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.

That Super Bowl Ad

There are two kinds of customers that come into our place, & I can often tell what category someone falls into as soon as they walk in the door.  It usually has to do with how they move.  There are those who take their time, look around, want to scope everything out, ask questions.  They tend to move slowly, contemplate decisions.  Maybe they’re new to this & want some suggestions, or tried something they really liked & are looking for something similar, or want to know what’s new.  They’re frequently open to trying something different & know we have plenty of “different”. 

Then there are those who walk in the door, walk straight to the cooler, grab their brand, usually a 12-pack or tallboys, & head straight to the register.  They move quickly, deliberately, & only hesitate if they’re having a hard time visually locating their staple.  The latter group I’ll refer to as “monovores”; the former, “polyvores”.   Monovores know what they like & stick to it.  Why complicate things?  Polyvores want to expand & see what’s out there.  Maybe they’re just breaking into the wide world of beer, or maybe they’re already craft drinkers & are just mulling over the myriad options presented to them.  If you’re reading this, you probably know who you are.

I choose the (made-up) term “polyvore” as opposed to “omnivore” because a polyvore doesn’t necessarily drink everything.  They do, however, deviate from course at least once in a while.  Maybe someone drinks Classic Ice 90% of the time, but will pick up a Pumking in fall, or a Framboise once in a while.  They’re a polyvore.  And there are no craft drinkers who aren’t polyvores, who stick to just Abita Turbo Dog & nothing else, for instance.  Monovores can become polyvores, but the transition almost never works the other way.

We all know that ad - the one Budweiser aired during the Super Bowl.  That ad pissed a lot of people off.  Hell, it still kind of pisses me off.  But I don’t think it was designed to piss people off, at least not in the way it seemed.  It was aimed at the monovores, and was a call to arms, an appeal to the core.  It aimed to divide, celebrating “us” by contrasting and alienating “them”.    It’s a tactic used in politics constantly, by the Tea Party AND the Occupy movement.  This ad was a rally, a DNC or RNC.  The Two Americas.  This is why you like us, this is what we stand for.  This is why you are us.  And not them. 

Polyvores (like me) bristled at being classified as an “other”, dismissed wholesale as being ponderous & navel-gazing.  But it really wasn’t saying anything negative about craft beer, just reaffirming what everyone knows already & throwing it into sharp relief, proudly.  “This is what we’re about, take it or leave it.  THEY can do what they want.  That’s not US, man.”  And it’s nothing that the craft beer movement hasn’t done a MILLION times already.  How many times have you heard that craft beer is “not just for getting drunk” or “not just to slam”, which implies that pale American lager IS those things.  American lager still has a flavor, & people drink it for plenty of reasons more dignified than the craft world gives them credit.  Since its birth, craft brewing has had to paint big beer as an “other” to sell itself & gain exposure.  To some extent, this implicated big beer’s fans by association, & there’s at least as much of a vibe of exclusion in the perception of craft beer – what it isn’t – than trying to appeal to the monovores.  “We don’t drink like THOSE idiots.  WE CARE about how our beer tastes.”

This ad gives the polyvores a taste of their own medicine.  But it’s also a validation that the “other” is significant enough to be worth reinforcing the division.  Craft is a threat, & big beer needs to rally the base.  By implicitly acknowledging the threat (& by being dicks about it), Budweiser may have actually opened a few people up to craft.  Believe it or not, since that ad aired we’ve gotten requests for Budweiser Pumpkin Peach Beer from people who like the sound of it!  I’m sorry, Budweiser doesn’t make a pumpkin peach beer, BUT can I suggest… 

I find that comedians can often make my point in a way more poignant & succinct way.  Patton Oswalt’s one of my favorites, & one of his most known bits is skewering KFC’s Famous Bowls.  This bit got so much traction that a magazine interviewing the CEO of Yum Brands (which owns KFC) asked how he felt about Patton calling the menu item a “failure pile in a sadness bowl”; the CEO gave a blithe response about how he wishes Mr. Oswalt could “see the smile on people’s faces when they dig into one of our Famous Bowls”.  In a follow-up bit, Patton recounted this interview, with the quip that “I’m actually on the CEO’s side.  All he had to do was say, ‘Who the f*** is Patton Oswalt?  I’m a BILLIONAIRE!’”  See the parallel?  He says it so much better than I do.  I wonder if Budweiser did themselves a disservice by not just continuing to ignore the threat & pretend it didn’t exist, at least on a marketing level.  It’s still the status quo & may have just rocked its own boat.  “Don’t think about a pink elephant, Bud fans.”

Two other points before I wrap this up:  The ad wasn’t hypocritical.  It was an ad for Budweiser, not Anheuser-Busch InBev (& its acquired ex-craft brands).  It was just promoting the “us, not them” angle while a whole bunch of “them” happened to be watching.  And yes, the “brewed the hard way” slogan is bullshit, as illustrated by this counter-ad.

Thanks for tuning in for another timely blog post.  We’re happy to accommodate both the polys & the monos, & trust that you know where you stand.

Top Shelf Thursday, February 2015: Revenge of Valentine's Day

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!

Vanishing Eisbock

The romantic in me bemoans that there are few styles of beer that are truly seasonal.  With modern temperature control & preservation methods, brewers can pretty much make any type of beer any time they want, independent of climate or agricultural cycle.  Some styles can be traced back to their more “Earth rhythm” roots – saisons fermenting at warmer temperatures, for instance – & some just make sense based on what people want at a particular time of year.  A dark, boozy, spicy beer just feels right with Christmas.  4^th of July barbecue?  Not so much. 

A few styles come to mind as actually being seasonally, meteorologically dependent.  We covered harvest ales, made with freshly picked, undried hop cones, here.  The yeast & bugs that get lambic knocked up have less competition during the cold months, so they’re typically brewed from October to May (thanks, MoreBeer.com!).  And though, in this day & age, freezers forego the need for naturally freezing ambient temperatures, Eisbock may be the style most connected to its seasonal context. 

Legend (per The Oxford Companion to Beer) has it that Eisbock was born of a happy accident.  A Germany brewery worker was instructed to move a barrel of bock out of a cold part of the building to a warmer one.  He forgot – with delicious results.  The next morning, the beer was found encapsulated in a block of ice, having expanded & busted out of the barrel.  Fearing it was ruined, the brewer tapped into it & tasted the beer inside.  Eureka!  The freezing process had isolated a portion of the water, concentrating the sugars & alcohol & leaving a strong, sweet beer for the taking.  Its nickname is “Bavarian ice cream”, & before modern freezing & refrigeration, could only be made in the frigid winter months.  A very special beer. 

There’s some debate about whether beers that undergo this process can truly be called “beers”, as it’s seen as a form of distillation.  There are those who argue that, for a drink to qualify as beer, alcohol content should be achieved solely through fermentation.  Remember the arms race a few years ago, between BrewDog & a number of German breweries, to brew the strongest beer?  Those were all made with freeze distilling, squeezing out that meddling water & squeezing the ABV higher & higher (60% sounds about right).  Sam Adams boasts that Utopias is still the strongest beer made by fermentation alone.

But Eisbock still fits in the beer family according to most of the so-sayers who write style guidelines: the BJCP, the Brewer’s Association, etc.  It’s a beer most beer folks know about, but I bet you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’s had one lately.  Eisbocks rarely show up on our shelves – Schneider’s Aventinus Weizen-Eisbock makes an occasional appearance, & once in a loooong while we’ll get some from Kulmbacher.  Voodoo’s Trapped Under Eisbock came & went a few years ago.  That’s all I can think of.  In my life, I believe I’ve had three, myself (Kuhnhehn’s Raspberry Eisbock was a treat after buying my first house). 

So yeah, it’s strange to see a style so well-known with so little real world representation.  It brings to mind the topic of disappearing styles, & what beers might be on the endangered list or next to go extinct.  Before being resurrected by craft brewers, many styles had vanished from the landscape, presumably by natural selection.  Berliner Weiss, Gose, Grisette, Grodziskie – styles that are making a little bit of a comeback were comprised of just a handful of obscure commercial examples til a few years ago.  Makes me wonder if others will be phased out with time, & fifty years from now some craft brewer or home brewer will read about dry stout or ESB & want to take a crack at reviving this arcane animal.  Part of the beauty of having such a decentralized movement is that people are free to make whatever they want, but there’s definitely some stream-lining, a slow flow toward slightly more conformity (how many kinds of IPAs exist now?).  Some styles may get left behind, or get an identity makeover.  But that’s evolution, right?  I look forward to the day when we’re able to order an Eisbock we haven’t stocked before, but before then it’s up to some brewer to make one. 

Which brings me to a point I meant to make at the get-go – & it’s frickin’ freezing out!  Until someone takes another stab, I guess I could try making my own.     

The Court of Public Opinion

The pool continues to get tighter.  Monday of last week, Lagunitas submitted an affidavit to sue Sierra Nevada over a perceived trademark infringement.  Lagunitas’ complaint was that SN’s new Hop Hunter IPA sported a label that bore too close a resemblance to the logo for Lagunitas’ flagship IPA.  The next day, news of the suit went public, along with Lagunitas head honcho Tony Magee’s accompanying tweets regarding the matter.  The backlash from the beer scene (as illustrated in micro on our Facebook page) was tremendous.  People were pissed at Lagunitas, said really negative things & made appeals to boycott them.  Even those who weren’t overtly angry at the plaintiff seemed to be in consensus that the case didn’t have much merit.  Most saw the case as just laughable at best, if not an act of aggression that violated craft beer’s “bro-code”.  There are always the apologists who validate a business trying to “defend its brand”, but even their voices were meeker than usual.  The public had spoken: “Not cool.”

And you know what?  Lagunitas backed down.  They listened to everyone who thought they were being dicks & took a look in the mirror.  That Tuesday night, Tony serial-tweeted about the attempts to contact SN without success, about trying to resolve a conflict person-to-person & failing, about opting for the hard way, & about how that looks to people who care about the ethics of an industry.  “Today I was seriously schooled & heard you well…Tomorrow mornin we’ll Drop the Infringement Suit & get back to answering other Questions.”  An admission of guilt & a concession to heed the consumer’s opinion. 

Not for nothing, of course – a business of Lagunitas’ size can’t afford to arrogantly ignore the collective ‘boo’-ing of their market share.  There have been scores of inter-brewery conflicts, almost always concerning trademarks.  This was different, though, as it would have been the first formal engagement of two major players with one another (based on 2013 volume, Lagunitas is the fifth largest craft brewer in the country, SN the second).  And it’s significant in that the outcome was altered by the court of public opinion.  Feedback is wicked fast these days, if you haven’t noticed.  News gets around faster than ever, as does the reaction to news.  It didn’t take long for the community to get whipped into a fervor, & Tony didn’t like being the target of an angry mob.

Gotta admit, I was surprised that Lagunitas withdrew the suit.  Pleasantly surprised.  The more the craft beer segment grows, the more the “It’s business” mantra rises in pitch, competing for volume with the “Brotherhood” cheers.  This was the pendulum swinging in the other direction a little bit, a wake-up call that craft consumers care about fair & unfair in the industry that they love & are supporting with their dollars.  It was a sign that, in the marketplace, ethics do matter.  There’s no telling what would have transpired had Lagunitas followed through with the action.  Maybe they would’ve taken a hit to the bottom line, maybe not.  But it would’ve been a blemish on the face of the craft community, & it’s encouraging to see that people do hold brewers up to a code of conduct.  Drinkers didn’t want to see more bad blood, & the supply side listened.

Just as I sat down to write this today, a piece of news fell across my desk.  Saranac brewed a winter seasonal, Prism White Ale, & got it bottled, labeled, & delivered to their accounts.  It wasn’t until they actually saw cases of beer from Philadelphia’s Prism Brewing Co. in a Philly distributor that they realized they’d made a mistake, & didn’t want a dispute to erupt over the name.  Saranac contacted Prism, copping to their oversight, & the two worked it out, agreeing that Saranac will continue to call their white ale ‘Prism’ while allowing Prism Brewing access to their laboratory facilities.  However few exist altogether, this can be another check in the ‘Collaboration Not Litigation’ column.  In a field that’s growing increasingly competitive, there are bound to be some locked horns & dust-ups.  It’s good to know that both the brewers AND the drinkers care about more than the bottom line, though, & that part of the enjoyment of the beer comes from a faith in its producers.  We can work it out.

Top Shelf Thursday, January 2015

It felt good to land back on Thursday nights again.  As much changed rolled out during 2014, culminating at the year’s end, the ritual of setting up, arranging chairs, laying out flight lists, lining up glasses, was terra firma to me.  It was comforting to see familiar faces, shake hands, catch up, find out what’s changed in their lives lately.  It’s exciting, too, to invite & get to know some new folks, learn about their tastes & opinions.  This Top Shelf Thursday felt homey to me, which is important when venturing into this long, dark, cold part of the year.

Speaking of cold & (occasionally) dark – the focus in choosing the line-up was loose, but leaned toward the ephemeral.  The beers selected would only be around for a short time – one-offs, anniversary beers – or had just recently found their way back to The House like some kind of prodigal kid.  Maybe ‘transience’ was the theme, kind of apropos for a new year.  And also a little ironic juxtaposed with the emotional tone I alluded to in the first paragraph.  Anyway…

It just so happened that there were a good many Belgian or Belgian-influenced brews in tonight’s flight.  We started with Zenne Valley edition of Lambickx, from importers & blenders Vanberg & DeWulf, associated with Brewery Ommegang.  This lambic was selected from oak & chestnut barrels from a proprietor in Belgium’s Zenne Valley, then blended to achieve the desired level of flavor & acidity, assertive but not as puckering as some.

We moved from tart & oaky to a tart & sweet mix with Lemon Chiffon Cruller Ale, the fourth in Rogue Ales’ series of collaborations with Voodoo Doughnuts of Portland, OR.  Sweet lemon notes jumped from the glass, buttressed by the use of vanilla beans & marshmallows.  Like or it not, everyone agreed it was like nothing they’d tasted before.

Great Divide Brewing celebrated their 20^th anniversary with a beer of the same name.  This Belgian-style golden ale hit the right notes for the style, & was given a boost of sweetness & fruity depth by the addition of Viognier grapes, putting it a little closer to wine territory.  And Browerij Van Steenberge marked their 230^th anniversary with a Brewmaster’s Edition of their Gulden Draak 9000 (a blonde quadruple), aged in American whiskey barrels.  The wood lent layers of toffee, banana, & coconut to the already flavorful brew, & a cool back-to-back comparison with Great Divide’s variation on a Belgian golden ale.

Counter to their character, The Bruery decided to color in the lines with 7 Swans-a-Swimming, the seventh in their annual series of Christmas releases.  Rather than using non-traditional ingredients or crazy processes, they stuck to style with a conventional (but exceptional) abbey quad with candi sugar.

Once again, Great Divide took a Belgian style & gave it a fruity twist - this time with Colorado peaches – for their Peach Grand Cru.  The sweet peach flavor took a front seat before allowing the drier body of the golden ale to carry through to the finish. 

Shmaltz Brewing decided to break with tradition as well with Jewbelation 18, commemorating their 18^th anniversary.  A dark barleywine with 18 malts, 18 hops, but “only” 12.4% ABV, the flavor hit just where a malty barleywine should (in my opinion), with notes of maple & caramel.

As is their wont, the auteurs at Draai Laag took some liberties with the barleywine parameters in crafting Yodeler, a “Belgian-style” barleywine fermented with four yeast strains, including brettanomyces clausenii.  The result was a full-bodied quad-ish ale with a smoothness that belied its 13.2% ABV & a finish that yielded a little fruity & floral note from the wild yeast.

We trod familiar ground with Huge Arker, an imperial stout from Anderson Valley aged in Wild Turkey barrels.  Make that “familiar, but welcome”, as the bourbon barrel-aged stout was like a hearty, comforting blanket, if just a tad rough around the edges.

And we cracked a new record for strength, topping off an already heady flight, with Dogfish Head’s Raison D’Extra.  This capped the “Belgian gone askew” motif throughout the flight, an 18% ABV strong dark ale with raisins & loads of fermentables, that married dark sugars & alcohol flavors beautifully in a package not too far from rum. 

So we hit some familiar strains, augmented by notes unexpected that somehow still worked.  Again, I think there’s a metaphor here somewhere, as we step intrepidly into a new year.  We let the known ground us, while also moving forward.  The only constant is change, the next step right in front of us.  A big thank you to all who braved the cold to tip a few glasses & embrace the new with us, & have a happy, healthy, & prosperous 2015.