What's Bob Drinking Now? And B.R., Too?!

No, I don't have a shaved head.

While shopping at New Beer for some nice Thanksgiving Day beers to sip while B.R. chefs it up in the kitchen, I noticed one that I had never seen before -- Anchor Steam's Brekle's Brown.

It's described as a 6% avb all malt, single hop (Citra) brown ale. I believe that it's a limited edition release, in honor of Anchor's and San Francisco's long brewing history. Well, long for North America, at least. Apparently in 1871 brewmaster Gottlieb Brekle was the first brewer of what would later become Anchor.

Anyway, I figured that it might make a pre-Thanksgiving Day drink! (We saved the Abbot 12 and the St. Botolph's Town that I picked up for the actual holiday!)

It's an ear ring.

There's a rich roasty brown maltiness throughout, but without any acrid bitterness. You can pick up a slight tang amid a touch of malt sweetness. There's ample hop bitterness, too, particularly evident in the finish, which also leaves you with a little lingering malt reminder in the aftertaste.


If it were lower in alcohol, it would make for a really nice session brown. But who's gunna complain about that -- you just drink more slowly!

What's Bob Drinking Now?

This is a new feature that we're trying out. Maybe we can get a "What's B.R. Drinking Now?" version created, too!

So, for a long, long time, Smuttynose Star Island Single would be the beer you'd see on this page. And it still does show up in the fridge on a regular basis.


But right now it's the Southampton Abbot 12 that I can't get enough of! After cleaning out the shelves at Good Beer, I took two off of the shelves at New Beer tonight (and sampled the Mikkeller Elliot Brew, a collaboration with Struise of Belgium, which was on tap tonight).

The Abbot 12 won a Gold Medal at the 2005 Great American Beer Festival and is described by the brewery as: "A strong, dark ale with notes of raisins, figs, and caramel, and a pronounced “dark rum” character. Deceptively smooth at 10.5% alcohol, this strong ale is ideal as an after-dinner sipping brew."

This bottle listed a 9.9% abv with an original gravity of 22.5 plato, and poured out with a generous lingering tan head. The dark aged fruit aromas wafted up and brought to mind rich brown malts, mixing with some background yeast spiciness. The flavor was candi-sugar sweet, with the slightest hint of cocoa/dark chocolate, a little alcohol as it warmed brought to mind rum, sweetly blanketing the mouth with its rich, thick body. This beer reminds me of Westvleteren, and that's not a comparison made often, if at all.

This beer is the perfect accompaniment to a crisp, cool fall evening, sipped slowly along with a snack of nutty, sharp, aged Holland gouda. I think that I'm going to need a case of this beer to survive the coming winter.