I was hoping to taste one of their barrel-aged beers or an IPA or Double IPA but luck was not on my side. Much like my Black Saturday trip to Dogfish, I arrived on a day when the taps were loaded with darker beers. Along with the Primal Pale Ale and Exile ESB, the taps were loaded with the Lucky 7 Porter, the Rise Up Stout, and the Rice Rice Baby. I’d had the Primal and Exile before and both are solid beers. Actually, while drinking the Exile, it occurred to me that it might be a good substitute for Fat Tire (which is finally coming to MD in September). Both are well balanced flavorful beers that go down easy. I’m expecting some Fat Tire in late March and I will do a blind test.
Back to the tasting, the Lucky 7 Porter is really good. I over-did it with dark beers back in my home-brewing days, so I rarely drink them now. The 1997 version of me would have been all over the Porter and especially the Stout. The Rise Up Stout is brewed with local Rise Up coffee (thus the name) and is well-balanced and delicious. The Rice Rice Baby is brewed with an addition of brown rice. The Mrs. hated it. I thought it was kind of neat - like a sweeter slightly stronger brown ale. It offers a lot more malt than hop flavor and a little sake sweetness. I picked up a growler to go and plan to take it to band practice this week. I'll follow up with a report of what my band mates think of it.
In closing - well balanced seems to be the theme for Evo. None of their beers blew me away or knocked me over the head with a hop explosion, but that’s not a bad thing. In current landscape of extreme beers (double IPA’s, bret, belgo, historic recipes, etc) it’s refreshing to have an up and comer focusing on solid classic session beers. hocofood@@@
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