Pipeworks Citra Ninja - Beer Review

I know that I have been favorably reviewing a lot of big IPAs for someone who recently claimed to have mixed feelings about the style (contradicting myself like Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass all over the place!). I promise to cover a more balanced array of styles in the future, but I've got another palate punisher for all you hop heads out there today.

Pipeworks Citra Ninja is a double IPA that features the wonderful aroma of Citra hops (If you thought Amarillo was as bright and tangeriney as a hop can get, think again.). Pipeworks usually hits it out of the park with intense dry hopping and interesting flavors; their Galaxy Unicorn is one of the best beers that I have ever tasted. I do hesitate to recommend Citra Ninja, however. Perhaps I should have known what I was getting into based on the title, but this sucker assassinated my taste buds with an arrow and throwing star barrage of bitterness.

Appearance:

Decanted from a 22 oz bottle into a fluted goblet. Beautiful deep gold; 7 or 8 on the SRM scale. Steady carbonation. Thick nest of foamy head; nice lacing. Bottle conditioned, so not perfectly clear, but opaque and not chunky. Looks moderately viscous on the side of the glass, but not as much as expected for a beer of this ABV (9.5%).

Aroma:

Pineapple, peaches, grapefruit, passionfruit, tangerine, Meyer lemon. The malt doesn't really make it past the fruity overtones.

Body and Texture:

Astringent, bracingly hoppy. Not as heavy of a mouthfeel as I expected. Alcoholic and sharp.

Aftertaste:

Lemon oil and peppery up front; heavy bittering hops (Chinook?). Doesn't ease up; really scorches the palate with bitter resins. Sen-Sen bite clings fast to the tongue.

Overall:

I usually like more citrus forward IPAs (as opposed to those that are piney or cloyingly malty), but this one begs for more sweetness as a foil to the formidable hop presence. The green apple skin astringency is intense. On the plus side, if I was eating Szechuan or Thai food, this would not be a bad choice to katana through the heat. Pot stickers dunked in sriracha would be fun to eat with Citra Ninja. It's one of the nicest smelling hoppy beers that I have encountered, but it definitely lacks balance on the palate.

Please do not let this review turn you off to Pipeworks. As I said, Galaxy Unicorn is out of this world, and their Standard Issue IPA is lots fun as well.

Brewery Vivant Contemplation - Beer Review

Jason Spaulding has given Michigan quite a gift with Brewery Vivant, Grand Rapids's envionmentally friendly purveyor of Belgian style beers. One of the founders of New Holland Brewing, Spaulding has done it again with his current venture, which features well-crafted, sometimes cheekily named Old World ales with a New World twist (Big Red Coq, for example). Brewery Vivant distributes their fine beverages in 16 ounce cans. Yes, you heard me, cans. And while you will probably never crack open a tallboy of Orval or Westmalle, Spauding's beers haven't lost anything as a result of their packaging. They are flavorful, robust, and created with the same attention to quality as other North American Belgian style breweries, such as Ommegang and Unibroue. Canning is part of Brewery Vivant's philosophy of sustainability, and the merits of the packaging are proudly displayed on their products. Usually when I'm in Grand Rapids, I have one compulsory stop at Founders; now it seems like I might have two.

I chose to review Contemplation, a Belgian Pale Ale brewed with Michigan honey and hops. Through this focus on local products, Brewery Vivant makes a nod to sustainability while incorporating the terroir of their state into this fine ale. Well played.

 

Appearance:

 

Decanted from a 16 oz can into a large goblet. Caramel colored. Medium amber, approximately 11 or 12 SRM. Thin head after initial pour, but heavy lacing on the side of the glass. Clarity is impressive; steady stream of bubbles continue to rise.

 

Aroma:

 

Floral honey up front, nutmeg, saisony barnyard notes, wild, slightly gingery, cidery, mildly clovey, yeasty, banana

 

Body and Texture:

 

Buttery and corny. Fairly thin body, moderate legs on the sides of the goblet, but not cloying at all. The honey fermented down without leaving much residual sugar.

 

Aftertaste:

 

No serious hop presence. Mild muffiny, buttery, and cidery linger.

 

Overall:

 

Not the best honey beer that I've had, but I think I'm a little biased because I make one of my own. Still pretty interesting. Brewery Vivant markets Contemplation as a good summer beer, but I think it's a little heavy for that (6.5% ABV). It strikes me as an appropriate autumn brew; it's earthiness and mild spice would make it a good partner to a Thanksgiving turkey and some pumpkin pie.

Ballast Point Big Eye IPA - Beer Review

Ballast Point seems to be the current star of the IPA scene; after tasting a couple of their beers I understand why. Big Eye was a really nice find. It is a little less citrusy than Sculpin (Ballast Point's other IPA), but it has a depth of interesting flavors of its own.

 

Appearance:

 

Well-carbonated. Thick lacing of foam around the rim of the goblet. Light amber, approximately 9 on the SRM scale. Mix of large and small bubbles. Retains a 1/4" of dense head.

 

Aroma:

 

Caramel, raisins, oranges, faint pine resin, lemon scones, bergamot.

 

Body and Texture:

 

Bready, rich mouthfeel. Sudsy and biscuity. Dry and bitter finish.

 

Aftertaste:

 

Starts off with a caramel corn/bready taste, but bitter hop resins quickly take over. Lemon zest/juniper tang erases malt sweetness from the palate.

 

Overall:

 

Very pleasant; can stand on its own. Not malt heavy or syrupy; not too astringent or biting.

 

I would pair Big Eye with tacos al pastor topped with salsa verde. The caramelly breadiness of the beer will go well with the pork, and the strong hop profile will help neutralize the bite of the salsa.

Odell Myrcenary Double IPA - Beer Review

When I was in St. Louis, I made it a point to pick up some beers that aren't available on this side of the Mississippi. One of the best ones that I brought back was Odell's Myrcenary Double IPA. It's a citrusy high gravity ale that tastes like a session beer. It's very dangerous, but very delicious (kind of like the beer version of fugu).

Appearance:

Decanted into goblet from a 12 oz bottle. Typical American pale ale appearance; SRM approximately 6 or 7. Modest carbonation, large bubbles slowly rise. Initially pours with a heavy white head. Scales down to a modest ribbon of small bubbles on the perimeter of the glass; dollop of large bubbles in the center. Swirling the goblet generates a 3/4" layer of dense head with staying power. Bubbles cascade down the side of the glass revealing moderate viscosity. Not thick legs, but a sheen of residual sugars.

Aroma:

Not as heavy on hop aroma as you might expect for a double IPA, but pleasant. Chlorophyll, pears, green apple, grass, grape skin, juniper, lemon rind, kumquat, ginger ale, faint chlorine, biscuity, crackery. Citrus and pine come out as the glass warms.

Body and texture:

Mildly viscous. Slightly flat, but enough carbonation to sustain a high gravity IPA. Initially thick and mealy, but the texture fades as the hop oils take over. Warm and hoppy up front.

Aftertaste:

Sweet greenness lingers with a lemon oil bite, very pleasant. Clean hops dominate, but courteously allow a biscuity aftertaste to accompany them.

Overall:

More balanced than most double IPAs; very flavorful on the palate. Could use more late hop additions or dry hopping to boost the aroma, but that's a minor flaw considering all this beer brings to the table. Myrcenary is deceptively quaffable in spite of its 9.3% ABV (I guessed that it was around 7% before I read the label!). I would recommend pairing it with Gorgonzola and pear slices.

I really wish I could get Odell beers in Chicago. C'mon guys, if Deschutes could make it out here, you can too!

Chinook Power!

My Chinook vine really took off this year. This is the third summer since I planted the rhizome. I might actually have enough cones to brew a wet hopped ale!

 

 

 

 

Skirt Steak Fajitas

We grilled these skirt steaks a couple of weeks ago. I pounded them out with a mallet and rubbed them with Bill Baron's Texas BBQ with Chipotle seasoning. We grilled them for four minutes per side on high heat, and let them rest for 15 minutes before cutting them into strips. I like using Steven Raichlen's method of cutting them in half crosswise, stacking the two pieces, and then thinly slicing them lengthwise (across the grain).

We served them with grilled flour tortillas, sautéed onions and bell peppers, cilantro, and homemade guacamole.

I also quick-pickled sliced jalapeños and diced red onions together in lime juice and sea salt. It was a simple and amazing side, although quite fiery, as I did not remove the jalapeño seeds or membranes. The Tallgrass Ethos IPA that I paired with the fajitas helped strip away the heat though.

The fajitas were delicious. My only criticism is that I could have sliced the meat a little thinner; skirt steak is a stringy cut no matter how thoroughly you tenderize it, and the thinner you slice it, the better.

Urban Chestnut Hopfen Bavarian IPA - Beer Review

I was told that Urban Chestnut uses lager yeast to brew Hopfen, so IPA seems like a misnomer. Perhaps IPL is more fitting (I know that Samuel Adams and Great Lakes have both made beers with that classification recently). Also, I think a lot of Brits may have a problem with one of their prized beverage inventions being labeled with a Germanic adjective (they didn't keep calm and carry on for that!). Semantic squabbles aside, Hopfen is original and definitely deserves a taste.

I enjoyed it at Urban Chestnut in St. Louis while having a great conversation about beer styles with the bartender. He really knew his stuff, and passed along some complimentary tastings of a few of their other offerings. They have a gorgeous, hop-laden beer garden, and are a must-visit craft beer destination.

Hopfen was served to me on draught in a fluted goblet. It is 6.1% ABV and has 45 IBUs.

Appearance:

Straw-colored. SRM is slightly darker than a Pilsner, approximately 6 on the scale. Slight haze, but fairly clear. Small bubbles gently waft up and collect in a 1/8" ribbon of close-knit, frothy head. Swirling the goblet brought the head up to 1/4".

Aroma:

Grassy, spicy, herbal, sweet aromatic malt, hay, barnyard, perfumey, soapy, jasmine.

Body and Texture:

Crisp, slightly sweet, thin lager body, very clean.

Aftertaste:

Hop presence is balanced; not too bitter. Flavor hops don't outshine the malt. Notes of lavender, violet candy, and jasmine tea.

Overall:

Fragrant malts and floral essences dominate the aroma; a real IPL star. Quirky with an almost Belgian sensibility, but balanced and fun.

I had a great time in St. Louis during their recent Craft Beer Week. The energy and citywide buy-in, especially on the part of local restaurants, charmed and inspired me. St. Louisans are looking to the horizon of exciting upstarts like Schlafly, Urban Chestnut, Civil Life, and Perennial, while scorning the sun blocker that Anheuser-Busch InBev tried to build over their town.

Milwaukee and Southwestern Michigan are well established hubs of beer tourism for Chicagoans like me; yet for my flatlander countrymen who do not mind driving a little further, I promise that the St. Louis beer scene can hang with the aforementioned destinations in creativity, aesthetics, and taste any day of the week.

Definitely check out Flying Saucer and Bridge next time you're there. They're both hip beer bars with dozens of quality taps (Flying Saucer's wall of draughts was out of sight! The picture below shows about half of them!). The Schlafly Tap Room is amazing too, and their excellent menu dovetails perfectly with their beers.

St. Louis is reinventing itself as a craft beer town right now, and it's making the best out of the energy surrounding the scene. It feels genuine and sustainable.

Stone Ruin Ten IPA - Beer Review

I'm not sure how I feel about really big IPAs. In some ways, they're like the brewing equivalent of the deep dish pizza. Just as any joker can pile copious handfuls of mozzarella on top of a crust, any brew monkey can toss barrels of hop pellets into his wort. I say this with a smile, and I don't want to trivialize the efforts of anyone in the culinary or brewing world, but it's disappointing when one ingredient is used to cover up the lack of quality of other components in a product (however, I would still rather drink an unbalanced, overhopped IPA than some swill of a light lager from a swirly-necked bottle or a color-changing can).

That being said, I do get a taste for deep dish pizza every now and then, and sometimes I like well-crafted imperial IPAs. They can be novelties, but they have a special place in my heart. Hoppy beers have a way of drawing people into the craft scene, especially those overflowing with a citrusy dry hopped essence. The first time you smell a beer that is brimming with lupulin is a moment that you'll never forget. I remember sharing a bomber of Two Brothers Hop Juice (now known as Hop Centric) with my brother a few years ago. Its nose, depth of flavor, and smoothness in spite of high ABV and IBUs made the tasting an inspirational experience. We were both amazed that a beer could be that way. My palate seems to change every few years, and I'm not as into IPAs as I used to be, but big beers like this take me down memory lane.

Stone Ruin Ten IPA is definitely one of these big beers. At 110 IBUs and 10.8 ABV, it is a monster. Stone markets Ruin Ten as "a stage dive into a mosh pit of hops," which is a fitting metaphor.

I poured Ruin Ten into a snifter from a bomber after removing it from the refrigerator and letting it warm up for about a half hour.

Appearance:

Impressive clarity. Looks viscous as it is decanted; barleywine consistency, although a shade lighter in appearance. Initial swirl of large bubbles, but they quickly fade. Random, solitary bubbles slowly rise and collect in a modest ribbon of head. Aggressively swirling the snifter briefly boosts the head, but it dissipates within seconds. Reveals a thick, syrupy sheen on the side of the glass that runs down in heavy legs. The SRM is a caramelly amber color; approximately 12 on the scale.

Aroma:

Caramelly, piney, junipery, and alcoholic. Emphasis on resiny hops; faint lemon zest. Pomaceous fruit notes. Hint of burnt sugar, crème brûlée. Golden raisins and orange peel.

Body and Texture:

Malty and sweet, although not as cloying as expected. Hops quickly peel away sugars and plaster bitter resins to the back of your tongue. Warming and bready.
 
Aftertaste:

Powerful West Coast hop flavors; Columbus, Magnum, or other high alpha acid varieties. Finish lingers with the peppery bite and warmth of rye whiskey. The staying power of hops on your tongue becomes overwhelming; this is one that I wish I paired with an aged cheddar. It demands food to fight back against the powerful bastion of hop resins.

Overall:

Fun to share with friends and marvel at its potency. Not really balanced, but I don't think it's supposed to be. It's pretty impressive that Stone packed in this much malt and hop flavor. There are many sharp cheeses begging to be served alongside a snifter of Ruin Ten. It's like Stone Ruination after a visit to the Biogenesis clinic; drink one before it's suspended for the rest of the season.

White Wizard Recipe

Craft beer seems to have been turned upside down with wild, esoteric new styles over the past few years. I've seen peanut butter and jelly beer, banana bread beer, palate-nuking beers that boast 130 plus IBUs, maple and bacon beers, Russian stouts chock full of coffee and vanilla, and all manner of barrel aged and high gravity styles. I don't think there's a traditional style out there that someone hasn't hopped through the roof, made into an imperial, or infused with some rare fruit or spice that's only harvested by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum.

Skilled traditional brewers--guys like Dan Carey--know how to embrace classic styles of beer while still managing to bring something new to the table for the consumer. The mouth-puckering Berliner Weiss that he recently brewed is a good example. It's not a new style by any means, but how often do you see it in America? I know that the Germans typically drink the sour potion with woodruff or raspberry syrup to ease the bite, but I found the New Glarus version to be mild enough to tolerate without any additives. It's lemony, quenching, and especially satisfying on a hot day. With guys like Dan Carey and Brooklyn's Garrett Oliver still shoveling grain into mash tuns, I think the time-honored recipes and methods of yore are safe, and core styles of beer will continue to be made with skill and dignity.

A very different breed of skilled brewer, however, is equally vital to modern craft beer. Guys like Sam Calagione are drawing from the past and looking to the future simultaneously. Dogfish Head resurrected Midas Touch from dusty archaelogy with one hand and and popularized Randall the Enamel Animal with the other. Yes, extreme brewers throw everything and the kitchen sink into their fermenters, but they are not destroying classic styles of beer; they're reimagining what beer can be. I really like Revolution's Rosa and I may never have known how nice hibiscus flowers are in beer if they hadn't tossed them into the wort. The Reinheitsgebot is dead, and no one cares. The iconoclasts aren't ripping down the industry. They're finding ways to make it new and exciting for everyone, and converting followers who didn't even know that they liked beer.

The current trend in imaginative new styles has been redefining what IPAs can be. I remember when I first started seeing the black IPA. It seemed like a novelty or an excuse for an overhopped porter, but some brewers have definitely executed it well. White IPAs seem to be all the craze now. I have really enjoyed them, my two favorites being White Hatter from New Holland and Deschutes's Chainbreaker. They are both essentially witbiers with an IPA hop profile. I was skeptical at first, but both breweries showed a deft hand at boosting the level of citrusy hops without smashing the delicate orange and coriander notes underneath.

I like this style so much that I made a white IPA of my own. I pieced my recipe together from ingredient suggestions that Deschutes recommends for homebrewing Chainbreaker. I also took cues from the Hitachino Nest White recipe from Clone Brews by Mark and Tess Szamatulski. The theory was to apply Deschutes's West Coast hop profile to a fairly standard witbier. I think it's the best beer that I have made to date. I call it White Wizard and I encourage you to try the recipe yourself.

Grains:
12 oz. two row barley
12 oz. torrified wheat
4 oz. rice hulls

It's necessary to mash torrified wheat with some 2 row barley instead of just steeping it like a specialty grain. It needs help from the enzymes in the barley to break down its starches into fermentable sugars.

Place cracked grains and rice hulls in a muslin bag. Steep in a gallon of water from cold to 155 F in an 8 quart pot. Turn off heat, cover pot, and hold temperature at around 155 F for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, heat up 2 gallons of water in your 20 quart brew kettle. When it reaches 155 F, turn off the heat, cover, and hold the temperature steady in that pot as well.

When the 40 minute mash time is up, remove the grain bag from the 8 quart pot. Place it in a strainer and hold it above the 20 quart brew kettle, allowing excess sugars to drain into the water. Sparge grains with a half gallon of 155 F water from the brewpot as the bag drains. Use caution when pouring hot water over the bag; I use a pyrex measuring cup. Discard the grain bag when you are done sparging. Strain the wort from the 8 quart pot into the brew kettle as well. The total volume of the brew kettle should be roughly 3 gallons. Bring it to a boil in preparation for adding the malt extract.

Extract:
6 lbs. Munton's Wheat DME added @ 60 min. (Remove pot from heat before you stir in the DME; if you add it to a boiling pot, you're in for a mess. Keep an eye on the pot as you slowly return it to a boil; lower the heat if it starts to foam up.)

Hops:
1 oz. Columbus (bittering @ 60 min.)
1 oz. Cascade (flavor @ 15 min.)
1 oz. Centennial (aroma @ 5 min.)
1 oz. Citra (dry hop)

Yeast:
Wyeast 3944 Belgian Wit

Other Ingredients:
1/2 tsp. ground coriander @ 15 min
1/4 oz. sweet orange peel @ 15 min.
1 tsp. Irish moss (added with the flavor hops 15 minutes before flameout)
water to top off the wort at 5 gallons in the primary fermenter
3/4 cup of corn sugar boiled in 2 cups of water (to prime before bottling)

The original gravity should be about 1.056 and the final gravity should be about 1.012. Hurry up and brew it so you can enjoy it before summer's over!

Brouwerij Van Eecke's Poperings Hommel Ale - Beer Review and Food Pairing

Inspired by Taras Boulba, I wanted to review another reportedly hoppy Belgian, so I chose to do a tasting and food pairing of Poperings Hommel Ale from Brouwerij Van Eecke. Hommel is the Flemish word for the hop plant. It also means bumble bee in the same language, which is appropriate because of the beer's sweet floral notes. The label promises the essence of the hop flower, but with a distinctly European take, as it features an idyllic scene of beautiful hop yards with castles and cathedral tops rising from the background. I paired this beer with the peppered salame from Columbus Salumeria of San Francisco. The pepper crust was aggressive, but the Hommel Ale brought everything together.

The Hommel Ale was decanted into a goblet from an 11.2 oz bottle. I took it out of the refrigerator and let it warm up for about 20 minutes before opening and pouring it.

Appearance:

Generously primed; foam begins collecting in the neck as soon as the cap is removed. Pours initially with a luxurious white head of dense, symmetrical bubbles. A continual stream of small bubbles feed the head from the sides of the goblet. Retains a 1/4" head against the wall of the glass; shallower in the center. A quick swirl easily froths head up to 1/2". Initially poured clear; negligible amount of sediment. Opaque, but not too cloudy; I withheld the bottom 1/4" of beer while decanting to cut down the turbidity. SRM is that of a pale ale; approximately 6 or 7 on the scale, a shade lighter than amber.

Aroma:

Slightly sweet malt nose; hint of white grape juice. Gentle floral quality of hops comes through. Polleny notes; fruity and muffiny.

Body and Texture:

Sweet, but not cloying or syrupy. Small effervescent bubbles quickly dissipate on the tongue, making room for rich flavor. Fair head retention, although I beat a lot of the gas out of the beer with frequent twirls of the goblet (sometimes I can't help it; snifters demand a swirl!).

Aftertaste:

Slight grass and Meyer lemon flavor up front. Clean, mildly bitter finish rests on the tongue. Slightly metallic. I'm not sure if honey was part of the fermentable sugars, but I wouldn't be surprised because of the jasminey, floral linger in the aftertaste. Very balanced; just enough hop presence to cleanse away the sunny sweetness and demand that you take another sip.

Overall Impressions:

Balanced and very drinkable; hoppy for a Belgian ale, but not very hoppy by American craft beer standards. Floral enough for spring, clean and spritzy enough for summer, and rich and flavorful enough for autumn. Really carries the terroir of its region by featuring hops grown locally to the brewery. I'm utterly shocked that it has a 7.5% ABV because it tastes deceptively light. Some candi sugar was likely used to accomplish that feat. Not exactly sessionable, but flavorful and brilliant for food pairings.

Food Pairing:

The Columbus Peppered Salame is tallowy, irony, and alive with the fermented tang of black peppercorn. Springy and dense in texture; flesh is deep magenta with thick white ribbons of fat. The wall of spiciness lingers and increases as you enjoy slice after slice.

 

The bloody, ferrous flavor of the meat and the bite of the black pepper brings out the metallic notes of the beer; different, yet pleasant. Brings the hops to the party as well. The Hommel Ale is sweet enough to stand up to the savoriness of the sausage, but hoppy enough to pull the oils from the black peppercorns off of the tongue, as well as deglaze the fat and salt. A compelling pairing that you won't forget.

If you like this beer, a similar domestic product is Brewery Ommegang's Fleur de Houblon. It has a slightly coriander witbier quality that is absent in Poperings Hommel Ale, but it has a similar summery spirit and features the floral side of hops as well.

Brasserie de la Senne's Taras Boulba - Beer Review and Food Pairing

This week I'm reviewing Brasserie de la Senne's Taras Boulba. It's a bright, sessionable golden ale that I have been hearing a lot about for the last few years. I've finally found a few bottles at a local Binny's. They were $3.99 for an 11.2 oz bottle, and worth every penny. I paired this flaxen beauty with Fromager d'Affinois Poivre, a wonderful soft French cheese, similar to Brie, flavored with black pepper.

 

I like using Randy Mosher's template from Tasting Beer when doing my reviews. I list the appearance category first however, because, as the Belgians say, you take the first taste of beer with your eyes. WARNING: Do not attempt to drink beer with your eyes.

 

The beer was decanted from an 11.2 oz bottle into a stemmed tulip glass. It was chilled in the refrigerator for around two hours before I tasted it. It was not tongue-numbingly cold, but the depth of aroma and flavor definitely improved as it warmed up slightly.

 

Appearance:

 

Large bubbles. Consistently held 1/8" ribbon of head after the initial foaming settled down. A slight swirl of the glass quickly brings head to 1/4" thickness. Big bubbles continue to rise upward and settle on the surface like a betta's nest. Golden ale appearance; SRM is somewhere between a Pilsner and a Dortmunder. Fairly turbid appearance with a snow globe of yeast particles. I tried not to pour out too much sediment, as with homebrew or other bottle-conditioned beers, but decanting some of it was unavoidable. Still has a pretty attractive sunny hue in spite of that.

 

 

 

Aroma:

 

Bracing and clean; light citrus note. Has a slight Pilsnery character. Smells sweeter as the glass warms up; peach character, slight Muscat grape tone. Marketed as "extra hoppy ale" but definitely not a wall of lupulin in the nose; balanced.

 

Body and Texture:

 

Denser body than I expected from the appearance; moderate amount of residual sugars detectable. Far less earthy and spicy than many other Belgians. Resembles a saison on some level, but lacks the same coriander/cracked pepper flavor. Clean like an American pale ale, but less bracingly hoppy.

 

Aftertaste:

 

Very clean; a very balanced beer. Slight malt sweetness and mild grassy hop note lingers gently on the back of your tongue. The flavor hops are really the star; the hop bitterness is restrained, while the hop aroma is not so aggressive that other notes are lost.

 

Overall:

 

At 4.5% ABV, Taras Boulba is a great lawnmower beer. I would drink it by the barrelful if it was more widely available and a little cheaper. It is a good gateway Belgian ale for those who want to try something a little different but may not be ready for the herbal, earthy, spicy, horse blanket, clovey, or medicinal qualities that some of the other ones have. In spite of lacking some of these more aggressive characteristics, Taras Boulba is by no means boring. It manages to be flavorful, balanced, and sessionable all at the same time; quite a feat for the age of "go big or go home" craft beers.

 

Food Pairing:

 

Pairing Taras Boulba with Fromager d'Affinois Poivre brought a new depth to the tasting.

 

The poivre has a cheez whizzy texture (in a good way!). It is grassy with a strong, but not overpowering, black pepper flavor. The rind is a lot like what you see on Brie, Camembert, or other soft cheeses, but it packs a punch. It is infused with bits of cracked pepper, and it is good in small doses.

Pairing this cheese with Taras Boulba shows a depth to the malt that was less noticeable when drinking it alone. The savory peppery saltiness of the cheese brings the slight bready sweetness of the beer to the foreground. A beer with a slightly more aggressive bittering hop presence would peel the unctuous quality of the cheese away from the tongue more effectively, yet pairing these two together definitely takes the exploration of Taras Boulba to another level.

Honey Badger Recipe

I'm somewhat dashed that Rogue has released a beer entitled Honey Kölsch. I have been homebrewing a Kölsch style beer with honey for the last three years, and was convinced, perhaps naively, that no one else was doing so. I call mine Honey Badger, although I'm sure that I could never go pro with that name because someone else is undoubtedly using it too. My recipe is a fairly straightforward extract brew, although a small amount of mashing is required. The ingredients and suggestions for making a five gallon batch are as follows:

Grains:
12 oz. 2 row barley
8 oz. torrified wheat
4 oz. flaked maize
4 oz. rice hulls

It's necessary to mash adjuncts like torrified wheat and flaked maize with some 2 row barley instead of just steeping them like specialty grains. These adjuncts need help from the enzymes in the barley to break down their starches into fermentable sugars.

Place cracked grains and rice hulls in a muslin bag. Steep in a gallon of tap water from cold to 155 F in an 8 quart pot. Turn off heat, cover pot, and hold temperature at around 155 F for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, heat up 2 gallons of water in your 20 quart brew kettle. When it reaches 155 F, turn off the heat, cover, and hold the temperature steady in that pot as well.

When the 40 minute mash time is up, remove the grain bag from the 8 quart pot. Place it in a strainer and hold it above the 20 quart brew kettle, allowing excess sugars to drain into the water. Sparge grains with a half gallon of 155 F water from the brewpot as the bag drains. Use caution when pouring hot water over the bag; I use a pyrex measuring cup. Discard the grain bag when you are done sparging. Strain the wort from the 8 quart pot into the brew kettle as well. The total volume of the brew kettle should be roughly 3 gallons. Bring it to a boil in preparation for adding the malt extract.

Extract:
5 lbs. Munton's Extra Light DME added @ 60 min. (Remove pot from heat before you stir in the DME; if you add it to a boiling pot, you're in for a mess. Keep an eye on the pot as you slowly return it to a boil; lower the heat if it starts to foam up.)

Hops:
1 oz. Hallertauer (bittering @ 60 min.)
1 oz. Tettnanger (flavor @ 15 min.)
1 oz. Saaz (aroma @ 5 min.)
1 oz. Saaz (dry hop)

(I typically use Saaz for aroma and dry hop, but I recently substituted German Select and had great results.)

Honey:
2 lbs. of honey added @ 5 min. (I usually use Kallas orange blossom or clover, but I tried their sunflower with my most recent batch and it was nice!)

Yeast:
Wyeast 1007 German Ale

Other Ingredients:
1 tsp. Irish moss (added with the flavor hops 15 minutes before flameout)
water to top off the wort at 5 gallons in the primary fermenter
3/4 cup of corn sugar boiled in 2 cups of water (to prime before bottling)

The starting gravity for this beer should be about 1.060, and it should finish around 1.010. I strongly recommend adding the honey in the last five minutes of the boil, just to pasteurize it. Boiling it for 60 minutes is unnecessary, and will only strip away its wonderful floral qualities. I would also recommend using distilled water for this recipe (with the exception of the gallon of water used to mash the grains; the minerals in tap water are useful during that step). The malt extract should already contain minerals from the water table where it was produced. My tap water is pretty hard, and I avoid using it with extract brews of Pilsners and Kölsch style beers especially. If you're doing all-grain brews, however, you don't want to used distilled water because it lacks some desirable minerals and can decrease your mash efficiency.

The Badger makes for pleasant summer drinking, but it isn't exactly a session beer, as I estimate that my last batch was about 6.6% ABV. I paired it with some grassfed beef burgers that I grilled last weekend. They were topped with smoked Gouda and served on a pretzel bun with dijon mustard and grilled onions. An alt or an amber may have been the logical choice, but Honey Badger held up nicely and paired particularly well with the Gouda. I love Garrett Oliver's recommendations for beer and food pairings, and I think that The Brewmaster's Table should be in every homebrewer and craft beer afficionado's library...but sometimes I'm like the honey badger, and I just don't care.