5 Rabbit 5 Lizard

I'm feeling a little under the weather today, so no beer.  So here's a beer I had about two months ago.  It's a Belgian-style white ale or witbier (a wheat ale), except instead of the usual oranges/orange peel and coriander, it is brewed with passion fruit and lime peel.

No effort on my part here tonight, this is just my original notes copy&pasted with some hyperlinks added in.

At long last I have found Chicago’s own Latino wit.  They recommend a tumbler or a flute; as I have neither, it will be served in a Boston Lager glass.

5 Lizard, from the 5 Rabbit brewing company, looks a lot like a standard white ale, except maybe a bit less red and more yellow.  Head is a steady half-finger in height, and solid white.  Carbonation looks ample.  The beer is very cloudy, always a good sign in a wit.  Oh, and there’s a surprising amount of lacing; hurray for wheat!

The smell is very lime-forward, with a healthy dose of wheat cracker.  There is also an almost farmhouse-esque  fruity tang to it.  Saisons often resemble lemon peels, so maybe the limes are throwing me off a bit, but it reminds me a bit of that (not at all bitter though).  Something that vaguely resembles the tropical fruitiness of certain brett beers (perhaps that is the passion fruit?).  This almost makes me think of what Sofie might taste like if it were 20% aged on lime peels rather than oranges.

The flavor profile follows a similar track, with the caveat that it is less dry than a farmhouse ale, tangier and with more passion fruit.  Limes and wheat are right there up front, providing some creamy graham cracker and light tart fruit flavors.  The coriander has a distinct spiciness to it in the middle before blending with passion fruit on the finish to a milder tang.  Passion fruit is most definitely there on the finish, though it never dominates.

The mouthfeel here seems a bit fuller than a standard wit---just slightly.  Still on the drier end of things.  The carbonation keeps the body in check and the texture generally and appropriately light.  This is definitely more tart than a standard wit too.

This is now my second-favorite white ale, after Allagash White.  I imagine it is hard to find too many passion fruit or lime beers that don’t come off like the passion fruit/lime equivalent of Sea Dog Bluepaw or Wild Blue (which are both miserable and hideous enough to win an ugly dog contest).  I only wish it was easier to find this in Illinois, they either don’t make it often or it flies off shelves.

The holidays in review

Okay, so now for the rest of the holiday roundup.  There were a few oddballs here that were sort of interesting, but I mostly focused on barleywines and three of Stone’s Vertical Epic beers.

I promise to keep more up-to-date so there’s fewer of these unsightly wall-of-text, ten-beers-at-once reviews in the future.

Barleywines

Two of the barleywines I had over winter were fairly odd themselves: Robinson’s Old Tom and Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo.  Both English imports, and both fairly new in the states, these are also among the weakest barleywines I’ve had.  The brewers don’t really call them barleywines, but that’s the closest label I can peg on them.  Otherwise, I just call them “good beer.”

Old Tom poured completely flat---there wasn’t even a hiss when I pried the cap off.  Flat beer is generally old beer, so I looked for a bottle date but could only find the cryptically meaningless phrase “L2366 20:24.”  It had the brown color of cola with some ruby around the edges.  The aroma had some prominent sweet barleywine flavors (raisins, molasses, and toffee) which carried over to the palate, where things started to get a little weird.  It is very rare to taste chocolate or cherries in a barleywine, and it also had a strange sarsaparilla flavor.  All very appetizing in spite of its weirdness.  It was much, much thinner than any barleywine I’ve had, but the lightness almost makes it feel like an everyday sipper.

Samuel Smith has been around forever, and are most prominently known for their oatmeal stout, imperial stout, and porter.  In the last few years they’ve started releasing an oak-aged strong ale called Yorkshire Stingo.  They reuse their barrels and actually go through the trouble of individually replacing each stave in the barrel when needed, giving a very smooth oak character.  Some of the barrels are apparently more than a century old.

Stingo basically tastes like a blonde barleywine.  I noted flavors of bright caramel, white grape skins, pudding and apples glazed in toffee.  Yes, that specific.  Maybe even taffy apple.  It tastes like what I would expect/hope a lighter barleywine would taste like after five years’ worth of cellaring, except this was only a little over two years old (brewed in 2010 and oak-aged for a year).  The English continue to make the best barleywines.

As if to illustrate that point, when I got out here to DC I was surprised to find a six-pack barleywine for under $10: Old Dominion Millennium Ale.  It is allegedly an English barleywine brewed with honey.  It is unfortunately very hoppy for an English barleywine, covering up whatever malt character there should be.  The honey is earthy and somewhat vegetal, not sweet, as if they fermented all of the sugar out.  The beer doesn’t taste bad, just unremarkable.  It has the sort of least-offensive mediocrity one can find in a barleywine, where the malt is present but forgettable and covered up by lots of (in this case, equally forgettable) hops.

Stone Vertical Epic (2010-2012)

A vertical tasting is when you have multiple consecutive years/vintages of the same beer or wine.  The idea is to compare how it changes year to year.  In 2002, Stone had this idea of brewing a special beer for each year from 2002-2012, changing the recipe each time.  Each beer was allegedly designed to hold up until December 12, 2012; on that count they seem to have planned the series poorly, as the earliest beers were IPA’s and white ales (imagine what a Blue Moon would taste like after sitting around for 10 years….yikes!).  In reality, the series was just an excuse for them to goof around with weird recipes.

I only tried three of the eleven beers in the series, but each one was a microcosm of Stone’s approach to brewing.  Stone’s approach is “what the hell, let’s pull some random **** and amp all the flavors up to 11.”  Vertical Epic 10-10-10 was a Belgian triple/pale ale malted with triticale (wheat/rye hybrid) and fermented with chamomile plus three grape varieties (Muscat, Sauvignon Blanc, and gewürztraminer).  And when it was fresh, it was perplexingly disgusting.  I noted flavors of rotting grapes, dead plants, plastic, and King Cobra.  It even looked like King Cobra.  I wasn’t expecting much when I opened this on December 17, but age treated it pretty favorably. 

The carbonation picked up in the two years I held on to it, leading to a much bubblier beer.  Head formation is still poor but what does form stays there a while.  It looks less pale and more orange than I remember it being, more like a Belgian witbier.  The color could just be different lighting conditions, but the carbonation definitely changed.  The aroma was still weird, but not off-putting.  Must, wet leaves, rosewater, flowers and white grapes are all there (there was something else I can’t describe that was familiar).  The flavors are now all about the additives and nothing about the malt or hops.  Huge white grape flavor, huge grape skin flavor (tannic), tea flavors, some specific white wine flavors (I could definitely place the Sauvignon Blanc).  Juicy semi-dry texture.  This could have used less tannins and by the time I was finished I was wishing I had a second bottle to try again in a year.

Vertical Epic 11-11-11 sounded so bad on paper that when I bought it in 2011 I didn’t bother trying it fresh, just got one to save for the big day.  It is a Belgian triple/pale ale brewed with cinnamon and Anaheim chile peppers.  Knowing their penchant for overdoing everything except sugar was the main reason I decided not to bother trying it fresh; I was worried the peppers would just obliterate everything in their path.

So, I don’t have any way to compare it to fresh.  But at least with a year on it, it turned out surprisingly well.  It had an amber-crimson hue to it with decent foam retention.  The smell was earthy and lightly spicy, not at all what I expected.  Very mild.  The taste had a prick of chile heat upfront with a slightly tangy middle, while the finish was where the cinnamon shined.  A bit of hop bitterness peeked through at the end too.  Once I got to the bottom, the sediment added a fruity dimension to it.  Texture was too thick for a Belgian, but they clearly weren’t really going for a Belgian beer here.  I thought it was actually pretty tasty.

Vertical Epic 12-12-12 was a Belgian dark ale brewed with a smorgasbord of spices, in the sort-of-tradition of Belgian holiday ales.  It looked more like a stout than a Belgian dark ale, and it didn’t really smell like a Belgian beer either.  The aroma was all oranges, cloves, vanilla, cola/root beer, and coco.  The flavor was basically a clove bomb, though I also appreciated some root beer and orange flavors.  The finish was mostly cinnamon and nutmeg.  Apart from the 10 megaton clove explosion, I was surprised at how dry this was.  It was overall enjoyable even if it should have been sweeter. 

Don’t drink it if you don’t like cloves though.

So, I had a nice holiday season beer-wise.  One thing I noticed recently is that I really stocked up on barleywines and stouts last year (October-December), so my next few winters should even be better given how well these things tend to age.

Cheers!

So many stouts, so little time.....part 2

Okay, now for the rest of the stouts.  As this is quite a lot of beer for one post, I will try to condense my notes as much as possible. I should note that when I individually review beers at home, it’s not uncommon for a single beer to get as long a review as all of the following mini-reviews combined, so obviously and unfortunately a few of these will not get the full review they deserve.

Central Waters Bourbon Barrel Stout 2011 and 2012

These two were easily the best stouts I had this winter.  I tried the 2011 for the first time last year shortly after it came out in late 2011, and I was immediately impressed by how smooth it was, especially compared to how harsh the older batches of Goose Island Bourbon County Stout were when fresh (I hadn’t had the newer, longer-aged batches at that time).  Chocolate, vanilla, some coffee, plenty of middle-shelf whiskey, a bit of ash but not too much, with just a bit too much warming to be perfect but otherwise amazing.  The 2012 is even better fresh; it was aged twice as long (12 months versus 6) and has even more vanilla goodness.

But the 2011 I had at the start of this past holiday season, when it a year old, was totally awesome.  It was so good and relatively mild when fresh I wasn’t sure it would get any better with a year on it, and many people don’t think bourbon-barreled beers age well anyway.   I was, and they are, spectacularly wrong.  The year-old bottle tasted like chocolate vanilla fudge.  Everybody likes chocolate vanilla fudge.  The 2012 was barrel-aged twice as long, so it may not hold up as well, but I am confident enough to put three away.

Two of the most impressive beers I had last year.

Dark Horse Holiday Stouts (Too Cream, Tres Blueberry, Fore Smoked)

Last year I had the Tres and the Fore stouts, this is the first year I’ve tried the Too.  It’s also the first I’ve tried One Oatmeal, but that was so dull I can’t even write a review of it.  Actually, the Too is pretty tame too.  It smells a bit like coffee with creamer, which is appropriate since it is a cream stout (brewed with dairy sugar).  Unfortunately, it had a slight chalky flavor on top of the coffee and creamer, and the finish is dry and still has too much chalk (WHY!!?!?!). Dairy sugar doesn’t ferment with brewer’s yeast, so it should all stay in the beer.  In other words, this shouldn’t be a dry beer.  This is pretty unremarkable and mediocre.

Oh, but Tres and Fore are both still great, although I think the previous batch of Tres had more blueberry.  Tres tastes like blueberries powdered with coco and then liberally drenched with coffee, and no it doesn’t taste as weird as it sounds.    Fore is brewed with peat-smoked malt like an Islay Scotch, and it is almost as weird as that sounds.  It isn’t the smokiest smoked beer I’ve had, but it’s unmistakable. 

Founders Imperial Stout

This brewery likes their stouts.  In addition to this, they have Founders Breakfast Stout (FBS), Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS), and Canadian Breakfast Stout (CBS).

This is a hoppy stout.  I can like hoppy stouts in principle.  I have enjoyed a few bottles of Great Divide Yeti, North Coast Old Rasputin, and Goose Island Night Stalker, to name a few.  But this one is just too damn much, and for someone who loved fresh 2010 Night Stalker that’s saying a lot.  Unlike that beer, this beer has some boozy cayenne flavors that don’t mix well with the hops, and even more irksome is the almost unnecessary amount of roasted barley that was used.  Roasted barley is extremely acrid, more so than black coffee---I like it, but a little goes a long way, especially when it’s competing with hops for bitterness.  My single bottle also wasn’t carbonated enough.

Great Lakes Blackout Stout

This was a perplexing beer.  To give an idea of its mystifying quality, allow me to quote my handwritten notes for how this beer smells:

              “reminds me of something…their porter?”

              “almost lager-esque, but also vaguely fruity”

              “slight roast”

              “reminds me of a fabric (?)”

              “Hershey’s chocolate syrup, charcoal”

              “aroma reminds me of their Dortmunder a bit”

Any beer (let alone a stout) that simultaneously brings to mind a German lager, charcoal, and an uncomfortable couch must be doing something wrong.  On the plus side, the texture was perfectly luscious, so perhaps it was just an off bottle.

Perhaps it would have tasted better if I had sprayed some Febreze™ on it?

Sierra Nevada Narwhal

This one reminded me a bit of what fresh Bell’s Expedition Stout tastes like, except smoother, hoppier and generally more interesting.  It doesn’t even really have any standout flavors, but it is fairly easy-drinking and I expect it might transform into something better with age.  Flavors and aromas include notes of coco, plums, and very earthy hops.  The carbonation and mouthfeel were both great.  This gets a solid “B” score for sure.

So that’s the rundown on the holiday stouts.  I think I’ll do barleywines next, and then my share of Stone’s Vertical Epic tasting.  After that I’m mostly caught up.

So many stouts, so little time....part 1

So, long time no post.  I’ve moved out of state now, and have been busy with that.  Not that I haven’t had any new drinks to blog about.  In between my last update here and moving out east, this little thing called “the holidays” happened; there have been plenty of drinks.  In particular, I have had my fair share of stouts, imperial stouts and barleywines.  Actually, I’ve had enough that it would take too long to do an in-depth review of each, so I’m going to just give the reader’s digest version of them and cram them all into three posts.  There will be two for the stouts, one for the barleywines.  Some might be getting the amount of space they deserve, others won’t.

I have had at least one of each of the following stouts since my last post:

Central Waters Bourbon Barrel Stout 2012 and 2011

Dark Horse Too Cream Stout

Dark Horse Tres Blueberry Stout

Dark Horse Fore Smoked Stout

Founders Imperial stout

Great Lakes Blackout Stout

Goose Island Night Stalker 2012

Goose Island Big John 2012

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout 2012

Old Dominion Oak Barrel Stout

Sierra Nevada Narwhal

First, the Goose Island Stouts, since they are the only ones anyone talks about.  Goose Island makes a beer called Cook County Stout.  You have never seen this beer because they have never bottled this beer; instead, they take it, do a bunch of weird crap to it, and then sell it under a different name.  When Cook County Stout is brewed with coco beans, it becomes Big John.  When it is intensely dry-hopped, it becomes Night Stalker.  When Cook County Stout is aged in bourbon barrels, it becomes the well-known Bourbon County Brand Stout, or BCS (Bourbon County Coffee Stout is the same thing, but with coffee added).  Prior to December 2012, I had previously had Bourbon County 2008 and 2009, and Night Stalker 2010 and 2011.  This is my first time having Big John.

Since they all start out as the same beer, it’s no surprise they all look nearly identical: inky black.

 

 

Note the existence of flash in this picture.  Note also it doesn't make a difference, as no light will ever penetrate this beer...

This is what Goose Island thinks this beer looks like.  Note the foam is clearly photoshopped; you will never get that much no matter how hard you pour.

  The barrel-aging on BCS gives the minimal foam a slightly different color, but as you can see there’s not much foam at all.  Same deal with Big John.  Night Stalker has much more foam from the extra hopping.  This year’s Night Stalker has been widely reported to have some major brewing defects, though the bottle I had was fine.  This is the smoothest one yet: the least hoppy but also the least boozy.  I still think the 2010 has been the best so far---it was one of the most breathtakingly hoppy beers I have ever tasted---but this is better than 2011.  As the previous batches mellowed they became chocolate bombs, so I’m putting two away for some short-term aging.  Speaking of chocolate, Big John doesn’t have enough of it.  I expected more from a beer that says coco nibs right on the label, but it’s very mild.  In fact, year-old Night Stalker has more chocolate flavor and it isn’t even made with chocolate of any kind.  Apart from having too-little chocolate and a faint hint of teriyaki as the beer warmed up, this was a pretty good, pretty mellow imperial stout.  It isn’t at all what I expected from a Goose Island stout.

Bourbon County Stout is not the same beer it used to be, and that is a good thing in my mind.  Though this stuff flies off the shelves now, it used to sit on shelves for months at a time or even up to a year, for good reason: it used to taste vile when fresh.  It smelled more like bottom-shelf plastic handle whiskey than an actual bottle of bottom-shelf plastic handle whiskey, and it tasted like someone poured said whiskey over blacktop pavement sprinkled with cigarette ashes---and then asked you to lick it.  It also burned more than some Scotches I’ve had, no mean feat for something that’s not even half as alcoholic as the weakest Scotch.  People drank it, but not until aging it for a year or three first, and having had the 2009 with two years on it I must say it tasted pretty good by that point.  This latest batch, by contrast, is promising.  Is it a little messy?  Yes; it has a bit too much heat going down, and still has some ashy flavors.  But it doesn’t burn, and has some underlying roasted flavors to let me know I’m not drinking watered-down bourbon.  And on the bourbon front, I can taste some molasses and vanilla, flavors which I couldn’t pick up in the older batches when they were this fresh (they may have been there, but I was too busy using a fire extinguisher as a chaser to notice them).  Bourbon County now tastes like slightly uneven beer, not bottled train wreck.

Bottom line, all were pretty tasty, but Bourbon County edges out Night Stalker.  Three or four years ago, there is no way I would have said that.  A few years ago the bulk price for BCS went up nearly 25%, from $17.99 per four-pack to $21.99/$22.99. I think this is when they started aging it longer, which is why it’s so much smoother now.  This is a good thing, but by contrast I think Big John and this year’s Night Stalker are a little too tame.  I seem to be lucky not to have gotten a bad bottle of Night Stalker; there are widespread reports of quality control issues with this batch, everything from souring infection to yeast death.