Backlash Brewing: Hops Hops Hops

So recently I volunteered for Drink Craft Beer's Springfest, a celebration of hops, and I was lucky enough to be stationed at Helder Pimentel's table pouring Backlash beer. Full discloser, the first time I had a backlash beer (Declaration) I was pretty disappointed, with tons of hype behind a decent, but hardly spectacular beer, I was put behind a booth of beer I didn't know much else about. After some introductions I poured myself a quick refresher of Declaration and was amazed at how much crisper and fresher this beer was than I remembered, and frankly, how delicious it was. The 2 other beers on the docket for the night was Salute, Backlash's west coast double IPA and a cask condition version of Declaration with a dry hopped addition of Citra Hops to the cask. A few people came back for 2nds and 3rds and told me it was the best beer of the night. The only Problem? That beer existed for that night and that night only. So I'm gonna ramble a bit about a beer you can have.

Atlas Distribution seems like the red headed step child of the Massachusetts Beverage Alliance, with specialty cases rarely, if ever, making it's way into the tough sell market of the route 2 corridor of Massachusetts. So I was in absolute shock when a case of Backlash's Salute showed up at the back door of my work, West Concord Wine & Spirits. Salute was recently geeked out on by Gary Dzen in his excellent column, 99 Bottles, and rightfully so because the first taste of this beer is a fresh blast of hops right in my fucking face. 2 hops, 2 simple but effective hops,  Citra and Simcoe make this beer a complex combination of all things citrus and pine, with a nice residual sweetness balancing the bitterness all the way down. Strait off the tap and fresh, this beer is outstandingly crisp and a wash of all things hops, and so drinkable that being behind the booth might make for a dangerous evening. Luckily I laid off it long enough to stay standing all night. But that doesn't mean I'm not gonna grab a bottle and experience this beer again, cause it's more that worth it. 

Devil's Backbone

So last September my friends moved to Blacksburg for Grad School at Virginia Tech. They've come back for family holidays and such twice, bringing me back mixed 6 packs from an excellent store, The Cellar, in exchange for crashing at our place. The best stuff I've gotten has been Duck-Rabbit Brewery that I reviewed before, Starr Hill Brewing and from Crozet, VA and Highland Brewing from Asheville, NC. But the most exotic and delicious variety of beer from Virginia I've gotten was from a brewery in Roseland, Virginia, Devil's Backbone. This week I decided to cash in my couch time and spend a week  below the Mason-Dixon line.
I have no idea when Devil's Backbone built a taproom outpost in Lexington, VA but I was thrilled to see the attractions sign from the highway signaling me to pull off the never ending expanse of Eisenhower's Interstate 81 and into the rustic roads of northwest Virginia. Pulling into the parking lot was  a mixed reaction, first we have a Connecticut license plate loading in a fresh case of Eight Point IPA into there trunk, and next we have two different minivans with Virginia plates plastered with anti-abortion bumper stickers and all sorts of catholic guilt bullshit. The outpost was a beautifully built new looking building with excellent ridged metal roof panels and exquisite wood doors and crafted metal door handles like deer antlers. It was bright and sunny out but the rays could barely squeak into the tap room. You can bring your own food to the taproom, and the baby saving squad was pulled up to two tables enjoying pints of delicious beer. I may disagree with everything they stand for and would regard a conversation with them as the equivalent of having my teeth pulled and being forced to drink lemonade but at least they're enjoying the best beer they can find. And they're requesting hockey on the TV. 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
Saddling up to the bar is a wonderful thing. 8 taps in front of me! So many choices but the clear choice is a taster flight of all 8 beers. The bartender pulls out all 8 beers and aligns them with the beer menu sitting on the bar so we can read the descriptions of everything we're tasting.
The beers were an excellent variety, 3 lagers, 2 Belgian style beers, 1 IPA and 2 takes on a scottish ale. I love the variety here, as I can really get a grasp on how well a brewery's ingredients react to my particular tongue. Gold Leaf Lager and Vienna Lager have won a combined 6 metals yet it was Beggar and Thieves Rye Lager that just blew my taste buds out of the water. The smell is immediately of citrus and pine hops, and the taste continues with fresh malt and a touch of pepper, with those hops beginning and ending the experience. It was so good I got a mini growler of it to take home. And it was just as good after 10 hours of driving home.
The belgian styles were extremely interesting to me. First was Congo Pale Ale, a pale ale that was stronger than their flagship IPA, clocking in at 7.5% and made with a Belgian yeast strain. Unfortunately is tasted a bit too sweet of alcohol and the hops felt buried in the back of this beer. After that comes Dark Abby, Devil's take on a Belgian style dubbel. It's exactly the same ABV, 7.5% yet there's no presence of alcohol in this beer. The yeast isn't battling hops in this beer, but rather pairing amazingly with the malts to give it a delicious raisony sweetness with that excellent clove and fruity spiceness in the finish. Besides saisons, the south doesn't have much Belgian beer going for it and this was an excellent surprise.
Reilly's Red Ale was an excellent irish red ale and a wood aged version of their Wee Heavy Kilt Tilter were and excellent bridge to the beer I was saving for last, Eight Point IPA.
Eight Point IPA is listed as a west coast style IPA that comes in just a touch under 6% alcohol, right in the range I love. I love my hops with a dry malty backbone, probably why I didn't love Congo, and exactly why I was leaving Eight Point for last. The smell is musty, like I dug up a citra hop plant in my grandmother's backyard garden. The taste is bursting with fresh hops of serious pine and citrus, the malts taking a back seat to the wonderful crispness of some serious hops. Every state should brew a fresh tasting IPA like this beer, so you can go down to your local store and grab a fresh 6 pack for some bitter deliciousness.
Anyways, that's how you do a taster, spanning a full spectrum of what your brewery can provide a community, and an excellent indicator of how people's taste works. One of the angels of justice came up to the bar and ordered a Congo Pale Ale just as I was leaving, showcasing something so important, my taste buds don't mean shit to anyone but myself, so everything is subjective, probably just like my opinions.
Though, as an added bonus, I got a bottle of brewed to support the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and their fight for clean water.

THIS. IS. AN. OUTSTANDING. BEER!!!! The hops in this beer are probably approaching 6 months since bottling but the beer still tastes like a fresh face full of hops picked from a vine and pressed directly on my tongue. The malts are perfectly balanced with some bready sweetness that carry a bitter wash down the tongue. They're brewing another batch soon and if I could recommend any beer from Virginia it would be any from Devil's Backbone, and this one might be the best beer I've had from the state. Hopefully I get it even fresher soon.

New Belgium Brewing Part 2: Hops

Getting to try new beers that I've only heard about is really a central point of taking a vacation. Yes, staying in a lovely house in the woods of Western Virginia with nothing but the sounds of birds and insects and that one fight of a husband using the wife's Ford Focus without asking is truly the reason I'm here, but packing up as many mixed 6-packs of unique stuff I can get is an excellent fringe benefit. And while I'm saving up my post about the best Virginia based brewery I've had so far, Devil's Backbone, I'm gonna roll through two more beers, both IPAs, from the amazing New Belgium Brewing which I talked about yesterday.
First was Ranger, there strait forward IPA, racking in at a nice 70 IBUs from a west coast blend of Chinook, Simcoe and Cascade hops. It is definitely on the lighter side of Pale and is incredibly refreshing to sip, with a nice dry maltyness and some citrusy fruity hops in the finish, clean and without much bitterness, but just enough to keep it very well balanced. The 6.5% alcohol makes it supremely easy to go back for another but I've got a bigger fish to fry after this guy.
Rampant Imperial India Pale Ale ups the ante with 85 IBUs from 3 different types of hops, Mosiac, Calypso and Centennial and boasts a 8.5% alcohol tag. The darker colors come courtesy of some black malts mixed in with the pale malts and give it a roasty warmth with the sweetness balanced with a very earthy/grassy taste on the tongue, and finishes with a much more prevalent bitterness. It would be much tougher to drink more than a couple and I think I'll be headed back to the Ranger to finish the night. Both are excellent beers and uniquely different. I'm really glad New Belgium didn't just make an Imperial IPA by adding more of the same to their existing IPA, but rather created a totally unique beer to pair side by side with it. Understanding the various ways to use hops for bittering and for freshness, for citrus or pineyness is something I love to get when I try new beers, because you know it's the same water, the same yeast, and the same equipment, and getting to understand the subtleties is what makes tasting new beer so fucking awesome.

New Belgium Brewing: Part 1 Fat Tire

After being laid up for a week from the flu, I fled cold New England for beautiful Virginia countryside, and I couldn't be happier. And as a New England beer drinker, I've heard many gushing tales of a lovely elixir drank from a can while hiking up the Rocky Mountains or skiing around Aspen or whatever. I still get requests at the store from customers looking for it. That beer is New Belgium Brewing Company's Fat Tire amber ale. In 2012 New Belgium Brewing was the 3rd largest craft brewer in America based on volume of Sales behind Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada. And yet I could never get it in Massachusetts, so within an hour or setting foot on the soil of Virginia, I walked into a supermarket and bought a 12 pack of Fat Tire in cans, and mixed up a 6 pack of some of their other offerings, most likely to the chagrin of the staff at Krogers fine supermarkets, but what they don't know can't hurt me I guess.
It's not a top rated hop bomb or hard to find Trappist beer, but I was super excited to crack open a Fat Tire for the first time. And while attempting to keep my expectations down I wasn't disappointed at what I got, an excellently well balanced amber all, with some nice sweetness and just a touch of bitter in the finish.
It's really a beer that I can get behind, a simple sipper beer that, if I'm really in the mood, can down an entire 6 pack (which I did the first night, I'm on vacation, don't judge) and love the taste of it the entire way through. Nothing to overpower my dinner or to leave me feeling too stuffed to move. Love it, and can't wait to buy a 12 pack of Pale Lager and see how the other yeast lives. Coming soon.

Dogfish Head: Sixty One

The most beautiful thing about Dogfish Head brewing and Sam Calagione (Head of Dogfish) is that they don't get bogged down with the industry. Hops are in right now, the top beers on Beer Advocate right now are all double IPAs. So instead of worrying about bottling a brand new year round hop bomb, Sam splintered off in another direction. Apparently inspired by Sam pouring some red wine in his friends round of 60 Minute, Sixty One combines the unique bitterness from wonderful hops with the lively spiciness of the syrah grape, my personal favorite wine grape. I was very excited to try this beer, and it didn't disappoint.

This beer immediately pours a beautiful red tinted pale, with an amazing fruity aroma, both pepper and citrus. The syrah grape must added really works excellently with the bitter hops, giving it a dry fruitiness with a very crisp beer, loads of citrus and bitterness rolling over the tongue. Unlike some of Dogfish Heads previous wine related releases, this beer will be available four times a year in four packs, at around twelve bucks, much better than the fifteen dollars for a 750ml, and much easier to drink when you want it. This is a definitive dinner beer if there ever was one.

Mystic Brewing: Lord Falconer

In medieval times oats were a common ingredient in ale, used to help bitter some beers that were being brewed far too sweet by peasants on farmland. Eventually though, as beer brewing become more precise and they were able to get better efficiency of sugar to alcohol, oats were no longer needed for beer. In The Story of the Pint by Martyn Cornell he mentions that eventually sailors from the era wouldn't even drink an oat ale because it was too bitter. And while a few brewers brewed an stout with oats in it, the style was dead by the 1950's. UNTIL Michael Jackson, the beer hunter, published the first important book on beer, The World Guide to Beer. In that book he mentions a defunct oatmeal stout brewed by Eldridge Pope. This simple chunk of beer history leads Charles Finkel, founder of Merchant du Vin, a very important importer, to commission Samuel Smith to brew an Oatmeal Stout, and a style of beer was resurrected, and Sam Smith's Oatmeal Stout became the standard for the style.


So this was a pretty long intro to get to a new beer released from Mystic Brewing, Lord Falconer Oatmeal Stout. Lord Falconer is the first in what I assume will be a collection of beers in the the Wigglesworth series, based on traditional english recipes. The Wigglesworth family settled in the Mystic Valley in 1631 and became prominent East India traders, bringing beer to the streets on Boston. Now we've got Mystic brewing an interpretation in our backyard for us to drink fresh.

Lord Falconer itself pours a heavy and deep black, and the nose is immediately chocolate and roasted sweetness. The taste is at first sweet with a balance of coffee and that bitter breadyness from the oats. First reaction is simple, this beer is amazing, balanced between sweet and tart, but the smoothest I've had from an oatmeal stout. This starts a battle between the best in the category, with Sam Smith's Oatmeal stout, and Founders Breakfast Stout, and I think a side by side is in order. Bottom line, this beer is so tasty, and at $4 a half liter it's worth buying over and over again.

Boston Beer Works 21st Birthday Dinner

Tuesday March 12th Boston Beer Works had their 21st birthday party at the Fenway location. Finally, it was old enough to drink! To celebrate they threw a nice little 4-course beer dinner, and I was lucky enough to be invite to enjoy. It's the first real beer dinner I've ever attended, and needless to say I was pumped.

I feel like I'm not alone in the group of beer lovers that can forget about Beer Works in a state with a booming craft beer populous, next to Vermont and Maine who are churning out excellent brewers. But it happens at least 5 times a year, whether it's going to a Lowell Spinners game, or wondering around Fenway and finding that the Yard House is way too pretentious to stick around in, I end up sitting in front of some very fresh beer, eating some nachos and watching Hockey, and it's always enjoyable. 

Coming in the experience is immediately great, being given a sample of some of their bottled beer and some excellent appetizers, it already felt like it was going to be a great night. But appetizers and samples of beer are one thing; I was ready to sit down for the good stuff, the meal. 

Beer Works did not mess around with this dinner. To start they served a crepe filled with creamy artichokes topped with cider vinaigrette. It was paired with Baker's Island Blonde, a Munich style golden lager, and while I was expecting a blonde ale, it was an excellent helles bock style beer that opened the meal nice and light, not filling me up too much as there was 3 more courses to go.

The 2nd course was seared sea scallops over vegetable risotto with a hopped gastrique paired with Crimson Clover Irish Red ale. First, the scallops were perfect, cutting like butter and tasting perfect and incredibly fresh. Too bad for the one guy near us that didn't like seafood, but his neighbor got to reap the benefits of extra scallops. The beer was much less hoppy than the red ale I sampled earlier and I actually enjoyed it more, being excellently balanced and not overpowering to the food. 

3rd course was where the amazing stuff happens. Roasted rack of lamb over ratatouille with a balsamic reduction, paired with their soon to be bottled Rosemary Imperial Pale Ale. This is what I imagine a beer dinner is for, an excellent hoppy rosemary ale that compliments a perfectly cooked piece of lamb. The entire accompaniment from the ratatouille to the sweet potato puree dashed on the side made this dish a perfect pair with an herbally spiced beer that really feels like it was made for this. 

And finally, the dessert was a ginger flan with candied citrus and ginger on the side, with a perfect dessert drink, their Irish Cream Stout. The flan was very well done, but really, the beer could be the dessert on itself, silky smooth for a stout with rich roasted chocolate and coffee all the way through. It was an excellent beer to end the night. If Beer Works is going to have more dinners in the future then I highly recommend checking it out, because for the first beer dinner they've done in years, they certainly knew how to make it work, and I'd certainly do it again.