Shaping a tasting theme around a holiday is always a fun
challenge. Each holiday has different
associations with it, some of which are more or less conducive to curating a
line-up. Halloween’s easy: chocolate,
evil. We covered that last October – AND
the previous October. This past November
was our first “Thanksgiving”-themed tasting, centered around different food
stuffs in beer. There hadn’t been a
Valentine-themed Top Shelf Thursday in a couple years, & then we covered
chocolate & wine, in the various ways it presents in beer (wine hybrids,
wine barrel-aged, barleywine). Figured
it was about time to recycle the Valentine’s theme, but since Halloween was not
long ago, decided to push other aspects unique to Valentine’s Day – wine again,
but also flowers, & love. With a
small group of beer lovers in attendance, we were all set for a magical
evening.
The first in our bouquet of beers for the evening was also
one of the few gruits we’ve featured at Top Shelf Thursday: Fraoch Heather Ale
from Scotland’s Williams Brothers Brewing.
Based on a recipe millennia old, this ale was low on the hopping,
seasoned instead with heather & bogmyrtle, another flowering shrub, & ginger,
coming across dry & herbal with a definite ginger twist.
Lost Abbey’s Devotion Ale fit in name, though the devotion
referenced is more of the monastic spirit.
A tribute to beers made by Belgium’s hop field-adjacent abbeys, this
pale ale struck a nice balance between Belgian esters & a bright, floral character.
We just got in AleSmith’s My Bloody Valentine less than a
week ago, so I couldn’t NOT throw it into the flight, right? A cousin of Evil Dead Red, this west coast
amber ale had prominent piney hop notes, supported nicely by a malt profile
that brought subtle dark chocolate & caramel flavors.
Hops are the female flowers of the eponymous plant, so I’d
feel remiss if there weren’t a couple IPAs in the mix (plus I just wanted to
try these). Hardywood Park’s RVA IPA had
a restrained bitterness & hop character for an IPA that said “east coast”
from top to bottom. Only fitting – the
hops for this beer were sourced from the community, grown by Virginia home
hop-growers in their own gardens!
And
Stone & Smuttynose joined forces to resurrect the recipe for the original
Ballantine IPA, from shortly after Prohibition (WAY before IPAs were all the
rage). Using maize & some old school
hop varieties like Cluster & Bullion, Cluster’s Last Stand was a cool look
at what the granddaddy of modern IPAs might’ve tasted like.
The remainder of the night was spent in wine territory of one
stripe or another, starting with Allagash’s Interlude. A Belgian strong with a secondary
fermentation by brettanomyces & aged in red wine barrels, this definitely
satisfied our sour-&-funky pangs for the evening. And we dug into another collaboration with
Terra Incognita (get it – dug?), from Sierra Nevada & Boulevard. The third iteration of a beer originally
brewed for the SAVOR festival, this was quite a mélange, with a portion of
dry-hopped young, blended with ales aged in wine & bourbon barrels. I believe there was some estate-grown pale
malt & a wild yeast in there as well, but the result was a well-rounded,
malty beer, somewhere between a weizenbock & a barleywine, with a nicely
tempered bourbon edge.
We hit the slopes with a pair of barleywines next, first
with the Quebecois Brasserie Dieu du Ciel!
Their American-style barleywine, Solstice d’Hiver, had developed some
wintergreen notes from the roughly half-year the brewery ages it prior to
release. Uinta’s Cock-Eyed Cooper, aged
in bourbon barrels, was sturdy & robust enough to stand up to the
wood. The group concensus was that both
of these could have used a bit more age to mellow out the alcohol heat – good
candidates for cellaring!
And we landed on some very solid ground with Not the Stoic,
a Belgian-style quad from Deschutes with a fraction aged in pinot noir &
rye whiskey barrels. Fans of Belgian
quads found this one just right, not too sweet, & sporting both pinot &
rye notes very well.
Thanks to all who enjoyed a most romantic Top Shelf
Thursday. Here’s hoping that you spent
Valentine’s Day with that special someone, even if that someone is a glass of
great beer. See you in March!
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