugs. Fallen apples that have hit the ground are always a food source for pests, so we let Berkshire pigs wander the orchard and eat the fallen apples.
After the harvest, we press our organic apples and allow them to slowly ferment for up to six months. We then carefully hand fill and label each bottle and let it age for several weeks. There are only two ingredients in our original JK’S Scrumpy. Juice and Yeast. No artificial flavors or colors and of course no sulphites or sorbates. We strive to make the best cider possible using these old methods and our traditional family recipe. There will be slight variations from bottle to bottle and year to year. Just as no two apples are ever the same!
Pretty cool, huh? This is how hard ciders are meant to be produced.
Availability:
JK’s Scrumpy is available year round and should be easy to find at your local bottle shop or at Deer Park Irish Pub, where you may spot yours truly slinging brews.
So how is it?
I usually have a hard time with hard cider. Most ciders on the market are overly sweet, too acidic, or taste artificially sweetened. This is not the case with Scrumpy.
On the nose, you get strong aromas of apple juice sweetness and subtle hints of cinnamon. The taste mimics the scent and hits you first with sweet apple flavor that is reminiscent of regular apple juice. You may look at the bottle to make sure that this actually contains alcohol. As the taste progresses, however, the notes of cinnamon come out at the finish. By the first full sip, I promise that it will remind you of all the ciders you buy at farmers markets and fall festivals and have you craving for that light jacket weather and colorful falling leaves.
In short, this is a truly “no-frills” hard cider.
Would I recommend it?
For those beer drinkers that turn their nose up at hard ciders, I implore you to give this one a try. It is simple, delicious, and may convince you to give many more ciders a try. Definitely plan to see many more hard ciders being reviewed here or on the regular Brew Review series.
So, what have you been drinking this week? Anything interesting you would like to see featured here? Feel free to comment below!
Cheers!
-J
First image courtesy of ELEVATE / Pexels.