Touring the Cascade Barrel Room and Blending Facility

Ron Gansberg (r) gave Edwin Johnson the
hat off his head.

On Monday, I had the good fortune to tour Cascade's impressive new(ish) blending facility in Beaverton. It's a place the brewery hasn't spent much time advertising or opening to the public, but it's big, growing, and really impressive. Brewer Ron Gansberg has something on the order of 1,300 wine and liquor barrels (including a small array of cognac barrels that arrived just recently) and maybe ten medium-sized wine foudres (or foeders in the Flemish) of around 55-65 hectos. (They vary.)

John Holl was in town for a bit over 24 hours and had arranged the tour; I got lucky enough to be offered the chance to chauffeur, which of course meant taking the tour and ending up on an epic bottle tasting as Ron and the gang started raiding the library for vintage rarities. By the end of the tasting, everyone on-site had joined in the fun, and I'm afraid we dented their productivity. Fortunately, a lot of the newer guys hadn't tried some of the older beers, so I think it can be written off as a training/team-building exercise.

 At one point, Ron dispatched one of the guys to go get the last bottle of Blackberry Ale dating back to around 2007 or so. It had been hidden somewhere, and only a couple people knew where it was. We also tasted a Kriek from that vintage, which was spectacular. The Blackberry was never as good as the Kriek--with fruit ales, you deal with terroir and the vagaries of the quality of the fruit in any given year--but drinking it was more sacrament than indulgence. We let the history pass across our tongues and considered the arc of this brewery's history.

Anyway, here is a photo essay of the day. What I didn't capture were large conditioning tanks where fruit was sitting for months on beer--cherry, raspberry, apricot. They don't look all that magestic compared to the French foudres, but one of them contained nine tons of fruit. You had to use your mind to apprehend that majesty. All right, here goes.

The barrels are packed tightly. Once they're in
place, they stay in place.

These foudres should last thirty years.

More after the jump.

Three Tasty Saisons

Note: this post had more garbled English than usual. I've tried to clean it up.

On Saturday, the Cascade Barrel House hosted a saison tasting, with a dozen and a half examples to demonstrate the breadth of the style. As a tuning fork, they had Saison Dupont on tap. Not that this is the only way saisons can be made or should--but as a matter of perfect pitch, you can't do any better. I tasted most of what was on offer, and was pleased with most. Three, however, really stood out and deserve special mention.

1. Boulevard Tank 7
Saisons are a state of mind as much as a style, and Boulevard does a magnificent job of capturing their essence without being slavish to a Belgian norm. Perhaps as a nod to the region, Boulevard's version uses corn and wheat in the grist, and the result is a soft, lightly sweet malt base as comforting and familiar as a bowl of porridge. The aroma is pure saison, though, with a musty, slightly cellarlike quality the yeast gives. The yeast also provides some interesting pepper notes, and while the grains are suggestive of sweetness, the beer is really quite dry and finishes with a crisp snap. An impressive beer that I would rank with Ommegang Hennepin as the best American examples I've tried.

2. Cascade Fume
I'm a fan of smoked beers, but Iwould have skipped Fume without a second thought except that people kept raving about it. The idea of smoked malt and saison yeast struck me as being roughly as compatible as anchovies and ice cream. Fortunately, others' minds were more open than mine. What I discovered was a very lightly smoked malt in an otherwise typical Dupont-style saison. But where Cascade's Saison de la Maison was wet and a mite sweet in the middle for my palate, the smoked malt dried out Fume. It added an austerity and richness, and when you swallowed, it clipped all sense of sweetness and evaporated instantly, like a wisp of smoke. Of all the attempts to find new ground beyond Dupont, this is the most interesting and palatable I've enjoyed.

3. Breakside Amarillo Saison
With apologies to Rod Serling, there should be a warning label on Breakside's beer reading: "You unlock this beer with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of aroma, a dimension of flavor, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas; you've just crossed over into the twilight zone of beer." I overheard people denouncing this beer; I watched people dump it; others just expressed shock and confusion. I loved it. Admittedly, when I took the first sip into my mouth, my eyes bugged out and rolled around in surprise. This beer is off the grid.

We often talk about hops as tasting like grapefruit, but this is an evocation. Flavors can only be described by other flavors; we triangulate from there. But Breakside's saison?--it really does taste like grapefruit. The hops provide one element, but it's the aromatic, oily part, not the juice. Add a dose of brettanomyces and you get the sour and bitter--the fruit itself. It was an amazingly resinous beer, and long, long after I quit drinking it, it was still managing to throw my palate off. Still, the intensity, once I submitted to it, was beguiling. By the time I finished my taster, I wasn't even thinking of it as all that intense. It was, but my palate had re-calibrated. I don't doubt that only a few, proud drinkers would find this beer worthy of praise, but I am among their company, and it is indeed worth praising. Approach cautiously, but prepare for a new dimension...

Cascade Scottish Ale Fest

Scottish Ale Fest
Cascade Barrel House
Saturday, January 29, 3-11pm
939 SE Belmont

In my haste to post news of coming events, I forgot one of the most important--Cascade Brewing's inaugural Scottish Ale Fest this weekend. (They're calling it the "first annual," but I think you have to have a second one before it's "annual.") Reason enough to go is the opportunity to see Ron Gansberg's band play, but you might also like the beer line-up:

The beer lineup includes Black Raven Brewing’s Splinters Bourbon Barrel Aged Strong Scotch Ale, Cascade Brewing’s McShagger Scotch Ale, Wee Ane and Black... Sheep Stout, Coalition Brewing’s Brigadoonery Scottish Ale, Fearless Brewing’s Strong Scotch Ale, Lucky Lab’s Scottish Holiday, Migration Brewing’s Old Silenus, Rock Bottom Brewery’s Highland Courage, Schooner EXACT Brewing’s Hoppy the Woodsman, and Upright Brewing’s House.

I'll be out of town, so you have to go on my behalf. I am particularly interested in the Washington breweries. (And, is that Rock Bottom beer a Havig origional? Could be a special one.) I charge you with trying the beers and reporting back. Please!

Cascade Barrel House First Look

In just a couple hours, Cascade Brewing will officially open the doors to the new Barrel House on Tenth and Belmont. They unofficially opened last week--and the difference between these two states appears to be a press release. Sally and I walked over (yes, walked!) on Saturday for a quick peek.

My analysis of the place follows two tracks. The first concerns beer; for the last couple years, trying to find Cascade's sour ales has been an Easter egg hunt of random opportunity. Even at the Raccoon Lodge, you couldn't reliably find certain beers. The Barrel House is the solution to this problem, and the menu contains ELEVEN sours (five other taps are given to regular beers--a nice idea, because not everyone is willing to take a walk on the sour side). I have managed to miss Ron's amazing meat-of-the-apricot-pit Noyeaux all these months--but finally had it on Saturday. Most of the beers come in 8-ounce goblets and set you back plus or minus six bucks, but given that many of the beers took more effort than a standard vintage of wine, I consider this a bargain. So, from a beer perspective, they could be serving these out of the back of an old mechanic's building and I'd be happy to visit.

That takes us to the second track--the Barrel House itself. If you took the Raccoon Lodge's general architectural vocabulary and transmuted it to Southeast Portland, you'd have the Barrel House. It's in an old industrial building, but the interior has tall ceilings with exposed rafters--an urban lodge. Barrels are used throughout, as table tops, table bodies, and bar decorations. Along one wall are comfy-looking booths (full when we arrived, as they probably always will be); the rest of the space has beer hall-style tables and benches. Lots of light streams in, both through large windows and the open garage door walls, de rigeuer for any inner-Southeast locale. It is half-way between wine bar and pub in feel, and I think this is a good target: I hope to see serious wine fans come in and see just how un-beery beer can be.

There's a small food menu, but it's not totally up and running and I only had hummus--we can look into that in later posts. I saw Preston Weesner, who's apparently been helping Ron with blending, behind the bar. Art Larrance, who deserves massive kudos for taking this expensive gamble, was also enjoying a tipple. Good people, good location, good space and amazing beer. Very auspicious.

The grand opening kicks off at 11 this morning. Go have a look.

Cascade Barrel House
939 SE Belmont
503-265-8603

Here are a few iPhone pics to get you in the mood. For a better look, have a gander at Matt Wiater's predictably stellar photos.

The interior has a spacious layout with beer hall seating and lots of light.


Barrels are used as architectural elements and as decor throughout the building. These two tables are choice sipping stations.



Barrels again at the bar--and a hiding barkeep. (He likes to be in photos as much as I do.)



Red and black blood--Sang Rouge and Sang Noir.



The outdoor seating is a mite spartan--that's Morrison beyond, but webfeet will take their sun whenever it comes.



Barrel-top tables and a nice, long stretch for running (if you're two).



Peeking in from Tenth Avenue.

Sourheads Rejoice

Once was a time when I used to get emails from Ron Gansberg. He used to invite me out to Beaverton to roam the barrels in his ever-more-crowded brewery. That was when he was an obscure sour-beer brewer in a land that barely appreciated his regular beers. When I was roaring around with him, I'd say, "Man, you should really get a taproom over on the East Side where people will appreciate you."

Now he has. The Barrel House is unofficially open for business (939 SE Belmont). My email? It seems Herr Gansberg has gotten too big to mess with wee bloggers. I was pleased and mollified to see that in the description of beers, one of the laurels mentioned was the Satori for Apricot Ale.

Speaking of Cascade, Paul Kasten over at Wildwood plans to host a seven course (!) meal with a corresponding number of Gansberg's sour beers. More on that later, but save the date. I was blown away by his menu when he last did one of these, with Pelican.

A Tale of Two Cities

At sometime around 4pm yesterday afternoon, Cascade Brewing announced that they were pouring the new vintage of kriek at the Raccoon Lodge; by six-thirty, Sally and I were asking the waiter for a pour. Fortunately, we were his first kriek customers of the day (we were, in fact, how he learned it had come on tap), and he blundered and brought us full imperial pints.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, this is a beer that generally sells for about $15 a bottle, so a five-dollar pint was a steal. (It's worth the fifteen, by the way.) The Blazer game started while we were there, and so we generally had a great time. Still, there were aspects to the experience that reminded me I was definitely not on the east side anymore.

Portland, Oregon is divided in half by the Willamette River (pr. wuh LAM it, for those of you from elsewhere). And when I say divided, I mean divided. It's essentially two cities that overlap, like a Venn diagram, in the downtown region. On the east side are the things Portland is most famous for--distinctive neighborhoods, bikes, good restaurants, pubs, and coffee shops. It is a very social, connected part of town. The west side is more like standard American cities, a hodgepodge of national chain stories and strip malls with indistinct neighborhoods tied together by a tangle of major roads--a place where houses form the nexus of social life.

After grad school, back in about '96, I drove a cab for a year. (Broadway, cab 133.) It was axiomatic that you were either a west-side driver or an east-sider. In that entire year, not a single fare ever asked to go from the east side to anyplace in the west. I have no doubt that the reverse was true, too.

So last night, there we are, settling in for a lovely pint of kriek, and my eye is drawn to the massive screen with Blazer pre-game activity. Sally is facing the other way, and she sees what's on a little TV in the corner: Fox News. Hannity or someone iconic. This is not alarming so much as mystifying. East Portland is that socialist hell about which Sarah Palin frets. Well, not really, but they'd like it to be. The only way Fox News would make it onto the television in an east-side pub is for irony. But hey, different strokes. In front of the bar, we're all brothers.

What really caught me by surprise was a quartet at the table next to us. One guy was drinking beer from a bottle, one woman had soda, and two others had pints of something pale. When they got up to leave, the woman with a pint had managed to drink about half, but the man's was almost completely full. They left and Sally and I wondered where they were going. Obviously, they weren't leaving, for they had left their beer. We held onto this misconception right until a woman cleared the table.

There's no moral to this story, but I am glad Cascade is putting a barrel house over on the east side, walking distance from my house. No one should ever stray a Ron Gansberg pint--and they won't on this side of the river.
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PHOTO: DAN LYNCH | Share

Everything But the Squeal

Among thrifty carnivore types, there's an axiom: "everything but the squeal." This applies to a pig and how much of the body to utilize. Apparently that axiom is one Ron Gansberg applies to beer, too, because he has re-harvested his apricots and included the meat from the pits in his latest beer.

When I was out there in December, he showed me the high-tech process they use once they have the discarded pits from their Apricot Ale. As I recall, it involves a hinged lever device and a lot of grunting. And then an explosion of pit shrapnel. In the end, what you have is an almond-tasting nut so small it takes 600-700 to make a pound. These have been used to flavor amaretto liquor and other almondy-tasting things, as well as tonics to ward off cancer. (Studies say it doesn't work.) In any case, the fruit of this laborious process is finally at hand. Over the weekend, Cascade will unveil a blended "white port/raspberry/apricot seed beer" for Zwickelmania.

Which reminds me-- Zwickelmania is this Saturday. It is an annual event wherein members of the Oregon Brewers guild throw open their brewery doors and give tours to the public. It was a smash hit last year--a little unexpectedly, according to the brewers I spoke to--and this year breweries are making an even bigger deal of it. Like, you know, releasing white port/raspberry/apricot seed beers.

For full details, including itineraries, maps, and addresses, go to the Oregon Brewers Guild website.

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PHOTO: OSHIMS
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The Art of Blending Beer

These are the normal steps of producing beer commercially: mash and boil, ferment, age, package. For brewers creating barrel-aged beers, particularly those who use multiple or wild yeast strains, the process is a lot more involved. The process begins the same way, until a brewery has a "base beer." Instead of proceeding to packaging, however, the brewer transfers the beer into wooden casks, offers a prayer to a higher power, and waits. In those barrels, nature happens. A lactobacillus culture down the road (and maybe a rogue brettanomyces or two) and the goes through strange and wondrous transformations. Eventually, a brewer will begin to sample the beer in these different barrels to assess their nature and characteristics. Finally, he settles on a blend that will produce the ultimate flavor he wants.

Yesterday afternoon, Ron Gansberg invited me to join him in this process. Knowing that I love his apricot ale, we spent the afternoon sampling beer from different barrels, assessing, and ultimately putting together a rough blend that would approximate the final beer. Fascinating stuff.

We started out by trying beer that had been aging with the fruit. There are three batches of this beer, with two varieties of apricots. The base beer that Ron uses for this blend is roughly a strong golden/trippel. It's based on his Tempter Trippel recipe, but with fewer hops. These beers were very sweet and saturated with fruit essence--I was reminded a bit of the heavy syrup you find in tins of canned fruit.

Then Ron started rummaging through the dozens of barrels he has in the brewery, looking for ones he and his assistant Curtis had identified as possible matches for the apricot. What they're looking for are qualities akin to the fruit--light, high notes, delicate sweetness, and some sharper sourness to balance the sugar. He had split one batch of the trippel into several barrels, and we tried these in turn. Although I have understood intellectually that barrel-aging changes beer, it was fascinating to see how the same base beer changed depending on what had happened in each barrel. One was cleanly lactic, lighter and more sharp; another was heavier, sweeter, with a sour bending toward the acetic. Even their colors weren't the same--the sweeter one had darkened some.

In his way, Ron was pulling plugs on various beers as inspiration took him. One barrel produced a deeper, mustier sour. Teri Fahrendorf had stopped by the brewery and joined us at this point, and she speculated that it might be some brettanomyces. It's an older barrel, so a latent colony might have started to express itself. (That won't go into the apricot, but it will find itself into something. Ron will put it in the back of his mind, and when he wants a bit of funk in something down the line, he has a cask to turn to.) One very promising barrel contains a spiced golden beer. It was very sweet, but light and a bit citric--when added to the apricot-aged beers, it made the fruit pop while lightening and brightening the beer itself. That was the kind of alchemy he was shooting for.

Finally, he began doing calculations based on all the batches we had tried. ("Let's see, half a milleliter per gallon is 100 plus half a milleliter multiplied by the three barrels is 300, plus ..." I nodded sagely.) We took it back to the brewery and tried the first cut. Actually, it wasn't quite right. Too much non-fruit blends. Ron will have to go back to the drawing board and rejigger the ratios. So it goes with blending beer--you have to get the proportions just right.

Our plan is to follow an apricot ale through from brew to bottle, and this was the first step (though it was actually toward the end of the process). I shot some video, and I hope to compile it together to show how involved the whole process is. I may cut together something rough from this segment--or not. Stay tuned, though, this is fun stuff.

Update: Cascade Apricot Ale

You'll recall that I identified the first vintage of Cascade Apricot Ale as my Satori winner last year. This year's, however, I found slightly less buoyantly fruity:

Every year, Gansberg hand-selects the fruit, basing his selection on the quality available. He chose these apricots because they have a fuller, sweeter flavor, though he admits they're not as aromatic. I noticed this right away--that succulent scent was almost absent. But that's the nature with hand-made, artisanal ale--you are beholden to the offerings of mother nature.... This beer is perhaps one notch less beguiling than last year's, but that means it's still exceptional.

Well, yesterday I cracked open one of the current vintages, and I was pleasantly surprised. Mind, I thought this was a good beer. Whatever criticisms I had were informed by being blown away by last year's. What I discovered was an emergence of the fruit. The aroma is now quite evident, and grows as the beer warms. Again it is that lush, fresh-fruit scent. The beer has soured some since I first had it, but the flavor of the fruit comes through more clearly, too. It's really just an amazing beer. My Mom, who was in town visiting, found it a little intense, but she admired it nevertheless (she's a porter gal, so we had wandered some distance outside her comfort zone).

I would recommend stopping by the brewery and picking up a bottle or two--and definitely get the kriek while you're there. We're in the season when these beers are just magical. Nothing like sitting outside under a fading sun while sipping a little liquid gold. Makes you happy to live in Oregon...

To Brett or Not to Brett

A few weeks ago, when I visited the Rac Lodge, I asked Ron if he used any brettanomyces in his beer. The look he gave me was akin to the expression a tower guardsman might wear while observing a horde of Huns swarming over the moat. Emphatically no.

I don't blame him. When you're messing around with wild yeasts, the decision about whether to invite Brett over is one not to take lightly. Brett is the Kali of yeasts, the destroyer of cities, eater of young. To add it to your beer is to submit to forces beyond your control, to cede dominion to a single-celled organism.

I was reminded of this decision as Sally and I watched the Oscars on Sunday. (Not a bad show, and I was psyched to see Sean Penn win for best actor in what I thought was the year's best film. Gus should have taken the statue for directing, and Slumdog was vastly over-rated. Still, seeing the glee of the half-Indian crew made up for the misplaced lauding.) We pulled out an '08 Cascade Kriek and a Dissident. In the former, no brettanomyces; in the latter, ample stores of the lush, horse-blankety bad boy.

There's a remarkable difference in the way the two have aged. The Kriek is much as I remember it from a year ago. The cherry character has faded a bit and become less distinct, but that's to be expected. The intensity of sour remains about where it was, as does the level of sweetness. In short, the yeast have pooped out, and any changes to the beer now are unrelated to their activity.

The Dissident, though--what a change! Here's what I wrote in my review in September:

[T]there's none of that skanky brett, but rather a sweet chocolate and sour cherry-accented nose. As it opened up, the astringency of the sour diminished a little and the cherries muscled their way in.

It is a lovely and approachable beer.... The body is creamy and rich, with malt notes contributing a brown sugar/biscuit base. Onto this are balanced the twin flavors of tart/sweet cherries and the sourness of the yeast and cultures.

It's a totally different beer now. The brett have muscled their way in; the beer has their characteristic horsey aroma, and the palate their musty sourness. And they've continued to break the beer down--it is now bone dry. The malt notes are gone, and the body, while still rich, is less creamy and more vinous. Anyone who fell in love with this beer in the fall might now find it too intense and lacking in that velvety luxury they admired. But for those who revel in the character of brett, this is something else. The progression is very similar to Orval's--the young and older versions of the beer don't even appear to be related, much less the same being. At the time of release, Deschutes listed Dissident as 8.8% alcohol. Based on the way Orval gets stronger, I'd bet it's well into double digits now.

Whether 'tis nobler in the glass to suffer
the stings and dryness of outrageous chemistry...
To brett or not to brett, that is the question.

A Visit to Cascade Brewing/Raccoon Lodge

Twice I have visited the Raccoon Lodge to see what Ron Gansberg is brewing. Twice I have gone straight to the brewery in the basement, bypassing the rather striking lodge part of the restaurant. Not a bad metaphor for what Gansberg has going on there. The Raccoon Lodge's regular beer menu is fairly typical--a wheat, an IPA, a stout, a Irish ale. Down in basement, it's a whole different brewery.

This time we did start with a rather pedestrian beer by the downstairs standard--but it could have been that Ron was just trying to get my goat. It was the Dark Day IPA, a black IPA, and he'd just read my jeremiad against the new style. The rest of the beer we tried was what has brought Gansberg attention at festivals and specialty pubs (not to mention the judges of the prestigious Satori Award)--barrel-aged, soured, strong. So, while I have news of nine beers (!), none is a standard Rac Lodge offering. Someday I'm going to have to go upstairs and reacquaint myself with those beers.

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We did start with the Dark Day IPA, a bright, mahogany beer (if memory serves). Hops were present but not overly aggressive; instead the beer was characterized more by cocoa-roasty malt. Personally, I'd call it as hoppy porter, or perhaps a strong schwartz (like most of the beers that come from the basement, it's strong--7.5%). Then it was onto the really experimental stuff.

The Vine (9.2%)
The rule of threes? Last year Cascade produced three fruit ales, but when it came time to select fruit, they found the blackberries insufficiently ripened. They still have three fruit ales, but The Vine uses (can you guess?) white wine grapes. I'll confess that this one is so far off the grid I have a hard time characterizing it. I was expecting something like Cantillon Vigneronne, but that beer is much, much drier. The Vine has enough grape and sweetness that it tastes more like a mead to me. The brewery further confuses the palate with spices--cardamom to my tongue, though they didn't disclose the recipe. I would like to try this beer in a few months, when the sour has come in a bit more strongly. I can only give this provisional preview--we'll have to wait for the finished product. (It's also worth noting that this beer is assistant brewer Curtis Bain's brainchild, so the lineage of "mad scientist" continues.)

'09 Apricot Ale
Random trivia: there are more than 20 varieties of apricot. Well, not so random: this year's batch of Apricot Ale is made from a different type than the '08 I loved so much. Every year, Gansberg hand-selects the fruit, basing his selection on the quality available. He chose these apricots because they have a fuller, sweeter flavor, though he admits they're not as aromatic. I noticed this right away--that succulent scent was almost absent. But that's the nature with hand-made, artisinal ale--you are beholden to the offerings of mother nature. (And man, is this artisinal brewing. Not only does he hand-select the fruit, but he leaves it spread out throughout the brewery. "We put the fresh fruit out and every day I scrabble up there and pick out only the perfect fruit.") This beer is perhaps one notch less beguiling than last year's, but that means it's still exceptional. You almost certainly missed the chance to try this last year, since so little was produced. Don't miss it this year. Bottles of the new vintage are now available at the brewery.

'09 Kriek (8.1%)
If variability was agin' Cascade on the Apricot, it was for them on the Kriek. Gansberg was both joyful at the results and cagey: "It might be too good to sell," he joked. Last year's version was nothing to sniff at--it earned a bronze at the GABF. But this version is much more resonant. The cherry flavor is deeper and sweeter, bringing the beer into harmony (I found last year's a mite too sour). The '09 is made with two varieties of cherry, one sour and one sweet. It's also substantially stronger than last year's at 8.1%, but Gansberg is making "Belgian-inspired" beers. The extra strength, he believes, will appeal to NW palates. "This is everything I have aspired to in beer," Ron told me, and I can see why. The only place to get a bottle right now is at the brewery, and you might consider buying a bottle earlier rather than waiting--I don't know how long it might last. This could be the must-have beer of 2009.

2008 Cuvee (8.4%)
Cuvées are created by blending a selection of a brewery's best aged beers (the word comes from the French cuve for "cask or tank"), and Cascade's includes their tripel, with some portion aged 18 months, Flanders Red, and quadrupel. To bottle condition the beer, Gansberg added a portion of the red that still had active lactic fermentation--he didn't prime or krausen the beer. Is it redundant to call a blended beer complex? The Cuvee has a roastiness, a dry, sherry-note, vanilla, and what Gansberg called a "blue cheese" flavor that lactobacillis produce when they die (sounds gross, but sour-heads will love it). Cascade will produce no '09 Cuvee--they just didn't have enough beer to blend. If you buy a bottle, you might consider two. They're corked and will lay down for a long, long time.

From here we went through a few draft-only beers in fairly quick succession and I have more abbreviated notes on these:

• Sang Noir. It's a double red aged with bing cherries in bourbon casks. It's a beer I know many people enjoyed at the Holiday Ale Fest, but I find the bourbon clashes with the sweet and sour of the cherry and red. (Then again, I'm not a big fan of bourbon.)
• Vlad the Imp Aler. "This is like Cuvee's gigantic big brother." Indeed it is. Made with year-old sour quads (25 P), sour, spiced blond, and a soured tripel, it weighs in at 10.3% ABV. We didn't drink a lot of it, but I found it sprightly for a big beer, rich and layered, sour, and tasty. Order it if you have a chance (and aren't driving).
• Mouton Rouge. This is the Flanders Red that is the backbone for many of the beers Gansberg produces. I had it straight at the Green Dragon a month or so ago, which is my where my main recollection comes from (my palate, by the time we tried it at the brewery, was ... not fresh). The strength (7.5%) combined with the very dry tartness argues that it could be called something other than a Flanders Red. But what? A debate for another time. In any case, a lovely ale.
  

The final beer we tried was poured straight from the tank. A new tripel (I think--anyway, that's what I declared it to be when Ron asked me what I thought--I don't know that I ever did get his description), made with a different yeast than he's formerly used. It was insanely drinkable: creamy, rich, and just a touch sweet--that will diminish as the beer ages and alcohol will come forward--it's one of those beers that would please equally the novice drinker and the old hand. It will be a popular beer. (You can't actually see it in his hand, but the tripel is what owner Art Larrance is drinking in the picture at right.)

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I often affectionately describe the brewery as the laboratory of mad scientist Ron Gansberg. It's apt because messing around with age and lactobacillis has an aspect of alchemy to it. Ron has decades of experience brewing, but no one can really get experience with these kinds of beers without brewing them. Since the experiments take years to execute, it's a slow process. But it means that, year by year, batch by batch, Ron refines his technique. I have enjoyed watching the progress, and hope to continue to see what evolves. These are fascinating, wonderful beers.