Sixpoint: 3 Beans

If you've never had a Sixpoint beer before drop what you're doing right now and go find a nice boxed 4 pack and crack into it. I first found Sixpoint when I started my new job. Clearance section, $7.99 while supplies last. No one was buying it. I have no idea how long it'd been there, or how fresh it was or anything, but I decided to give it a shot. I bought a 4 pack of Belgali Tiger, their "homebrewed" IPA and their german Style Pilsner The Crisp. The crisp was good, and it was what it was, a nice lager, but the Bengali Tiger was a beauty on the tongue. After that I was hooked, a good IPA can make or break a brewery for me, and Sixpoint delivered. After that it was a slew of releases that I just loved. Diesel Stout, Brownstone Brown Ale, Resin double IPA, they all deserve paragraphs and I might write them one day but today I wanted to write about the newest release from the self described "mad scientists."

3 Beans Imperial Stout.  It's impressive when I get a beer that the Oxford Companion to Beer has no information about a brewing ingredient. The ingredient list for 3 Beans reads more like a delicious smoothy than a beer. Brewed with Cocoa, Coffee and Romano Beans? What the hell is a romano bean you might ask, as I did too. Romano beans are a flat snap (It snaps when it's ripe) bean that most likely originated in Italy, and was probably cooked into alcoholic beverages many centuries ago in the early days of finding out how to get drunk and now it's in Sixpoint's newest concoction. 
3 Beans pours a midnight black that sucks any sun from the room, leaving nothing but a cold chill that requires me to drink it so I can be warm again. The smell is of cowboy coffee and some hints of chocolate. Once it hits the tongue though is has an almost mocha nuttiness and natural smoothness that makes this beer go down so much easier than the 10% would ever be expected. It's definitely the most unique imperial stout I've had to date, adding a nice new touch to a growingly flooded market of high ABV stouts, and it's a beer I am very excited to be able to drink again. It is, without a doubt, worth the high 4 pack cost, and will be worth going to buy another 4 pack before it's gone. 

New Albion Ale.

I love history. One of my favorite subreddits besides /Beer is /History. So to get the opportunity to drink a recreation of what is considered the very first microbrewery in the post world war II ravaged aged of beer is so exciting to me. I grabbed a few as soon as I saw them on the shelf and opened them as soon as I walked into the door. Hell, I basically opened it on the doorstep I was so giddy to drink one.
New Albion Brewing Company was started by Jack McAuliffe is wine country Sonoma, California. After attempting to start a brewery in San Francisco high costs forced him to move north. Sir Francis Drake referred to the Pacific Northwest as Nova Albion and thus, New Albion Brewing was started, hoping to slip right in along side the ever expanding wine and cuisine market that was already expanding in Sonoma. And for 6 years New Albion Brewing sold ever bottle of beer it produced, but they didn't produce enough beer to turn Jack's brilliant idea into profit and they had to close their doors. New Albion's influence however was unmistakable. Hopland Brewing Company inherited Jack's equipment (Hopland was founded by New Albion employee Don Barkley) and turned themselves into Mendocino Brewing Company who are still brewing today. Sierra Nevada credited Jack so much that for their 30th Anniversary beer they brewed "Jack and Ken's Ale" (Ken Grossman is a co-founder of Sierra Nevada) that was based on a seasonal barleywine brewed by New Albion called Old Toe Sucker. Every brewer owes a small debt to the first man to fail at his dream but spark the flame that started the fire in America.
Anyways, last August sometime Jim Koch from Sam Adams announced that for the 1st time in 30 years New Albion Pale Ale would be brewed. A truly original american pale ale made with nice bitter hops and simple 2-row pale ale. And god this is a crisp pale. Smell is actually a little weak but that's the only part of the beer that I don't notice. The taste is light malt, a bit of cereal grainyness. It's so crisp on the tongue with a great balance between the malts at the front and a nice floral and bitter hop finish. Nice bitterness left on the tongue with a heavy carbonation on the way down.
I could drink this beer all the time, nice and easy and smooth. It's not the most adventurous beer I've ever tasted, but if I existed 30 years ago (Just sneaking under that time line but that's another story) this beer would be mind blowing and eye opening to everything I believe in. Taste it just to understand what an experience it'd be to drink this after having nothing but shitty Shaffer, Pabst and Bud to drink the entire time.

Wild Gueuze Chase

 Lambics are a very distinct type of beer traditionally brewed in the Pajottenland region of Belgium and in Brussels. They're brewed and left open to allow wild yeast and bacteria to spontaneously ferment the beer. The beer is generally 70% malted barley and 30% unmalted wheat, but can vary based on brewer.
It's so hard to find unblended lambics outside of Belgium, in fact I think it's dam near impossible. After that you're left with blended lambics that are usually mixed with fruit like raspberries, cherries or occasionally a few others like peach, strawberries and even pumpkin. I've had a handful of these types of lambics, but I've never had a strait Gueuze. A Gueuze is a blend of fresh lambic and older lambics that are bottled with excess yeast to allow a second fermentation building up carbonation and developing the beer for years. Some lambics can last for decades if cellared in the right conditions.
Anyways, I finally got my hands on a Goose and I was pumped. I love wild ales but I was seriously craving the real thing.
Last year at the Southern New Hampshire Beer Fest White Birch Brewing tapped a cask of their wild ale they made especially for the fest, and it was an amazing beast of a beer. However, it was uncarbonated, warm and it was a thousand degrees out, not ideal conditions. But St. Louis Gueuze brewed by Castle Brewery in Belgium was just what a needed after a tough Celtics loss that was 5 minutes of good play followed by 2 hours of putrid basketball. The beer was much better than the basketball. First off, it was nicely carbonated out of the bottle, leaving a nice head that slowly dissipated. The beer reeks of funky cheese and some oakyness, and the taste really sips like a tart apple chardonnay, with a very dry finish that leaves a serious tart coat over the tongue, making me want another sip almost immediately. I definitely need to score another bottle and tuck it away for a few years to see what happens to this beer after some time. It's already pretty dry but I could imagine the yeast just keep gobbling up sugars till it's a bone dry funky beast, and hopefully in a few years I'll find out.

Ben Harris Cream Ale

 A lot has been made of Craft vs. the big brewers about who owns what and what to buy and everything in between. And while you'll never catch me buying shock top or blue moon or anything faux craft from the big guys, I was compelled to buy my first ever bottles of Red Hook. 

Recently, the Red Hook family suffered a tragedy at its brewery in Portsmouth, NH when a plastic keg exploded and killed brewery worker Ben Harris, a worker at Red Hook for over 7 years. A portion of the proceeds from this special cream ale will benefit the Benjamin Harris 2012 Memorial Fund. The attempt of this beer was to make a beer they thought Ben would enjoy himself, so they brewed up a special cream ale due to its accessibility that's got an extra kick of hops because according to Red Hook Ben liked “a touch of hops.” 

I recently had what I considered the best cream ale I'd ever had, Watch City's Hoppothermia, so attempting to dethrone that beer would be difficult. 

The beer itself pours a lovely golden color and smells like a nice bowl of frosted flakes. As soon as it hits the tongue you get a nice mix of sweet malts and bitter hops and the hops finish all the way down. Amazingly crisp and very drinkable all the way through. It's not quite as good as Watch City's Cream but it's definitely one of the better cream ales I've had.

Whether or not you're a fan of Red Hook, a fan of Cream Ales or terrified of Genesee Cream Ale, or just a fan of beer in general, this is a beer that's worth drinking and for an excellent cause. 

Mahr's Brau Kellerbier

Last year was the first time I unknowingly had a Kellerbier. Part of the problem is not a lot of breweries make one. Sierra Nevada has come the closest to mainstream kellers with their Kellerweis, but unfortunately it’s not a kellerbier, it’s a hoppy hefeweizen.

So the first Kellerbier I got to try? Sam Adams Alpine Spring, which is already on the shelves again this year, was unknowing to me, a Keller. I honestly had no idea what the hell a kellerbier was.

So, what is a Kellerbier? It translates literally to "cellar beer," and it’s most likely been brewed since the Middle Ages. It’s an unfiltered lager, usually brewed with more aromatic hops than the typical German lager and can be all over the map when it comes to alcohol, but they’re often brewed to an Okoberfestbier strength of about 5 to 5.5% alcohol by volume. So there, that’s a Kellerbier. But Sam Adams wasn’t gonna do it for me, I wanted something from beautiful Germany itself, so here’s my quick review of Mahr’s Brau Kellerbier.

Mahr's Kellerbier, eloquently named Ungespundet-hefetrüb, pours a beautiful cloudy amber with an excellent head that holds for only a few seconds. The hops have a sweet floral smell that have an apricot quality to them. The taste on the tongue is a lightly toasted malt with low carbonation making it so easy to drink, almost a little creamy with just a hint of bitterness from the hops, just an unbelievably delicious beer.

La Fin Du Monde Partie Deux

As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm a total sucker for made up paranoia and reasons to drink because of it, and at the time, the end of the world was approaching so I needed a beer that takes its namesake from impending doom. So on December 20th, what they were telling me would be my last night on earth before Jon Cusack goes crashing into hot magma, I opened up one last triple to enjoy before the end. I know that Quads get all the hype, but some pale pilsner malts with belgian yeast, topping out around 9% or so, with some light hopping to finish it, that's what I love.
Unibroue La Fin du Monde was recently named the 4th best Canadian beer on a certain beer website, and an affordable gift set was available help my love of all things eschatology as well as satiate my glassware love. After arriving home from a long day at work, I pulled the beer out of the trusty fridge, poured into the beautiful glass and watched a little Always Sunny in Philadelphia and waited for my death.
As for the beer itself, La Fin du Monde is one of the finest triples made today. It has a wonderfully full head on a heavy pour, and it smells like typical belgian yeast, banana and clove. However the taste is much more complex with a taste of baked apples and cereal grain, and the spicy yeasty taste is much subtler on the tongue and the smell. The hops hit the back of the tongue so this beer isn't a sweet bomb, making it perfectly balanced in every way. La Fin du Monde is the class of Canadian triples, and is among the best made in the entire world.

Enlightenment Ales: Farmhouse IPA

I find it funny that 2 different breweries in the Boston area make an amazing Saison and call it something slightly different from that. The first is Jack D'or from Pretty Things, my absolute favorite beer, bills itself as saison americana. Now we have another delicious "saison" that masks itself behind another name, Illumination Farmhouse IPA. Farmhouse ales are meant to be consumed on premise, made by farmhands during the winter for workers during the summer, and an IPA was a concept of well hopping beers for transport to India (I know that's a hotly contested topic, but I'm leaving it at that for now). Basically, what this wort boils down to is a Saison that's got the american hop treatment. Full of amazing citrus hops that carry nice pilsner malts along with the wonderfully fruity and dry belgian yeast strain. And really, when an amazing dry saison gets hit with a massive blast of hops, it only helps to accent the citrusy hops that are buried deep in this delicious beer.  As a style, this beer seems like a modern day take on an ancient style, but it feels as new and delicious as anything I've ever taken.
Saison Export!