Pipeworks Poivre du Sichuan (farmhouse ale)

Another one from Pipeworks.  This farmhouse ale was brewed with orange zest, coriander, ginger, pink peppercorns and its namesake Sichuan peppercorns.  I had this last August, and the cold weather of late made me wistful for this beer on a lazy summer day.  Then I remembered I never posted a review for it.

Poivre pours a gorgeous golden orange topped with a crazy crown of foam.  The carbonation in this beer is extremely lively and produces a thick, billowy white head.  I thought the foam was going to gush forth from the bottle before I even poured it.  Poivre's head retention brings beers like Duvel to mind, even if they don't taste alike.

 

 

Look at that craziness

The aroma is classic Belgian farmhouse ale.  Tangy and lightly spicy flavors mesh well with undertones of lemon and orange.  Despite the somewhat exotic Sichuan peppercorns, the flavor is pretty much classic farmhouse ale too.  Lemon and orange flavors upfront, followed by the usual funktang of saison yeast and all those spices.  Nothing overpowers anything; all is balanced well.  Mild grassy hops round out the profile of this dry, light, quenching beer.

Refreshing as hell.  This is one of the more perfect American iterations of a Belgian style that I've come across, and I highly recommend it.  I'm looking forward to trying their other "Poivre" beers next summer....which can't come soon enough right now.

Pipeworks Raspberry Truffle Abduction

This beer from one of Chicago's hippest new breweries is pretty much exactly what the name implies.  It is an imperial stout (called Abduction) to which the brewers added hundreds of pounds of raspberries and coco beans.

Yes, that label does depict an alien dissecting a raspberry from a man.

Raspberry Truffle Abduction's appearance does not surprise.  It is the same stereotypical black of so many other imperial stouts, capped by a small head with little retention capacity.  This is not for lack of trying, however; the carbonation is steady and the bubbles are fine.  Either the alcohol or the natural acids from the raspberries prevent foam from forming.

The aroma---at least at first---consists largely of roast with a hint of raspberry and licorice.  The smell of raspberries comes to dominate above all else within a few minutes.

Raspberry Truffle Abduction undergoes what might be the most dramatically rapid transformation to have ever occurred in mere minutes of warming.  One of the employees at the Binny's I bought this from told me the raspberries get increasingly obvious after being outside the fridge for ten minutes or more.  He was not exaggerating.  If you hate raspberries, you will hate this beer.

The brewmaster actually writes the batch numbers by hand with a sharpie and delivers them to stores himself.

It starts out with dark chocolate, a moderate dosage of what tastes like licorice, and a strong but brief blast of raspberry which does not linger.  By the time my glass is fifteen minutes out of the fridge, that once brief feature transforms to the point where every corner of my mouth has residual raspberry flavor.  It lingers for quite a while.  Apart from the sensation of licorice and some molasses flavor commonly found in stouts, every other aspect of this beer appears to revolve around raspberries.  The roasted flavors commonly found in stouts---coffee and dark chocolate---taste respectively like Godiva raspberry coffee and Lindor raspberry chocolate bars.  These flavored coffees and candies are joined by pure raspberry.


Even the perception of sweetness appears to come from raspberries, rather than from the body of a stout.  It is silky smooth and not really all that thick.  If it weren't for the fruit, this beer may very well be dry.  I will have to track down the regular Abduction to see if that's true.



Let me reiterate: if you do not like raspberries, you will not like this beer.  At all.  At times this resembles less a beer brewed with chocolate and raspberries and more a chocolate-covered raspberry with beer inside.  I have a hard time picturing how many raspberries per barrel they had to use.  It's borderline overkill even for someone who likes that fruit.  This would serve as an excellent alternative to a dessert wine or cordial after a Christmas or Valentine's Day dinner.

Kulmbacher EKU 28

Name:                 Kulmbacher EKU 28

Style:                   Doppelbock

Twist:                  None (just really strong)

Strength:            11% (!)

Notes: served in a snifter from an 11.2oz bottle with the indecipherable bottling date of “2329182.”

Nice carbonation on this one....

My first beer from this company is a bright red and surprisingly carbonated doppelbock.  The finely and tightly carbonated beer is nonetheless incapable of forming a sustained head, no doubt because of its strength.

“Liquid bread” as a description was practically invented for doppelbock.  It is a profoundly malty style, hearty without the oft-cloying sweetness of similarly malty styles like barleywine and imperial stout.  All beer is made from grains like barley and wheat, but of all the types of beers I have tried I would say doppelbock most closely resembles the flavors of the breads associated with it.  If its aroma is any indication, EKU 28 is no exception.  It is bready with a hint of toast and caramel, and possibly some alcohol.  I’m not much of a bread eater, so I’ll just say this reminds of me brown breads.

The taste of ethanol unfortunately plays a larger role than the mild aroma let on. It is not, however, a complete obstacle.  Ethanol-derived flavors of spices, heat, and rum add some balance to what  otherwise might be a very saccharine brew.  More brown bread, toasted bread, and some faint molasses let you know this is an actual imported bock, not a bad imitation.  I would prefer less toast, but mostly I would prefer less heat.  A faint apple-like flavor starts to creep out as this warms up.

Along with the alcohol heat, the carbonation keeps this from being cloying.  Actually, I’m tempted to say the carbonation and general texture of the beer are the high points.  Spritely carbonation is normally absent from a doppelbock.

Though this is considerably better than my least favorite doppelbocks, there are quite a few other doppelbocks I will reach for instead next time.  Interesting and could possibly improve with some age (to let the heat die down), but EKU 28 won’t be a regular purchase for me.  When it comes to stronger German bocks, Weihenstephaner Korbinian is still king in my book.

This was written as it was consumed on January 10, 2014.

Tilquin Quetsche (plum lambic)

Well, this one is a bit of an oddity.  A tasty sour oddity, that is.  Tilquin is not an actual brewery, but rather a blend-ery: they take the unfermented wort from lambic breweries in Belgium and then make up their own proprietary blends of 1, 2, and 3 year lambic.  Specifically, they use unfermented lambic wort from Cantillon, Boon, Girardin and Lindemans.  This particular beer is a blend of lambics aged in oak barrels with plums.

The cork comes off the bottle with quite a loud pop.  It doesn't take long to figure out why.  Some lambic is completely still (no carbonation), some borders on Champagne, and the rest falls somewhere between.  This one leans moderately towards the effervescent end of the spectrum.  A persistent crown of foam tops the plum-colored liquid.

Check out that best before date ten years out....

The aroma wets the appetite, to put it mildly.  The underlying classic sour lambic smell of Granny Smith apples and wet hay is no match for a veritable wave of fruity plum aroma.  A slight hint of white wine rounds things out.

Sourness in beer comes in a few different forms of varying intensity.  Fruity acidity of all kinds, vinegar-like acidity, mild cider tones, stomach churning, tooth-shredding intensity; there is a surprising variety of sour flavors and degrees of acidity.  Tilquin Quetsche is solidly in the fruity-puckering vein of lambic, and fairly intense.

A fruit lambic wouldn't be a fruit lambic without actual fruit, and this beer does not disappoint.  In addition to the expected tart apple/apple skin flavors found in all lambic, there is an abundance of plums.  Plum flesh, plum juice, it's all here.  Very juicy, bordering on Cantillon levels of fruit.  I can't imagine how many plums were added per barrel.

The texture is perfect for this sort of beer.  It is dry, light-bodied but not airy, and with a very appropriate level of carbonation.

After each sip, I rolled my tongue around the inside of my mouth, over my teeth, around my gums---similar to how one gets flecks of peanut butter off your teeth.  There was tart plum flavor everywhere for as long as ten minutes after my last sip.  Tilquin made a very elegant lambic here, even better than their unfruited one in my opinion.

Brooklyn Monster Ale (2012)

http://beerstreetjournal.com/brooklyns-brewings-cat-monster-passes-away/

Name:                 BrooklynMonster Ale (2012)

Style:                  English barleywine

Twist:                  None

Strength:            10.1%

Notes: I had this beer in August of 2013, close to its one-year birthday.  Served in a Bavarian Lodge snifter glass.

Monster Ale was formerly a seasonal (fall/winter) release from Brooklyn, named after the brewery’s cat.  When the cat died last year they decided to retire the beer.  After grudging and grimacing through one bottle, I was amazed that it ever left Brooklyn’s quality control division---and sympathetic to the cat, who probably deserved a better namesake beer.  I also immediately regretted buying two packs to make sure I got a last chance to try this.

Brooklyn Monster Ale is brighter than the norm for a barleywine, bright red in hue with no opacity.  The slow, steady stream of fine bubbles can’t overcome the high alcohol content and (likely) low hopping level.  Head formation and retention are both low. 

Apart from being unusually bright and translucent, Monster looks normal for a barleywine.  Unfortunately, everything from this point onward is downhill.  No…that’s not really accurate.  If it was downhill, it would be an easy drink.  “Falling off a building and painfully impaling oneself, Saruman-style” is more accurate.

The aroma is sharply redolent of both caramel and pure ethanol, a staggering juxtaposition at once impressive and unwanted.  Undercurrents of metal and nail polish remover compound the problem.  I very much doubt that anyone in the history of beer drinking has ever said to themselves “I want a beer that smells like caramel dipped in bad vodka and spiked with Cutex,” which leaves me confused as to why a respectable brewer would try to make one.

The dearth of deliciousness in the nose leads to a cornucopia of failure on the tongue.  In the last year I’ve had a great number of beers stronger than Monster’s 10% alcohol by volume, some considerably stronger (up to 16% alcohol).  Examples include Samichlaus Helles, Samichlaus Classic, Two Brothers 16, Schmaltz Sweet 16, and Goose Island Bourbon County Coffee Stout.  Monster unquestionably integrates its alcohol worse than any of these, however.  The ethanol burn far outshines any other sensation, grating every corner of my now-grimacing mouth.  There is a faint hint of caramel, which is the only mercy Monster grants.  I also picked up a mineral note akin to hard water, which I am indifferent too.

The nail polish remover from the smell is blessedly gone in the flavor, but the persistent presence of tin-like metallic flavors convinces me Brooklyn fermented this way too hot.  There’s clearly some other alcohol besides ethanol in here.  Unexpected and unwanted hop bitterness doesn’t help, and neither does a style-defying dryness.  Barleywines are supposed to be sweet.  The combined effect of dryness and burning alcohol made mincemeat of my nightlong efforts to wash the aftertaste away.

That Brooklyn deemed it necessary to release this monstrosity is confusing.  That they named it after a beloved pet is inexcusable.  This is one retired beer I won’t miss.