Grogr

There’s something very satisfying about popping the cork on a Russian River sour, the nice thump, the aromas that follow. I was anticipating the smell of it as soon as I grasped the cork to wiggle it out from the bottle. The aroma hits you right away, you don’t even need to hold it under your nose to get a whiff, but of course I did, and took a deep drag. Tart cherry hit my nose immediately, followed by a very noticeable wine scent, vinegary, and the unmistakable stink of wild yeast.

Consecration has a very rich red coloring but it’s fairly translucent. It pours with hardly any foam, but stays nicely carbonated throughout the drinking. There’s a very present wine-like, vinous taste to the beer, not surprising since it’s aged in wine barrels. It’s nicely tart, not too sour, doesn’t quite make you pucker up, but you definitely feel it on the sides of your tongue if you roll it around in your mouth. Again, tart cherries and grapes are what stand out to me, but everything seems to be blended so well that you can take a nice deep pull from the glass and drink it down no problem.

Yet another absolutely lovely and interesting beer from Russian River.

Availability: limited

Price: $13 for 375ml

ABV: 10%

IBU: n/a

This is the most expensive single bottle of beer I’ve ever purchased. Old Rasputin is a favorite of mine and has been for a good while now, so when I saw the bourbon barrel-aged anniversary release finally on the shelf in a local store, I had to pick up a bottle. I was also flush with Christmas money, so I didn’t really mind the price.

XIV pours thick and black like oil with a decent head that dies down to a thin film of tan floating on the top of the black with a nice ring around the edge. The aroma is a little boozy, more of a faint bourbon scent than anything overpowering. Excellent dark chocolate notes come through as well some coffee and vanilla. The vanilla really comes through in the tasting though, and sticks around for a while after the finish, and that’s when the bourbon really shows up, there’s a lingering whiskey sense that reminds me of a few minutes after I’ve taken a sip of actual bourbon, minus the burn. Bitter chocolate is also present in the taste, as well as some roasted malt.

All the flavor profiles are excellently balanced and nothing is overpowering, everything compliments each other and you get a smooth, flavorful stout that is a joy to drink.

Availability: limited release

Price: $20 for 500ml bottle

ABV: 11.5%

IBU: 75

I haven’t been very impressed with most of the Ninkasi beers I’ve had so far. I’ve found most of their IPAs to be lacking the strong flavors I expect from the West Coast style. This Sleigh’r isn’t an IPA though, it’s a double alt, and it might be the first double alt I’ve had because I can’t remember reading that on a bottle before. Something to do with brewing an ale at lager temperatures. Anyway, this one I like.

Sleigh’r is rich reddish brown in color and pours with a minimal head that only sticks around where the beer meets the glass. It smells quite sweet to the nose, malty and boozy, some of the hop profile coming through. The taste is a really solid blend of malts, chocolate and nuts, roasted and sweet, and then there’s a nice bitter hop back to it.

I’ll admit the label and the name is what caught my eye, any beer paying homage to Slayer will probably get my money for a try, but I’m glad I bought it. I’ll probably pick up another bomber of this one before it disappears for the year.

Availability: Annual Winter

Price: $4 for 22oz

ABV: 7.2%

IBU: 50

Ballast Point’s Victory at Sea is one of the best goddamned porters I’ve ever had. Now, that may be because I’m not a big porter drinker, in fact I just picked it up because it’s Ballast Point, not because it’s a porter. But wow, this is a beer with strong flavors mixed really well.

Victory at Sea is a coffee vanilla imperial porter, and all that implies is there in the taste. It pours a thick black with a creamy head that dies down but leaves really pronounced sticky lacing on the glass. The coffee notes are there, but the vanilla really shines through. That vanilla is complemented by some nice chocolate malt flavors and subtle brown sugar. It’s a damn good balance. The mouthfeel is medium, with light carbonation, but it leaves a nice aftertaste that sticks around.

This is a 10% ABV beer but all the flavors mask the boozyness, and it’s just a joy to drink while getting your buzz on. I realize now why this annual release is so looked forward to.

Availability: Annual winter

Price: $8 for 22oz.

ABV: 10%

IBU: n/a

Salvation Dark Ale is another bottle-fermented strong Belgian-style ale from Russian River. These guys know how to make opening a beer rewarding. The cork squeezed out with a loud pop and the strong aroma hit my nose right away. I poured it slowly at an angle and tried to keep the head developing right at the rim, but man this thing just foamed and foamed, even after I set the glass down I could hear the carbonation bubbling at the top of the head.

Eventually the head died down to a thin creamy foam on the top of the beer. This beer smells great, rich yeast character, sweet malts, almost a candied profile, some nice spices and fruits in there as well. The taste follows all that, some sweet fruit notes, pears, a slight tartness, bready malts. Really good.

Russian River has a high reputation, and so far they haven’t let me down, not even close.

Availability: limited/limited distribution

Price: $6

ABV: 9%

IBU: n/a

I’ll just come right out and say it, I don’t like pumpkin pie. I know, I know, how can that be? I just don’t, but it’s more of a texture thing than a flavor thing, reminds me of baby food, it’s just…mush. Though I’ve never been too big on the flavor either. I’ve had it too, plenty, this isn’t one of those things where I decided I didn’t like it when I was nine years old and have just stuck to my guns about it ever since. I try it almost every year during Thanksgiving, just to appease the old folk and not appear rude, though if there’s a French apple pie on the table too, well that French apple pie doesn’t stand a chance of making it out alive.

Shipyard’s Smashed Pumpkin, on the other hand, I absolutely like. It’s a lovely beer full of flavor and aroma, and unlike pumpkin pie, I rather enjoy the texture of beer. The smell hits you right when you crack the bottle, I took a big whiff and got a lot of cinnamon and nutmeg, real spicy (in the spice rank sense, not the hot sauce sense). Heavy on the malt scents too, kind of bready, smells thicker than it actually feels on the mouth. The taste is more of the cinnamon, but a good bit of that mellow pumpkin flavor in there too. It’s definitely a pumpkin ale, but it doesn’t rely on just that flavor, it mixes it up a bit and comes out tasting really good.

This Thanksgiving I might bring a bottle or two to share after dinner. Maybe cut a thin slice of pumpkin pie and wash down the mush with this, actually give my taste buds something to react to.

Availability: limited/Fall

Price: $8 for 22oz.

ABV: 9%

IBU: n/a

Around the time Stone was releasing their 15^th Anniversary Black IPA onto store shelves, they sent out an aged batch of their 12^th Anniversary Stout as well. I never saw any of these bottles actually hit the shelves in the stores I shop in, but I’m friendly with a couple owners and workers in these stores, so when I asked if they had anything special a couple months ago, one of them went back into the cooler and came out with a bottle of the Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout.

I’ve never had a three year old beer. I’m relatively new to the craft brew scene and I didn’t even notice this thing when it was on shelves in 2008, I’m sure I passed right by it and picked up a case of Guinness or Sam Adams and went on my merry way. I was drinking some Stone back then, but it was a bomber of Arrogant Bastard here and there, that was my luxury beer back then, $4 for a single bottle was probably the most I was willing to pay in 2008. I think I paid $8-9 for this bottle, but hell I’ve paid $15 for some bottles this past year, and I’m not even into the high-end rare aged stuff. This isn’t a cheap hobby.

The Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout pours jet black with very minimal head. The aroma is subdued, hints of the chocolate and roasted malts, bit of a boozy smell when it warms. The taste is another matter, it has a very full flavor of dark chocolate, light hints of coffee, sweet up front with a mild bitter following the swallow. The mouthfeel is lovely, very smooth and medium-bodied, lightly carbonated. This is a very good stout. Not surprising really, Stone knocks it out of the park with their IRS every year, they know what they’re doing.

I only wish I was into craft beer back in 2008 as much as I am now so I could have had my fill of this, I doubt I’ll find it again.

Availability: Rare, but it’s out there, somewhere, waiting for you.

Price: $8-9

ABV: 9.2%

IBU: n/a (but very low, it was brewed during the hop shortage).

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Hop in the Dark is a Cascadian Dark Ale (CDA) or Black IPA, or American Black Ale, or an India Black Ale. I’m not going to get into that whole controversy, because I have no dog in that race. Deschutes calls it a CDA so we’ll go with that right now because it’s their beer.

Whatever the case, this thing is black, black like a porter or a stout. It pours with a head that dies down quick but leaves sticky lacing around the glass. The aroma is strong roasted malts with piney hops layered on top. I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting as much bitterness in the taste that hit my tongue, it was a bit of a surprise. I know that’s the style, a hopped up dark beer, but my eyes were seeing porter and the hoppy bitterness just came up and smacked that idea out of my head. The mixture of roasted malts and strong hop bitter reminds me very much of coffee, albeit a foamy, carbonated coffee. It finishes very crisp but the bitter lingers for quite a while.

This isn’t my first Black IPA, that would be Stone’s Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale, but I don’t remember Stone’s offering being quite so…unusual to my palate. I have to say I prefer Stone’s take on this style right now, both their Sublimely and their 15^th Anniversary ale.

Availability: May-September

Price: $6 for a 22oz

ABV: 6.5%

IBU: 70

This Imperial IPA pours a thick, hazy orange. The sweet and spicy scents of the malts come through in the aroma more than the hops, and the citrus bitterness only really comes through in the taste. The malts really drive this beer though, it’s smooth and mellow for an IIPA, doesn’t have that big bitter bite that I’m so used to from West Coast IPAs. Not that it’s a bad thing, hardly, I’m becoming quite a fan of the Colorado style of IPA.

Of the few IIPA/DIPAs from Colorado that I’ve tried recently I notice a similarity, big on the malts and a pronounced boozy aroma and taste. But they’re all so smooth, maybe it’s the water, or just how they’re brewing them (I’ll admit my knowledge of the science of brewing is quite low, but I’m picking things up here and there), or maybe they’re not as enamored with packing a citrus grove into a can or bottle as they are out here in CA (I love that too though). Whatever it is, they’re doing a damn fine job of it, and Gubna is a damn fine representative.

Availability: year round

Price: $15 4-pack cans

ABV: 10%

IBU: 100

Squall IPA is a bottle conditioned, naturally fermented version of DFH’s 90 Minute IPA. It pours with quite a bit of head, thick and slow to dissipate. There’s a good amount of carbonation in this one, the bubbles continue to come up from the center of the glass for a good while after the pour. The aroma is a nice mix of sweet malts and earthy hops. It’s a thick IPA, mouthfeel is a little bready. Taste is a blend of caramel sweetness and tropical fruit bitterness, there’s some good citrus flavor in there on the finish.

I like what Dogfish Head does with their IPAs, they’re not all pine and citrus like a West Coast IPA, a little different, sweeter, and a nice change of pace. While I do love a beer that reminds me of standing in the middle of an orange grove, you have to switch it up every now and then.

Availability: limited

Price: around $9 for a 750ml bottle

ABV: 9%

IBU: n/a