Piraat

Belgian Ale

I decided to go Belgian last night, so I picked up a bottle of Piraat (one of the all-time classic Belgian ales) as well as a bottle of Trois Pistoles (one of the “Belgian-style” ales from Unibroue). I was planning to drink both bottles- at one pint, nine ounces each- but I could not. I had forgotten how heavy these cask-reconditioned Belgian beers can be.

Drinking a big bottle of this type of beer is about equivalent to eating a whole loaf of bread in one sitting in terms of how filling it is. By the time I finished the Piraat and poured my first glass of Trois Pistoles, I realized I couldn't possibly drink it and was forced to ask my wife to painstakingly pour it back into the bottle for me so I could drink it the next day.

Someone once described Piraat as one of the five best beers in the entire world. With ratings like that, I'm not sure I even feel qualified to comment on it! But I will say this:

 

It has a picture of a pirate and a picture of a pirate ship on the label, it's called “pirate” (well, close enough), it will blow your socks off if you're not careful, and it's damn tasty like all Belgian beers. So rather than trying to describe the qualities of such Beer Royalty as this, I'll just tell you I recommend it and leave it at that. Just don't imagine you can drink two of them, because you can't.

Fraoch

Heather Ale

Who were the ancient Picts? Did they come from Atlantis or from UFOs? Were they tiny like Hobbits, or massive barbarian He-Men? Were they druids or feminists? Nobody knows, but one thing we do know is that they drank heather ale, because people have been drinking heather ale in Scotland since 2000 BC, and they drank it right up until the English made them stop. Now you can drink it again if you can find a bottle of Fraoch, which is actually the Gaelic word for “heather,” which means it's not what the Picts called it because they spoke Pictish, not Gaelic.

Why would the English make the Scots stop drinking heather ale? Was it just to be mean, or were they trying to stamp out any lingering remnants of Pictish matriarchal-Druidic-Atlantean resistance to their oppressive rule? Nobody knows, but one thing we do know is that the English wanted Scots brewers to have to buy ingredients from England, instead of just using heather, which was growing all over the place for free.

 

The moral of the story is this: the Picts were either a group of tribes speaking a variant of P-Celtic and brewing ale from heather which they did not call “Fraoch,” or they were a mysterious Atlantean Druidic matriarchy. The English either banned heather ale in order to make a few extra bucks, or they did it as part of a fiendish anti-Pictish plot. Have a “Fraoch” and decide for yourself. It's pretty good.

El Mole Ocho

New Holland Brewery

 

Mole sauce is one of the most interesting flavors in all of Mexican cooking. It's unsweetened chocolate with a little hint of spiciness, recalling the ancient Mexican use of chocolate as a hot spiced beverage. Next time you're at a Mexican restaurant, check out chicken mole or mole poblano. Then pick up a bottle of El Mole Ocho by New Holland Brewery, because this is a beer designed to taste like mole sauce and it really does.

El Mole Ocho is conceptually similar to a chocolate stout, but smoother and with just a tiny hint of chile. That's like genuine mole sauce, which is only lightly spiced, and savory rather than sweet. But this isn't just a gimmick, it's actually a very satisfying beer with a continuously interesting and rewarding flavor.

 

Fair warning- and this should really be put on most of my beer blogs- but this one will knock your socks off. I tend to go for the high gravity beers, and El Mole Ocho is probably about twice as strong as a typical brew. If you drink the whole bottle at one sitting, you will probably get really drunk, unless you've got a high tolerance. I drank this one myself, but I'm a big guy and I drink a lot of beer. Most people will probably want to either split it with a fellow beer-and-chocolate lover or pace it out a bit more. Or drink it with a nice plate of chicken mole for a holistic chocolatey experience!

 

 

 

Negra Modelo

Dark, but light

 

Guinness Stout is a thick, rich beer and the climate of Ireland is cool and wet. Corona, on the other hand, is light and thin, and the climate of Mexico is hot and dry. This is not a coincidence. Drinking Guinness in Mexico would seem peculiar and masochistic, because that thick creamy stout would sit in your belly like a stack of bricks in the sun and the heat. Even in a northern climate like Minnesota, Guinness is something you would drink in the fall or winter, not the dog days of summer.

But what if your love of dark beer knows no bounds, and you don't want to drink a beer you can see through no matter how hot it gets? The answer to your dilemma is Negra Modelo, a Mexican dark lager. Negra Modelo is a beer you can drink comfortably when it's a 100 degrees outside, but it's pleasantly dark in color and has a more interesting flavor than Corona or Dos Equis.

 

It's not a stout, but if you're sitting there drinking a stout in that kind of heat, you need to learn about some of the other beers in the world! If you've ever found yourself dragging your bloated carcass down the street in the blazing sun, wishing you had drunk something other than Guinness with your lunch, then you'll know what I'm talking about. If you're one of those Guinness fanatics who will drink nothing else no matter what the conditions, then you will surely disregard this. But don't say I didn't warn you!

 

 

Bottle or glass?

Warm or cold?

 

If you're drinking a good beer, or even a beer that just claims to be good, you can't really judge it fairly unless you pour it in a pint glass. I'm not really sure what the reason is for this, but many beers taste distinctly different in a bottle than in a glass, and the flavor in the bottle is generally worse. Some of the complexity of the beer's flavor seems to get lost, and whatever the strongest element is tends to get exaggerated even more. “Old Rasputin Imperial Stout,” for instance, has a far superior flavor in a pint glass than in the bottle, where it sometimes tastes too hoppy. “Obsidian” stout is the same way.

Another factor is beer's temperature. The English like to drink their beer at room temperature or even lukewarm. I don't agree with this practice, but it is the case that most beers have more flavor at warmer temperatures. Keeping the beer really cold, chilling the glass or even putting ice in it (?!) will all tend to flatten out the flavor, so you only want to do any of these things in order to mask the flavor of bad beer.

 

The best practice, in my opinion, is to buy your beer at room temperature (the stuff on the shelf in other words), throw it in the fridge while you cook dinner, and pull it out when you're done. Pour it into a pint glass, let it settle, and you're good to go. Cheers!

 

 

Baltika

Odd-Tasting Russian Beer

 

 

“Baltika” is an extremely popular beer in Russia and Eastern Europe. I tried it out because it was inexpensive, and because it was described as a “dark lager,” which is one of the less common types of beer. I was expecting something similar to Xingu (a Brazilian black lager), but it was nothing like that. Actually, it was like nothing I have ever tasted before in a beer with the exception of some odd and in my opinion unfortunate home brewing experiments, the kind where your buddy hands you a bottle of his very own swill and you take sip, stifle a grimace and describe it as “interesting”.

Baltika does not really taste like a beer as such. It tastes like slightly carbonated water filtered through raisins and then flavored with molasses. This might appeal to your tastes- it really has to appeal to someone, because like I said it's a popular beer- but I'm afraid it did not appeal to me. If I am ever in Russia, I will drink the vodka before I willingly drink this stuff again, even though vodka has very sinister effects on me.

 

With the exception of subtle grace notes in the background of certain beers, I do not think of molasses when I think of great beer. I definitely do not think of raisins. If you happen to be a lifelong fan of raisins soaked in molasses, then this beer may well be your dream come true. Otherwise, I'd give it a pass.

 

The Reverend

Belgian-ish Quadrupel

“The Reverend” by Avery Brewing is a Belgian-style ale, done in the “quadrupel” tradition- high in alcohol, complex flavor, and sweet enough to be almost overwhelming. Apparently this type of beer was invented by Trappist monks, although not by Belgian Trappist monks, oddly enough, but by Dutch Trappists. I was really into this style of semi-Belgian beer just a few years ago, but now I think I've gone off it a little. Why is that?

I think I just like to drink a lot of beer at one time! But, unlike frat boys (whose solution to the same problem is to drink godawful watery stuff like Miller Lite) I prefer to drink really good beer if I'm going to drink beer at all. And this fruity-sweet super-intense pseudo-Belgian style is really better in smaller quantities, since it gets to be over the top after the first pint. It's also a very heavy beer, which contributes to making it less drinkable in larger quantities, particularly if you combine it with a meal. In all likelihood, this is not a problem for Trappist monks, but I suspect they have more of a commitment to “moderation in all things” than I will ever have.

 

So, while I don't think I'll be buying another bottle of The Reverend anytime soon, that doesn't mean you shouldn't. It's a good beer, and I enjoyed it- I just can't drink as much of it at one time as I might prefer, and that's why I generally go for the Imperial Russian stouts instead!

 

 

 

Oak Aged Yeti

And The Trouble With Guinness

“Oak Aged Yeti” is supposed to be a “more sophisticated” version of Great Divide's “Yeti,” an Imperial stout. What makes it more sophisticated, you might ask? I assume it's the oak aging, but I'm not really in a position to compare the two because I've only tasted the Oak Aged version, not the original and presumably less hoity-toity original. But that doesn't really matter, because any beer must stand on its own- and this one does.

The Oak Aged Yeti is delicious, with a multi-layered malty flavor reminiscent of (but distinct from) a good pint of Guinness. I specify a “good pint,” because Guinness is a rather delicate creature and its true superiority only comes across when it's perfectly stored and perfectly poured, a combination that rarely occurs. Nine out of every ten pints of Guinness outside of the British Isles will be disappointing if you know what the stuff is supposed to taste like, and the canned and bottled versions are inevitably sub-par, so even though Guinness in its pure form is one of the all-time great beers, it just isn't easy to get a good one if you don't happen to live in Britain or Ireland.

 

As such, it's frequently more satisfying to find a good stout from a microbrewery, unless you have access to Guinness in its ideal state. If you've tasted the real Guinness and you just can't seem to find it, “Oak Aged Yeti” will prove far more satisfying than the inferior Guinness poured by most pubs.

 

 

Night Tripper

And The Distinction Between Stout And Porter

Night Tripper Imperial Stout from New Holland Brewing Company starts out so smooth and drinkable you might almost think it lacks complexity, but the more you drink it, the more it tastes like a really fine and silky dark chocolate. The flavor of some stouts starts to get a little overwhelming by the end of your second pint or so, but Night Tripper retains the exact same chocolatey smoothness throughout.

It's also about the strongest stout you can buy for the money, at 10.8 percent. The combination of dark chocolate drinkability with high gravity alcohol kick is more than a little dangerous to the unwary, so approach it with caution. You could easily have too much of this stuff before realizing you were doing so.

 

A few weeks back, I mentioned that I didn't really know the difference between a stout and a porter. Well, now I do. All stouts are porters, meaning dark black ales. Historically, porter brewers would refer to their strongest porter as “stout” or “strong” porter. Since one company's stoutest porter could be another company's weakest, this was never really a consistent or logical term, but there's a vague and general tendency for the word “porter” to be used for weaker black beers and the term “stout” for stronger ones. To all intents and purposes, though, they're the same type of beer. Either a porter or a stout can be “Imperial,” “Russian,” or “Baltic,” which generally indicates a stronger beer. Nobody would call a 10.8 beer like Night Tripper a porter, but then again there are stouts and even “Imperial” stouts that aren't particularly strong. So there's really no rule, but broadly speaking you could say that a porter should usually be like a stout without too much alcohol, and a stout should be like a stronger porter.

 

 

Tiny Guinness Jello Shots

Micro-pints look delicious

Maybe you're the type of person who only enjoys the idea of a beer. You can appreciate the aesthetics of its creamy head, its rich, dark body, the thick, frosty glass that encases it. You watch your fellow imbibers drink it down like a chocolate milkshake, in full, hearty swigs without so much blinking an eye. It looks like it should go down smooth and make your tastebuds quiver with joy. But every time you give it a go, its bitter taste betrays your expectations. If only there were a way to replicate what you thought beer should taste like. 

Well, now there is. I'm not one of those people I just described--I love a good brew--but for those among you who find yourselves put off time and time again by all things beery, here's your remedy. It's beer candy, basically. Or rather, beer--Guinness, to be precise--sweetened, solidified, and served up in tiny little steins. Yep, we're talking beer jello shots. They're newly invented and probably perfect for all your St. Patty's day festivities. They even have a little foam head made of Bailey's irish cream. Because who wouldn't love a tasty, bite-sized pint?

These little Guinness gulps are surprisingly easy to make provided you have access to unflavored, uncut gelatin at your local grocery store (it should be right next to the strawberry stuff). You'll also need the Guinness itself, a little sugar (optional, to taste),  cocoa powder (also optional), and Bailey's. You'll want to conjure up these microbrews (sorry) in shot glasses--ideally, ones that look just like frosted mugs (they can be purchased here). 

For the recipe and directions, please visit 1FineCookie.com.

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