Sips

Today’s offering is from Ryan in Atlanta. He sent me a twenty pound box that I should be able to get a couple blogs from. This one is Devil’s Harvest from Southern Prohibition Brewing out of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I don’t think I’ve had anything from that state before, but I could be wrong. Either way, this was a lot better than I was expecting it to be.

There are two real cool things I liked about this beer before even opening it:
1) it’s labeled as a “breakfast IPA”.
2) the bottom of the can does not only provide the Canned on date of 07/18/17, but it also says “Canned by Nick”, and there’s something funny about that to me.

It poured a thick foamy head with lasting lacing and looked like a breakfast juice – cloudy and a kind of pineapple/orange juice mix color. Smell is danky citrusy, with a pretty good grapefruit presence. It’s got a pleasant hoppy taste – kind of lemony and some tangy grapefruit notes. At 4.9% abv, it’s got a mild and smooth feel, and is very easily sippable. After only a few drinks, I was wishing he had sent more than one.

I still have two more of these entries for the moment, probably will do the other one tomorrow, but for now, here’s an entry for a beer from Ben, a Wisconsinite who is my source for big bottles of Toppling Goliath beers. He recently sent me Fire, Skulls, and Money (a beer I want to try mostly because of the Warren Zevon song “Lawyers, Guns, and Money”) and Sosus, a beer I have wanted to try for a long time, and yes, it was worth it. However, this blog post will be about a collaboration between a Wisconsin brewery and one only about an hour from me in Illinois.

It’s Creamsicle Ale by Untitled Art of Waunakee, WI and Mikerphone in Elk Grove Village. When I opened the box, the first thing I saw on the top label of the bottle was the Mikerphone insignia, and I thought “Why is somebody from Wisconsin sending me a beer I could get if I was motivated enough to make the drive north?” Then I saw Untitled Art on the big label and realized that it was a collaboration, and I always enjoy seeing what two breweries can do together.

To the beer!

It looks like orange juice in terms of color, that’s for sure, and I can’t see through it with all the cloudiness. There’s very little foam to it, but a slight amount of lacing. Smell is a straight up slap of citrus (mostly orange) with a very slight bit of bitter hoppiness underneath. Taste is really fun – citrus and orange is the first thing I notice, but there’s a definite presence of cream and a slight bitter tangy hop under that. It’s very easy to sip and real mild for a 7% abv. It’s a very flavorful, very well balanced beer, and it more than lives up to the name. I’d recommend it, and I have to find some stuff to send to the friendly cheesehead who sent it to me!