Knock-offs

In a previous post, I derided Japan's Coedo Brewery of appearing to knock off the Chimay brand. I'm not linking to their website because it's full of flash and other infuriating website crap. However, here's a screenshot of their lineup:

My apologies on the size of this screenshot.

From left to right, that's Kyara, Ruri, Shiro, Shikkoku, and Beniaka.

It's got the same stubby bottle feel, same general color scheme, same luxurious feel. Same undersized pour too. Anyway, that red one, the Beniaka, was actually pretty good. So I had high hopes for the other two.

I tried the Shikkoku next. It's a schwartzbier, and I've had mixed successes with those. Sometimes they're insanely sweet (Xingu); other times, they're perfect (Full Sail Session Black).

Jet black pour

Apparently, Shikkoku is named after Japanese black lacquerwork, and it's pretty apt as an inspiration. This beer poured a very deep black, with a lot of roasted, almost charcoal qualities in the aroma. It had a very creamy head that lasted to the end of the beer, which wasn't terribly surprising given how small the beer was.

I should mention, without snark, that it was also really easy to drink. A lot of that had to do with the 5.0% ABV and a surprisingly dry finish for a schwartzbier. More of that had to do, unfortunately, with a very thin mouthfeel. I got some weak coffee flavors, maybe some brown sugar as well. But the nice aromas and inky blackness ultimately promised more than the flavor could deliver.

Two nights ago, I tried the final in the three (yes, there are two more out there in the world, but only 3 were available in my Japanese megamart. This was the white-label Shiro.

Shiro bills itself as an an unfiltered wheat beer with a "bright, smooth, slightly cloudy appearance." For an unfiltered beer, there's an awful lot of clarity in the glass. Otherwise, it was decent in its presentation, but once again, a wretchedly small pour.

That's a pint glass. Seriously. Maybe this beer is targeted toward people with Asian glow?

When I'm drinking a wheat beer, I try to find some banana or clove flavors, sometimes even bubblegum. It should be crisp and tart, without going too far into "sour." This guy didn't deliver on any counts. I got a lot of sour apple and a lot of just non-descript "beer" flavors with an alcohol bite that a 5.5% abv beer shouldn't have displayed.

There were two strikes against this beer, I think. The first was that it wasn't terribly fresh, and I think it may have just gotten manhandled in transit. The second was that I don't think I was eating it with a complementary foodstuff: fresh cherries. The cherries have been plentiful and cheap and sweet in NJ, so I've been enjoying them a lot this summer. But when paired with the beer, the cherries took on an astringency that negated any apple sweetness that I had managed to coax out of the beer. As a result, all that was left was a chemical bitterness. Small beer as it was, I didn't finish it - I ate the rest of the cherries instead.

Beeramisu and other delights

I don't cook with beer enough. Generally speaking, I'll happily crack open a beer while I'm cooking, but it's rare that the beer goes into the pan or pot, instead of into the chef. Chili is one dish that I put beer in. A few weeks ago, I made one with one of the Revolutionary Rye Ales I reviewed previously. My girlfriend thinks my chili looks too much like stew. She is wrong.

Mmm... Chili...

So when I discovered a way to use beer in a dessert, I was psyched to try it out. In launching forward to St. Patrick's Day, Serious Eats published a recipe for beeramisu.

Beeramisu, pre-devouring.

Take a regular tiramisu, swap out coffee for stout, swap out madeira for Bailey's, and you've got yourself a deliciously booze-tinged dessert. Instead of Guinness, which I find a little watery (I mean, hello, it floats on the top of a black and tan), I used Black Hawk Stout. On its own, Black Hawk is creamy, rich, and bitter, with very little carbonation. It's ink-black, with deep caramel and burnt sugar flavors, so I thought it might substitute in well for the coffee. Indeed it did.

It wasn't exactly easy to slice, but the flavors were nice.

The recipe I used from Serious Eats could use some tweaking: I'd cut back on the Bailey's being sprinkled over each layer, and go with more of the stout, as the final product needed a little more bitterness than a six-count dunk provided. This dessert got devoured, and rightly so: it's fantastic.

On a completely different, but just as delicious, note, I happened across three bottles of Coedo beer and was struck by how much these really looked like a Japanese knock-off of Chimay.

Japanese attempt at Chimay?

I drank the Beniaka this past week and was rather stunned by how nice it was. It's not the typical Japanese lager that makes one think fondly of Coors. Instead, it was a nice deep red, and had wonderful layers of caramel malt sweetness.

Apparently, brewed with sweet potato.

According to its website, which I will not send readers to because it is loaded with nonsense music and flash crap (google it if you must), "this premium lager features an aromatic sweetness in its amber tones [and is] a rare combination of high quality malts and 'Beniaka,' the roasted Kintoki sweet potatoes of the Kawagoe region." I'm not sure I tasted sweet potato, but I definitely tasted sweetness, and a depth of flavor I wasn't really expecting. I'm looking forward to trying the other two sometime soon.