Joining me on this podcast was Mike Carrino, owner of Restaurant Passionne, Eric Ottaway, General Manager Brooklyn Brewery, Kevin Malavarca from the Liquor Outlet in Boonton NJ, and John Hoyos from Hunterdon Distribution. The only prerequisite I have for the podcast is a love of beer.  You don’t need to know anything about the beers we are drinking only a willingness to try them and voice an opinion.

Before I go on I’d like to give a Special thanks to Rob Tod and Jason Perkins of Allagash Brewing Company for the beer and the time they spent talking to me about these beers and the process of brewing these craft beers.  Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian River for his time speaking with me about their brewing and fermentation process. And finally, Mike Carrino for hosting us at Restaurant Passionne.

As usual we have a podcast ready for download:

Listen to the Podcast (1:01:45)

or download it from iTunes

On Tap:

• Russian River Beatification Batch 3
• Russian River Beatification Batch 2
• Allagash Coolship Resurgam (#2)
• Allagash Coolship Cerise (#9)
• Allagash Coolship Red (#3)

Download the podcast and listen to all the details about how these Amazing Beers stacked up and the process with which they were brewed.

Russian River Beatification Batch 3

The first beer of the night was Russian Rivers Beatification, batch 3.  With both batch 2 and 3, these beers were spontaneously fermented in the barrels.  The barrels provided the bugs for these beers and was a blend of two spontaneous beers from June 2007 and Feb 2008.  Both Eric and Mike pointed out this is a great beer for shellfish or briny fish.  It had a strong lemon, grassy nose that carried over nicely into the flavor.  With the lemon in the flavor there was also a strong white grapefruit flavor on a very tart finish, but wouldn’t consider this sour.  We also detected a some interesting spice notes of Thai-Basil or white pepper. Listen to the Podcast

Russian River Beatification Batch 2

Next was Russian River Beatification, batch 2.  Like batch 3, it was spontaneously fermented in old oak barrels and was also a blend of two beers.  For this version it was a blend from July 2006 and Jan 2007.  It really showed how this beer will age over a year.  It was a lot more muted with its flavors compared to its younger sister.  We also noted the beer didn’t linger as much on the palette nor was it as tart.  Batch 2 was also a bit more lemony, Mike compared it to Limequat and thought it would work well with a spice Thai dish with coconut. Listen to the Podcast

Allagash Coolship Resurgam (#2)

The Third beer of the night was the Allagash Coolship Resurgam.  This is a Blend of 40% 2yr, 40% 18m, and 20% 6 month spontaneous beers.  This beer had a very nice, albeit unusual, tropical/passion fruit’ish nose.  The mouth feel was very smooth, mostly because of the low carbonation.  A very nice beer, not very sour, but had some decent tartness and finished pretty dry. Listen to the Podcast

Allagash Coolship Cerise (#9)

The next to last beer of the night was Allagash’s Coolship Cerise, a blend of 90% 2yr spontaneous with 10% 6 month  spontaneous which sat on local Maine Montmorency tart Cherries for 3 months.  The most noticeable character of this beer was the lack of color, aptly nicknamed by Jason Perkins as the “Albino Kriek”.  While it didn’t look like much of typical Kreik, it smelled like spicy cherry pie.  While funky, sweet, and tart, the finish was a a bit short lived.

Allagash Coolship Red (#3)

The Final beer of the night was the Allagash Coolship Red. Probably my favorite of the night; I love raspberries.  It was considerably more tart then the other 2 coolship beers even though it was the same blend as the Cerise, but sat on fresh raspberries for 3 months. It smelled of raspberries and funk.  The flavor was tart, almost sour, considerably bitter like biting into a raspberry and finished dry.

One other things we noted and Eric pointed out, while the Coolship beers we wonderful to try, you could tell they were evolutionarily young.  Meaning the process and utilization of the wild yeasts was still being put together.  Don’t get me wrong, If you get a chance to try these don’t pass it up.  But, the up side is Allagash has something special here.  With the talents of Jason Perkins, Alagash’s brewmaster and Rob Tod’s ability to push his company and portfolio of beer forward; I can only imagine how spectacular this series of beer will be in the future.  I salute them for doing something different, doing it well, and putting these beer out there for us to sample.

Simply Beer Podcast #32 – Spontaneous Fermentation is a post from: Simply Beer

So what is American Spontaneous Fermentation, well there are many common names for it.  Most common would be “lambic”.  But like champagne, the American Brewers beers we will be sampling all have a tremendous amount of respect and feel Lambic should rightly be reserved for the Belgian breweries that have made this style what it is.  Since this is a “preview” I’m not going to get into specifics or a definition of the style, but will leave you beer geeks drooling with the line up of beer I’ll be sharing with 6 others next Monday.

• Allagash Coolship Resurgam – a Blend of 2 year, 18 month, and 6 month or Spontaneous Beer
• Allagash Coolship Red - 2 year old aged on Raspberries for 3 months
• Allagash Coolship Cerise – 2 year old aged on cherries for 3 months
• Russian River Beatification - batch 002
• Russian River Beatification – batch 003
• Jolly Pumpkin Lambicus Dexterius – 4 year old aged wild ale

Usually I only have 2 or 3 other people joining me on these podcasts, but with such rare and fantastic (hopefully) beer there will be 6 of us, gotta share the love!

• Peter Kennedy, Simply Beer’s Craft Beer Guide
• Kevin Malavarca, Beer Manager, Liquor Outlet in Boonton NJ
• John Hoyos, Hunterdon Distributing
• Lee Williams, Hoptopia.com
• Mike Carrino, Chef / Owner Restaurant Passionné
• Eric Ottaway, General Manager, Brooklyn Brewery

Simply Beer Podcast #32 – American Spontaneous Fermentation – Preview is a post from: Simply Beer

Since there wasn’t much info on their website about the beer their website, I got the next best thing, I photographed the copy on the bottle.

Appearance:

Initially poured with a pretty decent beige head which was quickly eaten away by the massive torrent of bubbles steaming from the bottom of the glass.  This beer is a gorgeous, a deep garnet color with intense ruby highlights.

Aroma:

Like intensely hoppy aromatic beers, I could sit and smell that oaky, sour, fruity, tobacco aroma for hours.  Yet at the same time it smells so nice that I don’t want to wait, it has high drink anticipation quality; a beer who’s aroma builds excitement to drink the beer.

Taste:

Russian River Consecration

With such an inviting aroma, this beer does not let done on the flavor.  The first sip strikes as an intense sour right on the tip of your tongue, nice rounding fruitiness accompanies the sour from start to finish.  To me the fruitiness tasted like cranberries, even though this beer was aged with currents.  Come to think of it I don’t think I’ve ever had a current…anyway.  Right in the middle there is a nice push of tobacco and oak with a hint of funkiness that quickly gets walloped by that long dry cranberry (current) sourness.  Now for me a great marker of a good sour,  you can lick the sour off the front of your teeth and this beer hits that mark!

Glassware: Tulip or Snifter

Overall Impression:

A truly great sour beer.  I loved tart fruitiness with the strong sour.  Definitely one to go out and find, if you can.

Russian River Consecration Batch 003 is a post from: Simply Beer

Here is what Russian River has to say about Pliny the Elder:

Pliny the Elder was a Roman naturalist, scholar, historian, traveler, officer, and writer. Although not considered his most important work, Pliny and his contemporaries created the botanical name for hops, “Lupus salictarius”, meaning wolf among scrubs.” Hops at that time grew wild among willows, much like a wolf in the forest. Later the current botanical name, Humulus lupulus, was adopted. Pliny died in 79 AD while observing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. He was immortalized by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, who continued his uncle’s legacy by documenting much of what he observed during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

Ok, Nice history lesson, but I want to know about the beer…

Russian River Pliny the Elder

Here is my take on Pliny the Elder.

Appearance:

Very pretty beer, glowing orange with a creamy think head.  The head dissipated rather rapidly, it did leave a touch of lacing, but not much.  The color of this beer is what got me, it is very hazy, but the way the light bounces through the haze really makes the beer glow in my glass.

Aroma:

This is where I expect this beer to shine, a double IPA in my book should have tons of aroma.  This beer doesn’t disappoint, a very aromatic beer, good bit of sweet malt, grapefruit, orange, and pine all blend together very nicely with a hint of dried apricot.

Taste:

I quite enjoyed the taste of this beer.  It had a deep creamy caramel start that smoothed out into a Soft fruity citrus.  The soft finished out in a nice rounding bitterness.  I’m really enjoying the malty creaminess and the good strong hop presence.

Glassware: Tulip, Pint

Calories: 8% abv this beer would have about 250 to 275 cal per 12/oz (Calorie Chart)

Overall Impression:

This is a very enjoyable DIPA. Mine was bottled on 06/10/2009.  Not the freshest, but not out of date by any stretch either.  I will definitely seek out this beer again, but I’m not sure about the hype.  What I think is that it set a new standard for imperial/douple IPA’s with its bold aromatics and malty, creamy, hoppy flavor.   A world class, no doubt, but today there are others that are just as good.

Every has an opinion on Pliny the Elder, whats YOURS?

Russian River’s Pliny the Elder is a post from: Simply Beer

Appearance:

The Blind Pig pours a hazy golden orange color with a pretty dense creamy head.   There is a bit of carbonation bubbles rising from the bottom of the glass, but the hazy nature of the beer obscures most of the bubbles.  There is quite a bit of lacing going on as the head subsides from the original poor.

Aroma:

I was expecting a fairly strong aroma, after having Pliny the Elder a couple months back .  I found quite the opposite, a very mild pine aroma with a hint of cotton candy in the background.  I’ve been drinking a lot of hop monsters of late; this is a nice kick back to more of a “traditional” American IPA.

Russian River Blind Pig

Taste:

The taste follows suit with the aroma.  It not over done, but done enough so that you can tell what your drinking.   Right off the bat, this beer has a significant malt backbone, giving the beer a good thick mouthfeel without getting very sweet.  The maltiness gives way to an ever-present building of bitterness.  There is a good balance of sweetness and citrus on the back end that keeps the growing bitterness in check.  It ends with a nice dryness making me want another sip.

Overall Impression:

I’m enjoying the simply complex nature of this beer.  Without going overboard on the hops, but still having an abundance, you are able to enjoy many different flavors.  I would have enjoyed a bit more on the aroma, but it works with the flavors.  Two things I really enjoyed about this beer.  1, the bitterness was strong but held in check so you don’t start to get a burnt flavor that I’ve been experiencing with a lot of heavily hopped beers.  2, the dry finish along with the bitterness that didn’t compound its self after each sip made this a very enjoyable IPA.

Glassware: Tulip

Calories: With an Original Gravity of 1.060 and a ABV of 6% means this beer finished with a Final Gravity of around 1.014 giving you about 205 Calories per 12oz serving

Simply Beer Rating: 91, If you find it give it a try!

Russian River Blind Pig is a post from: Simply Beer