Top Shelf Thursday: The Tart & the Horsey III

Longevity can be fun.  It’s enjoyable to see how something changes the longer you do it, how it evolves & takes on new shapes over time.  Each year, putting together The Sour & the Funky during Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week, new trends emerge, things morph a little year-to-year; this year saw the first Gosen added to the line-up, as well as more local beers & more beers on draft.  So it is with our third “encore” Top Shelf Thursday (unofficially called ‘The Tart & Horsey’), held shortly after PCBW to throw out a little more funk for everyone. 

The German sours tend to get short shrift compared to the Belgians & American wilds, but that’s changing with the waxing popularity of Berliner Weiss, Gose, & other Deutsch obscurities.  We kicked off the night with a beer considered the standard-bearer of the Gose style, Bayerischer Bahnhof’s  Leipziger Gose.  This 4.5% beauty was light, effervescent, with a refreshing tartness & zest from the use of coriander, & could easily accompany one on a summer evening.  Hoppin’ Frog took this esoteric style & imperialized it, ramping the alcohol all the way up to a whopping 6% with its King Gose Home.  Named in honor of Lebron James’ return to the Cavaliers, this mutant Gose hit home with a more assertive tartness than its German uncle.

There’s some controversy about the use of the word ‘lambic’ outside of the Senne Valley, but luckily that heat doesn’t find its way into Free Will’s Grape Lambic.  Fermented with Free Will’s house wild culture, the vinous quality was apparent, & the beer was well-balanced without pulling too hard toward the sour or brett ends of the spectrum.

We were treated to a cool surprise & a first for these Top Shelf Thursday tastings, as not one, but TWO brewers were present to share & discuss the beers they had a hand – or a couple of burly arms – in creating.  Rivertowne’s brew master, Andrew Maxwell, brought his Yinzer Weiss, a blackberry Berliner Weiss fresh outta the tanks.  The beer was sweet & refreshing, with a clear blackberry character & just a kiss of acidity in the finish, ending cool & clean.

Though Belgian in name, Destihl’s Flanders Red also had a Germanic twist on it.  The traditional sweet-tart interplay was given a novel counterpoint by a strong lactic character, ending in a flavor not too far off from sauer kraut (though more appetizing than that sounds, too).  It’s cool seeing the rare sour beer in the can, too.

And our second show-&-tell came from Brendan Benson of East End, who poured Brett Hop, a version of their flagship IPA fermented with brettanomyces & lactobacillus.  The hops married wonderfully with the “wild” fermentation, emphasizing the beer’s floral & lemony aspects.

We stayed in the local vein with Brew Gentlemen’s brett-fermented saison, Loose Seal.  The dance of tropical fruit notes from the yeast & the New Zealand hops was great – we wanted to cry, but didn’t think we could spare the moisture.

Our course got slightly diverted when Perennial’s Aria didn’t want to pour evenly, so we took it to the west coast with Anderson Valley’s Horse Tongue Wheat.  I can see where they got the name – this wheat beer was puckeringly sour from a mix of bugs & time spent in wine barrels.

The brett continued to flow with Allagash’s Midnight Brett Ale.  The recognizably stony, mineral character of the wild yeast was given a unique support in the use of Midnight Wheat malt, offering a comfy, roasty base that bore the brett nicely.

All in attendance braced themselves for the notoriously sour stripe of The Bruery.  Oude Tart takes the acidity of a Flanders Red to a whole new level through extensive aging in oak barrels.

And rounding off the evening was Figaro, a two-plus year old sour blonde from Cascade.  12 months in chardonnay barrels, plus another 12 aging on dried white figs & lemon zest equals one complex beer that balanced an assertively vinous, acidic flavor with a twist of fig sweetness that helps ground it.

So we welcomed some firsts to this Tart, Horsey TST: Gose, more area-sourced beers, as well as the company & knowledge of some of our fine local artisans.  It’s a pleasure to see more new faces, folks finding that the wild world of beer has unexplored nooks & crannies.  And, of course, where would we be without our regulars?  Thanks to all for joining us on another journey, & hope to see you next time.

Fickle Mistresses

I used to have this fantasy.  It was born of seeing the beer guy at D’s, Hootie, always sporting this Ommegang sweatshirt.  I imagined beer drinkers forming gangs – like, actually street gangs – based on their affinity for breweries, or some other facet of beer culture.  Like, the Dogfish Head crew running into the Stone posse & waging an old-school streetfight, like the mods & the rockers.  I’m not talking about the actual brewers (though I know who I’d put my money on in a Sam vs. Greg match), but the fans, akin to the kind of hooliganism that follows soccer or heavy metal.  Maybe the hopheads, the Belgophiles, & the lager lovers would form separate gangs across the city, & beer fests would turn into riots with heavy security.  What if…

Not that I want to see thug violence besiege the community, but I’m always curious about beer drinkers as a subculture, & kind of thrill at imagining that parallel played out to a surreal extent.  Of course it would never happen, & not just because we’re generally pretty chill, self-regulating, self-policing people (in my experience).  You just don’t see that kind of diehard loyalty to a brand in craft beer.  Craft beer as a hobby is practically defined by playing the field – the more deeply into it you are, the more variety you’ve tried & WANT to try.  Craft beer is the vast continent beyond the mainstream, & once the door’s open, it takes a lot for it swing shut again.  Sure, you might hear that some prefer hoppy beers (or stouts, Belgians, sours, etc.), but that preference is almost never in exclusion to other styles, & doesn’t focus exclusively on one brewer.  You never hear “I’m a Great Lakes man.  Drank it all my life, just like my dad.  Don’t care to try anything else.”  Beer fans are like sharks – they gotta keep moving or they die. 

I imagine there’s a part, however small, of every brewery owner that finds that frustrating.  I remember Mark Thompson of Starr Hill speaking at SAVOR (via Craft Beer Radio) a few years ago.  Amid the beer-bro camaraderie vibe that always flows at these things, there was a little bit of angst in his tone.  At one point he remarked on what a “fickle” lot we craft drinkers are, how challenging it is to keep the public engaged, etc.  And he’s right.  That same angst was behind the hissy-fit Jim Koch threw in that now-famous Boston magazine piece.  As much as craft beer is all about the community as a whole, the little business devils sitting on everyone’s shoulders want to see brand loyalty, to keep them coming back.  There will always be a finite number of go-to beers in everyone’s pocket that we keep returning to, but I don’t ever see a craft brewery commanding “100% share of mind” from its consumers. 

That’s the double-edged sword behind “crafty” beers, the “boutique” brands rolled out by the big companies.  The corporations want to swipe a portion of the craft-curious market, & they’ve been successful.  But diversity breeds diversity, & once  those drinkers have tried Blue Moon or Shock Top, they’re open to many, many other brands that, before, were invisible to them.  Those companies have manufactured their own gate for people to walk right through.  But in the meantime, they’ve still shored up a sizable share in the action. 

That’s why the “Brewed the Hard Way” commercial was just what the big boys needed, right now.  It was to shut that gate & keep the flock right where they are: safe, sound, happy.  It wasn’t an “us too” message, but a “not us, thank you”.  Budweiser is what it is, & if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – that’s the idea, anyway.  Keep it simple, know what you like.  Ford, NFL, Doritos, Bud.  There IS such a thing as a “Bud man” or a “Coors man”, & they are loyal breeds.  They are the univores who go straight for their brand, & if their brand’s out, leave, no matter that there’s an extremely similar product sitting right next to that empty space on the shelf.*

One of the more memorable scenes from Anat Baron’s movie Beer Wars places her in a bar with brand-loyal Bud/Miller/Coors fans.  On a table are three cups of beer, one each of the afore-mentioned.  She asks participants in an experiment to state which of the big three they drink, has them taste all three beers, & try to identify which one is “their” brand.  Unsurprisingly, everyone fails, demonstrating the fallacy of brand loyalty with such a homogenous product.  But it doesn’t really matter if they can pick it out – the tie has already been established.  There’s something about that beer that makes it theirs, & no doubt those blind taste testers have already downed hundreds of that brand, & will likely continue.

I, personally, don’t see myself becoming brand-loyal any time soon.  Sure, there are breweries I get excited about (I get psyched any time Lagunitas unveils something new).  But I always go back to the comfort of playing the field.  There’s too much out there, & I’m not ready to settle down yet.  And I bet a lot of you are out there with me.  Here’s to choice, & hoping the supply side keeps it coming. 

*Part of me hates using this “us/them” tone.  It’s presumptuous of me to speak like I know who you, the reader, are, but I’ve done it before & will probably keep doing it.

PCBW 2015 at Ho1KB: Halftime Report

It’s that time of year again – what are you doing with your tax refund?  Wrong!  The answer I was looking for was “Blowing it all during Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week”!  Because it’s all going down now - ten days of craft beer fun all through the ‘Burgh & beyond.  Breweries, bars, restaurants, distributors, & other small businesses are upping their game once again, & once again, we’re stoked to be part of the action.  This is the House’s fourth year as a PCBW sponsor & participant, & we’re more than ever this year, throwing six events & dipping our toes into uncharted (for us, anyway) waters.

We had a good warm-up last Friday with a night of flights from Great Divide, featuring four high gravity beers from this high altitude brewery.  Hercules & Yeti are reliable standbys, & the flights poured were augmented by the rarer Peach Grand Cru & Barrel-Aged Old Ruffian.  And each flight came with a sweet Great Divide glass.

Saturday saw the welcome mull of puckerheads with the fourth annual Sour & the Funky, our festival of sour & bretted beers.  This year’s was more labor-intensive than usual: we hoarded bottles for months to make this year special, & John was up bright & early on Saturday tapping 20 – yes, 20! – kegs of wild  & funky beer, including more local offerings than in years prior, a sign that local breweries are stepping it up, too.  It felt good to offer a majority of beers not seen in past years, with Gose showing up in a big way, & the first appearance of sours in cans!  The crowd is always good & game for this fest, & many found some new favorites (personal highlights were Pizza Boy’s Pinot Grigio Abascio-Cell & Brew Gentlemen’s Loose Seal).  And each ticket came with a sweet glass.

As I write this, we’re pouring flights of Ballast Point Sculpin & its variants.  We’re lucky enough to have Grapefruit Sculpin & Habanero Sculpin on tap right now, next to the original, for a hoppy experience to be remembered.

We’re really proud of our monthly beer-pairing dinners, showcasing some great breweries supported by a truly talented culinary artist, Brian.  We’re especially psyched to welcome a unique voice in the Pittsburgh beer scene: Draai Laag Brewing.  Using spontaneous fermentation to cultivate a singular, signature flavor profile, Draai Laag’s carved their own niche – one that presents some really intriguing food-pairing possibilities.  Chef Brian’s created an equally innovative menu for this dinner, & we can’t wait to see how these two creative entities mesh.

PCBW at The House has traditionally been book-ended by The Sour & the Funky & a fantastic tap takeover from Voodoo Brewing, & we’re happy to stick with tradition this year once again.  Friday night, we tap a dozen-ish beers from a brewery that’s killing it these days, including six from their Barrel Room Collection.  Voodoo’s been a good friend to The House, & though they’re focusing their local efforts on their own taproom in Homestead, they’ve been awesome enough to roll with us for another year during PCBW.  This is always one of our busiest days of the calendar, & this time no exception.  And there will be sweet glasses.

And we’ll be wrapping up an exciting long-week by breaking some new ground for The House, partnering with another super-popular local business for a unique event: our donut-beer pairing with pastry prodigies Oakmont Bakery!  It’ll be a packed House on the final Saturday of PCBW, as we match some of Founders Brewing’s finest strong ales with some custom donuts from Oakmont Bakery.  The response to this has event has exceeded our expectations so far, but we promise an amazing time to all! 

Even more impressive than the craft beer scene’s efforts during this year’s PCBW, is the demand from the beer-drinking public.  Far from being spread too thin by hundreds of happenings, the crowds have come out in droves across the region, making each event a success.  We’re thrilled at the feedback we’ve gotten, selling out events, & bringing in even more adventurous drinkers looking for new, delicious suds.  So here’s to a continually rising tide, & to the Pittsburgh scene riding this beautiful wave into the sunset!  And dammit, we’ve got a keg of that Cool Ranch Doritos beer sitting into the cooler just begging to be tapped…

Enjoy by...? It's Complicated

Love it.  Hate it.  Like it.  Don’t like it.  Thumbs up.  Thumbs down.

Sometimes enjoyment can be complicated.  It’s convenient to think of things in black & white terms.  It’s something of a luxury.  But life can have shades of gray, & often we don’t think in terms of absolutes but levels of nuance, with multiple considerations to make.  Most of the time, life is more complex than good or bad.

And by “life”, of course I mean “beer drinking”.  As creatures given to categorization, evaluation, & discrimination, our nature leads us to rate most things that come our way.  And by “things”, of course I mean “beers”.  We have gut instincts that automatically attract or repel, & those instincts are tempered by conscious analysis.  A bartender puts a beer on the bar in front of us, & we have a reaction to its color, clarity, composition, cleanliness.  Smelling the beer allows us to refine our opinion a little more, tasting even more so, etc.  By the end of the glass, we decide whether we like it enough to have another, or to move on.  Our opinion is based on the beer’s perceived pros & cons, how much we liked the various facets it presented, basically how it made us feel.  

We might round up or down to conclude that we enjoyed a beer, or not, but there’s more to the story.  “The flavor was there, but it felt thin & watery.”  “Nice smell, but it had a nasty aftertaste.”  “Great beer, I just can’t put away more than one.”  You rate this beer a 3, & this one a 2.85.  It boils down to enjoying beer A more than beer B, but there’s a spectrum & so much is relative.

I believe that beer itself is an acquired taste, & there are plenty of colors on the beer palette that also take some getting used to.  The roast of a stout, the bitterness of hops, the pucker of a lambic - these can all be turn-offs at first, but grow on people to the point that they enjoy what those flavors bring to the table.  So challenge can be part of the equation, as long as it pays off & you’re justly rewarded.

What if you respect or appreciate a beer more than you enjoy it?  This concept isn’t foreign to a lot of art forms - I appreciate the energy & creative chaos in, say, free jazz, but do I enjoy it?  Is the sound inherently pleasurable or gratifying?  Some of art’s value can lie in it being difficult.  It makes us sit up, or moves us in a way that might not be comfortable.  Can beer do the same thing?

Knowing the origin of gueuze, the far-out process in the beer’s creation, brought my respect for it to a new level.  Were I tasting it blind, I might have been turned off, but the context gave me pause to reflect & consider elements that may have gone unnoticed.  I took the challenging elements into perspective, & realized that the acidity, the funk, the earthy nature of it were not flaws, but a parts of the process that the brewer/blender was intentionally presenting.  

 I remember trying Full Pint’s Rye Rebellion for the first time.  I think it was my first rye stout, & definitely my first rye barrel-aged rye imperial stout.  It was dark: dark color, dark, bold flavors, so deeply roasted, a little tannic, thick & strong with almost no balancing sweetness.  Unyielding, uncompromising.  There was nothing “off” about it, it was just a stoic monolith of a beer.  And I believe that’s exactly as the brewer intended.  The beer said to me “I am as I am.”  I can’t say my enjoyment for it was as great as my appreciation of it (though I didn’t NOT enjoy it, either), & that experience has stayed with me since.

I’ve come to have the same sort of relationship & understanding with the beers of Draai Laag.  I see them almost as works of abstract art, to be engaged on their own terms.  There are only a few Draai Laag beers that hit me on that “pleasure” level: Aureus & St. Angus are both rich & dessert-like, & though they’re not lacking in complexity, are also just plain tasty.  Same with Gouden Brugge, perhaps their most relatable offering.  

So much of their line-up, though, I find stimulating, intriguing.  They’re like Cubist paintings or David Lynch films in a glass.  They take unusual, sometimes disparate elements & combine them in ways that come together to form a whole.  They may clash a bit, they may have jagged edges, but I always get the sense that they’re exactly as lop-sided, angular, or surreal as the brewer intends.  So often I come away from a sip of one of their beers not necessarily wanting to down another right away, but to contemplate what’s in the glass.  I take a taste, let it do its thing, & just reflect on what it is the beer (& by degree, the brewer) wants me to see.  They’re beers that make me go “Hmm..” more than “Mmm…”, & therein lies their beauty

Consider, then, that there’s another kind of dimension on which we can fathom beer, that adds to our overall experience.  What is the beer showing you, & what if it’s more than “just” sensory gratification?  What if it’s getting to your brain through your nose & tongue?  It’s one more aspect of art in which brewers are just beginning to scratch the surface.  

To add to the elevation (here comes the pitch part), The House is thrilled to be hosting Draai Laag for a pairing dinner on April 23rd, during Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week.  We can’t wait to see what Chef Brian creates to accompany these brews.  The gustatory fur will fly.  It promises to be a truly unique experience.

Top 5 New Breweries!

With the beer scene growing at its current rate, it can be hard to stay up-to-speed on whose wares are worth tasting & who can remain in the middle of the pack.  No worries!  We’ve compiled a listicle of the top 5 breweries for the serious beer enthusiast to watch.

Pearls Before Swine Artisanal Fermentarium, Gilead, Maine

Owner/founder/brewcrafter Trent Moyer has made “happy accidents” his raison d’etre at this tiny farmhouse brewery in rural New England.  After brewing his first batch of wort, Moyer called it a day & went to bed, only to awaken a few hours later & realize that he’d forgotten to pitch the yeast!  Panicked, he shot out of bed, hit his head on a beam in the barn loft, & fell into a coma.  Upon emerging two years later, he tasted the beer & found it delightfully tart, earthy, & rustic, with a house character approaching enteric.  Moyer jokes that his farmhouse brewery is “more like an outhouse brewery”.  We get the sense that he’s only kind of kidding.  If you’re into small-batch, wild, artisanal beers in bottles that stuff smeared on them, check out Pearls Before Swine’s funky saison-style ale, Solipsism; wild-fermented table beer En Flusikc Lthdiklks; or the experimental Urge, Urge, Ever the Procreant Urge of the World.

River Dog Mountain Brewing, Greeley, Colorado

This innovative microbrewery is rocking craft beer to its foundation, with handmade libations that take balance to new extremes while capturing the essence of outdoor living!  Tear into their wickedly inoffensive Upstream Blonde; their aggressively moderate Gone Fishin’ Amber; or their Paddle Harder Copper, with just the right amount of both malt & hops.  As if these boldly subtle ales weren’t distinct enough, River Dog Mountain’s eye-catching labels, with hand-painted scenes of waterfalls, rocks, & various North American wildlife, are sure to make them stand head & shoulders above the fray.

Aggro Necktat Brewing, Chula Vista, California

Duck & cover, dweebs, because Aggro Knuckle is gonna bust you in the jaw with alpha acid!  This in-your-face, IBU-heavy, verbally abusive brewery started as a fight club, & now wants to take the brawl to your taste buds!  Be prepared to cry “Uncle!” when you get a face-load of the 100% Zeus-hopped DIPA Hop Proctologist; the 50/50 malt extract/hop extract blend Curb Hopped; or their triple IPA, No Pussies Allowed, brewed with real sweat & blood instead of strike water.  You won’t know what hit you!  

Beaver Patrol Brewing, Lubbock, Texas

What would craft beer be without a dose of ribald humor?  No one would accuse the crew at Beaver Patrol of taking themselves too seriously, & they pour some of that playful, low brow, crypto-misogynist spirit into every bottle.  Take a gander at their Udderly Full-Bodied Milk Stout; leer at their Master Bator’s Doppelbock; & get ready to salivate over their tart plum ale, Prune-Tang.  And if you think the names are full of double-entendre fun, just wait til you get a load of the label illustrations.  Wink!

#walezbro Brewing, Chicago, Illinois

These guys really cut to the chase, brewing only beer that makes hardcore beer geeks lose their shit.  Every bottle is numbered, limited, & can only be obtained through sharing in line at a release for a slightly less-hyped beer.  The names are all acronyms &, to be honest, we don’t know what they stand for.  We’ve heard good things about CYRY & hope to someday try it (though, apparently, the coconut fades, so maybe the “C” stands for coconut); a buddy of ours has some HWTCB coming, which is supposed to be amazing, but you really need to lay it down for a few years; & to really one-up your friends with “generosity” at that next epic bottle share, whip out EGK & its variants FREGK, UREGK, & TAMEGKWP for a side-by-side tasting.  #walezbro is also known for its strict quantity-control measures: every bottle that goes untraded after 48 hours must be drain-poured.  Beer porn ahead!

So don’t get left behind, folks – start seeking out these exciting new breweries that are really going places.  There’s still plenty of room in the pool!

The Uncanny Foresight of Oskar Blues

Sometimes you’ve gotta take a roundabout route to get back to where you started.  Sometimes things are popular because they’re just good ideas to begin with. 

Oskar Blues started the shift to canning craft beer.  They happen to make really good beer, too, & that’s by no means beside the point.  Of course they want to be known for their beer, but everyone knows them because they made cans legitimate as a package for that good beer.  The fame that they earned is because they make good beer, and they put it in a can.  The quality of the beer is necessarily an equal part of that equation, but people didn’t always realize it.

Canned craft beer was an oxymoron until these guys started doing it.  Oskar Blues started as a grill in 1997, then started brewing on-site in 1999, & when a canning system manufacturer approached them a few years later, they said “Sure, what the hell?” & history was made.  That was 2004.  How bizarre was it to consider canned craft beer eleven years ago?  I didn’t buy it myself at first.  The can seemed like a gimmick, & the name ‘Dale’s Pale Ale’ was too corny (& remains endearingly so).  But the beer – I tried it, & the beer was good!  So I thought we might see this one decent beer made by a company I’d never heard of, in a can.  It would remain a novelty, & that’s it.  I remember hearing the guys on Craft Beer Radio say that the cans didn’t even register on their visual field at first – they’d scan the shelves & their eyes would automatically pass over them, a sort of subconscious aversion to the format.  That’s how little respect cans garnered for the good beer vets – at first…

Then Oskar Blues stuck around.  They rolled out Gordon (now called G’Knight), a solid, strong red, & Old Chub, a strong, malty Scotch-style.  We saw the first ever canned imperial stout in Ten Fidy, with a body that fit the name.  These were not light beers for slamming & crushing the can on your forehead.  These were serious beers with some depth & personality.  A few double IPAs followed: Gubna & Deviant Dale’s.  And why not throw a pilsner in there, too? 

So the much-maligned can, vessel of the industrial swill so despised by the New Brew Order, found some redemption.  The myths about the metal “tainting” the beer were dispelled.  More & more breweries - & drinkers – found cans to have some significant benefits: lightweight, recyclable, transportable, protective.  More & more breweries adopted cans as a means of packaging (props also to 21^st Amendment as another big, early proponent).  The world’s highest-rated beer is packaged in aluminum, & actually instructs the drinker to imbibe straight from the can!  Boston Beer Company once said they’d never can their beer, but even Jim’s miraculously seen the light. 

And had the beer been crappy, it would’ve stayed a gimmick.  But Dale & the crew make some damn fine brew, & it showed those paying attention that, yes, this can be done!  I want to stress that the beer saved it from being a gimmick, & now it’s just accepted, part of the norm.  Maybe Oskar Blues didn’t realize what they was doing at the time – the way they tell the story, that first system was purchased as kind of a lark.  One could draw parallels to pop art & connecting the high & low, too, but that’s a whole other tangent…

Of course it’s all about the beer.  Which, by the way, we’ll be featuring at our upcoming pairing dinner this Thursday, when we match the beers of Oskar Blues (served out of giant aluminum cans called “kegs”) with some inventive cuisine.  On hand will be their new Pinner Throwback IPA (“Throwback” as in, “I’m going to throw a few back”), low alcohol with a sweetly dank hop profile; the afore-mentioned Old Chub Scotch-style ale, malty, caramelly, with a hint of smoke; Gubna, their imperial IPA made with a mountain of Cascade hops; Ten Fidy, the OG (get it?) of viscous, canned imperial stouts; & a newcomer in their Belgian-style IPA, Icey PA.  Can’t wait to see how Chef Brian’s menu accompanies this line-up!

So whether they like it or not (& I don’ think they mind), Oskar Blues will forever be known for a formal, technical contribution to the movement.  Rest assured, though, it never would have survived without some good liquid to fill it.

Top Shelf Thursday, March 2015: BIG BEER

As with any trend, craze, or movement, craft beer has a pendulum.  On one end of the arc, it swings toward the conservative - sessionability, cleanliness, simplicity, tradition.  This kind of balance is necessary, lest we get too carried away with ourselves & lose our heads.  The boat rocks in an effort to regain stability & find a center.  The force toward sensible ABV, recipe, scope, etc., is natural &, at times, much needed.  Keeps us sane.

But what would the new world of beer be without the other end of the spectrum?  Craft beer was born of a desire for freedom, to break boundaries & shed the oppressive restrictions of the beer-industrial complex, the tight dimensions of old-style lager.  Craft beer just wouldn’t be itself without the big, crazy extremities!  We gotta embrace the bold, the overstated, the indulgent, & flex those creative muscles.  Most of the time, more is still MORE!  We’re House of 1000 Beers, dammit - why not go BIG?  We chose to roll out our BIG BEER Week to celebrate the aspects of beer that make it fun - BIG flavor, BIG ABV, BIG BEER!  Seemed as good a theme for a Top Shelf Thursday tasting as any, so we highlighted some of the BIG BEERS from our selection (okay, I’ll stop with the caps now).

Belgians know big beer, & American-Belgian intersections are ripe for ramping it up.  We started with a style novel to Top Shelf Thursday - Belgian-style IPA.  Clown Shoes’ Muffin Top showcased some in-your-face American hops, shaped into a whole other animal through the use of Belgian yeast, amplifying fruity esters & colliding worlds.  

One of the grandaddies of big beer is barleywine, a style whose name belies its own heft.  The first in a trio of barleywines this evening, Central Waters’ Kosmyk Charlie’s Y2K Catastrophe Ale hit a pleasant niche between hoppy & malty, with a mellowly citric hop profile & some round, full toffee & caramel notes.  Nogne O’s #100 benefited from time spent crossing the ocean along with some “shelf-aging” - the hops transformed from bitter to a kind of peppermint character, holding up the bready malt base well & showing some of the beauty of a maturing strong ale.  And Great Divide’s Old Ruffian gave us a taste of fresh American barleywine, with an assertive bitterness verging on that of an imperial IPA.

A new little sister to an old name, Gulden Draak 9000 Quadruple was brewed in honor of Gulden Draak’s 25th birthday.  This strong Belgian golden was comfortably homey: sweet, fruity, a little hot, a little doughy, landing it snugly in the territory of many classic, well-crafted Belgian ales.

The tasting’s second half was a barrel roll, as so many big beers marry perfectly with wood.  Thirsty Dog’s delicious imperial stout, Siberian Night, warmed us up with bourbon notes coming through from 11 months spent in bourbon barrels.  The second offering of the night from Clown Shoes didn’t disappoint either.  Ride the Lion matched the caramel notes of a Scotch-style wee heavy to the toasted oak & vanilla of the bourbon barrels in which it was aged.

FiftyFifty Brewing’s Eclipse series required some explanation.  This California brewery takes an 11.9% imperial stout brewed with honey, divides the batch up, & ages it in name-linked barrels from different whiskey distilleries.  We tasted Eclipse in barrels previously used for Four Roses bourbon, a delicious pairing that would make a cool exercise when tasted in sequence with others from this line.  And we played hop frog with stout & wee heavy, landing next on Thirsty Dog’s Wulver.  Whereas Ride the Lion had a strong heat intensity to it, Wulver was all about smoothness & seamless blending, finishing with an aftertaste that just went on & on.

And speaking of blending, the final course showed us what happens when you blend two world-class big beers into one delicious package.  Taking parts from bourbon barrel-aged Serpent’s Stout & brandy barrel-aged Angel’s Share, Lost Abbey’s Deliverance drank like a glass of chocolate cordial, bringing a notable heat to the table but letting it play nicely with the deep malt & barrel flavors.  

This tasting was a prelude to our BIG BEER Week, & by the time this sees light, we’ll be well into a fun week of strong, full-bodied, savorable brews.  Thanks to all who came out & raised a glass to the freedom & pleasure that is big beer.