New Belgium Fat Tire

Fat Tire is a beer I've been hearing about for a while, but I hadn't gotten the opportunity to try it until right now. Yes, I'm drinking it while writing this review. People have been raving about it on Home Brew Talk and I've seen a couple clone recipes, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Fat Tire pours a hazy golden amber color. It's got a fairly insubstantial foamy white head that's less than 1/4 finger, but leaves a dusting on the top through the glass.

The beer smells very interesting to start off. It's got a subtle malt quality, with some flowery hop scents underneath. There's a somewhat toasty quality to it too. It smells a lot like freshly milled honey malt grains.

The taste is strongly biscuity. It's bready overall, with a nice sweet toasted quality to it. There's a clean hop bitterness in the back of the mouth. I got a little bit of a flavor reminiscent of chocolate just in the back of my mouth after swallowing as well. It's got a nice subtly sour bread aftertaste.

The beer feels bizarre in the mouth too. It's thick and full bodied, but has a tingly sharp carbonation and a creaminess to it all at the same time. It leaves a bit of smooth coating on the teeth as well.

Overall it's a very different drink, but it's really good. It mixes the bitterness of tea, the taste of bread, and overall feel of beer at the same time. It's easy to get down, and really doesn't have an in-your-face flavor. Still it's not weak by any means. Too bad it's hard for us to find out here, Dan had to get this bottle from Seattle.

- Adam

I Am A Home Brewer

Some of the members over at Home Brew Talk put together a video as an homage to the "I Am A Craft Brewer" video shown at the 2009 Craft Brewer's Conference. It's a great video and really captures the DIY spirit of home brewers. Check it out.

North Coast Brewing's Old No. 38 Stout

It's been a while since I've gotten to sit down and do a review. Honestly I haven't been trying out nearly as much lately. Since we started brewing our own beers, I haven't spent a lot on commercial beer. Partially it's because when you have 5 gallons of beer sitting around, it's a little unnecessary to go out and buy more. But it's also a price factor... brewing beer can be expensive. I think I dropped about $70 on ingredients last time I was at the home brew store. When you figure you can normally get about 52 bottles out of a 5 gallon batch, that means it's about $1.35 a beer, or $8.10 for a 6-pack. That's pretty consistent with the price of a commercial beer purchase, and in some cases even more expensive. So at some point, I just gotta say... if you want to see more reviews and less about home brewing on here, send me some money so I can afford beer!

Since the latest batch to go into bottles was a stout, I've got them on my mind. Stouts are one of my favorite styles now, which I still find amusing considering how much I didn't like the first one I tried. Anyway, I tend to go for a new stout before almost any other style unless there's something particular I'm in the mood for. Recently I had the opportunity to try Old No. 38 Stout from North Coast Brewing. North Coast is located in Fort Bragg, CA.

The Old No. 38 Stout is a Dublin Dry stout, and weighs in at 5.5% ABV. It poured a very dark brown, nearly black, with a hint of dark red around the edges. There was a light brown head, about a half finger thick, that dissipated to just a dusting rather quickly. The remains left a tiny bit of lacing, but not much to speak of.

The aroma was a strong roasty, almost coffee-like scent. The smell actually disappeared kind of quickly, until you get just a bit of a smokey smell. This was unusual in my experience, as normally the only smell that would not last throughout the beer is the initial hop aroma.

The taste was good, neither sweet nor bitter. Instead it had a strong roasted taste, with a bit of a sharp bready flavor. There was a touch of burnt flavor as well, but it was a nice addition and not unwelcome. The flavor isn't terribly strong, but definitely wasn't creamy. It was definitely an interesting flavor though, despite the fact that there wasn't a lot to it, simply because most beers tend either towards being sweet, bitter, or balanced between the two, but this one didn't really have any apparent swing towards sweet or bitter. It's hard to describe, but I think of it as a lack of either sweetness or bitterness, rather than a balance of the two. I know that sounds like it could be a bad thing, but it really wasn't.

The body of the beer was towards the heavy side, but it also had a substantial amount of sharp tingling carbonation. The level of carbonation did work nicely for me though. As the style implies, the beer had a dry quality to it. As I've learned from brewing myself, this is supposedly the result of a more complete level of fermentation of the sugars in the beer than normal. In other words, there aren't a lot of sugars left in the beer that haven't been converted into alcohol.

Overall it was a very good brew, and easy to get down. The flavor wasn't overwhelmingly strong, but I also didn't find it watery or weak. It's a flavor that sits well on the tongue. I could see this one becoming a regular for me when I'm looking for a stout, provided that it's available. I'm looking forward to trying more from this brewery at some point, as the Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout is supposed to be excellent.

- Adam

Brasserie Dupont Avec les Bons Voeux

The name simply means "With the best wishes from the brewery Dupont". Originally it was given as a gift by the brewery to their best clients, but with its popularity they decided to commercially sell the beer. It's an unfiltered light beer, in the same style as the famous Saison Dupont, but brewed in restricted quantities. The brewery is still independent and family run.

This beer poured a cloudy golden brown, with some floating white sediment appearing in the glass. There was also a huge rocky off-white head that had amazing retention. Lacing was left all over the glass from the beer.

The smell was somewhat bitter, with a touch of skunk apparent in the nose at first, but really not in an unpleasant way. There was a huge wildness to the smell, grassy, earthy, with some wild flowers mixed in. Spice comes through a bit as well, but it's mostly the smell of wild Belgian yeast. There's always this amazingly natural and wild smell to saisons that I just can't get enough of.

The taste just overwhelms the mouth with the very definition of a wild beer. It's like Ommegeddon mixed with Duvel. There was banana and wild flowers present in the taste. It just had this raw quality to it that's hard to describe. It's really not all that sweet tasting, but rather a nice grassy hop bitterness coats the tongue. Normally I wouldn't like a hop dominated flavor but this beer pulls it off so well. It's just wild and untamed. It's a bit tart tasting, but just amazing.

The beer is light in body, with strong tingling carbonation. It even feels good in the mouth. There's a bit of smooth coating left on the teeth, and some warming when it went down the throat. Overall the feel is just light and a bit airy.

Wow. This was an insanely easy beer to drink. I think saisons may be at the top of my favorite styles, and this is definitely the best I've had yet. It even beat out Ommegeddon, which was one of my favorite beers. It's hard to believe that something this good is only rated #4 on Beer Advocate, but I haven't had any of the ones rated higher yet. It's also pretty hard to believe that this beer was 9.5% ABV, since it barely had any indication of the level of alcohol in it. I don't think beer gets much better than this.

- Adam

Learning experiences Part 2

For those following our adventures in home brewing, you probably know that we had an issue with the fermentation of the stout we've been brewing. The specific gravity of the beer was too high, meaning there were still a bunch of sugars in the beer that the yeast weren't fermenting. The danger with this is that if we went ahead and bottled this beer, the yeast should resume fermentation of the additional sugars in the bottle, and since there would be more sugar than normal, the bottles could explode. These are called "bottle bombs" in the home brewing world, and can be extremely dangerous. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not have hundreds of glass shards flying at me when I go to get a beer out of the fridge.

Originally we had tried adding a new yeast packet and some yeast nutrient to the beer. This was the advice given to us by the owner of the home brew store, so we figured it was probably pretty sound. Well, turns out it had no effect. To be fair, we're still not sure that the issue was just that the yeast gave up, it could also have been that there wasn't enough oxygen in the beer for them to reproduce properly and get to the level where they could ferment all the sugars. I'm actually leaning towards this explanation.

Anyway, as a last ditch effort, we decided to make what's called a starter. Basically, it's a concoction you put together to get yeast going, that you then throw in the beer. We got some water boiling, added about half a cup of dry malt extract to it, boiled for a few minutes, and then got it cooled down. Basically following the same procedure as when we make beer, just with a lot less time and no hops. We then put it in a bottle and shook the crap out of it, to make sure there would be plenty of oxygen in the wort. We added a packet of yeast to that, once again using Nottingham yeast. We loosely covered it with foil to keep any nasty bacteria out, and left it overnight to start fermentation. The next day, Dan took the mixture and shook it up again to get oxygen in it once more, then dumped it in our beer.

Sure enough, not long afterwards he told me we were getting bubbles in our airlock once more. In fact it continued to increase over the next few hours, to the point where he had to take the airlock apart and put in a blow off tube instead. 48 hour later, the bubbling is still going and we've had krausen form, so we're pretty sure it's going to finish fermenting just fine. If this ever happens again, I'm sure we're going to make a starter right away instead of using it as a last resort.

Westvleteren 12

It's not the hardest in the world to come by, although getting a bottle isn't so easy.  Someone has to go to the monastery that the beer is brewed at and pick it up.  Thanks to the wonders of the internet, my fiance was able to pick up a bottle on ebay that she purchased from someone in Belgium.  It's also not the most expensive beer in the world, that title is generally given to Samuel Adams' Utopia, which originally retailed for $100 a bottle, but now goes for $400 or more.  However, it is generally considered to be THE best beer on the planet.  It's voted as #1 on both Rate Beer and Beer Advocate, which I think says quite a lot.  The fact that it's also somewhat attainable should be pretty exciting for beer lovers.  While you're likely to pay upwards of $20 a bottle, it's something that pretty much anyone can do at least once in their  life.

Like the 8, it comes in a fairly unassuming bottle, plain brown with no label.  The only markings it has are a ring in the glass neck of the bottle that simply says Trappistenbier, and a bottle cap marking it as the Trappist Westvleteren 12.  The beer is a Quadrupel, which is a strong Belgian style, usually in the 10% range.  It's also supposed to be stronger in flavor than either the Dubbel or Tripel.  I haven't had a lot of this style.  In fact I think the only other Quad I've tried was Ommegang's Three Philosophers, which as I recall I didn't enjoy all that much.

Pouring the bottle into the glass was a little whiff of Belgium.  The smell was fruity, of cherries, apple, and candied sugar.  Around the edges of the smell there's a bit of round hops that have just a bit of bite.  It's a fairly strong smell, but mainly sweet, with little bitterness present.  Underneath was just a touch of roast, but it's faint.

The beer poured a deep brown color, fairly cloudy, and with quite a bit of sediment in the bottom.  There's nearly a finger of yeast sediment at the bottom of the bottle, in large white flakes.  There's almost no head, just a slight dusting of off-white head.  The ring of bubbles around the edge of the glass left a touch of lacing.

The taste was initially of chocolate and fruit, with a good candy sweetness, but still some tartness in the mouth.  Towards the back of the tongue, a smooth hop bitterness took over.  The malty chocolate flavor sat just in the middle of the tongue.  I noticed just a hint of alcohol flavor as well, not nearly enough to indicate the 10.2+% that this beer contained.  The flavor was very strong though, absolutely filling the mouth, and leaving a fruity and bitter aftertaste for quite a while.

It's a very full bodied drink, absolutely thick and syrupy.  There's quite a bit of carbonation though, much more than I'd expect from such a thick beer.  It left a filmy coating on the teeth as well.  The beer warmed the throat going down, a much better indicator of how strong it is.

It's definitely a very good drink, and well worth getting your hands on one.  I didn't like it quite as much as the 8, but it's probably more a style preference than anything else.  I'm not sure exactly how old the bottle was, at least 4 months, and probably older.  It would be interesting to see how the flavors change between a fresh bottle and one that's aged.  I can see though why it's earned the reputation it has, although it's not the single greatest beer of my life, it's one that I thoroughly enjoyed, and am very glad to have experienced.

- Adam

We've Moved!

Well after discovering that there's already a blog called the Beer Odyssey, and talking it over with Dan, we decided to change the name of the blog.  We through around a few options and this is the one that stuck.  So from now on we'll be know as the Daily Dubbel.

No, we probably won't be updating daily.  It's just a fun beer related name.