With so many beer celebration days now, it’s hard to keep track which one is coming next. With International Stout Day just around the corner (The first Thursday in November), we have more than enough beer to talk about in the next few weeks! Today’s focus, though, is National American Beer Day.
To join in the celebration, I wanted to review a bottle from our friends at Shmaltz: Jewbelation (17): REBORN. With over 20 years of brewing, Shmaltz produced this beer in celebration of their end of contract brewing and the opening of their own brewery location in Clifton Park, NY back in 2013.
This beer pours a crazy dark mahogany with a persistent tan head. On the nose there is quite the complexity from the 17 malts with notes of heavily roasted coffee, brown sugar, and chocolate dancing over forward layers of fruitiness – figs, plums, and stewed apples. The 17 hops have faded in the last four years but you can still see some of their life in the very end of the nose with a light waft of hop spice. Underneath it all is a welcomed whisky-like booziness just to remind you that it is 17%.
On the palate, you basically experience the nose in reverse. The whisky note comes front and center, but is balanced out with some fresh roasted coffee notes and chocolate. The flavors linger out to the fruits shown in the nose but settle on a warming baking spice finish. The body on this one was so massive, it was basically a meal in of itself. Overall, an awesome beer experience and I hope I can find one more bottle to cellar to celebrate an American Beer Day in the future.
Thank you America the Beautiful and God bless our amber waves of grain!
~CJ
