Beer Sherpa Recommends: Double Mountain My Little Runaway

There's been entirely too much chat about the business of beer: let's talk about beer itself for a change.  Today's selection comes to us from Hood River, where Double Mountain founder and orchard-owner Matt Swihart has been making tasty fruit beers for several years.  His pièce de résistance is Devil's Kriek, a wild cherry ale that bubbles away under a Brettanomcyes cap over in one corner of the brewery throughout the year.  He may actually have topped himself with My Little Runaway, however, which is one of the best beers I've tried in recent memory.

Photo blatantly stolen from Ezra at the New School.

There's not a ton of info about Runaway except that it was fermented with the Ardennes yeast, made with Van and Bing cherries and "a tiny stolen blend of next year's Devil Kriek to commingle as sweet, refreshing cherry ale with the ghost of bitterness."  (Someone at the brewery has lately gotten poetic with the press releases.)  I considered trying to track down more info, but sometimes the less you know, the more you taste, so I let my mouth give me the tour.

Superficially, Runaway presents itself like a light frolic of sweetness and cherries, frothy and kissed with sweetness.  Uncareful tasters might not notice anything more and be plenty happy with that.  But there's more going on.  It's got a touch of acidity, which gives it some vinous balance (I think wine drinkers would absolutely love this beer).  A mouthful evolves in short order past the fruit into something earthy and spicy, which read to me like tannins.  (Cherry pits?)  A hint of leathery Brettanomcyes accentuates this quality and also dries the beer out as you swallow.  It is a wild ale, but just barely--and in this I think there's a lesson. Breweries often let their wild beasts roam too freely, and the aggressively sour and/or dry beers that result are too much for all except the most inveterate sour-heads. If all wild ales were at this level of intensity, though, they could find a mass audience. (Maybe the fact that the label nowhere identifies it as such is telling.) It's hard to imagine who wouldn't enjoy this beer. 

There has been a lot of talk about brewery ownership structures and "fussy" beers lately, and My Little Runaway is instructive for another reason.  It may well have mass appeal, but it's the kind of beer that's probably almost impossible to make on a mass scale.  It employs whole fruit, which is a pain in the ass to work with in large volumes, but more importantly gets its secret ingredient from an aging wild ale, the king of the unscalable beers.  You might be able to find a workaround to get a beer something like this if you wanted to brew 2 million barrels, but those spicy tannins, that delicate dryness--I can't imagine how you could mass-market that.  Little breweries often make the best beer because some of the best beer can't be made in giant volumes. 

Do yourself a favor and track down My Little Runaway (bottles are supposed to be available in PDX, but if you happen to be in the Gorge, make a special trip to Double Mountain)--it will remind you of just how good beer can be.

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"Beer Sherpa Recommends" is an irregular feature.  In this fallen world, when the number of beers outnumber your woeful stomach capacity by several orders of magnitude, you risk exposing yourself to substandard beer.  Worse, you risk selecting substandard beer when there are tasty alternatives at hand.  In this terrible jungle of overabundance, wouldn't it be nice to have a neon sign pointing to the few beers among the crowd that really stand out?  A beer sherpa, if you will, to guide you to the beery mountaintop.  I don't profess to drink all the beers out there, but from time to time I stumble across a winner and when I do, I'll pass it along to you.

All the New Beers

The release of new beers has an unpredictable quality.  Some years it seems like breweries collectively stand pat, while in others they issue a torrent of fresh suds.  This year is shaping up to be a torrent.  No single beer tells much the tale of the market, but if you look at them collectively, you can start to get a sense of where things are headed.  Saisons had their day, tarts, black IPAs, gluten-free, and organics.  So what's new in 2013.  Cue the ray of sunshine and the angelic choir, because it appears to be session ales. I have been flogging the joys of small beers for half a decade, and even, in one bright, shiny moment, helped to get a festival of sessions off the ground.  So obviously I'm psyched about this boomlet. So let's have a look at what's out there. 

Redhook Audible Ale and Deschutes River Ale
I received bottles of these beers on successive days in the chill of February.  I don't totally understand the superstructure around Audible's release--it has something to do with sports broadcaster Dan Patrick--but the beer is straightforward enough.  A lithe 4.7% beer, it is "brewed for crushability with lots of flavor," in the inexplicable language of the brewery.  ("Crush" apparently means "drink.")  Deschutes River Ale is just 4%, and the brewery even goes so far as to admit it's a session ale--no shilly-shallying around.

The contrast between them is the difference between old-school American craft and old-school English bitter.  While many breweries have shifted with the times, Redhook is a bit of a throw-back brewery, making very clean, bright ales that ignore the IBU arms race.  Audible is much in this vein.  Deschutes, by contrast, is a dead ringer for a nice bitter, with a rounded body, biscuity malt flavor, and bright citrusy-crisp hops (Cascades and Crystal).  I even thought I detected a touch of diacetyl, which brewer Brian Faivre confirmed: "We are targeting a low level of diacetyl, 30-40 ppb, as we feel that it lends a positive flavor attribute to this beer, similar to that nice character found in traditional English style ales."

It will come as no surprise to readers that my palate inclines toward the Deschutes.  Audible is a bit less complex than I would like, and there's a hint of roast in there that puts me off.  Deschutes River Ale, though, is a beer I would love to find on cask in a pub where I could spend a couple hours getting to know it.

Widmer Brothers Columbia Common
The name of this beer is instructive.  "Common" is, of course, the non-trademarked reference to San Francisco steam beer.  They get the hybrid character by using their regular yeast and a lager strain.  (Steam beer was made by fermenting lager yeasts warm in the age before refrigeration reached the wilds of California.)  The Columbia refers to a type of hop bred simultaneously with Willamette.  Budweiser was looking for a domestic replacement for imported hops and a couple of varieties were bred largely from Fuggle stock to grow well in the US.  You know how this ends: Bud chose Willamette, consigning Columbia to the scrap heap of forgotten strains. 

In fact, Columbia Common uses a variety of hops--the Widmers' standard Alchemy blend for bittering, and the sisters, Willamette and Columbia, together in later additions.  For the hop nerd, this is slightly frustrating--I'd love it to be a single-hop beer so I could get a sense of the flavor.  But there's no arguing with the results; it's really a wonderful beer.  I had it at the Rose Garden first, and it tasted really fruity, making me think the hops were quite a bit different from their Fugglish sister.  But in subsequent samplings from the bottle, I've found the "grassy, spicy" flavors the brewery promised.  In fact, the hops are a lot more German in character than English, and I was reminded of some of the helles lagers I had in Bavaria.  It's got a wonderful copper color (Widmer used chocolate malt for color but didn't get any roast, just color), and is a perfectly crushable 4.7%.  I really enjoy this beer and wish it would stick around through the summer.

Other Releases
Not all beers are sessions.  BridgePort has a new chocolate cherry stout called Bear Hug that is every bit as decadent and dessert-like as it sounds.  It comes in a 22 ounce bottle, so I'd be sure to invite a friend along before you pop the cork.  Full Sail has their latest vintage of Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout out.  Every year, the brewery alternates between a big porter and a big stout they age in bourbon casks, and every year the vintage is on one side or the other of excellent.  This year's is spectacular--akin to one they had out back in 2010 (maybe?).  An amazing balance of chocolaty roast blending into vanilla-y bourbon.  Double Mountain has its usual rotation of new one-offs, and I'd like to draw your attention to Project 48, a double IPA that really sings.  For me, double IPAs work best when the sweetness of the malt harmonizes with the flavors of the hops to accentuate bitterness and frame the lush aromas.  It's hard to pull off, which is why so few double IPAs stick around.  Project 48 does that in spades.  I think you probably will only find it in Hood River, but if you're up for the drive, you could do worse.

Big Beer, Monastic Beer, Irreverent Beer

Beer news of the world:

1.  How big is too big?
If the Department of Justice has its say, this is:

For more than a decade, the world’s biggest brewers have been swallowing competitor after competitor as they grapple with slowing growth in many markets. Now, the Obama administration wants to cut them off.

The Justice Department on Thursday sued to block Anheuser-Busch InBev’s $20.1 billion deal to buy Grupo Modelo, the Mexican maker of Corona beer, saying that the merger would cement Anheuser-Busch InBev’s control of the market and enable it to continue to raise beer prices. Grupo Modelo is the third-biggest beer company in the United States.

 I'm with the DOJ.  It's not just the size of the beer companies themselves--you have to consider the influence they would wield over hop and malt suppliers, distributors, and retailers.  Half the US market is enough InBud.  Let Modelo go.


2.  Engelszell Stift gets its button.
We were alerted a year ago to the news that an Austrian Trappist monastery had applied for official designation as a Trappist brewery.   I checked back a few times to see if the International Trappist Association had approved, but it's apparently a slooooow process.  (Monks have never been known as speedy deciders.)  I'm not sure when the approval happened--I must have missed the ITA's tweet--but they're in.  Update your records--there are now eight certified Trappist breweries.


3.  Revelations does not mention beer.
This cracked me up: yesterday Double Mountain released a new beer called White Rider of Conquest.  The description:

Revelations, Chap. 6:1: And I saw when Coughlin opened one of the beers, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. 6:2: And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a beer; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, with his Ale. 8.7% ABV, 29BU

The actual text is sadly less interesting.  Coughlin, incidentally, is Matt, a DM brewer.  I believe the text, however, was amended by devilish Matt Swihart.

Reviews: Red Rising, Westvleteren 12

One thing you have to say about the beer bloggers conference: insanely good beer. At every moment, in and out of sessions, someone was handing you a beer. Things got rolling in the first half hour, when Angelo started waving a bottle around in the universal, "what some?" gesture. We were at the back of the room in a scene that recalled my school days, sniggering and whispering and generally goofing off. He might have been proffering a Budweiser, but I was happy to thrust my glass forward. By way of communicating what the chestnut beer in my glass was, he handed over the cap: Westvleteren 12. And we're off.

I'm not going to review every beer I tried over the weekend (and maybe I shouldn't be reviewing beers at all--the general consensus among bloggers held that reviews are mostly boring) but a few can't be missed. Here they are.

Westvleteren 12
This is easily the most coveted beer in the geek-o-sphere. In order to secure a bottle you must travel to the abbey of Sint Sixtus in Westvleteren, Belgium (or get one from someone who did). The brothers don't distribute. So perhaps it's the rarity or maybe the beatific setting, but Westy 12 has this reputation: ambrosia on earth, god's tears, holy water. (Behold the love.) Styled a quad in the literature, I was shocked to see that it was brown. This was not the only surprise. Angelo said he thought the bottle (secured via eBay) was three years old, and it definitely exhibited the qualities of age. But beyond that, it was very much like an English barleywine. It has a bread pudding aroma with caramel and alcohol. The palate is deep and figgy, with notes of caramel and cola, boozy in the fashion of Thai Mekong whiskey. I wouldn't call it especially complex, though. There was little in the way of yeast-contributed complexity. Perhaps as a Westy unbeliever I am not a reliable witness; for me the beer was not made blood. I wouldn't turn down another pour, though, don't get me wrong. Call it a solid B.

Deschutes The Stoic
Speaking of quads, we've got a new one in town. Last week, Deschutes released a beer that's been in the works awhile, an 11% quad aged in rye and pinot barrels, spiked with sugar and pomegranate molasses, and aged and refermented four times. ("Stoic" is an interesting choice. A Greek philosophy holding that man should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief. As one observer said, 'pomegranate molasses--what's stoic about that?") My main reaction is that it seems a bit green. It's still sweet and a bit rummy. There's a mild phenolic note. It is exceedingly smooth, though, and there are no higher alcohols to make it sharp or prickly--which does make it an easy-sippin' 11% beer. I would love to see it grow past this youthful stage and into a more mature...stoic one. I'll get back to you in a year.

Hopworks Galactic Red
It may be that Hopworks will transition slowly into the Imperial brewery. They seem to really hit their stride at about 9% alcohol. I missed Galactic Red when it orbited earth last year, so this was my first opportunity. With big beers, the key is to create clean, clear flavors that don't fuzz out like sounds on an overmatched speaker. It's easy to add intensity; hard to produce clean, bell-like notes. Galactic Red nails it. It's got a candy-like malt base that offers just enough of a foundation for the hop assault, which is vivid, varied, and violent. In a kaleidoscope of hop flavors, you pass from earthy to spicy to piney to citrusy. Like a mushroom trip for hop flavors. They are distinct, though, and a joy to behold--in that eyelids-pasted-back kind of way. An A- any day of the week, and possibly an A if I'm feeling good.

Cigar City Tocobaga Red Ale
One of the hottest breweries in the country is Cigar City, from Tampa, Florida. They are brewing in the classic "International extreme" mode--a sure way to attract geek attention. (Though their list of beers is longer than your arm, so who knows what lies at the heart of their vision.) I approached the beer with a hearty skepticism. Sure, Floridians think it's good beer, but what do Floridians know? Turns out: something. This was a very nice beer, and more to the point, something fresh and new (Alan might take note). The red was, like Hopworks', based on a candyish base, maybe just a touch of caramel. The hopping though, was unique. It was very long and woody, resinous, and cedary. "Woody" doesn't always mean spicy, but here it does. Spicy-oily. And for those who think things must be tame in the South, this beer is a nice refutation. It was very big and very bold. Perhaps just a notch behind Hopworks, but what the hell, call it an A-.

Double Mountain Black Blood
Just a word or two on the robust porter produced from the cherries we picked on Kriek Kamp. Charlie Devereux brought up a growler for the conference, and I got to sample a splash. The main thing is that it was an intense, slightly disturbing color. "Black blood" was right on the money. My palate was a bit shattered when I tried it, but I recall thinking of desert--chocolate, cherry, and a twist of tart. You probably won't have a chance to try it unless you're passing through Hood River in the near future. Still, it was a cool beer.

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Apologies again to Matt Wiater, whose photo I've stolen. Matt was sitting next to me when we tried the Westvleteren, and his photography is always sumptuous (whereas mine is blurry and poorly-composed).

Indiginous American Brewing: the Double Mountain Example

Everyone needs to write a report about what they did over the summer, right? I went to Kriek Kamp. (No sing-a-longs or s'mores, but we did have the rough equivalent of the sixer of beer stashed in the creek.) The event was aimed at regular folk, not media (necessarily), and it revolved around making the annual Double Mountain Kriek. After a brewers dinner where we tried a vertical tasting of three commercial Belgian examples and the Double Mountain vintages--including the last three gallons of the '08--we went cherry picking and helped with the crush. In fact, mother nature was fickle this year, and brewer Matt Swihart's cherries weren't ready. So he brewed up a batch of porter, and the cherries we picked--at a nearby field--went toward sweetening it. The process was identical to the one they'll repeat in a week with the Kriek, though.

I wish every brewery did something like this. You get a very good sense of how a brewery runs, how the owners think about business, and how the brewer brews. From the outside, Double Mountain looks incredibly methodical. When they opened their doors, the menu was in place, they had a stellar line of beers ready, and Charlie Devereux almost instantly secured handles in Portland. They had really done their work, and they debuted like a five-year-old brewery. It was therefore really interesting to see that brewer Matt Swihart is more of an instinctive brewer. Some are improvisational, some methodical, some technical--Matt's instinctive. Charlie, meanwhile, was flexible and relaxed, despite having to orchestrate a new event with lots of changing, moving parts. It was like they invited us into their house, and it was a total blast.

Beyond the fun, though, Double Mountain is doing something rare and possibly unique in America, and Kriek Kamp brought it home. In the age of industrialization and globalization, every region is a good region to brew. That's actually a good thing--it means breweries have ready access to perfectly fresh, clean ingredients, and don't have to wait for the season to change before they can brew. But it also means most breweries are divorced from their own weather, their terroir.

Double Mountain is sited between Mounts Hood and Adams (hence the brewery's name), and in between them is one of America's premier fruit-producing regions. About ten minutes outside of Hood River, Matt owns forty acres cultivated largely in orchards. When he bought the land, it was planted with red delicious apples, but he replaced those with cherries, pears, and peaches--the former and latter with an eye to beer. (The orchard business surprised me on two counts: you can have a tree up and producing in 4-5 years, and fruit farmers regularly pull out trees and replace them with different ones.)

The idea of harvesting the cherries to go in the beer is both a throwback to a distant past in brewing, but maybe also forward-looking. One of the great contributions of craft brewing to the beer world--at least in the US--is the element of localness. The Northwest has a big advantage in this, since we have the hop fields so close. But breweries across the country have incorporated local ingredients into their beers (blueberries in Maine, maple syrup in Vermont, Door County cherries in Wisconsin). Even our practice of aging beers in bourbon barrels is purely American. I have long been fascinated by what it means to produce "indigenous" beer, and a central element is harnessing what's around you. Eventually, Matt hopes to use his peaches in a sour beer, and he is toying--not very seriously--with the idea of a perry.

I look forward to the day when there's a Peche Party to accompany Kriek Kamp. August, perhaps?

In Hood River

In lieu of words, here are a few photos from our tour through the beer world in and around Hood River. (These are from the iPhone; it does a composite rendering of three photos, which gives them a strange look sometimes. Better photos, from my camera, are on the way.)

Charlie Devereux, regarding cherries that will go in a Double Mountain robust porter. (This isn't brewer Matt Swihart's orchard.)


Logsdon Farmhouse Ales, outside of Hood River. Note actual farmhouse (that's the mash tun, lower left.)


If you're standing next to the mash tun looking out, this is your view. That's Mount Hood, for those outside Oregon.


Dave Logsdon, the man behind both Logsdon Farmhouse Ales and Wyeast Yeast Labs, went to enormous energy to import a cherry tree from Belgium back to the US. This is that tree. In five years, its descendants will be producing cherries for his ales.



This is Double Mountain brewer Matt Swihart's land. Cherries from his orchards go in his annual kriek. (The latest vintage, brewed with last year's cherries, was just released in Hood River.) His crop is about ten days from maturity.




A view from the highest point of Swihart's orchard, looking north(ish). Mt Adams, one of the Double Mountains (Hood is the other) is hiding behind the clouds.

A Taste of the Past: Cluster Hops

We spend a lot of time thinking about beers of the past, but this almost always means Europe's past. If you want to keep your historical excursions on this continent, one place to start is the venerable Cluster hop, a strain that goes back as far as many of the world's venerated strains. Those of you who went to the Single Hop Fest at Amnesia this weekend were treated to one tour-de-force example, Double Mountain's Clusterf#%k. But we'll come to that in due course.

First, a bit on the history of American hops. The first British settlers, beer-oriented as they were, had hops in the ground by 1629 and there was a commercial market for them by 1646. These were English hops--or possibly English and Dutch--but they were pretty quickly crossed with local natives. (I doubt anyone knows if this was intentional or accidental.) What ultimately emerged from these early crops was Cluster. By the turn of the 20th century nearly every hop grown in the country was Cluster (96%). After Prohibition, Clusters continued to dominate; in 1935, they occupied 90% of the market.

American hops weren't prized; they had high alphas, high cohumulone, and were regarded as pungent and harsh. Brewers used American hops for bitter charges and then scented and flavored their beers with the sweet nectar of low-alpha, low-cohumulone hops from Europe. For 350 years, American brewers bought in to the notion that their local hops, which definitely differed from European hops, were inferior. As that all changed, mainly when American craft brewers began to discover that local hops were indeed tasty and aromatic, and the Cluster hop--the original "C" hop--faded from sight.

I was dimly aware of all this history and assumed that one of the reasons no one knew US hops were so good was because Clusters lacked their cousins' virtues. Fast forward to Saturday, when I tried Double Mountain's Clusterf#%k, an IPA that uses the old hop in a way Henry Weinhard never dreamed of. With 75 IBUs of lip-smacking hoppiness, CF didn't nestle the hops in a subtle admixture of malt and yeast. No, this beer is all Clusters--and what a wonderful opportunity to see the old hop shine. It has all the American character you would expect, with intense citrus that was a dead ringer for passionfruit. It kicks off a lot of tropical fruit essence as well, suggesting mango or guava. It is every bit as sticky and vivid as you expect from US hops--and distinctive, too.

The Cascade will probably be the American hop for the next 350 years; Cascade Brewing sent a pale saturated in their namesake hop that was a perfect demonstration of why it's so beloved. It's got a pure, clean character full of floral, citrus life. Few hops anywhere can match if for elegance and versatility. Yet the Cluster shows that America has long produced great hops--if only we'd known to make beer in which you could actually taste them.

Obviously, you should try to make it out to Hood River for a pint of the Clusterf#%k. I doubt seriously Double Mountain wants a fourth IPA regular in their lineup.

Devil's Kriek and the Joy of Vintages

Beer and wine aren't radically different--both are mildly alcoholic, social beverages that go well with meals--but the people who make them are. Wine makers are steely, artistic types who don't mind impressionistic results. They have some control over aggregate circumstances--where they plant their grapes, which kinds, how they tend them--but the end product comes from the sky. One becomes a wine maker knowing that her company's product will never be the same from one year to the next.

Brewers, of course, prize precision. Although they must contend with the natural environment, they are not controlled by it. They can easily adjust pH, IBUs, and malt bills to adjust for the changes mother nature throws at them.

In much the same way, beer drinkers like consistency. They know that a Pliny the Elder is going to have that insane, piney hop kick every time they buy a bottle. Wine-drinkers appear to love the hunt. They track vintages and wineries, and know that a bottle of Erath pinot from 2005 and 2006 won't taste the same--and which is better.

This is why I admire the annual experiments conducted by Matt Swihart and Ron Gansberg as they make their annual fruit beers. Like wine makers, both are dependent on the quality of the fruit, and neither can replicate beers year to year. Ron has the advantage of being able to select the finest cherry and apricot crops he can find; even still, his beers vary markedly year-to-year. (Two years ago, the Apricot was amazing, but last year, the Kriek was the big winner. I have yet to sample the current vintages.) Matt Swihart has even less control: he uses cherries grown in his own orchard. Like a wine-maker, fruit is destiny, and no two vintages will taste the same.

Last Thursday, Double Mountain debuted their new vintage and I scampered down to Belmont Station to have a pour. Matt is still tinkering with the recipe and process for Devil's Kriek, and in addition to the variance in cherries, the base beer was quite a bit different this year. The original kriek was based on Devil's Kitchen, a golden strong ale; this year, Matt made a brown ale base. The two strands of cherry beers brewed in Belgium are lambics, made on a pale base, and the red/brown beers of Flanders. (You can see it pretty clearly in the photo at right.) Beyond that, he also used about twice the amount of Bing cherries as he did last year.

Yet there's also the matter of the crop. Recall that last year the Northwest produced a record cherry crop, "producing one of the best crops of cherries I have ever seen in my decade as a gentleman farmer," as Matt said. This allowed them to leave the fruit on the tree longer, allowing them to ripen to more intense flavor, create more sugar, and darken the tannin-rich skins.

The combination of great fruit and the new brown ale recipe? Amazing. Darker malts work especially well with cherries. The combination of pit-bitterness and tannin from the skins pull out the nutty, chocolaty flavors from the dark malts. The cherry's flavors marry perfectly with wild-yeast sourness. Together, the deeper, more resonant malts and bright, sharp sour are a perfect combination. Other fruit works with soured ales, but there's a reason breweries come back to cherries. This year's batch of Devil's Kriek hits all these notes. The fruit is especially fresh and intense, and I imagine this will be a rare vintage. Matt sours Devil's Kriek with brettanomyces, but poured cold, the sour isn't particularly funky. As it warms, some of the barnyard aromas begin to emerge, and the sourness softens from bell-like sharpness into a more organic, funky sour.

(I would like to host a symposium some day where I put Matt, Ron, and Rob Tod on a panel together. Matt is a brett man, but eschews lactobacillus. Ron is lacto man, eschewing brett. And Rob is a spontaneous man, daring to dance with pediococcus and other bacteria and funk. All right gentlemen, discuss.)

I wasn't a huge fan of last year's batch, though it pained me to admit it. Of course, that's the nature of the beast. Some years, Matt will spend 14+ months growing fruit and brewing and aging beer only to make an average beer. On the other hand, some years will be like this, when those 14 months produce a world-class beer. The beer fan in me wishes he could figure out a way to make it predictable, but that's not the way with fruit beer. Like crops, some are better than others. We have to live in the moment and enjoy the bounty while it's available. Matt says this batch will be on tap at Double Mountain regularly, probably for the better part of a year. You can also find it at the Portland International Beerfest this weekend. Enjoy it while you can.

Devil's Kriek, Preview of Coming Attractions

I was going to post my thoughts about this year's vintage of Devil's Kriek today, but I was waiting for the brewing notes. In politics, if you release news on Friday afternoon, it's called the "Friday news dump"--that's where you bury unwanted information. So I'll save it for Monday. But meantime, it appears to still be on at Belmont Station, and for you Rose City types, I strongly recommend you have a pour. Your next chance will be PIB next week, but thereafter it will be scarce. Obviously, I thought highly of it.

Puckerfest kicks off today, and Jolly Pumpkin kicks off the fun, so a trip to Belmont's probably in order in any case, right?

Meantime, you can go read Matt Swihart's comments about the beer at the Double Mountain blog.

GQ Lauds Double Mountain

With a hat tip to the Beer Goddess, I offer you a link to another "best of" list. I'm constantly railing against these things as fools' errands, but in this case, it's worth noting that they only selected two non-bottled beer, and one was Double Mountain's Irish Stout. (An odd choice, given its rarity, but who's arguing?) The list includes international beers regularly available in the US and has a lot of the great hits: Saison Dupont, Orval, Rodenbach, Westvleteren Abt 12, Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout, etc. They threw in a number of well-regarded American brews, and actually mixed things up a bit. The list tilts heavily toward Belgian-style beers (many brewed here). You always can have beefs with these things, but as lists go, it's fine. This is what they said about the beer:

Why do we import Guinness when we have this right here? Brewed in Oregon, this has that creaminess you love in Guinness, but with real flavor—pleasantly roasty, with a hint of dark-chocolate bitterness.

That they decided to single out Double Mountain indicates that its reputation for good beer is growing. Oregon got pretty well stiffed--Rogue was the only other brewery making the cut. But congrats to Double Mountain. This is actually pretty cool. An easier way to scan the list is here.

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PHOTO: GQ | Share

Reviews: Widmer Deadlift and Double Mountain Porter A Go Go

You might imagine that a 5% porter and a double IPA have precious little in common and normally, I'd agree with you. But there is something surprising that unites these two beers, and so I've grouped them together. (Originally it was going to be Deadlift and Highland Ambush, but plans change.) Through a strange combination of hops, malt, and yeast, both have managed to produce interesting berry flavors in their beer.

Double Mountain Porter A Go Go
Double Mountain released Porter A Go Go a week or two ago, and I tried it at the Horse Brass. I'll give more detailed notes in a moment, but what really intrigued me was a predominant blackberry note. Sometimes we say a beer is fruity or has "raisin" or "plum" notes. These are metaphors to hint at the kind of flavors we detect. But when I say there was blackberry in Porter A Go Go, I don't mean it metaphorically. It was a pure, clear note. (It wasn't, however, sweet or dominant, more like the way blackberry tastes when its baked in a scone.) I shot DM's Matt Swihart an email, and he wrote back at length about the beer.

I’m a giant fan of porters, they don’t get the attention they deserve, and often end up being pretty timid from a large brewer market perspective or way too big into the stout range from the little guys. I found myself seeking a rich, dark beer, ruby black translucent with a noticeable hop nose, yet not zealot-hopped, or accused of being a new beer style with black or India in the title. I wanted the alcohol level to be more moderate than typical beers I produce, as this beer was designed specifically so I could have a couple at the end of the day in our pub in Hood River. The beer had to have some crystal malt sweetness to balance the roast, so I could throw in my hop back desires (also known as large amounts of whole hops). The hops are US challengers, which I find to have a tad of that US citrus, which can be a blessing and a curse, of course. But UK hops can be quite variable in quality, I find, so as a brewer 2 hours from Yakima , I tend to brew with what I can drive to between taco shack breaks.

I think the blackberry note you are getting is likely more from our Abby yeast strain. I underpitched the brew to drive the esters up a tad, but kept the temperature of the ferment lower. I’ve been having some good success with that lately. Could also be a combination with the dark malts, again that I didn’t want a giant roast presence so you can achieve some greater subtlety at lower levels.

I, too, am a giant porter fan. Porter was one of the first beer styles I brewed, and one of the first I consider when I arrive in a new brewpub. Porter is a flexible style, with version ranging from the sweet, gentle and nutty to the smoky, burly, and bitter (which Denver styles "brown" or "robust"). I think the style actually runs more along a continuum, and Porter A Go Go is one of those versions that falls just in the middle.

On the one hand, it's a gentle 5% and has that sweet, light body you like in a nice brown porter. The nature of the sweetness is characterized by that blackberry note, which I think takes something, in addition to the yeast, from the chocolate malts. On the other hand, it's a pretty hoppy beer, and the bitterness plays on the roastiness of the malts and gives it more of the charcoal quality you get in robust porters. Not your average porter by any means, and a beer you should try to track down. On a day like today--low forties, drizzly--it's really hits the spot. I might have hopped it a tad less, so on the ratings scale, I'd go B+ (though of course, that extra hop oomph is exactly what will recommend it to some drinkers.)


Widmer Deadlift
If Widmer hadn't lost a batch of Deadlift to a power outage, I wouldn't have known about it before receiving a four-pack in the mail. (Yes, federales, I was comped.) A strangely stealthy release. What we have in Deadlift is a further evolution of the Widmer style. House character can be achieved in a lot of different ways, but against all expectations, Widmer seems to be doing it through their use of unusual hops--especially Summit, Citra, and Nelson Sauvin. And Nelson Sauvin are leading the charge.

Deadlift utilizes four hops: Cascade, Alchemy, and Willamette--but the signature comes from the Nelsons. This is a hop the brewery started working with in it's "Nelson" trials (Half Nelson, Full Nelson), and which it later used in Drifter. Nelson Sauvin is a very distinctive hop and one for which I have no great love. The brewery describes its character variously as citrusy, or berry-like, and I have heard others call it piney. All true, but my nose finds some chemical that smells and tastes like sweat. Based on the commercial and critical success of Drifter, I'm in the minority, though, so take that for what it's worth.

So how do the Nelsons work in Deadlift? Widmer's approach is interesting. it comes in at only 70 IBUs, which for a Double IPA is pretty low. Instead of bitterness, they've gone for a tea-like infusion of hop flavor. From the moment it splashed into my tulip glass (beautifully, too--a sunny, bright gold), I could smell the Nelsons. They come across as more orange-citrus, but there's that characteristic Nelson-ness. The beer's not super strong, but a lot of volatile alcohol vents from the beer, too, lifting those aroma compounds, almost like wasabi. On the tongue, that Nelson-ness isn't so pronounced. The flavor they describe as berry I might call spruce, too. As the glass warms, the bitterness fades back a bit more and it almost gets too sweet--though the alcohol just keeps it in balance.

Not totally sure what the reaction is going to be to this beer. Because of the Nelsons, I'm having a hard time rating it. The early reviews on BeerAdvocate are positive, though.


Update. More reviews of Deadlift: It's Pub Night, 999 Beers, Portland Beer and Music, Bulls and Brew.

Addendum, 2/12/10. Sally got into the Deadlift last night and drank two (!). I snuck a couple of swallows and while the beer keeps me at arm's length personally, thanks to those Nelson Sauvin hops, I became more and more impressed. If it didn't say "double IPA" on the label, I would have a hard time characterizing it. There are ways in which it bears some resemblance to strong Belgian ales: full effervescence, the volatile alcohol nose, even the deep golden-orange color. It definitely isn't cut from the same cloth as most double IPAs, and this is to its credit.
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Double Mountain Fa La La La La

[Note: this was written for and published at The Brew Site on Sunday as a part of Jon's Advent Beer Calendar. I'm posting it here because I like people to be able to do review searches.]

By Christmas standards, it’s not a long tradition, but naming your beer after a seasonal song has become, well, habitual, anyway. Double Mountain selected the refrain from Deck the Halls: Fa La La La La. A nice, ecumenical choice, but one has to ask what some of these lyrics really mean. “Troll the ancient yuletide carol”? Can you troll a carol? But I digress.

For those visiting Oregon from lands where they believe we only make extremely hoppy, intense beers, Fa La La La La (”Fa” hereafter) would tend to seem like good evidence. It is a beer characterized first, middle, and last by the copious additions of Centennial hops. But here’s the thing, sometimes crazy hopping makes for lovely beer. A couple weeks ago, I went through Hood River and picked up a growler of Fa. Back in Portland, I poured a bit out into winter goblets for folks. Uniformly, they took one whiff and started smiling. A tipple and they kept smiling. There’s something so fresh about the beer that it’s irresistible—like a freshly cut Doug Fir sitting in front of the roaring fire. Great stuff.

Brief stats: Brewed with organic Pilsner and Munich malt, imported crystal malts, and Centennial hops. 7.6% ABV, 83 BU

Over at Beervana, I rate my beers with a letter grade. One could make the argument that this is a straight A beer, but I tend to grade low to give breweries a chance to tinker and tweak up their score. Call this a very Oregonian A-.

Advent Beer Calendar

Every year, Jon Abernathy at The Brew Site does an Advent Beer Calendar. For the past three (four?) years, he's selected a different holiday beer for each day and reviewed it. As a testament to just how many holiday beers there are, he doesn't re-review anything. This year, he sent out a few invites to bloggers to write a review, and interestingly, most of us selected local beers. Here's Stan Hieronymus (New Mexico), Lew Bryson (Pennsylvania), Jay Brooks (California), and Lisa Morrison, who went against the grain and picked a California beer. My contribution is Double Mountain's Fa La La La La, which you can read here.

Double Mountain Devil's Kriek

Beer is local. Or was, anyway, before industrialization. Styles emerged from available ingredients, local culture, weather, water--a host of circumstances. The Zenne Valley is reputed to be so hospitible to spontaneous fermentation because local fruit trees (now mostly gone) housed tasty wild yeasts. The monks of Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint Remy brewed beer in the sixteenth century from barley and hops grown on abbey grounds. Bohemian pilsners and West Coast pale ales wouldn't be recognizeable without native hops. But then the industrial revolution made it possible for breweries to receive ingredients from thousands of miles away; its arrival meant the loss of indigenous styles and the homogenization of national brewing.

But now we are following our tracks backward, and that's what makes Double Mountain's Devil's Kriek experiment especially exciting. Made with cherries grown in brewer Matt Swihart's orchards, they return us to that time of specific locality. A kriek with Rainier cherries?--must be from the American Northwest. Ah, but the experiment also shows the drawbacks of depending on specific crops. Limiting yourself to a single orchard means living and dying by the vagaries of your fruit. Forget consistency; like wine, each year's kriek will exhibit the qualities of the cherries. Some will be better than others, and people who admire the product will admire this variability.

About seven thousand people showed up at Belmont Station on Friday to get a glass of the '09 vintage (made of '08 cherries), and I was among them. (The line was seriously insane, stretching out the door and down the sidewalk to the corner. Fortunately, we got there by 5:50 and beat the worst of the crowd.) Here's what I thought.

Devil's Kriek
Although I got the lowdown on the beer from Matt Swihart at Belmont Station--he was there handing out cherries from his orchard--he actually blogged about the brewing process on Friday.

"The base for our Krieks is a blend of three batches of a strong golden-colored beer, each fermented with a different yeast: our house ale yeast, which is of Belgian origin; our house Kölsch yeast; and the notorious wild yeast Brettanomyces. We’ve used Brettanomyces before, in the Red Devil, the IRB and in last year’s Devil’s Kriek. “Brett” contribues subtle fruitiness and barnyard character (think of smells in an old barn on a cold day) at low-level intensity and a horse blanket character (think of smells in a horse barn on a very hot day) at high intensity. Brett is also a component of many spontaneously-fermented French wines, as has legions of both fans and detractors in the winemaking world.

"Devil’s Kriek was held on the cherries for 9 months, then transferred and stored cool at 34F for the remaining 3 months. The Rainier Kriek sat on cherries for the entire 12 month process at cellar temperatures ranging from 50F to 75F. The warmer ferment on the fruit allowed the Brett to assert itself more fully, driving the acidity lower and kicking out a stronger wild-yeast character. We brewed 20 barrels of Devil’s Kriek in a regular fermenter, along with 3 barrels of Rainier Kriek in a mobile mini-fermenter that was originally in service as a yeast propagation tank at Widmer."

The beer is a massive 9%, similar to the sours Ron Gansberg brews--a decision I don't fully understand. Most of the Belgian sours, and particularly the fruit lambics, run about 5%. In my experience, this allows the more subtle and volatile essences of the fruit to express themselves. The force of flavor is in no way diminished in beers of even 4% or less; and unlike other elements of beer, sour doesn't depend on alcohol or malt. Of course, Gansberg's 2008 Apricot Ale had one of the most lush aromas I've ever encountered, and he uses a tripel as his base, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. (And wouldn't that be shocking?)

As you can see in the photo, Rainier Kriek drew very little color from the fruit; it's also a lot cloudier than the Devil's, which had a pinot-like clarity and depth of hue (though the color's all bing). Mostly the Rainier Kriek was characterized by sourness--if the cherries contributed anything, it was just at the threshold of identification. (This isn't too surprising--Rainier cherries are in no way assertive. They have a gentle cherry flavor but mostly a neutral sweetness. Cherries for people who don't like cherries.) The sour was lovely, though. I asked Matt what strain of brettanomyces he used and whether it was some kind of mild strain. (No.) Brett can get pretty funky, but not here. I found it gently sour and almost a little salty. Somehow it retained some residual sweetness, too, and the body was thicker than I expected from a brett-soured ale. A nice, quaffable beer, if such a thing can be said about a 9% sour ale. Call it a B+ on the patented rating scale.

The Devil's Kriek has a candy nose with an undercurrent of chocolate and almost no sour. The flavor is surprising; as in the nose there's almost no sourness. Instead the fruit contributes the beer's two main notes, a subdued cherry and a bitter, tannic note that I assume came from the pits. As it warms, the bitter note diminishes and a bit more of the cherry comes out. Appropriately, it's fairly dry and not at all cloying--the brettanomyces have taken care of any stray sugars that might have been floating around. I suppose you can intuit the size of the beer by the mouthfeel, but the alcohol isn't especially obvious.

"Not especially obvious" could be the three-word bullet for Devil's Kriek. It's a subtle, refined beer, and toward the end of the glass I was appreciating its wine-like character. But since I had the 2008 version in my head--I recall a tour-de-force of both sour and cherry intensity--I found it a bit underwhelming. Call it a B-.

Based on my discussions with Ron Gansberg, fruit is hard to work with. If you're not a tinkerer, forget it. My guess is that Matt is already adapting. He said he'll leave this year's fruit on the tree for a couple weeks longer so it ripens more. This should give the beer a more intense cherry flavor and allow him to take the fruit off sooner so it doesn't extract as much from the pits. But of course, that's if the fruit cooperates.

Still, I encourage everyone to track this beer down and have a glass. There aren't very many products like it in the world, and it's a rare treat to have a local brewer willing to put this much time and effort into any beer. Give it time--in a few years it could emerge as an Oregon classic. Plus, you need to fix it in your mind so that next year you have a basis for comparison.

Pucker up for the Devil

Craft Beer Month takes one of its finer turns beginning tomorrow as Belmont Station kicks off "Puckerfest," a weeklong celebration of sour beers. The inaugural event is tomorrow, starting at six. I'll go ahead an excerpt Double Mountain's entire listing here:

Devil’s Kriek Release/Puckerfest
Friday, July 10, 6-9pm
Belmont Station,
4500 SE Stark, Portland

It’s an honor for us to kick off Puckerfest at Belmont Station with the release of this year’s Devil’s Kriek, our Belgian-inspired ale brewed with cherries from [brewer] Matt [Swihart]’s orchard in Odell. Matt will be on hand to give a short talk, and to share some cherries from this year’s harvest. We’ll also have a quarter-barrel of Rainier Kriek, a super-limited sister brew made with Rainiers instead of Bings. This is an event not to be missed. Check back later this week for a blog post from Matt with more detail on the brewing process, tasting notes and whatnot.

Last year I got all of a couple mouthfuls of Double Mountain's Kriek, and that was enough for me to strongly consider awarding it the coveted Satori Award. This year's version is going be different, but I've been anticipating it for a year. That there will be a bonus kriek on the side means I'm likely to be there by 5:45 just to make sure I don't miss the tasty goodness.

No idea what's on tap this year for Puckerfest, but it's always good. Adjust your calendar appropriately.

Two Super-Short Reviews

1. Heater Allen IsarWeizen
Background: "Sarah Billick, a friend of my [Rick Allen's] daughter's, spent a year taking classes and interning at the IsarBrau Brew Pub in Munich. She brought back the recipe for their Wheat Beer, and we made it here at the brewery." I have no idea how difficult it is to brew a traditional German weizen, but Heater Allen falls just short in this effort. It has the elements in the right place, but not the oomph. The wheat isn't pronounced, the fun phenols are subdued, and it finishes more wetly and less crisply than I'd like. If you'd never had a Weihenstephaner, say, you might find this one quite nice. But for the rest of us, it's about a B-.

2. Double Mountain Vaporizer
Double Mountain specializes in taking standard styles and putting a little mustard on them. Vaporizer, styled a "golden IPA," is a beer brewed exclusively with pilsner malt and hopped with mostly Challenger hops. A more characteristic IPA has some crystal malts to create some body and sweetness to balance the hopping. These, or similar malts, will also deepen the color. Challenger hops are a traditonal English bittering hop--generally a clean hop without a huge amount of character. Double Mountain used a domestic strain, however, and it is more citrusy and fruity. The final result is an extremely quaffable beer, hops aggressive but not savage. I would love to tell you that it's a comely, straw-colored beer, but at the release party they served the beer in opaque plastic cups. What struck me more than anything was a desire to try this beer on cask. Call it a solid B+.

Vaporizer Release

This has been fairly well-covered already, but just a head's up: Double Mountain will be releasing a new beer at EastBurn tomorrow night. It's called Vaporizer, a dry-hopped "Golden IPA." You may ask, "Aren't most IPAs golden, more or less?" Apparently this one is more so--it's made solely with organic pilsner malt. It weighs in at 6% and has 60 IBUs.

Now, while you might have gotten that info at just any blog, we here at Beervana try to offer a little added value. To wit: I asked Charlie Devereux, who will be at EastBurn to introduce the beer, whether it was brewed with just Challenger hops, the only one cited in the press release. No: "There are some Brewers Gold in the bittering quotient, but otherwise it's all US Challengers, including lots in dry-hopping." Also, as to which yeast they used, it is the standard house yeast, which isn't particularly standard. Care to guess what they use? Hint: you can get it at Wyeast.

Double Mountain Vaporizer Release
5pm Wednesday, June 3
The EastBurn, 1800 E. Burnside
503-236-2876

Double Mountain .... Now Blogging!

It's not enough that Double Mountain makes some of Oregon's best beer--now they're blogging. Hey guys, why not leave something for the amateurs? Actually, this is a very cool thing, and it runs exactly counter to a problem I complained about back in June. Brewery websites tend to, you know, suck. They're con jobs by the PR department; they tell you less than nothing about the brewery, and afterward you feel like you need a shower.

But with only two posts, Double Mountain has shown how to use the internets to bring their customers into their thought process. In a long rumination, Matt Swihart offers a wonderful anecdote about how he got turned onto barrel aging:

My original interest in cask beers came from when I was head brewer at Full Sail. I was giving a tour to the head distiller at Macallan Distillery. Oh that’s good scotch. Anyway, I remember being very excited to talk to Peter about Scotch whisky and was anxious to show off the brewery. I was touring through the cellars and we stopped to sample some Old Boardhead I had been aging for a year prior to its release. The beer was sitting in a stainless tank, maturing nicely at about 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Peter then made a simple comment:

“What are you doing?” head distiller Peter asked.

“I’m aging the beer.”

“Why?”

“To mature the flavors, promote a more balanced barleywine through some long-term maturation…to develop some slight oxidative notes, reduce the bitterness, enhance the malt,” replied the head brewer.

“Well, if you want to develop those flavors, and you were making whisky, which uses beer as a base for the distillery, and you wanted to promote some oxidation, I would put that whisky in an oak barrel and hold it at cellar temperature. What you are doing now is protecting the beer from aging, you are not developing its maturation flavors, you’re trying to preserve the freshness. I think your approach is flawed.”

As a bonus, Double Mountain has finally gotten their website up and running. It has previously just been a splash page with the address. Now they have info on the beer, brewery, and so on. (They even appropriated a photo from my review--that'll cost you a growler, guys!) Welcome to the neighborhood, gents. Keep up the fine work. This is exactly the kind of thing we want to read.

Oh, and a shout-out Chad Kennedy, who was, to my knowledge, the pioneer of brewer blogging round these parts.

Review - Four Fresh Hop Beers

I have now tried two or three dozen fresh hop beers. I am therefore approaching or just over the number needed for my sample to be statistically significant. Revealed to me in this group is a unique flavor/aroma that I haven't yet found the words to express. None of these is right, but perhaps together you can begin to sense of its nature: "gassy," "cabbage," "sulfur," "grassy." Sally described it as that volatile smell you get when you turn over composting leaves. It has the quality of decomposition.

Guess what? I'm not super high on it.

Now, what I've also observed is that not every wet-hopped beer has this, nor is it as strong in every beer, nor is at as offensive once a beer has warmed up a touch (counter-intuitively). So I consider it a risk in working with fresh hops, but not essential to their nature. I recently went through the chemistry of fresh herbs and the constituents in hops, so perhaps after I've tried this year's batch of beers, I'll see if I can line up the "decomposition note" with a particular element in the hop. All of this is by way of introducing my review of four new versions of fresh hop beers. (Incidentally, I'll employ last year's specific scale for rating fresh hop ales: noble failure, decent outing, winner, and sublime.)

Hopworks Oktoberfest
By all appearances, this is a classic Oktoberfest. It is a clarion, russet hue, with a nice light head. It was hopped with Willamettes--not exactly the choice of dour-faced Germans, but with its spicy nature, well-chosen. Alas, there's the decomposition note. In this case, it tends toward buttery. As it warms, unexpected aromas emerge. Cabbage, which isn't that unexpected, but also a sweet rose-petal note. The flavor improves, exhibiting more of the underlying recipe, and the fresh hops turn herbal and almost savory (an adjective to which we will return). Rating: Decent Outing.

Ninkasi Pale
Again, we're off the grid in terms of familiar adjectives in describing the aroma. Ninkasi's pale, hopped with Mt. Hoods (an aroma hop derived from the spicy German Hallertau), smells of freshly-mown lawn, with a touch of fresh earth and spritz of citrus oil. Sally relates to the citrus as "pine," and I am sent down a philosophical reverie in which I ponder how it is that these two are related, before being pulled out, roughly, by that decomposition note. It's mild but persistent. There also seems to be a "hot" note which I took to be fusel alcohol, but which Sally, calling it "radish," made me think again. Could be another bizarre by-product of the fresh hops. My least-favorite of the four, I nevertheless can't give it a noble failure. Rating: Decent Outing (barely).

Double Mountain Killer Green IPA
I have noticed the increasing use of Perle hops in the US, and it's a house favorite for Double Mountain. Originally bred in Germany in 1978, they are now regularly (and successfully) grown in the US. Double Mountain manages to beat the decomposition note by dumping vast mounds of Perles into this beer. It is vividly hoppy, and has a standard IPA nose, sticky and resinous. The palate is of spruce, not atypcial for Perle, but also of tropical fruit. As the beer warms, that savory note I mentioned above comes out, and here it comes across as ... roast chicken. Sally suggests that it could actually be more like sage or rosemary (but probably sage) which could confuse the palate into thinking "chicken." I'm less sure, but it is odd. Fortunately, the bitterness calms all fears. It's a bold, tasty, and odd outing. Still, I like it. Rating: Winner.

Full Sail Lupulin (Mt. Rainier variant?)
Full Sail has three versions of Lupulin this year, one with the super new and obscure Mt. Rainier hops, and other versions with Cascade and Nugget. I think this was the Mt. Rainier batch, but it could be Nugget, I suppose (distinctive Cascade we can rule out). The aroma and flavor of this beer can be decribed in three words: piney, piney, piney. Smells piney, tastes piney. If you dig deeper, you can evoke mint, but this isn't too different from pine. Good news! There's no decomposition note. John Harris, who last year used Amarillo in his Lupulin (unavailable this year), managed a beer without the note, too. So he's two for two--impressive. I am not personally in love with the mentholated nature of the beer, but it was very well made. I can't call it sublime, but you might. Rating: Winner.

Have you tried any of these? What was your take?

Porter from Southern Oregon Brewing

I stopped in at Belmont Station last night and had a pint of Southern Oregon Brewing's Porter. If you recall, this is the Medford brewery that opened late last year (nice article here). For those of us at points North, it is an obscure place. No presence on the web, and until I spied this beer, no distribution in Portland. And yet by all accounts, it's a fairly big brewery, so I've been hoping to see it eventually.

The porter is an interesting beer (and singular--it's currently the only SOB beer on tap). It's brewed with a lager yeast but apparently at ale temperatures, if the flavor was any clue. Call it a steam porter. The strongest note is tangy and not quite identifiable--at first I think it's headed in a sour direction, but then it finishes out with a currant tartness. It's a creamy beer, with notes typical of porter--dark grains, roast, and coffee/bitter chocolate. I suggest it's fermented warm because, while the beer is a bit drier than a typical porter, it's sweeter and fruitier than a
German schwarzbier. Quite a nice beer, comforting and quaffable. I could probably use another pint to get a stronger bead on the beer, but it's in the B to B+ range. Nice.

Incidentally, Sally had a Swibrau Oktoberfest (presumably named for Matt Swihart, co-owner/brewer). I stole a swig or two and found it to be wonderfully spicy and rich, and I regretted I didn't have a pint of that, too. Something to put on the list.