Great American Beer Festival

| October 3rd, 2011 | No comments
This past weekend was the Great American Beer Fest in Denver, CO. I was lucky enough to have visited the final evening of the festival.

By far, the best beer fest I’ve been to, obviously, since this the biggest in the country. I finally had the chance to taste so many different beers that I don’t have access to in Nevada. In future posts I’ll write about some specific breweries or beers I tasted.
Downside of visiting the final day, a lot of the more rare beers were already out. However I do have a list of favorites that I did get to try:
Stone BELGO Old Guardian Barley Wine
Rogue Old Crustacean Barley Wine
Dogfish Head Tweason’ale
Ballast Point Victory at Sea
Left Hand Milk Stout
Great Divide Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti and Espresso Oak Aged Yeti
Alaskan Smoke Porter aged since 2000

And the list goes on. Attached are a few pictures I was able to take. Yes I took a picture in front of the Anheuser Busch booth for fun, no I didn’t try anything there. I was surprised to see how busy the booth was, which is a shame considering all the great craft breweries that were there in attendance.
Got to meet Zane Lamprey from the TV shows Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy, super nice guy. Also saw Greg Koch from Stone, he insisted that a picture be taken with him.
All in all, it was a great time. I highly recommend you take a trip to Denver for future GABF’s. It is impossible to not have fun.

Ballast Point Sea Monster Review

| February 4th, 2011 | No comments

ALC/VOL: 10%

Color: Black

Smell: Dark chocolate, espresso, burnt toast

Feel: Big foamy head gives this beer a smooth feel. Little to no carbonation.

Taste: Tastes like it smells. The dark roasted malts give this beer a very coffee-like taste.

Overall: Sea Monster is a beer for people who love dark beer. This is a very dark beer. Darker beers are made with malted barley that is roasted longer than the barley used in lighter color beers. Much like the darker coffee roasts, Italian, French or espresso roasts, darker roast beer has a very defined smokey, bitter taste.

This beer is very similar to World Wide Stout that I reviewed earlier. The tastes are almost the same. The main difference being that this has almost half the alcohol content that World Wide Stout has. This gives the beer a less alcohol pungent taste, and a little bit more carbonation. All in all, this is a very good beer.

Beer History: Imperial Stout

| February 3rd, 2011 | No comments

Imperial stout is a stout beer that is known for it’s higher alcohol content. Most stouts have about a 5% alcohol content. Imperial stout is around 10%. The name comes from the fact that the beer was made in England specifically for the imperial courts in Russia. The higher alcohol content was necessary to ensure that the beer would not freeze en route to it’s icy location.

Dogfish Head World Wide Stout Review

| January 14th, 2011 | No comments

ALC/VOL: 18%

My favorite part about the design of this bottle, is the bottle cap. Dogfish Head typically sticks to using gold bottle caps. For their beers that are above 9% alcohol, they use a red bottle cap:

For this beer, and I assume others of such high levels of alcohol, they use the below “caution” bottle cap:

Color: This is a very dark brown, almost black beer. It is beyond opaque. After pouring, look down into the glass. It looks like you are looking at pictures of outer space. Infinite darkness with the small moving bubbles making up star formations.

Smell: Strong malt smell with chocolate, coffee, hazelnut and some carmel.

Feel: There is practically no head and what little carbonation exists, disappears shortly after pouring. It is much thicker than most beers and has a slight syrupy consistency. Tilting the glass leaves a residue slowly dripping down the sides.

Taste: Sweet and creamy. It hides the alcohol well considering how much is in it. Tastes like very dark chocolate or unsweetened baking chocolate. The darkness gives the beer a black coffee like taste. The high alcohol content gives it an aftertaste very similar to red wine.

Overall: In case it wasn’t obvious, I love this beer. Definitely not an everyday beer, and definitely don’t drink more than one at a time. In, fact you’re probably not going to want to drink anything else for the night after this. The texture and consistency make this a very filling beer. This is something you would have after dinner with, or as, dessert.

The taste definitely isn’t for everyone. Highly recommended for those who enjoy dark chocolate or dark coffee. I would highly recommend any beer lover to try this if only for the uniqueness of it. Keep in mind that Dogfish Head does not brew this year round. Snag up whatever you find because what is out there, is all that will be available until December of 2011!

How To Make “Big Beer”

| January 13th, 2011 | No comments

The term “big beer” typically refers to beers that have a higher gravity, or alcohol content, than most other beers. I will soon be reviewing Dogfish Head’s “World Wide Stout” and I thought I’d take the time to explain what it is that makes these beers so unique.

For reference, most beer ranges from 4-6% alcohol. Usually, the higher stuff, IPA’s and Belgian ales, will range from 7-12% alcohol. The big beers will range from 12-20% alcohol. Any higher is practically impossible using traditional methods. World Wide Stout is 18% alcohol.

Below is a very brief overview of how beer is made:

– Malted barley is boiled in water. This releases, among other things, sugar into the water creating what is called “wort.”

– Because of the sweetness of the wort, hops are added to tone down the sweetness and add some bitterness and flavor. Hops are responsible for the “bite” that some beers have.

– Finally, the most important ingredient, yeast. Yeast determines whether a beer is a lager or an ale and, for purposes of this discussion, how much alcohol is in a beer.

Yeast is a living organism and, much like you and I, consume and create waste. The waste that yeast expels however, unlike you and I, is actually useful. Yeast consumes the sugar in the wort and expels CO2 and ethanol (alcohol) in it’s place. Thus, a carbonated, alcoholic drink! Once the yeast is added, it’s left to do it’s thing for about 2 weeks on average.

So how do you increase the alcohol content of a beer? The obvious answer is add more sugar and yeast. So, more malts = more sugar +  more hops to balance out the sugars + more yeast to eat up all the sugar = more alcohol!

So how much more malts and hops are needed for the big beers? Dogfish Head’s 120 Minute IPA has the highest alcohol content of any other IPA at 18%. Dogfish has explained that for them to brew 120 Minute, they need “over 7 times the volume of malt and over 30 times the volume of hops than your average light lager.” Not only that, it is also “aged over 5 times longer than the average ale.”

To make these beers, it’s not just as simple as adding more ingredients either. It’s also very difficult to do so as well. Remember, ethanol is a waste product of yeast. Much like how neither you or I could live in a house of our own waste, ethanol is toxic to yeast. Meaning in high alcohol environments, yeast dies off rather than eating more sugar and creating more alcohol. This is why creating a beer thats over 20% alcohol is nearly impossible using traditional methods. There has to be a balance between the sugar, yeast, and alcohol.

More ingredients, higher difficulty level and longer time to complete the fermentation period mean that these are very expensive beers to make. For Dogfish Head to produce 120 Minute IPA it costs them half a million dollars! It is likely the same cost for their other big beers. For the single 12 oz bottle of World Wide Stout, Ho Foods (Whole Foods) charged me $10. Compare that to the usual $10-12 it’s costs for any other micro-brewed six pack.

That is why the big beers are so rare, expensive and unique. Few breweries can afford to take the risk of producing something of this caliber. Last year, Dogfish Head had to dump their productions of 2 of their big beers due to the lack of continued fermentation. This cost the company almost a million dollars in lost profits.

I’ve never personally tried any of Dogfish Heads big beers so I am very excited to try out the World Wide Stout that I purchased!