Mark, Author at Kaedrin Beer Blog

Fremont Barrel Aged Dark Star – Spice Wars

July 10, 2019 by Mark

So we all know that the regular Dark Star beer is named after the obscure Carpenter/O’Bannon film (and totally not the popular Grateful Dead song), but this Spice Wars variant is a clear allusion to Dune. And not just any Dune, but the Expanded Dune universe. You know, those novels that were written somewhat recently by Frank Herbert’s son Brian Herbert (and co-written with the uber-prolific Kevin J. Anderson). The Spice War in question actually took place before the events of the original Dune and concerned a potential alternative to the Spice Melange (the war ended in disaster as that alternative never panned out). These Fremont folks are probably super-nerds, is what I’m saying (perhaps they should be called Fremen?)

That or this is just, like, a spiced version of BBA Dark Star. Fremont uses their typical practice of blending several barrel ages here as well, this time consisting of a blend of 18, 12, and 8-month Bourbon Barrel-Aged Dark Star in 12-year old Kentucky bourbon barrels. The spice regime includes cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, vanilla, and clove. This sort of thing probably puts this in more of a winter warmer or Christmas season beer, but I couldn’t really wait that long, so I just scarfed it down at the first opportunity. Let’s delve into this, Harkonnen style:

Fremont Barrel Aged Dark Star – Spice Wars – Pours a deep, dark black color with half a finger of light tan head. Smells very nice, lots of spices along the lines of cinnamon and nutmeg, some ginger showing its face too, hints of underlying stout base like caramel and roast, the spices mostly hiding the barrel in the nose. Taste has more of that rich caramel up front, followed quickly by a cavalcade of spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger, returning to caramel, with hints of the underlying roast, more spice, and a light bourbon, oak, and vanilla in the finish. It’s a real roller coaster of flavor. Mouthfeel is rich and full bodied, well carbonated, spice combining with booze to provide a little pleasant heat. Overall, it’s a very nice winter warmer-ish beer. Doesn’t really rival the plain-ol’ BBA Dark Star, but it’s a nice change of pace (would probably have been better to drink during the holiday season!) I didn’t have a problem drinking the bottle, but this is the sort of thing that would be absolutely perfect for a share. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 14% ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber, grey wax). Drank out of a snifter on 5/10/19. Vintage: 2017.

As per usual, the fancily flavored variant is a nice change of pace, but doesn’t quite eclipse the original. I will say that the Coffee variant, which I shared with a bunch of friends due to my legendary ambivalence to coffee, went over very well and was actually pretty damn fantastic. Stay tuned for another Fremont variant (of B-Bomb), coming soon to these pages.

Fantôme Lea’s Journey

May 28, 2019 by Mark

In typically enigmatic fashion, little is known about this beer, who Lea is, or where she is journeying to. The Fantôme never reveals its secrets. However, some sleuthing revealed that this beer was made to raise money for brewer Dany Prignon’s niece (who is presumably named Lea and making some sort of journey abroad). Of course, none of that explains the deal with the beer itself (just the crytic “Globe Trotter’s Beer” moniker), but that’s the joy of Fantôme. There’s one surefire way to find out:

Fantôme Lea’s Journey – Pours a mostly clear amber orange color with massive amounts of fluffy white head, long retention too. Smells nice, lots of Belgian yeast spicy phenols and fruity esters, some of that earthy Tome funk too. Taste follows the nose, earthy, spicy, fruity, perhaps more spice than the other elements. Mouthfeel is highly carbonated, crisp, and effervescent, medium bodied, a little spice. Overall, yes, one of the better tôme’s I’ve had recently… B+

Beer Nerd Details: 8% ABV bottled (750 ml capped and corked). Drank out of a tulip glass on 3/3/19. Lot 4 N 17. Best Before end 2020.

Always willing to take a chance on a new ghost…

Mother of All Storms

May 22, 2019 by Mark

Pelican Pub and Brewery’s Mother of All Storms is a stalwart classic of barrel-aged barleywine. Not the first, but among the better examples out there, it began its life as Stormwatcher’s Winterfest. The initial incarnations of the barrel aged version of same were dubbed Perfect Storm, but after a couple of years, this was changed to Mother of All Storms. In accordance with the Kaedrin tradition of completely unwarranted and unsubstantiated explanations for such changes, I suspect this has to do with some sort of legal snafu involving the popular book/film, The Perfect Storm. Rather than risk the wrath of George Clooney and Sebastian Junger (as they were obviously angered by a Northwestern brewery appropriating the tale of a tragic Nor’easter) Pelican caved and decided to change the name. As per usual, it’s what’s in the bottle that counts, so let’s hoist a glass in honor of the Andrea Gail:

Pelican Mother of All Storms – Pours a deep, dark brown color with a half finger of light tan head. Smells of rich caramel, candied dark fruit, boozy bourbon, oak, and vanilla, with some hops lurking in the undertow maybe? Taste is rich caramel, molasses, brown sugar, candied dark fruit, raisins, plums, and lots of that boozy bourbon, oak, and vanilla, finishing with a light bitterness. Bottle sez it’s an English Barleywine, but I get some of that vaunted American Barleywine hoppy dankness in the taste as well. Mouthfeel is rich and full bodied, well carbed, plenty of boozy heat. Overall, yup, awesome. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 14% ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber). Drank out of a snifter glass on 1/25/19. IBU: 40. Bottled: 11-9-18.

Yeah, I’m still catching up with some old reviews. Pelican seems like a neat brewery (located right on the coast, it seems like an absurdly photogenic brewery location), and they’ve built on the success of MoAS with additional barrel aged beers like Father of All Tsunamis (a BBA stout), amongst others, which I obviously need to catch up with someday.

Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve – 23 Years Old

April 15, 2019 by Mark

Hello, dear readers. You might not know this, but Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve is officially and irrevocably the best bourbon in the world. And the expression that’s been aged for 23 years is older, and therefore unquestionably better than all the other Pappy bourbons. If you don’t believe me, go and consult any of the approximately one million internet lists that definitively rank all the bourbons, or maybe you can check with a whole host of celebrity chefs or journalists on social media. I mean, come on, if it’s on Facebook and Twitter, what else do you need? It’s absolutely unquestionable, is what I’m saying.

As a result, anything with even a whiff of the Van Winkle brand is hyped to the gravitational levels of Sagittarius A* (the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy). Once the Pappy juice itself became scarce, some folks took to saying things like hey, Weller 12 is basically the same stuff, it’s just aged in a different part of the warehouse. Gravitation took hold, and now any bottles with the name Weller on it have gone missing. Pappy, the bourbon so famous that nothing, not even light, can escape it’s gravitational pull.

Here in PA, though, they do a statewide lottery for the Pappy release. This may be the one good thing about the PLCB, as they get a decent number of bottles and the lottery method is fair, if unpredictable. I’ve probably entered 15 lotteries and won 2 of them, but it’s hard to argue with snagging a bottle of Stagg or, most recently, the 23 Years Old expression of Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve. This is pricey stuff, even at cost, and it regularly reaches $2000-$3000 on the secondary market. I suppose I could have just sold it, but my one and only taste of Pappy was the 15 a few years ago, and I’ll admit, it was phenomenal. Not sure it’s worth the insane black-hole-esque hype, but really fantastic stuff.

You may not have noticed (despite watching me like ravenous hawks) that I’ve recently entered my annual beer slowdown (at least partly because I haven’t said much about it, and also because I’m still working through a backlog of beer reviews), but if I’ve been avoiding beer of late, well, that gives me an excellent incentive to crack open something special like this.

So what’s the big deal here? Well, Pappy Van Winkle was an actual guy, and at some point in the 70s, his son started making bourbon and slapping his Pappy’s picture on the label (that’s him on the bottle pictured). Bourbon is made primarily with corn, but while most bourbons use rye as a secondary grain, Pappy uses wheat. I’m told that people who know what they’re talking about call these bourbons “wheaters”, which sounds good to me. Bourbon went through some booms and busts, and the original distillery (Stitzel-Weller) closed in 1992. Pappy, like the rest of the Bourbon producers, struggled for a while, but 10-15 years ago, things started to turn around. The thing with the boom/bust cycle is that during the bust times, bourbon producers have all this bourbon just sitting around in barrels, aging. So you end up with really well aged stock, which ends up getting released at a relatively cheap pricepoint, which people love (both price and taste), which then lends itself to the next boom. Stuff gets scarce, prices go up. Is another bust looming? Maybe. It’s a hotly debated topic that I’m not really qualified to weigh in on… but “permanent boom” is a phrase I’d find suspicious.

One other contributing factor to the Pappy mystique is that a lot of this bourbon was made back in the 80s at what is now a closed distillery. Man, do whiskey dorks love them some closed distilleries. As recently as 2013, Pappy 23 was using that original Stitzel-Weller juice. Alas, that appears to have been the last of it. What I have here was produced at one of Buffalo Trace’s locations. Near as I can tell, it’s still pretty damn well regarded. All during this most recent boom, though, Pappy was regularly recognized as the best of the lot (again, it’s on the internet and that pretty-great TV show Justified, so it must be true), and the fact that they’re still producing a bourbon aged for 23 years is pretty unique these days (most distilleries have long since sold through their aged stock and are running on NAS fumes these days).

Of course, if you spend any time in the bourbon dork community, you’ll find a bit of backlash to the Pappy hype. It’s a pretty natural response, really, and it must be frustrating because there’s so much other bourbon out there that no one seems to care about at all (and the invasion of dilettantes and status-seekers certainly doesn’t help). That being said, it’s hard not to want to at least try some of this stuff, so winning the PA lottery was quite a welcome development for an amateur like myself (who has, at this point, been at it for a while). Let’s get to it:

Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve – 23 Years Old – Pours a nice shade in the copper amber spectrum, not much in the way of legs, but pretty enough. Smells intensely of oak, vanilla, oak, caramel, oak, dusty spice, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet, but also lots of oak. In case the nose didn’t tip you off, the taste features that oak quite prominently, but the traditional caramel and vanilla notes come through in good enough proportions as well as a dusting of spice (I know this is a wheater, but I associate this sort of spice with rye – maybe that’s just because I’m a fraud and am bad at describing bourbon) and an almost bitter oak note (I’m sure whiskey nerds see bitterness as a terrible thing, but as a beer dork who came up in the West Coast IPA days of breweries reaching theoretical limits of bitterness, the connotation is not meant negatively here) . Mouthfeel is medium bodied and for lack of a better term, it’s kinda dry. Overall, it’s delicious, but I can see why someone would call it over-oaked. I’ve had some bourbons that I’d consider over-oaked, but this one fares better than those. Plus, I rather enjoy oak. However, it’s far from the best bourbon I’ve had and I’m not sure it’s worth all the hype… A-

Bourbon Nerd Details: 95.6 proof, 47.8% ABV bottled (750 ml). Drank out of a glencairn glass on 3/30/19. Bottle #J3356. Vintage: 2018.

Beer Nerd Musings: As mentioned above, anything in Pappy’s orbit gets pulled into the supermassive black hole of hype, and that includes beers aged in Pappy barrels. Notable examples include Voodoo’s Pappy Black Magick (one of my favorite beers that I’ll probably never get to try again) and the infamous original vintage of Bourbon County Rare (which I’ve never had; I did really enjoy the follow up release, which was aged in 35 year old Heaven Hill barrels). Lots of other notable examples, and usually just the implication that Van Winkle barrels are involved is enough to make the beer scarce. However, it’s worth noting that not every beer aged can be aged in a Pappy barrel and come out perfect. Stillwater aged one of their Belgian Strong Dark Ales in Pappy 20 barrels and the result wasn’t especially accomplished (though it was still rare and expensive)… This was more an issue with the base beer not being able to stand up to the barrel treatment than the fault of barrel (i.e. it probably wouldn’t matter which barrel was used, it would still overwhelm the base). So the hype is real, but like the bourbon itself, there’s a nugget of truth at the center of the hype – a lot of these beers are genuinely great. Is it worth the hoop-jumping and cost? That’s the ultimate question…

All in all, I’m really glad I got the chance to drink this bourbon. I’m still not entirely sure it justifies the hype and concomitant price, but as a one-time splurge, I think it could be justified (note: I’m talking about the price at retail, not the secondary price, which is only worth it if you’re filthy rich, and even then…) I will probably continue to enter the Pappy lottery, but I will not be putting in for the 23 year again… I suspect the 15 and 20 year expressions are the sweet spot (and even though I only had a small pour of the 15 a few years ago, I think it was probably better than the 23).

Suarez Family Brewing Qualify Pils

April 4, 2019 by Mark

In this age of bombast and hyperbole, it’s hard to write about lagers. Beers prized for their crisp, clean, delicate flavors, and the subtlety contained therein generally take a backseat to the extreme, the intensity or concentration of flavors in something like an imperial doughnut brownie chocolate stout aged in 30 year old rum barrels. For better or for worse, there’s a lot to talk about with those beers. Where’d the doughnut come from? Was the brownie batter cooked before added to the mash? Or was it a sorta dry-hopped with brownies? What became of that rum? Why was it aged 30 years? Where was the chocolate sourced from? It better damn well be bean to bar chocolate, or there’ll be hell to pay!

Here there’s just the requisite four beer ingredients. The only real distinction to make is that Qualify Pils differs from Suarez Family Brewing’s other pilsner (Palatine Pils) in that it is a little more “hop-accented”. Big whoop; they don’t even talk about which hops they used. It’s probably an extremely unsexy noble hop of some kind too, given the traditional German take on the style. Of course, both of Suarez’s pilsners are pretty damn fantastic, and well worth trying out if you ever get the chance.

Suarez Family Brewing Qualify Pils – Pours a slightly hazy pale yellow color with a few fingers of fluffy white head, fantastic retention, and lacing as I drink. Smells very nice, earthy, almost spicy noble hops, a crackery malt character and maybe a hint of lemon zest. Crisp, clean cereal grains up front followed by earthy noble hops and that hint of lemon zest to put the finishing touch on it. I’d have to try it side by side with Palatine Pils to be sure, but this does indeed seem to have more hop character to it. Or I’m just a weak-willed simpleton who has been bulldozed by the power of Suarez’s suggestion. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, crisp, and clean, light bodied and crushable. Overall, yup a fantastic pils here. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a willibecher glass on 2/24/19. Canned: 1.23.19 , Drink By: 5.1.19

Another winner from Suarez, who is batting 1.000 so far in my experience (at this point, I’ve had at least 7 of their beers.) I hope to visit again this upcoming summer, so you’re certain to see more from them here. Keep a watchful eye.

Drink Fresh! Do not age… Cycle Rare DOS 1

March 26, 2019 by Mark

I’ve been lucky enough to have sampled some barrel aged Cycle Brewing beers that friends have generously shared with me. I recently managed to acquire a few for myself and noticed something curious on the label: “Drink Fresh! DO NOT AGE.” This is the sort of thing I’m used to seeing on an IPA (and it certainly makes a big difference on those beers), but not so much on an 11%+ barrel-aged stout… I figured that enquiring minds would want to know, so I drank some beer and fired off an email to Cycle to see why they were so insistent on this. Their response was interesting and detailed, so let’s take a look:

I can go long on this but the short answer is: beer doesn’t get better with age generally speaking. There are exceptions, active cultures being the most obvious, and some stouts and other big beers do ok, but how many barrel aged stouts can you honestly say got better?

I pretty much agree! While I have experimented with aging beer, my repeated observation is that while it’s always a different beer than it was fresh, it’s rarely a better beer.

And on top of that, we do tons of adjuncts, so from that small set of beers that got better, how many had adjuncts? Not many in my experience, the most common discussion is whether or not it held up which is basically hoping it’s as good as it once was. We don’t find cellaring beer to be worthwhile, most of the time it’s not as good, almost as good seems like a win. The tone most often struck in tastings of old beer is “it help up pretty well” and frankly we think our beer should be consumed rather than aged. We make a lot, more now than ever, drink what we packaged and more great beer is just around the corner.

Adjuncts and flavorings are definitely something that does not hold up well with age. I can only think of one example that held up amazingly well to the point of being potentially better than fresh (Bourbon County Vanilla Rye), but who knows if that’s repeatable. The observation that most discussion around aged beer centers on whether or not it’s “held up” is a good one and it’s funny that so many people talk about aging beer when the frame of reference is already pessimistic…

Ultimately it’s a subjective decision, I respect that and am not here to argue whether you like it better or not but in our opinion our barrel aged beers don’t improve with time. We did learn that non-barrel aged high gravity beers can benefit from them and we think the key component is yeast in suspension, with such a high density from the sugar the yeast is actually buoyant enough to stay floating around for a long time, months possibly, and it doesn’t taste better with yeast, we are actually wondering if half the improvement we see in the beer through barrel aging is just giving it enough time for all yeast and sediment to fully settle out. That remains speculation and just something new to ponder, post barrel aging though it’s time to drink or hope “it held up pretty well” someday.

It’s funny, but the most successful aging experiments I’ve had involve things like Lambic (i.e. bottle conditioned beer with active cultures, etc…) or non-barrel-aged behemoths like World Wide Stout or Samichlaus. We could probably quibble over the degree to which the barrel contributes its own character (I think it’s probably more than half), but it’s a fascinating observation that some of the benefit of barrel aging doesn’t come from the barrel itself, but rather allowing the time for yeast and sediment to settle out (and perhaps other age-related processes). As they say, this remains speculation, but it makes logical sense.

Ultimately, my feelings on aging beer remain the same. It can be fun, but it rarely improves the beer, and barrel-aged beer tends to be just right when “fresh”. Usually, if anyone asks me about aging beer, my response is always that you should drink it fresh first. If you can get your hands on another bottle, feel free to age it, but it probably won’t get better over time (though it can still be interesting and a lot of fun). The lone exception in my book tends to be Lambic, but that’s a sorta unique situation. All of this is academic, of course, since the three barrel-aged Cycle beers that I managed to get my grubby fingers on were all gone within a week or two of acquiring.

In the grand Kaedrin tradition of speculating on goofy or obviously wrong influences for beer names, I’m guessing Cycle named this beer after MS-DOS 3.0, an extremely rare release due to Microsoft’s battles with IBM (3.1+ were much more common). Or, possibly DOS is just an acronym for Double Oatmeal Stout. This particular iteration was aged in whiskey barrels for a full year.

C:\windows\chkdsk /f

Windows has scanned the beer system and found no problems.

This beer is pretty damn great. 0 KB in bad sectors.

Cycle Rare DOS 1 – Pours an inky black color with just the barest cap of light brown head. Smells great, rich caramel, fudge, and a strong bourbon, oak, and vanilla. Taste hits that rich caramel up front, sweet but some of the underlying roast character emerges here too, chocolate, char, toast, and of course, lots of that bourbon, oak, and vanilla. Mouthfeel is full bodied, rich, and chewy, thick and viscous, moderate carbonation, and a really well integrated booze profile. Overall, yup, pretty spectacular stuff, and you know how much I like the unadorned BA stout. Just barrels and stout, and it’s great. A

Beer Nerd Details: 11% ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber). Drank out of a snifter on 2/15/19. Vintage: 2019.

I also shared the Barrel Aged Hazelnut Imperal Stout with some friends, which was phenomenal (even given my general antipathy toward coffee and hazelnut). The Bourbon Barrel-Aged Baltic Porter was a little less successful (relative to the others), but quite nice. It’s a bit pricey to get these beers sent up to PA, but it feels worth the stretch, and you will most certainly be seeing more Cycle on this blog in the future…

Tree House Septuple Feature

March 14, 2019 by Mark

I keep thinking that I’ll visit Tree House up in Massachusetts someday, but on the other hand I’m blessed with friends who not only go up there who also buy way too much beer and are anxious to unload, for example, a mixed set of 13 beers from their spoils. At this point, I’ve been lucky enough to have a pretty wide swath of Tree House’s offerings, but one thing I appreciated about this batch was the inclusion of some *gasp* non-IPAs. And I didn’t even have to wait in their infamously long (but apparently very well organized and snappy) lines. We’ve got a lot to get through here, so let’s buckle up:

Tree House Snow – An IPA with a significant amount of wheat in the malt bill, hopped with Citra, Centennial, and Sabro. Drats, I’m getting out of touch, I don’t recognize that last one; Sabro was formerly known as HBC 438 and hails from New Mexico (pro tip – most hops, even ones grown here in the US, have their origins in Europe). It appears to be a typical new world flavor hop, lots of citrus and fruit characteristics which naturally dovetail with the juicy Northeast IPA profile. Pours a hazy pale orange, almost yellow color with a solid finger of head that has good retention and leaves lacing as I drink. Smells of juicy citrus, pine, and readily apparent wheat. Taste has a nice lightly sweet touch up front, followed by citrus and pine hops, and a nice balancing bitterness in the finish. Mouthfeel is well carbed, low to medium bodied, with a reasonably dry finish. Overall, it’s a rock solid NEIPA, not going to blow the hazebois away, but a real nice beer to pair a meal with. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 7.8% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 2/15/19. Canned: 01/17/19 (OUR SNOW IS BETTER, HARPER).

Tree House Sap – Originally brewed as a Christmas beer, utilizing mostly Chinook hops for their infamously piney character. Pours a hazy pale yellow color with a finger of head that has good retention and leaves lacing. Smells of citrus and pine, some floral and spice notes, not quite as intense as other Tree House beers, but it works. Taste has that same old-school citrus and dank, resinous pine expression, with more of a wallop of bitterness towards the finish than your typical NEIPA (but nowhere near the bracing levels of some West Coast IPAs…). Mouthfeel is light to medium bodied, well carbonated, and quaffable. Overall, another rock solid IPA… B+

Beer Nerd Details: 7.0% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 2/16/19. Canned: 01/31/19 (GOIN’ DOWN THE CAN LINE FEELIN’ BAD)

Tree House Super Sap – Imperialized version of Sap, also apparently brewed in the holiday spirit and presumably using the same Chinook-heavy approach. This is going to get repetitive, it looks much like Sap, hazy, pale, yellowish, well retained head and lacing. Smells like Sap, only moreso – citrus and pine, some floral and spice notes, a little more intense. Taste hits the same old-school note as Sap. Mouthfeel is a bit bigger, but similar. Overall, yup, it’s really good. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 7.9% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a Snifter on 2/16/19. Canned: 02/06/19 (BOILING HEAT MAPLE STEAM)

Tree House Haze – One of the more popular Northeast DIPAs that Tree House makes, and thus one of their regular rotational beers. Yeah yeah, pale and hazy with good retention and lacing, like the others. Smells great though, much more juicy citrus, sweet, tropical fruit hops. Taste has that same juicy citrus character, lots of tropical fruits, with a well balanced bitterness. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, medium bodied, relatively dry. Overall, yup, similar to the others, but maybe one tick above. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 8.2% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a Tulip glass on 2/17/19. Canned: 02/01/19 (IF THE JULES DON’T GRONK YA, THEN THE TOMMY BILL)

Tree House Ma – A hoppy imperial amber, a style I enjoy, but which doesn’t always work out. Named after one of the brewers’ Irish grandmother, it’s a sorta take on an Irish Red. Made with meatloaf because of their enduring love for Wedding Crashers (alright, probably not, but I enjoy making unsubstantiated allegations like this about brewers I like). Pours a dark, warm amber color with a solid finger of off-white head that leaves lacing as I drink. Smells of citrus and pine, heavier on the pine. Taste is sweet up front, some of those citrus hops lending a fruitiness to the malt, followed by dank, resinous pine hops towards the balanced finish. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, well carbonated, and quaffable. Overall, it’s a rock solid hoppy amber ale and I wish more breweries made this sort of thing these days. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 6.8% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a Tulip Glass on 2/22/19. Canned: 02/05/19.

Tree House Treat – Originally brewed for Halloween, I’m not sure what makes it Halloweeny, but I’m still endeared to it because I love Halloween so much and I like the label. I guess they tried to make it have a sorta candy like sweetness, but really it’s just a DIPA. Maybe they played down the bitterness a bit, but that ain’t exactly outside of the NEIPA playbook. Pours a cloudy very pale yellow color with a finger or two of head with good retention and lacing. Smells fantastic, sweet, juicy citrus hops, tropical fruit, mango and the like. Taste has that big juicy mango kick to it, sweet up front with less bitterness in the finish than the others in this roundup. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, well carbonated, and pretty well balanced. Overall, it’s another really good IPA, a tasty treat for sure. B+ or A-

Beer Nerd Details: 8.1% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a Tulip Glass on 2/23/19. Canned: 02/08/19 (TREAT YOURSELF)

Tree House Nervous Energy – A sorta french toast inspired milk stout made with maple syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla. Pours a clear, very dark brown color, almost black, with just about a finger of light brown head. Smells sweet, a little maple syrup, caramel, and some roasted malt. Taste is sweet up front, that maple comes out to play, then some spice kicks in, cinnamon, balancing hop bitterness and hints of roast in the finish. Mouthfeel is well carbonated but silky smooth up front, a little spice emerging in the finish, full bodied, sweet but not cloying. Overall, it’s a complex little bugger, but reasonably well balanced, flavors that play nice together and don’t overwhelm. B+ or A-

Beer Nerd Details: 8.1% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a Snifter on 3/1/19. Canned: 02/08/19 (POUR ME ON WAFFLES TAKE ME TO HEAVEN)

Tree House Double Shot (Vanilla Bean) – Bonus beer! A rich, sweet, and less roasty base stout provides a nice platform for a pair of coffee infusions in addition to, in this case, some vanilla bean. I had this at a share and thus did not take detailed notes (therefore I’m not going to call this an Octuple Feature, as I won’t be rating this), but my admittedly vague memories are that this was a fantastic little beer. Lord knows I’m not the biggest fan of coffee stouts, but in this case the sweet base combined with the vanilla bean managed to wrangle the beer into something rather great. Nice to finally get a load of some non-IPAs from Tree House. They are justifiably famous for both of these styles. I had a couple of other Double Shot variants as well, and they were also pretty darned good, even to a coffee skeptic like myself…

Beer Nerd Details: 7.6% ABV Bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a wine glass on 2/21/19.

Another successful batch of Tree House in the books. Still hoping to get there someday, but hey, I’m not complaining about the ones that do come my way. Special thanks go out to Kaedrin friend and fellow BeerNERD Gary for sending these beauties my way…

Fremont Barrel Aged Dark Star

March 4, 2019 by Mark

I think I’ve nailed down the inspiration behind this beer. You see, the crew brought this beach-ball-shaped alien aboard because Sgt. Pinback thought the ship could use a mascot, but then it escaped and messed up the comms equipment, inadvertently triggering one of the thermostellar nuclear bombs. During the countdown, they tried to teach the bomb’s AI a little phenomenology in an attempt to abort.

What the hell am I talking about? This is the plot to John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon’s 1974 debut Dark Star (a clear truckers-in-space precursor to Alien, also written by O’Bannon). I’m positive that this relatively obscure movie is the inspiration for this beer. I mean, sure, it could possibly be the far more popular and famous Grateful Dead song, but we prefer to attribute brewers’ chosen names with more goofy or possibly sinister influences.

This is why you should keep reading Kaedrin: Come for the beer, stay for the cutting edge cultural references and unsubstantiated insinuations about breweries.

So, um, anywho, this is a blend of imperial oatmeal stouts that were aged in bourbon barrels. Early releases of this beer were called Kentucky Dark Star, but my guess is that they dropped the “Kentucky” due to some sort of legal snafu (the label still sports the KDS logo). Those releases were aged in older barrels (I’ve seen references to 15 and 12 year old barrels). The 2018 release was aged in 7-12 year old bourbon barrels, but to make up for that the blend consists of beer that’s been aged in those barrels for 24, 18, 12, and 8 months. Proportions are unknown, of course, but the use of longer-aged beer probably makes up for the differences in barrels. Or whatever, this could very well be false data. Let’s see what Bomb #20 thinks:

Fremont Bourbon Barrel Aged Dark Star – Pours a deep black color with half a finger of light brown head that quickly resolves to a ring around the edge of the glass. Smell retains some roasted malt character, but there’s still a big dollop of chocolate, caramel, bourbon, oak, and vanilla. Taste is awesome, caramel and chocolate, a hint of the base roast malt, with a well balanced kick of bourbon, oak, and vanilla, finishing with a well rounded roasty note. Mouthfeel is perfectly carbed, full bodied, rich, and pleasantly boozy. Overall, yup, it’s great. A

Beer Nerd Details: 13.6% ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber, black wax). Drank out of a snifter on 1/18/19. Vintage: 2018.

Another big winner for Fremont, and we’ll definitely be seeing some variants of this beer and the most excellent B-Bomb in the near-ish future. If, that is, we’re not all blown up by that pesky thermostellar nuclear bomb.

Gigantic Massive!

February 21, 2019 by Mark

The color of beer mostly has to do with how malt is produced. Barley is soaked in water, allowing it to germinate, and then heat is applied to stop germination. The higher the heat, the darker the malt. The darker the malt, duh, the darker the resulting beer. Pale malts still represent most of the malt used. You don’t need a ton of darker malt to make the beer dark, but pale malt by itself isn’t especially tasty. The flavors of pale beers come from hops or maybe the yeast used (or maybe they’ve got an intentionally muted flavor profile.)

Obviously there are other adjuncts that can change the color of beer (i.e brightly colored fruit like cherries, dark sugars, etc…), but another thing that could be done is an excessively long boil time. Most worts are boiled for 60-90 minutes, but that can be significantly increased. Longer boil times results in darker, more concentrated wort and the creation of melanoidins (think browned foods like grilled meats or bread crusts). In other words, long boil times results in a sorta caramelization of the wort.

Enter Gigantic Brewing’s Massive! This is a barleywine brewed with British Golden Promise malt (a pale base malt) that’s been boiled for 8 hours, resulting in a rather dark colored beer. Age it in Heaven Hill Bourbon barrels for two years, and that adds tons of complementary flavors of caramel, oak, and vanilla. My kinda bwizzle #BiL.

Gigantic has been around since 2012 and is considered one of the best Portland, Oregon breweries (in a town known for breweries, that’s saying something) and they’re known for their eclectic experimentation. They are apparently well known for their artwork too, which seems to reflect their brand pretty well. Let’s take a look at this beer that lives up to the brewery’s moniker:

Gigantic Massive! Bourbon Barrel Aged Barleywine – Pours a murky brown color with barely a ring of head around the edges of the glass. Smells great, caramel, toffee, dark fruit, bourbon, oak, and vanilla. Taste is full of rich caramel, toffee, a bit of dark fruit, and lots of boozy bourbon, oak, and vanilla, with some bitterness balancing out the finish. Mouthfeel is rich and full bodied, but not flabby or underattenuated, light on the carbonation (but well matched to style), warming booze. Overall, yep, it’s a reeel gud bba barleywine. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 14.3% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a snifter on 12/31/18. Vintage: 2018.

I’ve also had Gigantic’s Most Most Premium Russian Imperial Stout, which was quite nice and probably should have been reviewed here. I shall endeavor to do better in the future.

Tired Hands Cacao Hazelnut Tangerine Milkshake

February 12, 2019 by Mark

I’ve basically given up trying to keep pace with Tired Hands. Even as they’ve started re-brewing various beers, I’ve found that I’ll probably not even reach my previous pace. Accordingly, I haven’t really been talking about them much here on the blog either. As of right now, I’ve written 37 posts covering literally hundreds of Tired Hands beers, most of which will never be seen again. There’s not a whole lot to say about the beer that hasn’t been said, though the intangibles have shifted considerably in the past few years. Once the Fermentaria opened, production ramped up. Then they started canning beer, which generated huge “lines” on a weekly basis. Scare quotes around “lines” because what you’d usually find were hundreds of empty chairs put out around noon on a release day, and maybe a few bearded dudes standing around a few hours early.

But the new hotness can’t stay hot forever; entropy took hold and these releases started to unravel, only really getting crazy for their insane Milkshake beers. Bottle releases had long since dwindled (once they started canning hops, the demand for saison bottles dropped off a cliff), even for more prized and limited releases like the Parageusia bottles. During an impromptu visit on a random Tuesday, it turns out that the previous Wednesday’s release was still available. The hype cycle has officially reached its end, I think. Perhaps insane popularity, long lines, and hype lead to backlash. Or maybe other local breweries stepping up their NEIPA game had an impact. Are NEIPAs are getting overexposed these days? Do insane “foraged” ingredients and other gimmicks grind people down? Maybe the polar vortex has people bunkering down and actually drinking the beer they have? All of the above?

I regularly waited in line for Tired Hands bottles back in the day. The can releases were never really my thing because they typically happened on Wednesdays and I have this thing called a “job” which generally prevented me from participating even if I wanted to. But frankly, I didn’t care too much. There are always great things on tap, often the same beers that are being released in cans, so why bother? I know some folks used it as trade bait, but I suspect that’s on the downswing as well. Still, I love me some Tired Hands beer, and it’s been a while, so I figured I’d write up this goofy Milkshake variant. I’ve already gone over the amusing origins of the Milkshake IPA before, but this is a little more amped up from those original releases, and it incorporates more wacky ingredients. Let’s take a closer look:

Tired Hands Cacao Hazelnut Tangerine Double Milkshake IPA – Pours that beyond murky pale yellow color with a finger of white head that leaves a bit of lacing as I drink. Smells great, juicy hops, orange juice, tangerine, no real cacao or hazelnut… but I count that as a blessing? Taste is very sweet, lots of juicy hops, that tangerine coming through, maybe a hint of the cacao and hazelnut, but it’s not really identifiable and I’m only saying this because I know its there so it’s probably like some sort of phantom flavor that I’m detecting, mostly towards the finish. Or, like, maybe I’m just really suggestible. Mouthfeel has that great TH milkshake character up front, medium to full bodied, well carbed, but this skirts the edge when it comes to the boozy factor, which throws it a bit off balance when comparing to the non-double milkshakes. It’s still absolutely delicious and it’s not like the booze is overpowering, but the balance isn’t quite as great as the regular-strength milkshakes. Overall, a really nice milkshake IPA that is better than its name (or some of its ingredients) would imply. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 9.3% ABV canned (16 ounce). Drank out of a tulip on 1/25/19. Canned on 1/16/19.

There was a time when I would end up at Tired Hands once a week, but that time has passed. On the other hand, almost every time I do go, I think to myself “self, we should come here more often!” and then for some reason it still takes a month or two to get back.