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Beyond the Bottle: Old Ales

January 15, 2020 by Ken Weaver

One of the two featured beers this month is Lost Abbey’s Righteous Son, a barrel-aged old ale made exclusively for The Rare Beer Club. Old ales are a dark and maltier subset of beers tracing their origins back to England, and they typically emphasize a generosity of notes like caramel, toffee, nuttiness, and/or molasses (even a bit of roast)—essentially hitting some of the same malt spectrum as barleywine, though without the same intensity of hops or alcohol impact. The Rare Beer Club’s founder Michael Jackson wrote old ales “should be a warming beer of the type that is best drunk in half pints by a warm fire on a cold winter’s night.”

While the above provides a basic sense of expectation for beers labeled as “old ale” today—higher in alcohol, darker malts, modest hops, often some sherry-like oxidative notes—there’s a lot more nuance to what “old ale” referred to historically. Martyn Cornell’s article “So what is the difference between Barley Wine and Old Ale?” is a great resource for any deeper dive.

If you’re digging Lost Abbey’s Righteous Son (or old ales in general), tracking more of these down can sometimes be a bit of a hunt. English examples making it stateside are pretty few and far between, while many of the old-ale examples made stateside are more barley wine-y. Great Divide’s longstanding winter seasonal Hibernation Ale (brewed annually since 1995) is one promising option that’s easier to track down, and North Coast’s potent Old Stock Ale is made year round. Got old-ale recommendations? Hit us up on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Silver Streak x2

December 15, 2019 by Ken Weaver

This will be the second of the Rare Beer Club’s anniversary beers to receive its name from a classic comedy, and it seemed like an ideal opportunity to pop an early bottle of Silver Streak for tasting notes and check out the movie itself. Silver Streak (1976) is partly buddy comedy between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and partly soft-thriller where everyone’s trying to kill Gene Wilder’s character—who proves that there is no limit to the number of times you can fall off a train. There are definitely parts of the movie that haven’t aged well, though it’s the first of four movies Pryor and Wilder did together, and is probably best in tandem with Stir Crazy (1980). Wilder’s character is next-level vanilla; Pryor brings most of the energy.

Not many beer parallels (there’s buckets of Champagne), although I couldn’t help but notice the love interest of Gene Wilder’s character, played by Jill Clayburgh, introduces herself by noting her character’s name is short for Hildegard. Saint Hildegard of Bingen is seriously one of the coolest people in history—and is generally credited for first recording the preservative qualities of hops!—along with establishing herself as an accomplished herbalist, a composer, scientist, writer, visionary, inventor of alphabets, church reformer, and lots of other things.

Best beer parallel I’ve got. The train scene at the end might be worth the price of admission. Got a classic comedy to recommend as a namesake for a future Rare Beer Club anniversary beer? Hit us up with your favorites on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Hallertau Blanc Hops

November 15, 2019 by Ken Weaver

The Hallertau Blanc hop, prominently employed in this month’s featured To Øl Chateau Øl, is a relatively new option for brewers, first commercially released in 2012. A daughter of the Cascade hop, Hallertau Blanc was created by the Hop Research Center Hüll in the Hallertau region of Bavaria, Germany. It was specifically made in response to the growth in America’s craft beer industry, and BSG Hops suggests using them as one might southern-hemisphere hops: in styles like wheat beers, beers with Brettanomyces, Belgian-style ales, and a mélange of IPA and similar. The hops are considered to be on the tropical side of things, with notes of pineapple, passion fruit, fresh lemongrass, gooseberry, and grapefruit.

Almanac Beer Co. has used Hallertau Blanc hops in a wide variety of releases over the years, including in their White Label (paired with California-grown Muscat Blanc grapes, for good measure), various “de Brettaville” releases, and their Flavor Wheel series. Hallertau Blanc is one of the key hops in BrewDog’s Hazy Jane (of the more readily available options), while Stillwater Extra Dry is dry-hopped with Hallertau Blanc, Citra, and Sterling hops. Mikkeller, Grimm, The Kernel, Modern Times, Other Half, and a bunch of other breweries have been experimenting with Hallertau Blanc across a mélange of styles… so keep an eye out. Have a local option with Hallertau Blanc you’re digging? Chime in on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: The Last Day of Christmas

October 15, 2019 by Ken Weaver

The Rare Beer Club has long been a supporter of The Bruery’s 12 Days of Christmas series, offering each release to RBC members dating as far back as 2009 with Two Turtle Doves, a Belgian-style dark ale brewed with cocoa nibs and toasted pecans. I’ve been working as the club’s newsletter writer for the latter half of the run—from 7 Swans-A-Swimming in 2014 to the present—and each release has combined the concept of Belgian brewers doing stronger, occasionally spiced dark beers for the holiday season with the annually rotating prompt from that 12 Days of Christmas song. 2 Turtle Doves riffed on ‘turtle’ candy. 3 French Hens used French oak barrels. 5 Golden Rings went a bit out-there—11.5% golden ale, with spices and pineapple. 8 Maids-a-Milking was an imperial milk stout… but fermented with Belgian yeast.

This year’s release of 12 Drummers Drumming marks the final release of the series, after 11 years of annual Belgian-style holiday beers, starting with Partridge in a Pear Tree. It’s worth taking just a moment to consider the series in context: it’s one of the first major (let’s call it) higher-concept series of annual one-off releases riffing on a core theme I can recall in craft beer, following in the SoCal footsteps of stuff like Stone’s Vertical Epic Series (02.02.02 to 12.12.12). Both are impressively ambitious projects, each taking over a decade to complete, and it’s especially neat that The Bruery’s started theirs in 2008—the same year they opened.

So, what other large-scale brewery release series am I totally overlooking? (The Lost Abbey’s Ultimate Boxed Set from 2012 comes to mind, though those 12 one-off beers were released monthly…) Also: have you been cellaring any of the 12 Days of Christmas series to pop with this year’s final release? Let us know on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Dry, Bitter, Belgian

May 15, 2019 by Ken Weaver

In chatting with Garden Path’s Ron Extract about this month’s featured The Garden Paths Led to Flowered, he mentioned XX Bitter from Belgium’s Brouwerij De Ranke as being a point of inspiration for it. If you haven’t yet crossed paths with XX Bitter, it’s more bitter and expressive in its show of herbaceous, grassy hops than one would expect from a 6% blonde. And it’s also basically the perfect sort of beer for repeated pints: layered, not numbingly bitter, crisp with depth.

It was a bit easier to get hold of fresh XX Bitter and the similarly poised Taras Boulba (from Brasserie de La Senne) back when living in DC, as the fresh import options are a bit patchier these days in California. Our tasting crew in DC sought out these beers and any adjacent kin: Orval, De La Senne’s Zinnebir, Thiriez Extra (from France), Jolly Pumpkin’s Bam Biere… In basic terms: potent hops, but more traditionally noble/herbal/floral—plus supportive yeast.

Hoppy Belgian blonde… Belgian pale ale/IPA… Buncha overlapping terms for this general space. The Rare Beer Club has previously highlighted De Ranke’s XXX Bitter, an amped-up version of XX Bitter with 50% more hops. Up here in Sonoma County, some of the closer alternatives are session options like Redemption or, with a more neutral yeast, Aud Blond from Russian River—but still not quite that hop density + yeast combo of something like XX Bitter.

Have a dry, bitter, Belgian-inclined beer you’re digging? Chime in on Twitter via @rarebeerclub.

Beyond the Bottle: More Beers with Tea

April 15, 2019 by Ken Weaver

One of the two featured craft beers in The Rare Beer Club this month is Brasserie Dunham’s Pale Duck, a dry-hopped and tea-infused saison that has Dan Cong oolong tea added just prior to botting. Eloi and company over at Brasserie Dunham wanted to develop a new beer with tea based on one of their core offerings, Leo’s Early Breakfast IPA: a collaboration with Anders Kissmeyer that includes guava and Earl Grey tea atop a more traditional IPA framework. At least one beer made with tea has been featured in the Rare Beer Club previously, as some of the club’s long-time members may recall Biere de Goord: Jolly Pumpkin’s green-tea saison.

Best Tea Beers

If you’re enjoying Pale Duck, or just curious about beers with tea to try, you’ll likely have a few options available nearby.

Sah’tea by Dogfish Head Brewery

Dogfish Head’s Sah’tea, which originally debuted back in 2009, was probably my first tea beer (as was true for a lot of folks), although it’s been bit since this one’s seen a bottling. Modeled after a Finnish beer from the 9^th century, the wort for Sah-tea is “caramelized over white-hot river rocks,” and uses foraged juniper berries and black tea.

Hopfentea by Perennial Artisanal Ales

A more frequent appearance, Perennial’s Hopfentea is a 4.2% Berliner Weisse-style ale steeped on a house-made tropical tea blend, including hibiscus, lemongrass, mango, and papaya.

Magic Ghost by Brasserie Fantôme

And Fantôme’s Magic Ghost specifically incorporates green tea in its funky and strong Belgian ale framework. (And now that I look it up… It was featured by The Rare Beer Club way back in 2011.)

Lots of breweries are experimenting with different types of tea as of late. Got a local beer option made with tea you’re digging? Let us know what’s good on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Beyond the Bottle: Revisiting Weizenbocks

March 15, 2019 by Ken Weaver

It has been at least a few years since the Rare Beer Club featured a weizenbock as one of its featured selections. The most recent example I dug up was Meantime Brewing Co.’s Limited Edition Weizen Double Bock, which the club featured back in August 2014. This style, as is true for many of the more out-there traditional beer styles in the world, has tended to find more frequent expression outside its country of origin (although many of the tastiest classic examples of the weizenbock space still definitely come from Germany). But the fact that the club’s 2014 weizenbock example was from England—and this newest one from Les Trois Mousquetaires in Quebec—kinda echoes the general state of the weizenbock style overall.

The history of weizenbock generally traces its lineage back to Schneider Aventinus, which was introduced by famed weissbier producer Private Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn in Bavaria back in 1907. That said… writer K. Florian Klemp noted in the (since-defunct) All About Beer Magazine that bock used wheat way back in the pre-Reinheitsgebot 14^th century; in that frame, this combo of wheat + strong malty beer has at least been explored a bit before. For modern drinkers: I’ll say that these beers are some of my favorite to seek out, combining the fluffy, toasty contributions of wheat with that rich, malty focus of a bock or doppelbock.

If you’re digging the Les Trois Mousquetaires example, there’s a decent chance you’ll be able to find some other weizenbocks locally. Aventinus, Weihenstephaner’s Vitus, and Ayinger’s Weizenbock are worth checking out and on the more readily available side. My personal fav in this general space is probably The Livery’s Bourbon Barrel Aged Wheat Trippelbock from Michigan—which clearly takes everything up a few notches. Have a local weizenbock you’re digging, or a fav classic? Let the club know what’s tasting good on Twitter: @RareBeerClub.