happy anniversary from Cheryl--live from Stuff Yer Face!

Happy anniversary, beer friends!

It is a great privilege and honor to wish Colleen and Paul a happy 'one year of being beer friends'. Their blogging about beer has been frequent and fun, and it feels appropriate at this time, as a third party to the shared beer experience, to wish them further happy quaffing.

In the spirit of sharing, Colleen has invited me to compose a guest blog regarding our mutual first drink of Flying Fish Grand Cru Winter Reserve. This stunning beer is a perfect mix of bottle-conditioned Belgian floral flavor with a subtle malty finish. In short, it's everything one would enjoy about a beer like Corsendonk or Hoegaarden, but with the warm lingering malt of a brown ale like Newcastle or a lager like Sam Adams.

After this shared experience, we set our sights in different directions. I opted for La Chouffe's Petit Houblon Dobbelen IPA Tripel, which at 9.0% ABV packs a strong punch in a highly aromatic start with a strong but balanced hop finish. The pour was yeast-tactic with a cloudiness that almost seemed "off". As our awesome bartender friend Jill put it, "it looked like a lava lamp". Colleen chose the Norse Porter from HaandBryggeriet. It's a Norwegian Dark Porter which poured out in a very fizzy way (causing Colleen a bit of discomfort when she tried to sip right from the bottle) but immediately gave a pungent chocolate aroma and followed with the same strong chocolatey porter flavor. Ironically, this heavily carbonated choice would imply that it should be bottle-sipped since it has a photoshopped-in set of fingerprints gripping around the bottle. In spite of exploding in Colleen's mouth, this fizzy deliciousness ranked well for Ms. Earp-Porterpants.

P.S. Happy belated birthday to the Colleenator herself, who shared her special day this year with turkeys and tofurkeys everywhere on November 25th.

Cheers,

Cheryl