High ABV Beers

Great post from Ryan_Brews on getting a pretty high alcohol level for a recent RIS homebrew.

Founders Brewing -- Nemesis and The Barrel Cellar

This morning, KalamaBrew posted information about Founders Nemesis "2009," which is to be a maple-bourbon-barrel-aged wheatwine, clocking in at 12% alcohol and 70 IBU's. Also, KalamaBrew included an older video, which is a brief tour of the Founders Barrel Room.

Charlie Papazian on Sour Beers

Charlie Papazian discusses sour beers and the various types of acid in beer here (part one) and here (part two).

One interesting point, aside from the discussion of lactic and acetic acid, is that the acidity in many porters come from the roasting of malt, creating that oft-occurring unripe cherry taste in many dark beers.

Allagash Curieux

Rob Tod from Allagash on the creation of Curieux (courtesy of Young & Hungry):

Beer Lager Heads
Waste Not, Want Not: The Story of Allagash Curieux
Posted by Tammy Tuck and Bruce Falconer on Jan. 14, 2010, at 9:27 am



Curieux, which is French for “curious,” is exactly what Allagash Brewing Company founder Rob Tod was when he decided to avoid wasting an extra batch of beer by aging it in bourbon barrels. We had the privilege of hearing him recount the entertaining story behind this fine beer during last year’s Allagash dinner at Granville Moore’s. We thought those of you heading over to The Reef tonight for Firkin Thursday would enjoy the story behind this week’s beer.

This is a beer we totally stumbled on, which is like a lot of the funky beers we come up with. I mean, beers we’ve kind of stumbled on, or mistakes or problems we’ve tasted and been like, “Wow this is kind of good. We should sell it.” This is one of those. The story with this beer…


We had a batch of Tripel, and this is back when we only had a couple tanks and we bottled the Tripel in the big cork-finished bottles. There’s only a couple bottle factories in the world that make this traditional Belgian-style shape bottles. We buy them from a plant in France, and they’ve got to go from France to Belgium to, I don’t know, Newark, New Jersey, and then up to Allagash, but they’ve gotta clear customs and they get held up in customs all the time.

This started around September 11th; everything was getting held up back then. We had a batch of Tripel we wanted to bottle, but we were basically short on bottles because there was a whole containter of bottles that was being held up in customs. We had no idea when it was going to show up, and we needed to bottle this batch of Tripel. We were going to have about 150 gallons of beer that didn’t have a home that we were going to dump.

About two weeks prior to that we had gotten a couple Jim Beam bourbon barrels. We just wanted to mess around with beer in bourbon barrels. People always envision doing a darker beer, not a light beer, for some reason, in the bourbon barrels. But anyway, we don’t like to waste beers. We kind of looked at the tank and looked at the barrels and were like, “We’ll fill the barrels with the Tripel so we don’t waste it, even though it’s probably going to taste like shit after a little while.”

So we filled the barrels with the Tripel, and bunged them real solidly with wooden bungs, which I guess was kind of a mistake. That was on a Wednesday. When I came in on Saturday there was nowhere for the pressure to go in these barrels because the bungs were so solid. I don’t know if they were refermenting or what was going on, but the barrels were almost vibrating with pressure. There was literally beer squirting out the heads of these barrels, and between the staves, and I kind of panicked because I thought one of these barrels would explode. I think they maybe could have because the heads were bulging.

So I ran to grab a screwdriver and a hammer and got down on my knees to start tapping a bung to loosen it to let some pressure out. The bung exploded out of this barrel making a huge pop. The bung went up and hit the ceiling. It went up 14 feet to the top of the warehouse. I got covered with foam, and I took my glasses off and there was this foam cascading down the side of the barrel. We don’t like to waste beer. So when that started happening I was down on my knees and I began slurping the foam that was cascading out of this barrel. I was thinking, “Wow, this stuff is f*&%ing good!”

I immediately called Jason, who is now our brewmaster at Allagash. He’s been there 12 years. I said, “Man, we gotta make this stuff.” That next Monday we ordered 10 wood barrels from Jim Beam and since then we’ve had a great relationship with them. This beer is just our Tripel aged in Jim Beam bourbon barrels. We totally stumbled on this beer.

It only ages in the barrels for about six to eight weeks, and right when the beer hits the barrels, it just sucks the bourbon out of the wood and into the beer. It’s almost like instantly aging the beer for a couple years in this wood because that bourbon that gets sucked into it just has all these wood flavors, so it totally transforms the beer. It gives it a coconut character, almost a dill character, of course a little bit of bourbon, and some kind of roasted charcoal notes.

Photo by Bernt Rostad used under Creative Commons license

Samuel Adams Noble Pils

Beer News discusses Sam Adams' new Spring seasonal, Sam Adams Noble Pils. The article states that the pilsner uses all five noble hop varieties:

This beer is special because of the quality and quantity of the hops in the recipe. Of the 100 plus hop varieties in the world only five are judged “Noble hops”, and this beer uses all five. Four are from Germany and one from the Czech Republic. The German hop varieties in Noble Pils are: Hallertau Mittelfrueh, Tettnang Tettnanger, Spalt Spalter, and Hersbrucker Hersbrucker. The Noble hop variety from Bohemia in the Czech Republic is Saaz.

Belgian Sour Beers

A short synopsis of the Belgian sour styles, courtesy of Young & Hungry:

Big news today for sour beer lovers, as master blender Armand Debelder of Belgium’s 3 Fonteinen brewery announced that he would retire from brewing his deliciously bright, acidic beers and focus on distilling beer into eau de vie. Debelder started this move to liquor production to recoup losses from summer 2009, when an equipment failure spoiled 100,000 bottles, almost one-third of his stock.

Debelder will still be blending his beers (by taste, like wine blends are made); the only difference is that the part of the blend that he used to brew will now be made by another Belgian brewery. If the transition is done well, drinkers shouldn’t notice. However, all this talk of blending probably sounds like nonsense to most ordinary folk, so here’s a quick, abbreviated guide to the sour beer known as geuze. (Oh, it’s also spelled gueuze sometimes. Confusing, right?)

Lambic is beer fermented 100% spontaneously — that is, instead of inoculating it with yeast, the beer is kept in an uncovered vat called a koelschip (think “cool ship”), where yeast critters that exist in the air around us air settle in and make themselves at home. These “wild” yeasts spoil ordinary beer and wine, bringing all kinds of funky and sour flavors that nerds like to describe as “horse blanket.” I’ve never smelled a horse blanket, though, so that’s not very helpful.

Also, to be called “lambic,” a beer must also be made in Belgium’s lambic region, or Patjottenland — it’s region-specific, like champagne and calvados. Pure lambics, that is, a straight lambic that is unblended with anything else, are rarely drank on their own.

Geuze is a blend of lambics, the grand cru of sour beers. By definition, they must contain some “young” lambic (unaged, or barrel-aged for less than a year), some 2-year-aged lambic, and some 3-year-aged lambic. Nothing else. Since the fermentation is 100% spontaneous, batches differ wildly, so in the end everything rests on the palate and personal taste of the blender.

Then there’s all the other beers labeled “lambic” (but not “pure lambic”). These can be any variety of flavored beers that start as a lambic but are blended with other stuff, especially fruit. Some of the popular ones include kriek (cherry) and framboise (raspberry) — and even these vary from syrupy, like Lindemann’s, to complexly tart, like Cantillon.

I’ll stop there, because I see that your eyes are glazing over. You should probably get some rest, or have a beer. But if you’re looking for something shockingly tart, sour, and other worldly, make it a 3 Fonteinen.

Dogfish Head History

Here for the Beer recently posted a video of Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head explaining the roots of the brewery.