Hair Of The Dog Brewing Co. Ruth
I previously wrote about about Hair Of The Dog (HOTD) Brewing Company this past winter when I stumbled over a bottle of Adam Batch #70 that I’d brought back from Portland last spring. Of all of the breweries I’ve learned about and tasted beer from, HOTD is one that I am really inspired. Co-founder Alan Sprints has always aimed to brew beers that he himself found fun and interesting to drink, and hasn’t sought to continuously expand and grow his business.
Thus, the first beer he brewed was Adam, a recreation of a historic German style known as adambier. HOTD’s version weighs in at ~10% and offers a myriad of smoky, deeply sweet flavors. It’s an unusual beer, and remains HOTD’s flagship beer today. At the same time, the brewery’s annual production has remained right around 500 barrels per year, a size that Sprints is very content with, despite it being a fraction of what many (perhaps most) craft/micro-brewers are turning out each year.
For more information about Sprints and HOTD, you can read a good interview with him here.
Amazingly, when I was in New York recently I happened upon a selection of HOTD beers in the couple of shops that I stopped in at. I had seen on their website that they had a New York distributor, but had thought little of it, and had expected to be lucky if I ever made my way out to Portland, OR again because it would be my only chance to try any more of their beers. All in all, I left New York with a couple of bottles of Adam (Batch 72), Fred (Batch 71), and Ruth. The last was a real find, since of the three it was the one that I had not tasted before.
And so the first really warm day of spring seemed like a fitting time to give a bottle of Ruth a whirl.
Ruth is HOTD’s “All American Ale”. It is a pale ale made with all pale malt and crystal hops, and then bottle conditioned. It weighs in at 4.5%, and is clearly HOTD’s “table beer”, relative to the other three beers in its portfolio, Adam, Fred, and Doggie Claws.
Ruth pours a hazy, golden straw color. You can definitely tell that this is a bottle-conditioned beer. It’s very effervescent with a big, pillowy head that takes a long time to settle down. Had to pour carefully to make sure the thick layer of sediment remained on the bottom of the bottle. The nose gives scents of candied lemons, sweet malt, and rising bread dough. With time, hints of black pepper enter into the mix. The palate is more lightly bodied than you would expect from the nose, to a great measure on account of the effervescent carbonation. Initially very dry on the palate, sweet malt arrives in a wave, followed by a late bittering element kicked in by the hops. A lightly malty backbone slowly emerges from beneath the carbonation. When first poured, citrus flavors, especially lemons and limes nearly dominate the palate. As the beer warms the flavors come into greater harmony with one another, and the beer seems to hit its stride at just below room temperature. The finish continues the strong citrus element, with some drying hops thrown in for good measure.
A very interesting take on the pale ale style. Ruth has several layers of flavor, much more than I would expect from a 4.5% beer. The overriding sense of sweetness is rather high, and the sweet, citrusy element really carries the day with this beer. On the whole this is more of a winter-style pale ale, as far as I can read it. Especially since I found it really opened up and the flavors really came together best when the beer warmed up quite a bit. Straight from the fridge, the flavors seemed to clash. I could see happily drinking this on a winter evening, after letting it warm up for about 10 minutes.
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