Third Street Brewhouse Minnesota Gold Lager

Third Street Brewhouse Minnesota Gold Lager. 3.9 % ABV. 12 IBU. ThirdStreet Brewhouse, Cold Spring, MN.

Clear, bright gold, large white head, softly settling.

In the nose: light, delicate, subtle...not much more to it. Soft malt character.

In the mouth: Light hops. Lightly toasted malt. Supremely drinkable. Crisp and clean. Nothing wrong with it. Actually, quite good.

This one's been around for years, but I'm tasting it for the first time because someone finally gave me a sample. I was never going to buy one on my own. Now that I've had it, hey it's a classic light lager. And you can drink it. Take that for what it's worth.

We are Minnesota, Land of 10,000 lakes. If we’ve got anything up here, it’s water. And we like our water. But more than that… we like to see our water put to good use. That’s why our brewers made Minnesota Gold, to see real Minnesota water brewed into a classic, premium quality lager. So please, go ahead and crack open a can. Here in your hands is a clean taste of Minnesota, from us to you.

ABV: 3.9 / IBU: 12
COLOR: Golden

MALTS: 2-Row, C60

HOPS: Hersbrucker, Willamette

BEST PAIRED WITH: 

Pairs well with many foods – suggestions include: herbed chicken, light seafood, salmon, burgers & hot dogs, mild cheeses, lemon based desserts.

Third Street Brewhouse Sugar Shack Maple Stout

Third Street Brewhouse Sugar Shack Maple Stout, brewed by Third Street Brewhouse, Cold Spring, MN.

I'm still on the fence with these guys. Not in their court yet, not even close. Some are good, none are great, I'm kind of like, "eh", is how I am. So, here's another, and it's something I've never had before…a stout with maple. Huh. Well, here we go.

Full-on blackness, beneath a rich roasted tan head, lasting long. Looks good, looks good.

Aroma: dark malt, chocolate, …dark fruits..-ish? Beyond that, I'm getting an empty set.

Taste: Okay. Malt. Bitter hops, a bit. Sweetness, for a bit. And then…suddenly, in rushes the maple sweetness. Not too sweet, thankfully, but there's the flavor, kept in check with hop bitterness. Nice balance. More cocoa rises out of the flavor, matched by the maple, …and then not much. I imagined that I was in for a strong maple flavor, overwhelming all else, dripping with the syrup-y stuff. Maybe that's a pessimistic viewpoint? That I expected more than I wanted, and yet wound up with less? Huh…

Okay, now it's time to turn the label and find out what it says: Again with the all caps. Here we go…"Tucked in the backwoods of the legendary Saint John's Abbey, the Sugar Shack is operated by monks passing on century-old secrets and providing some seriously sweet history. These guys take maple syrup making as seriously as we take great beer making. These discerning monks have given Third Street Brewhouse exclusive rights (yep, that means just us) to pair their notorious sweet blend with our perfectly crafted beer so we can bring you the Sugar Shack Maple Stout."

So many problems with this overblown copy. "Perfectly crafted"?Don't ever say that. Good lord, never say that you are perfect. Once you tell me that you are perfect, I stop listening to you. Is there really a Saint John's Abbey somewhere, (if it's so legendary, why haven't I heard of it?) or is this more bullcrap? I'd love to be proven wrong, but it just feels so very fictional. The whole yarn is well-spun malarkey, and the end product is rather blase.

(Okay, I'm wrong. But, still.)

I didn't buy this beer, I waited until I got a sample. I'm glad I finally tried, and I'm grateful for the freebie. But this is unexceptional, at the very least, and the overblown puffery in "The Story" really turns me off. I have to say that we're stuck here. I will continue to try these guys for free, but I'm not spending any more of my own money on them. It's all a lot of "so what." nothing that they've brewed has done anything for me, especially when compared to what they themselves say about it. So. Keep trying, Third Street, and I'll keep trying to like your beers.

Third Street BrewHouse Rise to the Top Cream Ale

Once again, horray for samples! This here beer is one I was holding back on, because of my dislike of the "cream ale" style. Luckily, their distributor came through and I got a 4-pack of samples, which included 3 I've already written about here, purchased with my own money. This one, I really didn't want to spend my own dime on. The only other one I'm missing is their pumpkin ale, which I might be able to still snag. Nonetheless, here are tonight's notes on what might be their most popular beer, the cream ale from Third Street BrewHouse, aka Cold Spring Brewing, Rise to the Top:

Third Street BrewHouse Rise to the Top Cream Ale, Alc. 4.1%.

Hazy, pale yellow cast, small white head.

Aroma: soft, citric, lightly floral, a touch of sweetness.

Taste: Starts with a tidy hop snap (not quite a bite), here comes a squirt of lemon, a bit of bitterness, then it's all smoothness and light. Faint finish, light body.

Cream ales are all fine, but they'll never be a choice for me. You may have seen my review of Anheuser-Busch's Natural Ice, which won the gold medal at this year's Great American Beer Festival in the Cream Ale category. If that's the best that a cream ale can be, this is way off of the mark. And, still, I find no special thrill in it. It's decent, you can drink, and it's beer. But…blah.

Hey, there's a story! How about some gobbledygook?
"Wusses need not apply. In the quest to be the best, obstacles are obliterated. Like a barrel-chested brewer lets nothing stop him in his journey to reach the top. {huh? That's a sentence?} We've bottled that don't-hold-back, bar-none, full-flavor into Rise to the Top Cream Ale, and nothing says manly like cream on top." {What?}
That's right, we said it. We mean it, You like it. We know you do."

Oh, please. This puffery is only slightly true if your target market happens to have previously believed Miller Lite to be a macho drink. I wish I could get over the poor writing, and awful marketing, but the blase' beer doesn't help, either. I'm still hanging on for Third Street beer I might actually be able to say  that I like.

Third Street Brewhouse Three Way Pale Ale

  Third Street Brewhouse Three Way Pale Ale. 5.2% ABV. 12 fl. oz. It's a pale ale, and I'm gonna drink it up.

Appearance: Lightly hazed, amber colored, small head that quits quickly. 'sokay.

Aroma: Nice and hoppy, featuring notes of citrus and pine, with some caramel /butterscotch notes. Just shy of diacetyl, but not unpleasant. Feels like a mix of English and American hops at work.

Taste: Slight bitterness up front, with lemon and pine notes, and an underlying sweetness. Lean bodied, light finish. I like it for a minute, then I don't care for it, then I tolerate it, then I'm indifferent. This will do in a pinch. I tossed the first 4 bottles in the six-pack rather easily, but sitting down and studying this bottle's contents…eh, it's fine. But not much more.

Well, it's beer and I can drink it.

Hey, there's a story: "The Story: Our obsession with the number three is getting so out of control that we've named our beer three way. Too much? Didn't think so.This sessional pale ale is unlike many others. Not only because of it's three distinct hops and three select malts but this brew is a conversation starter, a proposition and a punch line all rolled into one.
And hey if it works, you're welcome."

I feel dumber for having read that. And I can see how this name would backfire. "What are you drinking?" she asks coyly. He answers in a cocksure manner: "I'm having me a three way!" Her" "All by yourself? Good luck with that."

Third Street BrewHouse Bitter Neighbor Black IPA

Someone asked me recently about Third Street BrewHouse, before I ever tried their wares, before they released anything, this question: "Do you think they have anything to do with Cold Spring Brewery?", in that they are in the city of Cold Spring, Minnesota. I said something along the lines of, "they'd have to be, no one would ever take on that poisonous association." Cold Spring Brewing has been long known as one of the nation's worst breweries, at least when it comes to the online internet beer geek reviewers, (a subspecies I belong to, naturally). They were once the makers of the Gluek line of crummy brews, and finally lost all vestiges of that brand a few years ago.

Well, I was right. Cold Spring created this new brand, built an entirely new brewery, and hired very competent hands (Horace Cunningham, formerly of Summit). Perhaps the hand-drawn lettering and rough pencil artwork is meant to suggest honesty, raw integrity, deep-down craftsmanship? Maybe so.

Well, let's find out what they're all about, with some Bitter Neighbor Black IPA India Pale Ale. Careful perusers of this blog will know of my constant struggle with the still very new sort-of-style. We're teeter-tottering between the well-mashed and the utterly imbalanced. I need to research my own notes to find out just how this pseudo style has fared, good (in my opinion) versus not so good.

Let's crack this and find out…

6.5% ABV.
Appearance: Fully black, no light escapes, unless you really, really try, nice cocoa/tan head, tight 1/4" , lasting long.

Aroma: cocoa and cream, and a faint whiff of grassy hops. Smooth and balanced.

Taste: No real threat from hops at the start, fairly mild, but there. Pleasant on the palate, then the malt comes in, again, very well-mannered, not brash or brusque and rude in any fashion, just knocking on the door and taking it's shoes off. Well comported body, medium, with a lightly hoppy, chocolatey finish. Toasty, just-a-little-bit-bitter malty flavor.

Taking a break now to read the label. "The Story. You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family. You can pick where you live, but you can't pick your neighbors. That is, until now. When you pick up a glass filled with frothy, dark-colored bitter neighbor black IPA, it won't leave a bad taste in your mouth. In fact, it's quite good. (Sorry, we can't help you with the family part.)
Malts: Pale, caramel, Munich, Roasted Black. Hops: German & US (Magnum, Hersbrucker, Amarillo, Cascade.)

(Quick note about that copy. Breweries should never describe their beers as "nice" or "good." Just tell us how you made it and what flavors we might find, let us make the judgement about how nice and good it is.)

I've downed a few of these already, without taking notes, just drinking. And it drinks well. But considering what they expect that we get from this, and comparing this against others in this loosely collected category, I find Bitter Neighbor lacking. For one, not bitter enough. Hardly enough hops or bitterness to warrant calling it any kind of an IPA. Black it is, though, and actually quite tasty, and consumable, indeed.

If we just want to rave about beers that aren't bad coming out of a brewery known for awful crap, then we can do that. If we want to talk about something memorable, we can't do it here.

By the way, if this was just called a porter, I might not have said a lot of these words.