Having just returned home from spending Thanksgiving with my family I can tell you that I am thankful for a lot of things in my life. I still have a great-paying job, which is a big deal in this economy. But I also have an amazingly supportive wife and two of the sweetest daughters a father could ask for: twins Iris and Nora. They are only 19 months old and don’t know a thing about beer, but that’s perfectly fine by me. Well…about a month ago I did a review for the Cantillon Iris, which I dedicated to Iris. And now, I’ve returned with a beer I am dedicating to my daughter Nora. While I’ll tell you that the Cantillon is a far superior beer to the Baladin, that’s just not the case with my daughters. Iris and Nora are equally loved. With that said, the Nora by Le Baladin is my first true Italian craft beer. That is because there just aren’t that many Italian beers available here that I’ve been able to find. You will be able to easily pick these out in your liquor store because of the unique shape of their bottles. Le Baladin is probably the most recognizable in my eyes, and perhaps even Panil. Unfortunately, this one did not live up to my expectations. While somewhat similar to the Cantillon style of beer, the Nora really left me completely uninspired. It is somewhat one dimensional and not as flavorful as some reviews would lead you to believe. I only slightly picked up on the ginger component, which I thought would be the shining star of the beer…nope. The fact that the brewery plays music to its yeasts also excited me, but…nope. Altogether there just really isn’t a lot going on in this bottle. At the end of the day, though, my only real goal here was to have a bottle with Nora’s name on it so I could pop a flower in it and put it on her bookshelf. So in that way alone, this beer was a great success.
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This beer can be found in these states (including Missouri).
On the iPod: Yo La Tengo
Brewery: Le Baladin
Beer: Nora
Style: Traditional Ale
Location: Piozzo, Italy
ABV: 6.8%
Rating: 78/100
Posted by theReaper16 on November 30, 2009 at 9:05 AM
Nice to see you review a beer that you weren’t crazy about, even if the score of 78 seems about six points or so higher than I thought you would give it based on watching the review. So far your entries on The Hopry have been beers that are, at the least, very good. It’s cool to keep things in balance and see that you don’t, in fact, love every beer you come across.
Posted by thehopry on November 30, 2009 at 10:20 AM
Thank you for the comment. You know it’s weird…I do need to review more beers that maybe aren’t great. I do a lot of homework on BeerAdvocate and RateBeer to find what beers are generally rated well and use that as a gauge for where to spend my money. I tend to find that they are typically spot on when I drink them too. I’m hoping this doesn’t make the site seem “fixed.” I will say, though, that I’m a lot more realistic with my scores than those sites. For example, Founders Breakfast Stout is very very good, but not 100 points. I never understood their scoring anyway…
Posted by theReaper16 on December 1, 2009 at 4:39 PM
As I understand it, FBS’ score of 100 on Ratebeer (a site that I’m not a member of) means that FBS is in the 100th percentile of beers in its style. Its an altogether different type of rating than those found on Beer Advocate (a site I frequent and post reviews on), which assigns a letter grade based on an admittedly problematic formula.
I’m the same with you with respect to what beers I buy. I know from the internet which beers are supposed to be good and there is only so much beer money to go around for a poor graduate student like me, so I tend to pass up things that look like an intriguing gamble for beers that have stellar reputations.