The latest beer session
I got together with carl and Scott last Sunday to drink beer -- our first session of the year. We actually started off at the Big Time brewpub, where Scott finally got to taste the Saison Grisette, which is a very good saison that I've been drinking a lot of lately. Because of that I actually opted for the cask-conditioned Dark Days Black IPA, which had been dry-hopped with, IIRC, Amarillo hops. (Scott, carl, and I agreed in our conversation at the Big Time that beer geeks are people who know the names of hops. I'm getting there!) The Dark Days is extremely hoppy to begin with, so the dry-hopped version was goddamn hoppy. After that carl switched to the Golden's Tate Maple Nut Brown, while Scott and I had snifters of the Old Wooley Barleywine. I was surprised that the barleywine was still on tap, but the bartender told me that business in general has been down this year. I've been doing my best, but apparently it isn't enough.
After that pre-session, we headed to my place and cracked open some bottles. Here's a picture of the lineup. Click once to get a bigger version, and click again for the hellanormous version.
From left to right:
The Cantillon Bruocsella Grand Cru is one I brought back from my visit to Belgium with reverendjim and pingopark, bought at the Cantillon brewery itself. Like all their beers, it's a lambic, or spontaneously fermented beer (meaning fermented with wild yeast). Whereas most lambic is served as a mixture of aged and young lambics, called a geuze, and often flavored with cherries (kriek) or raspberries (framboise), the Bruocsella is pure three-year-old lambic. It's very flat and wine-like in texture and has a funky-sour aftertaste. Very complex sherry-like flavors. (carl tasted asphalt at some point, and I cried, "Esters!") A superb beer, best of the night by my tastes.
New Glarus is a Wisconsin brewery that doesn't ship bottles very far outside the state. Scott brings bottles back when he visits the Midwest. The Bock 40 (ar ar ar, farming joke) is a very good specimen of the bock style, which is one of my favorites and not a real common one around these parts. (Bottleworks usually has a lot of German bock on hand, however, for it is a German style.)
The V Cense (the V is pronounced "cinq", as in the French word for "five") is another bottle I brought back from Belgium. It's from the Jandrain-Jandrenouille brewery (although I misremembered it until just now as from the De La Senne brewery, which is one of the newer breweries in Brussels). It's an amber saison, slightly funky-sour in a similar way to the Bruocsella, but not as complex. Another very nice beer, however, and I also liked the other thing I tried by Jandrain-Jandrenouille in Belgium, another saison called IV Saison.
The bottle of Bashah 2009 Highland Park and Raspberry Reserve was a gift from reverendjim. It's a collaboration between BrewDog in Scotland and Stone Brewing of California. According to Jim, it's a Black IPA flavored with raspberries. A very potent flavor, and a beautiful hand-drawn label. Also according to Jim, Bashah stands for "black as sin, hoppy as hell".
Since it was a small bottle, we each drank four ounces of that side-by-side with four ounces of the Widmer KGB, which is a Russian Imperial Stout. A very dark, bitter beer that went very well with the sharp raspberry sweetness of the Bashah.
New Belgium's Eric's Ale is a sour ale aged in oak barrels and flavored (subtly) with peaches. As opposed to the funky-sourness of the Bruocsella and V Cense, this is a very tart sour. It's one of our favorites that we've had many times before, and it was a welcome refresher after those very dark, thick beers.
But it was right back to the deep end, as we finished off the night with the New Glarus Coffee Stout. "Claire would love this one," I said to Scott. (Not a hard guess, since she loves both stouts and coffee.) "Please take her the other bottle, and give her my fond regards," said he. So I'll be hauling one of those to Corflu.
After that pre-session, we headed to my place and cracked open some bottles. Here's a picture of the lineup. Click once to get a bigger version, and click again for the hellanormous version.
From left to right:
The Cantillon Bruocsella Grand Cru is one I brought back from my visit to Belgium with reverendjim and pingopark, bought at the Cantillon brewery itself. Like all their beers, it's a lambic, or spontaneously fermented beer (meaning fermented with wild yeast). Whereas most lambic is served as a mixture of aged and young lambics, called a geuze, and often flavored with cherries (kriek) or raspberries (framboise), the Bruocsella is pure three-year-old lambic. It's very flat and wine-like in texture and has a funky-sour aftertaste. Very complex sherry-like flavors. (carl tasted asphalt at some point, and I cried, "Esters!") A superb beer, best of the night by my tastes.
New Glarus is a Wisconsin brewery that doesn't ship bottles very far outside the state. Scott brings bottles back when he visits the Midwest. The Bock 40 (ar ar ar, farming joke) is a very good specimen of the bock style, which is one of my favorites and not a real common one around these parts. (Bottleworks usually has a lot of German bock on hand, however, for it is a German style.)
The V Cense (the V is pronounced "cinq", as in the French word for "five") is another bottle I brought back from Belgium. It's from the Jandrain-Jandrenouille brewery (although I misremembered it until just now as from the De La Senne brewery, which is one of the newer breweries in Brussels). It's an amber saison, slightly funky-sour in a similar way to the Bruocsella, but not as complex. Another very nice beer, however, and I also liked the other thing I tried by Jandrain-Jandrenouille in Belgium, another saison called IV Saison.
The bottle of Bashah 2009 Highland Park and Raspberry Reserve was a gift from reverendjim. It's a collaboration between BrewDog in Scotland and Stone Brewing of California. According to Jim, it's a Black IPA flavored with raspberries. A very potent flavor, and a beautiful hand-drawn label. Also according to Jim, Bashah stands for "black as sin, hoppy as hell".
Since it was a small bottle, we each drank four ounces of that side-by-side with four ounces of the Widmer KGB, which is a Russian Imperial Stout. A very dark, bitter beer that went very well with the sharp raspberry sweetness of the Bashah.
New Belgium's Eric's Ale is a sour ale aged in oak barrels and flavored (subtly) with peaches. As opposed to the funky-sourness of the Bruocsella and V Cense, this is a very tart sour. It's one of our favorites that we've had many times before, and it was a welcome refresher after those very dark, thick beers.
But it was right back to the deep end, as we finished off the night with the New Glarus Coffee Stout. "Claire would love this one," I said to Scott. (Not a hard guess, since she loves both stouts and coffee.) "Please take her the other bottle, and give her my fond regards," said he. So I'll be hauling one of those to Corflu.