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.

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.