Quick Sips: Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout

Aside from Sierra Nevada's classic Bigfoot,  there are few beers that have been an annual tradition in my life the way Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout has been. I don't even remember when I had my first. The late 1990s, maybe. I just remember it was INTENSE in a way beers had never been before.

I've been around the block a few times since then, but even so this remains an intense, complex, and utterly delicious beer.

First, take note: This beer is NOT made with chocolate! The "chocolate" in the name is all due to the roasted barley used in the beer. Once brewed, it takes on an amazing chocolate quality, but no real chocolate is present. The taste is just a miracle of the brewing process.

So anyway,  this amazing annual tradition, this big giant nearly 11% ABV stout that can last for years in your cupboard, how does it taste?

The nose is rich with dark malts and alcohol, with warm chocolate tones very, very faint beneath it. Smells boozy and sweet. And yeah, the taste follows through on the expectations. Big, fat dark malts with touches of chocolate throughout.

When it's fresh, you can taste the HELL out of the 10% ABV. A lot of modern American craft beers mask their alcohol content pretty well. Not Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout. When fresh, this beer tastes potent. Not a lot of roasty, coffee-like flavor here. Some dark chocolate, a lot of rich, black malt. and (when fresh) loads of booze.

But here's the thing: This beer ages well. It will keep wonderfully in your cupboard. In fact, having had this many times with six months, a year, or several years of age on it, I can say with experience that it only gets better with age. The alcohol mellows and the burn subsides. What comes out are rich chocolate tones, roasty cocoa, and more.

This beer is DELICIOUS. It's complex but young when fresh.  Buy a four-pack, but don't drink it until the NEXT year. You'll thank me for it. And buy the following year's four-pack while you do it!

Touring the Weyebacher brewery

I may be a beer geek, but to my great misfortune I don't tour a lot of breweries.

Part of that is because New Jersey just plain doesn't have many breweries to tour (though not a big complaint now thanks to Kane and Carton) and part of that (the bigger part) is that I like to build days around such tours, and those days involve BEER. The issue is that my region has awful public transportation options, and I prefer to play it safe whenever I can. Unlike, say, those in New York or San Diego or San Francisco, I have to get myself home but can't be expected to be helped along by buses or trains or taxis.

But when I got together with my co-host of the Year of Hitchcock podcast in the spring, we knew we were going to tour some breweries, have some craft beer, and do it all in the name of promoting our book on Alfred Hitchcock.

The weekend took a turn away from writing and a turn towards beer, however, thanks in part to Weyerbacher. How could we do any different in the wake of these amazing tanks?

Needless to say, we ended up doing very little promoting (read: zero), but plenty of beering. A quick glance through this blog will show you that I am a big supporter of Weyerbacher, so I shouldn't need to say more about whether or not I liked the tour.

But I will. How about, the people were super friendly the beer awesome, the location easy to get to, and the price of cases of limited edition beer at the time (thanks ENTIRELY to stupid Pennsylvania law) was so absurd they lost about $200 in business from my brief, visit? I hear the law has changed since then, so that's cool, but check in advance first. I loved how they'd keep pouring you samples of whatever beer they had, no matter how rare, as long as you asked. And if they didn't have it on tap, they'd open a bottle and pour it. Awesome!

Plus, check out their cool barrel-aging system:





It's not a lot compared to larger craft brewers like Firestone Walker, but when you yourself have only made a small number of beers in a whiskey barrel it sure is impressive.

Fun trip with some great people at the brewery. How could you NOT have a lot of fun going to a brewery that makes beers you love? Which is what makes me say, damn, why don't I do this more often?

And I should. If I'm to be a real beer geek, I should see where it is made more often (even if it is often made in my own home).

HOMEBREWING: Whiskey Barrel Imperial Stout

Last year, a friend and I put the whiskey barrel I bought to good use and brewed an imperial stout designed to be aged in said barrel. The recipe was, to say the least, intense. Easily the most expensive beer I have done to date, using a TON of specialty malts and in the end (thankfully) tasting comparable to Firestone Walker's Parabola, but here's the thing: It might also be the most delicious beer I've ever done. It's certainly the prettiest:

Looks wonderful, doesn't it? That's my co-brewer in the photo, and the beer is just a few weeks old (after a long primary and then secondary in the barrel). If you want the recipe, just ask. It's extract with specialty grains, so anyone can make it.

After the imperial stout, I did a honey porter in it, and the barrel currently contains a lambic, which will stay in the barrel for about a year or more. My plan is to blend small parts of that batch into future lambic and sour batches. (I currently have seven vessels with various sour beers, so the blending opportunities are endless!)

So here's the thing: Barrel-aging your beers is easy.

1) Buy a barrel! Just Google various phrases, there are TONS of sources. Spend between $70 and $120 (before shipping) for a 5-gallon barrel or you're getting ripped off.

2) Don't worry about cleaning it out. All that booze will keep it sterile. Just brew a big beer and put it in the barrel!

3) How long to age it? Keep the beer in it from two weeks to two years, depending on the beer. A weeks to two weeks is great for IPAs and Double IPAs, two to four weeks is ideal for traditional stouts and porters, four to eight weeks for barleywines and strong Belgian styles, and a month to two years for lambics.

4) Bottle, age, open, enjoy!

Yeah, seriously, it's that easy. I recommend bottling a few smaller sampler bottles so you can taste it over time -- barrel-aged beers tend to need some time to age into perfection, about six months to a year in my experience -- and going easy until it has aged into your taste. After that?

Cheers!

Quick Sips: Deschutes Black Butte XXIII

NOTE: This review is made nearly six months after the beer was enjoyed, so take any assessments with that in mind.

Deschutes. I'm a New Jersey guy, so their amazing beers are not available to me unless I trade beer. And that's exactly how I got Deschutes Black Butte XXIII, a big ass porter (almost 11%) brewed with cocoa nibs, orange peel, and with a portion aged in bourbon barrels, available exactly ONCE.

Wait, a portion aged in bourbon barrels? Nonsense! Because despite only 25% of this being bourbon barrel aged, it's BOOZY as fark! Anyway ...

Pour it and take a whiff. The nose is alcohol and chocolate with deep sweet breads. Even by the smell, this beer means business.

You need to drink the damn thing, though, so you pour a glass and despite the high alcohol some nice carbonation is there – this beer poured with a rich, frothy head that quickly disappeared – but it’s gone fast, giving the beer a silky, slightly slick feel on the palate.

The taste? Mild chocolate in front with some bourbon heat in the middle. Orange notes poke through in the end. This beer is 10.8% with some fairly complex flavors (bourbon, orange, chocolate, etc.), but most of them fight pretty hard for dominance. The beer could have used some time for all these elements to come together a little more smoothly. Deschutes recognizes this by putting a best AFTER date on the bottle of 6/15/12 despite this being a 2011 beer. (Who does that?) Despite the BEST AFTER, I drank this beer around July 2012, after their recommended date, and it STILL needed more time.

One thing that surprised me was the booze. The bourbon isn’t overpowering sure, but it’s far more present in the middle than you’d expect considering the barrel-aged portion makes up only 25% of this blend. And as this beer warms it just gets boozier and boozier.

All that said, it's easy to see why the special editions of Black Butte are sought after each year. This beer is complex and delicious, definitely worth sinking into if you're a beer geek, but take a pass if you just want a good beer beer.

Ride Ye to Wisonson!! The great breweries of Wisconsin

Wisconsin! I guess you should expect no different from a state that crowns its baseball team with the name the Brewers, but somehow I had never considered Wisconsin as being among the uber cool brewing states. There is California (1), obviously, Oregon (2), yeah, New York (3), sure, Michigan (4), no doubt, Pennsylvania (5), a surprising yeah, but Wisconsin?

YES!

I have had some Wisconsin beers before, especially the awesome brews by New Glarus, thanks to trading beer online. In fact, I liked them so much that when my buddy and coauthor Jim McDevitt went on a cross-country trip, I asked him to grab me some beer from this great state.

And yeah, even though he spent all of five minutes in this state, there was loads to bring home. In addition to a few beers I may post about later, Jim grabbed me a mixed pack of beers by New Glarus. This was the highlight of the BIG RIDICULOUS BOX OF BEER he brought home for me. (You write a book or two with someone, you're kind of tight, you know?) The pack had four beers, and they tasted a little something like this:

Spotted Cow – This is a pleasant, smooth beer that drinks like a lager but features a touch of ale zest. That’s because it has the softness of a lager, but more hopping and bitterness, albeit not MUCH hopping and bitterness. It’s very moderate, especially compared to today’s American ales. This beer is not worth going crazy to find – there is nothing particularly special about it – but it is a pleasant everyday beer that combines easy drinking with more taste than you’ll get from the big brewers. Recommended if you like Anchor Steam, Yuengling, or Fat Tire. 4.8% ABV

Totally Naked – This is your standard pilsner or light lager. Light, crisp, dry finish, light golden in color, a mild hop bite at the end of a mildly grainy but smooth draught. Fans of big craft beer flavor will be underwhelmed. Drinkers of Miller and Coors will like it because it will feel like home. I wouldn’t gravitate to this beer, but I sure would like to see it on tap instead of the latest product by the big guys. Recommended if you like easy-drinking macro lagers (Bud, Miller, and Coors). 4.25% ABV.

Two Women – A traditional German-style lager. They call this a pilsner, though it’s dark for the style. It has a malty smell with faint hints of dark breads, but nothing overwhelming. The beer has a nice, almost red ale-ish malt backbone with well-balanced, Earthy hops. It’s not HUGE on flavor, but it’s pleasant. Like the other beers in this mixer, Two Women drinks nicely but doesn’t make me say, “Holy cow, that’s good!” Recommended if you like Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Killian’s Irish Red, or Smithwick’s. 5% ABV.

Fat Squirrel – A traditional English brown ale that boasts all the hallmarks of one. A chestnut color and aroma. A taste of rich brown malts, nuts, and touches of caramel. A smoothness of character with just a bit of sharp roast at the end. This is a good beer and a good example of the style. Recommended if you like Newcastle. 5.8% ABV.

Overall – I have had a few of the fruit beers by New Glarus, and they were some of the best I have ever had. Seriously. BEST. So when I had this mix pack I had high hopes. Well, these beers are all GREAT for their given style, perfect examples of simple, drinkable brews. Which is to say, this is a BOOoooOOring mix pack for big beer geeks, but an AMAZING mix pack for people who either love awesome easy drinking beers or for beer geeks who appreciate the subtlety in making a good drinkable beer.

Verdict: If you are in Wisconsin or know someone who will be, get this mix pack. You'll be glad you did.



(1) - Stone, Russian River, Sierra Nevada, North Coast, The Bruery, Ballast Point, Green Flash, Lost Abbey, Firestone Walker, and a TON more. And when I say a ton, I mean a ton. Look at that long list, and realize I still left out 21st Amendment, Anchor, Lagunitas, and others.

(2) Deschutes, Full Sail, Ninkasi, Widmer, and the most overpriced beers in America, Rogue.

(3) Southern Tier, Brooklyn, Ithaca, Sixpoint, Ommegang, and more. (I did not forget you, South Hampton.)

(4) Founders, Bell's, Atwater, Jolly Pumpkin, New Holland, and more.

(5) Weyerbacher, Troegs, Victory, Yards, Lancaster, and the ever popular Yuengling, among others.