Bloomington Tastes and Other News

Upland's Pro-Am Rauchbier of Tom Wallbank is on tap (and growlers) at the Tap Room. The cordovan red color and tight ivory head make a good presentation. Classic Bambug taste. Smoke is not as strong as Schlenkerla but sharper than Spezial and with a very dry finish. 5.4%. Tom's homebrewed prototype is more Schlenkerlese but the final product is no doubt more suited to Upland's clientele.

Mothra, the 80-bbl wine cask has a double batch in it and is soaking for next year's lambics. Caleb is thinking Kiwi, Raspberry, Cherry, and maybe Persimmons in a spring release.

  • Upland Weizenbock – Reddish brown. Nice sweet malt hit. Balanced. Hints of orangey citrius. Stays balanced through the finish. 4.5% but seems more.
  • Dupland Double IPA – Golden with a fluffy white head that looks harmless but just keeps the character hidden underneath. There's very little aroma to warn you of the closet cleaning of hops. At 9.1% and "80+" IBU it is indeed a hop bomb.
  • Bloomington Brewing Mild. 1) Served very cold. 2) Nice brown/orange color, where's my sea bass flashlight?. 3) Floyd, this is too cold. 4) High carbonation. 5) Good British Mild  or Southern Brown. Bright and earthy at the same time.

On the BRIPA trail, Upland's Porter (4.4% – 19 IBU) and Dragonfly (6.0 – 39) mix gives a malt-predominant but balanced beer that is eminently quaffable. Some overtones of Old Ale stock come through from the porter. Try it for yourself.

Bloomington Brewing is now in 28 places in Bloomington and 4 in Nashville. When the leaves turn and you drive around Brown County, get Floyds beers at the Holy Cow, Ordinary Tavern, Pine Room, or Old Golf Club; all fine sounding pubs.

Lennie's has BB's Pale and Stout both on three ways – CO2, Nitro, and Handpull.

The Louisville Brew at the Zoo's "Best Of Brews" went to the New Albanian and Jared sounds proud.

Kentucky Ale's Pro-Am Cream Ale will be on tap in Louisville for 3 nights.

Tuesday, September 1 at Brendan's Restaurant & Pub
Wednesday, September 2 at O'Shea's Irish Pub
Monday, September 13 at Cumberland Brews

Monk's Cafe in Philly is closed indefinitely after two people fell from a 4th floor fire escape when a rusted railing broke. articleblog.

A tale of a brewery hop harvest. Small hops farms are springing up all over America.

4 comments:

rodney said...

I'm going to have to beg to differ here and say that the Upland rendition of Tom's rauchbier is not at all comparable to Bamberg. That's not to say it's bad, it's just not German Rauchbier. I did not have the homebrew recipe so I can't say how close the original came.

Unknown said...

Tom Wallbank had some of his homebrewed at last Saturday's FBI meeting. The biggest change from homebrew to 20bbl was the malt. Tom homesmoked his but smoking something like 300 lbs wasn't feasible so Weyermann's smoked malt was used at Upland.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the Upland beer used Briess cherry wood smoked malt. We tried 4 sources of Weyermann smoked malt (mini mashes and well as homebrewed batches) and none had the smoke intensity necessary even at 90+% of the grist. While the smoke character of the Upland beer is a little differnet than those I sampled in Bamberger this spring, the intensity, malt richness, and bitterness I beleive come thru as targeted. Tom.

Unknown said...

Tom, My apologies for getting that wrong. Thanks for the insight.

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