Beer Review: Thomas Hooker Liberator Doppelbock

Thomas Hooker founded Connecticut after a nasty breakup with Massachusetts. A few centuries later, Connecticut still has an inferiority complex that manifests itself in beer. While Mass is one of the most underrated craft beer producing states (underrated mainly because most of their good stuff doesn’t leave the state), Connecticut has yet to see much of a craft beer boom.

I’m hoping this paucity of craft beer in Connecticut changes. As you know if you know me in real life, I will be moving to Connecticut in the fall to pursue a Ph.D. in political science. Time to get acquainted with Connecticut’s brew options. Thomas Hooker Ales and Lagers are the only CT brewery (as far as I know) that distributes in NYC. I’ve had a few of their beers before — some decent hits (I liked their Hop Meadow IPA) and some appalling misses (I’m probably not the target audience, but they have a Watermelon Ale that tastes like pruno).

However, this otherwise middling brewery makes one beer, out each spring, that not only stands head and shoulders above the rest of their lineup but belongs in the conversation of best German-style beers brewed in the whole country. Meet the Liberator Doppelbock. If you need a refreshed, bock beer is a sweet, dark, malty German lager. Doppelbock is a strong bock — sweeter, maltier, higher in ABV. Rich enough that fasting monks used it for sustenance.

Liberator pours a very dark ruby color with a pretty substantial off-white head. It looks almost like Coca-Cola. The aroma is killer. Like any good doppelbock, it’s sweet and complex. I’m picking up toffee, toasted grain (think cheerios), chocolate, and a little bit of dark fruit and licorice.

The taste, like the smell, is powerful and complex. It’s the same components as the aroma, but it’s sweeter. The toasted grain is a little stronger, which adds a bit of bitterness. There’s no hop bitterness to speak of. A little alcohol burn is present, which I prefer in these sorts of beers but it’s not everybody’s favorite. As the beer warms a bit, the dark fruit flavors come out more. Oh, and this beer is incredibly sticky on the way down. It’s got the stickiness of a beer twice its ABV (8%).

As far as after-dinner sipping beers go, it’s hard to do better. At least I’ll have something to drink at Yale.

Beer Review: Captain Lawrence Rosso E Marrone

It was bound to happen sometime. Some people (the ladyfriend) accuse me of hoarding my rare beers. Hey, I don’t have a problem. I can start drinking anytime I want. And to prove it, I popped open my last bottle of Rosso E Marrone, a sour from Pleasantville’s Captain Lawrence Brewing Company. Rosso is one of Captain Lawrence’s brewery-only releases. To get your hands on this beer, you’ll need to show up at Captain Lawrence on release day, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and wait around for several hours. Of course, you and all the other beer geeks will have brought some special bottles along for the ride, and there ain’t no drinking like 7 AM rare beer drinking. (I wrote about CL brewery-only releases for NewYork.com last year…read it here.)

Rosso, like the other Captain Lawrence brewery-only releases, is a sour ale (specifically classified by Beer Advocate as a Flanders Oud Bruin). Sour ales are enjoying something of a renaissance amongst American craft brewers. Flavors run the gamut in these beers from lemonade to cider vinegar to various other types of sour. Here’s how the Captain describes Rosso:

Captain Lawrence Rosso e Marrone is billed as an American Sour Ale “fermented with grapes and aged in oak barrels.”

This beer sat quietly, aging in our barrel room for over a year before we decided it was time – time to blend in some beautiful ripe red grapes, Brettanomyces, freshly emptied wine barrels and time, this beer is infinitely complex and a challenge to the perception of what beer can be. This beer is re-fermented in the bottle and will age for years to come.

See, I do break out the rare beers on occasion!

“A challenge to the perception of what beer can be.” Bold claim. Does the beer live up to the challenge? I’d say yes and no. For a beer geek like me, Rosso E Marrone is a complex, challenging and rewarding beer. However, I can easily see a craft beer rookie being turned off easily.

Rosso is a fine-looking beer. It pours a ruby-to-brown color with a smallish white head that settles down into a ring. The aroma is a powerful mix of fruit and sour scents. The description talks about grapes, which I can detect in the wine-like scent, but there seems to be more cherry than anything else. There’s also a faint undercurrent of must, kind of like some poorly-visited library stacks. Sounds weird, but it’s actually a fairly common sort of aroma in sour beers, especially those fermented with Brettanomyces (you remember Brett, don’t you?)

The taste follows the aroma, but the sour qualities now take the lead. The fruit flavors seem darker and sweeter than they did in the aroma — plum or fig-type stuff. It almost tastes like there’s a Belgian dubbel hiding underneath all that sour. But oh, the sour packs a powerful punch. Very tart and very dry. There’s a definite woody character too, especially as it dries.

So Rosso is a solid, complex sour — not the greatest I’ve ever tasted, but definitely worth waiting in line for once a year. But I can’t for the life of me decide what a craft beer novice would make of it. There are other sours, particularly Oud Bruins, that rookies tend to like when I make them try one. But Rosso is odd. It’s almost as if it’s a different, sweeter style that somebody has painted over with a very sour brush. I guess I mean it’s not as well-defined as some other sours, if that makes sense. Don’t get me wrong, though — it’s a delightful beer and I very much look forward to this year’s batch.

Beer Review: Nugget Nectar 2011

This is kind of a slow time of year for exciting craft beer releases (at least on the East Coast). The ferocious stouts of the winter are behind us, and it’s not warm enough yet to sit on your fire escape with a cool IPA. But February does see the release of a few gems, and none are more anticipated in the NY Ale Project household than Nugget Nectar by Pennsylvania’s Tröegs Brewery. Tröegs makes a some solid year-round brews, like the Troegenator Doppelbock and the Hopback Amber Ale, but none of them will really blow you away. Nugget Nectar, though, is one of the best hoppy beers around.

The brewery describes Nugget Nectar thus:

Squeeze those hops for all they’re worth and prepare to pucker up: Nugget Nectar Ale, will take hopheads to nirvana with a heady collection of Nugget, Warrior and Tomahawk hops. Starting with the same base ingredients of our flagship HopBack Amber Ale, Nugget Nectar intensifies the malt and hop flavors to create an explosive hop experience.

Beer Advocate has it listed as an Amber Ale, which doesn’t make any got damn sense, since in the hop department it can go toe to toe with the best IPAs in the world.

I’m thrilled that it’s currently common on tap throughout NYC, so I decided to give this year’s version a review to see how it stacks up to previous years. This particular pint was enjoyed at Swift Hibernian Lounge off Bowery.

Truly the nectar of the gods.

As you can plainly see, this is a gorgeous beer. It pours into a pint glass a perfectly clear amber with a big, airy off-white head. The head falls pretty quickly into a minimal cap, and the beer leaves patchwork lacing.

The smell is primarily citrus and herbal hops. The hoppiness is complimented by a sweet, bready malt backbone. Not oo shabby. The taste is better. The citrus hops reveal themselves to be a succulent, juicy smorgasbord. Possibly the best straight-up fruity hop profile I’ve yet sampled. I’m picking up orange, grapefruit and nectarine strongly. The malt balance is a little weak, which surprised me for a strong amber. Still, the tremendous citrus hop profile is a rare treat for a hophead like me. The alcohol is noticeable, but not distracting.

The mouthfeel is definitely the beer’s weak point. It’s a bit light and watery for the style, and carbonation is a point too low. I’d like a beer with this gorgeous a hop profile to be a bit stickier. But it’s not bad enough that it detracts from the taste.

Looking back at previous reviews, there’s very little difference year-to-year. That’s a good thing when you’re dealing with a world-class brew. Go get it before it’s gone. No need to hoard it like seasonal stouts, since hoppy beers don’t age as well, but drink all the Nugget Nectar you can for the next little bit.

Gateway Craft Beer: Brooklyn Lager

As I’ve mentioned on other gateway craft beer posts (e.g. here, here and here), a beer’s ubiquity can go a long way toward converting your friends to drinking the good stuff. You order it for them at a bar, and a few days later, when they’re in the Gin Mill or whatever, there’s a good chance they’ll remember the beer and order one themselves. Hopefully, once they get hooked on a particular good beer, they’ll be ready to explore a bit on their own.

Well, in New York, it doesn’t get much more ubiquitous than Brooklyn Lager. It’s so nice to be NYC and to be able to walk downstairs and out the door to the grocer in the foot of my building and pick up a sixer of Brooklyn Lager anytime. It’s classified as an Amber Lager, which is darker and maltier than most other lager styles. Brooklyn Lager may not be sexy, but it’s a damn good beer that you can find, on tap or in the bottle, almost anywhere in the City. And it also has the advantage, mentioned in my writeups of Sam Adams and Blue Point Toasted Lager, of being a lager, a style that many layfolk have heard of. Giving your friend a craft lager might help ease their fears of drinking “girly” or “fancy” beer.

My love of Brooklyn’s Black Chocolate Stout is well documented, and I also gave a very positive review to the fancier Black Ops. These two are seasonals, as is the excellent Sorachi Ace saison (though that’s becoming a year-round beer in 2011!). But I’ve been underwhelmed by most of Brooklyn’s standard year-round offerings. Their Brown Ale, their English-style IPA, the Pilsner and the Pennant pale ale are all decent and drinkable but nothing special. The exception is their flagship Brooklyn Lager.

Going back to Brooklyn

The beer pours a lovely golden amber with a big, white foamy head. The carbonation looks active, with lots of tiny bubbles racing to the surface the entire time I’m drinking. A good amount of white lacing streaks the side of the glass as I drink. All in all, a very pretty beer.

It smells bitter and fruity. Honestly, I’d probably think it was an IPA if I were sniffing it blind. The smell is certainly better than other amber lagers I’ve had. The taste starts out sweet and fairly fruity, and then a nice earthy bitterness that lingers and lingers. I love the bitterness, it’s something I’m not used to in a lager, but it’s more of a background player than in an IPA. There’s a good amount of grainy malt, too. Bit of caramel as it warms. It’s highly carbonated and fairly thick for a lager, which you’d expect from the amped-up maltiness.

So go down to your bodega, your sports bar, your dive, or what have you, and grab your friends a Brooklyn Lager. Get them to sip slowly and pay attention. Maybe by this time next year, he’ll be demanding Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout on tap at Jake’s Dilemma.

Beer Review: 60 Shilling Mild by New Jersey Beer Company

New Jersey Beer Company is a very small craft brewery in North Bergen, NJ. Their bottling line is FUBAR, so for now their offerings are draft-only. This winter, they’ve been attempting to bring a bit of class to the Dirty Jerz. Their winter seasonal was the Weehawken Wee Heavy, a big and bold Scottish-style ale. After brewing the Wee Heavy, Matt Steinberg and Co. used a technique almost unheard-of in the American craft beer scene to make an honest to goodness session ale.

60 Shilling Mild was made with the second runnings of the Wee Heavy. Simply put, this means that after they sparged the malt for the Wee Heavy, they sparged the same grains a second time to create the Mild. This might sound really ghetto, like your great aunt who uses teabags thrice before she can bear to throw them out. But it was a common technique in England a century or two ago. The second running beer is called “small beer.” Since the first mash (in this case, for the Wee Heavy) claims most of the fermentable sugars, the second running is much lower in alcohol.

Milds and other low-ABV beers are much more common in England than in the States — you may remember my discussion a while back about the great debate about session ales. Well the 60 Shilling Mild is a session ale by the traditional English definition, clocking in at 3.2% ABV. But this is no Bud Light. Despite its low ABV, 60 Shilling Mild brings a decent amount of flavor and aroma. I was actually quite impressed with the nose on this beer. The aroma had a good amount of straw-like graininess and sweeter malt in a nice balance. The taste was similar, if more subdued. There was a bit of frutiness, too, and a light but astringent and pungent bitterness in the back of the throat during the finish. It’s incredibly dry in the mouth.

It’s good to see a real session beer around here, even if it’s a very limited run. It’s not going to knock your socks off with flavor or give you much of a buzz. But sometimes you just want a simpler, tasty beer to sip while the Jets break your heart.

Beer Review: Brooklyn Black Ops 2010

2010 marks the 3rd annual release of Black Ops by Brooklyn Brewery. Unlike the other Black Ops out this season, the beer doesn’t have a commercial inexplicably featuring Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel shooting assault rifles and rocket launchers and such. But Brooklyn’s version has plenty of hype of its own. It was one of 2008’s most sought-after beers as it made the festival rounds, and since then has shown up in 750ml bottles each December. Around 1000 cases are produced each year, so while it’s not impossible to find, bottles are fairly few and far between. You can still grab some on the shelves of Whole Foods and the like, but act fast if you want to give it a try. I paid $20 for my bottle, which was a welcome decrease from the $30 I paid for last year’s edition.

Classified.

Black Ops, as per Brooklyn Brewery’s description, does not exist (I’ve had more than one bar companion awfully confused by that one). In a less G. Gordon Liddy-ish description, it’s an imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels. You may think these beers, delicious as they are, are becoming a dime a dozen these days. Seems every month sees the release of a new bourbon aged imperial stout. Black Ops has a couple of unique features that set it apart, though. It’s bottle-conditioned, which means that it’s bottled flat and gains carbonation via a round of fermentation that takes place in the bottle itself. This technique is often used for Belgian styles, but it’s pretty uncommon for a stout. Even odder, the yeast for bottle conditioning isn’t an ale variety, but rather a champagne yeast.

Garrett Oliver’s unique experiments are all well and good, but can Black Ops go toe-to-toe with Kentucky Breakfast Stout, Goose Island Bourbon County and the other excellent bourbon-aged stouts on the market? Depends on how you like your bourbon stouts. Black Ops, as it should, pours a deep midnight black with a small tan head. I thought about pouring it into a champagne flute, being as it was New Years Eve and it’s fermented with champagne yeast, but a tulip glass sufficed.

The aroma, taste and mouthfeel all distinguish it from other bourbon stouts, for better or worse. The fellas at Brooklyn used a very light hand when it came to the bourbon flavor. It really takes a backseat to the chocolate and roasted malt flavors. There’s even a tiny little tartness in the flavor, maybe from the yeast? The bourbon flavor is light and blends in wonderfully with the other flavors. On top of that, there’s no booze detectable at all, which makes Black Ops dangerously drinkable. I know that some people like their barrel-aged beers to be bourbon or booze bombs (like Goose Island), and this is neither. But it’s a complex, delicious beer. The fizzy mouthfeel recalls champagne more than stout — I’m not nuts about it but it’s an interesting change-up. Like a black velvet, I guess.

This is a pricey bottle. Does it justify the expense? Well, I’d say it’s worth buying one or two a year for special occasions. Obviously it’s not going to be an everyday beer, and not even a once-a-week beer. Brooklyn’s own Black Chocolate Stout, at about $8 a 4-pack, is one of the best values in the world and is at least as good a beer. But I’d say it’s certainly worth trying for yourself. Split one with your friend.

Beer Review: Westvleteren 12

As you know from reading my “A New Yorker’s Guide to the Top 100” series, Westvleteren 12 has been the #1 rated beer on both BeerAdvocate and RateBeer for years now. That high ranking certainly isn’t hurt by the rarity and the hoops you have to jump through to get it, but it wouldn’t hold onto the #1 spot if it wasn’t a world class beer in its own right. Well, I got my hands on a bottle, and I’m going to give reviewing it a shot. Here goes.

Westy 12 pours a hazy dark brown with almost a maroon or purplish tinge. The pour into my Duvel chalice creates a decent tan head that dissipates but leaves quite a bit of lacing. The aroma on this beer is outstanding. It’s a great blend of dark fruits, brown sugar, and Belgian yeast. There’s a little bit of booze to tie it together.

The taste is far more subtle than I had expected. This is not a bad thing. Similar to the smell, dark figs or plums are prominent. A definite flavor of charred brown sugar. A small hit of crisp, light hops. Complex yet restrained. Beautifully balanced, with just the right amount of booze. The mouthfeel is very sticky, with carbonation lighter than I’d expected. I did my best to pace myself, but it was gone before I knew it.

Now, obviously, I can’t answer the question about whether this is the best beer in the world. That’s a completely subjective question. I can do a little better by comparing it to other quads. I would need to taste them side-by-side a few times to really make up my mind, but my first instinct is that I like St. Bernardus Abt 12 a tiny bit better. But if you’re a Belgian beer fan, or any sort of beer fan at all really, Westy 12 is worth at least some of the hype and is an absolute must-try.

Gateway Craft Beer: Duvel

Welcome back to our series on gateway craft beers, the best beers to get your Keystone-drinking friends to start sipping the good stuff. So far we’ve looked at a powerful but manageable case study on hops, a lager to get people to drink local, the flagship beer of America’s largest brewery, and a brew that beats you over the head with flavor, reminds you that you’re not worthy, and leaves you begging for more. This week we’re going to wow your friends with finery.

Many non-beer geeks have a dichotomy in their minds: American beer is bland and what you drink at frat parties. Belgian beer is exciting and fancy. This dichotomy is silly and false, of course, but we’ll convince your friend of that later. For now, let’s work with what we’ve got. The fact is, most easily available Belgian beers are way better than most easily available American beers. If you ask a random person on the street what an American beer is, she’ll most likely say one of BMC, or Sam Adams if we’re lucky. Ask her what a Belgian beer is, though, and there’s a good chance she’ll have heard of Chimay or Duvel.

Head is good.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that Duvel is only good compared to American macro lagers. Duvel is a world-class beer, period. That’s why we’re so lucky that it shows up everywhere, which is part of what makes it so attractive as a gateway craft beer. It’s in our bars, beer stores, regular stores, fancy restaurants, and not-so-fancy restaurants. These days, for the holiday season, you can buy a 4-pack gift set that comes with a fancy Duvel goblet (see pictured) for a very reasonable price (I think it was about $15 at New Beer Distributors). It makes the perfect gift for that special someone that you want to start drinking good beer.

Duvel is a great introduction to Belgian beers. Take a whiff from your goblet. Smell that kind of sweet, kind of spicy, kind of funky aroma? That’s from the Belgian yeast, and almost all Belgian beers will have some variation on that aroma. Another Duvel feature typical of Belgian beer is that big, fluffy, off-white head. The Belgians understand pouring a beer isn’t about cramming as much liquid into the shaker glass as humanly possible — head is good. A sturdy head on a beer releases a cascade of aromatics. Now’s the time, guys, to explain to your friend how aroma is so closely related to taste and that sniffing your beer is an important part of enjoying it.

Also like most good Belgians, Duvel is tasty enough for anybody to enjoy but complex enough that even the most hardened beer geek can spend a long time exploring the flavors. I get a light cotton candy flavor, some banana, some clove, lemony hops, and that’s just scratching the surface. Best of all is the mouthfeel, which feels like champagne and really hammers home the point that this is a beer worthy of the utmost respect.

So next time you’re at dinner with friends, skip the wine and order them a Duvel. You may find yourself a fellow geek for life.

Beer Review: Dogfish Head Bitches Brew

I drank my last bottle of Bitches Brew last night while watching Discovery’s new show, “Brew Masters.” (I’ll have a review of the show up later today). If you haven’t heard, it’s a documentary series following the globetrotting beer adventures of Sam Calagione, the founder of the terrific Delaware-based Dogfish Head Craft Brewery. The debut episode last night was about the making of Bitches Brew, an imperial stout combining American and African traditions, which was released to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew,” the seminal jazz album combining American and African traditions.

It’s a pretty cool experience to watch your beer get made as you’re drinking it. Bitches Brew is a blended beer — DFH made three tanks of imperial stout, and one tank of a mead-like concoction based on a traditional Ethiopian alcoholic drink. There four tanks were combined and blended at bottling.

This beer came out a month or two ago to a decent amount of fanfare, though not with the extreme hype of some other limited release imperial stouts (probably because DFH made plenty of it). So, how is it?

The beer pours into the glass deep black, with a bit of dark ruby around the edges. It’s got a puffy tan head that leaves a boatload of lacing along the side of the glass. The aroma is delicious, with dark chocolate, roasted malt and a powerful molasses scent. So far, so good.

The taste is a bit different from the aroma. What comes across as dark, bitter chocolate in the aroma is more like milk chocolate in the taste. Actually, it tastes quite a bit like chocolate ice cream. This beer was made with a lot of honey, but I don’t taste honey per se. There’s a molasses flavor that I suspect comes from the honey as well as the malt, but I don’t know for sure. It’s also nicely bitter from the large amount of roasted malt in the recipe.

The mouthfeel is silky, with low and lazy carbonation. The effect of the feel combined with the chocolate ice cream flavor is something like drinking the tail end of a root beer float. This is an excellent imperial stout. A half-step off the truly elite examples, but damn good. I need to grab a couple more bottles before they run out, because I’d love to see what some age does to this brew.

Beer Review: Blue Point Toxic Sludge

Earlier this week I profiled Blue Point’s Toasted Lager as a gateway craft beer. A couple of months ago I reviewed Hoptical Illusion, Blue Point’s IPA. Both of those reviews were of solid but pretty unexciting brews. However, Blue Point does have some real stars in the lineup. Old Howling Bastard is a damn fine barleywine, and Rastafa Rye is one of the best rye beers out there. It’s high time I found out if Toxic Sludge, Blue Point’s newest, falls into the first camp or the second.

Back when I wrote my guide to the Cascadian Dark Ale (aka Black IPA), I noted that no local brewery had one yet. Well, Blue Point launched Toxic Sludge literally days after my piece came out. I had a pour at the Get Real NY cask ale festival, and while you can never write a review of something you’ve just had a small fest taste of, I was pretty impressed.

Plus, the beer was made for a good cause. All of the proceeds from Toxic Sludge sales are going to Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research, a group dedicated to helping birds and other wildlife effected by oil spills and other environmental incidents. So if drinking local wasn’t enough to bolster your hippie sensibilities, helping poor, oil-covered birds should be.

So, do you have to rely on an avian guilt trip to buy this beer, or is it actually good? I’m happy to report that it’s another fine entry into the burgeoning Cascadian Dark Ale field. Toxic Sludge is as black and slick as its namesake, with a small tan head. The smell is a bit faint, but it’s a nice burnt aroma with a lot of hop support. It straddles the line between stout and IPA.

While the smell was a bit ambiguous, the taste is firmly on the IPA side of the spectrum. A big dose of pine hops is the main taste here. There’s a good amount of chocolate malt, too, to remind you of the “black” part of the black IPA. The balance between the disparate style influences is the trick to a Cascadian Dark, and Toxic Sludge passes the balance test easily.

It’s smooth and easy-drinking. It’s tasty. It’s local, and it’s for a good cause. So if you’re looking to get into the Cascadian Dark Ale game, make sure to give Toxic Sludge a try.