World Beer Reviews

Beer is by far my choice of drink when out with friends . Below are some of my favorites from some of the top beer countries in the world.

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Trouble Brewery: Sabotage India Pale Ale (Ireland)
While beer tasting in Dublin, Ireland, I ran across Trouble Brewery's Sabotage IPA. I was pleasantly surprised by how flavorful this beer was. Below are my thoughts, tasting notes and food pairings.

Trouble Brewing was founded by three men who had enough of the same old brews at their local bars. They started brewing their product in house while creating their brand.

Thinking their beer should be portrayed as a humorous yet bold beer, they chose to name the brewery Trouble Brewing. The brewing equipment was was bought from an outside source via South Dakota, U.S.A. and set-up in Allenwood, Co. Kildare in Ireland.

Now the brewery is dedicated to making different crafts of beer for the public. The beer is brewed using five varieties of hops from around the globe. The beer consists of Magnum, Chinook, Willamette, Columbus and Cascade hops. Their goal is to maintain quality beers with a hoppy kick.

Via Trouble Brewery

TASTING NOTES
The style of beer is a strong yet hoppy Indian Pale Ale with a punch. The hoppy taste of the beer is bold and delicious. The beer has a 5.5% ABV rating. It pours a rich golden color with a small white head that stays level until the last drop. The aroma is sweet fruity floral, with whiffs of citrus, grass and toffee. The taste is mildly bitter with more toffee, citrus and grass malts. The beer has a few different hop flavors occurring at one time. This IPA has an edgy hoppy bite with a strong full body. The carbonation has a medium to soft feel in the mouth. Overall, I really like this IPA. An edgy hoppy IPA is one of my favorite types of beer.

FOOD PAIRINGS
Mexican style steak tacos, rice and beans, a hearty flame-broiled steak and fried cheese curds.

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Guinness Brewery: Hop House 13 Lager (Ireland)

While visiting Dublin, Ireland, I had the privilege to visit the world famous Guinness Brewery. While I was tasting the most famous beer Guinness makes, I bought a new lager beer that the brewery just recently released. This beer is called, Hop House 13 Lager. I was surprised Guinness was expanding their operations with a lager beer. Here are my thoughts below:

This is the third beer from the Brewhouse Project that was created by Guinness Brewery. It follows follows the recently launched Dublin Porter and West Indies Porter from 2014. The Brewhouse Project was started in September, 2013 with the purpose of creating more wholesome, flavorful and easy-drinking beers fort he public to experience.

Hop House 13 Lager is named after a 1900's hop storefront near the St. James's Gate where the old Guinness Brewery once stood. This lager came to form by the head brewer Peter Simpson a few years back.

Now, Hop House Lager 13 is available only on draft in a few bars and restaurants in Ireland. Hop House 13 Lager will be a main stay beer for the foreseeable future.

Via Drinks Ireland Industry

TASTING NOTES
The pour is a clear golden with a decent white cap that stays level the entire life of the beer. The smell or nose is malty, floral, citric aroma, sweet honey, cream and vanilla. The taste consists of a reasonable hoppy texture, grassy and some citrus such as melon or tangerine. It has a medium bodied, normal amount of carbonation and a semi dry aftertaste.

This is a drinkable slightly hopped lager that can be seen as a summer beer. It's nothing special, a fairly normal smooth lager. It could potentially be better than the average macro lager. However, I wouldn't say it's a good craft lager beer in any way. There are better lagers out there.

FOOD PAIRINGS
This beer would be perfect with any kind of summer food. Pasta salad, potato salad, BBQ pork ribs and a steak.

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Mt. Everest Brewery (Nepal)
I spent 27 days in Nepal. I tried many beers that were readily available at any restaurant or bar. Everest lager beer was my favorite out of all of them.

Everest Premium Lager Beer was created in 2003 to celebrate the 50th Golden Jubilee. This celebration kicked off the historic climb of the mighty Mount Everest by Sir Edmond Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa on the 29th May, 1953.

The label on the bottle illustrates the famous Mr. Nima Gombu Sherpa and his Everest clothing.

Using some of the best ingredients Nepal has to offer and some of the best brewing technology available in the country, it has received praise by many consumers as the best local beer. People from Nepal call it "Everest, It's our beer". With popularity growing outside Nepal, Everest Premium Lager Beer has started exporting to Japan and United Kingdom.

- Via Everest Brewing's website

TASTING NOTES:
Easy and fair larger.

The beer comes in a 650 ml brown capped bottle. The oval shaped label illustrates an image of Mr. Nima Gombu Sherpa in trekking gear and noting limited edition. The back label generalizes the narrative of the brew. Most bottles used in Nepal are reused for recycling. The bottle I had was from a Tuborg Lager beer. The beer has a ABV of 5% Alc. by Vol.

The pour is a clear brown-yellow color, extremely rich frothy head with plenty of bubbles and a none-see through glow. The smell consists of a grainy farm incense with a hint of hay or grass like smell.

The taste of the lager comes with a sweet maltiness. It has a soft touch to the lips with a hint of citrus.

The beer has a light body and medium carbonation to it. With a refreshing finish to the lager, this beer is a great way to end the day after a treacherous hike through The Himalayas.

FOOD PAIRINGS:
There's only one type of food that goes with this beer to give you the best Nepalese experience. And, that is buffalo Mo-Mo dumplings.

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961 Lebanese Pale Ale (Hong Kong)
Before my flight to Nepal, a few friends and I went out to Craft Brew Co. to try a couple new beers. I chose three beers from different parts of the world. Below are my thoughts on each one.

961 Beer began during the siege on Lebanon in July of 2006. With alack of quality beer in Lebanon, Mazen Hajjar started brewing beer in his own kitchen. The first few batches were brewed in small kettles. With war raging on, the thought of brewing wasn't the most ideal activity for Haijar, as stated on his website. They decided that brewing a good beer for their home country during the war was what they wanted to do the most.

When 961 Beer officially began brewing they were the only microbrewery in the Middle East and still are. With 2 million liters brewed each year, 961 Beer has grown form a small microbrewery to a giant in the Middle East.

-Via 961 Beer's website

TASTING NOTES:
The beer pours a nice clear amber color with a thick line of foam. The aroma of the beer is a strong, grainy and spicy smell with a lot of cilantro. I also caught whiffs of caramel and a bit of a herbal aroma. The taste begins with a caramel sweetness, then some spice of cilantro and finishes with a taste of clove (herbal). The herbal smell and taste gives the beer a crisp and refreshing flavor. The body of the beer is comes with a 6.3 % ABV rating. Overall, it has a decent showing of spice and herb/floral tastes, which makes this beer a easy one to drink.

FOOD PAIRINGS:
Spicy chicken hummus with pitta bread, Baba Ganoush and/or a Shawarma sandwich.

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Brewdog Libertine Black Ale (Scotland)

The founders of Brewdog, were disinterested with the industrialized brewed lagers and ales that flooded the UK beer market. Wanting to change the way beer was brewed in the UK, they decided the best way to fix this predicament was to brew their microbrews. In 2007, Brewdog was born. With a dog and two ambitious 24 year olds, the team leased a building in Fraserburgh, UK, obtained many bank loans and spent their remaining budget on stainless steel vats, according to Brewdog's website.

They first started selling their brews in tiny batches to local and farmers markets out of an old beat up van.

Their mission is to make other people more passionate about great craft beer just like they are.

- From the Brewdog website

TASTING NOTES:
The brew pours a dark brown, bordering on black with a tan foam. Strands of sticky foam remain after each drink. The smell is filled with citrusy hops, roasted malt, dark chocolate, fruitiness and mint - it hits the nostril with a deep sense of flavor. It's quite nice.

The taste is overwhelming in a good way with citrus flavors, bold hops, roasted malt, pine and dark chocolate flavors and a grapefruit bitterness. A robust Black IPA indeed.

The Libertine beautifully uses Pacific Northwest hops to give it a classic porter/stout flavor worth buying.

FOOD PAIRINGS:
Any kind of picnic/summer BBQ food. Perfect for the summer time.

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Mountain Goat India Pale Ale (Australia)

Mountain Goat was created a backyard in the early 1990′s. The two friends, Dave and Cam, were producing home brews every weekends when the two reconnected after a long trip by Cam.

Cam was traveling Canada after quitting his job in Melbourne, Australia. “When I turned up in Vancouver a friend took me out to some local bars serving a host of local microbrews on tap. I just suddenly got the picture and realized what Dave was striving for back home. My perception of beer got turned upside down right then and there. So I sent Dave a postcard that said something like “Dave, we gotta talk, we need to start a microbrewery in Melbourne…”

- Via the Mountain Goat Beer's website

TASTING NOTES:
The appearance gives off a deep orange color body with red highlights - a fantastic feature. There's a pleasant aroma of pine hops and some citrus fruits, grass and some floral, with a touch of malt.

The taste is again the pine up front with a good dose of bitterness from the citrus fruits. It's quite heavy for an IPA, in that it has a strong caramel malt flavor with a heavy aftertaste. With a mouthful, you get a fairly heavy body with a decent amount of carbonation. It's very drinkable.

Overall, it's quite a nice English IPA. A nicely complex beer, but the maltiness takes away from the hoppiness. Still, a really good IPA with a full body.

FOOD PAIRINGS:
Fish tacos, fried chicken, burgers etc. An IPA like this can go with any type of food.

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Hong Kong Beer Co.

I went to Hong Kong Beer Co. on Saturday afternoon. I bought a flight of the 5 beers HKBC is known for. The bartender gave me some really good insight on how the beers tasted and what they were made of. Below are 5 reviews of the beers I had with explanations from the bartender at HKBC.

Here's a little bit about Hong Kong Beer Co.'s background. The brewery was launched as Asia’s first craft brewery to sell beer exclusively in bottles and kegs in 1995. The original name was South China Brewing Company but, changed to the current name in 2003.

Simon Pesch, the lead brewer with 20 years of experience with Pyramid Breweries, produces 167,000 hectoliters (140,000 barrels) of beer annually. Simon's brews are widely claimed as some of the best in the world. With 1 bronze, 2 silver, and 6 gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival, HKBC is well on it's way to becoming a well-known brewing company. He also was awarded the highly regarded Brewers Association's Brewer of the year award for mid-sized breweries. The brewing company is well on its way to becoming the top brewery in SE Asia.

The beer is brewed locally in the Chai Wan district of Hong Kong Island. The massive warehouse, where the brewery is located, houses state of the art vats that can hold 6,000 hectoliters (5,000 barrels) of craft beer annually.

What makes HKBC beer so unique is the local water used to make the beer. Yes, the brewery sources their hops, malts and yeast from around the world. But, the local water is what gives each beer its crisp refreshing flavor.

On to the reviews of the top 5 beers at Hong Kong Beer Co.

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TASTING NOTES:
The Gambler's Gold has a light roasted flavor. This is probably due to the light maltiness. There's a fruity ester accent that gives the beer a smooth finish. This dry ale carefully brewed with European malt and noble North American hops has everything you need for a crisp refreshing drink at the end of a hard work week.

SUGGESTED FOOD PAIRINGS:
I would recommend this beer with any local spicy Cantonese cuisine, creamy garlic linguini with seafood and grilled chicken with twice baked potato.

TASTING NOTES:
More hoppy and bold than a typical lager, this beer is to be enjoyed during a hot summer day. Its crisp, refreshing Amber finish will have you reaching for another one, two or three.

SUGGESTED FOOD PAIRINGS:
This beer is perfect for causal drinking during a game or party. It's good with a double cheese burger, a beer bratwurst with grilled onions and baby back ribs with sweet BBQ sauce.

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TASTING NOTES:
Medium-bodied brew that gives the malt flavor a pick me up each type you take a sip. The American hops increase the refreshment and aroma levels.

SUGGESTED FOOD PAIRINGS:
Try with any hearty cuisines from Southeast Asia. Personally, I like it with a Taiwanese chicken kebab, Vietnamese fried chicken or Hong Kong seafood stew.

TASTING NOTES:
The richly toasted and dark malts define this style. This silky-smooth brew gives any beer lover a satisfying feeling after consumption.

SUGGESTED FOOD PAIRINGS:
Famously a popular way to wash down Hong Kong oysters. Also delicious with roasted meats, dark chocolates and well-aged sharp cheeses.

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TASTING NOTES:
This is a dry-hopped local brewed beer that has all the right balance and flavor to give a spicy dish a fight back. Its robust flavors sit on a rich base of malt, complimented by a nice balance of bitterness, and the citrus and pine aromas of American Cascade hops.

SUGGESTED FOOD PAIRINGS:
This beer is perfect for those spicy Cantonese dishes. I recommend the beer with Galbi Udon noodles with chicken, Galbi pork fried rice and spicy seafood gumbo.