Review: Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron

Well, obviously I haven't had much time to update lately. Grad school tends to get busy at the end of the year, especially when you're about two essays behind where you should be. But I'm still indulging in the joys of fine drink, and I'm still capable of being surprised on occasion. Like by this stuff, for example.

With Palo Santo Marron the crazy mofos at Dogfish Head have crafted something truly grand, and also utterly ridiculous. What do I mean? Well, put aside for a second the fact that this beer clocks in at 12% alcohol. That's just silly (as much as I love strong beers, 12% is still comically high), but it's not the goofiest part. Also put in parentheses the fact that it's brewed in three massive 10,000 gallon tanks made from Paraguayan lignum vitae wood, which is hard enough to be used in cutting gems and dense enough to sink in water. This fact is even more silly, but it's still not the howler. No, much more absurd than all of this is the fact that Palo Santo Marron is a brown ale of all things. You know, the style that got you to start drinking halfway-decent beer the first time someone bought you a Newcastle. The style so hoary and venerable you get the sense that the European aristocracy quaffs it during fox hunts. That's what this beer says it is. Brown ales are almost definitionally mellow, conservative, and sensible - three things which Dogfish Head does not do well. Maybe that's why they seem to have taken particular delight in drawing moustaches on the style, first with their fantastic Indian Brown Ale and now with this.

Funny enough, though, none of this is what surprises me about the beer. That comes a lot later.

Now, I've no idea how old the bottle I have is - I bought it as a single towards the end of last year, waiting for a good time to try 'er out. I happen to have the four-pack box, too, which has a bit more history and some wonderfully rude puns ("It's all very exciting. We have wood. Now you do too.") but is otherwise fairly unremarkable. Well, I suppose there's nothing to do but try her out.

A brown ale? Really? Well, given that this stuff pours a black whose darkness is right up there with the rudest stouts I've put down, I have to question that categorization. No light passing through at all - this beast is a void, a singularity. Even the tiny little half-finger of beige head doesn't offer much relief, especially given its short lifespan (no way it's going to hold up against 12%). Only the nose reveals good reason to call this a brownie: mellow earthy English hops are right in front, fuggles or something related. But surprisingly, where I was expecting to get a mass of hops and wood, I get very little. The malts especially are tough to get a bead on: there's a little bit of a roasted tone and a dollop of acidity to it, although that may be the wood. I hope it's the wood, anyways, otherwise I'm not really smelling that at all. What I am getting a lot of, on the other hand, is alcohol. It ain't hard to estimate the caliber of this brew. I can tell it's going to slap me around a little.

Now, the taste is... confusing more than anything else. Although it's extremely rich and very striking, especially on the back end, it's rather hard to describe. Biting coffee bitterness comes right up front, which then develops into an extremely unique woody, almost burned taste. It's very, very thick and malty, although it's hard to say what sort of malts we're dealing with (or where the malt ends and the wood begins); by this point everything is so dense that it's nigh-impossible hard to isolate things into single flavors. At the back end, things begin to separate out a bit: I get more charred wood, some cinnamon, walnuts, and maybe raisins or strawberries (some kind of sour fruit, anyways). The hops that I detected in the nose add a bit of a grassy, earthy quality, but the malt flavor are the headliners here. The bitterness, which pretty much rules all the rest, surrounds itself with sour fruit and just a little bit of milk chocolate sweetness; they fuse into a very impressive (if not very complex) whole that carries through to a very long aftertaste.

Do I like the taste? Well, yes. It's completely unique, and like many DH beers I'd recommend it for novelty value alone. The problem is that as nice as it is, it just isn't as good as (say) a barrel-aged stout. For example, I prefer the Walter Payton stout - by no means a perfect beer - simply because there's a lot more going on (plus it's way less expensive). The Palo Santo Marron is a good beer - one of Dogfish Head's best - but it's just too damn simple, and in terms of taste you can do better for less.

So aside from novelty, then, why would one buy it? Well! You have to look fairly deep to see the point of this beer, but it's definitely there. You see, for such a massive and stupidly powerful beer this stuff is magnificently easy to drink. The mouthfeel isn't exactly light, but it's nothing you haven't tasted in porters with half the ABV. And speaking of the alcohol - incredibly - it just doesn't come out in the taste at anywhere near its true strength. If it weren't for the nose, which is hotter than a belt-fed Uzi, I'd put this in the 7-8% range tops. The result of all this is that I end up drinking the thing way too quickly, and five minutes later I'm thoroughly and unexpectedly sloshed.

That's the point of this beer. And that's what's surprised (and plastered) me. I'd gone in expecting a sipper of the Walter Payton variety, and it does indeed taste lovely, but that's the wrong sort of thing to compare this to. Purely and simply, this is an alcohol delivery system. It exists to get you drunk, and it's very good at its job. Sure it's expensive, and that puts it in a very narrow niche - most people who want to get roaringly drunk on beer will just grab themselves an Axe Head. But for the bourgeoisie among us who can afford it, this is the best imaginable way to leave the planet in two bottles or less. Other beers do better on taste and on value, but I can think of nothing in a beer bottle that'll get you into trouble more easily than this.

Think of Palo Santo Marron, then, as a malt liquor for the nuveau-riche. Think of it as a q-ship with hops, a hidden cruise missile aimed at your medulla. I don't think there's much space for such a beast in the world - but what little space there is, this beer fills well.

Grade: B+
Summary: A somewhat simpleminded, very malty way of getting drunk real damn quick.

Review: Goose Island Night Stalker Imperial Stout

It's always hard being the younger sibling. Especially when your older kin is rightly famous. Basically, assuming you aren't cynical enough to simply hop onto the name and ride it towards your own limited and mediocre success, you're in for a life of being introduced as a brother or sister. (One thinks of the complaint of Abraham Mendelssohn: "Once I was the son of my father, now I am the father of my son.") Unless, of course, you're actually able to meet or even outdo your sibling. Which has been known to happen on occasion (looking at you, Serena Williams).

Night Stalker here is in a similar sort of situation. It's made from the same basic stuff as Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout, which is probably still the best beer I've ever had, but instead of throwing it in a whiskey barrel for a couple of months to mellow they saturate the stuff with Mt. Hood and Simcoe hops and let it loose on an unsuspecting public. For awhile they were only serving it on draft, but now it's finally getting a proper bottled release.

Me, I've got two of them. One of them I'm storing away until the hops die down a bit. The other I'm drinking now, say about a year before I probably should. Numbers? Well, it's 11.7% alcohol by volume, which is slightly below than the mind-numbing 13% of the BCS. It's also ten bucks for a deuce-deuce bottle, only two less than its older kin. And at close to the same price, it's gotta be nearly as good or better. Is it? Let's find out.

Holy crap, the hops. I've barely cracked the cap and already the piney fumes of California are filling the room. This is fierce, eye-watering, wallpaper-peeling stuff. Put this near a houseplant and it'll be dead within minutes. It smells for all the world like an IPA, and a particularly potent and biting one at that - everything is grapefruity citrus wrapped around pine needles, soaked in alcohol. Even with all those hops, there's no way they're going to hide a level of heat well north of 20 proof. After I eventually get around to pouring it, it finally begins to seem like a stout. Night Stalker is a rich, syrupy motor-oil black with a one-finger sepia head; the stuff is utterly gorgeous, honestly. Giving the nose a second chance, I still can't smell anything beyond hops and booze. The malt, so powerful in the BCS, is nowhere to be found. After a round of agitation I can only just begin to detect it - there's some roasted stuff in there trying to push a bit of espresso through, but that's all, and even that's gone after a moment. Beyond that this aroma is all fresh, sour, grassy, nose-runny, brutal hops.

On the taste it wins back a lot of points. The closest comparison, as you might expect, is its older brother. Like the BCS, Night Stalker is all about throwing as many flavors around as possible. It's got a similar rich, almost too crowded taste profile - with the difference that there's no oaky bourbon notes at all, way less sheer thickness, a lot of dialing back on everything else, and a hell of a lot more hops. Up front and going into the middle, coffee and mocha dominate with a billion additional flavors swarming around them. It's not even desperately bitter or hot at this point, either: for an imperial stout of such power and mass, this bit of the profile is shockingly drinkable. Even here, though, the grassy grapefruit of the hops is working its magic, and it really gets into its groove by the end. The closing moments are a big juicy California slap in the face, one which slowly fades out into a more mellow piney aura. Here I was expecting the malts to completely give up the ghost - but to their credit, they don't! Instead they too climax into a big boozy bittersweet (emphasis on the sweet) finish, with flavors of rum and wood emerging. The aftertaste, consisting of the afterglow from these malts intermixed with the piney hop remains, lasts pretty much until one's next sip.

Is it easy to drink? Uh, no. It's not quite as good at smearing one's mouth as the Bourbon County Stout, which is an acknowledged master, but it's not too far away from that. And it's still thick, hot, and very very hoppy, so this is a beer that's going to take awhile. But that's okay, because drinking this brew slowly - as one must - is a rewarding thing. Unlike the BCS, which is amazing right from the start, this one takes awhile to work its charms. At first it comes over way, way too hot and hoppy, as if you've just been thrown into a citrusy sea of alcohol. It takes awhile to learn to breathe. As it warms and as you start to adjust, the beer begins to reveal is subtleties - and there are a lot of them. Vanilla, sassafras, prunes, a little touch of licorice, things I can't even name - tons and tons of flavors all stacked on top of each other. So, this beer is a chainsaw-weilding maniac at heart. But it's a maniac with a library and a fantastic art collection.

It's good, this beer, within shooting distance of great. But there are three problems with it. First, it really is just too young right now (as I expected). It needs a good couple of months (make that years) of mellowing before it'll truly come into its own. Second, there's the price. $10 is too much. It's a very good imperial stout, true, but you can get other very good imperial stouts for half that price. But those two, glaring though they may be, aren't Night Stalker's biggest problem (and you should already have some idea of what is). For it may be an amazing, even a world class beer, but there's one thing it'll never be: better than its big brother.

Sure, Night Stalker is pretty damn complex, but the Bourbon County Stout tops it. Night Stalker may be loud and shouty and overpowering, but the BCS has even more presence without resorting to hop terrorism. All this beer does, essentially, is to take the skeleton of its older sibling and run with it in a different (worse) direction. Only hopeless hopheads and completionists need ever really consider trying one. If you want a ridiculously hoppy beer, buy a Hopslam. If you want a stupid-good imperial stout brewed by Goose Island, buy a BCS. If you need something that splits the difference... well, buy a four-pack of Old Rasputins.

I snagged two of these things, which I don't regret. I have no doubt that beer enthusiasts worldwide have also grabbed a few to enjoy, pack away, and share with friends. Rightly so: it's good beer. The thing is, though, Goose Island made 750 cases of this stuff. That's nine thousand bottles. And 9k may not seem like a lot, but keep in mind that most of them are going to be kept around the Chicago area. Are there, say, five thousand people here willing to drop ten bucks on a bottle of hoppy 11.7% stout? Call me cynical, but I have my doubts. It would be fine if it were something totally unique, but it's not - no one except the hardcore will bother, and after the curious have tried it once they'll simply fork over the two extra bucks and switch back to the BCS. So expect to see these dark, ominous bottles clogging up Binnys store shelves well into next year.

Sad to say, then, it's just another case of a sibling getting overshadowed. If you see it heavily discounted - and it will be - give Night Stalker a shot, but otherwise you don't really need to bother. Sucks to be the baby of the family, eh?

Grade: A-
Summary: Bittersweet, complex, delicious, extremely hoppy, and - sad to say - basically pointless.

Rye-a-Rama: Rye Hopper, Cane and Ebel, Bitter Woman in the Rye, Hop Rod Rye, and Red's Rye PA

Last year, you may recall, I tried Bell's Rye stout - the first and only rye beer I'd ever had. I wasn't amazed by that brew (I gave it a B), but it was intriguingly smooth and bready. Enough to make me curious as to what everyone else was doing with this stuff, barley's meaner cousin. Surely there had to be some interesting beers out there using it. And, as a result, I've spent the last couple of months gathering a few together for a comparison.

Without further ado, the beers are:

-the Rye Hopper from the French Broad Brewing Co. in Asheville,
-the Cane and Ebel from Two Brothers in Warrenville (about an hour west of Chicago),
-the Bitter Woman in the Rye from Tyranena in a mysterious location between Madison and Milwaukee,
-the Hop Rod Rye from Bear Republic in Cloverdale CA, and finally
-Red's Rye PA (that's not a typo) from Founders in Grand Rapids.

Most of these are basically IPAs with rye in them, although a few (particularly the Two Brothers entry) look like genuine oddballs. They range from obscure 5.9% lightweights (the Rye Hopper) to nationally distributed 8% monsters (the Bear Republic entry). I'm genuinely curious as to what these taste like, and which is best.

So, let's start with the underdog first: the Rye Hopper. French Broad is a tiny little brewery (I've been there!) nestled in on the south side of Asheville. I tried a couple of their beers while I was down there (their Wee Heavier, by the way, is quite good) and grabbed a bomber of this particular treat to go. The bottle design is, let's say, uninspired. This, to my mind, is no bad thing - it may just mean they've put the money they would've otherwise spent on a guy with a macbook into their beer. And, well, since this is my first rye beer after the Bell's I don't really know what to expect from it. But I've come to trust that these folks know what they're doing.

Well, it pours a lovely and rich amber color, with about a finger and a half's worth of off-white head. The aroma is initially more hoppy than anything else - good all-American citrus, IPA stuff. Actually, you'd be totally justified in taking this stuff as an IPA prima facie. But don't be fooled, because a little deeper in there's definitely something different: the malts are really bready, almost earthy, like a field on a dry day. That, presumably, would be the rye, then. There's a little bit of the usual caramel note from the malts in there too, but the stars here are definitely the good ol' California hops and that funky rye malt.

The taste, too, initially fooled me into thinking "India Pale." Initially there's that penetrating Christmas tree bitterness characteristic of American IPAs, but then it takes a hard left turn. Where I expect it to develop into caramel and more citrus, it suddenly becomes spicy and bready - mouth-coveringly so, although not in the cloying way that the Bell's sometimes flirted with. It's a pure, uncomplicated moment of rye, and I like it. The ending is more traditional - your usual IPA slap of sharp citrusy hops - but after the hops die away the aftertaste, again, is really dominated by the spicy bread notes. The stuff clings on like crazy, which really only makes me want to drink more.

This is a fine brew. The more I drink it the more I notice a lonely bit of caramel sweetness way way in the back trying to moderate things, but it doesn't really have a chance: this stuff is very dry and shamelessly bitter. It's like drinking a caraway and cascade smoothie (maybe a little less thick). The mouthfeel may be right smack dab in the middle, but it's still surprisingly full-bodied for a mere 5.9 percenter. I like this stuff a lot, and I'm liking it more and more as I near the bottom of the bottle. It's a sipper, to be sure - there's just way too much flavor here to drink it with any speed - but it's never overwhelming, and it never gets old. I'd even be tempted to call this a perfect dinner beer, if I could think of something to pair it with (lamb, maybe?).

But that's enough of the Rye Hopper for now, because we've got more beers to do. For our second rye offering, we move from the mountains of Asheville to the flatlands of Illinois. And if French Broad was going for an IPA with rye (a RyePA, as Founders would have it), a hoppy sipper of an ale with spicy bready notes, then the the Two Brothers folks seem to be up to something entirely different. Just look at how they describe this stuff on their website. Simcoe and summit hops? "Thai palm sugar"? Who do these guys think they are, Dogfish Head? Originality definitely seems to be number one here, so here too I don't know entirely what to expect.

The Cane and Ebel pours a very dark ruby-amber shade, much darker than the French Broad entry. This time there's only a one-finger head or so, and it quickly retreats - this is a seven-percenter to the previous 5.9, remember. And the aroma. Wow, that's different. It starts off hoppy - a oddly fruity kind of bite mixed with some of the usual citrus notes. There's some toffee in there too, from the malts. It's all very civil and normal, right up until the point where you give it a few swirls - and suddenly the nose goes insane. Mango? Vanilla? Cherries? Peaches? Cloves? It's an astonishing cloud of flavors, one of the most complex and elusive noses I've ever come across. The only thing missing, really, is the rye notes I was expecting. Maybe they've just been outdone here. In any case, it's a fabulous aroma and I'm nearly ready to recommend this stuff by smell alone. Unless it tastes like a sewer pipe, it's not getting lower than a B.

It doesn't taste like a sewer pipe. As a matter of fact, it's really, really nice. The taste certainly isn't as varied as the smell, but how could it be? And surprisingly - considering the crazy ingredients and the extra alcohol - it's actually easier to drink than the previous entry. Smoother than a newly-buffed bowling ball, this stuff. The front end's a caress of sweet and sour malt, plus a peck of bitter hops (not up there with a serious imperial IPA, but you definitely know they're there). Towards the middle it gets even sweeter, way sweeter than the Rye Hopper, and at the same time the familiar spicy-grainy rye flavors start to creep in. This is where the beer wins me over: the combination of bready rye and sweet malt and sugar is phenomenal. Then there's the hoppy bite followed by the bready aftertaste - but again, much sweeter this time out. Some might find the sugar slightly too much here, but I totally dig it. And this is an aftertaste that'll last awhile, too, if you let it - but you won't, because you're already taking another sip.

This is a fantastic beer; I've absolutely fallen in love. And I shouldn't have: normally I adore stouts and dopplebocks, heavy dark malty stuff, and not ridiculous hoppy sugary bready things. But just look at me, I'm sucking this bottle down like a fish. And when I'm done, I'll probably want another (which I don't have). In a strange way this actually reminds me of the Celebrator: there's that same sense of, "there's no way something this complex should be so drinkable." It's hard to find any flaws at all. Again, someone without my sweet tooth may find it too sugary, but that's literally the worst thing one can say. Other than that, this beer is pretty much perfect.

It's the mark of first drinking an A-level beer that the world is a little bit different afterwards. And here that's true in the usual sense - it's set a new standard, almost a new genre- but also in another one as well. Before, if you wanted to head to the store and buy a truly great beer made roundabouts the Chicago area, you had to choose between the Yankees-esque and rather boring Goose Island and the brilliant but cultish Three Floyds... and that was mostly it (maybe Half-Acre too, but you have to look around a bit for them). Now, however, there's a third way. Two Brothers are a little crazy, but affordable and available; they aren't totally ubiquitous nor the cheapest option, but neither are they going to only sell their most famous beer on one day a year. They've become, as it were, the Bill Clinton of Chicago brewing. If they can keep making beers like this, everyone else should be very worried.

But we must be moving on. I honestly didn't think the Two Brothers would be quite so good; I was expecting to wander through these first few rather unremarkably, letting the favorites clean up at the end. But now I may have hit the summit early. Whatever the case, I feel a bit of sympathy for the beer up next in line. And, oh lord, it happens to be Tyrenena's Bitter Woman in the Rye. There's an uphill battle in store for the folks from Wisconsin.

Now, I tried Tyrenena's normal Bitter Woman IPA sometime last year and I rather liked it. It's not particularly strong (like some American IPAs) in terms of alcoholic muscle, but it more than makes up for it by firing a great big grapeshot load of bitter fruity hoppiness directly into your mouth and sinuses. What they've done here, I suppose, is make pretty much the same beer and throw some rye into the recipe. No indication at all of how strong this is, but the original was in the high five range (5.75%) and I expect about the same here.

Well, it pours almost exactly like the Rye Hopper - beautifully amber-colored, with a quickly-receding one-finger head. I suppose I should expect that, given that both beers are more or less modified IPAs: this beer looks like one and smells like one. But it's quite a lot sweeter-smelling than I recall from the original Bitter Woman - the caramel malts are right up front, and the classic west coast hops come following behind. The hops actually come across as pretty subdued compared (once again) to the Rye Hopper. And, of course, there's the same bready notes from the rye. It's a nice aroma, and I think I actually prefer it over the French Broad offering - at the price of a little power there's a touch more depth, although nowhere near the variety of Cane and Ebel. (Compared to that masterpiece, this nose - as good as it is - loses out hard.)

When you sip it, BWitR comes across quite a lot less sweet than you'd think it would (although it's still moreso than the Rye Hopper). Sweet honey is first up, along with a nibble of hops. There's more sugar and bitterness throughout the middle, but it's only at the end that the grainy, spicy, bready rye taste peeks in. Unlike the last two beers, though, it never really takes over. Actually, this has by far the least rye flavor of anything here. The aftertaste is more caramel malt, hops, and more of what remains from the (rather half-hearted) rye infusion.

In essence, BWitR is what it says on the label: more than the Rye Hopper, this isn't so much a "rye beer" as an IPA with rye added. The results are pretty good, albeit outclassed in this company. What's most interesting about this experiment, though, is that they somehow ended up with something less exciting than what they started out with. In the end, this is a beer that can't quite decide what it wants to be: the addition of rye rounds out the aggressive hop edge, lessening its power as an IPA, but there's not enough extra character to carry it somewhere else. On the other hand, this rather muddled status makes it very appealing for a different role. To my taste, Bitter Woman with rye in it becomes something of a party beer - were it not so tough to find, I'd definitely think about substituting it in for a more typical (mild) IPA the next time I'm playing host. It's not something that'll give anyone a revelation, but you could very easily entertain a group for a few hours with a six-pack or three.

But once again, it's time to move on. At last, here it is: the daddy. The Hop Rod Rye.

This beer intimidates by what's on the bottle alone. The ugly flaming 1930s hot rod coupe (were they watching The California Kid for inspiration?) may initially seem goofy, but in geeky microbrewer vocabulary it screams "Don't fuck with me, I'm serious." The only way to do this better is to transpose a hop blossom onto a skull and crossbones. And then there's the text - the scary bits aren't so much the ones that say "made with 18% rye," but the ones that say "8% alcohol by volume" and "Sediment at bottom of bottle may be a result of the truckload of hops." And this is even before you notice that BeerAdvocate ranks this as the 71st best beer in the world, the only rye beer to make the top 100. So I'm fully expecting this to kick my ass.

Let's give her a pour, then.

Holy lord that's hoppy. The California explodes out of the bottle the moment I pop the cap, and it only gets more dense as I pour the stuff. The color is actually quite similar to the Two Brothers - a kind of very dark amber, perhaps a few shades bleaker than the previous entry. And as promised, there are indeed floaties, and lots of them. The head is cream flaked with orange, two fingers' worth, a foamy monster that sticks around despite the alcohol dragging it south. Holy mother is this going to be strong. The aroma dies down a bit after a moment, but a swirl or two brings it right back. Yup, all hops. There's not even a nod towards balancing here - no real malts in the aroma at all, not even the rye, just grapefruit and pine needles as far as the nose can smell. It doesn't have anywhere near the nuance of the Cane and Ebel, but then that's not the point. This is all about brute force, shock and awe, sheer scale. When Heidegger evoked the category of the "enormous," he was thinking about this beer.

The first moment you sip it, however, you suspect something's gone wrong. There's a tiny citrus bite on the tongue up front, but in the middle it's actually extremely well-behaved. Hell, there's even a nice baked toffee flavor in there and way more maltiness than one would have expected from the smell. It's nice, it's soothing. You might even begin to relax. And then you swallow, and all hell breaks loose.

There's nothing subtle about how this brew behaves at the back of your mouth; it's as if the skies simply open up and drop a sharp piney firestorm onto your pretty malt paradise. This moment right here, the split-second in which you swallow a mouthful of HRR, is the essence of California brewing. It's the Summa Hopologiae if you will. If you love such beer then you owe it to yourself to stop reading this right now and go pick up a bottle immediately. And strangely enough, it's the rye that first provides some relief to all this. It slowly, slowly cuts its way through the forest of christmas trees and grapefruits to supply its characteristic earthy-grainy taste. The rye totally dominates the aftertaste (which is, of course, very dry), sitting alongside a load of residual hops. And neither is going away for awhile - not until you take another sip (which you will).

Alcohol? Well, I can tell it's stronger than the other three, but not by a lot (I would have guessed in the low sevens). The mouthfeel is creamy but (inexplicably) pretty light for such a monster - like the others, I suspect this is down to the rye contents. Like the Rye Hopper and BWitR, this is a California IPA at heart with rye added for a bit of character. Unlike the Tyranena entry, the two are complimentary: there's no way I could enjoy a beer this hoppy without something special to provide relief, and the rye does that brilliantly.

This is the best of the rye IPAs so far. All three are all uncomplicated, wonderful slices of hoppy Americana. But while the Hopper is an Olds 442 - quirky and obscure, but still a brute - and the Woman in the Rye is a 'Stang - strangely civil in spite of itself - the Hop Rod Rye is a Hemi Barracuda. It's not pretty, neither is it subtle. It's got more power and probably more insanity than a third world dictator. It's one of the most distinctive beers I've ever had, But - dare I say? - in the end I believe I still prefer Two Brothers with their Ferrari Daytona.

There's one more beer to review here, but it's one I bought significantly later than the others (like, by a couple of weeks). It's the entry from Founders, Red's (so-called) Rye PA. Although the competition isn't exactly fresh in my mind, I couldn't post this comparo in good faith without trying this stuff, since - with the possible exception of the Bear Republic entry - it's by far the most common beer of this sort. So: how does it stack up?

Well, like the French Broad and Tyrenena beers, it pours a nice amber orange. It's a shade or two darker than the others, although not quite into Bear Republic territory. The head, too, gives itself about a finger before sinking back into the depths. And, unsurprisingly, this is quite hoppy - close to imperial IPA territory, in fact. Nothing like the sheer force of the previous entry, but in return there's a bit more nuance: along with the typical grapefruit smells there's a nice, freshly-mowed grass sort of aroma. It's not rye, not that I can tell anyways, but it's rather nice. And, with a bit of agitation, the malts come right out: I detect lots of caramel and toffee smells, but still no rye. Hmm.

The flavor profile is, well - it's rather like the Rye Hopper, really, only not as good. There's a bit of sharp piney bitterness up front, just like an IPA, and then the rye hits - only instead of being a kind of spicy sandwich, as the French Broad is, this one slaps you with a mouthful of wet construction paper. It's definitely rye, but it's all gone wrong somehow: it should make me want to drink more, not scrape my mouth out with a chisel. Fair enough, there are some sweeter malts in here fighting back, but it's pretty pointless: in its middle sections this beer is basically like drinking newspaper. The finish is a little bit better, if only because it goes back to an old-fashioned imperial IPA citrus bomb. But even that's not enough to save it, as the aftertaste is really not pleasant - again, the rye taste sticks around like my mouth's been coated with paper mache.

I don't like this beer at all. And it's actually pretty watery compared to the others. And I can taste the extra alcohol (6.6%), although it's not quite as strong as the HRR. Is there anything at all that's good about this beer? Well... I suppose it gets slightly easier to drink after awhile... but that's like saying you get used to being smothered with paper towels after it happens a few times. And it's still no excuse not to go for a regular imperial IPA. I suppose it's pretty smooth too, although the paper flavors rather ruin that too. So, yes, this is not at all to my taste. But some might like it, I suspect: if you like hoppy beers with long, raspy finishes, this could be your brew. I'll leave it to you; you can have it.

I dunno. This is the second Founders in a row which I've hated; maybe I'm just not getting it? Maybe I have an irrational dislike of the company? Maybe. But, to my judgment, this is easily the least-successful of the IPA-with-rye brews. Bear Republic rounded out a beer that would otherwise be too brutal; French Broad added an interesting middle section to a good ol' fashioned IPA; Tyranena rather unwittingly made a rather solid session beer. What, exactly, have Founders done? I can't really say they failed, because I have no idea what they were going for in the first place.

Red's Rye seems to me, at best, like a novelty. "Rye beer! Wow!" It's around, perhaps, so that folks can try it once and impress their friends. But if you must drink such a thing - and you should - take it from me: there are better examples out there. At least five, in fact, counting these and the Bell's.

French Broad Rye Hopper
Grade: B+
Summary: A delicious spicy grapefruit sandwich on rye. Okay, that doesn't sound remotely appealing, but trust me: it works.

Two Brothers Cane and Ebel
Grade: A
Summary: It tastes like hoppy grain candy, and it smells like a bunch of fruit having an orgy in a pâtisserie.

Tyrenena Bitter Woman in the Rye
Grade: B
Summary: It'd be perfect for your average grad school departmental party. Shame it's so hard to find.

Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
Grade: A
Summary: A bottle of flaming hop juice, otherwise nigh-undrinkable, is mediated and made into a tour de force by a big dollop of rye. I'd still take the C&E most days, though.

Founder's Red's Rye PA
Grade: C-
Summary: Dip the New York Times in a good IPA and then chew on it for awhile, and I think you'll get roughly the same effect.

Vacation Roundup: Thomas Creek Stillwater Vanilla Cream Ale and Pump House Porter

Another week, another pair of beers I grabbed in Asheville. This time it's a couple of brews from the Thomas Creek Brewery in Greenville, SC; I haven't heard of them, but then again I'd never heard of the folks at Ceylon either. So, let's see what these southern boys've got for us.

First up from Greenville folks is the Stillwater Vanilla Cream Ale, apparently a summer seasonal. I bought it, among a number of other appealing choices, because I had no idea what any of the words in that name were doing together and it sounded interesting. The bottle, however, is not that interesting: it features two guys fishing and a funky logo, and could basically be mistaken for an organic root beer of some kind.

Anyhow it's a cream ale, a style with which I am not well-acquainted. With the exception of a Genesee I had a few years ago (which I don't remember liking) I don't think I've ever had a one. This could be a new experience, then. And the website confirms this in one sentence: this beer is "a light-bodied and golden American style cream ale with a highly refreshing palate and an undertone of pure vanilla essence." So they actually put vanilla into this stuff? Oh, man. I have enough misgivings about chocolate and coffee - vanilla has the potential to dominate a beer like an angry mistress with a snake whip. Here goes.

It pours a pale, lemony yellow with a fizzy one-finger white head. It looks a little like a macrobrewed lager, to be honest. Only when you stick your head in do you notice what's special, and - surprise! - it's the vanilla. It doesn't totally take over the smell, but nor does it integrate with the rest of it - which is mainly pale malts and some light hops, your standard pilsner stuff. The vanilla aroma just sort of floats on top of this, like oil on water, and it comes and goes. Let the glass sit for a moment and the sweet vanilla notes come wafting out; give it some agitation and the malts snatch the aroma right back. It's odd.

The taste is also odd. It's nice, so long as you don't drink too much or too fast. Take just a sip at a time and the unusual combination works beautifully: the vanilla arrives at the beginning and holds place like an ostinato, while the bitter but light beery flavors wax and wane over it. Drink it with patience and the sour and bitter qualities of the malts, rather than taking over the vanilla, give it a lovely flattering contrast. Try to drink too quickly, however, and things go wrong: the malts and (rather wimpy) hops take over right from the beginning, with the vanilla only coming out in the aftertaste (and not pleasantly so). Sucking it down is clearly not the right way to quaff this stuff - a fact that makes it a poor choice for everyday use, and about as far from the pilsner norm as you can get. It's a smooth beer too (it had better be, at 4.5% abv), light and carbonated - which makes it all the more strange that it sucks to drink fast.

It's an interesting thought, this beer, but does it work? Sipped for a half-hour it's extremely interesting, but other than that it's just too subtle, too delicately balanced, too easy to ruin. And this is a summer seasonal, exactly the sort of beer where you don't want subtlety. Weird flavor additives go in abbey ales and stouts, not in glorified pilsners there to provide refreshment in the heat. And despite this fact, despite all the reason in me screaming that this isn't a good beer, I'm liking it more and more with every sip. The vanilla tends to linger, and over the course of the bottle it very slowly begins to win its battle against the malts. The result is that this gets better as it goes along; it gains character and complexity, rather than just getting warm and nasty. I still don't think the idea quite works, but no matter the season I'd take a single failure like this over a dozen decent but identical wheatbeers and pale lagers.

Since this beer is basically sui generis, and is likely to remain so, I don't think I can grade it. It exists for the sake of the curious, and I think that's how it should be.

The second and last entry from the Greenvillians appears to be more pedestrian. It's a porter, and one with a less boring but somehow even more more unremarkable bottle than the last one. I prefer to link images large enough that you can actually see something, but here it doesn't really matter - this label really looks like it should be the cover of a now-forgotten alt rock album released circa 1995. But we're not here to be catty about designs, we're here to drink beer. Let's crack this open.

Well, it pours very dark indeed - not quite pitch black, but the light only barely passes through it. The head's almost nonexistent, something I don't expect from a brew this weak (a mere 5.75% abv), and what little there is quickly settles into a foam. It more than redeems itself in the aroma, though: this smells absolutely fantastic. It's not really a typical porter smell - think of an imperial stout dialed back a few notches and with the fuzz pedal turned off. There's a pure, rich cacao and cherries smell here, interlaced with nuts, caramel, and a little bit of cinnamon. I get a roasted malt aroma, too, although it's not the most prominent thing in the nose by far. I am absolutely in love. I may have to move to South Carolina in the near future if the beer itself is as good as its smell.

...It isn't. It's not bad, though. The front end, surprisingly, is the sweetest part of the taste profile, a kind of toffee taste with a bit of smoke to it. This gets taken over rather quickly by cacao and charcoal, although the roasted malts are never too intrusive. Everything else is more of the same: the bittersweet, smoky character hangs on through the aftertaste, which lasts forever (as it should). The finish is a bit dry, but not excessively so. In a lot of ways this reminds me of the Edmund Fitzgerald porter - there's that same sense of roasted malts barely kept under restraint. The Pump House isn't really in the same league as that monster, but it's still a fine beer. Its greatest flaw is that it's rather watery; if you can get past that and emphasize the smell of the stuff, it'll make a fine little session porter.

Overall? Well, if I graded entirely on aroma this would be well into the high A range. The taste and the texture aren't quite there yet, though. Give it a shot if you see it on a shelf somewhere - although if it's between this stuff and the Cream Ale, I'd grab the latter for novelty value alone.

Nice work all around, Thomas Creek. I look forward to trying more of your stuff whenever I'm in the neighborhood.

Thomas Creek Stillwater Vanilla Cream Ale
Grade: n/a
Summary: On the Island of Misfit Beers, this thing is in the aristocracy. Try it.

Thomas Creek Pump House Porter
Grade: B
Summary: Tastes like an ashy but pretty good porter. Smells like a spicy chocolate and cherry party in heaven.

Micreview: Guinness Extra Stout and Murphy's Stout

Well, it's the night after St. Patty's. And, although I may be late about it, I suppose I'm a obligated to review some Irish stouts. But there's a problem: I think the big names are shite, to be honest, including and especially all the Guinness I've had. I'm told, of course, that I've never had the real Guinness - and I reserve an open mind for if I try a pint of it one day - but I can state with certainty that all the Guinness that I've had in Chicago bars or in cans has been a muted watery mess not worth the material used to brew it.

Let's see, then, if a bottle of the Extra Stout does any better. This particular example was proudly brewed in Toronto, Canada Ireland, and it's got the same cream-on-black bomber design you've seen in every grocery store everywhere (especially in March). So: is it any good?

Well, it certainly looks like a stout should, pouring jet-black with a finger and a half of tan head. The nose is rather unassuming, though: the coffee-like note of roasted barley comes first, and there's also just a little bit of fruit if you concentrate. Sour fruit, not sweet - underripened cherries, maybe. It's not bad, but it's nothing to knock you over, either by detail or by raw power.

The taste is quite dry, as it should be, and fuller than I recalled. There's a touch of cacao at the start, which then expands into a full-on roasted malt frenzy. Halfway through it's chiefly lots and lots of charcoal and cacao, with a sweet-and sour note sneaking in towards the end. The hops aren't exactly no-shows, but they don't do much to relieve matters: mostly they just seem to add a slightly rusty effect, which isn't great. The aftertaste, to no one's surprise, is dry, consisting entirely of the bitter, lingering roasted flavors. It's a decent brew, I guess - it's a hell of a lot better than the nitro stuff they sell in bars - but it still fails to have any hook for me. The thing I'm most disappointed in, I think, is the mouthfeel: initially I found this stout rather full-bodied and creamy, but halfway through the bottle it's getting increasingly watery with every sip.

This beer, I would say, is exactly average. If you've got some roasted goose on the carvery (or some really nice Swiss cheese) and you need a beer to pair with it, this'll do nicely: it does its bitter thing, and it does it well. Beyond that, though, there's not much need to bother. It's really not worth drinking on its own, and the roasted malts do get annoying after awhile.

At this point I was faced with a problem: I wanted something to compare the Guinness to, and there aren't many other stouts with Irish ancestry around aside from the aforementioned Guinness Draught (which I avoid) and Beamish (which I couldn't find). I did find Murphy's Stout, though - four-packs were on sale at Binnys, and I snagged them. It comes in a can, too, which dutifully reports on its side that Murphy's is made in Edinburgh, Scotland Ireland. Should be interesting.

Well, the head on this thing is just amazing - it bubbles up from the bottom and forms a frothy beige of about two fingers. It's absolutely beautiful. And the color, again, is totally black - darker than black, in fact. It's a stereotypical, picture perfect stout appearance, even moreso than the Guinness ES; it looks fantastic. And the nose... the nose is... oh, no. The first thing I notice is that it smells like sour barley. With a little bit of a roasted hue, maybe some lactose and some yeast. And... that's it. It's one of the dullest aromas I've had in awhile, not only in the sense that it's boring but that it actually feels like it's been blunted. Oh, man. I may have made a horrible mistake here.

Onto the taste, where the misses just keep on coming. It's got a smooth consistency, to be sure, but it's also rather watery and unpleasant. Think skim milk. And the flavor? Bzzzt, sorry, there really isn't much. Somewhere - way way in the back - are some traditional Irish stout notes like roasted malts and cacao and a dry finish, but they've been so muted that there's almost nothing left. It's as if someone drew a stout with a pencil, and then erased it (but didn't completely finish the job). No, worse than that: seeing a half-erased stout right in front of one's eyes is still too direct an experience. Drinking Murphy's is like hearing your neighbor down the hall drink an Irish stout.

There's just nothing here. No flavor, no alcohol (4% abv), barely any texture. It's a 16 ounce can of nada that happens to look good when you pour it. I'm not sure exactly what I can blame this on: the can? the apparent nitrogenation of the can? the Edinburghers? Who knows, and I suppose it doesn't really matter. If you like beers that look pretty, get yourself a four-pack asap. If you like good stouts, avoid this stuff like a SARS case.

Really, Ireland, come on. You invented this style, and all you send us is a tasteless draught, a middling beer that any halfway-decent American microbrewer could better, and flavored stoutwater? We get drunk in celebration of your patron saint, dammit. You can do better than this. And until then, I think we should celebrate St. Patty's with stouts that are actually good - like Old #38, Black Hawk, Out of Bounds, or Black Sun, say.

Guinness Extra Stout
Grade: C
Summary: It's an Irish stout. It's roasty and a little dry. Meh.

Murphy's Stout
Grade: D-
Summary: Stout flavors dying cold and alone in a (very pretty) submarine, trapped at the bottom of an ocean.

Micreview: Lagunitas Cappucino Stout

Well, it's paper-writing week here at the U, and that means I don't have time to conjure up any deep thoughts or big comparative things. Instead I've decided (in brief form) to give the whole "imperial stout with coffee" thing another chance. This may or may not be a horrible idea.

The Lagunitas folks - who are, oddly enough, located about twenty miles north of Lagunitas, in Petaluma - may be from California, but they're fairly ubiquitous here in Illinois somehow. The Binnys website lists 18 of their beers, and I've yet to visit a reputable store without at least a few of their brews in stock. But aside from their IPA - which is almost architypically Californian, to a fault - I've never actually had any of these things. Tonight that changes. The goofy dog on the bottle has sold me, and so I'm trying out their December seasonal: the Cappucino Stout. So, here we go.

Well, it pours black (no surprise there), although when held up to a lamp I can detect some of the light still getting through. Funny enough, it's all ruby at the edges rather than brown. There's a cute little wheat-colored head, too, about a finger's worth, which then quickly dies away (this thing is north of 9% abv, after all). And the aroma - oh, happy days, they've done this one properly. Unlike the Breakfast Stout from Founders, which (you'll recall) I kind of hated, this one comes off as really well-balanced. The coffee is right out front, but kept under control by the addition of a thick ol' slab of sweet malts. Think of a slice of chocolate cake served with a cup of joe and you'll be close. And given a ton of agitation, I can actually detect some hops as well - which, for this kind of beer, is new to me. It's not a nose for the ages (I think I ultimately prefer the Kona Porter), but it's still an unexpectedly pleasant one.

The taste is quite a bit more varied, although it would be a stretch to say that anything about it is totally unexpected. At the front end and quite a ways beyond, this just comes across as a nice, extremely mild imperial stout: lots of bittersweet roasty malts and just a touch of dark fruit. As it moves towards the back of one's mouth, though, the coffee sweeps in like a German panzer brigade. Things get very bitter very fast as the bumble bean swarms over just about everything. And then, right after this, the hops try to push their way through - I can't really tell what sort they are, though, because they're clearly not making much headway against the onslaught. They do provide a lovely touch of dryness to the aftertaste, though, which is otherwise just coffee bitterness and a lingering chocolatey sweetness from the malts. As far as its texture, it comes across as rather thin for the style (not a motor oil, this) but still quite full-bodied and mouth-coating. It's pleasant, but not easy, to drink: you could easily spend a few hours on one bottle.

Bottom line? I like it. It's not something I would drink every day and it still falls short of perfection here and there, but it's a fine beer all the same. It's a good one to split with a group of friends, really, as anyone but a seasoned veteran is going to have trouble finishing a full deuce-deuce of this stuff. It hasn't dethroned the Kona as my favorite coffee beer, but it adds new evidence against my assertion that the idea of such a thing is fundamentally misguided.

Grade: B+
Summary: The first imperial coffee stout I've ever had that actually works.

Brown Ale Throwdown: Sprecher Pub Brown Ale, Goose Island Nut Brown Ale, and Big Boss Bad Penny Brown Ale

Yes, this is another one of those things where I pick three random representatives of a style and compare them. What can I say? I'm an academic, comparing approaches comes naturally. And heck, maybe more people will read the site if I can dig a minor niche for myself.

First up is the Pub Brown Ale from Sprecher, a very English-sounding beer that could not possibly look more German. It's a pub ale with a big fuckin' griffin on a shield on the (16oz) bottle design, which just seems wrong somehow. Don't be fooled, though, this thing comes from neither side of the channel. Instead, Sprecher hails from the decidedly less European Glendale, Wisconsin; there they make a number of beers and sodas. I've never tried the beers, but I've had a few of the sodas. I wasn't wowed by their orange soda or ginger ale, but their root beer is heavenly; it'll never top the one from Boylan, which is as complex and serious and magnificent as a psych rock show, but the Sprecher is its sweeter, easy-to-drink alternative whenever I'm feeling a little punk. It's this root beer, then, that encouraged me to hunt down one of their beers (once I found out that they made some).

Oh my, a twist-off cap. It's been a while since I've seen one of those.

Well, it pours rather lightly, with a nice coppery color (not quite brown, but who's complaining) and a one-finger cream head that quickly dies off. It looks like a dark ginger ale, really. The aroma is very promising indeed: not much in the way of hops, but there's plenty of pale malts cut through with caramel, sassafras, and a little bit of earthiness. It's not particularly complex, but it's pleasant enough.

Hm, the taste is in a solid B- territory. It's good stuff, it's the sort of thing I'd drink tons of during a night on the town - "pub ale" is exactly the right term. There's just no real sparkle, though. The front edge is a slightly pearlike sourness, which evolves into a nice soil-and-syrup sort of taste. It's basically your classic earthy/bready brown ale flavor profile. The hops, too, are pretty by-the-book, but they're way turned down even compared to the Bell's brown ale from a while back. Even the mouthfeel is light.

So, then: Sprecher went for simple and mild, and they achieved it. For what it is, then, this brew is pretty good, although I wish they'd been a bit more ambitious. It does strike me as a perfect beer for at least one thing, though: converting the people who've been drinking Pabst their whole lives. Think of this, then, as a beginner beer, not so much a rival to the masters as a (superior) substitute for Newcastle.

Onto the Goose Island Nut Brown, then, which I am on record as declaring not anywhere near as good as their Naughty Goose. It is cheaper and easier to come by, though, and that counts for something. Like all Goose Island brews (excepting the Christmas Ale), this is immaculately packaged in a lovely black-on-brown label. The boys with laptops deserve praise for this one. Also, I should note that I've been saving this bottle roughly since September, so it may be a bit old now.

Well, it pours quite a bit darker than the Sprecher; sort of an auburn, rather than a rust. The head's a tad bit less intense, somewhere just north of a half-finger - I'm chalking this up to the slightly stronger 5.3% ABV. The aroma is very sweet, even sweeter than the Sprecher, but also less detailed (if that's possible). I mainly get caramel, lots and lots of it, with a touch of English hops mixed in. When given some agitation it opens up a tad more, offering more of a coffee aroma; but really, if you're looking for complexity this isn't your beer.

With the taste, I'm feeling even more guilty for accusing the Sprecher of simplicity. This stuff is stupid simple. Most of the hops seem to come through in an initial bitter jab, after which there's nothing but thick milk chocolatey malts. The aftertaste is slightly more dry, but the rest of the time this stuff is shamelessly sugar-driven. And the texture is a bit heavier than the Sprecher as well, although by beer standards I'd still only call it medium-bodied.

I like this beer; it's sweet and kind of unassuming, like the shy kid in class. As a beer, on its own, I'd rank it above the Sprecher, but it also doesn't seem to me to be much of a brown ale. In a lot of ways this is much more comparable to a really mild porter or a sweet stout. Thus it runs into something like the same problem as the Flossmoor Pullman I reviewed last year: it's a good beer, but if I really wanted a brown ale I'd have to go elsewhere.

Last on my list is Bad Penny from Big Boss Brewing. This is another one I picked up from my trip east: these guys make their home in Raleigh, so good luck finding one of these suckers out in Chi-town. It's almost worth it entirely for the bottle alone, though, because it's fucking awesome. It's like they took a movie poster from 1972 featuring a sassy sister making eyes, and just drained all the colors out of it except brown. Yes, I know that doesn't sound appealing, but it works. It even has a bottled-on date: November '09. Well, then - the Goose Island was still okay, so hopefully the months of mellowing have done some good here as well.

It pours very easily indeed, with a moderate brown tone about halfway between the Sprecher and the Goose Island. The head is minimal - maybe a quarter finger tops. Even that's gone after a few seconds, leaving only an off-white floaty foam. The nose is actually quite similar to the other two as well. It's a lovely mix of caramel, nuttiness - well, hell, you've heard this before. I'd say it's right in between the other two, aroma wise, although closer to the Sprecher and perhaps a bit more subdued.

But then there's the taste. Wow, it's not what I expected at all. What strikes me first is that it's surprisingly watery - not that the other two were ultra-creamy, but this one doesn't cover the mouth at all. That's not to say it's bad, though, because the taste makes up for it. It's strikingly bitter, much moreso than the others. Espresso grinds hit right up front and hold on tight while some malty, dark chocolate sweetness slides in behind them. Coffee remains the dominant flavor right up until the end, where the hops deliver an earthy little nibble and let things slide off. The aftertaste is surprisingly long, despite the watery texture: once again it's mostly bitter coffee and chocolate, with (maybe) some almonds to provide relief.

For a night out with the boys I'd choose one of the other two; this is just a little too striking to work for that role. But it's got its own charms, and - in the end - I think I prefer it. Certainly I admire it more as a beer. Bad Penny is like the Bruce Lee of English browns: it packs the maximum amount of force into the minimal effort. It's not a heavy beer, yet features a flavor profile I've found lacking in brews going well into the 8% range. I'm not sure how much use the world has for a beer like this, and I'm not sure whether I myself will ever have it again. But I'm glad it exists.

So: we've got a much narrower spread than I expected here, and not a bad beer in the lot. The Sprecher is boring but also unassuming, the workman of the group, while the Goose Island is pleasant and sweet (but not really properly brownalelich) and the Big Boss is a pint-sized monster (which is a little too watery and not great for pub nights). So: which one should you buy?

Honestly? None of these. Well, try them once for shits and giggles, sure. But if you want a fantastic brown ale, buy the Samuel Smith or the Naughty Goose or Dogfish Head's India Brown. And if you want a relatively cheap, delicious, mild, easily available example of the style for poker nights, the correct decision is in fact Ellie's Brown from Avery. (You can't miss it, it's got an adorable lab on the label.) That's a beer I'll get around to reviewing it one of these days. As it is, though, these three - good as they are - can't beat the standard.

Sprecher Pub Brown Ale
Grade: B-
Summary: A beginner's brown - not bad, just not all that much going on. Your dad will love it.

Goose Island Nut Brown Ale
Grade: B
Summary: Think of this as more of a sweet stout with English-style hops than a real brown. Still good, though.

Big Boss Bad Penny Brown Ale
Grade: B
Summary: The most creative and assertive beer here. Bittersweet, emphasis on the bitter. The wateriness really bugs me, though.

Review: Ridgeway Foreign Export Stout

Ever since I aced the Lion Stout, I've had a nagging question. With the possible exception of Arcadia's Cocoa Loco - which is a somewhat different sort of beer - I'd never had an export stout before. And so, even though I was completely bowled over by the Sri Lanka slammer, there always remained a doubt about whether I really fell in love with the beer itself or with the style in general. Could it be that I'd just cornered the weakest member of a superior genus? Mightn't there be some other foreign stout out there which is even better? Thus, for a few months I've been keeping my eye out for something else of the same sort to compare the Lion with.

Needless to say I found one, and here it is: the Ridgeway Brewing Foreign Export Stout. It wasn't cheap - a mere 16.9 oz bottle went for $5.50, half the price of a whole sixer of Lions - but in the interest of science and my own curiosity I thought I'd give it a try. Unlike its South Asian cousin, though, this stuff hails direct from England. That gives it a "pedigree," I suppose, if that matters (it doesn't). And somehow it makes it seem even more ridiculous than the Lion, which (horrible photoshopping considered) is already pretty far up there. Despite how much I enjoy the culture, not to mention the beer, of England, there are some things that just send me giggling and keep me there. For starters, the Ridgeway here comes from somewhere called South Stoke, Oxfordshire. When I look it up Google Maps disagrees, and insists that No, South Stoke is actually in Berkshire, not Oxfordshire. So South Stoke either doesn't actually know where it is, or one of these sources is wrong. Frankly I'm happy to allow South Stoke to be wherever it likes, though, since both counties sound equally ridiculous to my American ears. They sound like the sort of places famous for a 12th century battle between some peasants and the esteemed Baron Doddingerton over taxation procedures in the Chipping Kilmister region. Everyone who lives there either drives a Bentley already or at least wants one - except in Oxford, maybe.

I kid, of course. They probably don't want them in Reading either.

But really, I kid because the beer itself encourages it. There's not much information to be found on Ridgeway Brewing, but the importers happily report that "Ridgeway Brewery is named for the ancient road... that meanders along a low escarpment across the high, rolling pastoral plain that is the southwest of England." Oh my. And it goes on: "The now patchy stone surface of the Ridgeway was laid by Britain’s oldest inhabitants – Druids and the like – thousands of years before the Romans turned up to build their own roadways. It is the oldest road in the British Isles and Europe, running nearly 100 miles, past that other ancient landmark, Stonehenge..." Okay, I'm stopping there, because if they pour any more of the Tradition thing on me I will probably start heaving. Yes, England is Old and your beer has history and Britishness and so on, we know.

On the outside, though, it really does have Britishness. I mean, blimey, just look at the bottle. It could only be more English if they'd somehow shaped the cap into the Spirit of Ecstasy. As a result, I'm expecting this stuff to taste like a mossy 9th century castle; whether that'll be a good or bad thing, I don't know. (But I'm eager to see.)

Well, here goes.

Nice - it pours a rich chocolate color, with a fine and proud three-finger tan head. I'm suddenly kicking myself for not having any Elgar on hand as accompaniment. The aroma is really lovely too - my closest point of reference is the Lion Stout, of course, but this is a bit more fruity and sweet, with way less cacao. Back behind the fruitiness is a mild toffee smell, intermixed with some earthy hops. It's a deep and musky aroma, really, like you might expect the Lake District to smell. It's not an amazing nose - it's actually a little too laid back, really - but it's pretty nice, and very British. Let's give it a sip or two.

Oh, that's scrumptious. Compared (again) to the Sri Lankan entry the taste is definitely several ranks sweeter, but it still maintains a bitter edge which (I assume) is characteristic of its species. There's some dark chocolate up front, which expands into a sweet but more espresso-like taste as it moves back. This is about where the fruitiness (prunes, mostly) from the nose comes in as well, although it's pretty well manhandled by the espresso. Then there's the hops, which arrive hauling nuts, soil, and that odd minty note I'm coming to associate with whole leaf hops. Finally, the aftertaste features whatever espresso has hung on from before plus the minty-soily hops. As far as texture goes, that too is like the Lion. Both are creamy but also quite carbonated, and these facts balance out nicely. It's a very easy beer to drink, especially for an eight percenter, but not so easy that you can unintentionally get yourself in trouble.

So by now you should already have some suspicion of the verdict. Is it a good beer? Yes, absolutely. I like it a lot, and if I could get a sixer of it around the $9 mark it would quickly go into my regular rotations. Hell, in a world without Sri Lanka I'd even be willing to drop six bucks on one every now and then. The trouble, obviously, is that as good as this is, a cheaper and even better brew is out there waiting to steal its blood pudding. As fine and English a beer as this is, the Lion Stout is somehow even moreso. It comes across as older, more earthy, more massive - and less user-friendly too, and by God better for it. Plus it's cheaper. Plus it's easier to find. So, basically on every level that matters the Lion is a better choice. Unless you really want a beer that's slightly sweeter, there's no reason to buy the Ridgeway. The English fought them in the brewing... and they lost.

So, to answer my question from before: yes, the Lion Stout really is that good. On the other hand, discovering and trying the Ridgeway has left me with a new puzzlement: why, exactly, did it take me this long to find another friggin' stout of this style? Why are so few breweries making them? I mean, just take a look at the beers available. Aside from the Lion, how many of these have you ever actually witnessed in the wild? Personally, I can recall seeing Fade to Black last year, and I know I spotted Reaper's entry somewhere or other. That's all. And this is still the case even when most of the sizeable microbreweries in the US (I suspect - haven't done the math) sell an imperial stout or two. The shelves are full of the damn things, in every variation anyone could want - 8% or 18% ABV, with chocolate, vanilla, and/or coffee thrown in, made with oatmeal or milk sugar, aged in barrels, whatever. Now, I love imperial stouts to a fault, but all of this still gets a bit stale after awhile. So why is it - with a earthier, mellower, possibly even more interesting, but equally powerful close relative of that style right on hand - that almost no one has bothered to switch things up? Why are there only a handful of American microbreweries selling these brews, leaving the Sri Lankans and the British as our main options?

I have to believe that I'm not the only person who adores this style. Other folks out there, perhaps, are also getting a bit bored with the parade of 40 proof Earl Grey-infused rum-barrel-aged hopheady stouts. So step up, brewers, it's time for something a little different. Give the Sri Lankans a scare or two.

Grade: B+
Summary: Like the Lion Stout, except sweeter and less interesting. And nearly three times as expensive.

Vacation Roundup: Starr Hill The Love and Dark Starr

Charlottesville is probably my favorite town (well, city) in Virginia. Admittedly, this probably isn't saying much. Everywhere around DC is more or less a suburban office park nightmare, absorbing all the petty malice and mutual unconcern radiating off of I-495 - the notorious Capital Beltway, the most hateful road on the east coast and an entity which feeds from the souls of all existing within many miles of it. The Virginia Beach area is a Navy town and a tourist trap, making me feel doubly out of place. Roanoke is located in the mountains (a plus), but is otherwise a bit boring somehow. Richmond is, well, hopeless. I'm tempted to pick Luray (foothill heaven, and mere miles away from Skyline Drive and the astonishing US-211, i.e. two of the best roads in Virginia), or maybe Leesburg or Williamsburg (for the simple joy of the colonial architecture). But on points, it's gotta be Charlottesville. It does the historic town thing almost as well, it's close to the mountains, it's actually got some culture, and they even like to drink a little. But this raises a question: can they brew a good beer?

To find out, I bought a pair of brews from Starr Hill while I was out east a few months back. The Starr Hill brewery is actually located a few miles west of Charlottesville (in Crozet), and they're surprisingly ubiquitous in the mideast states (I found some sixers of these as far down as North Carolina). I've got a The Love, which is a hefeweizen with a silly name, and a Dark Starr, which is a dry stout. So, let's start with the wheatbeer first.

Here's the first bit of news: the label is pink. At their site for the beer Starr Hill boasts that this stuff is made from an award-winning German yeast handed over by a friend. Someone "shared the love" with them, get it? Yes, yes, we see the pun, fine. But I would have titled the beer "Starr Hill Thank You," made the cover a big thumbs up to Germany, and saved myself the trouble. And I certainly wouldn't have made the label pink. Gah.

Pour it into a glass, though, and things start to get better: it's got a lovely cloudy-gold look, pretty much standard for the style, with a nice yeasty two-finger white head. And it's a sticky head too: with an ABV of only 4.6% (on the low side by wheatbeer standards), there's really not much to pull it back down. The aroma is very lemon-limey, with a hit of yeast further back; agitate it a bit and it shifts more in a banana direction. It's quite a simple aroma for a weiss, but there's nothing that's turning me off so far.

The taste carries through on the promise of the lemony aroma - it's a kind of yeasty lemonade, although obviously without the sweetness. Right up front is a pleasant tarty tang, which maintains itself right up to the end. Around there a wheaty taste butts in, along with some cloves and cilantro. No real hoppiness here, although I wasn't expecting it. The aftertaste, for the most part, is just more citrusy goodness. And... frankly, I'm struggling to think of anything more to say. Body's pretty light. No sense of the alcohol at all. It's a very refreshing taste, as these sorts of things tend to be, but there's also nothing at all to set this apart from the crowd.

Well, I didn't taste much love to be honest, but it's not bad. There's only one way to describe The Love: it is a Hefeweizen. And that means: if you like hefeweizens, you will think this one's pretty okay. It will do just fine by you, and you will immediately forget it exists after you finish drinking it. Such is its fate.

Now, onto the Dark Starr Stout. Unlike the self-consciously goofy The Love, this beer's a little more serious. The bottle's all murdered out, looking scary and muscular like a 1974 Challenger. Check the stats, though, and you discover that this black-bottled terror is actually a bit of a softie: it's 4.81% ABV, only a touch above Guinness and Murphy's (heck, the Black Hawk - still my go-to dry stout - is well into the low 5% range). So I'm expecting this to be more of a pub beer, more of a filling but unobtrusive bit of black matter that'll provide just the slightest lubricant for an evening with the boys.

Oh. Man, that's not what this is at all.

It's black, to be sure; it's got a medium viscosity and a half-finger head, to be sure; but this isn't a good old fashioned Irish stout. The aroma is, well, not what I expected at all. The strangest thing to the aroma is a strong, almost meaty quality, as if there's some grilled pork in there or something. It's not something I've encountered before, and I don't really dig it. Beyond that there's some coffee, lots of roasted malts, and an odd sourness that I can't pin down.

And the taste? Err, well, it's dry, give it that much. But beyond that everything's gone wrong. For starters, it's incredibly watery. The sourness from the aroma is also here (not something I really want in a stout). And then there's the worst part: from the very first sip one is inundated with a consistently cloying, smokey, ashy taste. Way back there, behind the wall of smoke, I can tell there are some good traditional stouty flavors, but there's really no digging them out. The aftertaste is indeed dry, but that's not enough to chase away the unpleasant smoky-sourness

If ever one needed a textbook example of how not to use roasted malts, this would be it. I suppose it's unique, sure, but it's not good, especially if you plan on drinking a whole bottle. (Starr Hill touts this as their "most awarded beer." I can only assume the judges all just did the sip-and-spit thing, because there's no way they would have medal'd this stuff if they'd had to suck down 12 ounces of it.) It's a watery, burned-out answer to a question no one asked. If you really want a smoky beer, try an Aecht Schlenkerla Märzen; if you really want a dry stout from Virginia, try to broaden your horizons.

So: Charlottesville. Nice town, and they make not-so-great stouts and also a Hefeweizen. I'll see if I can learn more on my next trip, I guess.

Starr Hill The Love
Grade: B-
Summary: It meets hefeweizen expectations.

Starr Hill Dark Starr
Grade: C-
Summary: Not so much a dry stout as a watery, ashy mess. Unique enough for the curious, but unpleasant to finish.

Review: Dogfish Head Punkin Ale

I'd like to talk for a bit about impossibility.

"Impossible" is, philosophically, a translation of the Greek adunatos. To be "dunatos" in the typical sense is to be strong, i.e. fit and able-bodied; in an extended sense it means to have a capacity, to be able to do something. Dunamis is "power," but not power in the general sense. It's always a power of a very specific sort: the power of a shoemaker to produce shoes, the power of a seed to grow into a tree, the power of 3 to become 9 when squared. But that same 3 cannot become 4 or 16 when squared, and to this extent it is adunatos - incapable. It cannot support the possibility, it cannot bear it. The seed too, will not support ever being-at-work growing into a castle or a dinosaur; the situation, as it were, cannot be borne by the entity. And when Aristotle famously states the single most basic principle (archē) of philosophy, he uses this very term: "To gar auto ama huparchein te kai mē huparchein adunaton tōi autō kai kata to auto." (1005b) This is a difficult and controversial passage to translate ("huparchein" is extremely ambiguous), but I submit: "for the same thing is incapable of both being and not being in a single moment, for itself and according to itself." But despite this being Aristotle's "most firm principle," I think we have to consider it as grounded in something even more basic - namely, the very concept of dunamis and the dunaton developed in Metaphysics IX. I won't try to deal with that discussion here, but suffice it to say that I consider it probably the single most important text in the history of Western philosophy.

Aristotle's statement has come down to us, of course, as the principle of noncontradiction, and although there have been subtle and important shifts in the content (many of which would have puzzled Aristotle, I think) it retains its status as something fundamental. Capacity has become possibility - now defining less what entities can do, and more whether and which entities can be at all. And the principle of noncontradiction quite often defines the space of possibility as such - "whatever is self-identical is able to exist." It usually defines the space for logical possibility, at least, i.e. it defines which propositions may concievably be true and which not. But of course, over the years philosophers have added additional limits to possibilities. Things may be impossible as willed by God, impossible by reason of a lacking cause, impossible by natural law, and (in Kant) impossible by the conditions of possible experience.

Let us consider this last one, what Kant calls "The Highest Principle of All Synthetic Judgments": "every object stands under the necessary conditions of synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible experience." (A158 B197) Since the project of the Critique of Pure Reason is famously to establish how it is possible that we know and experience objects at all - which turns out to amount to the question of how a priori synthesis is possible - then then this little stretch of text is fundamental to that project. The conditions of experience - whether that experience be concrete or an imagination of sorts - determines what and whether an object of experience can be. It's the chief work of the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements to determine what those conditions are. By doing so, one can precisely establish the limits of experiential as well as epistemic possibility.

Here one runs into a problem, especially obvious in Kant but (I think) probably common to everyone who attempts to determine the limits of the possible. How is it possible to establish what is possible? So far as I can tell, there are two available roads (Kant uses both). The first is to set down a law a priori from which one can derive various consequences. The second is the process that we now call "transcendental argument."

A "transcendental argument" is not, strictly speaking, an argument. It does not present premises from which one can derive consequences - or, at any rate, if it were then it couldn't do the sort of work Kant needs it to do. This "argument" consists rather in a curious form of projection, of the fantasy of a certain sort of experience. (I suspect it is finally no different in kind from what Husserl names as "eidetic variation.") We project ourselves into an experience and, as it were, attempt to determine the limits of the experience itself. We ask ourselves whether it is conceivable to experience in certain ways at all. The "argument" of Kant's second analogy, for example, does not conclude that experience is bound by the laws of causality because of some feature of the concepts involved. The point, brutely put, is: "Look, you can be skeptical all you want, but imagine yourself in a real situation watching the manifold sequence of events involved in billiard balls hitting each other. Now try to imagine that there is no succession at all. Not that the individual perceptions occur in a new order, but that there is simply no order. There is nothing wrong with the mere concept of this, but does it still make sense to think of these as events at all? Can we meaningfully think of perceptions without succession as experience?" The answer is supposed to be "no" - thus we admit temporal succession, i.e. causality, as a necessary condition for experience.

But if this is the method of transcendental argument, then it is open to an extremely simple criticism. In the end, there are quite a lot of things which we fail to "conceive" before the fact - falling in love, drinking an extraordinary Scotch, witnessing the collapse of Lehman Brothers - but this does not keep them from happening. And they do happen; they throw themselves at us despite our never seeing them in advance. And if impossibility here is tantamount to inconceivability, then one must conclude that the impossible happens every day. (One might establish "gradations" of impossibility, but that would be all.) Of course, one could counter that the inconceivability of non-successive experience is not the same as the inconceivability of a financial disaster. One might argue that there is a difference between what has not been thought by one person, or even by anyone, and what cannot be thought at all. But it is utterly questionable whether this is a distinction any of us could legitimately make. After all, it is me who participates in transcendental argumentation, not some grand overmind: if I cannot conceive something, I also cannot establish in advance which sort of non-conceiving I have run into. If we are to set down this distinction nevertheless, then we must turn to another method. We must take it as a principle.

There is, so far as I am aware, no serious criticism of the first Critique more common than: "Where exactly does the Table of Judgments come from??" That is, where does Kant get the source from which the deduction of the basic categories of experience is supposed to proceed? It's a very good criticism; Kant himself admits that he does not know (it's the mark of an uncommonly honest philosopher that he does this). In the end he simply lifts it from the tradition he's supposed to be critiquing and, thus, dogmatically takes the whole basis for the Transcendental Logic for granted. And I suspect one runs into the same question anytime one wishes to establish a law that will decide, once and for all, what is and is not possible. One can always just turn the quid juris back against the very thing that's supposed to establish the right in the first place. To be sure, dogmatic presuppositions of this sort can do quite a lot of work and they can be quite plausible, but ultimately they shall remain somewhat unsatisfactory. They will always be questionable, even if one has never heard of the epochē or Husserl's principle of principles.

Let us go back and reconsider Aristotle. His archē reads, once again: "The same thing is incapable of both being and not being in a single moment, for itself and according to itself." Is this a principle, asserted dogmatically? Initially it may look that way, but I think this is inaccurate. For one thing, Aristotle musters considerable phenomenological evidence to support his case, especially in Metaphysics IV.4. But it can also be seen simply from another line that closely follows the principle and, as it were, anchors it: "adunaton gar hontinoun tauton hupolambanein einai kai mē einai," "for it is unbearable to believe that the same thing can be and not be." Aristotle's entire proof of the principle amounts to demonstrating that this cannot be "believed," i.e. that one just cannot experience matters in that way. It thus amounts to a kind of transcendental argument - the same sort as before. But if that's so, then it is ultimately vulnerable to precisely the same criticisms as any other such "argument." Even noncontradiction, then, must run up against our inability to firmly draw a line between the absolutely impossible and the individually (or even universally) inconceivable.

Don't misunderstand me: I am not saying that everything is possible. This is exactly the reverse of my conclusion. There are possibilities, and there "are" impossibilities. This line is drawn by what is thinkable. But if I erase the second line between inconceivability and absolute impossibility, I do so not only on the basis of a good argument which is, however, entirely negative. I also do so because there are important, positive phenomenological consequences. The extraordinary thing is this: if impossibility is indeed tantamount to the unthinkable, the inconceivable - i.e., if we cannot justify any distinction between the two - then we will indeed experience the impossible to the same extent that we experience the unexpected. Perhaps this only happens for a moment, or even less; perhaps in the same instant that the impossible happens it retroactively inscribes itself into the field of the possible so that, as in Kant, there is an unbroken succession of reason. Nevertheless the impossible does happen. If that seems outrageous to common sense, I agree, but I think it's phenomenologically accurate nevertheless. The real work is to try to describe exactly what happens in those moments - as it were, to articulate how it is that the impossible gives itself to us. But that's work for a whole lifetime.

Now, all of this brings me to Dogfish Head.

If impossibility has a friend in the world of brewing, that friend is surely Dogfish Head. As a brewery, it's experimental to a fault and beyond. They are constantly pushing the edge on what we think beer can be, and depending on your taste this can be a good or a bad thing. Me, I love them. I love them more than I love other breweries that, overall, make better beer, precisely because I know these guys will always surprise me. Beer made with raisins and peaches? SURE. A stout pushing 40 proof? WHY NOT. A recreation of something we scraped out of 2700 year old steins? DAMN RIGHT. One gets the sense that they won't be happy until they break out of beermaking entirely and end up in some other kind of medium. The results probably fail more often than they succeed - but they're also never boring.

This here is Punkin, a brown ale brewed with pumpkins which is apparently the first beer they ever made. From the website: "Punkin Ale made it's debut as it claimed First Prize in the 1994 Punkin Chunkin Recipe Conest - yes, that was a full 6 months before we even opened our doors for business." As such, it seems like a good subject for a first review of their catalog. I'd almost forgotten that I had one of these until yesterday; it's getting on a little agewise (they brew this stuff at the beginning of fall), but I'm looking forward to trying it. My only other experience with a pumpkin ale is the Ichabod Ale by New Holland, which I found decidedly "meh."

Well, it pours a funky orange-amber with a finger's worth of fairly thin white head (no lacing from this sucker - that stuff is strictly carbonation). Good God, I can smell the aroma from here. And "pumpkin" isn't the first thing that comes to mind, although as I stick my head in - whew! - I can certainly detect it. The initial impression is more of a sharp, penetrating fruitiness, mellowed out by good old fashioned ale malts. It's like a pale ale that's been shot through with a cross-section of supermarket produce. And I can also detect a goodly bit of spice in here - mainly nutmeg, although the bottle informs me that there's also allspice and cinnamon. This is definitely not something I've smelled before - I'm not sure if I like it, but it's surely unique.

Wow, that's different... hmmm. Hmmmmm.

Well, first off, the beer is quite a bit thinner than I thought it would be. I was expecting more of the usual touch of brown ale creaminess, but it's actually rather watery. Second off, it's surprisingly boozy. This brew is a seven-percenter, which is high for a "brown ale" but pretty mild by my standards. The problem is that it doesn't hide it at all. Subtlety is not this beer's strong suit; if you're trying to get someone drunk on the sly, this is not the beer to do it with.

As for the taste itself, it's a bit of a rollercoaster. A fun one, no doubt, but one that will end in seasickness for a few among the riders. I admire this taste, but I don't think I like it. On the front end it seems like any other amber or pale ale - you get a sweet kiss of malt with a little bit of sour thrown in. Towards the middle things start to get weird. The usual caramel flavors are there, but a massive streak of herby dry bitterness rides right on top of them. That would be the spices, I expect. By the swallow said spices have taken over completely - there's a yeasty snap in the aftertaste, and then all that's left is a rather vegetable-like bitter mouth coating. Funny as hell, I don't actually taste any pumpkin here. I taste your regular run-of-the-mill ale malts, your crazy spice rack contents, and that's about all. No real fruit character through the entire thing.

If you like, you can divide Dogfish Head beers into four categories. The first is the standards; the second is the beer styles that they haven't drastically fucked with, but maybe tried to improve; the third is the radical experiments that succeeded; the fourth is the experiments that failed, but remain interesting. Punkin falls squarely into the fourth category - more of a Raison D'Etre than an Immort Ale or an India Brown. It's special enough to try once, but now that I've done it I don't think I'd bother a second time.

So, not a great beer, then. Is it going to put me off of Dogfish Head? Hell no. If I want a good solid beer that's going to coddle me for the night, well, there's lots of other breweries I can turn to. But if I want something that gives me a glimpse of impossibility - well, by that measure they're the best in the business.

Grade: C+
Summary: A very boozy amber ale and some fall spices meet up and cohabitate. Not very good, but try it anyways.

The Doppel-Off: Ayinger Celebrator, Weihenstephaner Korbinian, and Birra Moretti La Rossa

Okay, stop me if you've heard this one before. Two Germans and an Italian walk into a bar...

...(the punchline is fascism).

Welcome back to my lonely blog. I've been away doing lots of work and being very sick, very often. Happily, I'm squared away for the moment and I finally have a chance to do a little comparison I've had in the works.

So here's the thing: I realized that I've yet to do any lager reviews. This should seem strange to the vast majority of Americans (according to Americans, the only beer drinkers who count), who are unaware that any other sorts of beer exist at all. Or that the word "lager" itself indicates something other than a guy who cuts down trees. It's a niche that my website should fill if it wants to be respectable, and so I'm gonna review some lagers. Oh boy am I gonna review some lagers. Thing is, what I've got in mind are indeed lagers. but they're also exactly the sorts of beers from which the typical American beer drinker would recoil in horror. Yup: today I'm doing doppelbocks.

Dopplebocks are the anti-Budweisers of the lager world. Save for a couple of oddities (double pilsners, eisbocks, and malt liquors being my favorites) no other style of lager matches them for sheer knockdown power. Instead of being pale, light, fizzy, and American, these things are dark, heavy, moody, and very - very - south German. It's like drinking Friedrich Schiller, and I absolutely love the things. They're my favorite style of lager by far, and - more importantly - their very existence shows just how good these humble bottom-fermenting brews can be when they're made with some TLC and not shot through with corn and rice.

To give the style a good showing, I'm writing up one of my old favorites (La Rossa) and two I've never had before (Celebrator and Korbinian). These by no means exhaust the style. I wanted to find several others that I enjoy, particularly some Americans (Capital's Autumnal Fire and whatever the heck the Victory one is called), so I went on a doppelhunt to various shops around Chi-town. Alas, no dice. That leaves the Germans, the Italian, and whatever their plans are for world domination.

If I was hoping for a range of variation, the bottles alone are encouraging. The Celebrator is probably my favorite, in that it is unabashedly pagan. The label features goats standing around a gigantic glass of beer, performing who-knows-what ritual. Actually, goats seem to be a running theme here, as each (expensive) bottle comes with its own little plastic goat figure on a string. It's rad; I plan to use mine as a Christmas ornament. All of this makes the Celebrator one of my favorite bottle designs ever; you just can't beat alcoholic goats for setting the mood. But if the Celebrator is shamelessly pagan, then the Korbinian is its Catholic counterpart. Right above the brewery name is a bishop of some sort, apparently offering the beer a benediction. There are also some flags I don't recognize and - of course - there's a bear. This is Germany we're talking about, after all. Overall, the Korbinian comes off as even more Bavarian than than the Celebrator - hell, it's more Bavarian than Benedict XVI. As compared with the theological leanings of its two more expensive Teutonic cousins, then, La Rossa has a mustachio'd guy in a suit and trilby drinking a pint. This comes across as delightfully secular. Like the other two, though, it wears its national identity on its sleeve - or are the red, green, and white borders not enough of a hint for you?

So, let's deal with the Ayinger contribution first. In terms of alcohol content, it's the weakest (6.7%); in terms of price, it's the most expensive ($3.29 for 11.2 oz.). On the other hand, it's among the top fifty beers in the world according to our friends at BeerAdvocate, and the only lager there that's available in any wide degree. So, let's give it a shot.

Aaand my doubts are put to rest the moment I pour it. Holy damn this one looks good. Celebrator pours a dark russet color, with a frisky one-finger tan head. There's a surprisingly complex aroma here, not the sort of thing you expect from a lager. I get a ton of thick yeasty malts first of all, but behind it there's actually some fruit as well - raisin, maybe, and some other stuff that's tougher to pin down. No real hints as to the hops here, but then this isn't really that kind of lager. And speaking of lagerness, it very surely is one: it's got that slight sourness to its nose that lets you know exactly what kind of beast it is.

The taste. Dear lord, it's good. Where has this beer been all my life.

It's a massive explosion of flavors, like biting into a really spicy sandwich. Along with the bready textures I get sweet molasses, ginger, some vanilla, even some nuttiness. Then, at the end, a bite from the hops comes out of nowhere and cuts things wide open. The aftertaste takes yet another turn, where it becomes almost minty - or at any rate, there's definitely some incredible herbal notes. There's more fruitiness here, as well (raisins? prunes, maybe?). And despite this incredible succession of flavors, the beer remains impossibly smooth.

Celebrator is eye-openingly, mouth-gapingly, hair-raisingly fantastic. There's no doubt in my mind that it's the best lager I've ever had up to this point, and now it's only a question as to whether one of the others is going to take that title away from it. It's absolute magic. Nothing so exciting, so varied, so anti-boring should be this drinkable, especially when it's a lager. It has a flavor profile that other beers can only dream of, and yet (if you didn't mind being broke) you could easily put away four of these in a sitting with no problem at all. Unbelievable. It gets an A+ - not because you couldn't ever do a lager better than this, but because I can't imagine what such a monster would be like.

Onto the Korbinian. How the hell do you follow something like that? I hope to hell the Weihenstephaners have something in these 500 milliliters of abbey brewery goodness that will match their neighbors; otherwise this isn't even going to deserve the name "comparison."

So. At 7.4% abv, the Korbinian is the strongest beer here. While it's not exactly cheap ($3.29 for a pint and change), it's still better than the Celebrator. And, most importantly, it's equally Bavarian. Let's give it a spin, then.

First off, it pours a rather odd color - not an unpleasant one, just odd. Rather than brown, it's more like a very dark orange. There's also a finger or so of creme-colored head, which quickly dies down (a victim of the abv, one suspects). And the aroma is - well, wonderful really. Like the Celebrator, it's a surprisingly busy nose. A crisp chocolate milk smell from the malts is center stage; there's also some toffee, along with a fruitiness that's hard to identify. On my best guess, I'd say red grapes. More surprisingly, this beer is completely lacking in that sour lagery smell that I found in the Celebrator. If you didn't tell me different, I'd have taken this for an ale. Maybe they used a funky yeast of some sort.

Wow, that's good. It's not nearly as complex as the Ayinger - no, take it back, complexitywise it's not even in the same building as the Ayinger - but it has charms of its own. Korbinian is delicious maltiness all the way through, but more amazing is its much creamier texture. This is a mouth-filling beer of the best sort, with a flavor that coats everything and lingers forever. And it does so without even toeing the border on being too heavy (although it still comes across as the heaviest beer in this comparison). It's wonderful, lovely, fantastic. The maltiness, unlike with the Celebrator, is really all that's here, but it's a very multidimensional maltiness. There's milk chocolate and dates most of the way through, and things round themselves off in the aftertaste with a move towards a (slightly more sour and bitter) strawberry ice cream flavor. It's quite sweet, but I'm not complaining. And, just to make a point of it, I have no sense of the extra alcohol at all.

Amazingly, the Korbinian is almost as good as the Celebrator. They're extremely different beers, of course: one is spicy and insane, the other creamy and mellow. I love them both. I prefer the Celebrator, but some part of me senses that it's based more on personal preference than objective fact. I can easily imagine someone of good taste picking the Korbinian instead. Basically I prefer the Celebrator in the same way that I prefer Mercedes over Audis, or vanilla ice cream over chocolate. You can't really provide good reasons for these things.

Finally, there's humble La Rossa. Birra Moretti is nestled way up in the north of Italy in Bergamo - near the Austrians, in fact, who seem to have taught them a thing or two about brewing. It's now owned by Heineken, oddly enough, and that fact combined with Heineken's ownership of Murphy's and Affligem may accidentally make Heineken the producer of several beers that are actually good. No matter who makes it, though, La Rossa is (at $8 a sixer) by far the cheapest brew here, and easily one of the best bang-for-your-buck beers in Chicago. Heck, at 7.2% alcohol, it's almost as good for a cheap drunk as the Mendocino stuff. And, mind you, I'm not really expecting this working-class Italian to measure up to the Bavarian aristocrats. All the same, I'm curious to see how much good one can get at this price.

Like the Korbinian, La Rossa pours an odd orange-brown tone. Unlike the Korbinian, it's a much lighter color; also unlike the other two, there's tons of carbonation. You get a two-finger head for a start, one that's quite a lot more resilient than the others. It's got that same sweet malty aroma, but sadly there's nowhere near the complexity. The slightly sour lager smell I was missing from the Korbinian? It's back!! Aside from that, butterscotch is the main note, along with a touch of bready yeast. Miracle of miracles, I can also detect some hops in this: I can't place them, but they feature a nice kind of raisiny spice.

Well, in terms of taste, if you can think of the Korbinian as being akin to an English stout, then this is more like an Irish one. It's lighter and less sweet, with a much drier finish. There's a bitter sting on the tongue at first, and then the malts enter with a wave of caramel and smoky sweetness. Make that very smoky, in fact. The hops at the end are perfectly balanced against this - they come bearing a strange, almost sour yogurt note, though. The aftertaste is pleasantly dry and earthy.

I didn't expect this to be as good as the others, and it isn't. On the other hand, it's a fine beer by its own merits - maybe even more versatile in its own way (I wouldn't dare try eating anything alongside the other two, but this brew would go perfectly while munching on a swiss cheese sandwich or something). It's lighter than the Korbinian, but still has a really buttery, mouth-coating texture. And that's pretty nice now, in the midst of winter, but in August I think I'd find it cloying. It's not a perfect beer by any stretch, then, but for what it is I'd call it a solid success. And for the price, I'm hard-pressed to think of a better deal in Chicago if you're in the mood for a damn good lager.

To conclude, I really like all three of these beers. If I'd been able to find them, I'm sure I would have loved the Capital and Victory takes on the style as well. These are the lagers of lagers, giants wandering a sandbox filled with limp-wristed fizzy wimps. No God-fearing Bud drinker would ever touch any of these suckers, but for my money they represent the redeeming moment of half of the beer world. Friends, let us go out and drink us some lagers.

Ayinger Celebrator
Grade: A+
Summary: Complex. A rollercoaster of malts and hops and the sort of things witches keep in their cabinets. Despite all that, you could drink it every day.

Weihenstephaner Korbinian
Grade: A
Summary: Sweet and creamy, like drinking a bar of milk chocolate. If the chocolate had really amazing fruity notes, anyways.

Birra Moretti La Rossa
Grade: B+
Summary: Drier, simpler, and somewhat more ragged. Not really in the same league as the others, but a fine budget choice.