As part of its expanding lineup, RJ Rockers earlier this week announced it would be introducing a new year-round Belgian-style witbier to kick off 2014.
Witty Twitster – which, side note, is a great name – is described as the “perfect anytime ale” brewed with coriander and orange peel, and clocking in at a mellow 4.5% ABV. The beer will join RJR’s yearly lineup soon.
You can get a better look at the packaging for that and their new seasonal Good Boy Stout here.
Among bourbon fans, Pappy Van Winkle bourbons are some of the most highly sought-after whiskeys on the market, with bottles of the 23-year-old variant garnering thousands of dollars on the after-sale market. Among beer geeks, any beer aged in Pappy barrels is bound to draw a wealth of attention.
Both groups of fans will be happy to know coastal brewery River Dog recently release a version of its Belgian Quad aged in Pappy barrels. Previously tapped at the Music to Your Mouth Festival, the beer is now available in the brewery’s tasting room. The base is an 11% Belgian-style quad with all the quintessential dark fruit and raisin notes, but with a Pappy sheen on top, bumping the final product up to 12% ABV.
Julian Van Winkle, the current president of the Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery, recently gave his stamp of approval to the brew.
After more two years of preparation and nearly a year of expectations, Westbrook on Thursday will finally release its Old Time series of barrel-aged beers.
First announced back in January, Old Time is a collaboration between Westbrook and the Charleston Beer Exchange, including Manager Brandon “Old TIme” Plyler. The base beer – a Belgian-style dark ale – has been aging in a variety of barrels since it was brewed back in July 2011. Each variant has a different name: Brandy Old Time was aged in Laird’s apple brandy barrels for 18 months; Grumpy Old Time was also aged in Laird’s barrels but with the addition of wild yeast; Rummy Old Time spent 18 months in Pritchard’s rum barrels; and Funky Old Time was aged 18 months in oak red wine barrels with wild yeast. Each 750 ml. bottle is also bottle-conditioned.
The yield from each barrel varies. There are around 150 cases of Grumpy Old TIme but only about 18 of Rummy Old Time. So, some will be easier to come by while others will be extremely rare.
Since this is a CBX collaboration, they’ll get first dibs. They, along with Westbrook and the Greenville Beer Exchange, will all release the beers Thursday afternoon. Following that, accounts throughout the rest of the state should also receive some, but expect a very limited supply.
About a year after Goose Island first landed in South Carolina, the Chicago-based/A-B InBev-owned brewery’s presence will be expanding this fall with the arrival of its Belgian-style Vintage Ales series.
Beginning Oct. 1, Sofie, Matilda, Pere Jacques and Pepe Nero will all be available in major markets (Columbia, Charleston, Greenville, etc.). All four will be available in 765 ml. corked and caged bottles, and all but Pepe Nero will be available on draft.
All four Belgian-style beers are year-round releases. Sofie is a 6.5% farmhouse ale; Matilda is a 7% pale ale; Pere Jacques is a 8.7% Abbey ale; and Pepe Nero is a dark 6.4% farmhouse ale. All are great for cellaring, and from personal experience, I can say older vintages taste pretty great.
Boulevard Brewing Co.
Kansas City, MO
The Sixth Glass Belgian-style Quadrupel
10.5% ABV
I’ve made it clear that Boulevard is one of the breweries I want to see distributed in South Carolina the most. Every one of their beers I’ve had has been consistently solid, from their year-round products to their rarer offerings. (And, after trying Rye-on-Rye at a recent tasting, my opinion has been solidified ever further.)
But it’s their Smokestack Series that really gets me. Until recently, I’d tried every one in the series – Long Strange Tripel, Tank 7, Dark Truth and Double-Wide – but the most highly touted was The Sixth Glass, Boulveard’s Belgian-style quad. Clocking in at 10.5%, dextrose, brown sugar, dark brown sugar and dark candi syrup are added to a somewhat simplistic malt and hop profile to create “a deep and mysterious libation,” as the website’s description says.
First, I really have to compliment how gorgeous of a beer Sixth Glass is. It’s topped with a massive, foamy head made up of tight bubbles that subside quickly, but never really settle. It’s like there’s a constant half a finger worth of bubbles continuously on top of it. The color is a translucent amber and ruby red with hints of rust and plum in it. Just enough light gets through for you to see how beautiful the colors are.
The nose was surprisingly flat. As with any good quad, there are notes of figs, plums, raisins, toffee, caramel and candied sugar. There’s that thick sweet blend of Belgian yeast, malts and sugar, but nothing really popped on the nose for me.
But the taste? As Magnitude says best, pop pop! That bite of carbonation on the front is a nice bit of foreplay. It continues throughout the mouth as any good Belgian-style beer is wont to do. In the middle of the mouth are big flavors of grape, candied sugar, caramel, bananas and plums. All of those flavors mingle together and linger on the finish, but what’s surprising about the end result is that it’s not overly syrupy or heavy. It’s light, and if anything a bit dry. That sort of zaps the punch of the flavors out a bit, but in a good way. It’s a very sweet quad but in the end manages to keep itself from being too overpowering. It’s a nice break from a lot of quads, which have that syrup flavor linger on the end.
Any quad worth drinking manages to still be big and flavorful but keep everything balanced and in check. Westy 12 does it, as does Straffe Hendrik and Rochefort, and of course the Belgians know how to do it. But for an American quad, The Sixth Glass is one of the best I’ve had. It’s big on flavors, but that dry finish adds a unique touch and one that certainly makes it worth the hype.
What would the holidays be without alcohol? Copious and copious amounts of alcohol in all forms to help you get through the insanity of family, shopping, holiday parties and the like. Fortunately, there are plenty of holiday appropriate beers to help you get through it all. Here’s what I enjoyed during this week.
After having our own mini Christmas at our new home, my wife and I drove back to my parent’s house in Georgia to celebrate Christmas with them. I have the good fortune of having an easy-going, non-dysfunctional family, so I don’t need a lot of alcohol to help me cope. But that didn’t stop me from bringing along a bottle of St. Bernardus’ Christmas Ale to enjoy and share with loved ones.
At 10%, the spiced Belgian strong dark ale does plenty to keep you warm and toasty. A malty nose brings hints of cocoa, plums, caramel, black pepper, cloves and that classic Belgian yeastiness. A similarly complex taste follows, with a strong effervescent quality leading off flavors of berries, plums, cocoa powder, leather, tobacco, sweet bread, cinnamon and other spices. St. Bernardus always impresses me, but it also impressed my younger brother – a newly 21-year-old frat boy – and my dad, whose tastes lean toward “dark, heavy stuff.” It was a good way to warm up on Christmas Eve.
After returning home to Columbia on Christmas Day, my wife and I tucked in to some holiday selections from my cellar. We started with a 2009 bottle of Samichlaus Classic, a 14% doppelbock from Austria that previously held the title of strongest beer in the world.
At 14%, there’s just a slight hint of booziness on the nose, accompanied by a big, sweet malt character, hints of rum-soaked raisins, caramel, figs and a bit of maple syrup and just a slight alcohol burn on the back. The alcohol certainly hits you more on the taste, but it fades quickly into this sweet, rich, full-bodied blend of caramel, toffee, butterscotch, figs and a big malty sweetness with an almost hard candy quality. The sweetness is definitely cut well by the alcohol, which you can feel warming in your chest after a few sips.
As we settled in for the annual Doctor Who Christmas special, I popped a bottle of the 2011 Santa’s Little Helper imperial stout from Port. Last Christmas, I enjoyed the bourbon barrel-aged version but help on to the standard version for this year.
The coal-black 10% imperial stout presented with aromas of bittersweet chocolate, a touch of booze and a little bit of licorice, all underneath a cozy cover of big roasted coffee and espresso. Those roasted malts impart a big bitterness on the front of the tongue followed with a bitter coffee finish. There was a ton of espresso, dark chocolate, roasted malts and cocoa on it, but it’s not overly chocolatey or sweet at all. There may have been a slight infection in my bottle as there was this strange almost cough syrup quality on the finish. There was a phenolic burn on the back, kind of like the sweeter alcohol finish from NyQuil. It didn’t turn me off at all, and it honestly kind of worked with the bitterness.
The third of four Christmases this year was spent at my mother-in-law’s house on Wednesday. With all due respect to my in-laws, they are a bit more … eccentric than my family, and two little ones running around only add to the insanity. That’s why I was happy to walk in to the middle of a holiday beer tasting orchestrated by my sister-in-law, which included the St. Bernardus Christmas Ale, Rogue‘s Santa’s Private Reserve Ale, Grand Teton‘s Coming Home Ale 2012 and, for dessert, some Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout. I also got sent home with bottles of each, as well as a Rogue Farms Single Malt Ale and a Westbrook Dark Helmet. Add that to the two six-packs of SweetWater Festive Ale my brother got me and the SweetWater IPA and Terrapin Liquid Bliss “reinbeers” from my mom, and this was quite a holiday helping.
Whatever you celebrated this season, and whatever you’ll celebrate in the weeks to come, may your world be filled with delicious brews and good times. Cheers to all, and to all a good night.
Welcome to Planet Hype! Black Tuesday, Darkness and Kate the Great on Aisle 1. Westy 12 on draft.
It’s hard to say exactly where the hype surrounding any particular beer begins, and why some beers get much more hype than others.
Does it begin with the brewery when they announce they’re concocting some quad-hopped bourbon wine whiskey barrel-aged imperial IPA double stout brewed on the peak of a mountain? Does it start among friends with the both half-mocking, half-bragging, “What do you mean you haven’t tried the Pliny/Black Tuesday hybrid?! It’s soooo good!” Or is it a mix of both, with insatiable beer drinkers lining up for days to get the latest and greatest from their favorite brewery, only feeding the beast that much more?
That’s the question posed by David of Good Morning … as part of this month’s edition of The Session: How much does hype affect a beer, is it a good or bad thing and what does it mean when a beer doesn’t live up to the hype. Here are my thoughts:
How much does hype affect a beer?
There’s no denying there’s a wealth of hype in the beer world. Every few months, some new bottle is released to much fanfare. People line up for days on end or buy buckets of raffle tickets or stay glued to their computer screens just for a chance to buy a bottle of The Bruery‘s Black Tuesday or Three Floyds‘ Dark Lord, or even just a glass of Russian River‘s Pliny the Younger.
Hype can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can build up a brewery’s clout and help elevate a style. For a smaller brewery not often mentioned in “best in the world” discussions, it can help grow their profile. That’s true in the Carolinas with breweries such as Foothills, a great brewery that might not get much attention outside the Southeast if not for their excellent Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout. And as they say, competition is a good thing, and having a brewery put out a “Pliny killer” or some barrel-aged imperial stout that people go gaga for can cause other breweries to step things up and try to top it.
On the other hand, it can almost deify a brew in a way, giving it gargantuan and mythic qualities. When it come down to it, it’s just water, yeast, hops and grain. It’s not the Holy Grail. There was a time not that long ago when I did my damnedest to make it to every bottle share or tasting in hopes of tasting a white whale or something super rare. My mentality’s changed since then, settling into the ol’ “It’s just beer” groove. If I don’t have hyped beer A, I’ll likely have hyped beer B at some point, or some beer equally as good that has no hype surrounding it.
That brings me to the second question …
What does it mean if a beer doesn’t live up to the hype?
I’m going to get into this by delving into two different experiences with two massively hyped beers: Russian River’s Pliny the Elder and Westvleteren 12.
Before I discovered and became involved with beer trading, I participated in the shunned practice of buying beer off eBay. In my defense, I didn’t have a network to traders yet or a sizable cellar, so I didn’t have much to go on and figured just buying it would be the easiest thing. One of the first bottles I bought was Pliny, because 1) I’m a complete hophead and 2) the hype surrounding it had sold me.
It did not disappoint. I shared it with a few friends at a Halloween party last year and everyone agreed it lived up to the hype. This thing is, I hadn’t necessarily hyped Pliny up to epic proportions in my mind. I really wanted to try it, but I didn’t think it would be the end-all, be-all imperial IPA. I was just excited to try it.
On the other side of the spectrum we have Westy 12, which is widely considered to be THE beer to end all beers. I was lucky enough to come across bottles during my honeymoon in Brussels, Belgium earlier this year. In my review, I said this regarding the hype surrounding Westy 12 and whether it is the best beer in the world:
It’s a very subjective question and not one that’s easily answered. What I think is that the lure of Westvleteren beers creates a manufactured importance, and people certainly get caught up in the hype. It’s hard to live up to the expectations you have in your head.
That being said, Westy 12 – as well as Blond and 8 – are truly phenomenal beers. Is Westy 12 the best beer I’ve ever had? No. Is it one of the best beers I’ve ever had? Absolutely. Is it the best quad I’ve ever had? It’s a definite contender.
Westy 12 certainly didn’t disappoint me, that much is certain. But I absolutely got caught up in the hype and lure of the beer, and maybe at the time I had convinced myself it was a better beer than it actually was.
You’ll never get this! But that’s OK.
With Westy 12 getting (legal) distribution in the U.S. for the first time, I’ve had a lot of people ask me if it’s worth shelling out $90 for six bottles and two glasses. If you have some extra cash and want to treat yourself, I say go for it. Save the extras for bottle shares and people will really appreciate it.
However, that $90 might better be spent on bottles of St. Bernardus Abt 12, or Straffe Hendrik Quad, or Rochefort 10. They’re all Belgian quads, they’re just as good as Westy 12, they’re available everywhere and they’re pretty affordable.
And the best part? They’re not hyped at all, and a lot of times, those are the beers that deserve the most attention.
