Category Archives: Tasting Notes

These are my thoughts about various beers that I taste. Not as thorough as a review, but more than just casual drinking.

2012 Samuel Adams Utopias

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Samuel Adams Utopias is one of those legendary beers. It’s one of the original extreme beers – that is if you don’t include the earlier Sam Adams offerings, Triple Bock and Millennium. It’s not the booziest beer in the world, but it is the highest-alcohol, naturally-fermented brew. Getting a beer to ferment up to 29% is no small feat. Those others – the Tactical Nuclear Penguins and Schorschbocks of the world – cheat with freeze distillation. Part of the Utopias legend is rarity and cost. They make only 15,000 bottles and each 24 oz., brew kettle-shaped bottle retails in the neighborhood of $180.

Utopias is a blend of liquids. High-test brews from many different barrels – some of which have been aging for nearly 20 years – are brought together to complete the final brew. Some of that original Triple Bock from the 1990s is reportedly part of the mix. The result is an uncarbonated, spirituous elixir that is more like cognac or port wine than beer; a brew to sip from a special glass, two ounces at a time.

Utopias has been released in odd-numbered years since 2003. There was a batch in 2001, but they called it something else. Because it is a blend, every edition is somewhat different from the others. Somehow I have been lucky enough to sample every year’s release including 2001. While all have been extraordinary and luxurious, some have been better than others. I remember 2003 as a particularly standout year, though it’s been too long ago to remember why. 2009 was a lesser year; extra boozy and extra sweet as I recall.

Although it was an even-numbered year, Sam Adams released Utopias in 2012. It was the 10th-anniversary edition. The iconic kettle-shaped bottle remained, but this time it’s black instead of copper. The surface is etched with roots, “a metaphor for the 20+ years of complex history and aging of the liquids that make up this final brew.” So says the press release. For Samuel Adams Utopias, 2012 was a very good year.

Here’s my notes:

2012 Samuel Adams UtopiasSamuel Adams Utopias
Boston Beer Company, Boston, Massachusetts
Style: Strong Ale
Serving Style: 24 oz. decanter

Aroma: Every time it comes to my nose there is a different sensation – some extremely pleasant, some less so. Maple. Caramel. Butterscotch. Wooden barrel – very woody in fact. Old musty cedar. Vaporous alcohol.  Mineral spirits. Dried cherries and raisins. Chocolate comes in as it opens up. Really, there is so much going on that all I can do is list.

Appearance: Beautiful. Deep chestnut-mahogany. Brilliantly clear. No bubbles.

Flavor: Lip numbing with the first sip and the alcohol warms all the way down. It even stings a bit. Let your saliva blend in to mellow it out. There is so much fruit here; a surprising amount. It starts with bright, sweet/tart cherries. That gives way to darker fruits – plums, prunes, dates, and raisins. But that cherry never quite lets go. Rum and maple linger all the way into the finish. As it opens up in the glass some tootsie-roll chocolate note appear and hang on long after the swallow. Combined with the cherry it give the impression of tart and boozy chocolate covered cherry bon bons.

Mouthfeel: Viscous and smooth. Very warming.

Overall Impression: 2012 is really a very good year.

Kings & Spies from Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse

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Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse in Saanichton, British Columbia has become my latest obsession. This small, artisanal cider-maker is certified organic. They press their own heritage apples using the traditional rack and cloth method and ferment them with champagne yeast for a delicate sparkle. In their orchards they grow old-school cider apples – not the eating apples you get in the store – with names like Bill’s Red flesh, Brown Snout, and Winter Banana. They make awesome cider!

Really. This is some of the best cider I’ve ever had.

Four varieties are currently available in the Twin Cities – Prohibition, Pippins, Wild English, and Kings & Spies. Wild English uses a wild yeast fermentation for an earthy, funky profile. Pippins is light, bright, and tart. Rum-barrel-aged Prohibition is a strong cider with deep brown sugar and rum notes. You can read my notes for Pippins and Prohibition here.

Kings & Spies is the last of the bunch for me to try. It’s made primarily from Kings and Northern Spies apple varieties that the bottle says yield “a fruit-forward, Italian-style sparkling cider.” Making it even better, proceeds from this cider support Lifecycles, a Victoria organization that promotes local food security.

Here’s my notes.

Kings & SpiesKings & Spies
Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse, Saanichton, British Columbia
Style: Off-dry, Sparkling Apple Cider
Serving Style: 750 ml bottle

Aroma: A fruity nose full of red and green apples and hints of pineapple. It’s light and bright, but darker notes of raisin and brown sugar provide a suggestion of something deeper. I even get a skosh of oak, although I don’t know that this cider ever sees a barrel.

Appearance: Brilliant clarity with a light golden color.  Forms a foamy, white cap when poured, but it dissipates immediately. Small bubbles rise in the glass.

Flavor: A juicy sweetness up front that dries up in the finish, leaving behind a lingering tartness. Fresh red and green apple flavor, but with a wild edge, like the crab apples I used to eat off the tree as a kid. Lots of interesting fruity highlights – oranges and lemons, pears. The fruit finds a contrast in tones of earth and herb. Vague hints of brown sugar and raisin.

Mouthfeel: Light body with moderates bubbles.

Overall Impression: Another OMG-good cider from Sea Ciderhouse. A delight to drink from the start to the end of the bottle. Light enough for patio sipping in the summer, but deep enough to satisfy me on a cold January night.

Leuven from Funkwerks Brewery

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Fort Collins, Colorado is one heck of a beer town. The official population as of 2011 is just 146, 762. Yet there are currently something like 12 breweries in the city. There are breweries of all shapes and sizes; Anhueser-Busch and New Belgium on the big end, Odell and Fort Collins Brewery in the middle, and places like Funkwerks on the small side. And to top it all off, in addition to being beer heaven Fort Collins is just a great place to be.

If you ever find yourself in Fort Collins, Funkwerks Brewery is a must-visit. This tiny operation took over the space once occupied by Fort Collins Brewery when that beer-maker expanded. Funkwerks specializes in saison. That’s all you will find there. They make several varieties of saison, from straight-up, old-fashioned DuPont-like versions to ones made with green tea or Brettanomyces. Tasting your way through the rather generous sampler flight is an adventurous treat.

On my last visit there after the 2012 GABF in October, they had two “experimental” beers on tap that proved to be the best of the bunch. Nit Wit was a cross-style mashup of Belgian witbier and saison. Lueven fell somewhere between saison and Berliner Weiss. Both were good enough to convince me to shell out $25 a bottle and check my bag for another $20. Nit wit I just drank. I do that sometimes. I took notes on Leuven.

Here’s my notes:

Leuven
Funkwerks Brewery, Fort Collins, Colorado
Style: Saison/Berliner Weiss
Serving Style: 750 ml bottle

Aroma: Wheaty sharpness and lightly sweet. Hints of cotton-candy Belgian yeast phenolics and esters. Herbs. Apple cider.

Appearance: Light straw colored with a slight haze. Great big, fluffy, long-lasting, white head.

Flavor: Cracker wheat with a touch of sweetness. A bit of lactic tartness that brings a pucker in the finish. Green apples. Herbs – oregano and thyme. White pepper. Finishes dry and crisp.

Mouthfeel: Light body. Thin but with a wheaty fullness. Spritzy carbonation.

Overall Impression: So pleasant. So refreshing. Just the right balance of everything – sweetness, acidity, yeasty phenolics, herbal notes. Perfect for a summer afternoon. But then it was pretty perfect on a snowy winter night in Minnesota, as well.

Schell’s Chimney Sweep and Snowstorm 2012: Bière de Noël

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A while back I wrote a piece in the Growler magazine about beer tickers. In it I discuss how the relentless quest for what’s rare and new is shaping today’s beer market.

Gone are the days when it was enough just to make good beer. Now brewers have to constantly innovate to garner attention. Fail to do so and they become passé, regardless of how good their standard line-up may be. Old-school brewers whose reputations have been built on solid examples of classic styles find themselves pushed to produce boutique beers or risk irrelevance.

And so it is that a 150-year-old brewery – the second oldest family owned brewery in the country and a pioneer of American craft beer – releases no less than four new brands this year.

The brewers at Schell’s have been busy. Spring saw the release of a new full-time beer, the hopped-up Emerald Rye, and Czech Dark Lager, the fifth beer in the Stag Series lineup. Fall brings another Stag Series Beer – Fresh Hop Citra Pils – and another full-time release – Chimney Sweep. That’s in addition to the annually-altered seasonal Snowstorm.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand Schell’s regular lineup is great. Theirs is one of the best Pilsners available. The seasonal Hefeweizen is phenomenal. Firebrick is a go-to beer for me. With such a solid stable, they shouldn’t really have to constantly introduce new brands to keep beer lovers’ attention. On the other hand, Schell’s makes great beer. More brands mean more great beers to enjoy. It’s a double-edged sword.

At any rate, the brewers at Schell’s have been busy. Chimney Sweep and the 2012 Snowstorm hit shelves just in the last couple of weeks. I finally had the chance to give them a try.

Here’s my notes:

Chimney Sweep
August Schell Brewing Company, New Ulm, Minnesota
Style: Smoked Schwarzbier
Serving Style: 12 oz bottle

Aroma: A little bit of chocolate. A little bit of spice. A little bit of smoke. It’s not the bacony smoke of a traditional rauchbier. It’s more of a campfire smoke; that smell of your jacket after a night by the fire pit.

Appearance: Full, long-lasting, rocky, beige head. Dark brown and clear.

Flavor: Malt dominates with bittersweet, dark chocolate and campfire smoke. The smoke is prominent, but not at all overwhelming. Moderate pilsner-malt sweetness is perfectly balanced by moderate bitterness from both hops and roasted grains. There is some floral and citrus character from Sterling and Liberty hops – my two favorite varieties – but it is subtle. Super balanced. Finishes with a flourish of hop and roast bitterness.

Mouthfeel: So creamy. Medium body and medium carbonation.

Overall Impression: I tasted this last night and as I type up my notes right now I find myself craving a glass of it. Alas and alack, it is only 8 am. Too soon to start drinking when there’s work to be done. Chimney Sweep is wonderfully balanced and easy to drink, and yet so full of flavor. If you’re a person who doesn’t think they like smoked beers, this might be the one for you. It’s smoky, yes, but subtle.

Snowstorm 2012: Bière de Noël
August Schell Brewing Company, New Ulm, Minnesota
Style: Bière de Garde
Serving Style: 12 oz bottle

Aroma: What an interesting aroma. So much going on. Bread, herbs, honey, and brown sugar. Multiple fruits – green banana, red grapes, apples, a touch of fig. Belgian yeasty cotton candy. Horehound. Brings to mind the candied fruit in a loaf of fruit cake (I like fruitcake). Complex, layered, and changing.

Appearance: Medium-dark amber/orange and crystal clear. Good stand of rocky, off-white foam that falls quickly leaving a lace around the edge of the glass.

Flavor: The flavor follows on the aroma. It’s malt-forward and sweet, but with a dry finish. Bread crust, dark honey, and a bit of biscuit. Belgian cotton-candy sugar and yeast character. Loads of herbal notes – almost like a gruit. Touch of tartness comes in in the middle, but it’s not acidic. Bitterness is low. So much fruit – red-skinned Apples and orangy citrus. Cinnamon. White pepper traces in the finish.

Mouthfeel: Medium-full body. Medium-high carbonation. Some alcohol warming.

Overall Impression: What a festive beer! This screams the holiday season – sugar, spice and everything nice. It’s more Belgian yeasty than most bières de garde I have had, but that’s a-okay. To me it falls somewhere between a dubbel and a quadruple; it’s too full and fruity for a dubbel, but not strong or sweet enough for a quad.

Schell’s Stag Series #6: Fresh Hop Citra Pils

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Fall is fresh-hop season. Sometime in September the store shelves burst with super-citrusy IPAs that are loaded with unprocessed hops. They’re typically big, bright and a little bit grassy. I find the fresh hops impart subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) undertones of chive. By mid-October they’re mostly gone. There are still a couple lingerers as I type this, but the pickins are slim.

But just as the others disappear from stores, a new one from Schell’s suddenly appears. It’s a lager, so it had to cellar for a time before it could be released. That bottom-fermented identity is something that separates this one from the rest of the pack. Pilsners are the original hop-showcase beers. That perfumed Saaz-hop aroma is their claim to fame. Despite that, pilsners aren’t beers that most people think of as “hoppy.” Picking a pilsner to display the freshness of the new hop crop is an interesting move. It’s a choice that is perfectly in keeping with the Schell’s tradition of brewing great German-style lagers. It’s also in keeping with the somewhat hop-averse taste of Head Brewer Dave Berg.

Here’s my notes:

Stag Series #6: Fresh Hop Citra Pils
August Schell Brewing Company, New Ulm, Minnesota
Style: German Pilsner with fresh citra hops
Serving Style: 12 oz. Bottle

Aroma: Bright citrusy hops – lemons and limes – do a delicate dance atop a base of graham cracker sweetness. Very yeasty. Malt and yeast dominate. Hop character blows off quickly.

Appearance: Light golden and hazy – reminded me of a witbier going into the glass. Mousse-like white foam that lasts and lasts – also sort of witbeir like.

Flavor: Yeast and malt hit first, giving the impression of bread dough. Bitterness is moderate, but hangs on into the finish. It’s a very delicate balance between malt and hops. The hop flavor is also delicate, but definite – revealing at varying moments lemons, limes, and ripe musk melons. At times the limes are almost tart, like Starburst candy. Hints of fresh-hop grass and chive occasionally poke their heads out in the background. Those lemons and limes linger long after swallowing.

Mouthfeel: Medium-light body, but with yeasty fullness, like a witbier or a weizen. Medium carbonation.

Overall Impression: Everything about this beer says that I should love it. Pilsner is my perfect beer. I love a good Zwickelbier (unfiltered lager). Citra is one of my favorite new hop varieties. But there is something here that doesn’t quite fit for me. I think it’s that the doughiness of the still-suspended yeast fights for supremacy with the super-delicate flavors of the hops. It comes off a bit like a yeasty Radler. It’s not that I don’t like it, I do. I would drink a few pints. I just don’t love it. Now if it had been filtered…..

Summit Unchained Series #11: Old 152

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If you do a search online for Kentucky Common, you don’t turn up much. There are a couple of homebrew forum discussions, a Wikipedia page, and a reference to the 1901 Wahl & Henius Handy Book of Brewing, Malting, and Auxiliary Trades. The Handy Books is the only actual period reference, and it doesn’t tell you a lot. It says that Kentucky Common had a grain bill of malted barley and about 25 to 30 percent corn. Some sugar color, caramel or roasted malt was added for coloring. It had an original gravity of somewhere around 1.045, translating to around 4.5 percent alcohol under normal fermentation conditions. Hopping was moderate at one-half pound per barrel. It wasn’t fined or filtered, leaving it with a “muddy” appearance.

This lack of information is one thing that lead Summit brewer Eric Harper to select the Kentucky Common style for his second entry to the Summit Unchained Series, Old 152. Asked about this choice he said, “Nobody makes it. Nobody knows anything about it. You can’t have any preconceived notions about what it is. You can’t say I did it wrong, that’s for sure.”

Harper’s approach to the style was to take the scant historical information and riff on it. As the beer was originally made in Kentucky, he took a cue from the bourbon makers and used a mash of corn, rye and distiller’s malt. A portion of caramel and Victory malt added color and some toasty notes. He hopped the beer with Cluster hops, a variety that is native to the US and that 19th-century brewers would conceivably have used.

Some descriptions of the style make reference to a “sour mash,” another nod to the bourbon industry. Harper says that part of his mash was sour. “At a whisky distillery they are fermenting the entire mash.” he explained. “And then they take a portion of that fermented mash that’s got yeast and whatever bacteria and they add that back to the next batch. So that portion is the sour mash, and they are using that as a ph adjustment. We don’t ferment on the grain, and even if we did we don’t have an old batch of this beer around.” Given that limitation, Harper lowered the ph of his beer by adding acidulated malt, malt that has been treated with lactobacillus, an acid-producing bacteria that is found naturally on malted barley. This lowered the ph of the mash to far below the norm at Summit. “There is some confusion when I talk to people about it that the beer is going to be sour.” he added. But this notion of Kentucky Common as a sour beer is not borne out in the historical literature, and Harper’s version is definitely not sour.

So is Old 152 “to style?” Who knows? You’ll have to judge that for yourself. Release events started yesterday and run all week long.

Here’s my notes:

Old 152
Summit Brewing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota
Style: Kentucky Common
Serving Style: 12 oz. bottle

Aroma: Toast and caramel with tootsie-roll chocolate notes. Vague hints of spicy and catty hops add some high notes. Like a delightful baked good.

Appearance: Reddish amber with a slight haze. Good stand of off-white foam that sticks around in a thick layer on top of the beer.

Flavor: Toast and tootsie roll lead off with a bit of caramel adding sweetness. Rye spice comes in the middle. Bitterness is moderate, with spicy hop flavors that are almost prickly on the tongue. Light citrusy (lime?) and almost-lactic-tart notes peek furtively in and out of the background. Layered. Finishes quick and dry with lingering toastines, like toasted bread crust. Clean, crisp, and Lager-like.

Mouthfeel: Medium to medium light body. Medium carbonation.

Overall Impression: What a tasty, easy-drinking beer. The toasty malt at the forefront puts this one right in my wheelhouse. It’s Altbier-like, except with the wrong hop flavors. It’s a winner in my book.

 

 

Angry Orchard Iceman

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I’ve been getting into cider lately. Is it beer burnout? I’m not ashamed to admit that I feel that on occasion. Or maybe it’s because a whole new breed of ciders are becoming more common on store shelves these days. In something similar to the craft beer movement, the bland, overly-sweet juice drinks that people in this country have come to know as “cider” are beginning to see competition from more adventurous drinks.

In the Twin Cities it started with Crispin. While the blue label stuff that came first is not so interesting, at the time it was still better than most of the ciders that were available. The yeast experiments and barrel-aged ciders of the big-bottle, Artisanal Series pushed things to another level. Think what you will about Crispin, I still enjoy those. And the big-bottle, pear ciders from Crispin affiliate Fox Barrel are fantastic.

But others have begun to hit the market now. The newest kid on the block is Angry Orchard, a subsidiary of Boston Beer Company, makers of Sam Adams. Like Crispin, Angry Orchard has big-bottle and small-bottle offerings. The small-bottle ciders – Crisp Apple, Traditional Dry, and Apple Ginger – are good enough; better than most and quite drinkable. Again like Crispin, the big-bottle offerings – Iceman and Strawman – take cider to another level.

Last night I finally got around to tasting the first of two bottles that have been sitting in my fridge for some time now. According to the maker, Iceman is inspired by the traditional ice ciders of Quebec. The juice from a blend of bittersweet and culinary apples is frozen during the process. Not sure what that does, unless they are concentrating the juice using something like the freeze-distillation process that is used to make ice beers. I’m going to have to look into that. The juice is fermented with wine yeast and then barrel aged.

Here’s my notes:

Iceman
Angry Orchard Cider Company, Cincinnati, Ohio
Style: Ice Cider
Serving Style: 12 oz bottle

Aroma: The lead off is gooey toffee, sweet honey, and concentrated apple juice. Red apple skin is in there too. Spirituous alcoholic vapors swirl around, cutting the apple and caramel-candy sweetness, making it vaguely cognac-like rather than “cidery”. Faint hints of cinnamon, earth and flowers fill in the empty places.

Appearance: Light amber/orange color. Crystal clear. No bubbles.

Flavor: A mingling of cooked and fresh apples enveloped in honey, toffee, butter, and vanilla. Light acidity balances the sweetness. It grabs your cheeks and makes you pucker, but then there’s that sweetness again. Rum and raisins. Cinnamon makes an appearance. Alcohol enhances the whole. Earthy notes form a subtle background. The finish lingers on toffee; caramelicious goodness.

Mouthfeel: Still. Medium-full body. Warming.

Overall Impression: This is a delightful sipper. Read a book, sit by the fireplace, contemplate lofty ideas, and take it in slow and easy. Let the deep flavors sink in on their own time. Enjoy this with crème caramel or some other caramel desert. A grilled pork chop would suit this cider just fine, stay light on the seasoning though. Kale! Porketta! Maple bacon.

Boulevard Reverb Imperial Pilsner

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Anyone who knows me or has read much of my writing knows how I feel about pilsner; it’s the perfect beer. Pilsners are simple and easy-drinking enough to remain unobtrusive at times when drinking beer is more about the social event than the beer. But if you want to pay attention, there is a depth of complexity hiding beneath that simple surface. Take the time and make the effort. Pilsner will reward.

So why would anyone want to imperialize a pilsner? Why mess with the perfect beer? I have seldom met an imperial pilsner that I liked. Most are either too sweet or lean too much on hops. They upset the delicate balance that makes pilsner great. There was the one at the Rail House Restaurant and Brewpub in Marrinette, Wisconsin. It managed to be at once big and balanced. But the rest have all been drain pours.

So then there is was, Reverb Imperial Pilsner from Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City, Missouri. The bottle was staring at me from my fridge, daring me to drink; throwing down the gauntlet to challenge my bias. This beer first appeared in 2010 as the brewery’s first collaboration. I’m told that collaborator Jean-Marie Rock – a.k.a. the guy who makes Orval – had been sitting on this recipe for quite a while. It was a collaboration specifically between him and Boulevard, not Orval. I guess when one makes only one beer time and time again, the urge arises to do something else, and an imperial pilsner was that something else.

So what was I to do? Leave the bottle sit or accept the challenge, fully expecting to be disappointed by yet another large lager? I could not let this slap in the face go unanswered. I grabbed the bottle firmly by the throat, popped the cork, and poured its suspect contents into a glass. Challenge accepted.

Here’s my notes:

Reverb Imperial Pilsner
Boulevard Brewing Company, Kansas City, Missouri
Style: Imperial Pilsner
Serving Style: 750 ml Bottle

Aroma: Malt leads the way; a combination of pilsner-malt sweetness and notes of toast. Light hints of sulfur in the background. Hop character is lower than expected; floral and spicy.

Appearance: Light gold and quite hazy at first. The haze cleared as the beer warmed a bit. A large, mousse-like, cap of white foam that just wouldn’t die.

Flavor: A bit too cold on the first few sips, it came off a bit unbalance; light hops and overly bitter. A quarter of the way into the glass it suddenly became delightfully pilsner-like. The same sweet malt and toasty edges from the aroma. The bitterness is just about right to balance the amped-up imperial sweetness. Floral hop flavors ride smoothly over the top, slightly prominent, but never dominant. A hint of sulfur adds complexity. The finish is clean and crisp with lingering bitterness and floral flavor.

Mouthfeel: Medium-full body. A bit viscous. Medium, but prickly carbonation.

Overall Impression: I took the challenge and the beer won. This is the most pilsner-like imperial pilsner I have ever tasted. An ABV under 8% helped. Nothing is pushed over the top. If there is one flaw it is that the malt sweetness is a touch too much. A bit more bitterness would be welcome, but not a lot.

Schell’s Emerald Rye

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Emerald Rye, the new year round beer from the August Schell Brewing Company, has been out for a while now. I had the opportunity to taste it some time ago, but I’m just now getting around to giving it some proper attention. Things are busy, you know.

People were somewhat surprised when this beer was announced. A 60 IBU brew from Schell’s? How could this be possible from Brewmaster Dave Berg, a brewer somewhat famous for his aversion to tongue-scraping hop loads? But a suggestion from Jace Marti, soon to be CEO and 6th-genaration (or is it 7th?) descendant of the original August, proved too much to resist. Having just returned from brewing school in Germany, Jace was excited about a new hop called Smaragd – the German word for Emerald – that had the spiciness of a classic noble hop combined with copious fruit character. A touch of spicy rye would be the perfect complement to this hop, they decided. And true to Schell’s tradition, the new brew would be a lager.

Here’s my notes:

Emerald Rye
August Schell Brewing Company, New Ulm, Minnesota
Style: Rye Lager
Serving Style: 12 oz bottle

Aroma: Tangerines and toast. A bit of caramel-like sweetness lies underneath. Lime zest, oranges, pears and herbs sit on top. It’s a freakin’ fruit basket.

Appearance: Amber with reddish highlights. The long-lasting, creamy, off-white foam settles slowly to a film on the surface. Brilliantly clear.

Flavor: Sweet and bitter balanced. Bitterness hits at the top and returns at the finish. In between is toast and melanoidin malt with spicy rye flavors to give it some pep. The delicious fruit basket returns in the flavor; melons, citrus, floral and herbs. The finish is long lasting, leaving traces of sweet malt and fruit after that last bitter bite.

Mouthfeel: Medium-high body. Medium carbonation.

Overall Impression: Yes, it’s a bitter beer. 60 IBU is relatively high, especially coming from Schell’s, a brewery – and brewer – not known for the excessive use of hops. But this is not excessive. The sturdy malt backbone balances perfectly, leaving neither hops nor malt with the upper hand. The body reveals every bit of its 6% ABV, making for a satisfying quaff. This is a great food beer. It would be wonderful with cheddar or blue cheese, or maybe a hard cheese like aged Gouda. It was a great accompaniment to my Greek-seasoned, grilled pork chop. It would stand up well to a steak.

Old Chicago Gold Medal Mini Tour

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Truth be told, I don’t go to Old Chicago all that often. But they send me notices of each new mini-tour and every once in a while one will catch my attention – pique my curiosity. And so it was that the current one found me sitting at the Roseville location sampling beers.

Until August 19th, Old Chicago is featuring the Olympic-season-appropriate Gold Medal Mini Tour. The 8-beer tour is made up entirely of beers that have recently gone for the Gold in major national or international competition. This theme makes for an interesting and varied lineup. Remember that all of these competitions have Light American Lagers categories in addition to those for the more flavorful and funky brews. The Old Chicago selection of award-winners reflects that variety. At Roseville (three beers in the list vary from store to store) the list encompasses Michelob Ultra as well as Stone Cali-Belgique.

I didn’t sample the whole flight, as for some of them there was really no need. But here is the full list with notes for those that I did try.

Blue Moon Belgian White Ale

Michelob Ultra – Believe it or not, I had never tasted Michelob Ultra. I don’t tend to spend much energy on light beers. So it was with a certain amount of excitement that I raised the sampler to my lips. How do they make it so sweet when all the carbs are removed? It’s a mystery – a marvel of modern brewing science. And of course there was the green apple note that is the signature of AB products. I could see this being okay on a hot summer day if it is really ice cold. People are always complaining that beers like this win medals. Remember, the big-boys invented the category. Whether  or not you like the styles – or the breweries – they make them better than anyone else.

Widmer Brothers Hefeweizen – It had been over a decade since I had a Widmer Wheat. This is another hot-weather quencher. Crisp and dry with wheaty sharpness, it differs from other American wheat beers in its inclusion of subtle banana and clove yeast character. This could make a tasty everyday fridge beer. Nothing taxing, but tasty all the same.

Leinenkugel’s Berry Weiss

Schneider Weisse Tap 7 Original – This beer has won a ton of awards, and for good reason. It’s a great beer. It’s not called a dunkelweizen, but has many of the characteristics of one, including a dark-amber coloring. The sharp wheatiness is there. The full, yet light-bodied mouthfeel is there. Yeasty banana and clove are present, but not dominant. It’s rounded out by delicious caramel and dark fruit flavors with a touch of chocolate in the finish. Delightful! I just had to finish the bottle. Couldn’t let good beer go to waste.

Summit Extra Pale Ale

Stone Cali-Belgique IPA – Sometimes beers evoke images in my mind. While drinking this beer I could see the elegantly sleek outlines of modern industrial design; horizontal stonework, hanging light fixtures, exposed ventilation in the ceiling, and occasional flashes of corrugated steel. It’s bitter, but not the tongue scraper that I would expect from Stone. Peppery phenolics from Belgian yeast offer a nice complement to the spicy hops. A slight citrus edge adds bright highlights. The finish is clean and super-dry. This is an elegant beer.

Red Hook ESB – Another beer that I haven’t tasted in over a decade, this one took me back to the 90s when I lived in Chicago and waited tables at a restaurant in Evanston. It was a go-to craft beer at the time. Its reputation has faded since. It starts sharply bitter and then evolves to a caramel/toffee center. Bitterness lingers after swallowing. There was an intense fruitiness here; oranges and tangerines. It surprised us all. I don’t remember that strong fruitiness, but after more than 10 years, how much can I really remember of the taste of this beer?