Dark Victory

So the Patriots lost. I'm bummed out, naturally, but I'm not nearly as despondent as I had been in 2008. The Super Bowl was, indeed, a fantastic game, and while I wish that the result had come out differently, I can honestly...

oh the hell with it. I HATE THE GIANTS SO FREAKING MUCH. My fiancée's younger sister was rooting for the Giants because, as she puts it, Eli Manning is the patron saint of younger siblings. Whatever, that was some bush league bullshit. I'm not saying the Giants didn't deserve to win. Actually, yes I am; eff the Giants. I guess what I'm getting at more is that the Patriots deserved to lose, given how many dropped passes, blown coverages, and REALLY, A SAFETY?!? they had during the game. I am a believer in the power of prayer, but Gisele shouldn't have been praying for Brady. She should have been praying for the receiving corps, the offensive line, and the defensive backfield.

So... that happened...

Today I'm in NYC today and tomorrow for an overview course on regulating Financial Instruments. And I'm staying at the apartment of an old college friend, who is originally from Kentucky. This last bit is important, because this beer I found is aged in Kentucky Bourbon barrels.

Intrigued?

I got out of class at 5:25 and ended up wandering around midtown until Ray got off work. I asked my work colleague Noe how I might kill a couple of hours until I met up with Ray for dinner. Taking Noe's advice, I took a trip to the Time Warner Center, where I discovered the magic that is the Columbus Circle Whole Foods. Now, I like Whole Foods in New York City, because they do beer right. Or at least, the one at Houston Street does - it's got a whole room devoted to hops and barley excellence. Columbus Circle, maybe not so much...

This beer isn't just intriguing, it's phenomenal.

...that is, until I found several bottles of Victory's Dark Intrigue. They have a really small beer section, but maybe it's precisely because nobody goes to Columbus Circle for beer that they still had a few bottles of Dark Intrigue. Dark Intrigue starts off as Storm King Stout, a Russian Imperial Porter with a great following. The Storm King Stout is aged in the aforementioned Kentucky Bourbon barrels for the summer before being bottled and sold on a single day at which it sold out in 3 hours. Now I'll be honest with you, despite Victory Brewing being a scant 2.25 hours from my apartment, I've never had their Imperial. I've had their Prima Pils, which is lovely, and also a few others that demand their own posts. But most of what I've tasted from Victory is light in color and IPA-ish in flavoring (think of them as an East Coast Sierra Nevada). So while I don't have any real frame of reference to how this beer differs from its younger un-oaked counterpart, I can report that this is a phenomenal beer.

Ray is from Kentucky, and we tried this beer in official julep glasses.

Ray and I chilled this down as quickly as we could at his apartment and tasted it. Fantastic. Immediately, one notices a beautifully dark pour and a very floral nose. Depending on how warm the beer was, I noticed aromas of cream, milk chocolate and vanilla. Usually when something is aged in oak barrels, you can smell varying degrees of vanilla. With the Dark Intrigue, one actually smells the oak of the barrels: it reminds one of a damp and cold New England winter, like the kind we're NOT having right now.

This was my view for a good 40 minutes:

sipping, sniffing, and savoring this very intriguing beer.

The flavor was lovely. I got hints of dark bitter chocolate, coffee and vanilla, but it was cut by a strong hop presence that is rare in a stout. The carbonation was lively and delicious, and there was nonetheless a strong alcohol component to the beer. At 9.1%, Dark Intrigue hits hard, but it's so complex it would be a sipping beer even without the alcohol content.

Actually has a bottling date: November 10, 2011.

Like I said, this beer sold out at the brewery in 3 hours. A friend of mine from DC drove through the night and was 78th in line to buy a case (amazing). But it did also ship around the country. The limited release on November 23rd also proves possibly to be their last, they say. That's very sad. As such, I will be on the lookout for more of these and buying up as many as I can. I encourage you to do the same.

Draft

I like a good draft beer. It tastes fresh, clean, full of carbonation and life. It's delicious stuff, when it's done well. But unless you live by an amazing beer bar, there's just no way to get an amazing variety of beers the same way one can with a bottled selection.

Last night was my Fantasy Football draft, and already, I have awoken to severe buyer's remorse. It's amazing how a good solid week of planning, of making sure the numbers are solid, the rankings are there, etc. can all go straight down the toilet on the back of some very minor tweaks. Like finding out I draft 9th of 10, or discovering that because the draft order reverses itself, that there are 16 picks between my 2nd and 3rd round pick. So I did the only thing I knew to do. Crack open a beer.

The best part of the draft. Before anything has happened.

I've covered Samuel Smith brewery before on these pages, and I'm a fan. I tried their Imperial Stout, which was a delicious 7.0% abv. Their website says to serve with Espresso, Stilton and walnuts, cheesecake, steak au poivre, caviar, or coffee trifle with roasted almonds. I enjoyed mine with panic and a side of why the hell did I just draft that player?!?

It pours a fantastic opaque black with a wonderfully creamy tan head. The aroma is promising, like I'm maybe going to be OK this year instead of drafting a useless Tony Effing Gonzalez. First sip, I get wonderful molasses and coffee flavors. I settle in and wait for my draft turn. Foster, Peterson, and Vick drafted - nothing I couldn't explain or deal with, though I was disappointed. Ended up with Darren McFadden. OK, ok...

Lacing on the glass is fantastic.

More sips - this beer is really rich in the mouth. It's almost akin to drinking beef broth, it's so satisfying. But it's incredibly smooth and easy to drink, so I'm not noticing the timer ticking down or the 7% abv.

Panic. I don't like to draft a QB this early in the draft, but if Vick is already drafted, and suddenly Rodgers and Peyton are as well, maybe I should jump on the QB bandwagon? This beer is going to my head, and now I only have 2 minutes to decide on my pick...

Did I really drink half a glass in the first three rounds?

Uh oh...

Tom Brady. Wait, what? Two picks later, LeSean McCoy gets drafted. I'd long ago decided to take McFadden over McCoy, but McCoy should have been picked up 2nd. I'm an idiot. Drink more beer. A lot of dark fruits coming into the fore, like plums and raisins. I'm really liking this beer.

I need to top off my glass and empty the bottle.

I wait a while. Drink more beer. Dark bitter coffee and malt sweetness are battling it out, and I'm just loving every sip. My turn again? About now is when I realize most of the good running backs and wide receivers are gone. Panic... Reggie Wayne.

What? A guy who depends on having Peyton Manning throw to him? Peyton, who's been come off the injured list? I'm insane. I pass up known quantities for the likes of Plaxico Burress; I even pick Ahmad Bradshaw. Blurgh.

I don't love my team, but I love this beer.

First order of business: dumping some of these players for good ones. Second order of business: buying more Imperial Stout. This stuff is amazing.

Feel the burn.

Another painful day at the gym yesterday; another day of nursing my poor aching joints. My goal has been to sort of get my body used to being warm, as I am headed to Hong Kong in a couple of days. It's been my experience that as my body gets used to being warm, I tend not to react so poorly to heat when I'm in it. And Hong Kong is hot and humid. Severely.

I wish I were going to Hong Kong under better circumstances, but it's for a family funeral. My grandmother died a couple of weeks ago, and I'm off to the funeral this weekend. But of course, because it's on the other side of the world *and* I cross the International Date Line, I end up leaving on Wednesday morning and touching down at 7:00 pm on Thursday night. I'll line up a few blog posts, I hope, in the next two days. If not, well, it's not like prolonged absence is new around here.

I thought it might be nice, since I'm headed back to the old country, to try a beer that's a conscious echo of a different old country. Back in January, Mayflower Brewing from Plymouth, MA (duh) released a limited edition Imperial Stout. I wish I could link to something more definitive, but it's off of their website already.

Not a bad pour. This is a big bottle of a very big beer.

Mayflower Imperial Stout is strong stuff. It's a really dark pour that my camera doesn't do justice because the iPhone camera sucks at low lighting situations. A weak wisp of bubbles is about all this one could muster.

So the "Coopers Series" is all about reusing old barrels for aging (this is etymologically unsurprising), and the pedigree on this one rivals even my own. The barrels used to hold bourbon. Then they held Sam Adams Utopias. And then, Mayflower's own Barleywine, before they made the Imperial Stout. Pretty fantastic stuff. ...on paper.

Close-up of the bottle.

I wish I'd enjoyed the beer more, I'll be honest. I found the alcohol content distractingly high (10% abv). You can smell a lot of vanilla and caramel aromas left over from the bourbon and barleywine. Each sip is infused with a lot of bourbon flavors that do complement the deeply caramelized sugars of the roasted malt. It wasn't the flavors that were the problem at all. It was the alcohol burn. It felt really hot on the tongue, and the aftertaste of each sip was really warm. What we had here was a total lack of balance - the sip itself was pretty delicious, but the alcohol really got in the way, which doesn't always have to happen. Too bad.

Barrington Brewery, aka Berkshire Mountain Brewery

I'm in Western Massachusetts for the July 4th holiday, and have had the great pleasure of sampling (read: drinking) quite a wide variety of excellent beers. Now, yesterday was a bit rainy and gross outside, though I highly recommend the Berkshire Botanical Garden, even on a rainy day. As my girlfriend put it, "rain is really nice; it's just too bad it's so wet."

This is a small portion of the Berkshire Botanical Gardens. Well worth the admission fee and the time.

Of course, after an afternoon of traipsing around the botanical gardens, and other "aggressively quaint" towns in Western MA, it was a delight to come across the Barrington Brewery & Restaurant, just outside Great Barrington, MA. I've seen their beers in stores here before, but I have to say, I'm really confused by their branding. The label on the ESB I bought clearly says Berkshire Mountain Brewery. And they seem totally OK with this discrepancy - both appear on the aforementioned website. Weird.

Berkshire Mountain Brewers. Or is it?

The label, if I may, also shows a beer and a sun behind it - a clear advertisement of their status as the first brewery on the east coast to go 100% solar to heat the water for their beer. It's an admirable step, and I commend them for it. If only their beers weren't quite so unbalanced.

I purchased an ESB and had it with dinner two nights ago. It had a nice copper color with a fluffy head that stuck around a lot. It didn't, however, have much of an aroma at all. Flavor was nice and refreshing at first, with a great breadiness on the front of each sip. On the back end, though, it was very bitter, and the bitter and sour notes obliterated all else on the palate. After a glass of it, though (a nice 22 oz. bottle has a little under two glasses), the beer got more beery tasting, and I started to pick up a lot more pine hops and some (still quite muted) citrus. As a result, I kind of thought maybe it was just me, or just that particular beer.

So when we drove by the Barrington Brewery & Restaurant, I wanted to go in to try out their beers on tap - maybe the beers just open up better when they haven't been stuffed into a bottle? I ordered the Ice Glen IPA, and found it very refreshing, but similarly one-note to the ESB. It was aggressively bitter and very floral. While I might have detected some malt sweetness that might have come from their roasting of the grain (the beer was a very attractive copper color), the bitterness really got in the way.

Barrington Brewery & Restaurant. Ice Glen IPA, straight from the tap. I wish my phone took better photos.

The head did leave a really nice lacing on the glass that I found very attractive. Unfortunately, the IPA didn't end up opening up like the ESB, which became a little more piney toward the end.

I always like to see a little bit of lacing on the glass. That's purty.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, had a try of the Blackbear [sic.] Stout, which poured jet black and obscured the black lettering on her pint glass. It had some wonderful dark-roast coffee aromas, which was promising. The first thing that hits is that roasted malt and bitter chocolate flavor - it's all of the complexity of deep chocolate and coffee and really burnt caramel, which is pretty amazing given that they were able to tamp down a lot of the traditional malt sweetness that usually makes beers of this color very syrupy and cloying. Unfortunately, what I didn't like about this beer was a very thin mouthfeel - usually something like this just feels a little more substantial in the mouth, maybe a little creamier, and I wasn't getting it.

Is it Barrington Bresery or Berkshire Mountain Brewery?

Is it Black Bear Stout or Blackbear Stout?

Of the three, I would drink the stout again, and I'm still eager to go back and try their other beers. I will say this: they both went really well with the mozzarella sticks we ordered, and the bar itself is very rustic. The bartendrix was smiley and efficient, and commanded authority in the room. And when a passer-through asked if she had any wheat beers, she smiled and said "no, but I can put a slice of lemon in yours, if that'll make you feel better." Now that's someone I want pouring my beer.

Happy New Beer!

This is a time for celebrations, and some celebrations are tailor-made for a nice drink. Said Napoleon, "Champagne! In victory, one deserves it; in defeat, one needs it." While I'm not as down on champagne as Christopher Hitchens, I don't often reach for champagne when I'm thinking of celebrating. Instead, I'm much more eager for a beer, a cocktail, even a glass of wine. The thin astringency of champagne just isn't my thing, I suppose.

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout

So I'm ringing in 2011 with a few choice beers. Chief among them, the Bourbon County, from Goose Island. Make no doubt, this is a very big beer, with a ton of alcohol flavor. Most of Goose Island's offerings are nicely balanced, but the alcohol brightness (13% ABV) was in the forefront of this one. Backup notes include caramel and creaminess, but the there's a lot of vanilla in each sip (from the oak of the bourbon barrels). Some bitterness at the end (again, alcohol and dark chocolate). Great with dark chocolate. I also tried this with a very salty dark pretzel, and this beer actually intensified the saltiness. After only several sips, this beer warmed from within. Sipping only - this is heavy stuff. Very nice, but pretty tough to drink a lot of.

I'm reminded of a few other days of celebration I've experienced this year. Moving backward through the year, there were a few delightful beers over the Christmas table this year, and while I'm going to review the full Sam Adams Winter Collection later, one stands out particularly celebration-worthy. Old Fezziwig is the beer for which the Winter Sampler is really known – it’s the best of the selection by far, and represents well the jollity and festivity of its Dickensian namesake. Old Fezziwig is redolent of ginger, orange, and caramel malt, maybe some cinnamon and nutmeg as well, which also mirrors the spendthrift attitudes that got Old Mr. Fezziwig into trouble, since those spices would have been rather dear in Dickens’ time. It’s pretty great stuff, since the maltiness provides the backbone that this beer needs. Overall, there’s a good reason folks love this beer – it’s warming and fun without being cloying or muddy.

Brewery Ommegang: Three Philosophers

Further backward still, Thanksgiving was a delicious feast of turkey, stuffing, gravy, and Ommegang's Three Philosophers Quadrupel Ale. This is a wonderful blend of ale and lambic that pours slightly auburn and tastes wonderfully of cherry and raisin. Lots of yeast and some slight alcohol burn. It went beautifully with the roasted turkey and with the cranberry sauce.

And at the start of the fall, on Rosh Hashanah, I tried He'Brew's Jewbelation. Since this is He'Brew's 13th iteration of this annual beer special, the brewery celebrated their own bar mitzvah with this beer. It's pretty heavy on the tongue and in the belly, being very dark and deep. There's a mellow and sweet flavor with lovely roasted malt smoothness, but then halfway through swallowing, the alcohol kicks in and punches hard. Low carbonation in the glass and on the palate, with dull lacing left on the glass, the label says it says it has 13 types of hops and 13 types of malt. In the battle between those hops and malt, the hops definitely lose, sadly overwhelmed by malt sweetness and alcohol bite. It's pretty delicious, but it's candy-sweet and tough to drink a lot of.

So from the Jewish New Year to the Gregorian one, have a great 2011. 2010 was pretty wacky, with Lagunitas releasing its yearly reflection in the form of Wilco Tango Foxtrot. Subtitle: A Malty, Robust, Jobless Recovery Ale. It's punchy, with a lot of alcohol to sweep 2010 out the door. Nevermind that WTF (no kidding) was released in March. It's delicious, with lots of coffee and dark chocolate, with amazingly well-balanced roasted malt notes. So a swift and hearty goodbye to 2010. Raise a glass to 2011. Or several.