Tag: Imperial Stout
Great Divide Brewing Co. Espresso Oak-Aged Yeti
In much the same way that I’ve been on a tear with African coffees of late, when shopping for beer I’ve been seeking out oak-aged imperial stouts. This had been simmering ever since the Extreme Beer Fest in February, and during the past month or so has blossomed into a real quest. I’ve been picking up most any barrel-aged imperial stout that I’ve come across.
It was inevitable that Great Divide’s Oak-Aged Yeti would eventually become part of this run of tastings. Strictly speaking, it’s not a barrel aged beer (bourbon or otherwise), but is instead aged on French oak chips. French oak chips will impart some of the same flavor elements as a bourbon barrel, most notably some oaky vanilla and tannins, without the additional flavors of whiskey, caramel, and spiciness from the bourbon. So I was in store for a very different beast than the other wood-aged beers I’ve tried thus far.
I really like Great Divide’s approach to this beer. The Yeti Imperial Stout is a great base beer that they then age on French oak chips and release as Oak-Aged Yeti. A third variant is this beer, the Espresso Oak-Aged Yeti, to which they add fresh brewed espresso. They’ve also aged a small amount of Yeti in Stranahan’s whiskey barrels for 20 months and released this as Barrel-Aged Yeti. And lastly, they just announced the release of Chocolate Oak-Aged Yeti, a version of the Oak-Aged Yeti that uses cocoa nibs and cayenne in the brew.
It would be a fantastic tasting to work your way through samples of all five versions of Yeti, if only you could get your hands on the ultra-rare Barrel-Aged Yeti (less than 500 bottles were released). Unfortunately, with Great Divide located in Denver, CO, chances of that are pretty slim here.
The Espresso Oak-Aged Yeti is a seasonal offering from Great Divide, and it hit store shelves a couple of months ago. It rolls in at 9.5% and comes only in 22-ounce bottles.
The beer pours viscous and black with ruby hints at the edges. After a mildly vigorous pour a thick chocolate-colored head forms that slowly drops, leaving generous lacing on the glass. The nose has notes of carob, oak, coffee, roasted grains and wood resin. These flavors are pretty well integrated, with no single flavor being dominant. The palate has a moderate amount of prickly carbonation to offset the warm, velvety mouthfeel. Flavors of oak are notable, with some drying tannins added in to boot. Alongside this are notes of roasted grains, subdued coffee, bittersweet chocolate, and a hint of vanilla. As with the nose, no single flavor particularly stands out. The finish opens up with milk chocolate that gives way to a bitter espresso bite.
I was surprised by how dry and mellow the beer was. Expected flavors of coffee, chocolate, espresso, and a hint of vanilla all appeared, but were really balanced against one another and the oak finishing to create a beer that has no one dominant personality. If anything, I think this may have been a slight drawback, simply because I found the oak-aging to have dried the beer out quite bit, with the tannins being surprisingly strong. Yes, the flavors were in balance, but I wonder if this actually kept the beer in check, preventing it from expressing a pronounced personality. I’d like to give this one another chance though, since it showed a lot of promise.
On the whole, I thought the beer was ok. I’d still like to do the full tasting of Yeti expressions, and if I ever get my hands on a bottle of the bourbon barrel-aged version I think I’ll just have to organize that. It may mean sitting on the beer for a while until each of the seasonal releases have come out, but I would be willing to bet that it’d be worth it.
And I’m definitely hoping that during our road trip this Summer we can swing through Denver and drop in at Great Divide. If nothing else, I think the Yeti t-shirts are great. “I believe”.
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Port Brewing Co. Old Viscosity
Lost Abbey/Port Brewing Company brew a style of beer that I really want to enjoy more than I have. I’ve tasted a number of offerings from them, and while I appreciate what they are doing, the style of beers that they produce just doesn’t do anything for me. All of the beers that I’ve tried have been loaded with layers of flavor, but at the same time have also been big and rich, with heavy, thick palates. So while I appreciate their depth of flavor, it is offset by their heaviness. I think this is just their house style, much as it is with Dogfish Head, another brewery that produces great tasting, but very heavily-bodied beers.
I don’t mean to take away from the brewery’s beers, as I’ll readily admit that this is just a stylistic approach that I don’t fully appreciate. My preference is generally for beers that are lighter on the palate while still delivering lots of flavor. Therefore, I was surprised when I had Port Brewing’s Older Viscosity at this year’s Extreme Beer Fest and found that it was one of the best beers I tasted at the event. Here was a beer where the big, substantial body worked in its favor, supporting a rich collection of flavors and well-integrated notes from aging in bourbon barrels. The beer was pretty incredible.
Ever since then, I’ve had it in the back of my mind to give Older Viscosity’s younger sibling a try at some point, and so when I ran across it in a shop recently I picked up a bottle. It was only then that I learned just what an interesting beer Old Viscosity is.
This is a blended beer consisting of 80% of the base imperial stout, and 20% of the same beer aged in bourbon barrels. It is produced using two-row, crystal, carafa, and wheat malts, and magnum hops for bittering. The original gravity is 1.092 and the final gravity 1.014, resulting in a beer that is 10.5% and has a nice, viscous texture.
Old Viscosity pours pitch black, with a thick brown head that quickly dissipates leaving a thin layer on top of the beer and a bit of lacing. It pours thick into the glass, but relative to some of the imperial stouts that I’ve had recently (such as the Goose Island Bourbon County Stout) the body appears to be medium-weight for an imperial stout. The nose has flavors of pipe tobacco and espresso, with a bitter bourbon note and a thread of bittersweet chocolate. Picture a cup of espresso in front of you, add a piece of dark, bittersweet chocolate to it and let that melt, and then add a dollop of bourbon, and you’ll get a good picture of the nose on this beer. Bitter,warming, and enticing all at once. The flavors open up with bitter roasted coffee and spicy, black peppercorns. Creamy bourbon and vanilla flavors have a big presence up front but they quickly give way to a second wave of coffee, peppercorns and bitter malt flavors. The body is medium textured, slightly thick with a prickly carbonation. As the beer warms it becomes much more rich and mellow, but the bitterness never fully subsides. I definitely found the ideal temperature for this beer to be between 55-60. The flavors were really most in harmony there. The finish is intriguing with malted milk balls at first, quickly giving way to a lingering flavor of bitter roasted coffee and grain.
I liked this beer, but definitely wanted to like it a lot more than I did. As good as some of the flavors were, I found the persistent bitter notes to distract from the beer’s overall harmony. I wonder to what extent the 20% of the beer that was aged in bourbon barrels had to do with this. I’ve certainly found that aging in bourbon barrels can lend some beers a bitter element that they don’t normally have, which I imagine comes from a combination of the tannins from the barrel and the slightly astringent bourbon flavors. But at the same time, the bourbon barrels definitely added an interesting level of complexity to this beer.
In the end, my impression was that the beer never really hit its stride and never fully came together in the glass. Unlike Older Viscosity, it’s 100% bourbon barrel-aged brother, the sense that I came away with was that this beer was caught in the middle somewhere, one foot in one flavor spectrum, the other in a different one.
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Founders Brewing Co. Imperial Stout
These days there are moments when I think I’m becoming a beer cliche. Lately, my favorite styles tend towards imperial stouts, IPAs, and the occasional “wild” beer (lambics, etc.). And lately I’ve begun to really enjoy barrel-aged imperial stouts.
Those styles, especially the imperial stouts and IPAs, are easily the hottest beer styles of the moment. You can’t throw a stone without hitting a brewery that is making one (or more) of their beers in an “imperial” version, and all of the hot beers that are making people run to the store on release day are one or the other.
And so I find myself asking whether I’m a cliche, or whether these are just great beers and I’m simply enjoying them for what they are. I’ve gone back and forth over this question, and come to this conclusion: I don’t think I, or anyone else enjoying these beers for that matter, am a cliche. Instead, there are just some amazing beers being made in these few styles today, and they’re getting a lot of attention because more and more brewers are trying their hand at them. There’s definitely a symbiosis of sorts between the beer-buying public and brewers, but the bottom line is that as more brewers try their hand at these styles, more and more fantastic versions of them are hitting the shelves (or taps, as the case may be), and more people are recognizing this, which in turn generates more attention for the beers upon release, and so on the circle goes.
And let’s face it, as I look back over the different posts that I’ve written about IPAs, imperial stouts, and barrel-aged beers, I haven’t been uniformly positive. While there have been some that I’ve loved, there have been just as many that I’ve been disappointed by. Some of the beers that I’ve been underwhelmed by have gotten rave reviews elsewhere, whereas others that I’ve enjoyed haven’t been as warmly received there. I don’t know what that means exactly, but I think it most likely points to the reality that taste is subjective.
Although, while taste is subjective, at a certain point you just can’t ignore it when a brewery consistently hits the nail on the head, and creates great beer after great beer. This Imperial Stout that I’m drinking right now is yet another example of a remarkably stellar beer that Founders Brewing Company has brewed to perfection. I’ve had the good fortune to try a number of their beers now, most everything available out this way, and can honestly say that I haven’t failed to be impressed yet. And so here is one brewery, and one beer, where there’s no question but wholeheartedly agreeing with the rest of the beer drinkers out there in acclaiming that this is one fantastic brew, and one great brewery.
I actually first tried their imperial stout several months ago. I’d picked up a single bottle while buying something else from them. I hadn’t heard of it and wanted to give it a whirl.
Instead, it gave me a whirl. Or floored me, is more like it. I was totally stunned by the layer-upon-layer of flavors, the massive presence, complexity, and depth that it displayed, and the way that the flavors just lingered for what seemed like hours after taking a sip. And here I was, with just the one bottle!
And so when I saw a 4-pack available a little while later I jumped on it (not literally!). Turns out that I didn’t know how lucky I was. One local shop owner that I spoke to received all of 1 case for his whole shop, and it sold in a couple of days. And that was a month or two before I stumbled over this 4-pack.
So here I am, at the tail end of a blisteringly hot day in April, just as it turns from hot to breezy and cool, sipping on this amazing beer while sitting on my back porch and recovering from a long day.
Founders releases this beer quarterly, and allocation is very tight, so it can be hard to find. Their website indicates that it’s made using 10 different varieties of malted barley, and weighs in at 10.5% with 90 IBUs. I poured this straight from the fridge, and found that it really opened up when it hit cellar temperature, at about 50/55 degrees.
The stout pours thick and viscous, like motor oil. A dark cream-colored head builds and slowly dissipates to leave a persistent, thin layer and good lacing. The beer is pitch black without the slightest highlight. The nose has plums, darkly roasted coffee beans, bittersweet chocolate, espresso, roasted grains, with some hops floating around the edges. The palate is thick, creamy, like a rich turkish coffee, accompanied by flavors of molasses, anise, deep chocolate flavors, bitter roasted grains, and a mouth-coating malty sweetness. The texture is incredibly rich and velvety, with a layer of warming alcohol. The incredibly long finish starts off with bitter roasted grains and espresso, giving way to unsweetened bakers chocolate and and chocolate-covered raisins.
This is easily one of the best beers I have had in a long time. To be honest, this is one of those beers that tasting notes can’t really begin to describe. You can only fully understand how good it is by drinking it yourself. All that the tasting notes and description can do is convince you that you need to find it.
I continue to be astounded by the consistently great quality of Founders Brewing Company’s beers. Most often we experience breweries that turn out a number of beers, of which a subset is reliably great. But in the case of Founders, I have yet to find a beer that underwhelms me.
The rumor is that we may be making a cross-country trip this summer, and if so, I can guarantee that a stop at their brewery in Grand Rapids, MI is in order. In fact, I was so jealous the other day! One of my favorite bands, El Ten Eleven, was playing at the Founders brewery! Can you imagine, listening to some of your favorite music being played live while having the chance to try several different incredible Founders beers?! Sounds too good to be true. Anyhow, I can’t think of a better reason to find a route that goes through Grand Rapids.
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Stone Brewing Co. Imperial Russian Stout
Stone Brewing makes the first beer that I ever got really excited about, the Stone Ruination IPA. When I first drank Ruination it was early in my beer experiences and it completely amazed me. The flavors that hit your palate and the sheer massive hoppiness of the beer was astounding, and it quickly became my measuring stick for other beers. Each time I tasted a new beer, and not just IPAs but any beer, I consciously or unconsciously measured it against the Ruination.
As a result, I went through the process of trying a number of other beers from Stone, including their Smoked Porter, Arrogant Bastard, IPA, Pale Ale, and Imperial Russian Stout. The problem was that on some level I was comparing them to the Ruination, which ultimately made no real sense given how unique a beer Ruination is relative to their other beers. Add to that the fact that part of the reason that the Ruination awed me so much is because my beer tastes were so undefined and it is such an extreme beer. When it came right down to it, I hadn’t tasted enough beers to fully appreciate the whole line of Stone Brewing’s offerings.
In hind sight, I think of this as the Islay-Scotch phenomena. For many people new to scotch, Islay scotches quickly become their favorites. My theory is that this is due to the extreme nature of Islay scotches, most of which are pungently smoky with oily palates combined with a panoply of other flavors depending on the distillery. The Islay scotches are easily accessible in the sense that you can get so much out of them without knowing anything about scotch or having ever tasted another scotch in your life. Thus, many scotch novices initially gravitate towards them, only later branching out to explore the scotches of other regions and distilleries.
Now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this approach, it is simply one avenue towards a greater appreciation of the full range of scotch whisky. Similarly, ultra hoppy beers are one route towards gaining a greater knowledge of the beer world, one born of the sheer accessibility of this style of beers. If you develop a palate for imperial IPAs, then eventually making the transition to regular IPAs, then to bitters and pale ales, etc., is a logical road to follow. As long as you don’t become mired in the one style that first grabs your attention, then it is fair to look upon imperial IPAs or Islay scotches as valid starting points, perfect for drawing someone in to the world of beer or scotch.
Thus, while I was looking up to Ruination as my ideal beer, and tasting other beers whose style bore little or no resemblance whatsoever to an imperial IPA, it was difficult at best for me to fully appreciate these other beers for what they were. Realistically it is only now, a few years later, that I can say with any degree of confidence that my palate is familiar enough with other beer styles and that my mind is open to what they have to offer to truly give me the chance to appreciate just how good a beer can be, no matter what its style.
So it is with this in the back of my mind that I decided to pick up a bottle of Stone Brewing’s Imperial Russian Stout the other day. I wanted to revisit a beer that I’d tried back in the day, to give myself the chance to taste what is reputedly a great beer now that I’m more knowledgeable about the kind of beer to expect and now that I better know my own likes, dislikes. Basically, now that I have a real frame of reference to rely upon I think it’s time to revisit beers I may have written off in the past.
The beer is opaque, pitch black with ruby highlights at the rim. The nose contains roasted coffee, anise, bittersweet chocolate and a very slight hint of rumminess. The palate is thick-bodied and viscous with just a hint of carbonation in place to liven the flavors up. Flavors of roasted coffee, molasses, and dark-roasted malts dominate the palate. A just noticeable thread of hops can be picked up at the tail end and carrying through to the finish where it is more pronounced. The finish is fairly long and is accentuated by bitter roasted malts along with the mild hop flavor. In general, I don’t think the palate is quite as dynamic as the nose, but in this case that’s not really a bad thing. The nose is a mix of several elements while the palate reduces these to straight-forward and well-balanced flavors of malt, molasses, and a bit of hops.
The Imperial Russian Stout is age-dated, and Stone encourages you to age this beer. I do think it would be quite interesting to see how the flavors developed over the course of a year or two, as the hops that are so pronounced at the back end of the palate and throughout the finish mellowed and gave way to the coffee and malt flavors that are so dominant throughout the rest of the beer. My suspicion is that the beer would be even better than it is right now.
And that’s saying something, because I think this beer is really quite good. Of all the imperial stouts that I’ve had this is easily one of my favorites. The flavors are pretty well balanaced at this point, and I think the balance would improve with a little bit of time. I’m not usually much keen on aging beers, but I’d give it a shot with this one. In fact, along with the Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine, this is one of the two beers that I’d be interested in cellaring for a period of time to see what happened.
So perhaps this is the first step in reevaluating some of the beers that I tried a few years ago as I was just getting to know beer in general. I’m very aware that there are a number of beers that I’m sure I’d enjoy much more now with the benefit of having become more familiar with the many styles (and variants on those styles) out there. Hopefully, they’ll all be as enjoyable as I found this beer from Stone to be.
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Brasserie Ellezelloise Hercule Stout
Belgian Stout is one of those styles that has seen increasing popularity of late as more brewers, particularly American brewers, have turned their attention to brewing this style. Which is interesting, because it is a “style” that has little-to-no lineage in Belgium itself. Until recently only a small handful were brewed, and all by very small artisanal brewers. Up until the past year, I’d only heard of a couple of them actually, this Hercule Stout from Brasserie Ellezellois and Stouterik from Brasserie de la Senne. More recently, Allagash came out with their take on the style, named appropriately “Black”, and Brookyn Brewing recently came out with their “Black Ops”.
What is to be expected with this style is that, much like the also recently arisen style “Belgian IPA”, the latitude for what the final beer can be like is very broad. Stouterik weighs in at only 4.5% whereas the other three that I mentioned all come in at 9% and above. What is more, as is typical with Belgian yeast strains, the actual flavors and aromas that they produce in the final beer can be really variable brewer to brewer. So the style becomes a bit of a grab bag, sufficiently loosely defined that the brewer can take it and turn it into something all their own. Which, I think, is the real spirit of Belgian brewing in the first place.
So what about Brasserie Ellezelloise? They’re one of those Belgian brewers that I can’t help but fall for. They brew about 1000 hectoliters per year (about 26,000 gallons), which is a fair amount but still not too large. And they do that while only brewing three different styles, a golden ale, amber ale, and stout. This beer is named after the Agatha Christie character, Detective Hercule Poirot, who (fictionally of course) hailed from Ellezelloise. The head brewer is named Philippe Gerard, whom Michael Jackson quotes as saying, “brewing is my job, my hobby, my passion…my own brewery, my own beer, that was my dream.” For anyone who has homebrewed and dreamed of either working in or owning their own brewery, this quote will definitely ring home. The brewery is outfitted with second-hand copper equipment that Gerard sourced over the course of the 8 years that he spent getting the brewery built up. The brewery has a small cafe attached to it where they serve the beers along with a cheese that is flavored with it, and from Michael Jackson’s description you really come away with the opinion that this would be a great place to spend an afternoon while traveling around Belgium.
But then, how does the beer itself stack up? It pours a deep black with ruby highlights. The nose has typical Belgian spicy phenolics, along with hints of malt, caramel, and liquorice. The palate is velvety while not being too heavy with flavors of liquorice, sweet raisins, bittersweet chocolate, and a hint of smoke. The finish is mildly sweet with chocolate and liquorice carrying through. On the whole the beer is, start to finish, sweet without being cloying, and slightly smoky without being acrid. Pleasantly mild to drink, you wouldn’t no it was 9.0%.
I don’t think this is an incredible beer and not one that I’d go out of my way to track down. But it’s very enjoyable and well worth trying if you get the chance. I’d very much like to try their amber at some point though, and will be keeping my eyes open for that. At the least, how can you not want to support a brewery (and a brewer) like this?
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