Archive for December, 2009
Alaskan Brewing Co. Alaskan Smoked Porter 2008
One of the few beers that I was really hot to try during our not-so-long-ago excursion out West, was the Alaskan Brewing Company’s Smoked Porter. I distinctly remember a few years ago when I began homebrewing and bought an issue of Zymurgy, there was an article in the back featuring a tasting of several vintages of the Alaskan Smoked Porter. I was relatively new to beer and brewing, and the concept of vintage beers was totally foreign to me.
Accelerate a few years forward, and while I’ve had the good fortune to sample a number of tasty beers, the Alaskan Smoked Porter has always stuck in the back of my head as one of those I’d like to try someday. Not an easy thing to do, since it isn’t distributed anywhere near our state, and we rarely travel out West. Thus it being one of the handful of beers that I was really looking for during our trip.
Alaskan Brewing Company first brewed their Alaskan Smoked Porter in 1988. Having opened their brewery in 1986, the smoked porter was one of their first attempts to recreate a style that had roots in Alaska’s brewing history. To produce the smoked porter they worked with the owners of the Taku Smokeries smokehouse in Juneau to produce the smoked malt. They used alder wood, a type of wood commonly used in Alaska for curing fish and other items. Alaskan Brewing Co.’s Geoff Larson wrote,
Alaskan Brewing first produced its smoked porter in December 1988. It was released as a single batch, and it was called Chinook Alaskan Smoked Porter (Chinook was subsequently dropped from the name). The inspiration to produce a smoked porter came from historical research conducted by Mary Larson on the breweries that were located in Alaska in the late 1800s and early 1900s…To produce a modern porter similar to that brewed a hundred years earlier in Juneau, Alaskan Brewery used the Taku Smokeries smokehouse. Work began by smoking malt for a porter recipe that then-Alaskan brewer John Maier had developed…They discovered that balancing the intense flavors of alderwood smoke with those of the beer was best achieved by using predominantly a cold-smoking technique…In this process, Alaskan uses wet alderwood with controlled and low temperatures of combustion…the malt is smoked and then dried at elevated temperatures that darken the malt slightly.*
The smoked porter has been vintage dated since 1993 when they began refermenting it in the bottle. This bottle is vintage-dated 2008, and rolls in at 6.5%.
The beer pours dark black with amber highlights. The nose is rich with wood-fire smoke, anise, cocoa and roasted malt. All in all, largely a mix of smoke and malt underscored by a hint of sweetness. The palate has velvety textured carbonation, conveying flavors of chocolate covered espresso beans, molasses, alder smoke – a pungently sweet smoke – , and just a trace of hop bitterness. The smoke becomes a bit more prominent and acrid on the finish, accompanied by flavors of smoke, coffee, and a trace of molasses. Much more bitterness on the finish than the palate, driven by the smoke and hops.
All in all, a great porter and it’s inspired me to brew my own smoked porter. The best thing about the Alaskan Smoked Porter is a) how the intensity and presence of the smoke increased throughout, and b) arriving at 6.5% meant that the beer conveyed loads of flavor without knocking you out.
*Quote from Smoked Beers, Geoff Larson and Ray Daniels, 2000, pp. 82-87.
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Yamazaki 18-Year
There are a couple of different versions of how the Japanese whisky industry began. Regardless of which version you hear or believe, the two principal figures at the start of whisky history in Japan were Shinjiro Torii and Masataka Taketsuru, who came together in 1923 at the founding of the Yamazaki distillery.
Torii had been a whisky importer and had produced his own blend of Scotch whisky in the early part of the century. But his real aim was to build the first Japanese distillery. In 1923 he hired Taketsuru, an equally if not more compelling figure when viewed through the lens of history. Taketsuru had travelled to Scotland in the latter half of the 1910′s and had worked at a couple of different distilleries during this time. His love affair with Scotch whisky firmly in-place, he moved back to Japan with the goal of starting a Japanese distillery.
Taketsuru wanted to produce a whisky similar to the smoky whiskies he had been part of producing in Scotland, a goal that would be postponed until a later date. Instead, when he and Torii came together in 1923, they created a whisky that may have lacked some of the smokiness Taketsuru was fond of, but quickly gained in popularity nonetheless. A few years later, Taketsuru embarked on his own distilling adventure, founding the Nikka Yoichi distillery in Hokkaido in 1934.
Today, Japanese whisky is a rare find in America. The only company exporting any whisky to the US from Japan is Suntory, who produce Yamazaki (among other brand names). A few different bottlings of Yamazaki reach the states, including the 12, 18, and 25 year old bottlings, and a very limited 25-year distilled in 1984. Very recently, Suntory began exporting a new Japanese whisky to the states, the Hibiki 12-year old.
I recently read an interesting article about Japanese whisky in the Malt Advocate, and was intrigued by the author’s description of Japanese whisky as being very well-balanced and delicate in flavor, similar in a way to Japanese food. I was in the midst of preparing for a tasting that was to include the Yamazaki 12-year, and in preparing some notes and tasting through the whiskies, I was surprised to find this description to be somewhat apt.
The Yamazaki 18-year is aged in a combination of three types of casks, American bourbon, Spanish sherry, and Japanese oak. The result is an intriguing interplay of flavors from the different types of woods and liquids they previously held. Without a doubt, there is a strong element of oak in the whisky, but it plays off well against the other flavors, and is supported by a nicely structured body.
The whisky is the color of liquid gold with a burned, amber hue to it. The nose has fresh notes of citrus and vanilla, and sweeter notes of raisins and brown sugar. The palate has piercing notes of cedar, caramel, crème anglaise, and a slight citrus astringency. The body is light but firm, not heavy on the palate but not feeling thin and watery either. There is a warming sweetness on the finish, with initial flavors of caramelized sugars giving way to molasses and then angling back towards yummy crème brulee.
I really enjoyed this whisky, I must say. I was pretty skeptical about it, having never heard much about it, and was (snobbishly) skeptical when I saw that it had a screw top. But the flavors are nicely balanced, and it is a great sipping whisky. Having also tried the 12-year, I think the 18 is really a class above its younger sibling, so if you’re thinking of picking up one of the two, I’d definitely recommend the 18-year.
Hair Of The Dog Brewing Co. Adam Batch #72
About a year ago I ran across a bottle of Hair Of The Dog Brewing Company’s Adam in our beer collection. I had brought it back from Portland several months earlier and plumb forgot that I had it in the meantime. I distinctly remember being awestruck at the remarkable combination of flavors the beer presented: smoke, malt, gaminess, and more malt. At the time it was truly one of the most interesting beers I had ever tasted.
That was a bottle from batch #70. This is one of my favorite things about Hair Of The Dog’s beers, that each bottle indicates what batch it came from (with the exception of Ruth, their pale ale). Their beers are meant to develop over time, and there’s always the possibility of some batch variation. The batch marking is such a great way of giving the beer drinker a bit more information about what they’re drinking, and if they have bottles from other vintages they can compare them against one another. For a while, Hair Of The Dog’s website included a table indicating the brewed on and bottled on dates for both Adam and Fred. Sadly it is not up to date any longer, but you can view it here.
So I was excited to try this new batch of Adam, especially now that I had tasted it once before and was a bit more aware of what to expect from it. Even better, not too long ago I came across a homebrew recipe for Adam. It’s for a 10-gallon batch and was actually given to the author of the Homebrew Chef website by Hair Of The Dog founder/brewer Alan Sprints himself. What’s remarkable about this recipe is that it calls for 62 pounds of malt for 10-gallons of beer! The beer itself comes in at 10%, so those 62 pounds aren’t going to waste.
This bottle of Adam pours a very dark brown with amber highlights and a creamy tan head that forms two fingers thick and drops down to a thin, persistent layer. The nose is rich with molasses, smoke, raisins, and baking rye bread. The palate has a mild astringency made up of hop bitterness and darkly roasted malts. There’s lots of effervescent carbonation supporting a velvety texture. Flavors of molasses, smoky, caramelized barbecue, and dark rye bread, and a much more prominent smokiness than on the nose. The finish trails away with whiffs of smoke, followed by some more smoke, and then some astringent roasted grain flavors, and then again some more smoke.
The beauty in this beer is in how the smoky intensity builds throughout, from nose to finish. I found the smokiness to be much more prominent in this batch than I had in the previous one, which I enjoyed a great deal. In fact, the combination of pungent smoke, molasses, and dark rye was pretty great, and very enjoyable as I worked my way through the glass.
So were the different prominence of flavors that I picked up in Adam this time around a case of batch variation? Or was it just a different day, different time for my palate? Doesn’t really matter I suppose, but given how close the two batches were in time (#70 vs. #72), and the consistency of pro brewers, I have to give more weight to the notion of palate variation than batch variation. But who knows really.
Bottom line: a great, unique beer experience. Go drink one. Slowly. Let it really open up in the glass.
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Domaine La Guintrandy
I’ve recently become very interested in the wines from France’s Rhone region. There are a number of famous appellations from this region – Chateauneuf-du-Pape, Hermitage, Cote-Rotie, and the list goes on – but wines from the most notable of these tend to fall into a price bracket that turns them into special occasion wines. Not the weekday bottles that are nice to have around, and really not even the Friday or Saturday night “yay, we made it through the weekend!” bottles.
So in lieu of those more famous appellations, we’ve been focusing our attention on the real value wines from the Rhone – the Cotes-du-Rhone, Cotes-du-Ventoux, Minervois, Vin de Pays. That’s the nice thing about the Rhone region, there are loads of smaller, lesser-regarded appellations that produce great wine. There are loads of these available today, and while they may be of varying quality, if you can find a shop whose judgement you trust, then you know you can try most any of their Rhones with confidence.
This was the case when we bought this bottle at South End Formaggio. This small, very small, cheese, wine, and other delectable knick-knacky-type-foods shop in Boston’s South End is one of my favorite places to buy wine. They stock bottles ranging from $8 to $100, generally focus on smaller, more traditional or artisanal style producers, and we’ve never had a bottle from there that has disappointed us. And so they’re the perfect wine shop, one where you can buy a couple of wines right between $10-$20 and expect them to be good and interesting.
This particular bottling is a Vin de Pays from Domaine La Guintrandy, a small Rhone producer located in the southern Rhone that has been a family-owned estate since 1850. Today it is run by Marie-Claude and Olivier Cuilleras and produces a range of Cotes-du-Rhone appellation wines, the most prestigious of which bear the “Cotes-du-Rhone Village Visan” appellation.
This bottling is their Vin de Pays de Comté de Grignan, a red wine made from grapes grown on vines residing in the commune of Tulette. It is made up of 50% Syrah and 50% Grenache, and all of the grapes are harvested by hand. After harvest the grapes are left to macerate with the skins for 8 days before being pressed. The wine is then aged in stainless steel tanks until being bottled, without filtration.
The wine pours a very light, translucent, purply red. The nose is fresh and vibrant, with notes of racy black cherries, cocoa powder, and apple skins. The palate is lightly textured with a buoyant mouthfeel. Flavors of Macintosh apples, tart cherries, stone fruit, and an earthy, flinty minerality are well-balanced, and enjoyably refreshing and intriguing. The finish is sweeter than the palate, with sugared black cherries and a hint of raspberries.
This was a $10 bottle, and was well worth it. I really love light, refreshing, complex red wines, and this fit the bill. Not super complex, but interesting and very enjoyable. I only wish they’d had more bottles, I would’ve run right out to pick up a couple more to have on hand.
Great Divide Brewing Co. Hibernation Ale
It’s that time of year when breweries left and right come out with their winter beers. Snow lies somewhere just around the corner up ahead, the leaves have nearly all fallen off of the trees, and if you haven’t already then you’re seriously considering turning the heat on in your house.
Really, the various winter beers hitting the shelves are a motley crew. There are barleywines, doppelbocks, imperial stouts, spiced beers, you name it. Any style is fair game when it comes to winter beers. But recently my attention has been truly caught up by old ales, a much less common winter brew here in the States.
It all began with Founders’ Old Curmudgeon, their old ale -style beer aged in bourbon barrels. I’m a bit of a sucker for bourbon-barreled beers, and quickly fell in love with the insouciant combination of flavors Old Curmudgeon presented: sweet, bready malt, brandy-soaked fruits, and vanilla, caramel, and a hint of whiskey from the barrel-aging.
But old ales aren’t all that easy to find, and I haven’t been very motivated to do much searching lately, and so it wasn’t until we were heading over to some friends house to help them move that I ended up trying another old ale (and another American version of the style). This time it was the 6-pack of Great Divide’s Hibernation Ale, their seasonal old ale released each fall. That night, after several hours of loading furniture, boxes, and bikes into a giant U-Haul, we all opened up a bottle of Hibernation Ale and thoroughly enjoyed the soothing warmth that it brought back to our tired bodies.
About a week later, I had the chance to try a second bottle of Hibernation Ale, at a moment when I could pay a bit more attention to it. It once again totally hit the spot, and this time I was able to pick up more of the flavors in the glass. I came away pretty excited by what a great, remarkably enjoyable beer this was.
Hibernation Ale was first brewed by Great Divide in 1995, and since then has been one of their consistent seasonal beers. Old Ales originated in the UK and were one of the typical winter offerings from breweries (alongside barleywines). They gained the name Old Ale because they were often left to age for several months before being served, in the process acquiring a darker color and sweeter, nuttier flavors from oxidation. Hibernation Ale is brewed each year in July and aged until October before being released in November. It rolls in at 8.1%, on the higher side of ABV for most old ales that I’ve dug up info about.
The beer pours a ruddy, amber brown, with dark red highlights. A thick off-white head forms and slowly dissipates to a thin film, leaving a trace of lacing. The nose is rich with rummy notes and deep, malty tones, with a hint of smoke and a trace of hops floating around in the background. The palate is deliciously smooth, viscous, and mouth-coating. Flavors of brown sugar, burnt caramel, bran, and molasses rise to the top amidst lots of toasted, sweet, chocolatey malt flavors. I picked up some hop prickliness early on, but as the beer warmed this disappeared. The finish offers flavors of rum, brown sugar, and coffee that lead to a trace of lingering hop bitterness.
This is without a doubt one of the nicest, most enjoyably warming beers I’ve had in a while. The flavors all work together perfectly, offering loads of flavor without overwhelming your palate. Most importantly, it really, really just hits the spot on a cool, November/December evening as you appreciate the austere simplicity that is Fall in New England.
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