Anderson Valley Brewing Company Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout

Anyone who has been reading this blog knows that I am a fan (use the search bar for “anderson valley” to see other reviews) of Anderson Valley Brewing Company. I started trying their beers as soon as the local shops started carrying them earlier this year or late last year and they are worthy of the praise heaped upon them. This California brewery has also just announced (see story below) they will begin canning their beers, which is also exciting for us can junkies!

I’ve had a bottle of Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout in my fridge for several months now and I decided that using the 22 oz. bomber to nurse a wicked sunburn from two days ago was just what the doctor ordered!

The beer pours completely opaque black with no highlights and a fluffy, dark tan head. The aromas are dominated by dark roasty malts and something similar to a dark chocolate, although there is no chocolate in this beer.

Oatmeal stouts are stouts that use oatmeal as part of the grain bill. I’m not sure I ever really taste the oatmeal, but oatmeal in a beer gives a nice, slick, silky texture to a beer that really comes through in the body and it’s one of my favorite styles of beer.

AVBC’s stout is 5.7%ABV. A little alcohol comes through in the flavor, to me, and there is some bitterness about 1/2 way through a sip, but the finish is slightly sweet and dark roast as well as molasses or burnt sugar dominates the flavor.

This is a nice, smooth stout. I enjoyed it more as it warmed up. AVBC’s website recommended a drinking temperature of around 45°, but that seems way too cold to me. I started drinking it at the recommended temperature and found it way too cold, so once it was within 10° of room temperature I was happy. This is a good stout and the oatmeal really made it easy to drink and helped keep the carbonation from being prickly. Another winner from AVBC! Soon I’m going to ask them for a sponsorship! lol

Anderson Valley Canning Beers

Even more exciting can news! In a press release from June 19, Anderson Valley Brewing Company announced it will be released their Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema and Poleeko Gold Pale Ale in cans as an initial offering. Yet one more great canned beer to ask for from your bottle shop in addition to the recently announced Big Sky Brewing Company cans, too!

Can News from Big Sky Brewing

I was talking to a colleague who lives in Montana and I mentioned to him my love of canned craft beers. He shocked me by telling me that Big Sky Brewing cans their beers, too. I looked at this on their website and, sure enough, Big Sky started canning beers on my birthday, of all days, March 19! The cans have been available since May, and I’ve been seeing the bottled versions all year on shelves at Gomer’s and Lukas Liquors, so surely we can convince them to carry some options in cans, no? Im not sure which beers are available in cans, but I have reviewed both their IPA and their famous brown ale, Moose Drool, and like them both a lot.

Boulevard Pilsner On the Shelves Now + a Prediction

I reviewed Boulevard’s new pilsner a while back. I was lucky to have gotten about 8 bottles of the test batch and I’ve been rationing them out since spring. It’s a great beer for this ridiculous heat we’re having! I definitely recommend picking some up. Pilsners are very challenging beers to brew and I have compared a lot of them, lately, and I think Boulevard’s is a really good example of the style and very nicely done. At $5.99-$6.99 for a 6-pack it’s a nice price.

I don’t drink much Boulevard Wheat, anyway, but this will definitely replace that beer in my “light beer” lineup. Make no mistake, though, this is a nice, traditional, tasty (but subtle) pilsner, not fizzy yellow crap, despite the marketing angle they seem to be taking with their label and “genuine American lager” moniker.

As for my prediction, I wonder if they’ll make an imperial version for a future Smokestack beer?

Brother David’s Triple Abbey Style Ale

Brother David’s Abbey Style Ales is a series of beers being made by the wonderful California-based Anderson Valley Brewing Company. I’ve reviewed their IPA and famous amber, Boont Amber Ale, previously (just use the search bar to your right for “anderson valley” and you’ll find those reviews) and enjoyed AVBC’s offerings greatly.

I don’t know much about this beer from their site other than that this is a “triple” Belgian-style beer and that it is 10%ABV. I bought a 22oz “bomber” at Lukas Liquors a couple months ago, and I still have their Barney Flats Oatmeal Stout in a bomber to enjoy, too. So far I have been very pleased with Anderson Valley’s beers.

Belgian breweries have traditionally called some of their beers “doubles,” “triples,” and “quadruples” (or quads). This nomenclature is based off the “single” (usually called an abbey style ale or, more often, a “golden”). The double has twice the fermentables as the golden, the triple has three times the fermentables, and the quad is 4x. These terms are somewhat loosely applied, but generally as you go up the progression you’re adding fermentable sugars, often in the form of Belgian candi sugar, so the yeast creates more alcohol and the beers get more or less sweeter, too, because not all of the sugar ferments.

Goldens and triples tend to have a nice golden color while doubles and quads tend to be darker beers. Goldens and doubles tend to pair well with foods, while triples and quads are generally drunk alone almost like desserts in and of themselves. Triples tend to be very sweet and the Brother David’s Triple definitely fits this profile.

Courtesy of Don LaVange

The beer pours a beautiful rich, golden-amber into my New Belgium glass, and an aggressive pour yields a nice head, but it quickly dissipates due to the high alcohol content. The beer is nice and clear and is very pleasant to look at. Aromas are sweet, with a little bit of that unmistakeable Belgian yeast character and a bit of alcohol, but there really isn’t a ton of aroma in this beer, for me.

Flavor is very sweet, malty and with a little hops to counter it from being like liquid candy. The hops are very subdued, so I don’t get any in the aroma, but like I said, they do balance the sugar and sweetness just enough to dry out the finish a bit. The main flavor experience I get with this beer is of soft fruit, like peach, with alcohol and sugar. What it reminds me of is when you’ve let a peach way, way over ripen and the sugars have actually been fermenting under the skin. There isn’t necessarily peach flavors, per se, in this beer, but the experience is very much one of fruit, alcohol, and sugar that reminds me a lot of biting into an over ripe peach.

I like this beer a lot. A 22oz bomber of this is a lot to handle by oneself. The 10% alcohol will definitely get you buzzing, but the sugar and sweetness, for me, got old after a while, even though I enjoyed this a lot. This is the kind of beer you want to split with one or two of your friends. This beer may pair well with some desserts or strong cheeses, but the sweetness reminded me of port, and I wonder if chocolate or a nice cigar would pair well with it?

Overall I think I like this triple better than the last one I had, Boulevard’s Long Strange Triple. Maybe I’m just in a different mood, and I didn’t dislike Boulevard’s version at all, but from what I remember of that beer I think I like the AVBC version a little more. In any case, downing all 22 ounces by oneself isn’t recommended, so I guess I had to take one for the team on this one! lol

New Holland Brewing Company Full Circle

New Holland Brewing Company is a brewery/brewpub in Holland, MI that is near and dear to my heart. The brewery started in 1997 and I lived in Holland, MI from 2000-2007. I used to go there for beers when they still ran the brewpub on the brewery premises and would play roller hockey inside when it was slow! They eventually moved the brewpub downtown in the old Vogelzang Hardware Store and made is a gorgeous location in the heart of town, which was nice because it was an easy walk from my house!

NHBC has grown a lot and can even be found in limited supply here in Kansas City. The brewpub has always had a lot of stuff on tap that never makes it to the bottle, and I remember drinking what is now called Full Circle on tap back in 2006 or so, probably, before they started bottling it. Interestingly, Full Circle is now a kölsch style beer, but at one time it was originally a lager of some sort that tasted like Miller Lite, then the beer was pulled from the lineup and released a few years later in its current incarnation.

When I first had this beer on tap I liked it a lot. The kölsch style was just coming into vogue and this one had that nice grape-y flavor that is typical of the style. This was before I was really into beer, and I didn’t know anything about the style. I remember asking the bartender if there was fruit in the beer and he said, “No, but I think that stuff tastes like Bud. I hate it.” Not a glowing endorsement and he had no idea what he was talking about, really.

Unfortunately, in the bottles I’ve had of this beer I have not found any of that grape or “vinous” flavor or aroma that I remember on tap. It pours a cloudy gold color with a light head and has the aromas of pilsner, but no grape. As a kölsch, this beer is a little disappointing, but for a pilsner I like it quite a bit! lol It is clean, balanced but malty, little aftertaste and easy to drink. With an ABV of 4.9% it gets into session territory and it’s a nice thirst-quencher in the summertime, which is good considering that it’s going to be a heat index of 95° tomorrow at 8:00AM and afternoon heat indexes will be in the triple digits all week!

Full Circle won’t knock your socks off, and if you like kölschs for that really grape-like flavor you won’t find it in these bottles, but for a pilsner-like, light, but flavorful and altogether enjoyable summer drinker this is a great choice. It gets me excited for my August trip to Michigan. I am going to do my best to start saving my beer budget and spend it all up there, coming home with a trunkload of NHBC beers, Founders, Bell’s  and anything else from up there we can’t get here (although I know we can get some limited selections of all of those I mentioned). I better have a designated driver while I’m up there, too! Good craft beer is easy to find in Michigan.

Schlafly Special Release India Pale Ale

Schlafly is a brewery based out of St. Louis, MO which I have written about before (use the search bar to your right!). I’ve had quite a few of their beers in the couple years I’ve lived in Kansas City, but have written about a lot of them as they pre-dated my blog.

Schlafly brews a lot of beers, many of them seasonals and their “Special Release” line of beers that are also basically seasonals, too. One such beer is their Special Release India Pale Ale.  This IPA comes out every May and, interestingly, Schlafly is one of few breweries I know of that doesn’t have an IPA in its year-round lineup.

For those who don’t know, IPA is a British style dating back to the colonial times when beer was brewed in England and shipped by sea to soldiers and expats in India. Through trial and error, British brewers figured out that beers with more hops and higher alcohol content fared well on their long voyage than other beers. We now know this is because both alcohol and hops have preservative and antimicrobial properties.

IPA’s, then, have a lot of hops and relatively higher alcohol. IPA’s run the gamut from the somewhat mild traditional versions to the West Coast style bitter bombs. Schlafly’s Special Release IPA is 8.0%ABV with an IBU level of 66, using three different hops and four different malts. Schlafly’s website suggests a 6-month shelf life for this beer.

As far as IPA’s go, I would consider this more of an English style than a US/West Coast style. Our Midwestern IPA’s are a little more balances than the West Coast’s, and the Schlafly IPA fits that mold. It pours a hazy honey color with a butterscotch head. Aroma is mostly hops, but doesn’t assault your nose like some IPA’s. I get a little bit of “cat pee” undertones, which sometimes comes through with Simcoe hops, one of the varieties used in this beer. Don’t let that descriptor turn you off, as it doesn’t affect the beer negatively, but it is something you’ll pick up on from time to time.

There is a fair amount of hop bitterness throughout the flavor, but it really builds toward the last half of a sip. I get a fair amount of malt and alcohol early in the taste, then the malt dies down and the hops really come forward with more alcohol yet, then dissipates into a nice aftertaste.

This is a pretty balanced beer, but my only complaint is that the hops are a little “muddy.” I can’t really pick out the resiny, piney, or citrusy overtones that color hops, just the bitterness. I like this beer, but at 8.0% it’s hard to put away more than a couple and it doesn’t offer me what I do like in an IPA, which is a nice, colorful hop aroma and flavor. I appreciate the bitterness and overall balance, but compared to a lot of the other IPA’s I’ve been having it isn’t one of my favorites right now.

Belgica Update

I posted about Great Divide’s Belgica a few posts back and I liked it. I drank one while manning the grill last night, straight from the bottle, and I have some things to add. First of all, it’s better out of a glass than out of a bottle, by a longshot. Also, I drank it out of the bottle at fridge temp, and I didn’t like it as much. The Belgian yeast and hops really tasted weird together at a cold temperature. Once it warmed up, which didn’t take long, it was a lot more enjoyable for me. So, my drinking recommendations for Belgica are to use a glass and let it warm up to around 60° or so before drinking.

Moose Drool… Disgustingly Good!

Moose Drool is a popular brown ale made by Big Sky Brewing, a Montana-based brewery whose IPA I’ve reviewed in the past. Kansas City has relatively recently had access to some of the Big Sky beers, but I was out in Montana back in 2000 and the souvenir I brought back for myself was a Moose Drool pint glass I still own after many moves!

Moose Drool has a gross name, but the beer is far from disgusting! It pours clear and quite a dark color of brown with lots of crimson highlights when held up to a window. The big, foamy head is a nice caramel color.

Aroma is roasty and malty, but not sweet. Not much to say for hops on the aroma, and they’re pretty light in the flavor, too, but do provide enough balance for the malt to cut the sweetness back and give this beer a fairly dry finish.

Moose Drool comes in at about 5.2%ABV and has a relatively light mouthfeel, bordering on watery, but not quite enough to count off points for it. It is an easy drinker, especially on a 94° June day in humid Kansas City! There is a good amount of roast and some bitterness from the darker malts, enough hops to give a little bite and balance, but really this is a nice, neutral beer. Brown ales tend to really shine with food, so this would pair up nicely with a lot of cheeses and pretty much anything off the grill like sausages, steaks, pork or chicken. I haven’t had tons of brown ales to develop a strong sense of the style, but I think this is an even easier beer to drink than the Goose Island Nut Brown Ale (which somehow I never reviewed!) I like so much. So far Big Sky has me loving their two beers I’ve tried, but I really need to drink through some of my portfolio before I buy anything else!

Les Brasseurs de Gayant Amadeus

Amadeus is a bière blanche brewed by Les Brasseurs de Gayant in Doaui, France. Bière blanche is the French version of witbier or “white beer,” a Belgian style of ale brewed with spices, typically coriander and bitter orange peel. It was a lucky accident that I was able to try this beer a few weeks ago, when I spotted it on sale at Gomer’s, along with two other offerings from the same brewery, for a measly $4/bottle (or $3.50/ea for 6, so I bought two of each kind!). I liked the Amadeus enough to pick up two more bottles when I was over there the other day. Not bad for a beer normally priced at $9 for the 750mL bottle!

I thought these beers were a small Belgian brand, originally, as they are bottled in the standard 750mL cage & corked bottle. The guy at Gomer’s said they were good, and for the price I couldn’t pass them up. I have only had the Amadeus so far, but I really enjoy it.

Douai is south of Roubaix, France and about 1.5 hours west and slightly south of Brussels, Belgium.

Amadeus pours a cloudy yellow color with a fizzy head. Whereas most witbiers are on the orange side of color, this one is like a cloudy Bud Light. The other, more important departure, for Amadeus is that it is full of lemon on the aroma, rather than the standard orange flavors found in most witbiers.

Lemon really dominates the aroma, leaving little else to detect, but the aroma is soft, almost sweet rather than the acidic lemon you might expect. It’s almost like a lemon dessert, rather than the fruit or peel itself.

The same comes across in the flavor, which is dominated by a soft lemon flavor almost like a lemon pie. It isn’t sweet, necessarily, but it doesn’t have much bite. Combined with the high carbonation, this is a really nice thirst-quencher. The bottle recommends adding a slice of lemon to the glass, and while I don’t normally add fruit to my beers, I think it complemented the very lemony flavor, naturally. There really isn’t much else in the flavor for me… just lemon and I really like it!

As much of a heresy as this is, I think this would be a superb beer for a “shandy” (or radler, or alster, whatever you want to call it), which is typically a 1:1 mix of beer and lemonade or lemon soda. It’s such a light beer that it could easily be overpowered, so maybe a 2:1 ratio of Amadeus to lemonade would be better. In any case, what a perfect summer beer for such a concoction!

This beer also comes in tall cans, which I would kill for! Probably not easy to find those outside of France, but one can always dream! At 4.5% ABV, this is nearly a perfect summer session beer when you want something light and that you don’t have to think about too much. It would be killer with light white fish recipes, too. The only downside to this beer is that there isn’t much left on sale!