Big, Extreme, Imperial and even Leviathan-like

Today’s “Beer to Drink While Posting” Is:
Rock Art (Vt.) Brewery’s IPA (II) Double IPA

One of the things you never really notice until you start drinking craft-brewed beer is the alcoholic content of your beer. It’s beer, right? Drink more than one an hour and you start to get drunk. What’s more to know?

Take Budweiser and Michelob, for instance. Smooth, easy-to-drink (unless you don’t like the taste any more) and 5 percent alcohol. Miller Genuine Draft? It’s at 4.66, and the dreaded “Natty Ice” is 5.9 percent. Guinness (the tall can) is 4.2.

OK, so those are some numbers, and to be honest, many craft beers are right down there with them. But there are a number of movements afoot in the craft-brewing industry, and for several years there has been a move to push for “Imperial” beers, which basically means “high alcohol” beers. They are referred to as “Big Beers.

In fact, a number of craft breweries have separate series for their higher-alcohol beers. Smuttynose Brewing Co, in Portsmouth, NH simply calls its series the Big Beer Series,” and it includes a barleywine, a wheat wine and an IPA that range from 9 to 11 percent. (The measure is also called ABV or alcohol by volume.). There are other beers in the series, including an excellent Farmhouse Ale, which are down in the 7 percent range.

By the way, despite the name, barleywines and wheat wines are beers.

Stone Brewing from California is also at the forefront, pushing strong beers past 10 percent. These include Old Guardian Barleywine, Double Bastard Ale, Imperial Russian Stout, and Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (a recent and very happy experience). Some of the Stone beers, including Old Guardian, are released on a yearly basis, which each release being different from the others.

While the Big Beer and Stone beers – along with others -- have been around a good bit, Harpoon Brewery in New England is debuting its “Leviathan” series with a kicked-up version of the Triticus Wheat Wine that was one of the stars of its 100 Barrel series. This beer was designed by Jason and Todd Alstrom, the co-founders of my favorite beer site, www.beeradvocate.com, and the publishers of Beer Advocate magazine. The original Triticus – a personal favorite – was 11.4 ABV, but for the Leviathan series, it’s been pushed to 14 percent. Unfortunately, it is only available on draft and is released in a limited area that includes Boston and Windsor, Vt. The rest of the series will come out in 22-ounce bombers, the standard for many of the big beers.

Southern Tier from Lakewood, N.Y., is one of the great underappreciated breweries. They have done an Imperial series for a long time. Beers in that series., which has a range to 8 to 10 ABV, include my all-time favorite pumpkin beer – Pumking – as well as the obligatory Barleywine, a Wheat Ale, a Red Ale, a cherry saison and a Helles. These are all limited releases.

Southern Tier also has a Blackwater Stout series that is excellent and includes four beers at this point – an Oatmeal Stout, a Coffee Stout, a Chocolate Stout and a really intriguing Crème Brulee Milk Stout (think vanilla) that was part of the genesis for this post. These range from 10 to 12 ABV.

Rock Art Brewing, which has limited distribution in the Northeast, also has an “Extreme” beer series and also features a 10-percent ABV barleywine called “The Vermonster.” Yes, today’s posting beer is from the Extreme series. It’s a good, solid Double IPA at 8 percent. Not painfully hoppy, nor is there a strong taste of alcohol. It’s tasty and does not have the soapy aftertaste you sometimes get with this style.

There are many others to look at, but the last one I will mention is the Pompier, from Pennichuck Brewing Co. in Milford, NH. It is an English Style barleywine aged in oak whisky barrels. It’s an excellent beer and comes in a swing-top one liter bottle and checks in at 12.1 percent. A “pompier,” as the label tells us, is a person who works at the fire brigade.

These beers are very different and are a challenge for even experienced craft beer drinkers. You also have to consider that a bomber of an 11-percent beer has more alcohol than four cans of Budweiser. Be careful with these. I generally drink them at home or have no more than one or two in a bar. Many establishments serve this in half-servings because of the alcohol.

The Omnivore's 100 and good, strong beer

If you use any of the Internet networking sites, you are familiar with “memes,” those insidious “Hey, look at this” lists or quizzes in which your friends tell you their results and encourage you to share yours.

One of the better ones going around right now is The Omnivore's 100, which comes out of a British food blog – a pretty good one, by the way – and is one person’s list of 100 foods and drinks everyone should try in their lifetime.

It is a well thought-out list and includes items such as carp, calamari, raw Scotch Bonnet pepper, curried goat, a Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut, poutine and haggis.

Among the drinks were four that I think establish a good theme – Lapsang Souchong tea, Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more, and beer above 8 percent ABV.

Being a connoisseur of all of those things, I was tickled, especially by the beer.

My immediate thought was, well if my friends wanted to do that, what beer would I serve to them.

First of all, if they were your basic Bud drinkers, I would ease into it, maybe giving them a heavier beer, but one that was still in the 5 to 6 percent range. Maybe an easy Porter or Scotch Ale. I would explain to them that when we tried the stronger beer, they might actually taste the alcohol. I would work from a 22-ounce bomber and would assume I might have to drink a good deal of it myself. (Oh, well). Yes, this could be done at a good brew pub, too. Another thought: Arrogant Bastard is 7.2 ABV, and people get a kick out of the name. It’s a good lead-in.

For barleywines, I would go with Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, Great Divide Old Ruffian, Flying Dog Horn Dog or Stone Old Guardian.

I would be interested in what you think.

The Man of Kent Tavern -- Hoosick Falls, NY

Sometimes a restaurant just happens to be in the right place at the right time. When that restaurant is consistently good and inexpensive, so much the better,

We travel fairly regularly on Route 7 between or home in Salem, NY, and Albany, the gateway to the NYS Turnpike the rest of civilization. This route takes us past The Man of Kent Tavern in Hoosick Falls, and all in all that’s a really good thing.

A month or so ago, we were in the middle of a five-hour drive home, and we wanted to eat before we got home, so I suggested The Man of Kent to my wife, who had not been there, but lived in London for two years and would enjoy the feel of the place.

We’re talking a small place, festooned with sports decorations from European football scarves, rugby and European soccer jerseys, golf tea flags and a corner shrine to horse racing at nearby Saratoga. Yes, there are even a few American football items thrown in. All this and a view of the woods with a stream below, plus an outdoor patio.

Did I mention one of the best tap lines near the Northway, with a huge variety of British beer? Plus an excellent bottle selection? Those are things that really appeal to me, especially the fact that they still have Brown’s Brewing’s Whiskey Stout up, and I do not think I saw it at the restaurant the last time I was there. They do it right, using the right glasses for the specific beers. One nitpick: My wife would have liked to have seen a cider on draft.

Still, for all that terrific atmosphere -- and the beer – for this restaurant to be as good as it is, it needs the outstanding type of food that the kitchen produces. What’s important to remember along with the quality of the food is that the cost is quite low. The Man of Kent has some of the lowest-priced pub burgers I have seen, and they are excellent.

We pulled in, extremely hungry and tired, an hour from home, and it turned out to be one of those perfect stops. I had a reuben sandwich, and my wife had a roast beef sandwich that she said had clearly come from a recently roasted beef. Both came with chips. The waitress was attentive and knowledgeable about both the food and the beer. She was having a good time, as were the other folks there. I had a couple of beers – including the aforementioned Whiskey Porter – and my wife opted for ginger ale. We decided to share a chocolate dessert, and she had tea – real English tea – and I had coffee. The bill before tip? $30. Well worth it.

For those who may have visited before, the tavern was sold in July 2007, by John Stoate, an Englishman who had established the pub in the 1980s. In talking to folks and reading reviews, there does not appear to have been any major changes. The friendly atmosphere and the care of the staff are still outstanding.

Green Flash's Imperial IPA a real bright spot . . .

It’s not often at all that I pour a beer and say, “Wow, that’s a good looking beer.”This one was was the color of amber, clear and clean and sported a quarter-inch head of white-turning-to-ran foam. It was a good omen.

That just heightened my hopes, because this was from a San Diego-based brewery that had been getting a lot of word-of-mouth on the East Coast. We’re talking about Green Flash Brewery and its Imperial India Pale Ale. I had heard good things about the brewery, and I am always looking for a good Imperial IPA. It came in a 22-ounce bomber for $5.99.

I may always be looking for a good example of the high-alcohol style, but I rarely find it. Even more than regular IPAs, the high-end variants tend to taste very soapy at times. Oh, the hops flavor is there, but so is a soapy – or tinny aftertaste.

But not this time!

I took a good healthy sip – the label amusingly refers to it as “highly quaffable." The hops were high in the nose when I sniffed it, but now overpowering. They were quite evident in the taste, too – high across the bridge of the mouth. The alcohol was evident, too, at 9 percent, but the soapy taste never came. Instead, I could almost feel my mouth pucker, as if I had sucked on a lemon. Trust me, this is a good thing. The bottle says it rates 101 on the International Bitterness Unit scale, but my friends who know such things tell me that’s not overly scientific when you get over 70 or so.

What matters is that it tasted terrific all the way through the bottle. It gave me a nice, warm tingle, and since I will be back near that package store this weekend, I know it’s not going to be the last bottle I try.

Her cold, cold heart . . .

More from an earlier beer story.

OK, so yes, I found two beers in the car one night right before a very hard freeze.

Trouble is, there were three in there.

Found the remains of the bottle of the third in the morning, and the beer looked like that foam you spray to fill in holes in the wall. What a terrible end for a bottle of Ex-Wife Bitter Blonde Ale from Freeport Brewing Company. Yep, that's what I said "Ex Wife, etc." (You will note I did not say "bitter end.)

I was a touch depressed because it's another one of those beers that you buy because of the name and then it turns out to be pretty decent. (Even though it's not one of my favorite styles).

Anyway, on to the Cadillac Mtn. Stout from Bar Harbor (Maine) Brewing Company.

I always wonder about beers that feature a medal-winning note on the label. In this case, it's a "Platinum" from the 1995 World Beer Championships, marking it a world champion dry stout.

Now, I first bought it because I had heard good recommendations. I figure beer medals involve being in the right place at the right time, and heck, this one's 12 years old.

It's also one of the best stouts I have had.

What's cool about this one is that it gives you strong notes of chocolate, yet it's not brewed with chocolate. It's also balanced -- but very strong -- in hops and malts. Very big-tasting beer and very smooth.

It's the top-rated stout on Beer Advocate, which I did not realize until I just went to check its alcohol content (6.7, fairly alcoholic).

I use BA as a reference, and I have been on the site for more than five years. There will be a lot more about the site and the guys behind it as we go on.

PS: The 12-year-old single malt also spent the night in the car, but by God's Teeth, it didn't freeze.

More on the Belgian White front . . .

Yes, the sacrifice goes on.

Still on the Belgian White Trail and hitting two more , as I continue to try to figure out just how good I think the Long Trail Belgian White is.

One minor point, the distributor here in the North Country of upstate New York are not getting it yet, so I continue to ask package store owners to see what they can do. The nice thing is that I am on the Vermont border, and so can take a run over there if needed. I heard from sources it’s not in central Massachusetts yet, either. This is their Spring seasonal, so I hope it will be out soon.

First up is Allagash White, one of the more common Belgian Whites on tap, at least in the Northeast. It’s made by a terrific brewery in Portland, Maine, and I have always been a big fan. It’s a little more expensive than most of the others I’m trying, given the fact that it comes in four-packs rather than the six-packs that most others come in. (Note: The Southampton White I reviewed recently came in a 22-ounce bomber.)

This is a fine beer. A little more lemony than most, but it doesn’t have quite the peppery flavor that some other beers in this style have. It’s also a touch lighter than most. It’s definitely one of the better examples, but I still like the Long Trail better.

The second one is, believe it or not, a Coors product. A lot of people do not know that Blue Moon, one of the first mass-market Belgian Whites. Coors did a number of the Moon beers – including an early pumpkin ale. Anheuser Busch is finally getting the idea. (See the new blueberry ale they have out).

Anyway, I always liked the Allagash better than the Bllue Moon, and that’s still the case. The Blue Moon is thinner than the others and has, a bit of an aftertaste. It’s very light compared to the others, and does not carry a lot of fruit taste.

I did get a chance to visit Long Trail again today, because my daughter -- who just turned 21 -- was visiting. The Belgian's still as good as ever, and so is the Imperial Stout, which will nor be up much longer.

Unexpected pleasures

One day in January, I had to take my wife's car to work, and I discovered a small stash behind the seat -- a couple of 22-ounce bombers we had picked up at the RSVP package store in Portland, Maine, during our Christmas travels. Great location, they have. Just up the street from the Great Lost Bear, one of the country’s top beer bars, and quite close to a couple of breweries, including Allagash. I was glad to bring it in, because it was supposed to get really cold that night.

Anyway, unexpected beer is a good thing, and unexpected good beer is even better. I found a Chamberlain Pale Ale from Shipyard Brewing, and Cadillac Mountain Stout from Bar Harbor (Maine) Brewing Company.

The Chamberlain is interesting, because I first got it from friends who know I am a huge fan of Col. Joshua Chamberlain and his 20^th Maine regiment, some of the heroes of the Battle of Gettysburg, Funny thing is, for a beer with a cheesy name, it’s not bad at all. It’s a pale ale, usually too basic a style for me, *and* it’s made by Shipyard, which I don’t generally like because the brewery uses hops only from the United Kingdom. But this is a flavorful, easy-to-drink beer.

The Cadillac Mountain is one of my favorite stouts. (No. 1 is Big Bear Stout from Bear Republic from California. The Cadillac Mountain is one of those dark, chewy stouts that require a real commitment to drink.

You’ll notice, as I recount my travels, that I tend to buy local beers. Sometimes you can get lesser-known out-of-state beers near home. But I always like to pick them up when I travel.

Review: Southampton Double White

One of the most common clichés you’ll hear from beer writers is “Oh, the things I do for my readers . . . “

In this case, it’s going to involve drinking good Belgian Whites.

I decided that since I am enjoying the Long Trail Belgian White so much, that I oughta do fresh tastings on the other top-end Belgian Whites, including Hoegaarden, Allagash White, Sam Adams White and Southampton Double White Ale, which is rated No. 1 among Belgian Whites on www.beeradvocate.com .

I was fortunate enough to stop for beer on the way home from a weekend trip and picked up a bomber of the Southampton Double White Ale, which is described as “ale brewed with spices.”

It’s a really good beer, as would be expected. Thin white head and has the hazy yellow/golden color of the style. The lemon stands out in the nose when you sniff it.

It’s clearly not as sweet as the Long Trail and has more lemon and pepper notes. Some folks get the taste of orange, but I don’t. This beer sits for a long time on the roof of your mouth. Very drinkable.

Yes, it’s something I will drink again. It’s an excellent beer, but at this point, it’s my second-favorite Belgian White of the year.

Two from Southern Tier . . .

One of the cool things about drinking a variety of beer is finding breweries to add to your list of "I will try anything they make.

Southern Tier Brewing Co., in Lakewood, NY, has rapidly reached that level. It's not just the brewery's usual offerings that do it, but their Black Water big-taste series in 22-ounce bombers produced one of my favorite beers of last year.

I tried the following two as part of writing an article on pumpkin beers and another on chocolate beers. I hate to say this, but the pumpkin beer is not available right now, but I would expect it to be back in the Fall.

Perhaps the most fascinating of all the pumpkins I tasted last Fall -- and it was 10 at least -- was Imperial Pumking, “ale brewed with pumpkins,” from Southern Tier. "This is the real thing; as one intrepid taster said. “It tastes like pumpkin, and it tastes like beer.” That’s it in this one, all pumpkin, no spices, and it’s the better for it. A caramel brown, this beer fills your mouth, without much of a metallic taste at all, and for a beer that is 9 percent alcohol, it doesn’t taste nearly as strong as the Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale. It is an excellent beer for a frosty autumn night.

Later, into the Winter, there was Southern Tier Imperial Choklat Stout, described as "a stout brewed with chocolate."

I have to admit, I had very high hopes here, because their Pumpking, also from the Black Water series, was the best of the many pumpkins I had – so good in fact that my wife, who does not like beer, asked me to get more so we could drink and cellar.

Well, it’s not quite as exceptional as the pumpkin, but still the best of the chocolates so far. Very dark, as you would expect, with a thin head. Drinks easily for an “Imperial Stout.” Not as heavy as many others. Chocolate taste is smooth and clear right from the top. Kind of a milk chocolate, although it’s made with bittersweet Belgian Chocolate.

This is high-end stuff, 11 percent alcohol by volume, but it does not taste too much of alcohol. There is a touch of bitterness in the aftertaste, but it goes away as you continue to drink it.

I have had just about everything they produce, and I would drink anything new they come out with.

Why are all the hops gone?

It looks as though the initial reports were right, and the hops shortage is going to be with us for a while, and is going to affect what we’re drinking. The combination of bad growing weather and brewers' shifts toward using more -- and specific -- hops have combined to cause the problem. Brwers who are locked into contracts are OK, but those who don't have contracts will either pay more or be unable to find what they need. This means fewer styles and more expensive pours.

I have run into it myself at the closest brew pub to my outpost here in New York’s North Country – Davidson Brothers in Glens Falls. The Scotch Ale has been out for a while, and the Stout was also out, along with one other beer. There was no “Brewer’s Special” for a bit, until they put up a nine-year-old Strong Ale, which the hardy patrons sucked down in about 10 days. Word is everything will be back up soon except, of course the Strong, which was a one-shot deal.

Many local newspapers here and elsewhere have reported on how the hops shortage is affecting local brewers. The Rutland (Vt.) Herald had an excellent report on the rising prices – and the changing beer choices – of local brewers.

For instance, Otter Creek will release a Kolsch-style beer – fewer hops – this Spring, instead of its usual Extra Special Bitter. Ray McNeill at McNeill’s in Brattleboro, Vt., was quoted as saying his Imperial Stout and Imperial India Pale Ale will not be available in bottles until next year.

As you most likely know, beer is generally made from four ingredients – water, barley, hops and yeast. There’s been a real reduction in the hops crop, and many brewers have either not made specific style or have changed recipes. The trouble for me is that high-end IPAs are one of my favorites as are Scotch Ales, both of which are affected. The light middle-of-the-road beers, such as lagers, pilseners and some ales – not my favorites – are not as affected.