Sometimes Maps can be deceiving. When looking up breweries in St Augustine, it looked like getting to Dog Rose was quite the jaunt through historic downtown. As I was walking around exploring, I literally went one block off the main drag and found the brewery. Well, no need to look around further, so I sauntered in. The building is pretty new and roomy. They had a nice wooden bar with plenty of other seating and some shuffleboard games and darts. I sat right on the end of the bar with all the brewing vats and equipment off to my right. Of course, I tried their red as I had just drank one at Ancient City Brewing a few minutes before. This one was one of the best reds I have ever had. Called, Rhapsody in Red, it is an American Amber that has an unusually high IBU of 42 and a 5.2% alcohol content. I say unusually high only because reds are normally in the 25 range and even though it isn't always true that IBU relates to an actual bittererness taste, it does usually follow that way. This drank more like a 25, with no bitter hint, but I sure could taste the caramel malt and chocolate that I was looking for. it was smooth going down and flavorful. IBU calculators are made to take a bunch of factors into account, like the grains used, boil gravity, boil volume, alpha acid content and bunch of things beer drinkers just take for granted. It can depend on your own palate and what you've eaten in how you feel about it, but scientifically, something with a higher IBU should be more bitter. I felt none of it in this beer. I'm curious as to why and it could be because of the centennial hops they added in.
Nevertheless, I could drink Rhapsody all day. I did not, however. I wanted to try one more before moving along. Since I had bailed on an orange beer a half hour earlier, I decided on Orange Blossom Honey Ale. Lower IBU beer of 18 with a 5.3% rating, it was light and flavorful. Made with local orange blossom honey, which does actually come from bees making it from the spring orange blossoms which are plentiful in Florida. It tastes like honey, but with a hint of citrus, which should surprise no one. It is a pretty good warm weather beer and I liked it, despite not liking citrusy IPA's at all. It wasn't overwhelming and had an airy sweetness to it. I asked my serving wench where the name Dog Rose comes from and it apparently is a plant that grows locally, with a sweet scent and nice pink blossom. When it isn't blossoming it resembles a weed and is in fact, considered an invasive species and a weed in Australia and other places. Surprisingly, the weed has some prominence in literature. The Academy of Floral Games, founded in 1323, would give a sprig from the Dog Rose to authors to show their literary excellence. The ritual made the weed popular and its references can be found in Shakespeare's A Mid-Summer Night's Dream and in an old riddle called, The Five Brethren of the Rose. It is one of the national symbols of Romania. None of that had anything to do with why the brewery chose this as their name and since the bar keep had no idea why, we may never know. Go check it out, just a block behind the famous Lightner Museum in St Augustine.
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