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.
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.
I have a serious backlog of material hanging around in assorted places. I went to a party last Saturday where a number of magical beers were passed around, and here, for starters, are some notes.
Dogfish Head Midas Touch. The birthday girl swears by this, particularly for initiating people who say they don’t like beer. People, if by people I mean drunken nerds, seem to love the golden yellow color. Up front it’s sweetly mellow like a mead; then it gets sharp and pointy and leaves behind a vague memory of lemons and green grass. I like this, but if I had a choice I would rather drop the pretense and drink an actual mead or maybe a barleywine, depending on if I wanted to get lit or not, about which more later.
New Belgium La Folie. Dark dark red, pretty. Dried fruits, mostly tart cherries. Something roasted and sweetish. I liked this very much, and if this is what sour ales are like, I’ll try some more.
The one with the bourbon barrels. I believe it was this, or something like it. Very black, and both delicious and sneaky! I got none of the cream stout flavor from this, unless by cream we mean Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Does that sound contradictory? Very well then, this Bell’s contradicts itself. No straightforwardness but in its tastiness.
Awesome beer list and good post. I like the comparison to Harvey’s Bristol Cream 
For “historic recipe” beers from Dogfish Head, I like Pangea more than Midas Touch.
First off, I must call myself out and confess that I drank a mixed drink a couple nights ago, with an umbrella in it and everything, as I’d unofficially resolved not to do. It was technically free; there were no non-mixed drinks available; and the citrus juices in it were tasty, but the citron vodka wasn’t all that. Also I stuck the umbrella in my hair afterward, as you do.
Onward to the real stuff: I made an ill-considered pairing choice at a party the other week. I drank a Schell’s stout from the bottle and ate baba ghanoush, hummus, and salad. Blech. It improved with baklava and tasted truly awful with strawberries. I imagine that if I’d done it right, the beer would have had some nice coffee flavors.
The old yeast and sugar sensitivity has been coming back some lately, so I’ve had to lay off drinking whole beers for a little while. Over the appetizer course of a delicious Thai dinner the other night, I had a couple of sips of Gregg’s beverage, which was a Bell’s Double Cream Stout. Yum! I’ve had, I think, a Bell’s Two Hearted and maybe an Oberon before; I remember both tasting just OK to me, but that was before NMD and my realization that I’m not about the hops. The stout was very creamy indeed; I think this is the first beer I’ve had in which I perceived toffee flavor. I wouldn’t say I paired it with anything so much as I had my couple of sips in pretty close proximity to a cream cheese wonton, a labb salad with tofu, and some drunken noodles. I’d order one with the noodles, I think.
Speaking of pairings, NMD readers (who am I kidding, that’d be you guys who post here) might be interested in the Beer Sommelier, brought to me by Metafilter. My take is that it’s a neat idea with a slick interface, but that the food part of the database needs a lot of work for the app to be really useful (and usable).
woolwine, and 
smole 11:57 am on August 31, 2010 Permalink |
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.
woolwine 12:09 pm on August 31, 2010 Permalink |
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.