“WOW. It starts with a little bite, and then it slips you the tongue! Now that’s festive.”
Seriously, my first impression about sums it up. Hops come first, lightly citrusy and a little bit floral, and then a lovely warm bass note of toasty malt with just a little sweetness. Delicious.
So along with this, we had some He’brew Origin Pomegranate Ale, reviewed capably once before in this space by Sam. Ours might have been slightly less pink than the ’09 pictured there, but it definitely seems equally versatile. Alongside the cheese plate we started with, all I tasted was a nice serviceable amber ale, no pomegranate flavor. A little bread by itself brought the pomegranate right out, though, near the finish, just barely sweet and slightly astringent. I think it made a fine pairing for the soup, too, with more or less pomegranate coming through depending on whether each bite consisted of more soup, egg, chard, or delicious garlicky crouton. A really satisfying constellation of flavors for a bitter cold evening. There was supposed to be a salad course incorporating some bitter greens and crunchy Asian pears, but we didn’t quite get around to it; pairing some Origin with fruit is left as an exercise for the reader.
Instant classic. Eight thumbs up. Fifty stars. Buttery smooth caramel malt with leaves burning in the distance. May in point of fact be the actual best brown ale. Not totally sure, hang on, let me drink some more.
Paired with a damn fine mock duck sandwich and a room full of baby punks and shouty drunk soccer moms, at the Triple Rock.
Mmmmmmm.
I was super excited to find two beers from Abita in the box that landed on my doorstep a couple of weeks ago. The other one’s a wheat; no question, I had to try the Turbodog first. The autumn air where I am demands it — it’s been positively crisp here and I’m beginning to think I may never get around to drinking what was meant to be my last kolsch of summer. Turbodog comes highly recommended, too, by Levy if I remember right. So: I gave mine a clumsy — uhhhhh, I mean assertive pour into a straight-sided pint glass and was rewarded with a head about the size of my fist. My drinkin’ compatriot achieved much more reasonable results with a curvy glass. Once the giant head calmed down: cocoa, toastiness. A little bourbon finish that makes the whole thing reminiscent of Tyranena Rocky’s Revenge, on which my crush is still going strong. I wouldn’t object to tasting them both side by side. (Ooh: a brown ale flight/fight in my future? All I need is a couple more tasting glasses…) Dried plum and sherryish notes start coming out as the glass warms, but I wouldn’t bother letting the glass warm, really; this beer’s plenty delicious fresh from my basement.
I spent a very Minnesotan Labor Day weekend up north in Ely: tromping through the woods, sleeping in a cute log cabin, breathing some cool autumn air. In the evenings, there were beers. First, Two Brothers Cane and Ebel, a “hopped-up” red rye ale brewed with Thai palm sugar (so ‘cane’ is just a clever name). To my surprise, it seems to be mostly color and not so much sweetness that comes through from the sugar; in fact my Cane and Ebel poured about like the reddish hue in this picture. As the glass warms, some sweet and sour cherry notes show up, but mostly it’s just a nice amber ale with toasty malt flavors and a modest, mostly fruity hop edge. The rye flavor’s perceptible at the back, not obvious — but really, don’t you think of rye and taste mostly caraway? I do, so I wonder what a really strong rye ale would be like, or one made with actual caraway seeds. (I imagine that if either of those things existed, they would be amazing paired with my favorite cold weather dish, cabbage rye panade with Gruyere.)
Meanwhile, it seems my dad’s a hop fiend: he chose an Ommegang Hennepin that, of course, proved way too bitter for me. But I could tell from tasting it (ok, and by the instructions on the label, and by the fancy Ommegang-branded glass it came with) that Ommegang was not messing around, so I tried their Abbey Ale the next night, guessing it’d be the kind of Belgian I could get into. (Protip: Brewery Ommegang is in New York, so it isn’t Hennepin like Hennepin Avenue, but like Father Hennepin, discoverer of Niagara Falls; and in fact the one I had was brewed and bottled for them by Duvel in Belgium, according to the fine print.) I was right. So delicious. The predominant flavor is sour apple, underpinned by caramel and fig and brown sugar. A bit of spice, an imagining of hops. I must have nursed the giant glass for an hour and I only wish I’d been able to finish the bottle. Would drink again by a roaring fire.
And in brief, some things I’ve had in town: Rush River Lyndale Brown, didn’t grab me, too bitter; Great Lakes Burning River (named after the Cuyahoga? really? hee!), pretty nice and smooth though at the edge of my hop tolerance and, oh, the joy it brought my mouth when I picked all the grapefruit out of the spinach salad I was eating; Tyranena Rockies Revenge, so good, round like a porter but more subtle with a really nice understated sweetness.
That’s right, I had the distinct pleasure the other week of enjoying some adult beverages in the company of a fellow NMDer. The venue was the Happy Gnome and our agenda (read: Sam’s agenda that I copied shamelessly, because yum) was to drink some sour beer. I started out easy, though, with a Lake Superior Kayak Kolsch. This was a happy surprise at the beerfest for me, and it was pretty good on tap too, though best enjoyed while still cold. Sam got to the bar ahead of me and went right for the Surly Furious on cask. My experimental sips of the Furious were a happy surprise too — those, right there! Those are the grapefruit-tasting hops I’ve been hearing about! Whatever kind of hop this is, I’m going hunting for more of it. Racer 5 is already on my list to try.
Out on the patio, we ordered second beers and a Humboldt Fog cheese plate. My second was a Lift Bridge Minnesota Tan. What’s up with so many beers having names that sell the beer itself short? Tan is more complicated than the name implies: a cloudy yellow-orange ale in the Belgian tripel style that is stuffed full of lingonberries — you know, like you get in the little cup at the Ikea restaurant. It’s strong and tart with a lingonberry kick that is not kidding around, and not sweet either. They filed it under fruity and not sour, but I’m checking this one off as a win in the sour column. Sam, meanwhile, had the only tap beer on the sour list, a Monk’s Cafe Flemish Sour Red. The first whiff was a little bit like vinegar or kombucha, but the flavor was really more like sweet and sour cherry, getting rounder and tastier as the glass warmed. Besides the Humboldt Fog, there was some kind of cherry compote with almonds, a bunch of tiny microgreens, I think a balsamic reduction, and a few fresh berries: all serendipitously great pairings for the Flemish Sour Red, and not half bad with my tripel either. In fact, the flavors on the tasting plate were so interesting that my entree, a gigantic Juicy Lucy made from layers of crispy fried vegetables, couldn’t really compete despite being fantastically executed. Next time it’s kolsch with the sandwich for me — or, even better, a procession of tasting plates and strong beers.
Dessert was an ice cream cake roll and a Flat Earth orange-infused porter — the Internets tell me that it was in fact a Xanadu Cygnus X-1. See the orange cast to the head in that picture? No joke. I say orange zest with black coffee underneath; Sam says Orange Milanos. I note with interest that this is one of several infused porters Flat Earth released at the end of last month, and one is s’more-infused. A s’more-infused porter. If I can get my hands on some, I’ll tell you all about it.
A cold pint of golden ale (“Um…it’s a golden ale. From Rush River.” OK then!) in the half-dark of the Sample Room. Smooth malty cracker flavor on its own. (Meghan’s review: “It’s not too carbonatey.”) Light floral hops surprised me by appearing along with the baked goat cheese and tomato, and the malt came back strong alongside the fettuccine with wild mushrooms and white wine sauce that was my favorite part of the meal. I would drink it again even if chanterelles were not involved; I’ll bet it’s equally good with pizza.
Man, blog posts about big things are hard to write. NMD, IOU beerfest and New Glarus posts, but tonight you get a further exploration of my relationship with hops.
First I had two beers from Brau Bros. in the space of a couple of days: a Ring Neck Braun Ale and a Sheephead Ale. Ring Neck is delicious! But that’s kind of a no-brainer. I’m pretty easy as regards brown ales and this is a fine one: round and mellow, sweet but not too, a little breath of hop freshness barely there alongside the earthy malt. I went in unprepared for Sheephead; I saw from Nikii’s glass at knitting that it poured amber and I didn’t realize it was an American pale. Smells of piney hops; tastes like bitter hops and lingering hops and ok, I’m ready to not be tasting hops now.
Then, the other day at the Birchwood, I revisited Bell’s Two Hearted. I tried it cold from the bottle once, a couple of years ago when I was still drinking just wheat beers, and my palate couldn’t deal at the time. Bitter! This one pours an almost opaque orangey amber, and I hadn’t known until I read the label right before tasting it again that Two Hearted also calls itself a pale ale. Bugger, I thought. But I forged ahead and it was delicious. Floral aroma, maybe a little citrus rind; the hops are front and center, but they let a little malty roundness come through.
What’s the difference? I’m not sure. The internets say that Sheephead uses wheat malt; maybe that has to do with why it tastes to me like not-malt. Or maybe these are two different hop varieties; I can’t find that info anywhere. The best I could do at putting into words why I liked Two Hearted was that the hops appear up front and then get out of the way instead of sticking around on my tongue all night. You don’t have to go home, hops, but you can’t stay here.
Two Hearted Ale is one of my very favorite IPAs, and I like the floral hops in the nose quite a bit.
By way of explanation: I’ve always assumed that they use far fewer and less potent bittering hops than others, and add fewer of them at the beginning of the boil. Adding the hops later supposedly gives those excellent floral aromas with less of the bitterness, as would dry hopping or adding hops at the tap (like a Randall). Anywho… it’s hard to tell, as Bell’s doesn’t disclose the hops on their site. A better taster than me would be able to guess the exact varieties used, though.
Good to know! Everybody seems to heart Two Hearted; also, a friend of mine helpfully points out that it offers a lot of bang for the buck as regards ABV. Not that I need extra help in that department.
Tonight is National Night Out on my block, all puppies and children on trikes and pasta salads and clouds of cigarette smoke. I have eaten a fair bit of macaroni and cheese and delicious guacamole, and neighbor Joe from three doors down kindly shared his Session Black with me. Out of the stubby bottle with its wee narrow mouth it’s sort of gritty and almost porterish; poured into a plastic drunk cup, it makes lots more sense. Right away I got the pretzely feeling of a Gosser Dark; somebody on beeradvocate says metallic, and I suppose that’s the same flavor I’m perceiving, but it’s — just nice. Pretzely. I get subtle toasty malt throughout, just enough caramel for smoothness, and just enough hops for a fresh flavor. I like it. I’d drink more.
I got curious about the whole notion of session beers just now, and I’m not too proud to say I had to ask BeerAdvocate to tell me about them, since that page suggests the term’s provenance isn’t all that widely known. Session? Sure, it’s just over 5% abv; I had two in quick succession and I am still upright, just a little bit muzzy-headed. Taking the term in its full historical context, it’s probably not all that applicable to me, cheap date that I am these days. I might could go do my actual job after a couple, but wouldn’t trust myself to work with my hands, I don’t think. I can see drinking Session Black in larger quantities than I would many of the big fat beers I enjoy one at a time, though, and my read is that that’s what people generally mean by it anyway.
Meanwhile, several of the crowd were drinking something they called a beer margarita that I think they made with Corona, and a major buzz was afoot about Jeremiah Weed. Is this a thing everywhere? It’s a thing here. I’m not sure it’s a thing I could be into except maybe with a really high quality lemonade.
A little postscript: I went to a party the other day where I first delighted in a Hell or High Watermelon, absolutely the perfect beer in that moment when I’d just in point of fact mowed my lawn and had to sponge myself off with icy water afterward, and then sipped on a little bit of Beerhive. This is I think the newest of New Holland’s High Gravity series and it doesn’t grab me the way Dragon’s Milk did, I have to say. People seemed really into the honey and ginger flavors in it, but I didn’t find it particularly bitey, just alcoholic. Quite possibly the difference is that our hostess really likes a good saison and I think the style’s not my cup of, um, tea.
Posts to come: little beerfest and a trip to New Glarus! These are exciting times in my mouth.
Yards’ Tavern Ale. Supposedly based on a recipe from my alma mater’s namesake, Thomas Jefferson, it is sweet and malty and surprisingly tasty at 80 degrees room temperature. Definitely better than their Tavern Spruce Ale, which is brewed with “spruce essence and molasses, as barley and hops were not readily available at the time.”
woolwine, and 
Rachel 3:15 pm on December 17, 2010 Permalink |
Indeed.