A carnival of technology

AECHT SCHLENKERLA RAUCHBIER MÄRZEN!

Continuing my scattershot stumble across lands and styles, tonight’s beer hails from Germany.  It is made of smoke.

The traditional way of malting grains is to soak them for a little while to get them to sprout and then dry them to get them to stop sprouting.  This activates some enzymes and does some other things that let the yeasts go to town.  Sometimes the malted grains are dried in the sun, but more usually they are dried in a kiln.  As a species we have decided that fire is pretty rad, and a kiln can provide a dry heat to quickly get sprouting grains to knock off the sprouting thing, and it can also roast them a little bit for a darker ale, or roast them a lot for a porter or a stout.  The Germans did not use a kiln this time.

This beer is a dark lager, and what makes the Rauch is that they roasted green barley over an open flame.  Similar idea to Scotch, why not.  I open the bottle and pour it into a pint glass, where it looks about the color of a porter though lighter around the edges, a kind of reddish brown with a dark murky center with a head that—oh sweet Famous Amos my beer smells like meat.  I am not exaggerating here.  This beer smells exactly like, cross my heart, a smoked sausage.  There are some sweet and floral notes hiding away in the back, but I can’t concentrate on them over the much louder sensation that this a beer smells like it was once part of a pig.  It’s spicy and a little oily and what in the hell is going on.

I finally gather up enough courage to take a sip.  It’s sweet at first, a light taste of roasted malts, and then all of that disappears in a cloud of smoke and char.   There’s a good balance of sweet malts and bitter hops here, but seriously I cannot get over the smoke.  Things that you drink do not taste like burnt wood.  Meat meat meat meat.

I do not enjoy Rauchbier.

Week three, mother bitches!  Let’s end this one fancy.  I’m breakin’ out the champagne!

Deus Brut des Flandres

The bière de champagne style is a newer style and effort to finally bring Miller’s long-held promise to life.  The Deus bottle, which has the distinction of being the most expensive beer I have ever purchased, came with a little booklet that outlines the ten-step process used to make it.  Belgians love them some steps.  It takes them nine just to pour a beer, and seriously half of those could be condensed into “don’t be a slob.”  So in the interest of not listing some semitechnically-worded marketing material, what makes this beer’s process unique is: a) after being bottled with additional sugars and yeast, it’s shipped off to France to maintain for a while longer, II) they turn the bottle upside down after that and, 3) they cut off the part of the neck where all the yeast settles, add some more carbonation and stick a cork in the rest of the bottle.  The result is an aged, filtered beer that’s supposed to look and taste like a sparkling white wine.  Time to get out a flute and see.

The bottle opened with a sharp pop, and the beer poured a clear, light golden yellow with a big head that quickly settled and disappeared, leaving some steady streams of bubbles sparkling their way up through the glass.  So far it looks a lot like a champagne.  The aroma gives away its secret, full of sweet, earthy barley along with a tart, fruity smell.  It tastes of sugars and malts and honey, but it isn’t a sweet beer; it’s balanced by a bright, fruity flavor, kind of like a sour apple, and some spiciness that I’m not going to try to label, maybe a flavor left by the yeast or maybe actual spices, probably both.  The visible carbonation blends well into the taste, adding a little tickle but not an outright bite.  It tastes and feels quite dry, not unlike a glass of champagne.

This is an interesting drink.  The malt makes it taste pretty obviously like a beer, but it does have a lot of characteristics of a sparkling wine.  It’s fruity, and it’s dry but not bitter.  Deus wouldn’t be out of place at a New Year’s party, or before breakfast and a morning at Tiffany’s, or wherever champagne would be appropriate; and for the beer drinker it makes an interesting new style.  I’d recommend trying one out if you ever feel inclined to pay more than $20 on a bottle of beer.

And thus passes another milestone.  Looking back, here are some styles:

• Bière de champagne/Bière Brut/Brut des Flandres: 1
• Stout: 2
• Belgian-style dark: 1
• Pale wheat: 1
• Pale ale: 1
• Crappy lager: 2
• Bière blanche/witbier: 1
• Tripel: 1
• Dark Ale: 3
• Barleywine: 1
• IPA: 1
• Cream ale: 1
• Bière de garde: 1
• Hefeweizen: 2
• Good lager: 1
• Saison: 1

and countries

• Belgium: 3
• Jamaica: 1
• Canada: 2
• America: 7
• India: 1
• France: 2
• Lithuania: 1
• Ireland: 1
• England: 2
• Scotland: 1

and a more depressing metric that I think is important, of the past 21 beers, 13 of them are illegal in Alabama: 7 of them are stronger than 6% ABV, and 9 came in a bottle larger than 16 oz, which includes the half liter/ 16.9oz size of three.  There’s information in that link on how to contact your state senator if you happen to be Abalamban and would like them to know your thoughts on the Gourmet Beer Bill of 2009.

And that’s enough politics.  Three weeks, woo, yeah!  I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find a hundred new beers when I started, but as I go on I keep finding new styles and new ideas, and I think this crazy plan might just work.  It’s certainly been educational so far.

On the approach of a St. Patrick’s day some years past, the one day a year that I look for meaning in an ignored surname-based heritage, I found myself in a liquor store, wearing green and shopping for supplies.  The lady at the checkout was Jamaican with a thick accent and skin dark as the night.  She noticed my shirt, and we got talking about Irishness and its meaning on such a holiday, as well as her own link to the Emerald Isle, which turned out to be a couple generations closer than mine.

In the early 16th century, after Ireland had enjoyed a few years of relative independence and prosperity as a building Gaelic influence began to displace an apathetic English prescence, and the various earls and viscounts forgot about their summer cottages and fiefdoms, the House of Tudor rose to power and set off another long period when being Irish wasn’t really so great.  Though the emigration during the potato famine is probably the most famous due to the impact it had on North America, there had been a steady stream of unwilling migration going on since the time of Oliver Cromwell, an Englishman famous for being a huge dick when it came to the Irish.  After putting down a rebellion and solidifying the refreshed English control of the island, he began shipping Irish off to Barbados to work the sugar cane plantations.  These Irish slaves and their descendants were shuffled about the British possessions in the Caribbean, and after the Spanish gave up on a little island south of Cuba, the British landowners eventually created a concentration of Irishness in Jamaica.

The island colony gained independence in 1962 under the leadership of Alexander Bustamante, son to an Irish father and Arawak mother, and though the Irish influence has mostly melted invisible into the Jamaican culture and people, as it began to do the moment some poor, sunburned Irishman stepped onto its shores, this unlikely cultural mark can still be found in some oddly placed Mc’s, a tendency to muddle vowels like a boy from Cork, and what I’m getting at is that though the English colonists usually had the sense to keep their dark, heavy beers out of the tropics, I’m not surprised that Jamaica makes a stout.

Dragon Stout

Dragon Stout is brewed by Desnoes & Geddes, makers of Red Stripe and proud sponsors of the Jamaican national bobsled team.  It poured like a stout, brown just a shade shy of black with ruby edges, though there wasn’t much of a head.  And after that things got a little different.  I didn’t find the smell particularly strong, but what was there was more mollases than roasted malt, and it tasted very sweet.  There’s the roasted, stouty malt flavor, with a little bit of coffee-like bitterness, but dominant instead is sugar and cooked fruit.  The taste overall didn’t have that big stout punch, which, given the sweet focus, worked favorably by keeping the beer from getting sickly sugary.

In all this was something a bit unexpected, a bit simple, but not unwelcome.  I don’t think I’d want more than one of these of at a time—the sweetness would be overwhelming after too long and a 7.5% ABV is a bit high to be sessionable—but it made for a nice dessert.

Today only, two for one special.

Unibroue: Terrible

Unibroue is a delightful oddity, a Belgian-style québécois brewery that’s pretty good at what they do and occasionally shares some neat artwork and trippy French-Canadian folk tales on their packaging.  This is the not a beer with a backstory.  Apparently they got tired of writing everything out twice.  The things this bottle says are: “Terrible” (that’s French for “terrible”), “Unibroue Chambly Québec Canada,” “According to the Surgeon General…5¢ redemption value” “Best before 11-11-2013,” “Dark Ale on Lees, 10.5% alc./vol., 750mL.”  So all I know going in is that is going to be a strong, dark ale, and I should buy another bottle at some point for aging.

The beer looks chocolately brown as it comes out of the bottle, but once it gets all together in the glass it becomes a deep, shiny, inky black.  I’ve seen stouts lighter colored than this.  There’s just a hint of red around the edges to remind you that this isn’t really black, and on top there’s a thick, tan-colored head that after a while fades into a fluffy blanket.  It smells like sweet, dark fruits, plums and cherries and raisins, with a big yeasty aroma.  It tastes like fruit—I can taste a bright apple flavor along with the murkier, darker fruits from the smell—and sugar, and a little bit of spice, clove and some things I can’t quite place.  It feels velvety smooth with just a little tickle from the carbonation, and if it weren’t for the note on the bottle and a tingle in my head I never would have guessed how much alcohol there really is.

Terrible isn’t as complex as some others ales in this style, but this gives you something to think about and makes a tasty dessert.

Highland Cattail Peak Organic Wheat Beer

Highland is a brewery up in the mountans of Asheville that usually goes with a Scottish theme—ales pale and dark, porters, stouts—so this is a bit of a departure for them.  The bottle notes a hint of rye and hibiscus.

It pours a hazy yellow with a thin head and a smell of wheat and a little lemon.  The taste is not quite what I expected.  When I think of wheat beers I mostly think of the citrus and spice of the Belgian styles, but the focus in this is hops.  It tastes dry, bitter, a little herbal and floral and just a shade lemony.  I can’t find the promised rye, and in fact I can barely find the wheat.  That isn’t to say this is bad, just different.  The taste reminds me of the hops of a pale ale, but it has the body and light malts of a wheat beer.  It strikes me as a somewhat unusual take on a wheat beer, but it isn’t bad.  It’s refreshing and something I would drink again.

So that catches things up to today.  Coming up for this week I have another two Belgian ales from America, a stout from Jamaica, another attempt at a saison, something made with smoke and a champagne of beers.  L’chaim.

Q: What the hell am I going to do with all that cilantro?
A: Nothing, it died

I’m starting to see the shortcomings of trying to grow plants on a covered balcony that only gets full sun for about half the day.  The cilantro didn’t make it, but everything else seems to be doing ok.  I planted some flat-leaf parsley in its place, since I use more parsley anyway, and that’s going confusingly.  Pretty much all of the original leaves died after planting it, but there’s a lot of new growth.  I don’t know how that’s going to go.  The curly parsley is still going strong.  I gave the mint a big, flat pot so it can go all ground-covery, and it’s growing great.

I planted some basil that’s doing pretty well, and the tomatoes are growing slowly but steadily.  I don’t think the peppers are going to make it.  Thyme and rosemary are doing great.  And then there’s the garlic.  I cut off some of the scapes once to make some delicious pesto, and dang but they grew back mighty quick.  In light of this I think I’m instead going to try to just keep growing scapes.  I can buy garlic bulbs at the supermarket, and scapes are something delightful that I can’t get anywhere else.  Yay garlic.  I guess I’ll have to find some more ways to cook with it.

I’m starting to feel like I’m mostly repeating myself with these reviews.  I’ll try something weirder tomorrow in an effort to vanquish this curse of brevity.

Red Hook Cooper Hook Spring Ale

Red Hook is a Washington brewery, but apparently they have a brewery in Portsmouth, NH as well.  New Hampshire is where this one came from.

True to its name, Copper Hook is a deep, coppery orange.  It smells of roasted malts with some flowery hops scents.  The taste is malty and hoppy with some citrus notes.  There is a little bit of roasty taste, but nothing near the extent of a stout, or even a porter; it’s just a thicker malt flavor than you’d find in a paler beer, and with some caramel sweetness to it.  It has a pretty big feel to it, but the crisp, orangey hops keep it from being overwhelming.  The “spring ale” made me expect something a little lighter, or maybe a little fruitier, but this is more something for a New Hampshire spring: something to keep away the chill of the lingering April frost but with enough brightness to turn an optimistic eye to the warmer days to come.  It’s not bad, kind of a pale ale with a shade of extra heaviness.  Would drink again.

Taj Mahal Premium Lager Beer

The Indians hung out with the British for a few years, and the British are pretty ok at making a beer when they put their minds to it, so I figured this beer at least has a better chance than that Lithuanian thing.  Unfortunately, it seems like the makers of this particular Indian beer got most of their advice from the Americans.

Taj Mahal is a very light, clear yellow with an average head that dissipates quickly into a thin ring.  It smells mostly of hops, grassy and a little flowery, and it has that corn smell reminiscent of an American lager.  The taste is pretty thin.  There’s some grain, some hops, and a little bit of an oily feel that robs it of some of its crispness.  In all There’s really not much to say about Taj Mahal.  There’s nothing particularly offensive, but nothing special about it, either.

Amadeus Bière Blanche

White beers, or witbiers, are a Belgian style of light, spiced wheat ale.  Hoegaarden is a famous example.  Amadeus is a witbier, but it’s from France so they call it something else, in a language that people actually use.

“Bière blanche sur lie, à déguster très fraîche, seule ou accompagnée d’une rondelle de citron.”  If I understand that right, this is an unfiltered white beer, and it’s ok to drink it in your car if you drive a trendy little hatchback.  The defiantly untranslated bottle is giving a hint of things to come.  You know how sometimes a wheat beer like Blue Moon will be served with a slice of orange—and then the beer has no head at all once it gets to you and have to figure out where to pile all of the beer-soaked bits of orange—since it tastes orangey?  Amadeus tastes like lemon.

Though this is a beer on lees (at least I hope that’s what sur lie means), bottled with yeast, Amadeus came in a 75cl bottle, effectively providing filtering by decantation.  Smaller bottles of witbier produce the same effect, making it customary to give the bottle a good swish to mix in the yeasts before finishing the pour, but I don’t know what the ettiquette is when pouring from a bottle that has more than one glass’s worth.  I just left it alone until the end.  So, semi-filtered as it became, Amadeus poured a clear, very light yellow with a big fluffy head.  The smell was almost all sweet lemons, like an effervescent lemonade, with an elusive hint of what seemed like Hefeweizen banana.  The taste offered a little more by way of some spices—I don’t know what, probably corriander, and something that tastes like cinnamon maybe?—but again the theme was sugar and lemon, more sweet than sour.  In all it’s light and crisp and a good remedy to a hot day, but it doesn’t have a lot to say.

Maredsous 10 (Triple)

It can be easy to forget, as an American living in one of the few states which still won’t sell beer on Sundays, that a widespread condemnation of alcohol among Christian sects is a relatively recent phenomenon, and one mostly confined the US.  It was medieval French monks that kept oenology alive through a time when so much knowledge was lost to violent kingdom-building.  Legend says that Irish (or Scottish, depending on who’s telling the story) monks on a mission to Arabia saw how stills were used to extract the essences of plants and flowers for perfume, and after a flash of inspiration and a shift in application, whiskey was born, opening the door to an entire new world of beverages.  In Belgium, a land of grain and strange yeasts, the specialty is beer, brewing being encouraged by St. Benedict, the inventor of monks, for the sanitation of boiling the wort, the meditative toil of the process and the nourishment that beer provides to monks fasting.  After lifetimes of devotion to the creation of drinks in the service of God, some Belgians monks have gotten pretty good at it.  In particular they got good at making unique styles of strong ales, the tripel being the strongest of these.

The Abbaye de Maredsous was founded by Benedctines in the late 19th century, just a baby compared to some of the Cistercian abbeys that produce the famous Trappist ales.  Hopefully they were allowed to copy someone else’s notes to get started.   Maredsous 10  came in a stubby 33cL bottle.  The design of the label has a more modern look than the stark coat-of-arms on their website—more rounded edges, lighter colors—but it’s still fairly sparse.  It tells what it is, how much of it there is, notes that it’s 10% ABV and includes a little logo that reminds me of the mark included on Trappist beers.  Unfortunately the French side of the text encircling it is illegible, and I woudn’t even know where to begin with translating Flemish.  As with Welsh, I’m not convinced that it’s a real language rather than an elaborate joke.  There’s also a brief paragraph about the beer that includes advice to serve it colder than I expected, around 42° Fahrenheit.  I already had it in the fridge and I’m impatient, so that worked out well, and, oddly enough, the somewhat colder-than-cellar temperature did something really amazing with the taste, which I’ll get to in a few more sentences.

I got out the goblet for this one.  It poured a cloudy, brownish orange, with a fluffy, white, sturdy head.  The smell was quite pleasant, and it was fun to stick my nose in the glass and just breathe it in for a while.  The sweet, Belgian yeasty scent was dominant, and beneath that there were sweet malts, a lemony citrus and some other fruitiness that didn’t remind me of any particular fruit.  As I mentioned I drank it a little colder than I’d expect a beer this strong and fancy to be served, and this caused the beer to dramatically transform as it warmed in my mouth.  It seemed to unfold in four distinct phases: it hit my tongue with a silky smooth feel, thick and Christmasy with a taste of nuts and candied dates, and this quickly gave way to a sharp, hot bite of carbonation and alcohol.  As that faded it became crisper and more orangey while a malty sweetness came back into view, and it finished dry with some hoppy bitterness and musky taste of yeast.  It’s not spicey like some Belgian ales, but I thought the rush of different flavors was really interesting.  This beer is definitely worth a try if you come across it.

And that’s week two.  I guess I should do one of those summary dealies.

Styles:

• Saison: 1
• Lager: 2
• Hefeweizen: 2
• Dark ale: 3
• Bière de garde: 1
• Cream ale: 1
• IPA: 1
• Barleywine: 1
• Stout: 1
• Belgian Tripel: 1

Countries:

• Kingdom of Belgium: 2
• United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland: 3
• United States of America: 5
• Republique francaise: 1
• Canada: 1
• Eire: 1
• Lietuvos Respublika: 1

So there’s something.

Rinkuškiai Werewolf

I picked this one up purely for the novelty value.  I’d never heard of any sort of Lithuanian beer, and this one’s got a half–angry blonde chick/half-dog abomination on the label, so hey, why not.  The half-liter bottle proudly proclaims its alcohol content (8.2% ABV), has a little blurb on the back about the history of the brewery—a blurb that’s missing just enough articles to make it sound a little bit off—and on the front, beneath the werewolf, is a warning of sorts, “You must be sure you wanna taste it.”

Well, I guess they got me on that one.  This beer is kind of not so good.  It looks ok at first, a deep orange with a short, off-white head, but the smell is not nice.  It’s a little malty, a little boozy, and a little something else that’s hard to pin down, like roses and benzene.  The taste is simple and cheap.  It starts with with a sickly, caramel sweetness that fades into a musty bitterness, and that’s about it.  I ended up pouring most of it out.

I should have known better.  The werewolf would seem to imply that this is a beer that’ll you transform into something angry and hairy, or that’ll it’ll mess you up like a werewolf might, but what threw me off was another bottle from the same brewery next to this one at the store: Lobster Lover’s, which advertised an ABV of 9 and some.  Eating lobster doesn’t sound very threatening, so I thought maybe this is just some inscrutible Lithuanian heritage thing.  No, I think it’s just supposed to mess you up.  I recommend you shy away from European compactness and grab a forty instead.