Sometimes the Trip Makes the Beer

I’m headed to Jack’s Abby today to pick up the brewery only release of their Barrel Aged Framinghammer, one aged with coffee and one with vanilla, and it really got me thinking about how road trips are so important in beer drinking.

Hill Farmstead brewer Shaun Hill in a New York Times article recently mentioned his brewery would be brewing 150,000 gallons annual production and would cap production for the time being at that mark. Hill Farmstead’s beers will probably never leave his home state of Vermont (except for the occasional keg sent to various beer fests) and he seems just fine with that. So in order to get their beer you’ll have to make the almost 2 hour drive from Burlington. I’ve done this trip twice, once three years ago and once last year, and it’s been worth it every time. The two hour drive, with a return trip of equal distance only makes that beer that much better when you finally open the growler you bought, break out a nice glass and pour the first beer after your journey.

The journey for beer from the source to my lips can sometimes be incredibly long. Stone IPA begins its trip by being loaded into a shipping container in San Diego, driving across the country in a range of weather conditions before hitting a warehouse, being unloaded and then waiting for a salesman to key the case in, then it gets picked, loaded onto another truck, brought to the store and put on the shelves just waiting for me to wander in and decide, yes, today I’d like a 6 pack of Stone IPA. It’ll taste great, and I’ll be very satisfied with my choice. Sometimes though, it’s not enough, and I can’t always drive the 4 hours from my home to Hill Farmstead.

This is where local breweries are beginning to fit into a market they may not have known existed, trip destination. I can drive to Jack’s Abby in 45 minutes, and even closer Trillium Brewing is a 13-minute drive. 13! Sure, Jack’s Abby beers can be found at many beer stores, but if you want that prized whale you have to jump in your car and make the effort, and drinking that beer will taste that much sweeter, or bitter I guess depending on the beer.

Breweries are opening up all around the country in your backyard, trying to capitalize on two things, making great beer and your money. The best breweries will do both, making beer that’s worth seeking out and warranting a journey that pays off whether you’re driving 13 minutes for it, or 4 hours.  

America's First Trappist Beer: Spencer Trappist Ale

On October 26th 2013, Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project tweeted that America's first Trappist beer was in the kettle boiling. Every beer news outlet picked it up and soon after the hype was on! The Monks at St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, MA would be bottling the first beer made outside of Europe that would be branded with the authentic Trappist stamp. By mid December national news outlets like CNN and Fox News would publish articles about the beer being brewed in our backyard by devoted monks. 

Authentic Trappist beer must follow some simple rules. They must be brewed within the walls of a monastery, by the monks themselves or under their direct supervision.  The brewery is not to be used as a profit machine, but as a means to repair and maintain the monastery. And the beer must be of the highest quality. 

St. Joseph's Abbey, with help of many local and national brewers, including Dan Paquette of Pretty Things and the Monks of Chimay brewery in Belgium helped set up the equipment and the business model leading to a facility that if running at full capacity would make them the 2nd largest brewery in Massachusetts. As of right now though, they're hoping to sell 4,000 barrels of beer, or in bottles around 1.2 million bottles of beer this year. That's a huge order for a new brewery; even one with a higher power behind them.

On Monday we received our first shipment of this beer and as curiosity gets the best of most of us, I immediately took home a bottle and popped it open. The first smell is heavy banana with a heavy nose. The taste is delightfully sweet, with more banana balanced with a nice toffee sweetness and with minimal bitterness in the finish. For a first batch of commercial beer I think this is an amazingly well done and simple paters. They say that they're planning on brewing only one beer for the first five years but I don't see how that production can keep up without leveling off and the need for a new product makes itself impossible to ignore. We'll see though, we will see. 

Narragansett: Autocrat Coffee Milk Stout

I wish I was writing this while sipping on one more of these guys. But it's dead and gone. Gansett is claiming this was a one time release with Autocrat Coffee Company, a company that makes coffee syrup, one of my favorite drinks as a kid. It lead to my future love of coffee, and now my love, though fleeting, for a simple but delicious beverage, Autocrat Milk Stout.
This wasn't a beer like Oak Aged Espresso Yeti, but rather a nice 5% beer with nice sweetness and a roasted coffee flavor that lingers through the entire beer, so that once you're done you just want to crack open another right away. My mouth is watering just wanting another. If I see it on some dusty shelf at some backwoods convenience store that for some reason got a couple cases and then got ignored, I'll buy it all. It's not the best beer I've ever had, it's not even the best coffee stout, but it's so approachable, and you can just drink it over and over again. Find it and drink it, and it'll be gone.

Jack's Abby: Framinghammer

When Jack's Abby Framinghammer showed up in bottles this year I was extremely excited, for a few reason. One, this is a delicious beer that now won't require a 64oz growler fill for a 10% beast of a beer. Have trouble finishing a 22oz by yourself? Try 64oz's when the lady doesn't like drinking dark beers. The other reason I was excited for Framinghammer? That means that Coffee and Vanilla barrel aged versions can't be far behind. I missed out on them last year, and you can be dam sure I'm not missing out on a couple bottles this year.
As for this years base beer, Framinghammer reads like a blacksploitation tag, dark, sexy, smooth and dangerous, clocking in at 10% alcohol yet tasting like roasty coffee and chocolatey deliciousness. The smoothness of this beer is balanced with just enough hop bitterness in the back that it never gets boring, and never overpowers you're tongue with sweetness. At $5 a .5L bottle, it might be one of the best values you can get in Massachusetts. It's a classic in its style and reasonable to buy a handful of bottles.

It's Fucking Epic

Poor Gigazaur, you're dead because of me.

So somehow, last year, I managed to put away a bottle of Founder's Backwood's Bastard so that this year I could crack it open and compare to its "fresh" counterpart. It helps when I buy a massive purchase of beer so I can lose a beer in the mix. 2012 Backwoods was that beer. After that it was just waiting for the right moment.
Then I decided to play some King of Tokyo with two friends who love beer, and it seemed like a good time to bust out some aged deliciousness. (For the record, I've played 10 games of King of Tokyo and am an impressive 0-10, just saying.) We poured the fresh Bastard first, and the alcohol heat shined through along with excellent notes of sweet bread, vanilla and all those traditional other oak notes with a nice bitterness in the finish.
Similarly, the 2012 version was much less intense, with a more candy sweetness from the malt and no booze heat. The wood and vanilla was up front and the hops were faded away. This was an amazing smooth treat, blissfully sweet with lovely bourbon notes.
Taste preferences are amazing. Mike loved the fresh bastard, saying that while he hates bourbon, he loves the bourbon flavoring that the barrel adds this already pretty great scotch ale. Patrick and I enjoyed the aged version, enjoying the smooth malty sweetness and subdued oak that balances perfectly with the beer. All I really figured out is that one year of Backwood's Bastard fresh, or aged, is still just a delicious beer, and now if I could take Gigazaur to his rightful place as King of Tokyo I'd be happy.