Bruery Smoking Wood

[link to podcast page]
WFMU's Beer Hear! with Bob W. and B.R. from 12/27/2012

A few days before Christmas while at the local good beer shop, I noticed a case of Brooklyn Brewery's Black Ops in 750ml bottles on the floor by the check out. I asked how much they were going for, and was told something like $20. Hmmm... that's a lot for a bottle of beer from across the river. Though a few days later, when shopping for some special brews to enjoy on Christmas day I ended up dropping $28 on bottle of the same size. At least that bottle had to travel from Orange County, CA!

The 2011 label.

The Bruery's Smoking Wood is a 13% abv imperial smoked porter. They describe it thusly:
"Brewed with beachwood and cherrywood smoked malt, and aged in rye whiskey barrels, Smoking Wood is a delicious demonstration of what wood has to offer when it comes to beer. This imperial smoked porter is brewed with a hefty amount of rye malt, contributing to a full body and light spiciness. Toasty oak, caramel and vanilla flavors balance the smokiness, contributing to an intense yet refined flavor profile"

 

Smoking Wood is an incredibly well put together beer, that has a smoked quality so subtle that it's hard to detect in the aroma, yet gently discernible on first taste, melding with the roasty malty chocolate flavors. It's robust malt flavor profile easily masks the whopping 13% alcohol strength. Hear all the details in this week's podcast!

Final Pumpkin Podcast!

[link to podcast page]
WFMU's Beer Hear! with Bob W. and B.R. from 11/8/2012

Our third and final Pumpkin Podcast Panel was recorded in two parts. The first part was recorded on the evening of Oct. 29, shortly after we lost power and heat, thanks to Hurricane Sandy. With our battery powered recorder, an emergency LED light and some candles, we tried Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale and La Citrueille Céleste de Citracado (The Heavenly Pumpkin of Citricado), a "collabeeration" between Stone, The Bruery and Elysian.

 

Smuttynose was one of the most "beerlike" pumpkin beers out of all 11 pumpkin beers we tried, with discernible hop characteristics. Smutty's fell close in line to the standard pumpkin pie spice flavors that defined versions by Bluepoint, Post Road, Wolavers, and Captain Lawrence, though they all had their distinctions.
 
La Citrueille, a 5% abv ale, was one of the more non-standard pumpkin beers, with one of the more esoteric list of ingredients: yams, sugar pumpkins, fenugreek, lemon verbena, rye malt (both regular and dark), brown and honey malts, C-15 dextrine malt, birch bark in the whirlpool, New Zealand Motueka hops. It was earthy and a bit herbal, and intentionally far from the pumpkin pie spice characteristics of other pumpkin beers.

In the second part, long after both electricity and heat were restored to our home, we finished the panel with three outstanding beers. We started with the Midnight Sun T.R.E.A.T. (The Royal Eccentric Ale Treatment) which wasn't very big on the pumpkin pie flavors, but was rich, dark, heavy, complex and delicious. It's billed as a 7.8% Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter. This one's going to end up in the fridge again!

Then, a favorite of mine and a non-favorite of B.R.'s, the Southern Tier Pumpking! This 8.6% seasonal Imperial Pumpkin Ale is a sweet, almost buttery/creamy, gingerbready desert of a beer. It is the quintessential pumpkin pie beer. It's pretty much a love it or hate it kind of beer. And while it's not what I'd reach for on a hot summer afternoon, I'm happy to drink it from October through November!

We finished up with a beer from a brewery which you might assume makes nothing but pumpkin beer -- Jolly Pumpkin. Out of the 15 beers they list on their website, only one, La Parcela, is made with pumpkin. Jolly Pumpkin is known for their sour beers, using open fermentation, oak aging and bottle conditioning. La Parcela, which we had from a growler filled at Good Beer, definitely had sourness. But it was a mild sourness, mild spiciness, complimented by earthiness and bitterness -- delicate and complex. This was the lightest bodied beer in the entire panel, and probably the most refreshing.

Hey! An actual pumpkin beer from Jolly Pumpkin!

Out of the entire panel, the La Parcela, Carton, La Citrueille, Oak Jacked Imperial, and Treat were the most "un-pumpkin" pumpkin beers. Smuttynose edged away from the pack with it's unique hop bitterness. For the beers that aimed towards pumpkin pie, Pumpking was a stand out. It was interesting to see how some angled towards nutmeg flavors, others towards cinnamon, and yet others steered away from standard pie spice all together. The variety of the beers -- in color, from pale yellow to near opaque, in ABV, from 5% to 10.31% -- demonstrated that there's a wide range in everything when it comes to pumpkin beer!

Weathering the storm.

La Citrueille.

Sour Beers At Jimmy's No. 43

WFMU's Beer Hear! with Bob W. and B.R. from 8/18/2011

Every Tuesday at about 7:30pm JIMMY'S NO. 43 hosts a beer tasting with a different theme or angle each week. It's only $10 and usually includes roughly 5 to 7 different beers. The tastings are organized and lead by Mike of UNION BEER, a local distributor of craft beer.

This past Tuesday, the theme was SOUR BEERS. While B.R. was busy judging a homebrew contest at the Heartland Brewery, I dropped by to find some regular non-beer-industry folks to talk to and see what they thought of sour beer.

Now, in general "sour" is not how beer is supposed to taste, and when most beers become sour, it's considered one of the worst possible flaws. It typically means that the beer has been contaminated by bacteria. But there are a handful of styles that, in fact, are supposed to be sour, and they achieve sourness by intentionally allowing certain bacteria strains to interact with the beer.

The beers featured were:

Jolly Pumpkin Weizen Bam (on draft)

The Bruery Saison De Lente

Orval

Jolly Pumpkin La Roja

Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza

Cantillon Pure Kriek

 Instead of talking to some expert about the beers, we thought that it would be cool to talk to some non-industry, non-beer judge people. One such person whom I had arranged in advance to talk to was WFMU's Liz Berg. Unfortunately, the the event sold out before Liz arrived, so she didn't make it in. But I recognized two people at the tasting from the street hockey league that B.R. and I play in -- Mike and Heather. So, after a little persuading, they became our guests!

 They were great to talk to, because they definitely were outside of the local inner beer scene, BUT they were not total novices when it came to craft brew. They're just getting started in homebrewing, they hit the occasional craft beer event here and there, and, most importantly, they love trying new and different styles of beer.

Our conversation about the sour beers that we sampled is part two of this week's two-part podcast. Part one, and interview with Kelly of Heartland and Kelso, is HERE.