New Glarus Unplugged Smoked Rye Ale (365 Day 85)

By scot in 365 Days of American Craft Beer on Thursday, February 24th, 2011

New Glarus Unplugged Smoked Rye Ale

As the American craft beer scene continues to develop, more and more breweries have jumped on the limited release band wagon. It seems that they are only fueling the thirst that beer drinkers and nerds have: annual releases, release parties, and hard to get beers. The beer connoisseur wants to be the guy online bragging about the greatest rare release that everyone has to have but only 200 bottles were produced.

Fortunately, some breweries haven’t taken to that extreme, with New Glarus being one of those with their Unplugged series of beers. They release, in smaller batches but not the minuteness of beers mentioned above. As long as you can get to Wisconsin, you should be able to get some. Also, these beers are quite good with some even demanding an encore performance.

New Glarus’s most recent Unplugged release is Smoked Rye Ale. This is a rye ale with a TON of smoke in it. I felt like strips of bacon where in the beer, which is usually a good thing for me, but in this case: yuck. I am not a fan of smoked beers but I thought I would take a chance on Smoke Rye Ale as New Glarus usually doesn’t let me down. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be this time. The smoke is so over the top it drowns out just about every and any other aspect of the beer on the nose and mouth. I am sure that some people will really like this beer but it just doesn’t agree with me. Enjoy!

Aroma: 7, Taste: 6, Look: 9, Drinkability: 5, Overall: 6.4

Useless Fact: The average cough comes out of your mouth at 60 miles (96.5 km) per hour.