Brewed by longtime Massachusetts brewer, Dann Paquette, Pretty Things Beer & Ale Company was started in 2008 after he returned from brewing in Yorkshire, England. Jack D'or Saison Americain was launched first as the flagship beer, and Pretty Things hasn't looked back since. Dann started out renting space at the Paper City brewery in Holyoke, MA but has since moved on to renting space on a much bigger system at the former Buzzards Bay Brewery in Westport, MA. A bigger system means more beer, and more beer means we can more regularly get Dann's delicious (and pretty) beers. Jack D'or is a classical Belgian style Saison with a bunch of American hops thrown into the mix. The result? Well, let's see:

Appearance: This beer pours with a big, dense, pillowy white head. Not as fluffy and light as some Saisons, but you can immediately smell the hops! A dark golden hued, slightly cloudy beer sits under it... being a bomber, you get a second pour and this one is much cloudier from the yeast. In the past, Dann has told us to tip the bottle before opening to distribute the yeast as this lends it the flavor he intended.

Smell: The first thing you get, as mentioned above, is hops. You can literally smell it while pouring without even getting your nose close. This comes with a great spicy, phenolic smell from the yeast that really complements the the citrusy aromas of the hops. There is a hint of malt in here, but maybe only because I know it's there?

Taste: To sum this up as succinctly as possible, this beer is dry on the end and bitter up front through the finish. It's delicious! The carbonation is nice and light, a bit prickly even. The dry and bitter along with the carbonation would be great on a hot summer day! We can only imagine sipping a glass of this while sitting outside in the sun on a hammock. At the very end you get a hint of alcohol, but not in a bad way at all. This beer is dry and super hop and yeast forward, exactly what I like in a Saison with an American twist.

As you may remember from our Beer and Cheese Pairing Article: Eat Local, Drink Local, this beer goes great with cheese, especially one with some shallots in it. Give the pairing a shot, or just drink the beer. Either way, it'll be delicious!

Hop Diggity is an IPA we brewed in April of 2010. We wanted a very hoppy beer with tons of hop flavor that came in at about 6.5% abv. In our minds, 6.5% abv is a solid IPA but not overwhelmingly alcoholic or heavy for the summer. We wanted it dry and bitter, but to still have some malt behind it... we didn't want bitter hop juice. This recipe was somewhat inspired by Bell's Brewing Company's Two Hearted Ale, which uses all Centennial hops. The result is a very tasty beer that feels like a blend of Bell's Two Hearted and Sierra Nevada Torpedo. While there's no doubt that at 94 IBUs this is a bitter beer it doesn't crush your pallet right away. The addition of much of the hops later in the boil gives a great depth of flavor that any hop head will appreciate.

For a tutorial on how to brew, and to see the methods we used for this article, check out our How to Home Brew Guide.

Centennial hops are known for their citrusy aroma (they're basically Cascade, the preeminent US hop, on steroids), which we love. We wanted to expand upon the Centennial a little bit and get some more grapefruit and orange flavors from the hops, which explains the use of Amarillo and Chinook late in the boil, which is where hop aroma and flavor comes from. Chinook is know to provide some pine, as well, but we've found the particular flowers we use (grown in Jeff's backyard) are especially grapefruity.

We used Maris Otter for a base malt as it provides a little more character than simple 2-row. It's an English malt and is great for IPAs, Pale Ales and any English style, really. It gives just a bit more malt body with some mild nuttiness. We like it a lot and think it makes a great IPA! We also added a little Vienna malt to get some biscuity malt flavor and to darken the brew a little. Lastly, the Crystal malt was used to balance the hop bitterness with residual sweet, caramelly flavor.

Stats:

• Target Original Gravity: 1.066
• Target Final Gravity: 1.015-1.020
• 94 IBUs

Recipe:

• Mash at 146-148 degrees Fahrenheit for 60 minutes
• Collect 6-6.5 gallons of wort so that you end up with 5 gallons after boiling
• Prime with 4 oz of table sugar when bottling

For a tutorial on how to brew, and to see the methods we used for this article, check out our How to Home Brew Guide.

Grain:

• 10 lbs Maris Otter Malt
• 2 lbs Vienna Malt
• 1 lb Crystal Malt (20L)

Hops Schedule (All times are time until the boil ends, i.e. the 60 minute addition is done when you still have 60 minutes of boil time to go. Hops are pellets unless otherwise noted.):

• 1.5 oz Centennial - 60 minutes
• 0.5 oz Centennial - 30 minutes
• 0.5 oz Cascade - 10 minutes
• 0.5 oz Amarillo - 10 minutes
• 0.25 oz Cascade - Flameout (aka 0 minutes)
• 1 oz Whole Flower Chinook - Flameout
• 1.25 oz Cascade - Dry Hops - 1 week of contact time

Yeast:

• WLP 001 California Ale

Review

Appearance: A hazy orange body in the light, this beer is a murky burnt sienna/rust color without direct illumination. It's got a cream to off-white head that is big and clingy! A few minutes after pouring it's still going quite strong. It started at four fingers, and now it's down to one and doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

Smell: Hops. Tons of grapefruit and pineapple up front. There isn't much malt in the aroma, just hops. It's fairly dry smelling and you really can't smell the 6.5% abv at all.

Taste: Now this is the most important part of any beer, especially homebrew. Your friends will put up with an ugly beer that doesn't smell like much if it's delicious. And this one is! Up front there's a ton of bitterness with the Maris Otter malt there just enough to hold it together. There's just enough breadiness to give the hops a great canvas to display on. After a second in your mouth, this beer really shines (and it was good right away). There's tons of hop flavor, a lot of citrus from the American hops. There's pineapple from the Amarillo and grapefruit from the Chinook with the general citrusyness of Cascade rounding the whole thing out. The hops lend this beer a juicy quality, and it's just a great flavor to go on top of a mild sweetness from the malt. It ends on a fruity citrus hop note then, after you swallow, the bitterness persists for a few minutes. You can bet we'll make this one again!

We've here at DrinkCraftBeer.com have been digging craft beer in cans for a while now. So, when we heard there was a new canned IPA in Boston, we had to give it a try! We've heard a lot about Central City's Red Racer IPA, both that it's a great beer and that they were having some legal problems Bear Republic in California regarding the name and font. Let's forget the legal issues for a second; we're not here to discuss intellectual property, we're here to drink craft beer! Now, on to the beer:

Appearance: This IPA pours with a huge thick, taupe head that lasts and last and lasts! It just doesn't go away, that's some serious head retention! As the head shrinks, it just gets denser somehow. The beer is a dark copper color, like an old penny, and totally clear.

Smell: WHOA! HOPS! All we can smell is hops. This is literally like sticking your nose in a bag of hops. Very few IPAs we've ever had even come close to this one, there is no other aroma coming through. Go buy a bag of hops at your local homebrew store... we'll wait.

Got the hops? Good. Breath deep, really smell them. Now you've smelled this beer!

Taste: The beer starts out dry but not super bitter. Some light caramelly malt flavors come through but quickly give way to piney hops and a mild bitterness that stays on the back of the tongue. As much as this IPA reeks of hops, we expected more bitterness and flavor to be honest. It's good, but there's other IPAs that are drier and hoppier that we'd prefer in the warm weather. One note, though, is that as the beer warms more hop flavor comes through. It's a very good beer that we'd drink any day we could... it seems it would fit winter better. During the summer, we tilt towards dry and bright IPAs with a lot of bitterness. In the colder weather a nice, warming, flavorful IPA with a little more malt is what we want.

Wet hop ales (otherwise known as Fresh Hop Ales) are a little-brewed type of beers where hops are taken from vine to brew within 24 hours, skipping the drying step that allows hops to last in storage but causes them to lose many volatile oils. Many brewers go through extreme feats to get their hops this fast, but some go above the others. One of these is Rogue Ales in Newport, OR. They have launched a new line of Rogue beers called "Chatoe Rogue," a play on the french "Chateau" normally used in the wine industry. To brew these beers, they've launched what can only be called a brew farm, where they grow both malting grain and hops. In First Growth Wet Hop Ale, they showcase two propriety strains of hops they've cultivated, Independent (coincidentally the name of the town in which the farm is located, 77 miles from Newport) and Revolution. According to the label: "Raw hops are picked, stuffed into burlap bags, driven immediately 77 miles to Newport, Oregon and pitched into the brew kettle." Luckily, we didn't have to grow any hops to try this beer (but we do grow hops anyway), so that's what we're going to do right now!

Appearance: The beer pours a deep amber red with a light taupe head. Pour this one with mild caution as we were able to get about 5 inches of head from a pretty rough pour. Looks tasty!

Smell: Fresh hops are the first thing you smell... like being in a hop field. It's not overwhelming as many hop-focused beers can be, but rather delicate and complex due to the extremely volatile oils preserved by skipping the drying step of the hops. After this, you get a bit of malt. It's fleeting, but there's definitely some bread and light grain in there... a great complement to the hops.

Taste: At first it's fairly clean and crisp, just enough hoppiness to balance the malts which definitely show through a bit. After a second, though, medium bitterness comes in as does the hop flavor. The only way we can describe it is a juicy hop flavor. Throughout the taste the grain is there, but it's just a support structure for the hops, providing a great drinkable beer. Rogue definitely did a good job with this one; they made a beer that isn't over the top but showcases some great flavors in a manner that could be drank all night long. We can't wait to try some of the other brews from the Chatoe Rogue series!

Hailing from tiny Lyons, CO, the Oskar Blues brew pub has shot into the stratosphere of craft brewing over the past few years with their (then) revolutionary canned craft beer. They immediately won us over with Dale's Pale Ale and Old Chub Scotch Ale, and continued to woo us with their Imperial Red, Gordon, and their Imperial Stout, Ten FIDY, both in cans. They recently moved Ten FIDY to a seasonal brew schedule, leaving half the year open for something new. What did they fill it with? GUBNA Imperial India Pale Ale! More hops, more malt! This monster clocks in at 10%abv. Now, let's get down to the good part and taste it.

Appearance: Gubna pours almost orange enough to be described as pumpkin colored, except for the fact that it's crystal clear. A white head forms as the carbonation cascades through the beer, looking a lot like the well-known "Guinness" cascade... this time, though, it's because the beer is fairly thick coming in at 10% abv. The head sticks around for quite some time and definitely leaves its mark in the from of lacing all the way down the glass.

Smell: As soon as I pour this beer, all I can smell is hops. As I'm taking the picture you know what I smell? Hops! The aroma has permeated the room! Aromas of dank hemp and pine are all you can get until you stick your nose nearly into the foam. Once you do, you can pick up a trace of alcohol which should be expected for a beer of this strength. There's not much malt to smell or yeast influence... or they may just be covered up by HOPS!!! As it warms up, you get some orange from the hops as well. Weird, it looks orange and tastes a bit like oranges...

Taste: Bitter and oily hops are the first thing you get in this beer and they coat your mouth for the long haul. The mouthfeel is slick, but the beer is try which is quite contradictory. There is just the mildest hint of residual sweetness, but the dryness really helps to showcase the humulus lupulus that this brew is definitely all about. Even as I'm typing I have some bitter hops in the back of my mouth. As Gubna warms up you get a bit of malt sweetness on the front... nothing more, no real malt character to speak of before the hops sweep back in to take over the show. It's at this point, though, that the alcohol starts to come through a little bit giving a mild solvent finish to the beer. This is the only real problem I can find with it, but it's not a big problem.

Oskar Blues delivers another winner with their Imperial IPA, Gubna! The only thing I would ask is that they tame it down to around 8.5%abv. I'd be able to drink more of it then and I think that would help the solventy finish I'm getting.