Wine Focus for August: Beer and other cooling libations

Street party downtown Saturday so popped into one of the local bars. Tried the New Belgium Brewing IPA, Colorado. Very flashy website I see but found the beer way too hoppy and unbalanced on the finish.
Beer Advocat guys seem to like it so best to say not my style!

I haven't posted anything about MOCOOL wines, because I spent too much time having fun to take notes. However, I did bring with me a few bottles of Leonard Oakes Steampunk Cider. This is a great sparkling cider - very refreshing and comes in at 7% ABV.
Here is an older link. http://www.buffalonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121003/LIFE01/121009851/1057

It took us almost 17 stinkin' years, but last week we finally found a BBQ joint in NJ that meets my Kansas City wife's insanely high "I won a category gold medal at the American Royal, sucker" standards. It's not *quite* as good as any number of those storied Midwestern establishments, but it's so close as to be of no real consequence.

Today is my wife's birthday, so I stopped there on my way home from work and picked up a selection of ribs, brisket, burnt ends and pulled pork (I promised her I'd pretend I wasn't a vegetarian on this her big day...but just for a day).

After that I stopped at Gary's for a bottle of Maker's Mark to make her favorite mint julep, but passing by the cooler section I spotted single large bottles of Schlenkerla Rauchbier (Smokebeer). Smoked beer! With BBQ!

It was as good as it sounds. We both smell like a pitmaster's wood pile now. Mmmmmmmm......

Kékette bière blonde

All the local publicity and the waitress told me that I was drinking a Norman artisanal beer but, on reading the back label, it transpired that the contents of this bottle had been brewed at Douai in Northern France. Furthermore a newspaper article reveals that some of their brews are made as far away as Binche in Belgium. So this is Norman beer ?

That said, this was a pleasantly refreshing drink with more weight than the likes of cosmopolitan Carlsberg or Heineken, a gently honeyed note infusing the malt flavour and a clean bitter finish.

Tonight I ordered a Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar, which was pretty interesting and mostly came off well with the different nutty flavors. But there was the underlying suspicion of off flavors, which I suspect is from poor handling at some point. (In my experience, this is just as much of a problem - if not worse - with beer as with wine. I remember being sensitive to this in beer even when I was an undergrad, almost 20 years ago).

Undergrad 20 yrs ago..that long Rahsaan .