557. Cigar City Cucumber Saison

So the De Ranke was our opening salvo in an evening of indulgence. Next up: Cigar City’s Cucumber Saison. We’ve seen Cigar City before—often provided by Jeff Fortney—and this evening was no exception. This is our fourth reported beer from Cigar City (plus a visit to the brewery!), including Marrón Acidifié (the collaboration with the Bruery), Guava Grove, and José Martí American Porter. All in all, fine, fine beers. Like this one.

Cucumber Saison pours a pale hazy straw with a thin white head; the nose is—as one would both hope and expect with a beer carrying this name—cucumber front and center. As the beer opens up, it moves from fresh-cut cucumber towards pickle, although it never quite gets fully there. The skin character of the cucumber aroma continues to grow as the beer warms. Flavors open with a soft dough-y sweetness that gives way quickly to the cucumber along with an almost vegetable peppery spiciness. The cucumber continues throughout, with flavors moving towards pickle—like in the nose. There is a slight touch of bitterness in the finish, but it is restrained, allowing the cucumber to remain the dominant flavor. The mouthfeel is chewy but the body is well attenuated, creating a bright, clean, crisp and refreshing beer. I can see how many would balk at the idea of this beer, but, well, those people are wrong. Dead wrong. This beer is awesome, and would go fantastically with food—grilled summer food, specifically. Here’s to Cigar City for pushing the envelope on craft beer in interesting and productive ways. Kudos to Wayne and company. 

From the bottle: “The humble gherkin. Usually we encounter this unassuming green fruit pickled or sliced and flung atop a salad. But the cucumber has so much more to offer us. It is a remarkably refreshing gourd with the power to cool a dry tongue and when just two sliced wheels are placed atop the eyes of a lounging lass in a stock ad for the spa the mystical cucumber has the magical ability to justify obscene spa service fees. Truly an amazing botanical gift to the world! We chose to employ the cucumber in a low gravity Saison to create a refreshing seasonal ale redolent with notes of honey, tropical fruit, lemon bitterness and of course cucumber. Brewed as a survival tool for the Florida Summer, this cucumber creation features Citra and Sorachi Ace hops. So put some cucumber wheels on your eyes, lean back, relax and enjoy. Ahhhhhh.”

ABV: 6.0%

(2/13/2012)

471. Bruery Autumn Maple

“I yam what I am.” Ralph Ellison Invisible Man

Another from the Bruery, the brewery I love to love. Previous victims of my overbearing and slightly creepy love include Humulus Session, 3 French Hens, Saison de Lente, Rugbrød, Hottenroth, Orchard White and Saison Rue. I guess I don’t know when to stop, do I?

Don’t look into the light...

Autumn Maple pours a deep, rich mix of orange and copper—we’re gonna call it caramelized yam—with an initially fluffy tan head that lingers decently with a thick ring and some small islands in the middle. While the beer doesn’t quite have legs, it is thick enough that the carbonation moves slowly through the beer on the way back to the surface—the effect is pleasant to watch. The nose is certainly Belgian; besides the Belgian juicy floral yeast character, it reveals hints of brown sugar, maple, caramel, and what I am going to assume is sweet luscious yamminess. There is a touch of spice in the background, but only minimally. The delicate blend found in the nose disappears in the body, however, and the spices attack the palate once the beer touches the lips. And we get all of them: cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, mace, and clove. They may not need pumpkin, but they certainly got the spice. Some of the yam makes it through in the front, along with a sweet breadiness, but mixed with the spices, it strikes me as more fruitcake than breadiness. It is not until the middle that some of the maple and brown sugar flavors break through the spice blockade, and the subtle yeast character peeks out from behind everything else as well. The spice returns a bit in the finish—well, it never really fully leaves—along with a fair amount of caramel sweetness and even more alcohol warmth and heat. As the beer warms, the finish gets sticky, and even a bit cloying on the palate, and there is a fair amount of lingering harsh alcohol on the back of the throat. Overall, Autumn Maple comes across as uneven and out of balance. I was told it would get better with age (this is from August 2010), but this bottle tastes like it need more than another year or so in the basement. As well, I’m not sure that the spice flavors will ever drop enough to allow the other delicate and more interesting flavors lurking in the nose and the middle to shine on their own—I think this would be a far better and more interesting beer without them. But maybe it is partially my fault—I know I don’t like pumpkin beers, and I did foolishly imagine that trading yams for pumpkin would somehow make this a different beer. But it didn’t. I even saw the spices listed on the label, so I should have known. But I was seduced by that Bruery label. I was. So, if you like pumpkin beers, you’ll probably love this. As for me, I think I’m gonna officially swear off pumpkin beers for good. Except for Jolly Pumpkin’s La Parcela No. 1. Because sour trumps spice any day of the week.

From the Bruery website: “Brewed with 17 lbs. of yams per barrel (in other words, a lot of yams!), this autumn seasonal is a different take on the ‘pumpkin’ beer style. Brewed with cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, vanilla, molasses, and maple syrup, and fermented with our traditional Belgian yeast strain, this bold and spicy beer is perfect on a cold autumn evening.”

ABV: 10%
IBU: 25
SRM: 15
Release: Fall

(4/20/2011)

371. Hitachino Real Ginger Brew

“Their beers are good as soon as you accept they’re not gonna be what you want them to be.”

This is our first beer from Kiuchi Brewery in Ibaraki, Japan. We tried it mainly because of our love of a good ginger beer—Mount Island Desert Ginger from Atlantic Brewing Company is still the benchmark here, although I still miss the old label, which was so much cooler.

Real Ginger pours a clear caramel with an ivory tan head. The nose has a sweet candy caramel malt aroma coupled with some spicy ginger coupled. Flavors open with soft caramel and a bit of toffee before moving into a clean creamy middle with more sweetness and some herbal ginger flavors. The finish starts sweet, but dries out quickly, and has a slighty chalky or minerally characteristic and has a bit of a spicy ginger bite. Real Ginger has a medium body with a soft, creamy, and bready mouthfeel. The carbonation is medium, but there is not much of a presence across the profile. There is also a bit of an herbal spicy tang on the back of the throat as well, which corresponds to the spicy, dry bite in the finish. Real Ginger is a well-made, interesting beer; it’s the first Top 1o Best contender of the new year.

From the bottle: “Fresh ginger roots added to the brewkettle create an intriguing balance of ginger-spicy, sweet-malty and hop-dry flavors and aromas.”

From the Hitachino website (I think this is the most succint description from a brewery’s website that we’ve ever seen): “This Ginger Ale is brewed using fresh fragrant raw ginger.”

ABV: 7.0%
Malt: Marris Otter, Munich, Crystal, & Chocolate
Hops: Chinook, Perle, & Styrian Golding
IBU: 18
Specialty: Ginger

(7/6/2010)

303. New Holland El Mole Ocho

This marks our third or fourth beer from New Holland, depending on how you want to count ’em; we’ve previously had Dragon’s Milk and Golden Cap Saison, and I also had Envious as a bonus beer (which is kinda like a bonus beat, except that it is drinkable rather than toe tappin’). El Mole Ocho is another beer from New Holland’s High Gravity Series.

Pouring a crystal clear burnt sienna, El Mole Ocho has luscious ruby red highlights that shine through the glass onto the table. The nose is chocolate and dark fruit—most distinctly cherry—and some Bazooka Joe bubblegum aromas that bring up the rear. El Mole Ocho opens with sweet maltiness followed by chocolate; the middle has dark fruit flavor—again, mostly cherry, like with the nose, as well as a bit of chili bite. The finish is chalky with cocoa and a decent lingering burn, specifically in the back of the throat. There is none of the coffee flavor described on the label that we can discern. El Mole Ocho has a medium to heavy body with a good amount of warmth, mostly from the dried chilies, and there is a bit of chewy stickiness to the mouthfeel. The warmth starts mostly in the middle, and runs through into the end, lingering in the back of the throat. This beer is good, but not so much what we expected—we were hoping for more rich chocolate, coffee, and chile spiciness, and we didn’t anticipate the large amount of dark fruit flavors. Probably the best description of this beer is that it is good, and we would happily drink it again, but not if we wanted a dark chocolate and chile beer.

From the bottle: “Our exploration into the flavors of mole, the legendary sauce of central Mexico. Malty aroma and rich, cocoa-laden laced with an invigorating tinge of dried chilies and coffee. Pairings of poultry, red meat, dark chocolate.”

The New Holland website says pretty much the exact same thing...

ABV: 8.0%
OG: 22° P

(4/29/2010)

196. Dogfish Head Theobroma

Yep. Another beer from Dogfish Head. This makes our sixth: we’ve had 120 Minute IPA, Festina Peche, Squall IPA, Burton Baton Oak Aged Imperial IPA, and Sah’tea. So, backstory. In graduate school at SUNY Buffalo, I had to read the Popol Vuh for one of Dennis Tedlock’s classes. And yes, Adam, you still better have your copy of that sitting on the bookshelf. So while we’re reading it, Tedlock tells us a story one day in class in his monotone voice that’s a half-register above the air-conditioner about how the Maya used to drink this alcoholic hallucinogenic chocolate beer out of a calabash, which represented the skull of their slain opponents. Damn. Hardcore. My first thought upon hearing this story: I need to get me some of that. Fast forward to the present, and I read about Dogfish Head’s Theobroma. While I did have momentary pangs about the lack of hallucinogens, the flashback to my dreams from grad school made it all worthwhile.

Theobroma has a candied fruit sweet nose; it is a very clear tan with a strong red undertone and has a light white head. In terms of flavor, Theobroma starts with low levels of dry malt before moving into some light fruitiness (mostly cherry-like) and some alkaline cocoa flavors, ending with a return of the sweetness that lingers too long on the palate. It is soft and dry in the mouth, and, somewhat paradoxically, has some cloying stickiness in the mouthfeel. There is medium carbonation, but very little bite to it, and the heat that does appear in the back of the throat from the ancho chilies is very much in the background and takes some time to accumulate. This bottle was sort of a letdown—last time we had this (on tap at the Trolley Stop) it was much spicier and had more of a chocolate flavor in the body with a lot less fruitiness. We’re not sure what happened between that last batch and this, but we liked the previous one much better.

From the bottle: “Theobroma, or ‘Food of the Gods,’ is a re-creation of the premier chocolate beverage of the Americas, intended only for the gods, kings, and the elite. This liquid time capsule is based is based on the earliest chemical and archeological evidence of cacao in the New World, dating to before 1100 B.C., and enhanced by natural additives of the later Mayan and Aztec drinks.”

Stolen from the New Yorker

From the Dogfish Head website: “This beer is based on chemical analysis of pottery fragments found in Honduras which revealed the earliest known alcoholic chocolate drink used by early civilizations to toast special occasions. The discovery of this beverage pushed back the earliest use of cocoa for human consumption more than 500 years to 1200 BC. As per the analysis, Dogfish Head’s Theobroma (translated into ‘food of the gods’) is brewed with Aztec cocoa powder and cocoa nibs (from our friends at Askinosie Chocolate), honey, chilies, and annatto (fragrant tree seeds). It’s light in color - not what you expect with your typical chocolate beer. Not that you’d be surpised that we’d do something unexpected with this beer! This beer is part of our Ancient Ales series - along with Midas Touch, Chateau Jiahu, and other - step back in time and enjoy some Theobroma.”

ABV: 9%

(1/12/2010)

166. Rogue Chipotle Ale

Once this Rogue train a-here starts rollin’, ain’t no tellin’ when it’s gonna stop. This is our fifth beer from Rogue. Our previous roll call includes: First Growth Wet Hop Ale, Juniper Pale Ale, Maierfest and Capt’n Sig’s Northwestern Ale.

Chipotle Ale has a malty and bready nose with a little smokiness; the reddish copper color and tan creamy head create a nice visual combination, and there is a decent amount of lacing on the glass. Flavors start with a sweet bready malt, moving into a smoky bitter middle—we’re guessing the smokiness is from the chipotles—with a little vegetal flavor, and finishing with a deep smokiness and slight heat bite and burn from the peppers. Chipotle Ale has a medium to light body with a moderate carbonation bite and some lingering low level burn on the palate. The smokiness of the chipotles makes this reminiscent of a rauchbier, which is a very nice touch to build and balance out the spice and heat of the peppers. The malt profile is quite enjoyable: sweet, smoky, and well balanced. The vegetal touch in the middle is a slight downside, but overall Chipotle Ale is an excellent and well crafted beer.

From the Rogue website: “Roasted chipotle peppers produce an eye opening chile flavor in this deep golden ale with a malty, smoky aroma and smooth, crisp flavor. Dedicated to Spanish author Juan de la Cueva, who, in 1575, wrote of a Mexican dish that combined seedless chipotles with beer: Chipotle Ale is based on Rogue’s American Amber Ale, but delicately spiced with smoked chipotle chile peppers. Blend it with Rogue Chocolate Stout and create a Mole black and tan!”

OG: 12° P
IBU: 35
Malts: Harrington, Klages, & Maier Munich
Hops: Cascade & Willamette
Specialty: Chipotle Peppers

(12/13/2009)