Brewery: Rogue Ales
Where: Newport, Oregon
Beer: Chatoe Rogue First Growth Wet Hop Ale
Style: American Pale Ale
IBU: 40
ABV: 6.4%

Here we have another installment from one of my favorite breweries.  The Chatoe Rogue First Growth Wet Hop Ale has been sitting on my shelf for a while now so I decided to chill it and pop the top this evening to see what's been going on in Oregon lately.  The First Growth Wet Hop Ale is an American pale ale with a fantastic hop flavor and aroma.  It has a rich golden orange appearance in the glass with a thick head.  The flavor is quite crisp and refreshing with a very nice hop presence.  The Munich malts used by Rogue in this beer give it a very nice malt presence when coupled with the two-row pale malt.  The hops used in this beer are first growth Independent and Revolution.  They come together for a great bitterness and piney flavor. 

Sometimes it sucks to live on the east coast.  There are some great beers made around here but the west coast is still the beer cultural center of the free world, in my humble opinion :)  Rogue has several beers in the Chatoe Rogue First Growth series, but this is the only one I could get my hands on...  Maybe I just need to travel more...

Brewery: Anchor Brewing Company
Where: San Francisco, California
Beer: Liberty Ale
Style: American Pale Ale
IBU: N/A
ABV: 6.0%

Today's sample is Liberty Ale from Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco, California.  Anchor beers are widely available and shouldn't be too difficult to find.  On a recent trip to the World Market, I picked up three individual bottles of Anchor beers for my sampling regimen, and this is the first to get the cap popped. 

Liberty Ale poured with a nice golden color coming from the simple 2-row malted barley base grain used to make this beer.  I nice foamy head followed and hung around for most of this drink.  The head provided an interesting aroma of hops (probably Cascade) as this beer is dry hopped during the aging process.  I could not find an IBU listing for this beer, but I would assume it's in the neighborhood of 40 IBU.  It's not an extreme APA like so many that are appearing on the shelves these days.  This beer has been around for a while... From the website:

First introduced in 1975, Liberty Ale is brewed strictly according to traditional brewing methods, and, like all Anchor Brewing Company products, uses only natural ingredients - water, malted barley, fresh whole hops and yeast. 

A special top-fermenting ale yeast is used during fermentation and is responsible for many of Liberty Ale's subtle flavors and characteristics.  Carbonation is produces by an entirely natural process called "bunging," which produces champagne-like bubbles.  Dry-hopping (adding fresh hops to the brew dring aging) imparts a unique aroma to the ale.  It is a process rarely used in this country today.

I think the last statement about dry hopping may be a little out of date now, but it does truly produce an aroma that can't be matched otherwise. 

Brewery: Founders Brewing
Where: Grand Rapids, Michigan
Beer: Harvest Ale
Style: American Pale Ale
IBU: 70
ABV: 6.5%

This is my second taste of a wet-hopped pale ale.  It's not bad... The hop flavor and aroma in this beer is quite intense, as it should be.  It poured with a nice golden color with a little haziness and a decent head that was full of a floral hoppy aroma.  This is my first taste of a Founders Brewing beer, but there are several others I want to try. 

I'm initially disappointed in Founders Brewing over this particular beer in terms of marketing.  For any of you who follow this blog, you know that I go to the brewer's website and look at their information on every beer I try.  I'm also a homebrewer, so my interest in the 'mechanics' of any given beer is a lot higher than average. 

Harvest Ale is a wet-hopped ale.  What this means is that fresh hops right off the plants have been added to this beer... probably late in the boil and as dry hopping additions during secondary fermentation.  The general key to the greatness of this process is the TYPE of hop used to make this beer what it is (or isn't).  There is no information on the bottle OR on the website to indicate what style of hops Founders chose to make such a prominent part of this brew.  My experience makes me believe that it might be a Cascade hop, or possibly a Centennial, but we'll never know since that information seems to be hidden.  I think that's a rather poor choice.  Most brewers are really proud of the hops that were used to make a beer like this. 

If anyone knows what it might be, let me know :)

I picked up a bottle of St. Terese's Pale Ale from Highland Brewing Company as part of a mixed sixer last week.  If you follow this blog much, you can see that I don't often buy pale ales, but I do get some occasionally.  It's not because I don't like them though... it's just because I prefer malty beers most of the time.  This beer is an American style pale ale which is more balanced between the hops and the malts than the India pale ales.  The St. Terese's Pale Ale poured a very nice golden color with a thick foamy head.  The head maintained itself well throughout this drink and laced the glass nicely.  This beer rings in at 5.2% ABV and 24 on the IBU scale, so the hop presence is well stated but not overpowering in this delicious brew from Highland.  I will eventually try their Kashmir IPA which boasts an IBU rating of 60 :)  The St. Terese's will definitely make the drink-again list...