Monkey See Monkey Brew

With my overstock of barrel aged beers I entered three into a competition in Tennessee. Why Tennessee? Well a cohort in the Sabco brewing forum runs it and he seemed like he needed entrants, and I have plenty to send. So off went a Bourbon Barrel Imperial Porter, a Sour Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout (really just the Porter recipe from the soured Bourbon barrel) and a Sour Belgian Pale Ale aged in a Loudoun County red wine barrel.

Barrels have taken brewing like a storm. Barrels flavoring, barrels souring, barrels just taking up space. I have found my way into 4 barrel projects cranking out way more unusual beer then I could really drink. The barrels are: a straight bourbon barrel, a souring elderberry wine barrel, a soured red wine barrel and a soured bourbon barrel. That puts you dead in front of a lot of beer.

1. Sierra Nevada’s Hoptimum – This is the beer we have all been waiting for from Sierra Nevada. Year after year Sierra Nevada has produced excellent beer that you can trust. It is consistent and consistently great, but they have not changed in a very long time. Greatness fades, while glory remains. The good news is that after a year of Sierra Nevada releasing Anniversary beers, they rolled out Hoptimum. This is the Sierra Nevada beer you have dreamed that they would make. It is a massive Double IPA that simply stuns. It uses Citra better than any citra beer I have ever tried.

The Budweiser born on date offers some confusion here. The irony of Bud/InBev's campaign is that drinking fresh gives you the best beer as this is juxtaposed against the idea of lagering, which their beers are, as the practice of aging. Traditionally this was defined as 6 weeks to 6 months in Germany. So fresh is best, eh?

Well truth be told, like everything else, it depends. If you have a simple beer it is unlikely to get better with age, in fact it is likely to become insipid (which is plenty close to being unsippable). You can try that experiment with a Bud in your cabinet.

2010 Best Beers in America

1. Dale's TenFidy – In 2009 I described TenFidy as wow, wow and wow, and that assessment remains. This is a beautiful imperial stout. You can quickly forget that this is a canned beverage, because this complex black elixir possesses everything you want from an imperial stout. Or, if it helps, you can think of it as your own personal keg. It is a temptress of power and might at 100 IBU and 9 - 10% alcohol.

It is not often that one finds the opportunity to go to an event like the Brewer's Association SAVOR event. At this event BA pairs dozens of beers with food. The event is an amazing beer event, but preping food for hundreds make the task of pairing very bothersome. The only real answer is to come up with several generic options and make a match. The food itself is not, and realistically cannot be, adequately cared for as volume is a demand. Largely the food is good enough and the matches are fair, if not forced. That is just the reality of a huge event.

I have a preference for really large ales as the weather turns. The problem is that I also like them with some age. A rip your face off barley wine is great in February, but I really like them next Christmas. Enter the brew in spring, bottle in summer, and drink in winter. This year I kind of lost my mind and did three beers. I made it a little easier because they are 2 beers, one split on two yeasts (I love that experiment) and the other is a blend. The end result is that it is still 5 cases.

I have long been a fan of Kona Brewing, and I can pin point when this adoration began, 10 years ago when I visited. Sure their beers are solid, but it is location, location, location all the way. Visiting the Kona Brewing pub on the island of Hawaii magically makes the beer tastes better and the pizzas super tasty, but this is partially because you are sitting in Kona, Hawaii. I am not sure if my fondness would be so strong if this was a location in say Grand Island, Nebraska.

There is a quest before us, to make something worth drinking in the summer. Not to full of alcohol, not to heavy, but with actual flavor. Can it be done? Does it have to be mostly wheat (because it is rather boring to me)? Does it need to be light? The quest for summer sessions is on!

Imperial everything is giving way to a simpler mindset or less just might be more. The truth is that 5 gallons of 9 - 10% beer is a lot of potent liquid. Really, how many of these can you have in one night? One or two? The simple appeal of session beers is the talk of the home brew (I'd say buzz, but, well, you know). The American Homebrewer's Association has a Mild as an option for their mildly humorously name (at least for this year given the Mild recipe) Big Brew. The co-author of this site has long been interested in brewing a mild (he has the ingredients).