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.