Imperial Stout

My First-ever Beer-industry Publication

Entrepreneurship, Food and Drink, Media, Wisconsin, Writing

screenshot - chocolate chili stouts

Big announcement. Da, da, DAAAAHHH!

I’ve recently published my first-ever piece of actual beer-industry writing. Please go have look!

Totally excited about Mobcraft, a real up-and-coming, two-year Madison brewery, ready to break ground on their $2 million facility.

I’ll be freelance blogging for them. This first post of mine is an article on chocolate chili pepper stouts, in advance of their newly-bottled beer No Stout About It.

My next piece for them will come out in the coming days. Stay tuned . . .

Beer Roundup #10: Three Coffee Stouts

Food and Drink

Lagunitas Cappucino Stout coffee beer

To Buy or Not to Buy?

1 = horrible
2 = bad
3 = average
3.5 = good (many better beers out there; won’t buy this again)
4 = very good
4.5 = great
5 = rare best

 

A Note on the Style:  Coffee Stout

Coffee Stout is actually not a style you find described in the BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program).  A coffee stout is essentially an American stout in which the brewer has added coffee beans or grounds to the boiling wort.  The result is generally a beer of middling alcohol content (say, 5% – 7% ABV), low to middling hop bitterness (30 – 60 IBU), and a pronounced roasted coffee flavor.

Cappuccino Stout, Lagunitas Brewing Co.
Rating:  4.2 / 5
22 oz. bottle, 9.2% ABV, 82 IBU.

This is a double stout, by the way.  The other two beers in this roundup are regular stouts.

A nice looking pour from a bomber into a tulip glass. Somewhat thin-looking, black, to be sure, with a smallish head, and very sticky lacing.

Perhaps this bottle hasn’t benefited from sitting in my cellar for five months. The coffee aroma seems muted.  A lactose smoothness in the nose makes the coffee-and-cream character astonishingly accurate.  (Pretty sure this was not brewed with any lactose, though, so technically it’s not a “sweet stout” or “milk stout.”)  There’s some vanilla, biscuit, unsweetened cocoa, and a grassy bitterness that must be hops.

Coffee flavor in the mouth is highly bitter, a mouth-puckering acid disrupted some by a milky sweetness that renders the burnt flavor a semisweet chocolate. The vanilla comes forward, with lots of dark chocolate and a subtle buttery caramel. Finish dries out a bit . . . No. Scratch that. The finish is pretty dang sweet. Yes, it’s black coffee and sugar.

If not for being a bit watery in body, the lactose-seeming creaminess makes the “capuccino” element awesomely spot-on.

I used to be in love with this beer. I’m wondering, it should be noted, if five months sitting has hurt this beer. I’ll have to wait ’til next year to see if a fresh specimen recaptures that old magic.

Jingle Java, Bent River Brewing Co.
Rating:  4.55 / 5
12-oz. bottle, 6.5% ABV, 29 IBU.

How lucky to have found this winter holiday beer still lingering in the singles cooler of my neighborhood bottle shop.  It’s fabulous.

This is the most stunning coffee flavor I’ve ever had in a beer. It really is an iced-Americano, with carbonation. The aroma is pure cold coffee with milk.

Flavor in the mouth is uncannily straight-up fresh-brewed iced coffee. There’s a tart, tinny hop bitterness that tries to remind one this is beer. But the aggressive French-roast flavor resists such a notion. There’s a nice sweet vanilla in the background that helps a milk chocolate undercurrent emerge from the dark depths.

Best coffee stout I’ve ever had. Blows doors on New Glarus Coffee Stout. While there are better coffee-infused stouts of imperial strength (Central Waters Brewhouse, 8.2%; Southern Tier Mokah, 10%), Jingle Java beats anything in the 6% – 7% alcohol range.

I wonder how much the low bitterness (29 IBU) plays a part in this brew’s success?

Java Lava, Pearl Street Brewing Company
Rating:  3.9 / 5
12 oz. bottle, 6.0% ABV, ? IBU

Wow, a third really good coffee stout in one night. USA! USA!

Earlier I had Jingle Java, by Bent River, out of Rock Island, Illinois. I’ve heard Bent River has an amazing imperial stout festival. The Jingle Java was actually a cut above this one, but this is still rather decent.

It’s not over the top amazing, like the Jingle Java. But this beer has an excellent demitasse essence.   Great creamy mouthfeel, despite the high carbonation.

Hmm.  As the level in my glass recedes, I see it’s actually nowhere near as good as the Jingle Java.  But it’s a solid brew.

Beer Roundup #7: Three Midwest English Barleywines

Food and Drink, Health

Whole Hog BW

To Buy or Not to Buy?
1 = horrible
2 = bad
3 = average
3.5 = good (many better beers out there; won’t buy this again)
4 = very good
4.5 = great
5 = rare best 

A Note on the Style:  English Barleywine

I prefer the malty “English” style barleywine over the hoppy “American” style.  All barleywines have a stiff malt backbone and generous sweetness, but the hop-forward American-style is often so bitter as to be indistinguishable from a high-alcohol double IPA.  Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are double IPA’s; I love me a double IPA when it’s got intense sweetness to offset the high IBU, like Bell’s Hopslam, Dogfish Head 120 Minute, or Founders Devil Dancer.

Despite my preference for the maltier English barleywine, it’s curious that I’ve found way more good American barley wines than English ones.  

How to explain this?  Is the English style BW less common in the US?  Not really.  Nearly every brewery that produces American barleywines also produces English ones.  The more likely explanation:  brewing a good English barleywine is more of a challenge because it doesn’t have the pronounced hops to balance the jacked-up sweetness.  Hence, many are sickeningly sweet, like Anchor Old Foghorn or Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot.

But all three specimens below are really good.

Stevens Point Barley Wine Style Ale (Whole Hog Series), Stevens Point Brewery

Rating:  4.44 / 5

12 oz. bottle (4-pk)  10.2% abv, 73 IBU.

From a very reasonably priced 4-pack ($7), the first sip has me totally psyched.

It’s not a great looking pour into a tulip glass, with barely a half-finger of white head atop the opaque, red-tinged, brown murk. Sticky lacing, with legs.

Very little in the aroma, probably just too cold. But bready, mildly floral, and of course malty in the nose, plus a grape-like, mildly acid wine character. Even after it warms, the nose remains reserved.

But in the mouth, now this is a provocative surprise. Stevens Point Brewery, for those of you not from Wisconsin, is an old-time adjunct-lager outfit, one of the oldest breweries in the US. My Midwest beer friends rarely say anything nice about SPB, so I wasn’t expecting a lot from this brew. But this is right up my alley. It’s a complex sweetness, like that of my two favorite English BW’s,  JW Lees Harvest Ale and Midnight Sun Arctic Devil. The grainy biscuit flavor is what backstops the sugar-sweetness, not any bitterness. Some will call this cloying. I love it. The sweetness rounds out with an estery, mossy oak. The butter/caramel is of the burnt variety. There’s milk and coconut, too.

The mild to moderate carbonation is a welcome cleanser and leavener of the oily-sticky feel.

I’ve gone back to Riley’s Wines and snatched up the last two 4-packs. One goes in the cellar, the other down my gullet!

Schell’s Barley Wine (Stag Series), August Schell Brewing

Rating:  4.46/5

On tap,  9.5% abv, 80 IBU.

I wasn’t expecting a whole lot, thinking of Schell as merely an adjunct-lager outfit. What an awesome surprise.

On tap at Mason Lounge (Madison).  In a snifter, a handsome pour, a clear coppery amber with a finger of white head and good retention and lacing.

The aroma is a bit reserved.  There’s a diacytel caramel, dried fruit, piney hops, and a bit of sharp ethanol.

Flavor in the mouth offers sweet caramel, stone fruit, a bit of citrus, and a floral hop bitterness on the back end.  Finishes sweet, with a hint of grassy hops.  Alcohol is hardly there.

Upland Winter Warmer, Upland Brewing

Rating:  4.05 / 5

On tap,  8.5% abv, 47 IBU.

Pours a hazy, ruddy copper, topped by a fluffy, two-finger head.

A seriously complex aroma, the sweet swirls with the hops.  The hops come as white grapefruit and a bit of must.  The lovely roasted caramel struggles to dominate and ultimately does.

In the mouth the malt/hop tension from the aroma comes down solidly on the side of the malt.  Simple syrup on the front end, sweet butter and bread in the middle, plus fig and cinnamon-raisin ice cream on the back of the tongue. Goes down with just a rumor of bitter hops.  

Feels like a much bigger beer than it is, chewy, even.

Not nearly as good as the other two in this review, but it gets points for availability, as it’s pretty common to find on tap in Midwest bars in the colder months.

Beer Roundup #6: Three from My Cellar

Food and Drink

bourbon County brand Stout

THREE FROM MY CELLAR

To Buy or Not to Buy?

1 = horrible
2 = bad
3 = average
3.5 = good (many better beers out there; won’t buy this again)
4 = very good
4.5 = great
5 = rare best

A Note on My Cellaring Experience:

Two things had me feeling anxious about all the beer in my cellar.  First, my wife and I moved apartments last summer, and all the beer suffered a potentially bruising trip, jostled in the back of a moving van in hot weather.  Second, the storage unit in the basement of our new apartment building didn’t stay cool summer long.  In fact, for a period of at least a week or two, temps down there rose into the upper 70s if not lower 80s.  Thankfully, I didn’t detect any ill effects in my test samples at the end of the summer, nor in any of these three beers, here.

Brewer’s Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout, Central Waters Brewing Co.

Rating:  4.88/5

12 oz. bottle (4-pk)  9.5% abv, 70 IBU.

This is the “2012” from my cellar, 13 months of aging.

Pours nearly perfectly black, with a rim of tanned leather at the 2mm of fast-dissipating khaki foam, plus bits of lacing and legs of running alcohol on the glass.

In the nose it’s an umami cocoa, first and foremost.  How choco-wonderous.  Then aromas of toast, burnt sugar, and bourbon, with hints of coffee and vanilla.  But one really has to work to get this complexity, as the aromas are whisper quiet.  (In fact, I’ve demoted the aroma score.)  The oak barrel is nice.  People talk about toasted coconut in the aroma, but that’s one note I’ve been unable to fathom.

In the mouth it’s a spumoni ice-cream cross of vanilla and chocolate.  It’s so good, one tends toward big mouthfuls to swish from side to side, front to back.  It’s nearly the vanilla heights of Southern Tier Creme Brulee Stout.  Perhaps it’s the aging, but the bourbon comes muted. (But my wife feels the bourbon is highly present.)  Roasty malt and charred oak walk with maple syrup, burnt caramel, and chewy biscuit.  Then the dried fruits come, some raisin or prune, and a candied cherry.  The merest suggestions of pine-hops and anise twist the thumbscrews of complexity.  It all washes down with coffee and cream on the backend.

Medium- to full-bodied, fabulously smooth, with a modest carbonation and a mild boozy heat.

Decadent, delicious.  It goes down fast.  Something this rich, you would expect it to be a one-and-done type of deal.  But I feel I could have several. Perhaps that’s the beauty of a sub-10% abv.

I’m just as impressed with this as I am BCBS or Mikkeler Black Hole or Midnight Sun Berserker.  It puts into perspective Tier 1 vs. Tier 2 imperial stouts.  Now relegated to Tier 2 are:  Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Founders Breakfast Stout, Southern Tier Mokah/Jahva, Weyerbacher Tiny, and Goose Island Big John.

Brewers Reserve Bourbon Barrel Barleywine Ale, Central Waters Brewing Co.

Rating:  5/5

12 oz. bottle (4-pk)  11.2% abv, — IBU.

This is a “2013”, so eleven months of aging.

A clear reddish-caramel in a tulip glass, with almost no head, even after an moderately aggressive pour (hence the 11.5% alcohol).  Lacing is sparse, but with serious stick-to-it-iveness and dripping legs down the glass.

How I miss this aroma.  Brings me right back to snowy April of last year.  Bourbon in the nose seems nicely muted compared to my memory of it.  I remember the bourbon being more pronounced in the aroma.  The vanilla, too.  Oak and char and melted butter bring further bouts of nostalgia.  Brown sugar and raisin, too.  Yeah, baby.

In the mouth the aging is instantly evident, with the hop bitterness knocked way back (though there’s still a ghostly, earthy pine bitterness on the back-end, for sure).  Pushing against the simple-syrup sweetness, the quiet hops present about an 80 or so IBU.  The flavor is wonderfully round:  soft sugar cookie, ice-cream-caramel swirl, fig and prune, then the bourbon.  I put more in the glass, and pie crust fills my nostrils.  Plus Juicy Fruit Gum and marshmallow.  It’s massively toffee sweet, and yet the mild hops and tannins from the oak–not to mention the brightness of the still-respectable boozey ABV–bring balance.  It drinks like Dogfish Head 120 Minute.

Despite a fairly significant carbonation, the smoothness makes me want to cry.  It gives the feel of a super-syrupy moscato di asti.  Definitely more an English Barleywine profile, at least after the aging.  How astonishing to experience true beer nirvana.  I feel like I did two years ago sipping a JW Lees Harvest Ale for the first time.

CW’s detractors denounce them as a one-trick (bourbon barrel) pony.  Not only is this wrong (duh, Illumination?  Exodus?  La Petite Mort?).  But even if true, this is bourbon-barrel aging at its very best.

Bourbon County Brand Stout, Goose Island Beer Co.

Rating:  5/5

12 oz. bottle (4-pk)  15% abv, — IBU.

This is a 2012 BCBS, so 18 months-old.  It’s much smoother, sweeter, with less astringency than it had last year.  There’s still almost no head to speak of, poured into a snifter.  It looks like soy sauce with some floating bubbles.  I might have said it also smelled of soy sauce, or at least chilled soy sauce.  Then I realized the aroma was tart plum, fruitcake, and moist spice cake.  Wow.  What eye-popping clarity in this complexity.  I’m beside myself (even if my less craft-beer-minded guests are non-plussed) with how amazing an aged BCBS is.  The most astonishing surprise here is a distinct peppermint stick aroma.

Can you say “Port Wine”?  My wife just asked me what I would think if tasting this without knowing anything of its provenance or vintage.  I tried to imagine it, and I think, yep, port wine.  Charred nuts, dried fig, and burnt raisins make for a thematic, seasonal flavor–it’s that fruitcake flavor from the aroma.  The bitterness resembles molasses more than it does hops.  Balance comes from the spicy alcohol.

Creamy and thick on the palate.

I can only say thank God I’ve got four more 4-packs in the cellar.  This is the shiznet, by all standards.

Beer Roundup #1: THREE RUSSIAN IMPERIAL STOUTS

Food and Drink

beer expedition landscape

THREE RUSSIAN IMPERIAL STOUTS

Just a word about the scale of my ratings.  I use the weighted average scoring system developed by Beer Advocate, http://beeradvocate.com/help/index?topic=reviewing_beers . Also, here’s how I translate my numeric ratings into actionable intelligence.

To Buy or Not to Buy?

1 = horrible
2 = bad
3 = average (many better beers out there, won’t buy this again)
4 = very good
4.5 = great
5 = rare best

Bells Expedition Stout

Rating:  4.49/5

look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 5 | overall: 4.75

I seriously have to upgrade my previous 3.75 rating from last summer. Perhaps that bottle at the Come Back In (Madison) last June was oxidized. Even more likely, I simply drank it too cold, without a glass, and distracted by the Come Back’s legendary karaoke scene. Whatever the case, the specimen I’m now this moment holding in my hand is fabulous.

A fairly aggressive pour into a tulip glass gives a small head, w/ almost no lacing, the slippery solvent alcohol refracting on the glass.

The aroma is still remarkably tame, though subtly rich with burnt coffee, uncooked pasta,  maybe caramel, and faint woody alcohol.  And a bit of leather (but in a good way; I normally detest leather in beer).  There’s undoubtedly a quiet majesty, here, just a bit too quiet.

The flavor in the mouth, wow, now that’s a different story.  Incredibly complex. It oscillates between many different dyads of bitter and sweet:  burnt toast and milk chocolate, anise and  toffee, honey-baked ham and oatmeal-raisin. Wait, that last pair are both sweet. Plus an alcohol heat and an odd salt that help give shape to the mouth-expanding sweetness profile.

A fullish-bodied, slick-viscous texture, like warm maple syrup. Yet that syrup is leavened by a moderate carbonation, even as the pour in this tulip glass has risen to room temperature.

Update: several hours later, I’m getting more aroma, now, from the mouth of the empty bottle. Orange peel, black pepper, black cherry juice, unripe tomato, and dopplebock malt.

Founders Imperial Stout

Rating:  5/5

look: 5 | smell: 5 | taste: 5 | feel: 5 | overall: 5

This one has tipped the scales. It’s cracked my Top-5 list of all-time favorites, of all beer styles.

I should make special note, though, this beer has the unfair advantage of aging.  I somehow found this four-pack at a nearby bottle shop this week.  That means it must be 10 months old; the Founder’s release schedule for “Imperial Stout” is January. How this sat on a Madison store shelf in plain view for nearly a year is beyond me.  Elite beers don’t last long in this town.

One of the blackest beers I’ve seen all year (cf. Dark Horse Reserve Special Black). A chocolate meringue-like brown head chokes the neck of my tulip glass and leaves lacing plastered on the glass.

Dark chocolate and burnt coffee rise in the nose, first. Then a cascade of stone fruit, especially overripe cherry and prune.  Boozy vapor cuts what might have been cloyingly sweet.  There’s also a nice dark bread aroma.

I just the other day had their Founders Porter on tap, and I’m now struck by the same particular roasted coffee flavor in the mouth, here. Except this of course comes with an undergirding of overripe cherry and dried fig to replace the bright/tart hop bitterness of the porter. The massive, corn-syrupy fruit-cake and pecan flavors remind me of Southern Tier Mokha, another of my favorite double stouts. The alcohol politely makes itself known on the backend.

I’m cognizant of the mellowing effect the ten months worth of aging has imparted to this beer.  I had this on tap last spring during Mad Craft Beer Week and, sure, I was impressed, but this, this has rocked my world.

Narwhal, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

Rating:  4.26/5

look: 4.5 | smell: 3.75 | taste: 4.25 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.5

From a 12 oz. bottle into a tulip glass.  Black.  Oily.  Chewy brown head whose lacing slides off the glass via some obvious alcohol solvency.

Boozy aroma, w/ coffee, barely detectable chocolate.  Nice, but fairly simplistic.

Booze first on the tongue.  Then tart stone fruit, cherry, prune, or is it black plum? Cocoa’s next, along with bitter molasses reduction. Then more booze, which is an issue.

Thick, oily, despite the significant carbonation.

Very much like Old Rasputin, which isn’t my favorite RIS. I like them sweeter than this and with less alcoholic heat. The simplistic aroma is the weak spot, here. And one wishes there were more chocolate and/or vanilla involved. It’s still quite good.  And at this price point ($8.99/4-pack), I’ll drink this regularly.