Inaugural post with trade haul and review!

I've been thinking about setting up a blog for awhile to highlight some of my adventures in craft beer. I'll be posting up some beer reviews, reports on local releases, home brewing trials and tribulations, trading results /experiences, and other various things. This will hopefully occur on a fairly regular basis.

Trade that just came in today:

3 x Three Floyds Dark Lord (white - 2008, black - 2009, green - 2010), Russian River Pliny the Elder, Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout, and Bell's 9000. The Pliny, KBS, and 9000 were excellent extras!

I figured I'd get this kicked off with a review of a great beer and one of my favorites, Russian River Pliny the Elder, especially since this just came in today. Pliny is a year round beer, but is under high demand and limited distribution. Pliny is currently rated #7 in the world on Beer Advocate. It weighs in at 8% abv.

This bottle of Pliny was bottled on 03/21/2010, so this bottle is fairly fresh. The Plinys I've had in the past have been about a month old as well. I poured the Pliny into my tulip glass where it gave a lot of fluffy white head and a fresh hop aroma. You can already see the head sticking all over the glass in the photo. The aroma has a mix of pine and grapefruit hop scents backed up with a sweet scent from the malt. They should make car fresheners that smell like Pliny. The flavor is filled with hops. Lots of grapefruit and pine flavors from the hops. The hops supply a great bitterness to go along with the luscious hop flavors. The beauty of Pliny that you don't always find it other bitter west coast IPAs is a solid malt backbone, which donates a sweet caramel flavor. The malt is definitely in the background, but the subtly that allows this to be a hop forward beer without owning your mouth is really what sets Pliny apart and makes it one of the most enjoyable imperial IPAs to drink. Pliny's medium bodied with just the right amount of carbonation. This is a beer that I would buy by the case if I were able too. I'll probably end up making a homebrew clone of this one of these days. Here's a link to a clone recipe that had some help from RR's Vinnie Cilurzo.