New Belgium Eric's Ale (Lips of Faith series)

Eric's Ale is a peach sour in New Belgium's Lips of Faith series, though, like La Folie (and others, probably), the beer predates the creation of the Lips of Faith line.  The brewers make this beer by blending a <3 year old oak-aged sour and a fresh sweeter beer.  Then, they mix in some peach juice, allow it to ferment out the new sugars and voila!  Eric's Ale is born.  Old-with-new sour blending is best known in lambic production, particularly gueuze, and master lambic blender is probably the coolest profession on earth (the Telegraph Stock Porter review discusses it a bit outside of the world of sours).  Of course, Eric's Ale is no gueuze, but it's certainly a tasty sour.

This beer is likable, interesting and refreshing.  It does not have the unrelentingly sour (read: wonderful) strength of La Folie, but it is still assertive and tart.  I'd give it a six on the pucker scale.  As my glass warms, the beer seems to be growing a bit sweeter.  The initial sourness and puckery finish are still present, but the middle has noticeable maltiness.  It's a pleasant, kinda spicy malt note (not sure if there's wheat in this one).  To be clear, the beer is fairly dry but not quite as dry as what you might find in a good fruit lambic.  The taste is like an unripe but juicy peach or a pie/jam-making peach variety.  The peachy-ness comes through even more strongly in the aroma.

Unripe peaches, lemons, old oak barrels and traces of caramel and musty barnyard odors all come through in the aroma.  The sour aromas are heavier on the oaky, vinegary, nearly lactic side of things.  The oak also adds a wonderfully dry feel.  Though present, funk is not a major player in this experience.  That caramel sweetness, presumably from the younger beer, sets Eric's Ale apart from most available sours.  The peach aroma is natural and relatively strong without stepping on the toes of other notes.  All of the flavors blend nicely, and the sum is greater than the parts.

Appearance-wise, it's a golden beer, transparent, with a small white cap that disappeared quickly.  As with other considerations, sours don't really conform to normal beer standards.  This beer resembles whiskey once the bubbles have entirely dissipated, and it's a nice look within its specific context.  

Though it's definitely not the most challenging sour around, Eric's Ale still has enough juice to confound the palates of those uninitiated to the world of sour beer.  Happily, it might also be a good beer to with them over.  

Stopping in at City Beer Store

Earlier today, I stopped at City Beer Store, my regular store and bar rolled into one, and indulged in a few of their draft selections.  Stillwater's Cellar Door, Bush/Scaldis Pêche Mel and Drake's Hopocalypse all pitched in to slake my thirst on this hellishly hot (for San Francisco) day.  A bottle of Fantôme Black Ghost made for a nice purchase (I always feel terribly fancy when I buy Fantôme).

The beers were a mixed bag.  Cellar Door was my favorite by a longshot.  It's a saison from the new American "gypsy brewer" Brian Strumke (he was featured on NPR).  He recently announced the beer's release year-round in bottles and kegs - link - so, hopefully, it will see a lot more of the country, soon.  Stillwater's Stateside Saison was also quite good.  While Stateside was made with relatively aggressive American hop aromas as its twist, Cellar Door uses white sage and lighter but still interesting hopping.  The yeast notes are similarly dry and earthy with a mild barnyard smell.  It tastes of fresh wheat and herbs.  The sage adds a nice complexity to the aroma without overpowering things.  The hops come through with a bit of that wonderful sweet citrus flavor of Citra hops.  The beer is light to medium dry and very refreshing.  I look forward to seeing more beers from Stillwater/Strumke.

On the other hand, I definitely do not look forward to seeing more Pêche Mel in the future.  It was too sweet for me with a somewhat unfortunate fruit flavor.  It's from Dubuisson, under the Bush name, aka Scaldis (their court-ordered American alias - god knows the Busch brand would be ruined if they were allowed to coexist) and is a blend of their quad, a solid enough strong Belgian and a peach lambic.  It's somewhat cloying, and the peaches taste sorta artificial and off.  There are also an earthy, spicy Belgian quality around, but the peach flavor mostly drowns it out.  That said, I didn't hate the beer, and, if you can get past the sweetness, it's probably not all that bad.

Finally, Hopocalypse was a tad disappointing but otherwise good.  I'm a fan of Drake's.  They're just across the Bay and seem like a nice bunch.  Plus, they make some excellent beers.  Their imperial stout was one of the first beers I tried of the style, 1500 is very satisfying, basically a light IPA with a full strength hop aroma, and the newly bottled Denogginizer is a great East Coast-leaning DIPA, sweeter than normal for around here with lots and lots of hops.  They also make a few keg-only (D)IPAs that have been mostly excellent so far.  So, I was primed with high expectations.  This beer really pours on the grapefruit rind hop flavor in aroma and taste.  It seemed a bit raw, almost.  I like big, bitter DIPAs quite a bit, and this beer was good.  However, some of the more delicate hop notes seemed to get lost in the wash of bitterness.  The mouthfeel was verging on harsh but didn't quite cross that line.  I enjoyed the beer, but it's not something I'd want every day.

Oskar Blues Brewery - Ten FIDY Imperial Stout (1.5 years old)

Oskar Blues is a well known brewery with relatively wide distribution.  The company has positioned itself at the forefront of the relatively recent craft beer canning trend.  Their regular lineup is generally good and certainly well-made.  However, they elicited some amusingly disparate reactions with their latest addition, Gubna, a big, all Summit-hopped DIPA.  Reactions to Summit hops, and, in turn, Gubna, swing from "what the hell is wrong with other breweries for not using this gift rendered unto man from on high?" to "this smells like a poorly ventilated gym full of roided out anthropomorphic onions."  I fall in the latter category.  On the other hand, Ten FIDY is one of the best rated (not that it really matters, but its overall rankings currently are 45th on Beeradvocate, 66th on ratebeer) beers and has won some well-deserved recognition from more mainstream press, as well.  So, let's get to it...

I like Ten FIDY.  I like it a lot, actually, though I dislike capitalizing five out of seven letters of its name (apologies if I overuse "it" or "this beer").  When fresh, the beer is a velvet blanket of chocolate and roasted malt foam.  It's a soft imperial stout, easy to like and easy to drink, though not lacking in flavor.  There's no harsh hop bitterness and little booze.  Caramel malt sweetness is definitely present and the beer makes for an excellent dessert, but it's nowhere near the cloying sweet mess of some versions of the style.  However, the can sitting in front of me is not fresh.

This particular can has been sitting in a box in my makeshift cellar for more than a year.  My best guess is 18 months, but my cellar inventory tracking is fairly weak, and the date printed on the bottom of the can is unreadable, at least I think it's a date.  This is the first intentionally aged can of beer that I have tried.  Of course, it's still fairly young for a 9.5% abv stout, but I'm trying to limit my nightly dance of beer indecision and grabbed something familiar in a panic.  Plus, I had no real intention to age this can longterm and was merely curious to see how it would change after any amount of time.

And it hasn't really changed much.  The roasted malt flavor has started to go fruity, and the chocolate has receded a bit.  The beer feels distinctly less creamy, but it still coats the mouth in a pleasantly thick layer of flavor.  There's a bit less hop bitterness, still enough to keep the sugar in check, but it's unsurprisingly similar otherwise.  No complaints really, but it's probably a bit better fresh.

The fruity roasted malt notes give the beer a somewhat generic aged imperial stout flavor.  This can won't stick out in my mind so much as it does when fresh, mostly because my favorite part, the chewy chocolate bar quality, isn't as dominant.  I'm still getting a good amount of high quality chocolate - I'd peg it close to a ~65% bar - and the combination of chocolate and roasted raisins/prunes holds its own joy.  The sweetness tastes of honey fading into black strap molasses.  I'm happy to be sipping it out of a pretentiously tiny snifter.  This beer remains a decadent dessert.

I'm happy that my patience held for this long and allowed me to see some insight on an excellent beer, but future cans will be drained more quickly.  This isn't a bad beer to age, but, at least, short term aging hasn't won me over.  Creamy chocolate still defines Ten FIDY to my mind, and that flavor does not seem to be improving with cellar time.

Telegraph Brewing Company - Stock Porter

Telegraph is a small brewery in Santa Barbara.  I know very little about them.  Probably not the best second sentence of my blog, right there.  Their website merely tells us that they find pleasure in copper, and then there are a bunch of overused craft beer-y terms, like handcrafted and small batch.  Their beers show up in San Francisco with some regularity, though usually only one or two at a time.

I've tried two beers from Telegraph before this porter.  About two years ago, I had a glass of the Reserve Wheat Ale and loved it.  On the other hand, their California Ale was just ok, though good, I guess, for a California Common/Steam Ale (a style that seems to stick around because it has an interesting history; plus, it's hard to say anything bad about Anchor without seeming like an ass).  The Golden Wheat Ale tends to sit around on the shelf at local beer stores.  On to the review...

This Stock Porter is a rather good beer.  I wasn't expecting much, but it's making me believe in Telegraph's nonsensically earnest self-description.  So, high marks.  However, it's not a standard porter.  They describe the beer as being made according to the old technique of blending a stronger barrel-aged beer with a fresh, lighter version.  That sounds good, and, happily, it tastes as good as it sounds, though perhaps not as you might imagine.

The flavor is dominated by fruity dark malt notes.  It smells sorta like a light, sour plum wine blended with warm caramel.  There's also a perfumey chocolate aroma in there.  It's light on the hops and closer to English versions of the style than American.  That style-defining ashiness (style-defining for me, anyway) is mostly absent, or, maybe, just really well done.  The fruitiness is somehow reminiscent of ashy roasted malt, though I can't quite put my finger on it.  I'm going to chalk it up to barrel-aging magic.  The flavor is lightly sour with some fruit and caramel sweetness.  The finish is particularly fruity with some pleasant acidity.

I'm not great at picking out specific ingredients, but this beer probably leans toward lactobacillus.  The sourness is yogurty, and there's no real funk to speak of.  Some oakiness come through, particularly in the drying vinegariness.  Most likely, the flavor is entirely too clean to be historically accurate, but it's a nice, safe version of history and probably tastier for it.

The liquid is a very dark brown that appears to have ruby highlights when held up to the light.  The head is beige and aggressively foamy.  Carbonation is relatively light, and the beer has a very smooth feel.  It's a rich beer, full of interesting flavors and fun to drink.  This might not appeal to most folks, particularly if they're looking for a standard porter, but it's good stuff and manages to deliver on its historical promises more than most beers with similar hooks.

Anywho, I would definitely recommend buying Telegraph Stock Porter, if you're open-minded about styles and enjoy fruity barrel flavors.  I picked it up at a nearby Whole Foods, and it's a great deal at $8 or so for 750 ml.