Schmaltz He'Brew Jewbelation Sweet 16

Obviously, the owner of this company is Jewish and proud of it.  They've released several beers with "He'Brew" in the name, their bottles are adorned with quotes from Scripture or Hebrew/Yiddish phrases ("L'Chaim!"), and get this: their motto is "The Chosen Beer."  Every anniversary since their 10th, they've released a beer called Jewbelation.  Jewbelation 10 was 10% alcohol, brewed with 10 hops and 10 malts; 11 was 11% alcohol, brewed with 11 hops and 11 malts, and so on.  This year's is their Sweet 16: 16 malts, 16 hops, and 16% alcohol.

It is also only available in 22oz bottles.  This combination poses some obvious problems if only one person is willing to try the beer, as that's basically like drinking a bottle of port to yourself.  I had to borrow a wine re-sealer and spread it out over two nights.  It was better the first night, FYI.


I expected it to be like a barleywine, but it poured pitch black like a stout.  Beeradvocate calls it an "American Strong Ale," which usually means the person who submitted the beer was too lazy to call it.  It is pitch black, brewed with roasted barley, not sour, not brewed with lager yeast and not licorice schnapps, ergo I'm going to call it a stout.  Striding atop the black body is a surprisingly lofty crown of foam about 1.5 fingers high, mocha-hued with a hint of....blue.  I don't know.  Not the usual color of  stout foam.

 The aroma is unabashedly malt-forward, with just a hint of earthy-bitter hops for balance.  Malt aromas are oddly fruity, which I would not expect from an American stout.  Blueberries and plums were the first two that came to mind.  There is also a hint of coffee from the roasted malts.  Alcohol notes are mild and more spicy than blistering hot, and nothing chemical-esque either (for some reason, a fair amount of beers this strong smell and taste like cleaning chemicals, jet fuel, nail polish remover; none of that here).

The malt explosion continues in the taste.  Once again, plums and blueberries come out, with a new cherry-like flavor making an appearance.  The roasted malts bring forward the expected coffee plus some dark bitter chocolate, which wins out.  Another new malt flavor is molasses.  The booze contributes a stronger flavor than it did an aroma.  The beer is warm going down and only occasionally veers into "hot" territory, though this never really sits well with the hops.  The texture is very thick, somewhat rough and a bit oily. but that could change with age (I'm sure this will cellar great).


My first exposure to Schmaltz brewing company is a solid B-, maybe even a B.  Could get better with age, but given how easy it is for beers this strong to taste like cheap vodka spiked with gasoline, I'd say this beer is smoother than it should be.  Worthy of an anniversary.

Word of warning though: try to find some people to split this with in one night, rather than re-seal it like I did.  All of the above flavors were still there the next day, but sitting on top of them was an unpleasant flavor reminiscent of teriyaki sauce, and the alcohol tasted stronger too.

Boulevard BBQ: INFECTED!

Well, to celebrate my birthday yesterday I decided to treat myself to something I already bought 11 months ago: Boulevard Bourbon Barrel Quad (BBQ) 2011.  Yes, 2011.  I bought two bottles shortly after it was released, one to drink fresh and one to put away in the basement until the next batch came out, for a comparison.  Unfortunately, Boulevard just announced there will be no BBQ this year, and none next year until the fall.  I decided I’d rather not wait another year, which as it turns out was probably a good idea.  I’ve appended my original review of the fresh bottle at the end in bold.  As it turns out, I think I drank it from the exact same glass as last time (a snifter from Bavarian Lodge).

BBQ is loosely based on the Belgian beers typically called Strong Dark Ales or Quads (they’re essentially the same thing).  Pretty much the Belgian equivalent of a barleywine, they are dark (ranging from red to deep brown), strong (rarely less than 9%, and when they are they’re called doubles or dubbel); minimally hoppy but often maximally carbonated.  Their carbonation level is high enough that many breweries seal them with champagne corks rather than bottle caps, which is what Boulevard does.  They are said to cellar well.  The main differences between a quad and a barleywine are the carbonation level, the use of fancy adjunct sugars (candi sugar, invert sugar and date sugar, for example), and very aggressively-flavorful yeast strains that taste like spices, figs and dates.  I have also found that most quads have very little alcohol flavor compared to barleywines, which don't integrate it as well and can taste quite boozy.

This beer is a quad brewed with cherries and aged in bourbon barrels.  It was great fresh.  It’s still good now, but those cherries have turned out to be a bad idea with age.

On first pour, BBQ looks pretty much the way I would expect it too, and not much different than it was fresh.  It is dark red color, not quite brown, and it is topped by about two fingers’ worth of foam.  It wasn’t that foamy fresh, but quads often get more carbonated with age (the opposite of most beers).  Where this differs from the fresh bottle is that it is much cloudier now, and when I can actually get some light peering through it I notice the carbonation level is very high.  Bubbles everywhere; I’m not surprised the cork exploded.

The smell is where things start to really get off course.  When it was fresh, this smelled mostly of figs (classic Belgian yeast flavor) and a woody-vanilla aroma from the bourbon barrel.  There was no boozy smell like some cheaper barrel-aged beers.  Cherry was mild.  Not anymore; cherries are now the dominant smell, with a bit of burnt sugar on top of that.  Fruit flavors are supposed to fade with age, so I’m a little confused.

After tasting it, I know why: the beer is infected!  It has a light sour edge to it that gets more pronounced as the beer warms.  I guess those cherries weren’t rinsed off before they used them, as they seem to have brought some lactobacillus with them that’s starting to kick off.  Lactobacillus is a common, naturally-occurring organism in sour beer, though it is usually not supposed to be there (most beer is not supposed to be sour, including this one).   I’m fine with sourness, I just don’t expect it in a quad.  Nice enough touch to make it interesting here, without taking away from the beer.  Unfortunately, apart from the cherries, most of what I liked about this beer fresh is now gone.  Vanilla and toffee flavors from the bourbon have been replaced by a sharp alcohol note, and that fig flavor is nowhere to be found.  It is now dominated entirely by cherries, and sour cherries at that.  There is an extremely faint hint of salad vinaigrette, which means this might also have an acetobacter infection.  In that case, glad I’m drinking this now and didn’t unknowingly wait until it turned to complete vinegar.

Unfortunately, the combination of intentional bottle-fermentation with live yeast and an accidental fermentation with wild bacteria has pretty much obliterated this beer’s texture.  It was the perfect balance of high carbonation and thick barley when fresh.  Now the carbonation is overkill.

Overall, I like it, and find it interesting.  There is sort of a niche market for sour quads (De Dolle comes to mind---more on that here), and maybe I’ll try some more.  Here though, as interesting a touch as the infection is, it simply takes away too much of what I liked about it fresh.  Next year, I don’t think I’ll be putting away any bottles in the basement.

Here’s a Copy + Pasted Word doc from my fresh review:

Name:                 Boulevard Bourbon Barrel Quad (BBQ)

Style:                   Abbey quad

Twist:                  Brewed with cherries, aged in bourbon barrels

Strength:           11.8%

Notes:                 750ml bottle of the 2011 vintage, split with a friend and served in a snifter.  Previous iterations of this beer have been a combination of fresh and barrel-aged beer, with cherries being added during the aging process.  Last year’s 2010 batch was all barrel-aged with cherries.  For this year’s release, the whole thing was barrel-aged but cherries were added during primary fermentation, not the barrel fermentation.  In addition, it is a blend of different batches---some aged for eight months in barrels, some for two years, and the rest somewhere between that.  Confused yet?

BBQ 2011 pours a deep bronze red color.  Though it only has a single finger of foam on top, the lacing is great, and the carbonation level looks great for a quad.

It smells delicious.  I’ve never had the earlier batches, but many people said (as a commendation or a complaint) that it never really smells or tastes like a quad.  This batch begs to differ.  The underlying aroma here is the classic Belgian yeast aroma of figs, an aroma/flavor seemingly present in all dark Belgian ales.  I say underlying but the most prominent aromas are from this beer’s ancillary twists.  The bourbon aroma is a nice woody vanilla flavor with just a hint of alcohol, not the cheap plastic-handle bourbon some beers have.  Cherries are subdued, but present.

The bourbon and booze character is mostly on the backend when I taste the beer, however.  The yeast and the wood give the dominant flavors: vanilla, toffee, and lots of figs.  There is a hint of cherry, and also of coconut.  Alcohol warming is kept to a minimum, and hops are nonexistent.  This is really damn good.

The mouthfeel is perfect for a quad.  It is just the right balance of light body and depth, held aloft by that excellent carbonation I mentioned earlier.

Wow!  This beer, or at least this batch of it, is a definite A-.  It should age well too, and I have a bottle to test it.

This was written in early January 2012, and typed on February 21, 2012.

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.