Harviestoun Ola Dubh Special Reserve 12

I have been waiting for a good excuse to drink this beer since I bought it a few months ago at Lukas Liquors. Sitting here on March 28 watching tons of snow and listening to the sirens of emergency vehicles flying down I-35 in the midst of a horrible snowstorm, I thought, “When better?” I hope whoever those sirens are for is OK.

Ola Dubh is a series of beers that are a collaboration between Harviestoun Brewery and Highland Park, an award-winning distiller of Scotch whisky. Ola Dubh means “Black Oil” so of course, it is a stout. The Special Reserve 12 is matured in the casks that Highland Park uses for its 12 Year Old Single Malt Scotch Whisky, known for its smooth flavors and notes of smoke.

The beer pours a lot thinner than, say, Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout, with lots of red highlights, but once in the glass it is like a black hole, with no light getting through or even a hint of a highlight of color at the edge of the glass. My sample was bottled in 2007 and poured with almost no head, and I noted virtually no carbonation on the mouthfeel, making this beer a sipper rather than a gulper.

I waited for the beer to come close to room temperature (low 60′s) before drinking, as I feel this complements the aromas and flavors of this style of beer quite well.  The aroma has lots of whisky character… smoky wood, that peaty bite, and a bit of malt, maybe.

The flavor is has a lot of smoke and oak and peaty scotch up front that tapers to slight hop and roasted malts bitterness toward the middle. The finish on this beer is dry and has some cocoa and some notes that remind me of good cigars. This would be great with a Padron 2000!

The Ola Dubh 12 year is a nice, complex sipper. The 8% ABV is well-hidden. I might detect some alcohol on the aroma, but it really doesn’t come through on its own in the flavor. For a barrel-aged stout this has a really nice, dry finish that isn’t sweet or cloying at all. The mouthfeel is a little on the thin side, but otherwise I have no real criticism of this beer.

This would make an excellent dessert beer or something that would complement a nice cigar after dinner. Because of it’s dry finish, it may even pair well with something like a really good vanilla ice cream, although I’m not sure how the cream and sugar would play off the smoky wood flavors. It would either be REALLY great or really awful!

This is the first beer I’ve had from Harviestoun and I am impressed. I think this is the perfect amount of smoke in the beer, not overwhelming, but not so subtle it makes you work for it. The scotch character is very forward and aggressive, but it is well-balanced and works great in this beer. Not overdone whatsoever. Harviestoun makes a 16 and 30 year version of Ola Dubh, too. I almost sprang for the last bottle of 30 year that Lukas had, but it was about two or three times the price of this 12 year. In retrospect, I wish I had bought it and the 16 year and could compare the three Ola Dubhs as a flight. Oh well, live and learn. If you get a chance to buy Ola Dubh, do so. You won’t be disappointed.

Anderson Valley Boont Amber Ale

Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s first ale offering was Boont Amber Ale, named after the “Boontling” dialect that locals speak. I generally get about as excited for “amber ales” as I do for “lagers.” Which is to say not very excited at all, but knowing that AVBC makes great beers and being impressed with several of their other offerings at least made me want to try this, as opposed to completely avoid it like most ambers.

It isn’t that amber ales are bad beers, they’re just not very exciting. “Amber” is sort of a catch-all style, not really meaning much beyond the fact that you can reasonably expect the beer to be slightly red in color. Most of the time ambers are just sort of there, occupying space.

I poured my sample from a 22oz bomber I bought at Lukas Liquors. Uncapped it almost became a serious gusher, like another AVBC bomber I had a while back, but I noticed it rising and poured it off into my English style pint glass before it could overflow. The beer pours a hazy reddish-amber color with a big, rocky butterscotch head. My sample had big, soda pop size bubbles clinging to the glass, too, but these dissipated pretty quickly. Aroma is pretty weak to my nose, and my nose is actually working today! Not much there. A little malt, a little hops, but nothing really. Maybe a little graham cracker if I hallucinate.

The beer is balanced, as most of us would expect from an amber ale. It leans a little toward the malty side, with a bit of bitterness to balance it out, but I can’t honestly say I notice too much hops flavor, so the bitterness could be coming from darker malts. In the long aftertaste I get some roasty, almost burned (but not in an unpleasant way) flavors.

The mouthfeel is pretty thin on the Boont Amber Ale, but for such a lightly bodied beer it has quite an aftertaste. I think this beer would pair well with something like roasted chicken and potatoes with rosemary, maybe some pastas in cream sauce and possibly even with smoked cheeses like a nice smoked Gouda. I don’t cook much with beer, but I’ll bet this would be a great beer to use in cooking, too. It’s not a bad beer, but it lives up to expectation for an amber… kind of boring, kind of ho-hum. Perfectly good beer, especially if you’re looking for balance, but from this brewer I’d just as soon reach for the oatmeal stout or IPA. Look for the stout review soon.

Slowdown Explained

Just wanted to let you loyal readers know I haven’t forgotten about you. I’ve been writing less for a couple reasons:

1) I’m cutting back on my beer a little lately because I’ve been exercising more and trying to drop some pounds, so cutting out empty calories seemed like a good idea.

2) What beer I am drinking is mainly to thin out a quickly growing collection of six-packs of stuff I’ve already reviewed. Once I have the herd thinned some I plan on drinking some new stuff and plugging away.

Thanks for your patience and hopefully I’ll be back in the saddle soon!

New Belgium La Folie

Today is my birthday, so I decided to celebrate with a bottle that I’ve been waiting to drink for quite some time. I bought this caged & corked New Belgium La Folie for about $13 or $14 at Gomer’s in Midtown at least 5-6 months ago, if memory serves me. It has been in the fridge since. My bottle was “born” 7/2008.

It poured a dark reddish-brown. The light that does get through it is a ruby red color. The head was thin was disappeared almost immediately. I left this beer out of the fridge for about an hour, so it was probably in the low 60°’s when I drank it. A little cooler than room temperature at the time. Aroma was definitely acidic with some dark fruit on the nose and something that kept reminding me of a smell that would be similar to smelling a jar of olives. I don’t know. For once my nose was actually working OK, then I smell olives in La Folie! lol

Wow! First sip was like drinking vinegar, which I expected. Blammo! I have had a fair number of sour beers by now, but this is the king, for sure. As the sourness dissipated on my palate I was left with a flavor of tart cherries.

The vinegar on the aroma just never quits, either. Each sip has a long, lingering sour/vinegar flavor that mellows into a bit of malt and cherries. No hops on this bad boy! To give you an idea, the sourness just goes straight to your cheeks and lays waste to your palate. After 1/2 a glass or so the sourness was mellowing a tiny bit, but nothing like Rodenbach, for example, which to my palate stops tasting sour within a few sips.

After about 1/2 the glass I started tasting more of the wood aging barrels (oak, I think) than cherries on the aftertaste. In fact, after one swallow the aftertaste was about the same as I would’ve expected from sucking on a piece of the barrel for a minute. Incredible!

I think that “olives” tone I was picking up is an earthiness that is a combination of the acid and wood flavors and aromas. The wood really comes forward as my palate starts to get used to the acidity. As I think about that earthy “olive” flavor I want to amend it to more of something similar to capers.

This is a very complex and rewarding sour beer. Definitely not an entry-level sour for those who are new to the style, in my opinion. I would start people with dry, just slightly funky beers like saisons, then move to something like Rodenbach, then Grand Cru, and if they were still on the sour train, hit them with La Folie! It takes a good glass to get attenuated to the sour, but as your palate gets used to it, more and more of that oak comes through. My only disappointment was that the fruit flavors of tart cherries I was picking up early on disappeared once the oak kicked in.

What a great beer. Not something I would want regularly, but I could enjoy this a few times a year when the mood strikes. I wonder if it ages well?

Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock

With so much talk recently about doppelbock beers, and my mild disappointment with Shiner Commemorator, I noticed Paulaner’s Salvator in bottles at Lukas Liquors during my last fieldtrip, so I picked a couple up. I don’t remember the price, but the larger 25 oz bottles (the label reads, “1 pint 9 fl oz”, but it looks smaller to me than a 22oz bomber bottle, so I don’t know what gives) were probably $3-$4, perfectly reasonable. Salvator is supposed to be a good example of the doppelbock style, too. I drank this beer from a tall pilsener glass that seemed appropriate for the style. Salvator is 7.9%ABV and it seemed like a nice way to start my work trip to Vegas by having one of these for lunch!

The beer poured with the trademark gigantic head that all Paulaner beers seem to have. It wasn’t quite as tight of a foam that I could use to build all sorts of architectural wonders as the Paulaner hefeweizen has, but it was close! Salvator pours an amber-tea color, clear, with a butterscotch tan head.

On the aroma, my ailing schnoz picked up some toffee or caramel, but also maybe some raisiny notes. The mouthfeel is a little on the light side with a slightly watery finish.

As it should be for a doppelbock, there is essentially zero hops flavor, aroma or balance to the malt. Doppelbocks are basically supposed to be liquid bread, and this definitely fits the style! I didn’t pick up much any of the raisin in the flavor that I picked up on the aroma. The predominant flavor was of bread with a touch of roasty caramel bite in the apex of the flavor. This is a very simple beer, in my opinion, but very enjoyable. The flavors are nice and this is definitely a beer that you can use to calibrate your palate for what a malty beer should taste like. I was a little disappointed by the light body, and being a malt bomb this beer did leave a bit of a goober in the back of my throat, but this is a good, enjoyable beer for those times you don’t want any hops but also want to shy away from the roastiness and complexity of a stout or porter.

Now that I know what a good doppelbock should really taste like, Commemorator loses a little more for me, even! I think Paulaner has taken the place as my favorite German brewery!

Bell’s Hopslam

Since I didn’t have to work today, I decided to head to Waldo Pizza for a heavy lunch and a beer. I decided on the Hopslam. Big mistake for a lunch beer. Somehow I didn’t realize it was a double IPA, so it wasn’t really geared to be an early day beer, but c’est la vie. Anyway, I had it in the 12 oz bottle. It was listed as 10% ABV. I’m pretty familiar with Bell’s beers as I lived about an hour and a half away from the brewery when I lived in Michigan. I like pretty much everything they make!

The beer poured a honey/orange/amber color with a small head. I detected lots of floral hops notes in the aroma. The flavor is, well, a hopslam! It is very hops forward, very bitter, but with a lot of the same floral notes that are on the aroma. There is also a LOT of alcohol on this beer, to me. It was quite hot on the alcohol, actually, and it really carried the hops forward, I think.

Some sort of flavor played on the edge of my palette toward the end of a swallow and the beginning of the aftertaste. For the life of me I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it was pleasant and enjoyable. Hopslam is brewed with honey, so I wonder if the flavor was coming from honey or the play between hops and honey. In any case, I was frustrated by it because it was familiar, yet I couldn’t quite nail it down.

I found Hopslam to be fairly enjoyable, however the heavy alcohol content turned me off. I like to taste the alcohol when appropriate (Goose Island’s Bourbon County, for example), but it seemed to be overbearing and too hot for this beer. I would like to try Hopslam on tap, and I wouldn’t turn another bottle away, but if this is typical of this beer there are a lot of other double IPA’s I would rather drink. That said, this is one of the few double IPA’s I’ve had that actually have a lot of hops bitterness and flavor that isn’t restrained back by the malt, which I like.

Avery India Pale Ale

Avery Brewing is a Boulder, CO brewery that I’ve mentioned once or twice here before. For some reason I’ve always had the habit of skipping over Avery’s beers for others, but after reading some good things on other KC beer blogs figured it was time to enjoy some of their beers. I reviewed their 14′er ESB in the past.

Avery’s India Pale Ale pours a cloudy, golden orange color with a small head that dissipates quickly. The aroma has lots of floral notes and a hint of citrus, almost like tamgerine. Very nice aroma that seems sweet rather than the more piney aromas of some of the IPA’s I’ve been enjoying lately.

The mouthfeel is really nice on this beer, with just the right amount of carbonation. The hops on the palate are also a little more floral, although about 3/4 of the way into the aftertaste the more bitter aspect of the hops becomes apparent.

Avery’s IPA is very balanced, in my opinion, with the hops bitterness offset by a nice maltiness. It’s definitely hops forward, but the hops don’t cling or linger, or build much. Avery lists the alcohol content as 6.3% ABV and this beer uses Centennial, Chinook, Cascade and Columbus hops in its brewing.

All in all this is a nice IPA. It doesn’t knock my socks off and it doesn’t necessarily stand out in a crowd, but it is easy to drink, has nice flavors and balance, and a nice aroma and flavor profile that keeps me wanting more. Another nice beer from Avery!

Exclusive – Boulevard Test Batch: Pilsener

I don’t know Boulevard’s policy on this sort of thing, so I hope I’m not breaking any rules, but I figure I can get away with pleading ignorance once! A friend of mine who has done some work with the brewery gave me a few bottles of a test batch of pilsener from Boulevard Brewing Company. The bottle is an unlabeled 12oz screwtop that says to drink by July. I know nothing about this beer other than it’s a test batch of a beer that will presumably be in the running as a seasonal or regular offering.

The beer pours a straw yellow color, a little more orange than, say, Budweiser, but in that same category. It’s not quite clear, but has a little haze and in a pilsener glass it poured with a nice two-finger white head that dissipated fairly quickly.

The aroma is unmistakably pilsener. Pils are lagers that vary from region, but got their start in 1830′s Bavaria. Pilseners tend to be clean, crisp, fairly dry and refreshing beers. They sometimes have a slight metallic “twang” from the noble hops that are often used in their brewing. Pilseners tend to be a little malty and lighter on the hops, which are there more for aroma and balance.

Unfortunately, my allergies are wound up today, so my nose is even worse than usual. The aroma on this beer just really yells “American macro” to me. I got some hops early in the aroma, but after a few sips all my ailing schnoz is picking up is sort of that spilled-beer-from-last-night’s-party type of aroma. I don’t think I am doing it must justice in my impaired olfactory state, SO, moving on…

The flavor is really good on this beer. Light, nice carbonation, very refreshing and WAY too easy to drink. This is the type of beer that is easy to gulp and rewards you with a little tingle on the throat and just is giving me a feeling of “Ah…. Friday….” THis is a perfect beer for after a long week and heading into a week of vacation, which I just happen to be! There is a little hoppiness on the finish and maybe a little graham cracker on the malty side of things. What I like about pilseners is that they are light, refreshing beers that don’t make you think too much!

Mouthfeel is pretty aqueous on this beer (I don’t want to say watery because I don’t mean it in a bad way). I get no alcohol in the aroma or in the flavor whatsoever. I’d be curious to know the ABV on this. If this is a sub-5% beer I would really like that, as this would make a nice session beer/tailgater (hey, maybe they’ll put it in cans!). I think this beer would pair well with lots of foods, too, as long as they aren’t too heavy or saucy.

This would be a great beer to have on hand at a party where you know there won’t be “beer geeks.” It’s 100 times better than American macro beers, but pilseners are going to easily tolerated by someone who, say, never drinks a more adventurous beer than Corona! This is a fantastic beer and I’m really enjoying it. The aroma still isn’t doing anything for me, but I get none of the things in the aroma that I don’t like in the flavor at all. I’ve had a fair share of pilseners and this is a good one.

I sincerely hope this beer gets added to the lineup of Boulevard’s offerings. This would make a good year-rounder, but also a nice addition to the spring lineup (although Irish Ale has that in the bag). People who like Bob’s 47 in the late summer would like this a lot, I think, although this pilsener is a lot lighter and less malty, and cleaner, than Bob’s 47. Boulevard should be congratulated on this beer. The only thing I’m really disappointed about is that I only have two left!

Upcoming Events

Well, I saw my friend last night (making 1200 Jell-O shots for our pub crawl on Saturday!) and picked up my beer. As promised I have three or four bottles of a test batch of Pilsener from Boulevard. I’m not sure what sort of drinking mood I’m going to be after the pub crawl (usually turns me off drinking for a couple weeks) and I’ll be in a warm and sunny place most of next week, but you can expect a review sometime soon. If you don’t hear from me next week, you know why, so stop by soon and keep reading!

Anderson Valley Brewing Company Hop Ottin’ IPA

Anderson Valley Brewing Company is a California brewery that has recently made its way to Kansas. I first heard about AVBC a few years ago on Craft Beer Radio, but this is my first time getting to try the company’s beer. The brewery is located in Boonville, about 115 miles north of San Francisco. The people of Boonville have their own dialect, called “boontling.” Hop Ottin’, in boontling, means, “hard working hops.” According to legend, the boontling language came about so that people in the area could talk freely about their marijuana crops without the fear of being overheard by the wrong people. Coupled with the fact that AVBC is solar-powered, you can start to see where the company’s obsession with the hop cone (cousin to other Cannabis varieties rumored to grow in the area) becomes more clear!

I drank this beer from an English style pint glass (you know, the kind Guinness is often served in with the bulge 3/4 of the way up the glass) out of a 22oz bomber bottle. My bottle was a gusher! I lost several ounces in the eruption of foam from this bottle. Consequently, it had pretty light carbonation, but I don’t know if that was from the loss of a lot of carbonation or if the beer is supposed to be that way. Luckily I bought a 6-pack of the same beer today, so I should get plenty of chances to figure it out!

The beer pours a nice dark orange/amber color that is a little cloudy and with a nice head that dissipates pretty quickly. Aroma is of nice, citrusy hops, leaning more toward grapefruit and away from the stickier, pinier aromas I’ve been detecting lately.

The first thing that struck me about this beer is what a nice mouthfeel it has. Nice and smooth, very little carbonation (which I actually usually like). The lower carbonation (again it could be by accident) gives this beer a nice, firm, solid body that is really a joy to drink. The aroma and the flavor are very similar, in my opinion. The hops are very forward, but balanced by a big malt backbone. Unlike the Boulevard Single-Wide I’ve been writing a lot about recently, the bitterness on the Hop Ottin’ doesn’t build. Within 30 seconds of a sip my palate is pretty much unencumbered, but it isn’t flat or weak by any stretch.

Of the IPA’s I’ve been drinking lately this is by far the best balanced. The malt really holds back the hops and works well with them, while the nice body and mouthfeel make this beer go down really smooth. This is an exceptional drinker for an IPA and I think it would make a pretty good gateway beer for someone who is unsure about IPA’s, bitterness, etc. Fantastic and I am glad I invested the $11 in a 6′er of this today, too!

Edit: added minutes after posting… It struck me as I was refilling my glass that this beer tastes really familiar to me. A few months before I moved from Michigan to Kansas City one of my favorite bars got “Stone IPA” on tap. I don’t know which beer it was, but Hop Ottin’ reminds me a lot of that beer in the flavor. The Stone was definitely more in-your-face and not balanced like AVBC’s, but the hop flavors seem really similar to me.