Dark Truth Stout

Brewer: Boulevard Brewing Co.

Style: Imperial Stout

ABV: 9.7%

IBU: 60

Serving type: 12 oz. bottle poured into a snifter

Pours espresso dark with a finger of dark brown head that clings to the glass. Aroma is subdued at first, but strengthens as the glass empties and warms. Smells like dark roasted coffee and dark chocolate. Some roasted malt is also present.

Taste is also intensly roasted and toasted with semi-sweet chocolate. A touch smokey. Maybe some dried dark fruit. The chocolate turns milky by the end of the glass. Mouthfeel is very creamy, light in carbonation. A nice, heavy body. There's no burn of alcohol in the taste, but a noticeable, pleasent warmth in the chest and stomach.

This is a great entry from Boulevard's Smokestack Series. A definite sipper with a pleasent warmth to remind you of what you're drinking. I drizzled a few teaspoons of this over a slice of chocolate cake that had gone a little dry, and it did wonders for it.

My score: 5/5

Beer Advoacte: B+
Rate Beer: 97/100

Pintley: 3.9/5

The Poet Oatmeal Stout

Brewer: New Holland Brewing

Style: Oatmeal Stout

ABV: 5.2%
IBU:

Serving Type: 12 oz. bottle poured into an English pub glass

Dark brown with a finger of light brown head. Just a few hints of ruby highlighting with a bright light behind. An aroma like lightly roasted coffee with tons of cream, and a side of instant oatmeal.

Taste follows the nose with notes of coffee and toasted and roasted malts. A touch of bitter chocolate. Mouthfeel is medium-heavy, but not too heavy, and oh so creamy. Decent carbonation.

This is one of my go-to beers. Great flavors, not too heavy, and light enough in alcohol to drink a pair.

My score: 5/5

Beer Advocate: B+

Rate Beer: 94

Pintley: 3.7/5

Citra Pale Ale: Brew Day

MoreBeer.com had their recipe kits on sale a few weeks back and I grabbed a few, thinking it would be a good way to get back into my favorite hobby after a months long lapse. Today I brewed the Citra Pale Ale all grain kit.

The grain bill was 2-row pale base malt, plus some light crystal, cara-pils, and white wheat malt. Add to that a little Magnum hops for bittering, plus tons of Citra for flavor, aroma, and dry hopping. Given that I'm not really looking for yeast character with a beer like this, I opted for a simple dry yeast, Safale US-05.

The brew day started out slow. When I went to HyVee for water, I dropped into their liquor store for curiosity's sake, trying to find a bottle of this year's Utopias. Turns out Andrew, the Assistant Manager there, had purchased their only bottle for himself about a week earlier. He was a great guy though, and admitted that this made him feel like "kind of a dick."

That said, he called around and managed to track down a bottle for me at Broadway Liquors in Pekin. So off we went for a $200 bottle of beer. And now I have one of only 4 or 5 bottles of Utopias seen in Peoria in 2011. Totally worth a delay in brew day.

But I digress. Back to the brew. I targeted a single infusion mash temperature of 152°, using a calculator on my phone to figure the temperature of the strike water. In spite of my calculations, the mash seemed to settle around 160° by 10 minutes after mash-in. I tossed in a handful of ice cubes to try and bring it down, which seemed to work at first, but I soon found myself with a mash temp of 148°. Rather than play with it further, I decided to just roll with it and increase my mash time to a full 90 minutes. This will probably make my wort more fermentable and give me a drier finish on the final beer. We'll see.

Second fiasco came with an empty propane tank just after sparging. Not a big deal, just another delay. It really couldn't have come a better time in the process. If I'd already had a boil rolling with hops, the whole flavor profile could have been thrown off. But the beer made it into the fermenter, and the fermenter made it into the fridge (this is also the inaugural brew for my temp-controlled fridge turned fermentation chamber), so it was a good day.

Trappistes Rochefort 10

Brewer: Brasserie de Rochefort

Style: Quadrupel

ABV: 11.3%

IBU:
Serving Type: 33 cL bottle poured into a brandy snifter

I had one of these gems a few months ago at the Fly Saucer in Kansas City and loved it. When I saw it at Hyvee of all places, I knew I needed another taste.

The beer pours a thick, deep mahogany with no highlighting. The tan head quickly fades to null. The aroma is very faint at first, but strengthens as the beer warms. Plum, raisin, and fig are are at the forefront, but there's a whole fruit basket to be found here. A hint of Jolly Rancher.

Dark fruit comes through in the taste just as well as the nose. There are also notes of dark candy sugar and just a hint of peppery spice. This is an incredibly complex beer. It's velvety smooth with just the right amount of carbonation. Slightly dry on the finish.

This is an amazing beer. Easily my favorite quad and one of my top beers, period.

My score: 5/5

Beer Advocate: A

Rate Beer: 100

Pintley: 4.5/5

Yorkshire Stingo

Brewer: Samuel Smith's Old Brewery

Style: English strong ale

ABV: 9.0%

IBU:

Serving Type: 550 mL bottle poured into a tulip glass

I wasn't familiar with this beer, but picked it up on a whim. The bottle proclaims that the beer has been aged for "over a year" in oak barrels, some of which "date back more than a century". There's a lot about the barrels, but very little on the beer residing within. I was actually expecting a stout or something and was surprised by a English strong ale.

The beer pours a dark, muddy copper with some ruby highlights. There's a finger of off white/light tan head that fades to a thin film. Some of the muddy/cloudiness is probably my fault for disturbing some of the yeast sediment. The aroma is lovely and strong. Dark fruit up front, plum and raisin; with fresh baked banana bread behind.

The dark fruit flavors come through in the taste, though somehow not as strongly as in the aroma. There's a good amount of caramel malt and earthy hop flavor there to balance. No alcohol warmth. I would call the body medium to heavy, but very smooth; it clings to the glass like a wine. The carbonation is pretty high, but not over the top.

I split a 550 mL (lousy Brits) probably 70/30 with my wife and was able to knock back my... 13 oz. or so pretty quick, so this is a nice, easy drinker. As the carbonation dies down and the glass warms up, it feels less like a beer and more like a nice brandy. A very nice surprise with this beer.

My score: 4/5

Beer Advocate: A-

Rate Beer: 96

Pintley:

Concerning Light Beer

Beer is many things to many people. It makes sense, therefore, that we see beer in such a dizzying myriad of styles. Among these styles, arguably the most popular worldwide, is the American Light Lager. Born out of a post-prohibition fear of alcohol-heavy beers, and transformed over the years into a commodity designed to have the broadest possible appeal among consumers. "Broadest appeal" means "least offensive flavor with the greatest number of people".

People are finicky. Every person has a unique palate with unique tastes. What you may find delicious, another may find repulsive. Thus, "least offensive flavor" quickly becomes "least flavor". Marketing of the macro breweries will try and tell you otherwise, but these beers are nonetheless designed to be muted in any and all ways that could possible be perceived as the least bit displeasing by anyone, anywhere, ever.

A side effect of this muting of flavor is a lower caloric content than more flavorful beers. The natural direction to market them as "diet" beers. The diet beer craze peaked a few years ago with the release of Miller Genuine Draft 64 and Bud Select 55, with 64 and 55 calories, respectively. Now, your average Bud Light and Miller Lite are already so light in color, flavor, and body, it got me wondering just where that calorie reduction came from. With all the other caloric contributors to beer stripped down to nothing, the only thing left to take away is alcohol.

Alcohol is a chemical compound with known, immutable chemical properties. The ultralight beers are commercial products with a known number of calories and percentage alcohol. Thus, it is relatively trivial to figure out how much of that calorie reduction is simply from cutting the percent ABV.

Pure alcohol contains 7 calories per gram. Alcohol has a density of 0.789 g/cc. A 12 ounce bottle is 355 cc's. 7 * 0.789 * 355 = 1961. Multiply that number by the ABV, and you've got your calories from alcohol from a given 12 ounce beer.

Let's look at the Bud family.

Budweiser has 145 calories and 5% ABV. That's 98 alcohol calories, and 47 of what I'll call "flavor" calories. This is the baseline. Bud Light has 110 calories, a 35 calorie reduction and 4.2% ABV; 82 alcohol calories, 28 flavor calories. So, of that 35 calorie reduction, 16 came from cutting the alcohol back, the remainder lightening the flavor.

Bud Select is lighter still, at 99 calories but curiously, 4.3% alcohol; slightly higher than Bud Light. 84 alcohol calories, and a mere 15 flavor calories. Bud Select 55 contains the titular 55 calories and a mere 2.4% alcohol. 47 alcohol calories, and 8 from flavor. So, in cutting 44 calories from Bud Select, 37 came from the reduction in alcohol.

This is a lot of numbers to just throw out there, so let me try and sum it up. The calorie drop in an ultra light beer is primarily the result of lowering the alcohol content. You may as well just drink two normal beers.

This whole thing is just an exercise in curiosity anyway. You won't find me drinking any product of AB-InBev, or MillerCoors. If you do the same thing with a good beer, say, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (175 cal, 4.6% ABV), you get 90 alcohol calories and 85 flavor calories. Going for something a little heavier, Sam Adams Cream Stout (195 cal, 4.7% ABV) has 92 alcohol calories and 103 flavor.

Now, there's a lot in those extra calories. Sugars, proteins, enzymes, etc. They're not all going to contribute "flavor". But when you leave yourself just 8 calories, you can't do a whole lot. You can make up a Bud Select 55 "cocktail" by adding a third of a shot of vodka and half a teaspoon of sugar to a glass of water. It'll probably taste about the same, too.

Cowboy Coffee Porter

Brewer: Big Sky Brewing Co.

Style: Robust Porter

ABV: 6.4%

IBU: 32

Serving Type: 12oz. bottle poured into an English pub glass.

Beer is a very dark brown, with little to no highlights, but not quite black. A coarse, brown head is quick to form and fades to a thin film. There is a rich aroma of coffee and chocolate, with a hint of smoke.

Tastes of black coffee and roasted malts. Smokiness is still present, though less so than on the nose. No hop flavor, and the bitterness is well hidden by the coffee and malt. Really, comes off more as a slight astringency from a dark roasted coffee. Beer is well carbonated, and light to medium in body. A very easy drinker, flavors are intense but don't linger.

My score: 4/5

Beer Advocate: B

Rate Beer: 93/100

Pintley:

Big Sky opened in 1995 in Missoula, Montana. Last year, they brewed beer in the neighborhood of 40,000 barrels, easily making them the largest brewery in Montana.

Destihl Restaurant and Brew Works

Destihl is a self described gastrobrewery opened 2007 in Normal, IL. I've only known them to serve excellent food and beer (all brewed on site). My most recent visit was April 23, when my wife, son and I were in Bloomington for Easter.

Beers come in 4, 12, and 16 oz. sizes. I opted for a 12 oz. of the current cask ale, their Jacob's Ladder American Brown, plus a number of 4 oz. samples. Keep in mind that the beers here are in order of consumption; my senses were probably getting strained by the end, not to mention the effects of alcohol.

Von Linne Apricot Wheat--A super tart beer. Very little to no malt or hop flavor, but tons of apricot. Almost less a beer than a very light, slightly carbonated, apricot liqueur.

Jacob's Ladder American Brown--Had this one on cask. Pine and earthy hop notes up front, with caramel malt behind. Light in carbonation and super smooth.

St. Dekkera Single Barrle Reserve--This was actually my first taste of a sour ale. It hardly seemed like beer at all. Very sour, no carbonation. There is a little malt there to balance the sour, but it's definitely in the background. And then there's this savory, almost cheesy note that comes through under the tongue. Very intriguing. Can't say I'm a true believer in sour ale, but this makes me curious for more.

Antiquity Rye Wine--This one is super peppery on the nose and palate; hard to believe that's all from the rye and not straight up black pepper. Otherwise, a fine barleywine.

Cerise Stout Imperial--The server brought me a little sample of this one after I opted for the first sour ale. A sour stout with cherries. There's an aroma of hot tub water. The super tart cherry flavor comes through with the sour. It has the smoothness of a stout.

Bamberger Rauchbier--Lighter (in color) than I was expecting. Very smokey. This was the last beer of the night and it was hard to get much out of it besides the smoke.

Glissade

Brewer: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

Style: Maibock/Helles Bock

ABV: 6.4%

IBU: 42

Servig type: 12oz bottle poured into English pub glass

From the brewer:

As winter begins its slide toward the sunny days of spring, we bring you Glissade Golden Bock to help you enjoy the ride. Glissade is a remarkably mellow take on the traditional spring bock.

With restrained sweetness, we emphasize subtle malt flavor, balanced against delicate aromas of spicy and floral European hops. This complex balance helps Glissade slide across the palate—bracing us against the last cold nights of winter, while its bright golden color turns our thoughts toward spring.

Glissade pours bright gold with a touch of amber and a thin layer of white head. A constant stream of fine bubbles fill the glass. Aroma is yeasty and slightly citrusy/spicy.

Malt profile is bold, with notes of biscuit, honey, and crystal coming through. Not a ton of hop flavor. Bitterness does come through in the end, though less than I expect from the 42 IBU. There is a slight alcohol warmth there, which I wasn't looking for from 6.4%. Fairly high in carbonation. Good, clean finish.

I feel like the malt profile overpowers the hops a little, at least given the brewer's description. Overall a good, malty beer that still comes through clean and drinkable.

My Score: 3/5

Beer Advocate: B

Rate Beer: 71/100

Pintley: 3.2/5