Tag: 3 floyds

3 Floyds “Barbarian Haze” and “Speed Castle Lager” hitting Iowa shelves this week!

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**Barbarian Haze** – 6.5% ABV – “At long last, we bring you our take on a Hazy IPA. It’s no secret that most of our portfolio is hop forward, flavorful, unfiltered. With Barbarian Haze, we took the hopping protocol a bit further, using some new age brewing alchemy coupled with our old school heavy handed approach. Fans of the style will recognize the complex soft malt character that helps balance the generous hop additions for supreme drinkability.

**Speed Castle** – 5.6% ABV – “Our newest year-round beer has arrived – Speed Castle Pilsner. Using hops sourced from German farms, American Pilsner malt, and hand-selected fresh or ‘wet’ hops, Speed Castle is a crisp, refreshing and world-ending Pilsner.

Coming to Shelves: New Belgium, Boulevard, Founders

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boulevardHave some beers that are going to be making their way to Eastern Iowa shelves soon. Some are new and some are seasonals that we’ve seen before. From beerpulse.com.

Coming from Boulevard for the Tasting Room pack:
*ESB
*Ginger-Lemon Radler

Here’s more from the brewery:

Brewmaster Steven Pauwels encourages our brewers to brew whatever they’d like and then the best beers are given the opportunity to leave the brewery to be shared with a wider drinking audience. The two Year-Round beers featured in our upcoming package will be Unfiltered Wheat Beer and Single-Wide IPA. Rotating in from the Tasting Room series will be an ESB (Extra Special Bitter) and Ginger-Lemon Radler.

foundersFrom the Founders:
Rubaeus
Old Curmudgeon

From the brewery:

Be on the lookout for Rubaeus, our summer seasonal. It will be available in May–or earlier in some of our markets. It’s brewed with fresh raspberries added during multiple stages of fermentation.

Curmudgeon Old Ale, an old ale brewed with molasses and an insane focus on the malt bill, then oak-aged, has already started hitting shelves and draft lines. It’s our April-June specialty release.

New Belgium is releasing a familiar brew but also has a collab in the works with 3 Floyds.

From New Belgium:
Skinny Dip
FOCOllaboration w/Odell Brewing (American Pale Ale)
Gratzer Ale w/3 Floyds

gratzerGratzer is a Polish beer style composed primarily of oak-smoked wheat. More from the brewery:

NEXT WEEK:

Skinny Dip makes a comeback this summer as the Revival Beer in bottle Folly Packs. This full-bodied, highly drinkable beer made its mark as a summer seasonal.

JUNE 1ST:

We teamed up with our hometown hop heroes at Odell to brew a FOrt COllins collaboration. Our proximity allowed sharing of ingredients to create this unique Pale Ale. If only we could employ prairie dogs that in habit the space between us to courier the Fawcett malt, an Odell standard, we used to complement our favored Centennial, Cascade and Citra hops.

In the heart of the Midwest is a very small brewery with a very big reputation. In spite of their super limited distribution, Munster, Indiana’s 3 Floyds is known far and wide for beers like Alpha King, Dark Lord and Dreadnaught. We got together and brewed a gratzer with them and in June we’ll release it as part of the Lips of Faith series.

Beer Review #97: 3 Floyds Gumballhead

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gumballheadAmerican-style wheat beers had become relatively insignificant to me as I delved deeper into the craft beer world. I would often run into watery, flavorless, trivial American-wheat beers still wanting to give them a fair shake and then after trying, realizing why I should avoid them. I started my love of craft beer drinking Boulevard Wheat and I will still go back to that beer, it is maybe one of the most popular American wheats out there and a great stepping stone from the Buds, Coors, and Millers, have the world into the realm of craft beer. That all changed on a Saturday in Chicago, IL.

My wife’s family had a weekend planned in the Windy City and since my Dodgers were in town to face the Cubs it was the perfect opportunity to take the kids to a ball game. Beautiful weather, a couple of beers, the smell of stale piss, and hot dogs, made for a great day. Towards the end of the game my brother-in-law, Clem, asked if I would be interested in hitting a few bars around Wrigleyville. He was familiar with the area, and I wasn’t, so we got the ok from the rest of the family and started our wonderful beer journey. We hit up Goose Island and then went to what is known as an Iowa bar?, Merkles (www.merkleschicago.com). Seeing a sign advertising $3 draws of Dogfish Head Aprihop made it a relatively easy decision. Anyway……. after a few Aprihops I decided to try Gumballhead, this was before 3 Floyds blew up as a brewery, and I was blown away by it! Calling it an American-wheat is kind of misleading as this beer packs a pretty amazing hop punch, not much wheat present in this beer, maybe a bit on the palate at the end of the beer, but I don’t care, this a very drinkable, thirst quenching, brew. From the brewery:

An American Wheat Beer brewed with red wheat and boat loads of amarillo hops gives this summer brew a lemony finish. The slight haze in the bottle is from the bottle-conditioning, where yeast is added to the bottle for a secondary fermentation. Gumballhead is a Skingraft Comics hero. Check out Skingraft Comics and Records at http://www.skingraftrecords.com. Cheers!

I realize I brag up 3 Floyds a lot on this blog, but I think it is totally justifiable by the product they put out. Nothing is half-assed, just full-out great beer. If you haven’t tried their products yet, buy whatever you can and just appreciate the fact that you can get your hands on their products because they are one of, if not, the best thing going today.

REVIEW

Style: American Wheat

ABV: 5.5%

Purchased at: Merkle’s bar, but now head to Madison or Chicago or just go to Munster, IN.

Pour: Cloudy yellow pour with a thick white head.

Aroma: Citrus hops stand out.

Flavor: Citrus hops stand out, a tad bitter but mellowed by the malt. Not much wheat flavor.

Ratebeer.com rating: 98/100

Beeradvocate.com rating: 94/100

Overall: A-

My recommendation: Like I said above, buy any and all 3 F’s products.