Sixpoint 3 Beans Part Deux

[link to podcast page]
WFMU's Beer Hear! 3 Beans Part Deux Podcast

Last week B.R. and I did a side by side comparison of the Sixpoint 3 Beans Baltic Porter, made with Romano beans, coffee and cocao, and Montréal's Dieu Du Ciel Péché Mortel, a Coffee Imperial Stout. We found that both beers, while quite different in many ways, share a lot of characteristics.

As I continued to ponder the two beers it occurred to be that many of the characteristics that separated the them could be bridged by another DDC beer, the Aphrodisiaque, or as it's known in the U.S., the Aphrodite. As it turns out, the often irrational Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) thinks that you're so dumb that you'll think that a beer named "Aphrodisiaque" is an actual aphrodisiac (which it probably is, anyway!), so a name change was required. People in Canada are apparently much more sophisticated, and can differentiate a clever name from a literal description. But that's the subject for another post.

We invited our pal Paul from our MBAS homebrew club over to help us with an experiment to blend Péché Mortel with Aphrodite, a 6.5% Cocoa Vanilla Stout, to try to create a beverage that, as closely as possible, approximated the 3 Beans, for no good reason other than it would be fun and a good excuse to share some excellent beers.

The three of us would each try our hand at making the blend. We set out four glasses each, three for the three different beers and one for the blend -- a highball glass for the Péché, a small goblet for the Aphrodite, a wine glass for the 3 Beans and a large goblet for the blend.

Without discussing our techniques prior, we each had a different approach. I started with mixing a 50/50 blend, and found that the aroma was quite muddled, and the flavor favored the coffee bitterness of the Péché. B.R. went heavy on the Péché, while Paul went for a higher ratio of Aphrodite.

You can hear how the experiment unfolded, and how the different blends turned out in this week's podcast. In the end, though, we were left with three incredible beers and one very interesting blend -- and you can't lose with that situation!