Big Beer In Big Bottles

"They have weapons & we have weapons, & ours might seem like slingshots & their's seem like giant missiles"

-Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head

The more market share that smaller breweries take away from mulitnational beer corporatianons the more those companies are doing to take back that market share.

"Fancy" bottles wheather out of nessity, tradition, marketing, or just plain brewers prefrence have in a way been a mark of better breweries for a good while now. Big companies have always understood their appeal, it's a big reason why Grolsch has never let go of the flippy top bottle, and it's the reason why each year (particularly around the holidays) the big guys put out special packaging. But it's not enough to throw a few cans of Bud in a tin anymore.

This year Des Moines is seeing all sorts of novelties aimed specifically at taking shelf space away from smaller breweries. Two are particularly nice looking and serve a niche of the market that's been pretty well owned by better breweries for some time now.

Stella 750ml

Blue Moon Grand Cru

So the moral is "don't buy these bottles" right? No, not at all. If you feel like a Stella buy a Stella & if curiosity gets the best of you buy Blue Moon Grand Cru (I know I might). I guess what I'm saying is be aware of what things like this are intended for, and be cautious when a pretty bottle shows up it could be there to elbow something you love right off the shelf.

Bieres Des Moines - Westmalle

How dedicated am I to this blog? Dedicated to update it the day my firstborn entered this world. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The Abbey of Westmalle coined the term "Tripel" for a beer that became so popular the term is now widely used for the strong golden Abbey ales of Belgium. Other Trappist brewers that make a Tripel include De Koningshoeven & Chimay but countless secular breweries in Belgium and abroad have taken this style under their wing.

The original pours a golden color with a big fluffy white head. The aroma is bready and lightly spicy with some apricot and fresh cut hay. The flavor is bready and spicy with a nice well balanced but noticeable alcohol character. This sort of noticeable alcohol is sort of a benchmark for the Tripel style. Something about the style dictates that it generally does not refrain from showing it's strength. This is not a bad thing as long as the booziness balances well with the rest of the flavors of the beer. In this case I can attest that this is the case. Fruity flavors are abound in this beer but it's not for lack of dryness.

This beer is a true classic. Easy to find, with a pricetag of about $10 per 750ml or $6 per 11.2oz bottle it's a special occasion beer, but as you might have read before my wife delivered a beautiful baby daughter today, I hope I'm not the only one drinking to that.

Brewer Profile - Bells (part 1)

I'd like to start doing some Brewer Profiles where I give a rundown of some of the better products from breweries we see a lot of here in Des Moines.

Bells Brewing based out of Kalamazoo MI makes a lot of different kinds of beer, so many so are available in the Des Moines metro that I really couldn't do a rundown of the brewery in one blog entry, so I decided to present to you one specific style of beer that Bells is best known for, their stouts.

The Lineup

Kalamazoo Stout-

One of Bells flagship products is their Kalamazoo stout, such a definitive product of this brewery that it bares only the name of the city where it was born. Kalamazoo stout is an impenetrably dark unrelentingly roasty, and unapologetically unique beer. The label says in very simple terms "Stout Brewed with Brewers Licorice" and how! While licorice notes are only mild on the aroma which lends it's self more towards tones of espresso and slightly burnt toast, the flavor is particularly laden with notes of licorice balanced by a good deal of roasty malt bitterness and a mild fruity hoppiness rounded out by that espresso promised to us in the aroma. This beer at 6% abv is the "smallest" of Bells stout lineup yet has as much flavor as prized Imperial Stouts from other brewers. Good things can come in small(er) packages.

Special Double Cream Stout-

This rich stout pours a deep almost black color and (despite my picture) has a thick fluffy head. The complexity of the aroma is remarkable with deep roasty tones akin to a strong mocha along with some nice smokiness. The flavor is nice, just a mild bit of sweetness does this beer right and gives it almost a latte character, flavors of dark berries and fruity hops follow making this a warming and decedent beer.Bells Double Cream was for a few years the strongest beer Bell's sold in Iowa slipping in just under the former 6.25% abv limit. Now repeat after me, beer does not need to be strong tobe good. Thanks. But sometimes a cold day deserves a strong stout, and this one always delivers. As such it became a regular drinker for me for quite some time.

Cherry Stout-

There is no lack of creativity among the brewers at Bells and one of their most unique products is this their Cherry Stout. A rich, complex, black stout with a generous addition of tart cherries. Cherry Stout is a beer that can be drank fresh, but I prefer to cellar it for a year or more as it develops very nicely in the bottle, most particularly the cherry characteristics. This beer fresh or aged has much more depth than a standard fruit flavored stout. The aroma has tart cherries with light vinous & woody notes that give way to tobacco and whiskey. The flavor does not lack for cherry tartness but it also has roastiness, bitterness, and a fair amount of dark chocolate and raisin. My only complaint is that at times there are light hints of robitussin that distract from the subtitles of the beer. At 7% abv there are some warming alcohol notes you would expect from a cordial or port wine. This beer really ought not be served too cold, somewhere between 50 degrees and room temperature will pull out the best in the aroma and the flavor of this beer.

Java Stout-

I'd love to know who first decided that if Stout beer tastes like coffee, then why don't we just flavor it with actual coffee to intensify that character. Bless them whoever it was. Bells didn't miss a beat when they made this their coffee stout.

The beer pours a deep black and the head leaves an elegant lacing on the glass. The aroma is strong with coffee but not without a bit of sweetness akin to say a fruity coffee varietal add to that a bit of charred wood and you've got a very straightforward and simple aroma while remaining pungent and luxurious as a great cup of coffee. The flavor is as expected bitter and roasty as a cup of coffee, however this beer doesn't taste nearly as sweet as the aroma lets on. The coffee flavor is some sort of odd dichotomy between cheap diner coffee and a strong espresso... terrible as that sounds on paper it works very well somehow here. The beer is remarkably full flavored but barely lets on that at 7.5% abv the beer is as strong as it is.

Expedition Stout-

Ranked among the top 50 Beers in the world on Ratebeer Expedition Stout is one of the most beloved of Bells extensive lineup. First brewed over 20 years ago Expedition Stout was long ahead of it's time and remains a benchmark for the American Imperial Stout and a world classic to countless brewers, beer writers, and drinkers.

The beer pours absolutely black with a big tan head. Aromas of molasses & espresso are abound on the bouquet of this beer that features complimentary notes of pine, alcohol, and maybe just a touch of vanilla. The flavor is absolutely enormous making this a "sipper". This beer has a nice bit of residual sweetness but avoids being cloying by a mile a particularly healthy dose of hop bitterness that rounds the huge dark fruit, lightly burnt toast, and coffee flavors of this beer perfectly. This beer is elegant, it is complex, it is both bold and subtle, it is a masterpiece to be sipped and savored. Not to mention that the beer is one of the best in the world to lay down in the cellar for long term aging. What's most remarkable is that despite the current trend of limited release beers and huge prices for bigger beers, Bells Expedition Stout can be found for a modest price at anyplace good beer is sold here in Des Moines.

Make Up Work

I never did the whole "studious" thing in High School, which means I depended a lot on Make up Work to make the grade. It looks like that old mentality has reared it's ugly head here on my blog, I've missed a few months worth of posts now. Shame on me. I do hope you'll accept these next week of consecutive daily posts as a reparation for my laziness.

I'll take this first opportunity to talk a little about a style of beer that has a wide appeal both here in the central Iowa as well as the world over (not to mention within my household). Roughly Half the batches of homebrew I've made could be categorized in some degree as Saison so it's a style I've got a little experience with.

Saison beers were originally low gravity beers for farm hands in the Southern half of Belgium. They've certainly been refined but many are still very rustic in nature. One thing that has sure changed about a lot of these beers is the gravity, while originally these thirst quenchers rarely hit 5% abv, it's not uncommon to see them as high as 8% abv anymore. Saison is usually a blonde to amber colored beer, moderately hopped, and very dry. Sometimes they're spiced & sometimes they are sour, but the common thread is their yeast character and their dryness.

Saison has enjoyed a bit of a surge in popularity in the United States here within the last decade. Saison Dupont has become the classic of the style for Americans named consistently as "one of the best beers in the world" by countless publications. Stateside examples have flourished in popularity including brands like Ommegang's Hennepin, Jolly Pumpkin's Bam Biere, and North Coast's Le Merle. A little closer to home Kansas City's Boulevard Brewing has given us their trio of Saisons heralded as some of the finest examples brewed on this side of the pond. But you need not look so far south for local offerings in the Saison tradition. I wanted to take a look at three breweries round these parts that are taking this style and putting their own unique twist on it.

Peace Tree Cornucopia-

I'll be the first to admit that when Joe the brewer at Peace Tree told me he had made a Saison using sweet corn I had to bite my tongue from rudely laughing. Such is the skill and the charm of Iowa's newest native brewery that they could indeed pull it off. Really though, it wasn't a question of "pulling it off" as I suppose putting it that way makes it sound like under extraneous circumstances they produced a passable product. I rather ought to call this beer a triumph, as the end product is a very true to style Saison in spite of one particularly non traditional ingredient.

Cornucopia employs the house yeast strain from Brasserie Dupont, this being one of the most definitive and popular yeast strains used in the style. The only character of corn in the beer comes in the aroma as along with spicy, floral, and bready aromas classically associated with Saison there is an earthy green aroma akin to that of dew soaked corn stocks, the aroma of which will not be left unidentified by the drinker who has spent even one summer of his youth detassaling. It's not an unpleasant aroma, but for me some of the memories it conjures are terrifying to this day. The flavor has a wonderful bubblegum character up front followed by a light straw dryness. The beer also shows herbal notes and hints of peppercorns and apricots which while they sound like a poor match on paper really tie the flavors in this beer together exquisitely. Now my understanding is that the beer is brewed with whole corn stalks thrown right into the brew kettle. This process certainly provides a romantic visual and I hope they keep making the beer this way. One problem with whole sweet corn stalks is that they're not always in season, and I can say with certainty that sweet corn is not an ingredient listed in a brewers supply catalogue let along whole sweet corn stalks. So Cornucopia will remain a beer only brewed when such an "exotic" ingredient is available to the brewery. Six packs are still in stores now, but I wouldn't be surprised if this beer is gone till springtime very soon.

Rock Bottom Tigerlily Saison -

Named for one of the brewers daughters Tigerlily is a Saison in the tradition of DuPont (much like the cornucopia) however this beer maintains a character all it's own.

Pouring an almost orange color with a big head that leaves a great lace on the glass, Tigerlily certainly looks the part. The aroma has a wonderful bouquet of orange blossom & cooking spice with keeping pungent and floral overall. The flavor is earthy and dry with a nice bitter old world hop character. The yeast provides a very nice fruitiness. This isn't the only Saison that is made out at Rock Bottom, numerous beers of the style are brewed each year here and each of them represents Saison in a different way.

Court Avenue Bon Pere -

I guess Makeup work usually includes at least a little cheating. Technically Bon Pere is brewed as a Biere De Garde, which I suppose is the farmhouse beer of France. This is not to say that the styles are the same, but they carry a very similar history, character, & following. Many a Saison has been dubbed a Biere De Garde and vise versa in world of "craft beer"... Bon Pere is currently on tap at Court Avenue and while it represents a different style of beer it's the closest thing they've got to a Saison currently, which is not to say that Saison is not a well loved style at this downtown brewpub.

Bon Pere pours (into a pretty stemmed glass) a light amber color with a small head. The aroma is bready with a fair amount of earthy character and floral sweetness featuring a nice peach and toasty character in the back-ground. The flavor is lightly tart with flavors of peach, strawberry, brown sugar, spicy and herbal hops and an earthy bitterness. All that fruit flavor and one would expect a sweet beer, not so in this case where we have a nice dry beer complimented by fruit flavors.

There are very few styles that aren't in some way or another represented in the lineups of the Area breweries here. For this we are blessed. If you don't frequent these establishments, please use this recommendation to go ahead and do so.

IPA DSM

I planned on doing an entry about Christmas Beer Today.... the story goes that I didn't have enough time to drink all the Christmas beers I wanted to write about, so I've got something better for ya'll.

I'd be the 45,634,902nd person on the internet to spin the proverbial yarn of how India Pale Ale came to exist, needless to say there are some serious variations on that story as well. So I will say this instead. If you're in the dark about what India Pale Ale is, basically it's a beer with slightly higher gravity (or alcohol by weight/volume) and is focused on high hop flavor and bitterness.

These days there are more India Pale Ales on the market than you can shake a stick at, and we're getting more, that's for damn sure. I certainly don't intend to give you cats a rundown of all the IPA's in town. But I want to point out a few that I like a lot that seem to be all over town.

Two Hearted Ale -

For me the quintessential Midwestern IPA is Two Hearted Ale from Bells. Two hearted is unique in that while most of the time brewers tirelessly work to find just the right blend of hops for their India Pale Ales, bells stuck with one they liked. It's one I like a lot too, the Centennial hop varietal is perfectly presented in Two Hearted ale.

For a beer that tastes as bitter and dry as Two Hearted it sure smells sweet, not in the sugary way but certainly in the floral and fruity way. The centennial hop (named for the state of Oregon's centennial) is one of the classic C-Hops (the others being Cascade & Chinook) these are a group of commonly used hops in American Ales known for their fruitiness and citrus characteristics. The centennial hop lends Two Hearted ale it's unmistakable melon & orange rind fruitiness while offering a good deal of bitterness to balance out the fruity flavors. This beer is terribly addictive and very easy to find, most grocery stores around town carry it, but you'll usually find a fresher bottle at a specialty store like Beer Crazy or Ingersoll Wine & Spirits. One great thing about Bells is that they stamp the bottles with a batch number which you can enter into their website to see how fresh your beer is, and the fresher the IPA the more hop flavor and aroma you'll get. With a beer like Two Hearted its best to find the freshest possible bottle or six pack.

Sierra Nevada Estate Harvest Ale -

This is a unique beer, all the hops and grain used in this beer was grown by Sierra Nevada on their property. This "estate" trend is something I seem to always be a sucker for and it's something that both Sierra Nevada and Rogue have been doing a great job with in the last couple of years. I've got to think it's a bit of a gimmick, admittedly though it's a gimmick I like. Last year I had a chance to try Sierra Nevada's Estate Harvest on tap on the East Coast, apparently I was very lucky as I was told that very few bottles, and even fewer kegs of this beer were sold. Imagine my surprise when I started seeing this year's version all over town. The bottle is terribly handsome and although it took a little twisting of the arm I forked over the $12 to try this beer out again.

The beer pours a nice reddish orange color with a huge off white head. The aroma is very similar to most of the Sierra Nevada IPAs Plenty of citrusy west coast hops featuring the classic grapefruit and melon rind aromatics that put many of the classic old school American IPAs on the map. The flavor is similar to the aroma with a nice soft lightly toasty maltiness buried under a rich tapestry of bitter & fruity hops. There is plenty of citrus and grapefruit accented with the most fleeting of caramel character that seems to elude many brewers yet has been nicely mastered by this long standing pillar of the California brewing scene. Here we have Sierra Nevada presenting the kind of beer that made them famous, and that's fitting for an Estate Beer.

Boulevard Single Wide India Pale Ale-

This beer won my heart in the days before we could get Two Hearted regularly, and continues to be a go to beer for me. Weighing in at 5.7% abv this is the lowest gravity IPA of the three and is really on the very low end for the style it's lucky for us Boulevard knows the secret so many beer enthusiasts forget from time to time. Alcohol is not a precursor to flavor, and the two can be happily exclusive. Like Two Hearted ale Single Wide employs the Centennial hop to get that melon like aroma and flavor, however in all the beer blends six different hops to achieve it's unique character wonderfully blending bitterness and fruitiness. The citrus and melon fruitiness stands in bold contrast to the overall dryness of this beer and create a balanced beer that begs for another sip. The aroma of the beer is a complex mixed bag of fruity, floral, and pine scented hops blended just so. India Pale Ale is a beer best served as fresh as possible, we here in Des Moines are lucky to have such a high quality IPA brewed so close to home, not to mention available just about anywhere with a halfway respectable beer selection.

Sour Beer In Des Moines

Sour beers are something I'm particularly passionate about, among their ranks are many of my favorite beers, and beer styles. They are at once both the most direct connection to ancient brewing traditions as well as the most sophisticated beers being brewed today. As little as two years ago I could not point to one single sour beer available for purchase in the Des Moines area, at least not with any frequency. Forcing the beer lover out of town (and many times out of state) for a puckering beer. A few have trickled in and fizzed out over the last couple of years but there are three that I've been seeing around quite a bit lately.

Two of them are from the Flemish Red or "Sour Brown" tradition of Northern Belgium, the other comes from the Lambic tradition kept alive in the area in and around Brussels.

Two of these beers are from Belgium and one is from "New" Belgium.

Lindeman's Cuvee Rene Gueuze:

Gueuze is a style very dear to my heart, a blended beer fermented solely by wild yeast naturally occurring in the air and the brewery, aged in oaken barrels for up to three years, the older beer is blended with younger beer.

You might recognize the Lindeman's name and label from their very popular line of very sweetened beers the Framboise and the Kriek are particularly well loved in pubs, restaurants, and stores all over the city. You'll find none of that strong sweet fruit flavor in Cuvee Rene, rather quite the opposite. This is the beer that Rene Lindeman the owner of the brewery drinks, and has become the only product I consume from them with any great frequency as well.

This golden colored beer pours with a big white head. A whiff of this beer is certainly odd to one unfamiliar with traditional lambic presenting the olfactory with notes of cork, farmyard, oak, and a floral character usually associated with dry white wine. The flavor is equally as sharp and complex. The beer is dry and sour, puckeringly so, with a bit of blue cheese rind, a nice earthy oakiness, and very tart cherries. The beer will taste much more like dry white wine than most beers. Elegant and complex just as a Gueuze ought to be.

Monks Cafe:

While the beer may be from Belgium, it's named after one of the first pubs in the United States to specialize in Belgian beers. The house ale of Monks Cafe in Philadelphia has seen distribution well outside the city of brotherly love and is a welcome addition to many a beer shelf in Des Moines.

Monk's is a Flemish sour brown ale, now there are a lot of beers in this style and really there are no hard and fast rules about how they are produced or taste. These beers range in color from pinkish red to deep brown and can be moderately to intensely sour. Something that ties them together more often than not is long maturation in oak casks whereby microorganisms in the wood provide complexity and sourness to the beer within.

The deep reddish brown beer gives off a dusty... almost dirty aroma with hints of balsamic vinegar and dirty socks. Sounds disgusting right? Honestly these beers are not for everyone but when balanced properly those aromas that are singularly pretty bad meld into something pungent in the best way possible. The flavor of this beer is lightly sweet with some distinct tannic character akin to a red wine. The sourness is ever-present in this beer but plays more in the back-ground allowing dusty maltiness and a nice spiciness to balance it all out. This all rounds out with a nice tart cherry fruitiness on the finish.

La Folie:

Our third example is a one of the beers that first got me really excited about beer. La Folie used to be a little known product from a very well known brewery. These days a bottle can be had at any reputable beer store or even at Hy-Vee, and I'm cool with that. La Folie made by New Belgium (yes the makers of Fat Tire) is a Sour Brown (or Flemish Red) style beer, stylisticlly akin to Monks Cafe but far more bracingly sour. Historically this beer is a benchmark for sour brewing in the United States and while it's lost a bit of it's elusiveness in the past couple years it still enjoys a devoted following.

This beer used to come in corked champagne bottles, and it seems like every single time they change the labeling/packaging on it there are droves of folks on the internet beer community declaring that "IT'S NOT THE SAME". This is my first sampling of the 2010 vintage, so we'll see if anything has changed that I can detect.

The beer pours with that same classic mahogany hue with that old familiar pungent tart aroma that includes notes of farmyard, balsamic vinegar, and pronounced toasty maltiness. The flavor is that classic dominant strong sourness akin the tartest cherry you can imagine with earthy and woody notes allowing for a light malt sweetness and a wonderful nuttiness throughout. The beer has a dustiness to it, now I know a lot of us don't go around tasting dust, but somehow that's the only way to describe a certain character of this beer, try it and you'll see. Other complimentary flavors that add to the complexity of this beer are a nice light chocolate and a distinct oak woodiness. It still tastes like La Folie, but I will say that the 2009 bottle we opened a few months back seemed a lot more bracingly sour. This is however still identifiably the same beer I fell in love with years ago.