Tasting: Wee Heavy Winter Ale

Wee Heavy Winter Ale
Hale's Ales, Seattle WA

After a long walk today to the Post Office and back (with Elaine in the Baby Bjorn), I stopped in the food co-op and picked up a 6 of something local. "Wee Heavy", as the carton explains, is another expression for a Scottish strong beer. Although it is called a winter ale, I don't detect any evidence of spice or other adjuncts, other than hops.

The freshly opened bottle smells yeasty and malty, with a decent amount of boiling hops character. It feels heavy, as advertised, with a light carb burn. Carbonation in general is low to middling. This brew has a strong chocolate flavor, and reminds me of Young's Double Chocolate Stout, without the addition of actual chocolate, of course. It made sense to me.

The strong but clean bitterness is carried equally between the hops and dark roasted malt. There is almost no sourness, thanks in part to the low carbonation. There is also very little overt sweetness--what there is exists as a burnt molasses buried in the secondary.

In short, this gets a strong recommendation from me. I look forward to sampling the rest of Hale's Ales.

Tasting: Maracaibo Especial

Maracaibo Especial (Special Brown Ale) Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, Dexter, MI

I went into the Beer Depot yesterday after finishing up all official ties to the University of Michigan to get a Celebration Beer. I noticed this line of Artisan Ales in 750 ml bottles, and selected the Golden Ale. Then, noticing that the homebrew specialist was working that day, I asked him whether he thought it would be worthy of the occasion. He said that it was a decent beer, but warned me that it was a bit sour. I did not realize this, but "oak barrel aged" is synonymous with "tart", because souring infections from certain bacteria are encouraged in this process. One of my first tastings on this blog was another of Jolly Pumpkin's offerings, Bam Biere, and I complained about the tartness. Perhaps what bothered me the most was that no mention was made of the tartness in the beer description on the bottle.

Anyway, he got busy with another customer and I wandered back to the Jolly Pumpkin section. I read each label for the oak-aged warning, and then cast my eyes on this one: "A rich brown ale inspired by the enigmatic monastic brews of Belgium, and the mysterious mist-shrouded jungles of the tropics. Brewed with real cacao and spiced with cinnamon and sweet orange peel for a seasonal delight. A brew to be sipped, savored, and enjoyed." There was no mention of oak barrel aging, but I knew that I was taking a chance anyway.



So it poured a clear, medium dark brown with a bit of amber. It smelled clean and rather spicy. The first sip immediately revealed the sour note. However, knowledge can often tip the balance with something like tasting. I was much more patient than I might have been had I not understood that the sourness was intentional. I took my time, getting used to the new, and the spicy mixture of cinnamon, chocolate, and orange, along with the middling amount of carbonation began to scrub against the increasingly faint backdrop of watery wine. About a fourth of the way into my glass, I realized that I really liked this beer. The malt sugar is still there, but the bacterial enzymes convert a portion to the sour form that initially dominates. I'm not sure, however, how much I would like this without the adjuncts (for example, their Golden Ale, or Bam Biere). But this brew convinces me that the folks at Jolly Pumpkin know what the hell they're doing, and I'll definitely be seeking out more of their beers.

Friday Grab Bag

A relaxed and empathetic-without-being-uncomfortable Good Morning to you, or a warmer-than-merely-civil Good Afternoon for our friends in the South Pacific (Ohayo!). We're counting down the top few unrelated things today, and we won't stop 'til we get to number ONE, so fasten your bucklebelts!

1. I tried a few other beers without blogging them all over the place, so here's a recap:
   
1. Arcadia Scotch Ale Arcadia Brewing Company, Battle Creek, MI I put off trying Scotch ales for awhile, because I'm not a huge fan of Scotch whisky. No, I'm not an idiot, it's merely a matter of word association. If you handed me a beer and said that it's Stewed Cauliflower IPA, but that it's not actually made from cauliflower, I would politely decline. Anyway, at Jon and Kerrigan's wedding, some fellow homebrewers were taken with the weissbier that we brought (Jill's brew), and offered up glasses of their Scotch Ale. It was fairly amazing. So, since I've been impressed with Arcadia's offerings to date, it made a lot of sense to pick this up. So the pocket review goes like this: molasses color; malty aroma; syrup-sweet, mega-malty flavor; medium-light body; slight bitterness from a minimalist hops approach and from darker roast grain; wonderful finish; maximum drinkability is about 3 per session (lightweight here gets toasty after 2). Final analysis? It's in my current top 10. Nummmmmmm.
2. Dubbel Ale Allagash Brewing Company, Portand ME
   I bought and tried this at the same time as Railbender Ale. I'm unclear as to whether or not this brew has any hops at all. There was a big empty feeling in the middle to back of my tongue (sorry). It was like part of my mouth was tasting beer and another part was drinking water. I chalk it up to almost no bitterness. The pocket review: Golden to Maple syrup color; slightly sour, trub-like odor; dry, light, and sweet flavor, light body with a bit of carbonation burn; the aftertaste starts out slightly bitter and quickly turns sour; quite drinkable, but in the 6-7% abv range. I tasted this once more to be sure of my analysis, and it was much sweeter, so I think that there's some variability from bottle to bottle, or one of the bottles that I tried was bad. I would like to try more from this brewery. Check out their website.
2. I printed off my thesis last night to take to the Graduate school for my post-defense meeting this morning. It's a rather modest volume of 130 pages, counting the fluff at the beginning and the bibliography, but I think that it is of decent quality. There's a few additions that I would like to have made to the introduction, but it's fairly focused as it is, and I like that. Greg, my boss, signed off on it yesterday, and I've been busy filling out paperwork and making sure that I've met all of the requirements. So today, I turn in an unbound copy of the thesis to the grad school, and arrange for the binding of another copy to be sent to the Graduate Library. This will fulfill my obligations to the university, and I will receive a certificate stating my eligibility to graduate in December, which also enables me to start working as a post-doc. Then, I need to get another 6 copies of the thesis bound -- one for me and one for each member of my thesis committee. So, I'm pretty happy and relieved at this point. I just hope that my margins are all correct...
3. I'm going to see Battles at the Blind Pig in November, and I'm planning on getting my tickets in advance. Anyone else who wants to go, let me know by Monday at the latest. I've got a feeling it's going to sell out.
4. As I alluded to last Friday, I totally would have won that prematurely-ended game of History of the World two Sundays ago. Not that I'm the sort of person that would dwell on such matters. I'm quite content to leave it all on the table, as it were. But I can hear a faint challenge to my claim humming through cyberspace with a Turkish accent, so here we go. If you'll observe the following image......you will notice that my yellow forces have been pushed back into Northern Europe and North America by the sequential uprising of the Huns (Jonathan, purple), and the Mongols (Tony, blue). You will also notice that I am in a very tight race for 1st place despite having used the least strength to get there. This is the board at the end of Epoch V. I would be selecting the first Empire in Epoch VI, and the odds dictate that I would get one of the middling to better ones. I also had two lesser events that I was going to play on my next turn: Sub-Saharan Migrants, which would let me place two armies in Africa (on those two resource lands, enabling me to build a monument), and another card that lets me place an army and a city in Palestine. So there's 8 extra points going into Epoch VI, and I'm spread out again. Also, I'm not a huge target as the 3rd place guy. Finally, I had the Japan Major Event card for Epoch VII, so I'm getting bonuses again, and probably the highest total strength for that round, without incurring the penalty that high strength brings. So, thanks for playing, and I'll just assume that you're all congratulating me from home.
   
   Have a great weekend!
   

Tasting: Railbender Ale

Railbender Ale Erie Brewing Co. Erie, PA.
So, I'm skulking up and down in front of the coolers at the Beer Depot, looking for a six of something new (and preferably Michigan-born), when I spy this one. Never even heard of the brewery! Railbender! I guess it had a nice ring, because here we go.

From the label:
(Deep Malt Flavor, Caramel Sweetness Lingering In A Soft Hop Flavor, Deep Red)
"Dubbed 'Nectar of the Gods' by 'Bender', believers and ardent apostles from mount to the plain, this strong Old-style ale has a following of devout like none since Aegir himself. With an alcohol content of 6.8% by volume, our maltiest ale is remarkably smooth and sweet. It's complex bitterness and aroma result from four hop varieties, including Czech Saaz and English Fuggles. Taste Ambrosia!"


Wow. I have no idea who Aegir or 'Bender' even are, but I can tell that this is going to be awesome. Did you read that? Awesome, I tell ya. Be back soon...

OK, I'll argue that it's not "Deep Red", but more of a dusky golden red. It pours clear, and the refrigerated head is but a skim that somehow lasts until the beer is gone. The aroma is all malt, with just the ghost of aromatic hops present. The taste...oh, yes. This has the perfect amount of sweetness for a beer. Very malty, like a good Old style ale should be, with a slight carbonation burn. I'd put it at about a 4 out of 10 on a bitterness scale, with nearly all of it coming from the boiling hops. Man, this is nice. The aftertaste is where the bitter hops really come out, and they stave off the inevitable sourness for a minute or so.

So, sweet-but-not-cloying, some gentlemanly bitterness, and great drinkability. Well, decent drinkability, with that 6.5% abv estimate. I would totally buy this again.


Let's talk about an uncomfortable subject. Mouthfeel. Say it with me...mouthfeel. It's a word that has great utility if you're describing a tasting experience, be it beer, wine, lemonade, or melted butter. Trouble is, it's a horrible, horrible word. It really puts the reader or listener right inside your mouth while you're describing something, which seems, on the surface, to be a great idea, but in reality it is a bad thing. I don't, for example, want to be in your mouth while you're tasting something, so it stands to reason that...got me? And it's no good to say something has X characteristic "in the mouth", because that just sounds dumb, and causes the same ooky problem.

So do we need a new term for expressing this, or has the existence of the word just made me lazy? Instead of "...had a heavy mouthfeel, like maple syrup...", I could say "...after slurping up a yapful, I found it heavy, like maple syrup...", or even "...I sat there with a mouthful, my tongue violently probing the flavors prior to swallowing, and I noted a peculiar maple syrup-like gravitas to the concoction...".

Incidentally, Railbender Ale was delicious in the mouth, and it had a fantastic mouthfeel.

Please help me.

A Tangle of Tastings

I've tried a number of beers in the past month or so, but couldn't find the time for a decent writeup. So before I forget my impressions, I'll briefly cover a group of them.

Whitetail Golden Ale Rock Art Brewery, Morrisville VT.

I drank a few jars of this at Jon's wedding. Wow. This is a medium-light spiced summer beer with a healthy dose of Pacific Northwest hops (Northern Brewer and Mt. Hood). It has that really nice combination of pungent hop nose and taste combined with an orange sweetness. There's also a peppery component to add to the complexity of the brew. I really liked it. Much like Bell's Oberon, I'm betting that this one is best on tap.

Newcastle Nut Brown Ale

I intended to do a full tasting writeup of this one, because I've long claimed it as my favorite beer. Revisiting it after trying so many microbrews led to the surprising finding that there's not much there. It has a lovely medium-light body with ample carbonation and enough protein lingering to produce largish bubbles, leading to a creamy head. There is a natural sweetness that is not immediately apparent, much like the sweetness that you get from pecans. The bitterness also is nutty, as opposed to a roasted or hoppy bitterness. And that's it. It's quite drinkable, but ultimately very uncomplicated, to the point that I was bored with it when doing the tasting. I'll try it again soon to see if I missed anything.



Dortmunder Gold Lager Great Lakes Brewery, Cleveland OH
Edmund Fitzgerald Porter
Burning River Pale Ale
Holy Moses White Ale

There was a sampler 12 pack in the store.

I liked all of these. The Dortmunder was a surprisingly full-bodied lager with nice sweetness and a touch of aromatic hops. Very pleasant, simple, and refreshing. I would love to find this on tap in the summertime. It's nice to have a lager without the sour aftertaste.


Eddie Fitz is one of those rare beers that does better in the bottle than on tap. It's a richly complicated porter that changes drastically as it warms. The predominant flavor for me is anise, but that changes once you sip it and let the other flavors blossom. Trouble is, I'd rather have an Imperial Stout.

Holy Moses is a perfectly acceptable White Ale. Goodness, but aren't there ENOUGH FREAKING WHITE ALES OUT THERE THANK YOU VERY MUCH AND THEY ALL TASTE JUST FINE.

Finally, Burning River is one of those American-style pale ales that would be considered an IPA in England. As such, it has enough balancing malt to be palatable (to me), but the tap/cooler selections would have to be pretty slim for me to actually order/grab one over many other beers.

Anyways, I enjoyed this sampler, and can safely say that Cleveland is in good hands.

Batch 8,000 Bell's, Kalamazoo, MI

Bell's 8,000th commemorative batch is (drumroll) a Belgian Wit! Otherwise known as a white ale, even though wit means wheat. So, it's essentially the same recipe as Jill's Breech Baby Beer, with the addition of grains of Paradise. The bottle instructions say that this beer is best fresh, and that it will never be made again. After tasting, I believe that they aged this in the warehouse until it was perfect, or they did a long secondary fermentation, because the orange, coriander, malt and hops have mingled beautifully. It is a spectacular specimen of a wit.

Tasting: Angler's Ale

Arcadia Ales, Battle Creek MI

Angler's Ale

From the bottle:
"Premium English Two-row Malted Barley"
"Premium Pacific Northwest Hops"
"A Pale Ale--brewed in the English tradition"

So, I'm of two minds on hops. I occasionally like a brew with hops up front, where you can't pretend they're not there. Certain beers demand it, like the classic I.P.A., which was designed for long boat rides to a hot country, and used hops for their germicidal properties. Some of the more decadent I.P.A.s attempt to achieve some balance with the hops by adding malt. While this move makes it more palatable to me, it also raises the alcohol content, which kind of misses the point for a refreshing summer beer. I'm actually more likely to try a Pilsener in the summer--a good, bubbly lager with a *ping* of hops right on top, like a celery stalk in the bloody mary.

More often, however, I like my hops to be part of the bigger picture, blended nicely with the other elements of the brew. Lately, here in 'Merica, there's been a trend in Pale Ales actually being I.P.A.s, and I.P.A.s being akin to some bizarre college stunt. Therefore, I was intrigued by this "Angler's Ale", which, despite hawking Pacific Northwest hops, offered the reassurance of an emphasis on malt and a disclaimer that it was brewed in the traditional English style.

The pour was pure amber--not pale at all! The beer was fully chilled, and there was no apparent head. I smelled caramel/toffee/coffee malt first, then the pungent Northwest hops. I was expecting some fruitiness, but it really just smelled like a clean, slightly hoppy ale. My first taste impression was of complex malty sweetness, followed after a moment by a bit of sourness, possibly from the yeast. The hops contributed most of the bitterness, with a minor assist from the roasted barley. The body was medium light, but the hops cut through and made it feel lighter. Since the brew was fully chilled, the carbonation was trapped in the liquid, and it emerged with a refreshing vengeance upon sipping. The aftertaste was initially clean, and then tending toward sourness.

As the beer warmed, the hops came forward in the aftertaste, mingling pleasantly with the natural sourness of sugar in the mouth, and encouraging another sip. Drinkability factor: Medium high. It's a reliable beer, but not boring. I could see having a few of these on a summer evening, or sharing a six-pack with one or two friends. It has entered the realm of "viable option", and I would struggle to choose between this and, say, Newcastle, at the grocer's fridge.

One more thing...I'm also posting this over on Links (<---- Thataway)...this is the site for official beer tasting guidelines for competition. If you follow it to English Pale Ale, like I just did, you'll find an explanation of what certified judges look for in such a beer. That said, this beer is more like the Special Bitter than the simple Bitter in color, aroma, and mouthfeel.

Tasting: Trois Pistoles

Today, I thought, “Hey, I’ll do an easy tasting! I will try one of my favoritest beers of all time, Trois Pistoles!”

This turned out to be harder than I thought.

Trois Pistoles is a dark, bottle conditioned ale from the Unibroue brewery (check out the website!) near Montreal. It either comes in 4 packs of 12 oz bottles, or corked 750ml bottles. I went with the latter. The brewers claim that this beer, like their other, redder, dark ale, Maudite, can be cellared for richer flavor. I would welcome an opportunity to test this out in the future.

Truth be told, I lack the skill in tasting to do this brew justice. There’s just so much there. I think that I will resort to bullet points.

• I bought it fully chilled, and poured it into one of our oversized Reidel red longstems.
• The head was robust and stiff, but did not adhere to the glass.
• The first sniff revealed the distinct smell of…brown? It’s such a rich, almost wine-like aroma. Barleywine comes closest, I suppose. Jill smelled clove, I smelled licorice (just barely), but the overall impression was one of A Lot Going On With This Brew.
• Think Imperial Stout with a much lighter body.
  
• The first taste fairly explodes in your mouth. There’s an undeniable sweetness up front that cannot be explained away by malt sugars. They must be using the trippel Candi sugar for the priming.
• It is richly carbonated with tiny bubbles that wake up your entire mouth with a song of deliciousness.
• The bitterness has the quality of a really clean coffee, and is hard to attribute to hops, so it must be the dark roasted malt, but...it’s almost a sarsaparilla kind of thing, comforting and warm.
• The finish is as enjoyable as the initial sip.
  
• It is the color of Coca Cola, and in many ways, just as sweet.
• Do not drink most of a bottle on an empty stomach, as I did just now.
• Try this, please.
• Also, Maudite.

Trois Pistoles!

Trois Pistoles!

Tasting: Breech Baby Beer

When baby Elaine was still a month away from her expected arrival, Jill got brave and decided to brew a batch. She had been nauseated by the faintest smell of alcohol throughout the pregnancy, much to my chagrin, but had finally gotten past it. We agreed that we needed something summery to ring in the advent of parenthood, and we decided on a successful recipe from last summer. In the Papazian book, it's called "Who's in the Garden Grand Cru", allegedly a clone of the Hoegaarden Grand Cru. The beer itself is a spiced summer ale, a wit flavored with orange peel and coriander, much like Blue Moon. Jill modified it last year, using Belgian Ale yeast instead of the German Wheat beer yeast (wit=wheat), and that change undoubtedly added some much-needed character to this brew. Of course, we'll never know for sure, because I doubt that we'll ever make it any other way!

I put one in the fridge for about 30 minutes...wait, I'll go get it now...

So maybe I should have let it cool a bit more, because it gushed on me. We've taken to adding a bit of extra priming sugar, because our beers were ending up less lively than Jim and Sonja's, and that made a huge difference in the impression you got when tasting. There's only a few styles of beer where no head is desirable.

Still, having the beer less chilled allows the flavors to really emerge off the first sip. The beer poured orange-amber, much like Bell's Oberon, with moderate cloudiness. I smelled banana and orange with the hops hiding way in the back. Fruit aroma completely overpowered the light malt extract. On the sip, there was sugary sweetness with very little bitterness, and the strong orange flavor providing, I think, more bitterness than the hops. It was light to medium-bodied with light carbonation at 10 minutes (although quite a bit was used up in the initial gush). The aftertaste is where the coriander becomes evident, pleasantly mingling with the clean bitterness of the orange peel oils. The beer itself appears to be merely a vehicle for transporting these two flavors, to its possible detriment. Maybe next time, we'll back off of the adjuncts a bit, and let the malt play a slightly bigger role. Still, it's delicious, refreshing, very drinkable, and I could easily see spending an afternoon reaching for one after another of these.

Great job, honey!

Tasting: Morland “Hen’s Tooth” Strong English Ale

The name is explained on the bottle as, “A fine, specially-brewed English ale which finishes fermenting in the bottle. In the words of our head brewer – a combination of flavour and character that’s as rare as a Hen’s Tooth”. We shall see.

Despite the bottle conditioning, it’s a clear, caramel-colored brew that looks like a bitter. Upon opening, I immediately smelled a touch of fragrant hops and the strong smell of rising bread. Yes, we’re in England here. It was fully refrigerated, and poured with a modest head that faded to a polite but persistent skim in a few minutes. Once in the glass, the finishing hops were floral and very much in evidence, almost overpowering the toasted smell of the malt. Upon the first taste, however, the malt came front and center with a welcome sweetness and medium body. The hops cut the body a bit to keep it refreshing, but most of the bitterness came from the coffee-like dark roasted malt. Carbonation was on the low end, with only a few, rebel bubbles fighting their way up from the bottom after 15 minutes in the glass, but it was quite appropriate for the brew.

This reminds me of Old Speckled Hen, which I believe is a bit paler, but similar in alcohol content. “Hen’s Tooth” clocks in at 6.5% abv, which is just right for one pint in the evening, wouldn’t you say? The extra ethanol isn’t as overpowering as in OSH, but you can’t ignore the contribution to the flavor, especially in the aftertaste. It’s been about three minutes since I took a sip, and my mouth tastes a little bit like kerosene. Hang on….that’s better.

Let’s see what they say about this beer over at that other place:

“The good news is that this beer tastes a lot better than it smells. The smell on the initial pour can slap you in the face. It is a sour, unpleasant smell – much like the trub (or fermentation residue) from a batch of homebrew. This makes sense, as this beer is bottle fermented. The color, on the other hand, is beautiful. It is a bright ruby/amber color that is a pleasure to look at. The taste is rather nice. It is a rich English bitter with a slight carbonation burn and a lasting bitterness that hits at the back of the mouth and sticks through to the aftertaste. For any fan of “real” English ales, this will be a treat. It isn’t sweet or terribly unique. But, it is a solid and consistent traditional English Ale.”

Wow. I totally disagree with two points. First, the trub isn’t always a bad smell (I even downed the yeast, old school style, because it didn't smell terrible. Great source of B-complex vitamins!).

Second, sweetness is the first thing that I registered upon sipping this beer .

What’s that they say about taste?

Another tasting...Delirium Tremens!

DT is a Belgian Tripel Ale that I have enjoyed for some time, and it's actually the first Tripel that I ever tried. My first time was last summer, when I brought a 750ml bottle home and uncorked it.

I thought that it must have gone bad.

My taste buds, accustomed to English-style ales, porters, and stouts, were not ready for these exotic fruity flavors coming from a beer. And the wild yeast in these old Belgian breweries has a certain...gamy quality to it, such that it seems more hearty than a beer of similar lightness. My wife assured me that nothing was wrong with it, and that it was delicious. Skeptical, I let her finish the bottle, but I gave it another go the next week. Tasting it with more open buds allowed me to appreciate what was there, and it quickly became one of my favorites.

Tripels are bottle fermented with candi sugar, which is crystallized sucrose. This gives a different kind of sweetness than corn sugar or malt extract, especially since all of the sugar is not used up in carbonating the beer. Tripels, as the name suggest, have higher alcohol content than most beers (8-10%), but the only indication that there may be more alcohol in DT is the extra syrupy sweetness. Much like a shooter that's high in sugar, you can drink yourself into a headache with DT.

So the unofficial tasting, interrupted for a few hours by a squalling infant, goes like this:
The pour is very golden, very effervescent. The head is light and fragrant, and doesn't linger long. This beer remains cloudy, because the yeast flocculate, or remain in suspension. Most yeast sediments. The flocculant yeast provide most of the fruity flavors by virtue of the specific sugar breakdown products, or esters, but their presence in the glass contributes to the spiciness of the beer. I smell strawberries, banana, and spice as the bubbles pop, and I taste a wine-like sweetness that is cut by citrus flavor and intense spice. The effect is not unlike a champagne made from Viogner, but much more refreshing! I say champagne because the tiny bubbles that consistently dance with the yeast give DT a mouthfeel similar to a champagne. The high carbonation really softens this in your mouth, as opposed to the larger bubbles in a lager. Fortunately, a healthy proportion of extra light malt sugar keeps DT from being dry like a champagne.

Overall, then, Delirium Tremens is an outstanding specimen of a Tripel, outshined only by La Fin du Monde in flavor and character. And since I'm all about Michigan microbreweries, I'll put in a plug for the best Michigan-based tripels that I've tried, in order of preference:

Bell's Sparkling Ale Kalamazoo
Dragonmead Final Absolution Warren
Dark Horse Sapient Trip Ale Marshall

Honorable Mention -- Really good, but -WHOA! - the hops!
New Holland's Black Tulip Holland

A Tasting -- Bam Biere!

In addition to homebrewing, I like to try microbrew offerings, especially from Michigan microbreweries. The cool thing about the Michigan microbreweries is that they don't have a specific identity, like the Northwest or mountain states. They make EVERYTHING. Out West, the choice is whether you want your beer super-hopped or uber-hopped. It's a total pissing contest out there, and beer drinkers lose. It reminds me of people who boast about the amount of spicy heat they like in their food...it seems that at some point, you don't really taste anything.

So, today, my neighbor Bob handed me a bottle of Bam Biere Farmhouse Ale, from the Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales Co. in Dexter, MI. From the bottle,"Golden, naturally cloudy, bottle conditioned, and dry hopped for a perfectly refreshing balance of spicy malts, hops, and yeast."

A bit of explanation. Golden and naturally cloudy are self explanatory. Bottle conditioned means that, like homebrew, the yeast is not filtered out prior to bottling, and is used to naturally carbonate the beer. This also allows for aging of the beer. Dry hopping is placing, well, dry hops right into the fermenter after the boil and cooling of the wort. Those hop oils are thus untouched by heat, which makes for a more pungent bitterness and nose.

So after all of that ado, here are my very unprofessional observations and impressions. The beer poured golden, as advertised, with a tall, creamy, yet very light head right out of the fridge. Unfortunately, I decanted the yeast, as well. Sometimes, bottle yeast is mildly off-flavored, and sometimes it is sulfurous and tart. This was the latter variety. Fortunately, much of the dark brown yeast remained trapped in the head, and I scooped it out with my finger.

I don't know that Farmhouse Ale is an actual variety of beer. The label indicates that it is intended to be refreshing and spicy, so I was expecting something in line with a Belgian ale, like a Hoegaarden. I was surprised to find a strong lemon component, probably a diluted version of the sulfury sediment. I didn't really detect any other fruity flavors, and the spiciness eluded me. The dry-hopping must have been on the light side, as well. It had a nice, light weight, and refreshing liveliness, but in the end, I just wasn't crazy about the flavor.

When my wife tasted it, she suggested that perhaps the bottle had turned. I'll pick up another bottle soon and give it one more go, being careful not to decant the sediment.

Introduction to Beer

My wife and I began homebrewing last January, after being impressed by the quality of brew being produced by our friends, Jim and Sonja. A local place, the Beer Depot, carries anything the beginner to advanced homebrewer might want, and they're only a few blocks from my house. The features that recommend homebrewing are as follows: it's easy, it's a great social activity, you make about 4.5 gallons of beer for about $35 (once the initial investment in equipment is made), and you receive immense satisfaction as those bubbles pop right under your nose while you take that first sip of a new batch.

The upfront cost would be close to $150. The crucial items are these:

1. Large Stockpot, the bigger the better, but at least 4 gallons. A heavy bottom helps avoid burning.
2. Two Carboys, glass, 6 ga.
3. Two stoppers with vapor locks
4. Large 5 gallon pail
5. Two measuring pails, 4qt.
6. Funnel with screen
7. Thermometer with pot hook
8. Hydrometer
9. Plastic tubing and racking cane
10. Capper -- you can get away with no capping if you buy the Grolsch-style bottles
11. One-Step or any other sterilizing agent that you do not have to rinse.
12. Bottles
    

This is the basic setup. I included two carboys because you might want to have two batches going at once. You will also want Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, as it will be your best friend for the first year or so. Aside from this, you simply buy the ingredients and follow the recipes.

Brewing 101
So what is beer? Beer is the fermented sugar from wheat and/or barley. Hops are usually added for flavor and aroma (and for preservative qualities, as in the IPA), but other aromatic plants like heather or spruce can be used as well. If a large amount of hops is used, a large amount of malt sugar is required to properly balance the beer. This is why Sam Adams sucks.

Malt is prepared as follows: Wheat or barley has the hell beaten out of it until the grains fall off and are collected. These grains are soaked in water in huge rooms for a while until they begin to germinate. This is called malting. The water is drained from the room and the malt is dried. Germination activates many enzymes in the grain that are then available for breaking down sugars in the malt. Hardcore homebrewers will set up a mashtun, which is a tank for soaking cracked malt at specific temperatures to extract the sugar and allow conversions, via the enzymes, to other sugars and esters. I purchase my malt in the form of a concentrated syrup that a company was kind enough to make.

The concentrated malt is added to water (usually 2.5gal), and is brought to a boil. Hops are often added for a 1h boil to make the beer more bitter. A few minutes before the end of the boil, finishing hops are added. Because they don't boil as long, the volatile oils extracted from them are retained in the beer, providing that 'green' flavor and aroma. The beer stew that we are left with here is called the wort.

When the wort cools, it is transferred to a glass carboy containing 2 gal cold water. When the temperature reaches 75-80F, the yeast is added. Yeast accomplish the fermentation. For the first week or so, the yeast eat the sugar and grow exponentially on this rich food source. They break down the sugar into simpler components, including ethanol and CO2. When the sugar is all used up, or the yeast have created a self-toxic alcohol environment, fermentation stops. All the homebrewer sees is that there is a thick head on the beer in the carboy that eventually disappears.

After a week or so, the beer is usually ready for bottling. A cup or so of corn sugar is boiled, and the fermented wort is added to it. The beer is siphoned into bottles, and the bottles are capped and put away for 10-14 days. The corn sugar is used by the yeast to carbonate the beer in the bottles.

That's all there is to it. Most of the process is cleaning...cleaning the work area before you begin, sterilizing equipment that will come into contact with the boiled wort, cleaning bottles, cleaning up afterward. But it's really worth it when you have a few batches put away, just waiting for you to have time for a nice beer.