Dan's Best of 2010

Ok, so I'm coming in a little late with my list, but I've been going back through the hundreds of beers I've had this year, and trying to pick just 10 was really difficult. Thanks to a friend starting up a monthly beer tasting (beerthursdays.blogspot.com) and opening up his home and considerable cellar in the process, as well as my finding a great beer store near work (www.pinbeer.com), I've had a lot of beers I otherwise never would have gotten my hands on. So lets get to it. In no particular order (and probably leaving out some great ones that have slipped my mind) here is my top 10 of 2010.

Dark Lord - A massive Imperial Stout from Three Floyds in Indiana, this is a brewery only release. Jay, the host of BeerThursdays, attended Dark Lord Day 2010, and we've had a few vintage bottles to taste. This a big roasty and complex stout, a little alcohol on the finish when its fresh, but that goes away with age and the sweeter dark fruit flavors come out to complement the roast.

Super Friends - I was lucky enough to try this at beeradvocate.com's Belgian Beer Fest in Boston. This IPA, brewed at Ithaca Beer Co, is a collaboration with brewers from Ommegang, Captain Lawrence, Flying Fish, Southampton Publick House and Ithaca. It was made entirely with Citra hops and fermented with a blend of different strains of Brettanomyces.

Coffee Bender - This is Surly Brewing's Bender brown ale steeped with coffee (for 24 hours according to their description), and I think this is the closest a beer can get to tasting just like and iced coffee. It sort of became an obsession for the BeerThursday guys and I, and prompted the homebrew recipe I've currently got fermenting.

Hopslam - Bell's is a brewery I hadn't been able to get before this year, and this was the first of their beers that I got to try. Its a IIPA whose explosive bitterness and fresh citric hop character is hard to top.

The Abyss - This Imperial Stout from Deschutes, currently ranked #1 in the style on Beer Advocate, is thick, viscous and packed with roasty, brown sugar, and dark fruit flavors. I don't think I am capable of adequately describing how velvety smooth and rich this beer is.

Victor Francenstein - I attended a small forum with Allagash Founder Rob Tod and Head Brewer Jason Perkins during the Beglian Beer Fest, and this is one of the beers that we sampled. This cask aged Victor with added bacteria and Cabernet Franc grapes is tart and complex. It is truly indicative of the craft and artisanship (I made up a word!) happening at Allagash and so many other Craft Breweries across America. They also brought Larry, brewed just once, and a pair of beers (partigyle), Big Little Beer and Little Big Beer, brewed with the Alstrom brothers of BeerAdvocate.

The Angel's Share (Bourbon Barrel-Aged) - An American Strong Ale from The Lost Abbey in California, this is a whiskey drinker's beer if I ever had one. Rich, toasty malt, with vanilla and oak flavors are all cut sharply by a boozy heat. This is a sipper, folks, and a fine one.

Sculpin - How many citric, hop-forward IPAs can I put on this list? This is probably the most easily found of the three, and also Ballast Point's highest rated IPA. (It is also #1 on BeerAdvocate in the American IPA category, which I didn't notice until writing this)

Fisherman's Imperial Pumpkin Stout - I'm not one to go crazy over fall seasonals. I find Oktoberfests dull and most Pumpkin Ales to be overly spiced or too sweet. This offering from Cape Ann Brewing puts the thick creamy body that you get from pumpkin into a big Imperial Stout and add's just enough spice to make it taste like fall. ~ While I'm on the subject, I'm going to give an honorable mention to Heavy Seas Greater Pumpkin, and Bruery Autumn Maple, the only other Fall seasonals that stood out to me this year.

Brute - This Wild Ale from Ithaca sums up my 2010 well. It wasn't until this year that I really dove into REALLY wild and funky beers, and I went crazy for them. Adam already mentioned Supplication, which I probably would have chosen to credit with my love of sours, but I've put away a lot more Brute this year than the much more notorious Supplication.

So there you have it; My top 10 of 2010. Inevitably when I press Publish Post I'll think of 10 more amazing beers that I had this past year, and wish I could have mentioned them. I guess I'll just have to drink them again in 2011, so I can include them in next year's list. (and post more often so I don't have to try to cram a year worth of drinking into one little list)

-Dan

The Best of 2010

One of my favorite things to do every new year is go back and rethink everything I've had in the last year. It gives me an opportunity to decide what beers really stood out from the crowd, and what was truly (for me) a world class beer. As last year, I'm not even going to try to rank them, mostly because the beers are different styles with different perspectives, and every single one of them is worth trying if you can. Unfortunately, almost all the beers on my list this year are either limited releases or have limited distribution (especially to my area), so they could vary wildly in difficulty to obtain. There were some very hard choices this year as well, and some very good beers that didn't make the list. I've been pretty fortunate to have had a lot of amazing beer in 2010. Now on to the list.

1. Dogfish Head/Sierra Nevada's Life and Limb - This collaboration between two of the most popular craft breweries in the US was absolutely outstanding. If you didn't manage to get a bottle yet, good luck to you. Hopefully there's a re-brew of this beer somewhere in our future.

2. Stone 14th Anniversary Emperical IPA - This beer was an English style take on the standard American Imperial IPA, going back to the origin of the drink. I was very impressed with how they took a style that's done to death, and put a unique and delicious new spin on it. It's still around at a few places at least, so you can try to get your hands on a bottle.

3. Mikkeller Rauch Geek Breakfast (Beer Geek Bacon) & Beer Geek Brunch (Weasel) - I'm listing these beers together as they are both variations on the Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast, a smooth stout brewed with coffee. The first was made with rauch malt to add a meaty smoked flavor, and the latter was brewed with Kopi Luwak, the world's most expensive coffee (and made from the excrement of a civet). Both beers were excellent and worth mentioning, and it's hard to choose a favorite. I will say that of the two, the Rauch Geek Breakfast was the more obvious choice to me, but lost some points as I didn't feel like the rauch malt came through as much as it could have.

4. Russian River Supplication - A sour beer from Russian River, and if you're into that sort of thing it's fantastic. It's kind of along the lines of drinking a warhead or sour patch kids (although not as sweet). It is produced fairly regularly, but their distribution doesn't really come out to the east coast much so it can be a challenge to get.

5. Dogfish Head Zeno - This is sort of the wild card of the bunch. As a limited release from the Dogfish Brewpub, it was available only on tap at the pub over a few weeks in the summer. Strangely though, it's been one of the best things I think Dogfish has produced in the last year, beating out Bitches Brew and My Antonia for me. It was a saison, one of my favorite styles, although this version was more heavily focused on the fruity aspects of the drink and less on the funk. I actually made 2 trips down for this beer since it was so good, and I hope that Dogfish puts it into production.

6. Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout - Another breakfast stout brewed with coffee, this beer is aged in oak bourbon barrels for a year before being released. It's one of the best coffee stouts out there, so definitely try it out.

7. Russian River Pliny the Elder - This beer from Russian River is one of the top rated beers in the world, and one of the most sought after. For good reason too, this beer is sort of the official drink of the hardcore hop-head. We made a clone of this recipe a while back and it used 17 ounces of hops in a 5 gallon batch, where a normal beer would use 2-5 ounces. When I finally had the real thing, I was surprised at how close our clone actually was. Despite the huge hop presence in the beer, it's actually not overly bitter, but has a smooth blend of hop quality all the way through.

8. Stillwater Existent - I wasn't planning on adding this beer at all, I had already put the list together when I had it, but it was absolutely fantastic. As a black saison it's a bit of an anomaly, but has some very unique flavors that come out in the beer. There's a ton of earthy/funky flavors and aromas in this beer, which I absolutely love.

9. Spring House Planet Bean - Wow, another coffee stout. It's been that kind of year. This made the list as one of the most well thought out and flavorful beers I've had all year, and on tap at that. The Spring House brewery is up in Pennsylvania near Lancaster, and we've gone up there a few times now. If you can manage to get your hands on a bottle, it falls under their B-Sides series. You may be in luck though, since they have stepped up their bottling line recently and seem to be growing. Maybe it will be getting some wider distribution soon.

10. Fantome Saision - This beer is the top rated saison on Beer Advocate, and was sublimely delicious. I know I'm a little biased with this beer as I love the style so much, but it really is worth trying if you can get a bottle. It's a shame I couldn't do a side-by-side comparison, because I still felt as if I might prefer the Avec Les Bons Voeux from DuPont for it's infinite funkiness, but it's hard to compare a memory from a year ago with a glass in front of you.

- Adam

Guinness Foreign Extra Stout

Guinness. In my beer journey, it was one of the first beers I turned to as something different from the BMC beers. For most people, it's as far as they get from the generic American macrobrews. For others, it's something they only have on St. Patrick's Day. In Ireland it's the drink of the masses.

As I learned more about beer, I started to find Guinness to be thin bodied and low in flavor compared to a lot of the other craft stouts out there. I still have it from time to time, usually at a bar or a restaurant when there are no craft options other than Boston Lager, but it's nothing I ever look forward to at this point. That being the case, when I heard about the new release of Guinness Extra Foreign Stout, I wrote it off as a waste of my time and not worth trying. I had heard that it was the closest thing to the Guinness served in Ireland, but I figured that at best it was probably only slightly better than the normal Guinness I've had for years. It surprised me then when Dan picked up some of it and told me that I absolutely had to try a bottle of it.

The first thing I noticed upon pouring was that the had was not the foamy almost white color that I am used to from Guinness, but instead had a slightly deeper tan hue, and more of a rocky quality to it. The smell as before only has a bit of roast to it, but there's a bit of tartness to the aroma as well, with a slightly acidic twinge to it.

The taste did vary quite a bit from the standard that I'm used to as well. Initially it was light and a bit tart, but in the back of the mouth bitterness dominated the flavor strongly. It's hard to determine, but I would say that the bitterness comes less from dark malts and more from hops in this version. I've heard that in Ireland, the Guinness served is a blend of younger beer and an older version that has a strain of Lactobacillus added to provide the tartness. I can definitely see that more in this version than the Guinness I've had before.

Differences aside, there are definitely good and bad sides to this beer. It's hard to separate the expectations built up from years of drinking the standard American version of Guinness, but I'll try to talk about it as it's own entity. First, the tartness is pleasant, and works well with the beer. It adds a layer of flavor that is usually not found in a stout. On the other hand, I found the bitterness in it to be unbalanced, and having a dull quality to it that I didn't find fitting. The body is a bit on the light side. It has a decent amount of flavor to it, and certainly stands up as a real stout.

Overall, I couldn't decide if it was worth trying or not. As academic curiosity about what all the fuss over in Ireland is about, I suppose it makes sense to try. As a stout on it's own, it's ok but not great. I guess the question at this point is whether it's fair or not to consider the Foreign Extra Stout a legitimate style on it's own since the whole basis for the style is to fit this particular beer. I certainly wouldn't be upset if I didn't have it again, but I would choose it over the standard Guinness.

- Adam

Competition Results

Dan and I recently decided to give another shot to home brewing competitions. We had only entered one competition so far, the American Homebrewers Association National Homebrewing Competition. This is the largest competition of the year, with thousands of home brewers around the country entering, and over 6,000 total entries last year. Obviously it was a far shot for us to expect to win anything in our first competition with less than a year's experience under our belts. We entered our best tasting beer, our Imperial Brown Ale that we've dubbed "Aberinkula" after a song from one of our favorite bands, The Mars Volta. Of course, we did not place in the competition, but we did get a "silver certificate" for having earned a certain number of points with our beer. We also got notes saying our beer wasn't really in style for the category we entered.

The competition we decided to enter this time was the Happy Holidays Homebrew Competition sponsored by St. Louis Brews. It's a lot smaller, with only 400 some entries, but the prize for best of show was a stainless steel 15 gallon fermenter. We decided to enter two beers, the same Imperial Brown that we had entered in the previous competition, and a stout that I had put together and brewed as the first all-grain batch at my place. We had to rush around like madmen trying to get the beers packaged and shipped, as we had less than a week to get them to St. Louis before the competition deadline. After hastily getting everything put together we went to our local shipping agent, only to find out they had closed for the night. The next morning we got the bottles sent on their way, with a promise that they would get there the day of the deadline.

A few days later I got an email from the coordinator of the event letting me know that two of our bottles had broken in shipment, due to our lack of proper packing material at the time. One bottle from each entry had broken, but she offered us the choice to either stay in the competition and not be eligible to win best of show, or send another bottle of each beer before the judging took place. We opted to send the bottles again, and after securing better packaging materials they were on their way.

The results of the competition came in this past Sunday. We did not win best of show, and Aberinkula did not place at all in it's category. I went on to look for the results for the stout category, and saw that we had taken first place! I told Dan, and we were both pretty thrilled about it. What I'm most proud of though is that the recipe wasn't put together to fit to a style, but rather to taste good. We're both very happy with how the beer turned out, and I enjoy drinking it regularly. So often I hear people say that the people who are out there winning competitions aren't making the best tasting beers, just the ones that most accurately follow the style guidelines. At least in this particular case, I can honestly say that that was not true.

Because this was a qualifying event for the Masters Championship of Amateur Brewing, our gold medal allows us to enter that competition as well with the stout. I'm planning on doing it, just to see how far our little beer can go. Stay tuned.

- Adam

Waxing Bottles How-To

I've been in homebrewer mode a bit this weekend. I got my 1st Anniversary Barleywine transferred over to secondary, ordered a kegging setup, and worked on a little project I have going for Christmas. I decided that this year I was going to make something special for some of my beer-loving friends, and settled on a spiced Belgian Strong Dark Ale. Wanting it to look a bit more special than plain brown bottles, I opted to wax the caps. I've always thought that this looks nice on a bottle of commercial beer, and Brewmaster's Warehouse carries multiple colors of wax beads. Since it's for Christmas, I went with red. I didn't see much information about this process for brewers, so I decided to put together my own how-to.

Step one was melting the wax. Seems pretty simple and obvious,

but one of the things I learned was that you can't put wax in the microwave to melt it. Wax is oil-based and has a fairly low flash point, so it can catch fire easily before it's even finished melting in the microwave. Instead, candle makers suggest using a double-boiler. That's basically a pot inside a pot. You put water in the outer pot, and it serves as a buffer between the inner pot and the source of heat that keeps it from scorching whatever is inside. Since I didn't have a double boiler, I decided to use a glass jar in a pot of water. Glass can shatter if it changes temperature quickly, so I let it sit with the wax beads in it while the water was warming up as well. You could also use an empty can, but make sure you use something you won't mind getting dirty, because it's very hard to clean the wax out afterwards. You definitely don't want to put it directly in a good pot.

The wax took half an hour or so to melt fully. I kept the heat on low after the water started boiling, and then stirred with a bamboo skewer we had lying around. Then it was time for step two, dipping the bottles. This was a pretty simple process, and only took 20 minutes or so for two cases of bottles. Basically you just have to flip the bottle upside down, let it sit in the wax for 10-15 seconds, then let the excess wax drip back into the jar. Very easy.

And then it was time for step three... well, actually there was no step three. That's it, sit back and relax. It's a nice way to present the bottles, and in theory it has some advantages for the beer. Supposedly, it can help reduce problems with oxidation, since the wax can keep oxygen from getting into the bottles as it ages. I don't know how much truth there is to that, but it certainly can't hurt. Considering the strength of this beer, it's possible that whoever gets it could let it sit for a few years, and hopefully this will allow them to age it optimally with the least off-flavors possible.

- Adam

The Woods Monomoy Kriek

Cisco Brewers is another brewery I haven't seen or heard anything about before. I happened to see it while at the liquor store and on a bit of a whim decided to give it a shot. From their website, it appears that Cisco is a combination brewery, winery, and distillery. Their main product is a vodka, but they produce a fair number of craft beers as well. The Woods seems to be a series of wild ales, and this one is a 2 year old Flemish-red aged for 10 months on sour cherries. And what that means is a sour beer, something I've been getting more into lately.

I have had some sour beers that are pretty mild, but this is not one of them. Just from smelling it you can tell that there's a strong sour quality, which presents itself in the taste as a puckering lactic tartness. It's a deep reddish brown, cloudy, with pretty much no head. It's got a fairly high level of carbonation (maybe even overcarbonated), which combined with the dryness of it, makes this beer seem to suck the moisture out of the throat. However, this beer is not over the top sour either, but presents itself with a nice balance of acetic nature and other wild flavors. The tartness seems to come from the cherries as well.

As I haven't had very many sour beers yet, it's hard to really judge this beer against another. However, I did find it to be tasty, and enjoyably tart without being sickening. It's even a bit refreshing despite it's dryness. It does seem to wake you up a bit. Dan says it's like getting kicked in the face by a cherry ninja. I think it's like licking a sour-patch kid. While it's not the best sour beer I've had yet, it holds its own, and it certainly seems worth a try.

- Adam

The Bruery Saison Rue

I haven't had a lot from The Bruery before. I've known that they have a reputation for producing very good beers, but most of the time when I've headed to the liquor store, I've had something particular that I wanted to pick up. As it happened, everything I went to pick up this last time (Dogfish Head Poppaskull and Alaskan Smoked Porter) was not available. After a little searching around, I thought Saison Rue from The Bruery was the way to go.

First off, I have to admit that I failed epically at pouring this beer. I let it go until the head reached the top of my glass, but it just kept growing, with driblets of wasted beer cascading onto my counter. As a result, I had a thick layer of marshmallow-fluff head sitting on top of this hazy amber brew. Be warned that this beer supports a massive head that sticks around and clings to the glass, so pour with caution!

The first thing I noticed was the slight pepper spice aroma interspersed with wild fruitiness. The taste is a balance of light hay and grass, a touch of lemon, a surprising bit of sweetness, and a lingering suggestion of pepper. Underneath I also caught a hint of toast or bread in the beer.

I didn't find the beer to be as dry as some saisons, with the sweetness of it enhancing the fruity quality rather than being cloying. The body was somewhat heavier than average, with a lower level of carbonation that startled me at first. I should note of course that this was a welcome change in this beer and not at all unpleasant.

I found this saison to be a refreshing deviation from the normal within one of my favorite styles. Things that I would normally find a little off-putting, like a lack of bitterness, some sweetness, and a heavier body actually meld together in this beer, leaving me with a feeling of sublime balance on a razor's edge.

- Adam