The Captain's Chair

Sam Adams Utopias isn’t really a beer…it’s an experience.

Offered in extraordinarily limited quantities once every two years (there were only 53 barrels produced for this year’s version), Utopias is considered to be one of the tougher beers out there to get your hands on, and for good reason, taking into account the intensely laborious, time-consuming process Boston Beer Co.’s brewers take to produce this innovative brew. In its fifth release, Utopias has traditionally contended with such beers as Dogfish Head’s 120 Minute IPA as the most alcoholic beer on planet earth*, coming in at a mere 27% ABV. But the strength of the beer, while certainly unique and more reminiscent to what you’d find in a fine liquer, is not all that sets it apart in my mind.

To brew this one-of-a-kind beer (and yes, it technically is a beer), they use a blend of two-row, caramel and Munich malts with a healthy dose of maple syrup to help kick up the gravity, likely to uncharted levels that would make your average hydrometer hide in fear. To balance the insane levels of malt, they hop with several Noble varieties including Spalt Spalter, Hallertau Mittelfrueh, and Tettnang Tettnanger to add a bit of spice to the concoction. For such a potently sweet wort, they use a number of high gravity yeasts to ferment, including Champagne yeast, and much like a fine distiller, they also blend a number of batches to come up with the finished product, some of which have aged up to 16 years in various casks including brandy, sherry, cognac, bourbon and muscatel. In short, Sam Adams Utopias is to American brewing what Cantillon Blåbær and other rare lambics are to the Belgian brewing tradition with all of the patience and care involved in developing it.

Liquid aside, the bottle holding the beer is something to behold in and of itself, like a piece of art. Designed by a noted Brazilian glassware manufacturer, the container is a miniaturized copper brewing kettle with advent-like sliding doors that reveal a picture of the brewer/patriot himself, Sam Adams.

Utopias poured into a snifter (my special commemorative Riedel glass is on order!) with no perceptible carbonation. Awe-inspiring amber coloring, like staring at a beautifully crafted stained glass window in its magnetism. The beer had legs for miles that slowly sank down the sides of the glass when swirled, like a nice wine or single-malt scotch. Piercing notes of raisin, plum, honey, vanilla, and caramel in the nose mixed with a stinging wave of alcohol. Taste is immediately sweet, with an unparalleled symphony of caramel, honey and oak. The alcohol burn in the finish is really no burn at all, but rather a soft blanket of warmth gently coating the tongue. Surprisingly light mouthfeel, truly masterful in its complexity, and easy to see how the prestigious Wine Enthusiast Magazine gave Utopias its highest possible rating of 96-100 points several years ago.      

It’s difficult to compare this to anything, considering the beer doesn’t really have a stylistic equal. But if you’re looking for a warming, after dinner drink that resembles something like a sherry or cognac, Utopias is your choice.

Rating: A+

* Scottish brewer BrewDog has recently laid claim to the strongest beer in the world title with their forthcoming Tactical Nuclear Penguin. Looks like Jim Koch may have to up the ante with Utopias 2011.

The legendary lambic style made famous by artisan brewers in Belgium is about as labor-intensive as it gets when it comes to making beer.

• Step 1 – develop a base wort using wheat, barley malt and cheesy hops
• Step 2 – place said wort outside in the cool night air, preferably in the Pajottenland region of Belgium, exposing it to indigenous wild yeasts and other funky bacteria causing spontaneous fermentation
• Step 3 – age in oak barrels for a couple years to let the nasty critters really set up shop and pucker the hell out of the beer
• Step 4 – sample the beer, and possibly blend with other lambics of varying age to achieve desired flavor, also known as a gueuze
• Step 5 – if the gueuze isn’t your thing, rack the beer onto a bed of sour cherry, raspberry, peach, or strawberry, causing a second spontaneous fermentation from the sugars in the fruit
• Step 6 – continue to age in oak barrels for, oh, a year or two
• Step 7 – bottle, wait another year, and serve chilled in a fluted glass

Reuters recently did a nice profile on the art of brewing lambics, which is fortunately seeing somewhat of a reprise thanks to growing global interest in finely crafted beer. So when you get a good one (and I’m not talking Lindemans), savor it.

New Glarus’ recently released Cran-bic, part of their Unplugged Series, is one of those fantastic examples, brewed in the great state of Wisconsin using locally grown cranberries and native wild yeasts to give the beer its harmoniously balanced aromas and flavors, really a masterpiece that only reinforces in my mind that these guys know their way around a fermentation vessel when it comes to brewing incredible fruit style ales.

Poured in a fluted glass with a beautiful light crimson tone, perfectly clear and jumping with large champagne-like bubbles. The aroma is breathtaking, a combination of tempered brettanomyces giving the beer some very mild musty, horse blanket notes, but coupled with a sweet acidity from the cranberry. Flavor is so balanced, with each complex component equally expressed from start to dry finish. Wonderful sourness hitting the sides of your tongue, but not overly dominating like some other lambics I’ve sampled, which makes this beer incredibly drinkable.

This is such a nice beer, a great example of the style if you’re able to get to Wisconsin and get your hands on some.   

Rating: A

Just a real quick post on this because I know several people have expressed interest…

The Berliner Weisse I brewed a couple weeks ago seems to be doing very well. I racked the beer to secondary last night after a nice primary fermentation, and it smelled amazing. Beautiful sour aroma set on a solid wheaty background. Very light and delicate.  No hops to speak of, which was expected given the no boil approach. Taste was also pretty good, the faint beginnings of tartness, but not as sour at this point as I was hoping. I’ve been reading that the lacto will take some time to work its magic. All in all, I’d say somewhat reminiscent to Festina Peche, minus the apricot thing.

The beer finished at 1.002, putting it at about 2.5% ABV. When I bottle in a week or so, I’ll dose with a second helping of lacto, which will help promote the souring as the beer conditions in the bottle over the next couple months. When the time comes, I may even try to concoct my own syrups to accompany the beer, an homage to the traditional way the beer is served in Germany.

Forget hops…over the past several months, I’ve been slowly becoming what can be called a sour head.

After having a few phenomenal sours at GABF, and more recently sampling stuff like Russian River Consecration and Supplication at a friend’s beer tasting event, I’ve been itching to brew my own. I did some research into styles, bacteria and brewing processes, and decided to focus my first foray into the category on making a Berliner Weisse, a very delicate, low-alcohol beer that originated in northern Germany several hundred years ago.

When Napoleon’s troops marched into Germany and sampled the beer, they called it “the champagne of the North,” and it does indeed resemble a champagne with its high effervescence and dry acidity. They generally come in between 2-3% ABV, with extremely little (or no) hop bitterness or aroma, and are often served with various syrups to balance the trademark sourness. The grain bill is very simple, traditionally made up primarily of pilsner malt with about a third (sometimes up to half) wheat. The puckering sour in the beer comes from lactobacillus delbrueckii, a bacteria that can be imparted in the wort any number of ways, either naturally using a sour mash or via inoculation from a prepared culture as I did, figuring the sour mash procedure seemed like too much of a crapshoot on the level of sourness you’d ultimately get.

It’s fairly difficult to find commercial examples here in the Twin Cities. But if you’re willing to order beer online or travel to Hudson, you can find a few nice ones (often seasonal) including The Bruery’s Hottenroth, New Glarus’ Unplugged Berliner Weisse, and Dogfish Head’s Festina Peche.

Here’s the recipe I went with for a five gallon batch:    

3 lb Pilsner
3 lb White Wheat
1 lb Carapils
1 oz Tettnanger (4.4%)
Wyeast 5335 Lactobacillus Delbrueckii
Wyeast 1338 European Ale

Saccharification rest: 152 degrees for 60 minutes
Sparge: 170 degrees for 45 minutes
OG: 1.028

This is a no boil recipe…yes, you heard me right…no boil. And the reasoning behind it is two-fold. First, while I decided to inoculate the wort using a bacteria culture from Wyeast, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to let any naturally occuring lactobacillus from the grain husks in the mash play a less significant role in upping the sourness of the beer (assuming any survived the saccharification rest). I suppose that also means there’s potential for other unwanted bugs to get in the beer, but I’ll take that chance (the style is also known to have low levels of brettanomyces, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Secondly, hops play an extremely small, almost non-existent role in this type of beer, so I hopped in the mash using a small amount of the low alpha acid German Tettnanger as opposed to boiling which would have extracted and utilized more compounds than required. Hop compounds can also inhibit the growth of bacteria (ever heard that hops have a preservative effect?) which is counterproductive for this style.

Once I had collected my wort, I cooled down to about 85 degrees and pitched the bacteria into the carboy, thinking that the bacteria would work more effectively at a warmer temperature as opposed to cooling to the preferable 65-68 degree range for ale yeast. I gave the bacteria a 24 hour head start before I pitched the yeast, as I wanted the bacteria to get some sugars before the yeast came into the picture and gobbled everything up. However, the bacteria can quickly cause the pH level in the wort to become too acidic, creating an unsuitable environment for the yeast to do its thing. So 24 hours seemed like an appropriate timeframe between bacteria and yeast.

Within 12 hours of pitching the yeast, I saw a small but active krausen in the carboy. The beer’s original gravity is only 1.028, so very small. I’m anticipating this will finish out around the 1.002 range, giving me about 2.5% ABV. After primary fermentation and a diacetyl rest, I’ll condition in secondary for a few more days before I bottle. When I do package the beer, I’ll dose it with another shot of lactobacillus and let it bottle-condition for at least a couple months.

It’s been more than six weeks since I published my last dedicated review, with a smattering of stories mixed in here and there. Call it the post-GABF slump.

Since I’ve been blogging, I’ve tried to hold myself to a loose goal of two, sometimes three, stories a week. But following my trip to Denver, I think I pretty much expended most of my beer writing energy for a while. Which has been just fine, however, since life has been a bit busy around The Captain’s abode, to say the least.

In addition to putting in some long hours at work, my wife and I have been anxiously preparing for the birth of our daughter later this month, and I couldn’t be more excited. 

It’s been a significant mental shift, and at times a bit tricky balancing my love affair with yeast with all the changes and new responsibilities that come with preparing to be a new father. Instead of brewing or bottling homebrew, I’m following IKEA-like diagrams to assemble cribs and glider chairs. Instead of heading up to The Blue Nile, Acadia Cafe or Town Hall to sample the latest wares, I’m attending baby classes at the hospital learning about proper swaddling techniques and how to securely fasten an infant car seat. Who knew babies needed to eat up to 8-12 times per day? Wait…so does that also mean…well, good thing I paid attention in the diaper class.

With less than three weeks to go, we are in the long-awaited final stretch…and when I say “we” I’m of course referring primarily to my beautiful wife who has been nothing short of amazing throughout this entire process. Pretty sure there’s a reason women were blessed with the ability to bear children as opposed to men. Because if I were in my wife’s shoes, I would have likely thrown in the towel months ago, considering my threshold for pain and discomfort is that of a soccer player flopping on the ground after stubbing his toe on a blade of grass. 

Pregnancy is an amazing thing…it’s difficult to put into words the emotions of love and total awe that I’ve felt watching our little family grow with each passing day. It’s exciting and scary all at the same time, and I’m trying my best to fully take in every moment of it.

Somehow amidst all the baby prep, I did manage to make my way out to this year’s Darkness Day at Surly, what proved to be another incredibly fun experience meeting new friends and enjoying some of the best craft beer in the country.

Not having much free time to run out with my fellow beer geeks in town and take in what seems to be a large number of bars tapping Darkness 2009, I decided to crack the wax on one of my bottles on Halloween night (seemed apropos) and sit down to immerse myself in this year’s vintage (or is it bintage?).

Poured into my 2008 commemorative snifter with a very deep and rich ebony appearance befitting its name. A nice mocha colored head briefly formed, but quickly retreated under the strength of the beer below. It’s cliche, but this beer truly does benefit from warming to near room temperature. I’d cooled the bottle down for an hour in the refrigerator to about 55 degrees, and the hop character, certainly much more perceptible in this year’s batch than 2008 (and closer to 2006 and 2007 versions), came off a little too dominant in the nose for my taste compared to the somewhat muted malt, I’m certain a result of the chilling. Not sure what varieties were used, but somewhat dank and earthy (guessing Fuggles), not citrusy or piney.

After giving the glass some time to warm, the aroma came right back into balance, providing a suitable segue to what is truly a spectacular malt foundation complete with flavors of molasses, coffee, roasted barley, and chocolate. More of the bittering hops in the finish, mingling with cocoa and a faint alcohol burn.

Aroma and flavor aside, one of the common denominators across many of Surly’s offerings that I’ve always loved and admired is the mouthfeel…whether it’s Furious, Bender or a huge beer like Darkness, there’s a trademark chewyness that you frankly don’t find in many other beers. Call it something like a “house flavor,” or simply Todd’s unique brewing stamp. Whatever the case, it completely sets Darkness apart from most other imperial stouts out there, making it a perennial front runner in my book as one of the best examples of the style.

So bottom line…what kind of beer are we dealing with here? I think an offering that surpasses nearly every expectation that’s been heaped upon it, delighting with nuanced complexity sip after sip. However, taking into account all my genuine superlatives in describing Darkness 2009, I’m ever so slightly partial to last year’s sweeter, more malt-forward version, which I realize is the distinct anomaly in the Darkness portfolio to date.

Rating: A