Dieu Du Ciel At Spuyten Duyvil

The Wallonade Belgian blonde and the Symbiose 4 sour.

[link to podcast page]
Dieu Du Ciel At Spuyten Duyvil podcast

For the past few years NYC has been the very lucky, and unique, beneficiary of a tap take-over by Montréal's Dieu Du Ciel brewery. Usually DDC invades the Blind Tiger sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, though it wasn't possible this past fall. So, they made up for it by coming in April, with some 22 different beers! Six of them were exclusively featured at Spuyten Duyvil.

The brewery began in September of 1998 with a modest, but busy, 4-barrel brewpub in the Mile End neighborhood of Montréal (kind of like their Brooklyn?), but the success of and demand for their beers created the need for more capacity. So, in the fall of 2007 a 20-barrel production facility was built in St-Jerôme, about 30 minutes up the highway from the city, in the foothills of the Laurentian Mountains. There, their flagship beers are brewed, bottled and kegged for domestic distribution and export.

We met up with co-founders Stephan Ostiguy and Jean-François Gravel at Spuyten, where they told us that, while it's nearly impossible to find such a wide array of their beers on tap anywhere outside of their brewpub on Laurier and St-Laurent, it's completely commonplace to find 18 different beers pouring at the brewpub on any given day.

While that may be true, we've never seen so many of their rare and special beers up at once at the brewpub. Purgatoire old-style porter aged in red wine barrels, a collaboration with Trou du Diable (10.2%), Péché Mortel Bourbon aged in bourbon barrels (9.5%), Equinoxe du Printemps cask scotch ale with maple syrup (8%), Symbiose 4 sour beer aged in oak barrels (6%) -- ALL at once? You best travel to NYC if you want that experience!

They explained that it's a huge benefit to the microbrewery to have the brewpub to test out new beers or tweak old recipes. Aside from it being easier to experiment on the smaller system, they can immediately gauge public reaction to the beers through the brewpub patrons. The smaller brewpub system also allows them to create very challenging, unique and unusual beers, if they choose, without having to sacrifice resources and tank space.

The Dieu Du Ciel brewpub is a certified beer geek travel destination. And it's great to have some of their beers available in places like New Beer and the Whole Foods Beer Store in New York. But it's also nice to know that once a year, Dieu blesses us by descending from the heavens to baptize us with some of their choicest creations that they save up all year long, with which to sanctify the New York faithful!

Dieu Du Ciel Visits 508 Gastrobrewery

Dieu Du Ciel has planned a busy visit to NYC this week, starting with a Canadiens game in Newark last night (which could have ended more satisfyingly), directly followed by making an impromptu visit to Chris Cuzme at 508 GastroBrewery, where he was serving up his Hamber (smoked amber), a deliciously sour Berliner Weisse, a tasty gentle Wit, and a hearty Black IPA.

Berliner Weisse, Dark IPA, and on the far right, Wit.

On the official DDC itinerary:

Wednesday, April 24, 2013, Blind Tiger:
  • Grande Noirceur - imperial stout, 9%
  • Fortunella - kumquat ipa, 7.2% 
  • Pionnière - imperial black ipa, 9.5%
  • Chaman - imperial pale ale, 9%
  • Basse Messe - kölsch, 5%
  • Péché Mortel - imperial coffee stout, 9.5%
  • Péché Mortel Bourbon - aged in bourbon barrels, 9.5%
  • Solstice d'Hiver - barleywine, 10.2% 
  • Neuvaine - amber ale brewed with and wormwood and fennel, 8%
  • Pénombre - black ipa, 6.5%  
  • Mea Culpa - india cream ale, 6%
  • Purgatoire - porter aged in red wine barrels; collaboration w/ Trou du Diable, 10.2%
  • Isseki Nicho - imperial dark saison, 9.5%
  • Cornemuse - scotch ale, 8%
  • Equinoxe du Printemps cask - scotch ale with maple syrup, 8%
  • Grande Noirceur cask

Thursday April 25, 2013, Spuyten Duyvil:
  • Morality - American-style IPA, 7.2%  
  • Péché Mortel 11th Anniversary - imperial coffee stout brewed with special coffees, 9.5%  
  • Symbiose 4 - sour beer aged in oak barrels, 6%  
  • Solstice d'Hiver Bourbon - barleywine aged in bourbon barrels, 10.2%  
  • Revenante - smoked porter, 6%
  • Wallonade - Belgian blonde, 4.2%

Those are two very impressive lists of beers! You won't even find such an amazing tap list of Dieu Du Ciel beers in Montréal -- don't miss this very special opportunity!

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!

Péché Mortel And 3 Beans

[link to podcast page]
WFMU's Beer Hear! Péché Mortel And 3 Beans Podcast

Not long ago we discovered the Sixpoint 3 Beans beer -- a 10% oak-aged Baltic Porter, with some very special ingredients -- on the shelves of the local shops selling good beer. We were instantly intrigued and quickly addicted to the rich maltiness, alluring coco qualities and dense full body of this big beer in a slender can -- a can not too unlike a can of premium iced coffee.

After enjoying this rich, malty treat, I got to thinking, "I've had something like this before!" I was sure that 3 Beans was echoing another obsession. But what? Then it hit me -- Péché Mortel.

I was certain that Brooklyn's magnificent 3 Beans Baltic Porter had more than a little in common with Montréal's Dieu Du Ciel Péché Mortel. It turns out that there are significant similarities and significant differences. They're close in alcohol percentage (Péché is 9.5%, 3 Beans 10%), they both use coffee (DDC uses Fair Trade beans in copious amounts making it a noticeably stimulating intoxicant, and SP uses Stumptown roasters java). One thing that sets them apart is that 3 Beans use of cacao husks, provided by Brooklyn's Mast Brothers Chocolate, in the mash to impart a dry, dark chocolate flavor and aroma. Also unique to 3 Beans: the third bean in the mix, romano beans, adds more to the fermentables and helps provide fuller body. But it would take a side-by-side tasting to properly evaluate these two coffee brews.
 
Listen to the podcast to see what we discovered about the taste similarities and differences of these two champions of darkness and malt. And, by the way, if you see either of these beers on the shelf -- buy them! Drink them! Or hold on to them. If none of the above... sell them to me!