Avery Brabant (No. 1 in Barrel-Aged Series)

Avery Brewing, Boulder, CO
Brabant Barrel-Aged Wild Ale

Bottled Feb 10, 2009. Production: 694 cases
8.65% ABV
12 oz. Bottle

OMFG, this beer is a horrendous carbonated cherry cough syrup. Avery brags on the side of the bottle that they are “all about” making beers that “defy styles and categories”. In this case, that also means brewing a beer that is seriously overpriced and mega-gross. Frankly, I don’t care that this dark ale was aged for 8 months in Zinfandel barrels.  It may as well have stayed in those barrels forever.

Founders Red Rye P.A.

Image taken from Founders Brewing Co. website

Founders Brewing Co., Grand Rapids, MI

Red Rye P. A.

Rye Ale

6.6% ABV

12 oz. bottle into pint glass

Delicious grapefruit and cedar notes.  Reedy and metallic.  Medium-bodied and unpretentious.

Nina’s new favorite beer.

Founders Brewing Taproom: Barrel-aged Brews and Holé Molé

Founders Brewing, Grand Rapids, MI

Taproom
**

Holé Molé

Breakfast Stout with Habanero and Chocolate

4.5% ABV

draft, Pilsner glass
**

Black Biscuit

Baltic Porter / Black Beer, Bourbon Barrel-Aged

10.5% ABV

draft, snifter
**

Backwoods Bastard

Stotch Ale, Bourbon barrel-aged

10.1 %ABV

draft, snifter
**

Newaygo County Cherry

Cherry Beer, Bourbon barrel-aged

7% ABV

draft, sample glass

I judge a brewery only partly on the quality of the beers they distribute. If I get to visit their taproom, I expect to be titillated, shocked, perhaps disgusted, but never bored, by beers only available to those who make the pilgrimage. While visiting my sister recently in Grand Rapids, MI, I got to make such a pilgrimage to the taproom of Founders Brewing. Perry wasn’t with me, but I called and texted him incessantly with elation and increasing drunkenness. My mission was to try everything I couldn’t taste in Ann Arbor. My server generously helped me accomplish this, providing me with ample samples to supplement our paid orders.

A taproom visit guarantees exposure to genius new brews as well as disastrous experiments. Founders was no exception. The stand-out disaster was Holé Molé, a breakfast stout brewed with habanero peppers and chocolate. This beer was probably brewed on a dare, since why else would you brew a beer with the world’s hottest pepper? I carefully dipped my tongue in the thick head and was promptly singed. After that scare I hesitantly took a sip and was surprised that the chocolate flavors developed nicely as I swirled the beer in my mouth. But after swallowing, my mouth and lips were thoroughly burned with habanero fire. I had to send back the beer, which they assented to gracefully– I imagine it’s happened before.

An equally stunning, but more enjoyable, experience was trying all three of Founders’ current bourbon barrel-aged brews, most of which are not distributed outside the taproom. I have to admit that my tasting notes deteriorated as my pilgrimage progressed. The Black Biscuit was my first beer of the evening. It is a mix between a Baltic Porter and a Black Beer, then submitted to bourbon barrel aging. The barrel is a huge contributor to the aroma, flavor, and feeling of this beer: at first it smelled vinuous, then oakey, then like Bailey’s Irish Cream. The feel in the mouth was very full, round, and even creamier than it had smelled. It was sweet without being syrupy in texture, and vanilla and coffee flavors dominated. My sister is not generally a beer fan, but she described this one as “strong flavors but not gross,” which I roughly translate here as, “high alcohol, high sugar, not overly hoppy.”

The Backwoods Bastard in a Bourbon barrel-aged version of Founders’ Scotch ale: Dirty Bastard. The bartender also gave me a sample of Dirty Bastard to drink for comparison. In most ways Backwoods Bastard resembled the Black Biscuit more closely than its namesake beer. The Bourbon barrels create a vanilla aroma and creamy texture equally in the black beer and scotch ale. The resemblance in smell, taste, and texture was so strong that I double-checked the color of my beer (dark amber) to make sure I hadn’t been served another glass of the Black Biscuit. The finish, however, was much hoppier than the Black Biscuit. Neither of these brews knocked me over with the taste of high-alcohol. Instead, the alcohol came through mostly in their somewhat winey/whiskey nose, and, of course, in their effect on my brain chemistry during the night. (When was the last time I drunk-dialed my brother?)

The third Bourbon barrel-aged beer, Newaygo County Cherry, was perhaps the strangest. This was not only aged in Bourbon barrels, but, according to the bartender, aged in Bourbon barrels in which maple syrup had already been aged. Complicated. The cream and vanilla were still present on the nose, but then the beer itself was a sweet/sour cherry beer– a complex and surprising combination of aroma and flavor. It was too fruity to be called a beer and the adjective “girly” sprung to mind. My tasting notes, scribbled on a small burrito receipt, are all but illegible from this time in the night. As a hophead, I’m slightly embarrassed to say that one note I can read from this beer is “sooo good.” I wonder who wrote that.

Avery The Beast

Avery Brewing, Boulder, CO

The Beast, Grand Cru

Belgian Grand Cru

2005

14.9% ABV

bottle, 12oz.

Oops, we used the wrong glass!  But would it have made a difference? This sugary alcohol bomb is equally at home in a deluxe Belgian glass, a shot glass, or just dumped straight down the kitchen sink.

What makes this a beer? It pours thick and burgundy-brown, with little to no head. The first whiff is intensely alcoholic, smelling more like bourbon whiskey than beer. It’s not actually aged in Bourbon barrels like many trendy strong ales these days, so the smell must come from the alcohol and brewing sugar (of which there are 8 distinct types in this brew).

It tastes more like a carbonated liqueur : sweet, smooth, spicy, fruity (orange), molasses-y, but not bitter or alcoholic. Perhaps this is a dessert beer, or a sipping beer. We judge it to be somewhat disappointing for the price.

Lagunitas Hop Stoopid

Lagunitas Brewing Company, Petaluma, CA

Hop Stoopid

Imperial IPA

8% ABv

22oz. bottle

This beer smells like roses, raspberry, orange blossoms, and a touch of lemon mint, with some subtle hints of pine and clove. I got dizzy from sticking my face down into the glass and euphorically hyperventilating through my nose.

I was initially skeptical of this beer because of the horrible name.  The shelves of my local beer store are crowded with gimmicky hop-inflected names, as if we could forget that IPAs are made with hops.  These ultra-hopped beers often sacrifice balance for over-the-top bitterness.  Thankfully, this beer is an exception.  The overpowering hops taste is the focus, but it is eminently drinkable, even by non-HopHeads, as preliminary participant-observation has suggested.

After a couple of sips my palette was ruined for another high quality IPA I had sitting nearby. This herbaceous fever-dream is on our “Good” list, even if the name makes us shudder with embarrassment.

Bell’s Sparkling Ale

Bell’s Brewery, Inc., Kalamazoo, MI
Sparkling Ale

Tripel
9.0% ABV
bottle

The holiday season has arrived.

Marketed as an “American Tripel,” this seasonal release is firmly in the Belgian tradition. Light and slightly hazy in the glass, the aroma is an unmistakable yeasty combination of sweaty laundry, banana peels, and wet hay. Bell’s has wisely christened this a “Sparkling Ale,” since “Refined Belgian Juggernaut” probably wouldn’t appeal to most buyers stocking their fridges for Thanksgiving and beyond. Bring it to family gatherings! The goofy name will appeal to your beer-ignorant relatives, the Belgian taste will satisfy you, and the high alcohol content will mollify grandma.

Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout

Brooklyn Brewery, Brooklyn, NY

Black Chocolate Stout

Imperial Stout

10% ABV

bottle

As Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796, Catherine the Great impressed the world with her savvy foreign policy, patronage of the arts, deep intellectual prowess, and scandalous sexual affairs. Why should a beer drinker care that she profoundly changed Russia’s position on the international stage? Or that her personal art collection was the basis of the Hermitage Museum? Or that she corresponded personally with Voltaire? Speaking of Voltaire, did you know that “Voltaire” is a pen-name of uncertain provenance (and only one of 178 attributed to the same author)? I digress.

Anyhow, what еvery beer-drinker should know is that the original version of the Imperial Stout was created exclusively for Catherine the Great’s pleasure. Brooklyn’s Black Chocolate Stout is brewed in this style, but otherwise has nothing to do with Catherine the Great, for better or worse.

I didn’t taste much namesake chocolate in this brew, but rather a subtle hint of molasses– a hint as subtle as a girlfriend circling 18th century engagement rings in a magazine and leaving those pages dog-eared on her boyfriend’s 18th century desk.

Though slightly sweeter, and lacking the fresh-off-the-draft head, I find this beer very reminiscent of Guinness (Perry heartily disagrees).  This is also a nod to how well the alcohol is concealed– 10% and it tastes more like 6%. No sticky, syrupy, alkie sweetness in this imperial stout. За ваше здоровье!

Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale

Bell’s Brewery, Inc., Kalamazoo, MI
Two-Hearted Ale
IPA

7.0% ABV
bottle

Located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Two-Hearted River is immortalized in Hemingway’s short story “Big Two-Hearted River” (1925). The beer is named for that story. It is a story about a man named Nick. He fishes for trout in the river. It is a fine story. The beer tastes good. In the story, Nick does not drink beer. Nick drinks coffee.  The coffee is bitter. Nick laughs.

Nina says this is deeper and rounder than most IPAs. It is round and low. It tastes like pine, but it is not too bitter. This is a benchmark mid-Western IPA. I was thirsty. I did not believe that I had ever been thirstier.

Rogue Yellow Snow IPA

Rogue Ales Brewery, Newport, OR

Yellow Snow IPA

IPA

6.2% ABV

bottle

Perry and I split a 22 oz. of Yellow Snow IPA and had two very different drinking experiences. From the beginning our glasses distinguished themselves because mine was totally opaque, and Perry’s was practically clear. Then the flowery aroma I described as finely floral, flittingly fruity, and practically aphrodisiacal, Perry described as (b)a(r)prhrodisiacal. I assume that I got the fragrant sediment of this presumably unfiltered beer, whereas Perry received the sorrowful upper layer.

Based on the glass I drank, I would call this a solid medium-bodied IPA, with a more-bitter-than-most finish that is more common in Pale Ales. My only question is why name a beer after piss? Perry thinks the name is appropriate.

Speakeasy Double Daddy IPA

Speakeasy Ales and Lagers, San Francisco, CA
Double Daddy IPA
Double IPA

9.5%
bottle

This beer poured a beautiful cloudy copper, but the big aroma of an IPA was absent, even after vigorous swirling– a disappointing first impression.

At first sip, this beer seemed like a typically overly sweet double IPA. Then I put the beer down and my mouth was filled with an alarming bitterness– like biting into a tree, eating grapefruit rind, downing a bottle of pine-sol, or having your post-wisdom-tooth-extraction dry sockets stuffed with bitter and numbing clove oil. This tingly feeling lasted minutes after each sip. Admittedly, this was a refreshing change after trying many a syrupy double and triple IPA, whose sweetness often clings to my palate like molten hard candy. But bitterness can also be taken too far. My dad sipped peckishly at our shared glass for a while, then declared he “would never try this beer again.”