100 Beers, 100 Days: Day #28

Posted by David on May 7th, 2009

Madrugada Obscura

Tonight’s beer comes from a little west of Ann Arbor and claims to be a “Belgian inspired stout.”  I do not know what that means.  Maybe like an imperial stout?  It’s strong enough for it.  Whatever, snifter time; I’ll give it a shot.

It looks like an imperial stout, and it smells like an imperial stout.  It’s black and has a sturdy tan head, and it smells like roasted malts, cherries and a little sour note sort of like a porter.  So far so good.  As for the taste…holy crap this beer is tart.  Maybe by “Belgian” they mean they wanted to make a Flemish sour and changed their minds partway through.  It’s a big blast of green apples on top of roasted malts, shouting down anything else that might be there.  My first inclination was to check the bottle for a best-by date.  This was bottle refermented, and maybe that just went too far?  I couldn’t find any dates on the bottle, but I bought it from a nicely-set, dust-free display, so as far as I can tell this is this year’s beer.  And besides, this isn’t a something’s-gone-bad kind of sour; it tastes like it was intentional.  Maybe the beer needs to be colder?  I let it warm up a little before drinking, so how about I stick this glass in the freezer and do something else for a few minutes…ok, that helped, but not enough.  The tartness is a little more subdued on the front, but comes right back on the way out, and it doesn’t fix the problem that this sour taste does not belong.  It doesn’t match the heavy, bitter taste of the malts and just ends up making a mess of what might have been an ok stout.  Ugh.

So that’s the end of a fourth week already?  How time flies.  It seems like just yesterday I was complaining about skunky saison and the American hop fetish.  So what have I gotten myself into:

Styles

  • Stouts: 3
  • Bières de garde: 2
  • Good lagers (including one crazy lager): 2
  • Bad lagers: 2
  • Saisons: 2
  • Porters: 2
  • Rauchbier: 1
  • Hefeweizens: 2
  • Dark ales: 3
  • Pale ale: 1
  • Pale wheat ale: 1
  • Cream ale: 1
  • India pale ale: 1
  • Barleywine: 1
  • Tripel: 1
  • Bière blanche: 1
  • other Abbey ale: 1
  • Bière de champagne: 1

And a survey of distant lands:

  • US of America: 11
  • Belgium: 4
  • England and Scotland: 3
  • Canada: 2
  • France: 2
  • Ireland: 1
  • Germany: 1
  • Jamaica: 1
  • India: 1
  • Lithuania: 1
  • Denmark: 1