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.
Showing posts with label brown ale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brown ale. Show all posts
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Sunday, March 7, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
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.
"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.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Micreview: Goose Island Christmas Ale (2009)
The Christmas Ale is a Goose Island tradition, apparently. At heart it's a humble brown ale, to which the brewers add a slew of festive spices - "and with each year we change the recipe slightly so that you have something special to look forward to." This, then, is the 2009 vintage, something that's relevant for two reasons. First, this year Goose Island is giving some of their profits from this beer to the Chicago Christmas Ship (a local charity) - kudos to GI, then. Second, the bottle I'm drinking is a bit young, having only been brewed in October. Goose Island claims that the ale "develops in the bottle over 5 years" - which is a lot, considering the alcohol content is well south of what I typically think of as beers suited for storage (it's only a 5.7). Note that, seeing as this is a Christmas ale, they had to go and make the bottle design just about the most garish thing Goose Island sells. The wreath and Santa hat really look rather silly set next to the deliberate simplicity, e.g., of GI's heritage collection.
Anyways, that's enough post-holiday complaining, we have a beer to get to. This stuff pours a rather lovely amber color, with about a finger and a half of fizzy tan head. It's also quite thin-looking, but then again this is a brown ale - I'm not expecting chocolate sauce here. The aroma is the first real surprise: it actually comes off as boozy, which by all rights it shouldn't be. Aside from the very present alcohol, the main features are a mix of caramel and citrus (from the hops, I assume), undergirded by an odd earthiness and maybe a touch of yeast. It's not that great, really. More surprisingly, the spiciness I was expecting just isn't here at all.
Thankfully, the taste comes off somewhat better. "Brown ale" isn't the first style to come to mind, though - this strikes me more as an amber than anything else (and yes, I more than anyone admit that these categories are open for debate, but still). There's a bit of a bittersweet nudge up front. Towards the middle the pale malts start to come in - there's a sort of biscuit character to it all, mixed with some fruitiness (apples, maybe). The hops from the aroma are there at the end, and they've got a quite noticeable grapefruity bite, but they're not nearly as strong as I expected. Only after I swallow do I begin to notice some spices: suspended over the maltiness from before I get nutmeg, cloves, and maybe a little bit of cinnamon. Not an extraordinary aftertaste, but pleasant nevertheless. It's nice, it's festive, and it's by far the most interesting thing about this beer.
If you absolutely must have a Christmas seasonal with a Santa Goose on the label, well, this brew ain't all that bad. Beyond that, I wouldn't bother with it. If the Goose Island brown you need for your festivities can do without the holiday label, then do yourself a favor and find some Naughty Goose.
Grade: C+
Summary: A middling brown (actually amber) ale with a somewhat nifty holiday aftertaste.
Anyways, that's enough post-holiday complaining, we have a beer to get to. This stuff pours a rather lovely amber color, with about a finger and a half of fizzy tan head. It's also quite thin-looking, but then again this is a brown ale - I'm not expecting chocolate sauce here. The aroma is the first real surprise: it actually comes off as boozy, which by all rights it shouldn't be. Aside from the very present alcohol, the main features are a mix of caramel and citrus (from the hops, I assume), undergirded by an odd earthiness and maybe a touch of yeast. It's not that great, really. More surprisingly, the spiciness I was expecting just isn't here at all.
Thankfully, the taste comes off somewhat better. "Brown ale" isn't the first style to come to mind, though - this strikes me more as an amber than anything else (and yes, I more than anyone admit that these categories are open for debate, but still). There's a bit of a bittersweet nudge up front. Towards the middle the pale malts start to come in - there's a sort of biscuit character to it all, mixed with some fruitiness (apples, maybe). The hops from the aroma are there at the end, and they've got a quite noticeable grapefruity bite, but they're not nearly as strong as I expected. Only after I swallow do I begin to notice some spices: suspended over the maltiness from before I get nutmeg, cloves, and maybe a little bit of cinnamon. Not an extraordinary aftertaste, but pleasant nevertheless. It's nice, it's festive, and it's by far the most interesting thing about this beer.
If you absolutely must have a Christmas seasonal with a Santa Goose on the label, well, this brew ain't all that bad. Beyond that, I wouldn't bother with it. If the Goose Island brown you need for your festivities can do without the holiday label, then do yourself a favor and find some Naughty Goose.
Grade: C+
Summary: A middling brown (actually amber) ale with a somewhat nifty holiday aftertaste.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The Bell-a-thon: Bell's Rye Stout, Special Double Cream Stout, Expedition Stout, and Best Brown Ale
This might be my last update for awhile, given that A) I'm going out of town for winter break tomorrow and B) I doubt my folks are going to give me much time to write about alcohol until I get back. But it should be a good one.
So here's the deal. After much singles-buying and several people dropping off beer for Thanksgiving, I've now inexplicably got my hands on collection of four (4) different beers from Bell's Brewery. I didn't plan for this and I don't really know how this happened, (given that I don't typically buy Bell's), but here I am anyways. Funny enough, three of them are stouts as well (probably because Bell's has some crazy obsession with stouts - last I checked they sold about a dozen of the things during various parts of the year). All told, I've got me an Expedition Stout, a Special Double Cream Stout, a Rye Stout, and a Best Brown Ale. I'm hoping amazing things will happen, and dreading that they won't.
You see, I like to think of Bell's as something like the Toyota of the microbrewing world. I do this for several reasons. First: they're fairly ubiquitous. Toyota is the largest car company in the world, and while Bell's isn't quite up to that level, the upper midwest is still nevertheless utterly saturated with them. If any store around here sells any microbeer at all, they're going to sell Bell's. Second: they're reliable. I've never had a Bell's that's actually been bad, which is to their credit. Third: most of what they make is pretty boring. As examples of this I'll cite their Porter, Lager, and Pale Ale, all of which I've had sometime in the past year. All three of these beers are quite competent, practically flawless, and deeply unexciting examples of their styles. I wasn't exactly let down, I just felt like I was drinking... a porter, a lager, and a pale ale. With nothing much remotely interesting about them. If I ever have any of those beers again, I might review them - but it'd be hard. I think I'd come up with something along the lines of: "Yeah. Pretty good."
Those, then, are the three typical things. But there's one other thing about Toyota, and (indeed) about Bell's, that most people don't notice. And that's Point The Fourth: every once in awhile, when the mood is just right, they can and do go completely insane.
I could cite several moments from Toyota's occasional dives into madness. The original Scion xB, for example, or the 2000gt, or the upcoming Lexus LFA (which will cost three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars). But there's a much better example to be found. Way, way back in the glorious cocaine-and-Wham!-fuelled days of 1985, Toyota created something very special. Up until that year the company had mostly been making its name off of stuff like the Tercel and the Cressida - cars that never broke down, at the cost of being deeply dreary. And then it dropped this thing - the MR2. It was an instant masterpiece: a light, stripped-down, fingertippy, revvy, quite fast sporty coupe. Even better than that, it was (and still is) stunningly good-looking. In terms of its looks, the MR2 was like a Japanese Ferrari. No, not was like, but was a Japanese Ferrari, beating Honda's NSX to the trick by half a decade. Better still, just like the hardest of the hardcore roaring Italian monsters of its day it even had a rear mid-engine layout - i.e., the engine was mounted literally right behind the driver to achieve a perfect weight balance. The engine itself was quite small - only a 1.6 liter four-banger - but it revved like a mofo, could be supercharged for good measure, and - as one of the legendary Toyota A-engines - it lasted pretty much until Richard Pryor came along and shot it with a .357. And most importantly, the MR2 was cheap. All of this meant that any moderately successful 20-something could suddenly own himself a very reliable hardcore exotic sports car for about the same price as a four-door family cruiser. The MR2 was a stupendous achievement, and it was also voice-hearing, straightjacket-wearing, bug-eating nuts. I absolutely love it; it's my favorite Toyota ever, by miles.
(For the purposes of being thorough: GM also built a mid-engined car at about the same time, the Fiero. Unfortunately it had a habit of catching on fire)
Like Toyota's mad cars, Bell's has brewed some mad beers. I'll cite just one, which is (so far as I can tell) universally beloved: the Hopslam Ale. Unfortunately I can't speak from firsthand experience here; I tried to get my hands on one of these monsters to review, but by the time I realized it existed (uh, sometime this past summer) it had disappeared from the shelves altogether. The Hopslam, in essence, is a massive 10% ABV India Pale Ale. The very idea of such a thing is slightly insane, the fantasy of a dangerous and antisocial cascade addict, and it's certainly not the kind of brew you'd throw together in a weekend. Nevertheless, the folks at Bell's got together one day, seemingly lost their minds for awhile, and then went and made it. And that's wonderful.
So, here's the deal with my four beers. I'm expecting at least half of these to be boring, frankly. The math demands it. But what I'm really hoping for is that at least one will demonstrate the madness that I know Bell's is capable of, and earn my undying love.
So, let's get this going. First: the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout.
Well, what exactly is so "special" about it, I wonder? It comes in a fairly unimpressive, winter-themed bottle with some buck-naked tree branches (call me a philistine, but I miss the cow a little). In terms of style, this is apparently a milk stout - roughly comparable, then, to the Left Hand Milk Stout I reviewed (and loved) last month. I'm expecting good things, and the initial impressions don't let me down. This stuff pours a beautiful dark russet color, with a one-finger off-white head. The aroma, unsurprisingly, reminds me a lot of the Left Hand - it's basically good, lactose-rich chocolate milk. It's not quite as strong a nose as the LHMS, especially when agitated, but in return there's a little more going on. I detect hints of caramel and butterscotch buried a ways behind the chocolate milk. There's a little tinge of hops as well.
So I take my first sip, expecting the milky smoothness of the Left Hand, and... I don't get it. Astonishingly, this is actually thin. Very thin. It certainly doesn't have anything like the rich mouth-coating texture I was expecting, anyways. In terms of body this is essentially comparable to a porter, - and that's not necessarily bad if you're selling yourself as a porter, and not as a "Special Double Cream Stout." I've discovered, then, what the "special" means: they took the cream out.
It's not all that great as far as taste goes, either; I get lots and lots of roasted malts, with little else. It's just a muddy cacao bitterness that occasionally (but not often) lets rays of sweetness shine though. The aftertaste starts out with a dry, bitter twang, but if you let it linger for a bit you'll get (funny enough) a kind of earthy fruitiness as well. Think of musty, chalky raisins and you'll be close. It's not particularly pleasant, sadly. On a side note, this also tastes hotter than the Left Hand - a fact confirmed by the 6.1% alcohol content (as compared to 5.2).
I'm disappointed by this one in a big way; it's much drier than the Left Hand, which (again) would be fine if it were anything other than a "Special Double Cream Stout." I suppose the dryness and unrelenting cacao bitterness could suit some, but I find it to be nowhere near as much of a pleasure to sip. This, too, would be fine if the Bell's were cheaper than the LHMS (which, at $11 a sixer, is a bit dear) - but astonishingly, it actually costs more. And a lot more than Bell's regular beer. Bottom line, the Milk Stout is a supremely great sit-back-and-murder-two-hours beer. This, on the other hand, is more of a drink-while-chowing-on-gouda-and-a-barbeque-sandwich kind of beer. I don't mind such beers, of course, but I've got a ton of the latter to choose from and not a lot of the former. It's decent, where I was looking for great.
So, onto the Bell's Best Brown, then. It's a brown ale that comes with an owl on the bottle's label. Hmm, well, I'm honestly not expecting much from this one.
It's clearly not as thick as the stout as it pours (although it's not exactly a pilsner either). And it's not really "brown" per se - it's more like a darkish rusty color, with a foamy beige two finger head. The aroma's on the weak side for a brown; maltiness is the chief note, plus some grassiness, a touch of apple, and a slightly lemony hop tinge. It's rather pleasant, actually, like a nap in your backyard hammock.
And now I sip the stuff, and I'm honestly shocked. This beer, spookily, comes off as creamy - like, really creamy. It's like the lactose that was supposed to go into the Double Cream stout went into this instead. Whatever's responsible, I like it. In the front I get a little bit of fruity sourness, but that's quickly dispatched with a big wave of creamy, caramelly, malty goodness mixed in with a nuttiness that's spot-on for the style. Once it reaches the back the hops cut through and (politely, reservedly, like nervous children asking questions at Sunday school) have their say. The aftertaste is mainly the aforementioned nuttiness, with a touch of the hoppy citrus suspended over it.
It's very good, in that understated English brown sort of way. If you can think of brown ales on a spectrum ranging roughly from South Shore's Nut Brown (the most subdued) to Dogfish Head's Indian Brown (the most fierce), this is about 80% of the way towards the South Shore. There's enough hops around to remind you that you're, you know, drinking beer, but beyond that it holds back and just lets the texture and the earthy caramel speak for itself. Aside from the creaminess, then, this is a fairly standard (albeit particularly well-done) brown ale. And that's by no means a bad thing: an Indian Brown may be great for when you'd like to be wowed, but this, this stuff is comfort food. It's a big old Labrador coming to meet you at the door after a long day at work. It'd make a fantastic session beer, and frankly I like it a heck of a lot more than the Cream Stout (which is a neat trick, because it's two or four bucks cheaper for six).
All right then, the Bell's Expedition Stout. This is a Russian imperial, folks, so it should go right for the jugular. And, importantly, I'm drinking this one very fresh - it's had no aging at all, and I've been told this is a brew that probably needs it. So I'm expecting things to be pretty lively.
As expected, it pours a nice thick black, the usual dirty motor oil look. It also has a relatively large head - I get almost two fingers, and I didn't even pour the whole bottle. The aroma, again, is somewhat more subdued than I expected (the Brooklyn beats the pants off this for sheer knockdown power). When I sniff deep, oddly enough the first thing I notice is a kind of rustiness from the hops. It's not great. Things open up a bit with some agitation, giving off some toffee scents and (perhaps) a little bit of coffee. I can't even detect much heat - surprising for something that's a whopping 10.5% alcohol. Even when agitated, though, this thing has a very subtle nose. Weird. Well, bottom's up.
Wow, there we go. That knockdown power I was expecting in the nose? In the taste, it's there. This here is high-caliber shit; it's very strong and very rough. Some aging would probably mellow this right down, I think, but at the moment it's a teenaged street tough with a knife and a disregard for the health of others. Up front is a roasted bitterness with a sharp alcohol edge. Moving on back, I get cacao - lots and lots of very bitter cacao, with a touch of coffee in there as well. It's really mouth-coating, hair-raising stuff, too - this is a beer with a bad fuckin' attitude. Charcoaly hops hit like a FAE bomb at the end (destroying everything in your mouth that was left), and they carry right on through to the aftertaste (which, as is typical in imperials, lasts close to forever). Somewhere, Barber's Adagio for Strings is playing.
I don't know quite how to grade this. It's an imperial stout - which means I'll love it however bad it is - but this one is very, very tough to drink. It's to Storm King what Mezcal is to Tequila; imagine someone handing some newly-brewed Old Rasputin a chainsaw and you'll be close. I'm rather charmed by its rough ways, to be honest, but don't expect to drink it quickly. Set aside some time for this one, folks.
Last up is the Bell's Rye Stout. This is the one I've been saving a lot of hope for; I've never had a rye stout before, but given how much I love a good old fashioned (with Wild Turkey Rye or occasionally Old Overholt, if I'm feeling cheap) I've got high hopes that this'll be the great discovery of the night. The pale white gentleman on the bottle's label appears to have been killed by his, after all.
A fairly typical stout pour, really - it's a fairly thick, dark auburn, with hints of a cream head. The smell, mainly, is a big wet sloppy kiss of roasted barley. I get mostly milk chocolate all the way through, with a subtle edge to it in the back - I can't tell if it's from the alcohol (6.7%) or something else. Hmm.
The taste is - well. Hrm.
The rye is definitely adding something, that's for sure, but it's not quite what I was expecting. It's rather difficult to describe. As a rough blueprint, think of a standard medium-bodied Irish stout. Got that in your head? The creamy texture, the dry finish? Okay, if you can, mentally remove the dry, gentle hoppiness and replace it with a kind of mouth-coating bready feel. Yes, bready, as if you're chewing a slice of pumpernickel or maybe eating a nice aged cheese. I was expecting spice and burn with this stout, Sazerac-style, but it's not like that at all - instead the general sense is just this nice, yeasty, wheaty, slightly bitter flavor. It's odd.
All right, I should probably be more precise about the taste. Up front I get the creamy texture and a little bit of a tingle, but nothing out of the ordinary. There's still not much to talk about as it moves back, save a bit of bitterness (this stuff is smooth to a fault). By the end you get a bit of the roasted, milk chocolate flavor promised in the smell. It's only after you've swallowed that the yeasty, earthy, grainy bread taste shows up, and it lingers for awhile in tandem with the roasted sweetness. The alcohol isn't that strong (6.7%), but if you're paying attention you can tell it's there.
I don't know what to think of this one. It's not a bad beer at all, it's just not what I was expecting. I was looking for a rye whiskey assault, and got a sandwich. Verdict: decent, not great.
So that's it then. Four beers, and no real masterpiece among them. The SDC Stout was the biggest disappointment, as it just comes across like a mediocre porter. The Rye wasn't that amazing either. The Expedition Stout, while by far the most exciting beer here, was unweildy and not that much fun to drink. So the "winner," astonishingly, is the sleeper of the bunch - the Best Brown Ale. It is, as near as you could want, a perfect workhorse of a brown ale; sure, they could have gussied it up a little more if they'd wanted, but that would have lost the point of a simple brown ale. This beer is here to pamper you, to hand you your slippers and lie at your feet, and it does that flawlessly.
And thus, I wade into the Bell's portfolio and pick out the most boring beer of the four as my favorite. Against my better judgment, against my own convictions. I feel slightly guilty about this, as if I'd just driven a bunch of Toyotas and the one I preferred was the Avalon. Nevertheless, the result stands. And really, as much as I love the MR2, maybe the Avalon's not such a bad option after all.
Bell's Special Double Cream Stout
Grade: B-
Summary: It's a cream stout without the cream. Yeah. Pretty good.
Bell's Best Brown Ale
Grade: B+
Summary: It's a fine example of a mild brown ale. Yeah. Very good.
Bell's Expedition Stout
Grade: B
Summary: Charcoal ninjas declare war on your mouth.
Bell's Rye Stout
Grade: B
Summary: It's a really bready stout. Yeah. Pretty good.
So here's the deal. After much singles-buying and several people dropping off beer for Thanksgiving, I've now inexplicably got my hands on collection of four (4) different beers from Bell's Brewery. I didn't plan for this and I don't really know how this happened, (given that I don't typically buy Bell's), but here I am anyways. Funny enough, three of them are stouts as well (probably because Bell's has some crazy obsession with stouts - last I checked they sold about a dozen of the things during various parts of the year). All told, I've got me an Expedition Stout, a Special Double Cream Stout, a Rye Stout, and a Best Brown Ale. I'm hoping amazing things will happen, and dreading that they won't.
You see, I like to think of Bell's as something like the Toyota of the microbrewing world. I do this for several reasons. First: they're fairly ubiquitous. Toyota is the largest car company in the world, and while Bell's isn't quite up to that level, the upper midwest is still nevertheless utterly saturated with them. If any store around here sells any microbeer at all, they're going to sell Bell's. Second: they're reliable. I've never had a Bell's that's actually been bad, which is to their credit. Third: most of what they make is pretty boring. As examples of this I'll cite their Porter, Lager, and Pale Ale, all of which I've had sometime in the past year. All three of these beers are quite competent, practically flawless, and deeply unexciting examples of their styles. I wasn't exactly let down, I just felt like I was drinking... a porter, a lager, and a pale ale. With nothing much remotely interesting about them. If I ever have any of those beers again, I might review them - but it'd be hard. I think I'd come up with something along the lines of: "Yeah. Pretty good."
Those, then, are the three typical things. But there's one other thing about Toyota, and (indeed) about Bell's, that most people don't notice. And that's Point The Fourth: every once in awhile, when the mood is just right, they can and do go completely insane.
I could cite several moments from Toyota's occasional dives into madness. The original Scion xB, for example, or the 2000gt, or the upcoming Lexus LFA (which will cost three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars). But there's a much better example to be found. Way, way back in the glorious cocaine-and-Wham!-fuelled days of 1985, Toyota created something very special. Up until that year the company had mostly been making its name off of stuff like the Tercel and the Cressida - cars that never broke down, at the cost of being deeply dreary. And then it dropped this thing - the MR2. It was an instant masterpiece: a light, stripped-down, fingertippy, revvy, quite fast sporty coupe. Even better than that, it was (and still is) stunningly good-looking. In terms of its looks, the MR2 was like a Japanese Ferrari. No, not was like, but was a Japanese Ferrari, beating Honda's NSX to the trick by half a decade. Better still, just like the hardest of the hardcore roaring Italian monsters of its day it even had a rear mid-engine layout - i.e., the engine was mounted literally right behind the driver to achieve a perfect weight balance. The engine itself was quite small - only a 1.6 liter four-banger - but it revved like a mofo, could be supercharged for good measure, and - as one of the legendary Toyota A-engines - it lasted pretty much until Richard Pryor came along and shot it with a .357. And most importantly, the MR2 was cheap. All of this meant that any moderately successful 20-something could suddenly own himself a very reliable hardcore exotic sports car for about the same price as a four-door family cruiser. The MR2 was a stupendous achievement, and it was also voice-hearing, straightjacket-wearing, bug-eating nuts. I absolutely love it; it's my favorite Toyota ever, by miles.
(For the purposes of being thorough: GM also built a mid-engined car at about the same time, the Fiero. Unfortunately it had a habit of catching on fire)
Like Toyota's mad cars, Bell's has brewed some mad beers. I'll cite just one, which is (so far as I can tell) universally beloved: the Hopslam Ale. Unfortunately I can't speak from firsthand experience here; I tried to get my hands on one of these monsters to review, but by the time I realized it existed (uh, sometime this past summer) it had disappeared from the shelves altogether. The Hopslam, in essence, is a massive 10% ABV India Pale Ale. The very idea of such a thing is slightly insane, the fantasy of a dangerous and antisocial cascade addict, and it's certainly not the kind of brew you'd throw together in a weekend. Nevertheless, the folks at Bell's got together one day, seemingly lost their minds for awhile, and then went and made it. And that's wonderful.
So, here's the deal with my four beers. I'm expecting at least half of these to be boring, frankly. The math demands it. But what I'm really hoping for is that at least one will demonstrate the madness that I know Bell's is capable of, and earn my undying love.
So, let's get this going. First: the Bell's Special Double Cream Stout.
Well, what exactly is so "special" about it, I wonder? It comes in a fairly unimpressive, winter-themed bottle with some buck-naked tree branches (call me a philistine, but I miss the cow a little). In terms of style, this is apparently a milk stout - roughly comparable, then, to the Left Hand Milk Stout I reviewed (and loved) last month. I'm expecting good things, and the initial impressions don't let me down. This stuff pours a beautiful dark russet color, with a one-finger off-white head. The aroma, unsurprisingly, reminds me a lot of the Left Hand - it's basically good, lactose-rich chocolate milk. It's not quite as strong a nose as the LHMS, especially when agitated, but in return there's a little more going on. I detect hints of caramel and butterscotch buried a ways behind the chocolate milk. There's a little tinge of hops as well.
So I take my first sip, expecting the milky smoothness of the Left Hand, and... I don't get it. Astonishingly, this is actually thin. Very thin. It certainly doesn't have anything like the rich mouth-coating texture I was expecting, anyways. In terms of body this is essentially comparable to a porter, - and that's not necessarily bad if you're selling yourself as a porter, and not as a "Special Double Cream Stout." I've discovered, then, what the "special" means: they took the cream out.
It's not all that great as far as taste goes, either; I get lots and lots of roasted malts, with little else. It's just a muddy cacao bitterness that occasionally (but not often) lets rays of sweetness shine though. The aftertaste starts out with a dry, bitter twang, but if you let it linger for a bit you'll get (funny enough) a kind of earthy fruitiness as well. Think of musty, chalky raisins and you'll be close. It's not particularly pleasant, sadly. On a side note, this also tastes hotter than the Left Hand - a fact confirmed by the 6.1% alcohol content (as compared to 5.2).
I'm disappointed by this one in a big way; it's much drier than the Left Hand, which (again) would be fine if it were anything other than a "Special Double Cream Stout." I suppose the dryness and unrelenting cacao bitterness could suit some, but I find it to be nowhere near as much of a pleasure to sip. This, too, would be fine if the Bell's were cheaper than the LHMS (which, at $11 a sixer, is a bit dear) - but astonishingly, it actually costs more. And a lot more than Bell's regular beer. Bottom line, the Milk Stout is a supremely great sit-back-and-murder-two-hours beer. This, on the other hand, is more of a drink-while-chowing-on-gouda-and-a-barbeque-sandwich kind of beer. I don't mind such beers, of course, but I've got a ton of the latter to choose from and not a lot of the former. It's decent, where I was looking for great.
So, onto the Bell's Best Brown, then. It's a brown ale that comes with an owl on the bottle's label. Hmm, well, I'm honestly not expecting much from this one.
It's clearly not as thick as the stout as it pours (although it's not exactly a pilsner either). And it's not really "brown" per se - it's more like a darkish rusty color, with a foamy beige two finger head. The aroma's on the weak side for a brown; maltiness is the chief note, plus some grassiness, a touch of apple, and a slightly lemony hop tinge. It's rather pleasant, actually, like a nap in your backyard hammock.
And now I sip the stuff, and I'm honestly shocked. This beer, spookily, comes off as creamy - like, really creamy. It's like the lactose that was supposed to go into the Double Cream stout went into this instead. Whatever's responsible, I like it. In the front I get a little bit of fruity sourness, but that's quickly dispatched with a big wave of creamy, caramelly, malty goodness mixed in with a nuttiness that's spot-on for the style. Once it reaches the back the hops cut through and (politely, reservedly, like nervous children asking questions at Sunday school) have their say. The aftertaste is mainly the aforementioned nuttiness, with a touch of the hoppy citrus suspended over it.
It's very good, in that understated English brown sort of way. If you can think of brown ales on a spectrum ranging roughly from South Shore's Nut Brown (the most subdued) to Dogfish Head's Indian Brown (the most fierce), this is about 80% of the way towards the South Shore. There's enough hops around to remind you that you're, you know, drinking beer, but beyond that it holds back and just lets the texture and the earthy caramel speak for itself. Aside from the creaminess, then, this is a fairly standard (albeit particularly well-done) brown ale. And that's by no means a bad thing: an Indian Brown may be great for when you'd like to be wowed, but this, this stuff is comfort food. It's a big old Labrador coming to meet you at the door after a long day at work. It'd make a fantastic session beer, and frankly I like it a heck of a lot more than the Cream Stout (which is a neat trick, because it's two or four bucks cheaper for six).
All right then, the Bell's Expedition Stout. This is a Russian imperial, folks, so it should go right for the jugular. And, importantly, I'm drinking this one very fresh - it's had no aging at all, and I've been told this is a brew that probably needs it. So I'm expecting things to be pretty lively.
As expected, it pours a nice thick black, the usual dirty motor oil look. It also has a relatively large head - I get almost two fingers, and I didn't even pour the whole bottle. The aroma, again, is somewhat more subdued than I expected (the Brooklyn beats the pants off this for sheer knockdown power). When I sniff deep, oddly enough the first thing I notice is a kind of rustiness from the hops. It's not great. Things open up a bit with some agitation, giving off some toffee scents and (perhaps) a little bit of coffee. I can't even detect much heat - surprising for something that's a whopping 10.5% alcohol. Even when agitated, though, this thing has a very subtle nose. Weird. Well, bottom's up.
Wow, there we go. That knockdown power I was expecting in the nose? In the taste, it's there. This here is high-caliber shit; it's very strong and very rough. Some aging would probably mellow this right down, I think, but at the moment it's a teenaged street tough with a knife and a disregard for the health of others. Up front is a roasted bitterness with a sharp alcohol edge. Moving on back, I get cacao - lots and lots of very bitter cacao, with a touch of coffee in there as well. It's really mouth-coating, hair-raising stuff, too - this is a beer with a bad fuckin' attitude. Charcoaly hops hit like a FAE bomb at the end (destroying everything in your mouth that was left), and they carry right on through to the aftertaste (which, as is typical in imperials, lasts close to forever). Somewhere, Barber's Adagio for Strings is playing.
I don't know quite how to grade this. It's an imperial stout - which means I'll love it however bad it is - but this one is very, very tough to drink. It's to Storm King what Mezcal is to Tequila; imagine someone handing some newly-brewed Old Rasputin a chainsaw and you'll be close. I'm rather charmed by its rough ways, to be honest, but don't expect to drink it quickly. Set aside some time for this one, folks.
Last up is the Bell's Rye Stout. This is the one I've been saving a lot of hope for; I've never had a rye stout before, but given how much I love a good old fashioned (with Wild Turkey Rye or occasionally Old Overholt, if I'm feeling cheap) I've got high hopes that this'll be the great discovery of the night. The pale white gentleman on the bottle's label appears to have been killed by his, after all.
A fairly typical stout pour, really - it's a fairly thick, dark auburn, with hints of a cream head. The smell, mainly, is a big wet sloppy kiss of roasted barley. I get mostly milk chocolate all the way through, with a subtle edge to it in the back - I can't tell if it's from the alcohol (6.7%) or something else. Hmm.
The taste is - well. Hrm.
The rye is definitely adding something, that's for sure, but it's not quite what I was expecting. It's rather difficult to describe. As a rough blueprint, think of a standard medium-bodied Irish stout. Got that in your head? The creamy texture, the dry finish? Okay, if you can, mentally remove the dry, gentle hoppiness and replace it with a kind of mouth-coating bready feel. Yes, bready, as if you're chewing a slice of pumpernickel or maybe eating a nice aged cheese. I was expecting spice and burn with this stout, Sazerac-style, but it's not like that at all - instead the general sense is just this nice, yeasty, wheaty, slightly bitter flavor. It's odd.
All right, I should probably be more precise about the taste. Up front I get the creamy texture and a little bit of a tingle, but nothing out of the ordinary. There's still not much to talk about as it moves back, save a bit of bitterness (this stuff is smooth to a fault). By the end you get a bit of the roasted, milk chocolate flavor promised in the smell. It's only after you've swallowed that the yeasty, earthy, grainy bread taste shows up, and it lingers for awhile in tandem with the roasted sweetness. The alcohol isn't that strong (6.7%), but if you're paying attention you can tell it's there.
I don't know what to think of this one. It's not a bad beer at all, it's just not what I was expecting. I was looking for a rye whiskey assault, and got a sandwich. Verdict: decent, not great.
So that's it then. Four beers, and no real masterpiece among them. The SDC Stout was the biggest disappointment, as it just comes across like a mediocre porter. The Rye wasn't that amazing either. The Expedition Stout, while by far the most exciting beer here, was unweildy and not that much fun to drink. So the "winner," astonishingly, is the sleeper of the bunch - the Best Brown Ale. It is, as near as you could want, a perfect workhorse of a brown ale; sure, they could have gussied it up a little more if they'd wanted, but that would have lost the point of a simple brown ale. This beer is here to pamper you, to hand you your slippers and lie at your feet, and it does that flawlessly.
And thus, I wade into the Bell's portfolio and pick out the most boring beer of the four as my favorite. Against my better judgment, against my own convictions. I feel slightly guilty about this, as if I'd just driven a bunch of Toyotas and the one I preferred was the Avalon. Nevertheless, the result stands. And really, as much as I love the MR2, maybe the Avalon's not such a bad option after all.
Bell's Special Double Cream Stout
Grade: B-
Summary: It's a cream stout without the cream. Yeah. Pretty good.
Bell's Best Brown Ale
Grade: B+
Summary: It's a fine example of a mild brown ale. Yeah. Very good.
Bell's Expedition Stout
Grade: B
Summary: Charcoal ninjas declare war on your mouth.
Bell's Rye Stout
Grade: B
Summary: It's a really bready stout. Yeah. Pretty good.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Review: Flossmoor Station Pullman Brown Ale
I was in a class with Bruce Lincoln once, when the topic of the World Series came up. A few people in the class admitted to pulling for the Yankees over the Phillies. He wasn't so much outraged by this as confused; "Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for capitalism," he said.
I understand the sentiment, especially when I think about Goose Island. They make some fantastic - no, phenomenal beers, although most of my friends seem to completely ignore the good ones in favor of the fucking 312 Urban Wheat Ale. The thing is, Goose Island is huge and Goose Island is everywhere. In Chicago at least, every booze shop and every supermarket that sells beer carries some Goose Island or other. In a word, they're the Yankees of the Chicago brewery scene.
And that's fine, right? I mean, they do make some good beers and all. Indeed, but as a lover of this stuff I really want to get as much great beer as possible to the shelves of my local store as possible, and the giant in the playground isn't always going to be the best guy to do this. The trouble is, what about the other breweries around chicao? Where the heck are they? Do they even exist? And if they do, do the stores carry them?
If you look around you'll find a few here and there, but you can be forgiven for not noticing them. Half Acre, up in Lakeview, sell a bitter (pretty good as I recall) and a lager (which I haven't tried) and a bunch of other stuff I haven't been able to locate. Metropolitan, who reside up near Evanston, sell a couple of lagers that I also haven't gotten around to yet. If you want to go farther out, you've got Two Brothers out near Naperville (who make, among other things, a nice comfy reclining chair of an imperial stout that I'll have to review at some point) and America's Brewing Company a few more miles down in Aurora (who make that stupid but fun bourbon barrel stout I tried last month). And aside from a couple of brewpubs, err, I think that's about it...
...Except, of course, for the company I'll be talking about here. Flossmoor Station is a restaurant slash brewpub in Flossmoor (as you might expect), located right next to the Metra stop. I'd heard of them, but I've still never been down there. One day, however, I happened to spot this guy in the fridge of my local Binny's - the Flossmoor Station Pullman Brown Ale, a deuce-deuce with a beautiful bottle (which I'd like to describe in a moment). It looked interesting and it was local. Well, why not?
So, one thing to note right away is that this is a premium brown ale sold in a 22 oz bottle at around the $5-6 price range. And that immediately poses a problem. You see, that fact means it's competing directly with Naughty Goose, another brown brewed this time by - you guessed it - Goose Island. (Note that this is different from the GI Nut Brown Ale, which is more common, cheaper, and not nearly as good.) And Naughty Goose is probably my favorite brown ale ever. Compared to the Sam Smith's or the Dogfish Head it's not all that exciting, but there's such a purity and a faithfulness to the style and a skill to the approach that it just doesn't need all the extra nuance you get in those beers. Now, as you might expect, I'm not all that happy about the fact that GI makes - so far as I've had - the best brown ale. Loving something from Goose Island is, indeed, like loving capitalism. Thus, I do hope that the Flossmoor Pullman is better - beyond even my usual hopes that each beer I have be a little bit better than the one before. But the Naughty Goose is really good, so the Flossmoor folks have quite a battle in front of them.
So: the bottle. Briefly described, it's fantastic. Just take a look at the thing - those aren't labels you see, all that stuff has actually been painted onto the glass like an old-timey Coke bottle. The retro train-lookin' brewery logo, the exquisite design for the beer name, the various little "stamps" all around describing the beer - it just looks absolutely wonderful. I love the shit out of this bottle. If I gave out awards for best design, this would win this year's prize by a huge margin.
Nevertheless, this isn't a blog about bottle design. It's a blog about booze. And that means we have to actually open the thing up and try it. And I'm honestly not sure what to expect from this beer. It's a brown ale, which are usually pretty boring, right? But then on the side it reads: "This rich, robust, chestnut-colored ale uses eight malts plus oats and a dollop of blackstrap molasses for a smooth, creamy taste and texture." Molasses? oats? In a brown ale? What the hell am I getting into here?
So, the pour. Wow, this looks a heck of a lot darker than a normal brown - it's kind of a very dark auburn, rather than the usual coppery shade. Mind you, there's still a wee bit of light getting through, but not a whole lot. Newcastle on a drizzly day, then. There's not much of a head, either, which is really odd for the style - I only get about a half-finger of off-white foam, if that. If I were judging merely by its appearance, then, I'd suspect this of being a porter or even a stout long before I called it as a brown. The aroma, too, is very nice indeed, but it still doesn't make me think of a brown ale. There's tons of sweet roasted malts in there and some macademia nuts; the molasses comes through very strongly as well. I also detect a touch of hoppiness, although I suspect this beer's going to be very mild.
Now to taste...
...Okay, this is a stout. Or at least, very very close. That's not intended as a criticism - it's just a fact. It absolutely tastes like a stout. Apologies to my revolutionary comrades at Flossmoor, then, but that's what you've brewed here. The mouthfeel, for one thing, is incredibly smooth, creamy, and rich, with a medium body. I think it's the oats that're doing the most work in telling me this is a stout, really - this is very much like an oatmealer, although with quite a bit more character. The taste begins with a bit of coffee bitterness up front, and then expands into a thick mix of woody and sweet flavors. Towards the end I get a bit of an edge from the hops I smelled on the nose - not much, just a love nibble to let you know they're there. The aftertaste, to finish up, is very subdued, but mainly consists in the woodiness from before and a little twang left over from the hops.
In fact, if there's any case at all to be made for this being a brown ale, I'd say it's in the character of the hops. They are far and away the most traditional brown ale elements here - everything else is sweet and creamy and stouty, but these hops could've come right out of Avery's Brown or Turbodog. And happily, they do exactly what what the hops in a brown ale should: they counterbalance the maltiness and the sweetness with some bitter earthy citrus. In this case I think they're overmatched, but the good old fashioned brown ale hops are definitely here. (And now that I notice it, this extra bite actually makes Pullman easier to drink than most oatmeal stouts. Funny, that.)
So I'm torn by this stuff, really. As a beer, without any further determinations, this is excellent; just as good as Naughty Goose, and much more creative. But if I went to the shop looking for a really good brown ale, I wouldn't buy it. It's so far from that style that, were it not for my specifically looking for brown ale traits, I wouldn't have noticed them at all. So, give Pullman a B as a brown but an A+ for trailblazing (I'll split the difference and call it an A-). For Flossmoor has really created its own style here: it's a brown ale with stouty creaminess, an oatmeal stout pulled back to the earth by a good dose of rustic hops. Whatever you want to call it (an oatmeal brown, say), it's great beer. And when downing a bottle means striking a blow against the Yankees of the beer world, you've got all the reason you need to go out and find one.
Grade: A-
Summary: An English Brown and an Oatmeal Stout met at a bar and had a one-night stand. This is the mad, wonderful result.
I understand the sentiment, especially when I think about Goose Island. They make some fantastic - no, phenomenal beers, although most of my friends seem to completely ignore the good ones in favor of the fucking 312 Urban Wheat Ale. The thing is, Goose Island is huge and Goose Island is everywhere. In Chicago at least, every booze shop and every supermarket that sells beer carries some Goose Island or other. In a word, they're the Yankees of the Chicago brewery scene.
And that's fine, right? I mean, they do make some good beers and all. Indeed, but as a lover of this stuff I really want to get as much great beer as possible to the shelves of my local store as possible, and the giant in the playground isn't always going to be the best guy to do this. The trouble is, what about the other breweries around chicao? Where the heck are they? Do they even exist? And if they do, do the stores carry them?
If you look around you'll find a few here and there, but you can be forgiven for not noticing them. Half Acre, up in Lakeview, sell a bitter (pretty good as I recall) and a lager (which I haven't tried) and a bunch of other stuff I haven't been able to locate. Metropolitan, who reside up near Evanston, sell a couple of lagers that I also haven't gotten around to yet. If you want to go farther out, you've got Two Brothers out near Naperville (who make, among other things, a nice comfy reclining chair of an imperial stout that I'll have to review at some point) and America's Brewing Company a few more miles down in Aurora (who make that stupid but fun bourbon barrel stout I tried last month). And aside from a couple of brewpubs, err, I think that's about it...
...Except, of course, for the company I'll be talking about here. Flossmoor Station is a restaurant slash brewpub in Flossmoor (as you might expect), located right next to the Metra stop. I'd heard of them, but I've still never been down there. One day, however, I happened to spot this guy in the fridge of my local Binny's - the Flossmoor Station Pullman Brown Ale, a deuce-deuce with a beautiful bottle (which I'd like to describe in a moment). It looked interesting and it was local. Well, why not?
So, one thing to note right away is that this is a premium brown ale sold in a 22 oz bottle at around the $5-6 price range. And that immediately poses a problem. You see, that fact means it's competing directly with Naughty Goose, another brown brewed this time by - you guessed it - Goose Island. (Note that this is different from the GI Nut Brown Ale, which is more common, cheaper, and not nearly as good.) And Naughty Goose is probably my favorite brown ale ever. Compared to the Sam Smith's or the Dogfish Head it's not all that exciting, but there's such a purity and a faithfulness to the style and a skill to the approach that it just doesn't need all the extra nuance you get in those beers. Now, as you might expect, I'm not all that happy about the fact that GI makes - so far as I've had - the best brown ale. Loving something from Goose Island is, indeed, like loving capitalism. Thus, I do hope that the Flossmoor Pullman is better - beyond even my usual hopes that each beer I have be a little bit better than the one before. But the Naughty Goose is really good, so the Flossmoor folks have quite a battle in front of them.
So: the bottle. Briefly described, it's fantastic. Just take a look at the thing - those aren't labels you see, all that stuff has actually been painted onto the glass like an old-timey Coke bottle. The retro train-lookin' brewery logo, the exquisite design for the beer name, the various little "stamps" all around describing the beer - it just looks absolutely wonderful. I love the shit out of this bottle. If I gave out awards for best design, this would win this year's prize by a huge margin.
Nevertheless, this isn't a blog about bottle design. It's a blog about booze. And that means we have to actually open the thing up and try it. And I'm honestly not sure what to expect from this beer. It's a brown ale, which are usually pretty boring, right? But then on the side it reads: "This rich, robust, chestnut-colored ale uses eight malts plus oats and a dollop of blackstrap molasses for a smooth, creamy taste and texture." Molasses? oats? In a brown ale? What the hell am I getting into here?
So, the pour. Wow, this looks a heck of a lot darker than a normal brown - it's kind of a very dark auburn, rather than the usual coppery shade. Mind you, there's still a wee bit of light getting through, but not a whole lot. Newcastle on a drizzly day, then. There's not much of a head, either, which is really odd for the style - I only get about a half-finger of off-white foam, if that. If I were judging merely by its appearance, then, I'd suspect this of being a porter or even a stout long before I called it as a brown. The aroma, too, is very nice indeed, but it still doesn't make me think of a brown ale. There's tons of sweet roasted malts in there and some macademia nuts; the molasses comes through very strongly as well. I also detect a touch of hoppiness, although I suspect this beer's going to be very mild.
Now to taste...
...Okay, this is a stout. Or at least, very very close. That's not intended as a criticism - it's just a fact. It absolutely tastes like a stout. Apologies to my revolutionary comrades at Flossmoor, then, but that's what you've brewed here. The mouthfeel, for one thing, is incredibly smooth, creamy, and rich, with a medium body. I think it's the oats that're doing the most work in telling me this is a stout, really - this is very much like an oatmealer, although with quite a bit more character. The taste begins with a bit of coffee bitterness up front, and then expands into a thick mix of woody and sweet flavors. Towards the end I get a bit of an edge from the hops I smelled on the nose - not much, just a love nibble to let you know they're there. The aftertaste, to finish up, is very subdued, but mainly consists in the woodiness from before and a little twang left over from the hops.
In fact, if there's any case at all to be made for this being a brown ale, I'd say it's in the character of the hops. They are far and away the most traditional brown ale elements here - everything else is sweet and creamy and stouty, but these hops could've come right out of Avery's Brown or Turbodog. And happily, they do exactly what what the hops in a brown ale should: they counterbalance the maltiness and the sweetness with some bitter earthy citrus. In this case I think they're overmatched, but the good old fashioned brown ale hops are definitely here. (And now that I notice it, this extra bite actually makes Pullman easier to drink than most oatmeal stouts. Funny, that.)
So I'm torn by this stuff, really. As a beer, without any further determinations, this is excellent; just as good as Naughty Goose, and much more creative. But if I went to the shop looking for a really good brown ale, I wouldn't buy it. It's so far from that style that, were it not for my specifically looking for brown ale traits, I wouldn't have noticed them at all. So, give Pullman a B as a brown but an A+ for trailblazing (I'll split the difference and call it an A-). For Flossmoor has really created its own style here: it's a brown ale with stouty creaminess, an oatmeal stout pulled back to the earth by a good dose of rustic hops. Whatever you want to call it (an oatmeal brown, say), it's great beer. And when downing a bottle means striking a blow against the Yankees of the beer world, you've got all the reason you need to go out and find one.
Grade: A-
Summary: An English Brown and an Oatmeal Stout met at a bar and had a one-night stand. This is the mad, wonderful result.
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