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According to historians, beer has existed for at least six millennia and has been savored on every continent (even Antarctica!). With credentials like that, it’s no wonder that brewers have occasionally turned to some highly unusual techniques and ingredients to make their beverages stand out. Here are eight of the oddest.
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This pours a dark brown. It has sumptuous brown hues. Thick and pours out slow like oil. A creamy head of chocolate colored foam reminds me of a milkshake. This beer will show you lace and legs.
Nose is sweet chocolate caramel and cream. Earthy coffee and the bright presence of the pepper. No vanilla. The pepper seemed to fade into the beer as the malts took over. Caramel a bit nutty and a light airy chocolate.
The taste is silken and long. That caramel is luscious alright and lasts on the palate. There’s barley and a grainy roast that does not touch burnt so it’s creamy. There is a cocoa powder so light so provocative that it actually feels like a dusting of cocoa powder on the back of the throat. it is delicate and that is a pleasant paradox. The pepper is earthy and shows you everything gently but no real heat. There is a touch of cream to this flavor that lets you see the depth of that roast but only askance as it finishes full, slightly chewy . The pepper finally flares up just a little in the aftertaste and the beer ends smooth, dry and beyond chocolatey.
4
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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is a great beer writer. That’s Maria in the middle. The other two are not, but they are lucky to have her as a friend.
86 on Beer Advocate.
93 and 95 for style at Rate Beer.
What about peanut butter doesn’t these reviewers understand? Are they so nose focused they miss it’s the smell that’s skewing their reviews?
Seems so.
Big light brown foam head that holds a while. The body is a dense black that bright light hardly shines through. The head cascades downward into the quaff. Great presentation
Peanut butter and chocolate mixed perfectly, right up front, on the nose. Darker malts, way in the background, but very muted. The peanut butter and chocolate dominate.
On taste the chocolate is slightly bitter, as if dark chocolate and/or cocoa nibs were used
Very alcoholic. Indeed a tad too much in my opinion: throws the balance off. Not even the luxurious, seemingly heavy, body compensates. My guess is body is actually medium, but chocolate and peanut butter make it seem heavier. Peanut butter a mere hint in the taste. Not sure the abv, but if not high I would think a mild case of higher alcohol.
Nice try. I suggest backing off the high abv or higher alcohols, up malt sense and get more peanut butter into the taste.
3.6
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I began washing and harvesting my own yeast about a year ago. I got excited and harvested 4 jars from 4 batches in the first month, leaving me with 16 jars of 4 different yeasts. Since I usually brew twice per month, I had a ton of yeast just sitting in my fridge. After using some of this stored (aka old) yeast in beers that came out less than perfect, I began tossing it – hours of work, down the drain. Then I had an idea – why can’t I just harvest clean yeast directly from my starter? After trying out a few techniques, here’s the process that seems most efficient:
Step 1: Make a starter (3 days prior to brewing) that is .5 liter larger than you need for your beer. Since the majority of 5 gallon batches require no more than a 1 liter starter, a standard 2000 mL flask or even gallon growler will work great. In the photo below, I needed a 2 L starter for a 10 gallon batch, so I made 2.5 L.
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Red solo cups are fine for backyard barbecues and certain country music artists, but when we’re hosting a dinner party or feeling fancy, we prefer to drink our adult beverages out of slightly more sophisticated vessels. And, as if feeling like a badass holding a martini weren’t enough, there’s scientific reason to be choosy about your glass.
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A couple of weeks ago, Jester King’s head brewer Garrett Crowell made an astonishing proclamation. The brewery has made a decision to switch to green bottles, not in spite of the danger it poses to beer, but because of it.
“My pursuit of the use of green bottles stems mostly from the character of all of my favorite beers. Cuvee de Jonquilles, Blaugies, Thiriez, Fantôme, Cantillon, Dupont, all use green bottles. I’ve had brown bottle versions of some of these beers, and have had them on draft as well and there is an element missing from those versions that the green bottles have…. So many breweries have attempted to mimic the classic Saison Dupont yeast profile, and I feel what is most often missing is the light struck character that is integral to the profile of that beer.… I absolutely like skunky beer, oxidized beer, or “flawed†beer.â€
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(New York City, NY) – On Christmas, Evil Twin Brewing founder, Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø, shared a photo on Facebook (photo credit goes to Smuttynose Brewing’s Patrick Fondiller) showing the SingleCut Beersmiths logo with some anti-contract brewer messaging that reads, “Contract brewing will be the death of craft beer.â€
The photo set off a flurry of comments from fellow brewers, many of whom thrive off of contract brewing and closely-related “tenant†brewing.
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Looks like a tripel. Sweet golden color. Creamy white head Slight chill haze.
Smells like a tripel. Soft sweetness of the pils malt. Fruity middle wafting out to the top of the nose without any fanfare from the tettnang. They simply look on and give out pepper and floral as a greeting. Spice as your bring your head down to drink.
Taste is a gentle sour on all that nose. Citrusy fruit mingling with soft breaddy malt. A sparkling touch of acidity to enliven the palate before a crisp finish. Tettnang is known for it’s clean bitterness and in this beer it only shows you as much as it needs to to finish the beer and let that malt come to the finish breaddy and dry while they wait for all that long finish earthy and herbal . A warming from alcohol so slight, so pleasant a touch of sweetness from the alcohol . The finish is where you finally get a sense of the body of the beer. Medium, creamy, and carbonated to a bubbly perfection.
It’s amazing at 9.5%. Drinks like a sour tripel.
4
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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is a great beer writer. That’s Maria in the middle. She lives on a hill, but has to walk down and up it because she has yet to buy a jet pack.
Some craft beer lovers get a “fix” out of weird, novelty, brews-PGA
Spring and Summer seem to be the times of year when brewers get a little more whimsical with their releases. They experiment with flavors of fruits and spices, in what many people might call (and this is the most polite term I’ve heard) “girlfriend beers”.
Well, fruit has a long tradition as a beer ingredient, and as to experimental beers, well, that’s what pushes the envelope. It’s good to have an open mind about what constitutes things like patriotism, a family, or even beer.
Okay, my first two beers are both from The Bruery, in Placentia, California. Something one can *never* say about The Bruery is that they do anything normally, average or “to style”. Every single brew they produce is drastically unique in some way, and these two certainly fit that description. Continue reading “Tom Becham on Novelties”
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