Archive for September, 2011
Alesmith Speedway Stout
Since moving to Portland, I’ve become less caught up in the phenomenon of “exciting” beers. New releases of rare, limited-edition beers or special evenings where one-off, hard-to-find beers are being poured just don’t get me as worked up as they used to. Perhaps it’s the ubiquity of really good, and even great, beers here. This definitely wasn’t the case in Boston, which relied on the release of new, exciting beers from out of state to keep the beer scene humming. Here in Portland, your nearby brewpub is as likely to turn out something really exciting as anyone from out of state.
That being said, there are still certain beers that I get downright excited about, and look forward to the chance to track down and try. On a local level, Cascade Brewing’s Vlad The Impaler is one. Founders KBS is perhaps the perfect example (sadly, there are no Founders beers in Oregon), since I’m still hoarding the few bottles of this that I have left from before our move. And Alesmith’s Speedway Stout is another.
Surprisingly, though Alesmith is distributed in Massachusetts, Speedway Stout is a beer of theirs that I’d never had the chance to try. It would always sell-out before I got my hands on a bottle. So when I heard that it would be available here in Portland about a month ago, I happily went out and snapped up a bottle.
Speedway Stout is an imperial coffee stout that Alesmith releases annually. It’s a very big beer, brewed to an original gravity of 1.111, and loaded with many pounds of coffee beans. While the beer itself has garnered a great reputation, Alesmith has taken this a notch further by releasing a bourbon barrel-aged version of it (seriously, that would be tremendously awesome to try) in very limited quantities, and plan on releasing single-origin coffee versions of the beer later this year. There’s not much info out there about the single-origin versions, except that one of them will use the rare Kopi Luwak beans (more info).
We had a brief spell of warm weather here, followed by a return to more normal, cooler temps. Right in the middle of the two, when the temps were comfortable but you still needed a sweater, I popped open this beer to share with a friend of mine.
Tasting Notes
As I said above, this beer is brewed to an original gravity of 1.111, and finishes at 12.0% ABV. It uses an unspecified amount of coffee, though with that OG you can guess that it is quite a bit. It comes only in 750, capped bottles. They don’t vintage date their bottles, but obviously this is from the 2011 release.
The beer pours jet black, with a thick, dark, chocolaty brown head that leaves loads of lacing. The nose practically leaps out of the glass with notes of bittersweet chocolate, coffee beans, anise, and herbal hops. The palate is very smooth, with a velvety textured mouthfeel conveying deep rich flavors of flourless chocolate cake, roasted malts and coffee beans. The flavor spectrum definitely leans towards the sweeter side, with chocolate flavors accented by coffee notes. On the finish, a notable hop bitterness lingers, alongside notes of dark-roasted coffee beans.
I’d sum up by saying that this is a big, rich beer, full of sweet chocolate and malt flavors, alongside the flavors you’d experience if you were chewing on a mouthful of dark-roasted coffee beans, complemented by a noticeable hop presence. The nose and the palate were pretty remarkable, but I found the finish to lack some of the depth that they had. And this is definitely a big beer, so make sure that you have someone to share it with.
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