Beer – Fermented Explorer

November 1, 2019

American Beauty – Pale Ale

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery – Milton, DE

I saw this beer back in August when I was spending a couple weeks with family in Connecticut. It looked interesting and I thought about trying it. Unfortunately, I was leaving the next day and I couldn’t justify using the precious baggage space on it. Truth be told, I had already overfilled the bags and pushed my family’s patience. So, it just didn’t make the cut. Earlier this month I found it again while traveling to Yakima, Washington when I stopped by the Booze Behemoth (Total Wine…).

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery started in 1995 by Sam Calagione in the town of Milton, Delaware. He and the DH crew are legends in the craft beer scene, and their beers can be found almost (not in Montana?) everywhere. Their tagline is “off-centered ales for off-centered people” and they mean it. Dogfish Head are known for their dramatic, bold, and sometimes extreme flavored beers. I have tried some I thought were crazily awesome and others that were too much for me. I did not have that problem with American Beauty.

In preparing to brew this beer back in 2013 Dogfish Head took suggestions from the Grateful Dead band and their fans. They received over 1,500 ingredients suggestions including wildflower honey, with granola at the top of the list. Originally, this beer came in at an alcohol level of a strong 9% abv. Also, it was a special release and only available in 750ml bottles. American Beauty returns in 2019 as a year-round beer available in 12oz. 6 packs and at an easier drinking 6.5% abv.

Dogfish Head’s American Beauty is a pretty good all-a -round beer that is fairly well balanced. It has a light copper/orange/golden color and a decent head to it. The aromas coming off this beer are a carmel maltiness and honey with some fruitiness I can’t figure out. I found out later that it might be marzipan/almond cherry with orange. It is soft on the mouth and has a good carbonation and light effervescence feeling with a warm sweet aftertaste with some bitterness. The taste is a well-balanced, malty and with a light honey flavor. Overall, I think this is a solid pale ale that I’d be happy drinking and sharing on cool nights by a bonfire with friends. American Beauty is not a beer that seeks to be bold or the center of attention. It is comfortable just hanging out just being part of the group. It’s a good beer that feels soft and warm and tastes balanced and sweet.

Happy Exploring,

Tim – Fermented Explorer

October 25, 2019November 1, 2019

Ace of Spades – Imperial IPA

Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB) – Portland, OR

Like its namesake, one of the pivotal songs from the band Motorhead, this beer is going to grab you by the shirt and make you take notice. Ace of Spades from Hopworks Urban Brewery aka HUB located in Portland Oregon is a seriously hopped IPA. Ace of Spades is one of three beers from HUB’s Imperial series that they tout as breaking the rules of the playground and seeing how much hoppiness and sustainability you can fit in to a 22oz. bottle. At 8.6%abv and an ibu of 100+ this beer is not for the casual drinker, but if you like IPAs, I highly recommend you give it at least a couple of tries.

I first tried Ace of Spades on tap about a month ago at Rumour taproom in Missoula, MT, when Steve, the manager and purchaser there highly recommended it. I was there looking for a great New England style IPA, so I was not a big fan. But, going in blind to a beer can be a real crap shoot. Everyone’s tastes are different, even between two people that love the same styles and beers. About a week ago, I saw it in the 22oz. bomber bottle and thought I’d give it another go. I came into this tasting much more open, and Ace of Spades delivered BIG time.

They pack nearly 200 lbs. of Amarillo, Cascade and Centennial hops into this IPA by adding them in every phase of the brewing and fermenting process, so you can probably guess: it is a real hoppy beer. Using that many hops in that kind of way could be a real mouth-puckerer, but HUB balances it out incredibly well with its choice of malts to make it a very drinkable beer.

Ace of Spades – I think it has a good yellow/orange color with some haze to it, yet is still fairly clear, and has a nice full head. It has a full-flavored taste, with slight hoppy bitterness that works well with the caramel malt flavor. I think it comes on strong with a sweetness, then fades into a nice well-balanced hoppy IPA and tastes really nice. It is a bold feeling beer that packs a good punch, hence the imperial. Overall, if you’re a hophead or someone that likes to explore new beers (especially IPAs), I would recommend you give Ace of Spades Imperial IPA from Hopworks a try. I think you’ll enjoy the experience.

Happy Exploring,

Tim – Fermented Explorer

January 29, 2019October 12, 2019

The bottling of Oddball Brown Porter

… it’s a week later, and it is time to put this teetering idea of a concoction into glass bottles. The process seems simple enough, you take your fermented brew and mix it with a sugar solution (priming sugar), and then put it into bottles and cap it. Easy, right? Well…. The whole beer can get TRASHED if you touch it or, anything you’re using comes into contact with it that isn’t SANITZED! No pressure, do it right or you flush about 6 hours of brewing down the toilet!

Good news! This is a happy story, not a story that ends with me destroying my friends’ garage and leaving thousands of pieces of glass carboy all over the concrete floor. As with many things in life, it took longer than it should have. We got a late start and fumbled for too long with what kind and how much sugar to use. Then, came my frustration about home much water to add for the solution, and the lack of internet access to find out. I figured it out and began boiling water while Brutus started sanitizing all the equipment for transferring into the bottling bucket and for bottling. With the priming solution finished, I set it aside to cool down, and we had a beer (Upslope – Chocolate Orange Stout / tap room series) and waited. After about 40 mins, the solution still wasn’t cool enough (if it’s too hot it will kill the yeast and stop fermenting, … and ruin your beer), so we put it in the fridge had another beer (Odell’s – Jolly Russian / 2018 cellar series). Finally, the priming solution was ready, and we put it into the bottling bucket, then also transferred the fermented liquid into the bucket.

Once this was finished, it was time to start sanitizing our bottles and crowns (caps) and begin bottling. This is the part that can get tricky, you need to keep everything sanitized while you’re bottling, so that it gets sealed clean. I’m really obsessed with keeping my hands clean while I’m doing it, if I touch the table, drink a beer, pat a dog or llama, I re-sanitize immediately. A lot of people don’t realize how hard bottling is, it takes serious work and you can run into dehydration issues. So, we poured another beer (Junkyard – DDH Belma (Double Dry hopped with Belma hops), then we ran into a different issue. At this point we had a little over a case of beer (24bottles), and we started running out of clean bottles. Usually in this kind of situation, I tend to get worried and go into overdrive trying to fix the problem, but this time I had calmed the anxiousness with the preceding beverages.

Brutus started furiously cleaning out the extra case of bottles, putting each clean one into the sanitizer bucket, while I added more crowns to the sanitizer and then continued to bottle. We finished off the last of the bottles and most of the beer and began the process of capping the bottles and cleaning up all the containers and buckets. Brutus sampled the last little bit of the leftover beer as we cleaned up, and I had a beer (Oskar Blues – Ten Fidy).

This beer came out kind of interesting. It was lighter in color (like a YooHoo chocolate drink) than I had planned, probably needed more boil time or hotter/longer mashing. The flavor was good, but a little thinner than a traditional porter. It has a little bit of a hoppiness to it, but not to overwhelming. At first, I was disappointed and thought it a failure because it didn’t represent the original (Edmund Fitzgerald Porter) very well, but over time it has grown on me. I’ve had a lot of people who don’t like “dark beers” respond very positively to it.

Next up – and IPA