Tastes like Juicy Fruit™ (Lagunitas Brown Shugga)

Well, it is the time of year when barleywines---also known as barley wines, barley-wines, strong ales, old ales, stock ales, Burton ales, and probably a few others too---start getting released.  These are strong, typically 10% or higher (hence being “wine-strength”); and they are typically malted entirely with barley, no rye or oats or corn or wheat; hence, barleywine.  They may be sticky-sweet from all the malt or intensely bitter from a generous helping of hops, or somewhere in-between.  Most can be aged like wine (I’ve done this before to mostly-good effect).  Most are somewhere between a light red and a deep brown.

Lagunitas Brown Shugga’ might be categorized as an “American Adjunct Barleywine.”  It meets pretty much every metric of a barleywine, with the exception that it is fermented with a lot of brown sugar (in brewing terms, an adjunct).  According to the company, the beer actually came about because they screwed up a batch of Lagunitas Gnarlywine.

It looks pretty much par for a hoppy American barleywine, semi-bright red with just over two fingers of white foam topping it off.  The foam has excellent staying power and leaves plenty of lace caked to the glass.

I first had this a month ago and the smell really threw me off.  Or rather, the combination of the smell and beer’s name threw me off.  Does this beer smell sweet?  Yes.  Does is smell like brown sugar?  No, not even close.  It smells very hoppy; not the bitter, sucking-on-a-pine-cone hoppy but more of the tropical fruit-y hop aroma.  Some grapefruit, some mango; pretty appetizing.  After getting over the “where is the brown sugar,” my first thought was this smells a bit like Juicy Fruit™.  I like Juicy Fruit™.

The taste pretty much follows the nose.  A lot of mangos, some tangerine, honeyed malt, slight pine bitterness, and more Juicy Fruit™.  Like I said, this is firmly in the sweet spectrum of beers and definitely full-bodied, but at least this fresh I wouldn’t say it tastes like brown sugar at all.  Hops are generally one of the first things that fade with age, so maybe the bottle I have in the basement will taste more like the name once that wears off.

A very solid A-offering here and one of the few barleywines that is truly outstanding fresh.  So much so that I wonder if it will taste worse once the Juicy Fruit™ hops go away.

Stone Double Bastard

Yes, that really is the name.  Double Bastard is the bigger, badder and meaner cousin of Arrogant Bastard, which itself has an oak-aged brother.  Both of those are available year-round, while Double is released about once a year (usually in the fall).  All three have an exceptional reputation for brazen hoppiness and "abundant arrogance." All three are known for an aggressive flavor profile erring heavily towards bitter rather than sweet.  I just finished a bottle of this year's Double release, just out late last month.  Split it about 2/3 for me and 1/3 for someone else (it's a big bottle).




Yes, I have the actual glass from Stone.  Two of them, actually.

 

 

You can't really tell from either of those photos (no thanks to the poor lighting), but Double Bastard is a very clear, very transparent, and very red beer.  It isn't quite as brown in light as it looks there.  The foam tops out at about a half-finger tall.  High alcohol content cuts down on head retention and formation, and if this year's batch wasn't 11.2% pure ethanol I'm sure the foam would rise higher (and last longer).

The aroma is not as aggressive as I thought it would be.  A bit of indistinguishable bright fruit, a hint of pine cone and some dirt.  It has a mild suggestion of what I have come to call "the red flavor"---a weird combination of rotting bagels and burnt toast that I taste in pretty much every Irish red ale (hence why I don't like them).  It's faint though.

The flavor is not in any way faint.  It is very, very angry and bitter.  That red flavor comes back with a vengeance, like I expected (not what I hoped for).  Combine that with a lot of pungent hop bitterness and the end result is a beer that smacks your senses around quite a lot.  There are some hints of lightheartedness, though: some burnt sugar lends it a bittersweet sensation.  I like the pine flavor. Mostly though, the hops are flavorless bitterness, and the beer has some clear ill will towards all mankind---and if you read the novel written on the back of the bottle, you will quickly find out that is the point.

 

 

I've never really cared for Arrogant Bastard.  I felt like Stone couldn't decide whether they wanted to brew an IPA or an Irish red ale, so they brewed both.  I like a lot of IPA's; I've never enjoyed a red ale, Irish or American.  The burnt, rotting bagel/toast flavor is just too much, and it ruins Arrogant Bastard for me.  The suggestions of sugar keep Double Bastard from veering completely off course, and the hops are more distinct here than in the weaker version.  Weirdly, I find this more drinkable than Arrogant Bastard but I'm still inclined to age my second bottle.  The label says "ages well."  I think this needs some time for the hops to calm the hell down and for the grains to sweeten up a bit.

Millstream (not so) Great Pumpkin Imperial Stout

Well, this beer is an oddity.  No, not as weird as Gran Gas; that was a magnificently peculiar beer.  This one is strange in a way I don’t quite care for.  The idea itself sounds like it could be tasty and I do find myself enjoying maybe half of the bottle.  What the Millstream Brewing Company from Iowa made here is a pumpkin imperial stout, though not an especially big one.  Until recently, Iowa law forbade brewers from making and selling beer over a certain alcohol content, around 6.5%.  This was recently changed, and Millstream decided to push their boundaries a bit with this 7.6% stout—strong by most standards, but fairly weak by imperial stout standards.

The problem?  “Brewed with artificial flavor.”  That phrase is rarely seen on beer labels, and I now I can see why.

As expected, the beer pours pitch black with fairly good head retention.  Smells like chocolate-covered pumpkin candy mixed with cherry candy.  The chocolate aroma has a milk chocolate quality to it, not the aggressive dark chocolate imperial stouts are known for.  That is fine by me; to be honest I wish more imperial stouts were on the sweet milk chocolate side of the spectrum.  Unfortunately, that candied pumpkin aroma (which is weird and fake) coupled with the cherry candy (which is weirder and faker) makes it too sweet.  I chose the word “candy” earlier carefully; it feels very artificial.

The taste is even further out there, and worse.  When it first enters the mouth I actually think it tastes fairly good.  Milk chocolate and pumpkin flavor go together well.  Then comes a vexing array of fake pumpkin, rotting gourd, and cherry-flavored cough syrup.  Throw some stale coffee on top and you get a real perplexing mess.  What the hell went wrong with this beer?  Why does a beer brewed with artificial pumpkin flavor taste like actual rotting gourds were added?  Where is that cherry flavor coming from?  There aren’t any hops to balance the sweetness out either, and weirder still there’s none of the traditional pumpkin pie spices.  Nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, cloves—these could have provided some spiciness to balance the sugar.

Yikes.  Like I said, a few ounces is fine.  After that, the mold-and-cherry-covered gourd sensation starts to overpower whatever stout or pumpkin niceties there are.  I’m not sure if the vegetables-gone-bad flavor is from a poor fermentation or the artificial flavor, but in any event fake flavorings are not a good idea in beer. 

A shame.  I like their Iowa Pale and John’s White Ale.

A quick note on a weird beer

About two hours ago I got home from one of my favorite local restaurants, John's Tavern (formerly John's Buffet) in Winfield.  Local beer enthusiasts, take note: this is a great place to get limited releases from Goose Island, including Illinois-only tap beers.  Goose's newest tap-only beer is called Gran Gås, or "Spruce Goose" in Swedish.  It is a Belgian pale/golden/blonde ale brewed with Colorado spruce tips and Swedish lingonberries.  Believe it or not, this is not the first spruce beer I've had; that would be Alba.

Since I had this in a restaurant I can't really give this a thorough review.  In brief:

Look: copper-gold with a flimsy head.  Slightly cloudy.  The restaurant isn't bright enough for me to accurately tell how this looks.  To further compound matters, I'm also color blind.

Smell: I can smell my father's single malt Scotch across the table more than the beer in front of me.  Hints of spruce, maybe some pear (probably from Belgian yeast). 

Taste: huge blast of spruce, quickly followed by flavors of melons and pears.  I've never had lingonberries, so either they aren't very strong or taste a lot like tropical fruits.  Light kiss of hops add competing flavors of spice and grapefruit, so I guessed a combination of Chinook (spicy hops) and Cascade (grapefruit/citric hops).  Looking at their website now, it seems it was hopped with Centennial (otherwise known as "Super Cascade") and Chinook.  Hurray for palette accuracy.

Texture/Mouthfeel: semi-dry, semi-tart.  Quenching.  I had a second pour afterwards.


Very good, and also the most peculiar beer I've had in months.

O'Fallon Pumpkin Beer

Last time I reviewed two huge pumpkin beers, each weighing in around a hefty 8.5% alcohol.  I like a good strong beer and drink them fairly often, but sometimes I like it when I can drink several beers in one sitting without needing to lean on something when I stand up.  An 8.5% behemoth like Pumking just won’t do in that case; you need something more reasonable.  Oftentimes this means sacrificing flavor intensity for drinkability; a weaker beer is made with fewer ingredients, and fewer ingredients mean fewer flavors.  This is why, say, Keystone Light tastes like carbonated rice water.

Fortunately, O’Fallon Brewery out of Missouri does not seem to like watery beer.  Prior to trying their Pumpkin Ale a few days ago, the only other beer of theirs I ever drank was Smoke---a porter brewed with smoked barley.  It might be the most intensely smoky beer I have ever tasted, even more than much stronger beers.  I pretty much expected the same treatment with their Pumpkin beer, but they made a very approachable and quaffable beer instead.  I don’t mind.

If I was holding this up to the light, you'd see it is actually a bit brighter.

O’Fallon Pumpkin is a much brighter-colored beer than the previous two pumpkin beers I reviewed, though it is a touch hazier.  Underneath the golden-amber color is a spirited carbonation level chock full of fine bubbles, leaving a film of lacing around the glass edges.  It can never get beyond half a finger in height though.

O’Fallon’s website says they brew this beer with 136 pounds of pumpkins per barrel and then finish it off with a spice mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves (the label says it is brewed with pureed pumpkin and a “spice tea”).  That much pumpkin sounds like overkill, but it doesn’t smell overpowering.  I can appreciate a more distinct pumpkin aroma than Pumking, but it does not have the rich pumpkin pie spice aroma that Pumking does.  O’Fallon seems content to let the gourd itself shine.  I do smell the cloves though; it gives the beer an almost hefeweizen-esque character (almost),

When I first sip it, the beer drinks the same each time.  There is a balanced, delicious pumpkin flavor right away, followed by a quick dash of cinnamon.  The finish is long, but slightly different with each sip.  One time I taste mostly cloves, and another time I taste a bit more nutmeg.  One sip gave me the only hint of the underlying malt bill, a simple cereal grain flavor that reminded me a bit of a bock actually.  The evolving, kaleidoscopic finish keeps it interesting.  The aggressive carbonation keeps it light and a bit airy, the lack of malt sweetness/underdeveloped body being this beer’s only minor issue.

This is a great beer for both slow sipping and multiple pours.  A solid “B” here.

Pumpkin Combustion

Well, I must apologize for not keeping this more up to date.  Between my brother heading back off to college, a weekend air show and me getting an internship, I have been a bit busy the last few weeks.  The good news is neither has kept me from trying new beers.

When I first had one of these beers (Southern Tier Pumking) three weeks back it was humid and in the nineties—hardly the weather for pumpkin beer.  Breweries put out their seasonal releases earlier and earlier now, and it has been going on long enough to make a mockery of the phrase “seasonal beer.”  Sam Adams Summer Ale came out in March this year, and Sierra Nevada is considering re-branding their seasonal lineup “quarterly releases” for the same reasons.  Now, pretty much all of the pumpkin beers are in stores, but the weather is starting to feel like fall.  I bought two new pumpkin beers today, but I want to review the other ones I’ve tried this year first.  One is the aforementioned Pumking; the other is Sam Adams Fat Jack.

Both of these beers might be thought of as imperial pumpkin beers, or double pumpkin beers (Sam Adams calls Fat Jack a double pumpkin ale).  They are strong ales, each around 8.5% alcohol; minimally hopped; and brewed with a variety of ingredients commonly found in pumpkin pie (examples include cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger).  Beyond that, they are very different.

Southern Tier Pumking pours out a clear pumpkinized gold with a small, thin, off-white head that retains moderately well.  The carbonation is lazy, but the bubbles are nice and small.  A very faint lacing sticks to the sides of the glass.  Sam Adams Fat Jack is just as clear but takes on a darker red hue, and the foam is a bit bigger.  It also leaves more lacing.

The smell sets them apart…immediately.  Fat Jack is fairly tame; too tame.  It has a vague suggestion of the sort of Germanic malt I would expect in a bock, but just barely.  A bit of pumpkin and nutmeg round out a rather boring aroma.  For Pumking, I wrote down the phrase “HOLY PUMPKIN PIE BATMAN” in big letters in my notes.  In true Southern Tier fashion, this is a no-holds-barred approach to brewing a pumpkin beer.  Their chocolate imperial stout smells overwhelmingly of chocolate; their imperial cream stout brewed with vanilla beans smells like a vanilla milkshake; and their pumpkin ale smells more like pumpkin pie than beer. Specifics include pumpkin, cinnamon and bread.

That crystal-clear difference in aroma is replicated on the tongue.  Fat Jack’s bottle proudly proclaims all of the ingredients it is brewed with, to include nutmeg, allspice, ginger, cinnamon, pumpkin, and (weirdly) smoked barley malt.  I can actually taste the smoke a bit (hint of campfire log) and a mild hint of pumpkin and nutmeg; the ginger, cinnamon and allspice are nowhere to be found.  By contrast, the explosion of pumpkin pie flavor in Pumking is almost funny.  The taste focuses more on the spices involved (especially cinnamon) than the actual pumpkin, but both are much stronger individually than all of Fat Jack’s flavors combined.  Fat Jack also has a hint of pure ethanol flavor that Pumking is blessedly devoid of.

The two beers also differ markedly in texture.  Fat Jack is medium-full, edging towards full (sweet).  Southern Tier has a reputation for being the wrong brewery for diabetics; each time I’ve had their vanilla cream stout I feel like I need to buy a glucometer afterwards.  I was bracing for the same thing here, but even though it is a bit juicier than Fat Jack the spices are so strong that it feels dried out a bit.  In any event, I think the final gravity is lower than Fat Jack (which wouldn’t surprise me, Sam Adams’ strong beers are always too damn thick).

I don’t suppose Fat Jack is bad at all.  But for a “double pumpkin” beer that’s 8.5% alcohol I really expected more pumpkin flavor.  With Pumking, Southern Tier somehow exceeded my already-high expectations for pumpkin pie combustion.  I definitely like it better; people who hate pumpkins or pumpkin pies should avoid it at all costs though, as should anyone who hates cinnamon.

People need to stop buying so much of this so I can get more....

Expect more pumpkin beer reviews in the coming weeks.  I'm drinking another new one now (O'Fallon Pumpkin) and I've got a fourth in the fridge for this weekend.  I've also recently tried a new abbey double and two new imperial stouts, so I've got some catching up to do. Cheers!