Top Shelf Thursday, October 2013

Fall is a great season for beer, & next to Christmas, Halloween is probably the holiday that lends itself best to brew.  Fall seasonals are Halloween-appropriate, but what’s even more fun is that there are so many beers with sinister or downright evil names & motifs,  enough to constitute an entirely separate blog entry.  Our October Top Shelf Thursday centered around a general Halloween theme, featuring pumpkin beers (a no-brainer), chocolate beers (trick or treat!), & the afore-mentioned wicked brews.

 

We started off with a one-two pumpkin punch, though the beers were light enough they might be better likened to a playful slap.  The Pumpkin Lambicus, from the Belgian Brouwerij Timmermans-John Martin, was unique in that it was the only pumpkin lambic anyone had ever heard of.  Semi-sweet & generously spicy, the 4% ABV lambic was reminiscent of a fall cider.  The slightly heftier (at 4.4% - holy!) Great Pumpkin Ale from Cambridge Brewing started with a sweet aroma of baking spices that belied the light, crisp, & bitter taste within.  Some compared the beer to a light lager, but found an interesting exercise in tasting some pumpkin ales that strayed from the norm.

Our first ominous beer of the evening, The Bruery’s Tart of Darkness, really hit the right notes for fans of sour ales.  Tart of Darkness begins life as an American stout, but radically transforms through aging in oak barrels with wild yeast & other tart-ifying bugs, & comes out resembling an intensely puckering Flanders ale with little stout character to speak of.

Things really took a turn for the unusual with Telegraph Brewing’s Obscura Cacao, from Telegraph’s Obscura series of small-batch, experimental beers that frequently use wild yeast strains.  Obscura Cacao is made from a sour mash with Dominican cacao beans from a local chocolatier, as well as cacao in the boil, to give it a taste that’s both tart & chocolatey.  Some liked the brew, others not so much, but everyone agreed it was one the most anomalous beers they’d ever tried.

A perfect fit for a Halloween-centric tasting is Russian River’s Damnation.  Inspired by the quintessential Belgian golden ale, Duvel (itself the Flemish word for ‘devil’),  the light body & creeping alcohol are indeed seductive.  Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo cites Duvel as one of his favorite beers, & Damnation is a solid homage. 

Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale is well-known for its idiosyncratic name & label – the Double Dead Guy is, apparently, twice as dead as THAT Dead Guy (does that make him undead?).  Rogue ramped up their maibock/ale hybrid into a sweetly boozy strong ale.  They give the same treatment to their Chocolate Stout to create – you guessed it – Double Chocolate Stout!  In this writer’s opinion, the Chocolate & Double Chocolate Stouts are some of the best Rogue has to offer, with rich, round chocolate notes.

Another smaller batch, experimental brew was offered from DuClaw Brewing in their X-1, the first in their eXile Series.  X-1 combines chocolate & rye in an imperial porter, pairing the sweet chocolate with the subtly spicy rye for a tasty balance.

The wicked juices kept flowing with Dark Hollow from Blue Mountain Brewing.  Not messing around, Blue Mountain took a 10% ABV imperial stout &aged it in whiskey barrels for a big, complex brew that did not disappoint.  And the devil was certainly in the details with Founders’ Devil Dancer Triple IPA.  12% ABV, 112 IBUs, & dry-hopped with ten different hop breeds over a period of 26 days, this massive, bitter brew brought some to their knees in adulation, others in despair.  And the label is pretty devilish,  too.

All in all it was another fun Top Shelf Thursday, & the second to be based around a holiday (the first being Valentine’s Day which, coincidentally, also incorporated chocolate beers).  Half the fun of curating &, hopefully, participating is the interpretation of the theme, & this was no exception, with plenty of room for creativity.  One might think there’s more beer that exploits its reputation as a vice, but there’s also the holy & reverent – think of all the abbey ales, doppelbocks, etc.  Just once in a while we like to embrace the dark side of life.  It’s what Halloween’s about, & who doesn’t love a dark beer?  As always, thanks to those who joined, & to those who missed this month, hope to catch you next time.