Founders Sumatra Mountain Brown

May 18, 2016 by Steve Leave a Comment

American Brown Ale, Texas Brown Ale or as Founders calls this beer ‘Imperial Brown Ale’ generally describes a malt forward beer, a pumped up version of an English Brown recipe with hops like Cascade aggressively added and the ABV often much higher than the British original. The Oxford Companion to Beer notes that American Browns use “(r)oasted and caramelized malts are used heavily enough to skirt the edges of the porter style’ and nearly all have ‘notable hop aromatics’.

THE BEER

Founders Sumatra Mountain Brown bottle is subtle compared to many of their own labels for beers such as Backwoods Bastard and Breakfast Stout. More like Black Rye. The brown and yellow color palette seems to hearken back to an older time, preparing us for a simple beer. Imagine our surprise then, when I spied that this brown was brewed with Sumatran coffee (yes, hence the name) and comes in at a whopping 9% alcohol by volume. This is not a working man’s sipper at the pub. Founders describes the beer thusly:

This bold, imperial brown ale gets its body from a team of malts including Caramel malt for sweetness, flaked barley for dense foam, a bit of Chocolate malt for its deep color and Aromatic and Munich malts to add even more depth. German and Perle hops add a touch of bitterness to balance the malty sweetness. The addition of rich Sumatra coffee takes this perfectly balanced imperial brown ale to a decadent level.

TASTING NOTES

Cracking open Sumatra Mountain, the addition of Indonesian coffee is evident. Dave and I both felt it reminded us of the percolator or instant coffee aromatics one finds in beers like Weyerbacher Sunday Morning Stout. The picture above looks nearly black but as it poured the color is a ruddy brown. The tan head is foamy and lingers a good time for a 9% beer. What you taste is big on roasted malts and of course coffee, nothing percolator about how it comes through in the flavor. Really nice use of the java, with some pop of hops right at the end, with mild bitterness. The mouthfeel is amazingly creamy! Apparently due to the flaked barley, making it highly drinkable, and the beer finishes dry. Great brewers don’t brew high alcohol beers, they make great beer that is high gravity. Drinking Founders Sumatra Mountain Brown I got no hint it was anything above 5%.

CONCLUSION

Founders Frangelic Mountain Brown was another 9% ABV coffee beer, released as one of the more underwhelming of the Backstage Series in a large format bottle. Despite not setting off the beer geeks fervor, it was a tasty beer with strong hazelnut notes (BarleyWhine.com gave it an 8.0).

Founders Sumatra Mountain Brown comes in at the same 9%, with big coffee notes, dry with a medium body, although minus the hazelnut flavoring. I’m not sure these beers vary greatly in their recipe, which is a good thing. Offering 6 packs of a coffee forward imperial brown ale is a great addition to the Founders lineup. Brown ales, especially those with nuttier notes or coffee, are often gateway beers for those entering the good beer world. As such, Sumatra Mountain would be a great choice to try if you are starting out looking for a craft beer with a balance of flavors, albeit leaning towards the sweeter malt side. This is a fine beer, delivering on what it promises. One of the better straight ahead coffee beers around. find yourself a ~~6-pack~~ 4-pack and you will not be disappointed.

8.0/10

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Best Coffee Beer: Part 4

March 25, 2015 by Steve Leave a Comment

Best of Series: What is the Best Coffee Beer: Part 4?

It seems each year more and more breweries decide to try their hand at pairing arabica beans with beer. Nearly always brewing a porter or stout, brewers blend the natural coffee/chocolate flavors of darker malts with bold roasts, often from their favorite local shops. The combination continues to prove popular with craft beer fans. For Part 4 in our series, we look at coffee beers from Avery, Hill Farmstead, Eclipse, and Jackie O’s.

THE BEERS:

From barrel aged bombs to subtle milk stouts, we cover some of the best new coffee beers.

AVERY TWEAK

Steve: I drank this from the bottle pictured above. Following the great success of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout and Founders KBS, Avery takes the barrel aging process to their coffee stout. The 17.81% ABV stout is aged 4 months in bourbon barrels after brewing with an organic espresso blend from Ozo Coffee Co. Potent bourbon, coffee and chocolate notes on the nose. Pours black, with an unexpected ruddy brown head. The taste is a perhaps the most potent coffee flavored stout around. Huge espresso blends with the vanilla and char from bourbon barrels, and waves of sweetness to balance this explosive espresso shot. The booze kicks in in the finish as the mild carbonation holds on to make this dangerously drinkable: Amazing beer.

Dave: … 5 oz pour in a large snifter at the new Avery tasting room in Boulder. Delivers on all the flavors promised and more – coffee, bourbon, oak, chocolate, molasses. Huge flavors blended well with no noticeable alcohol bite. Superlative.

New space Avery is terrific – a must stop when in CO.

9.5/10

JACKIE O’S DARK APPARITION VANILLA & COFFEE BEAN

A big Russian imperial stout brewed with brown sugar, Dark Apparition from Jackie O’s may be the most recognizable label from the Athens Ohio brewery. Tasted here is a newly bottled variant, brewed with vanilla and coffee. While the original has bold malts with some coffee notes, this beer smells distinctly of vanilla and coffee, with mild soy sauce and hops less pronounced. The carbonation is good for a 10.5% ABVer, helping making the thick body quafable. Finish is fading vanilla with the coffee showing itself in a bitter note. Overall, the taste is very close to the base beer, with modest vanilla notes, and a hint of coffee. If you like vanilla, and maybe don’t even like coffee, this beer is a fun twist on Dark App. If you are looking for a coffee forward beer that brings the java up front, this one might be a slight let down.

8.0/10

SIERRA NEVADA/NINKASI BEER CAMP DOUBLE LATTE

In the summer of 2014 Sierra Nevada released a 12-pack of collaboration bottles and cans, each a separate beer brewed in conjunction with “…coveted breweries, which were selected for their innovation and reputation for brewing world-class beers”. As you may recall, I visited Ninkasi and they certainly fit this description. So I was thrilled they were selected to team up on a coffee based milk stout. The Oregon brewer employed a cold pressed blend from the famous Stumptown Coffee Roasters to flavor Double Latte. And to great effect, this Beer Camp bottle pours a chocolate malt looking head that is frothy and long lasting, smelling of coffee, chocolate, and fruit. No soy sauce notes are present in the sweet coffee flavors that match the nose. The body is a glorious silky, creamy mouthfeel. There is just a hint of sweetness, along with mild acidity and a hop presence, all balancing each other. Dry finish with some lingering coffee and hops. One of my favorite beers from the 2014 Beer Camp collection.

9.0/10

HILL FARMSTEAD EARL

Note: Unfortunately, this beer will not be scored due to its age. Bottled in December of 2012, we didn’t sample it until February of 2014. Just like ground coffee in a can, the volatile oils from roasted beans fall off quickly in beer.

Aged or not, Earl opens with a crisp pop of the cap, pouring out a dense wet sand colored head with good retention. The aromas are sweet grains, and stone fruit. The flavors of this stout are roasted grain, oatmeal, semi-sweet chocolate, and fruit, with a hint of coffee building. The body is marvelous, with the oatmeal adding a creaminess to the thick stout. Finish on the palette is a transition to bitter coffee, that builds. A very nice beer, that is almost certainly even better with fresh coffee flavor.

CONCLUSION

For some, there is no such thing as bad pizza. Thick or thin crust, allowing for some standards such as fresh ingredients, the basic components are a time honored infatuation for millions of pizza lovers. It seems that with coffee beer too, we have come to a place where highly skilled brewers using high quality coffee, are hard pressed to brew a bad coffee beer. While some may prefer the vanilla in one recipe over the bourbon in another, none of these coffee based beers left us unhappy.

Prairie Artisan Ales Bomb!

August 17, 2014 by Steve Leave a Comment

One of the most sought after 12oz beers of the past year, Prairie Artisan Ales Bomb! is another in the increasingly popular style of spicy stouts mixed with the already popular, and well covered by us, coffee beer. Can an Oklahoma brewer take on this complex blend of flavors?

Kickstarter, that micro finance wonder-boy that promises to bring back 80’s childhood favorite Reading Rainbow, has helped raise funds for one of the most talked about breweries in America. Prairie Artisan Ales began with gypsy brewers the Haley brothers getting backing from distributing powerhouse and one time podcasters, Shelton Brothers. With a good web presence, and an awareness of beer geek trends like unique glassware, the Haleys raised more than double the $10,000 they sought, and were off and running.

Starting with saisons, Prairie quickly began diversifying their lineup. Keeping their ear to the beer geek ground, Prairie quickly turned out a spicy imperial stout, ‘ala Cocoa Mole, Hunahpu, Mexican Cake, Abraxas, ect. The difference being that Bomb! skips the cinnamon element from the more Mexican hot chocolate style brews and adds coffee.

THE BEER

Bomb! is an imperial stout ‘aged on coffee, cacao nibs, vanilla, and chili peppers’. The coffee is an espresso blend from Oklahoma roaster Nordaggios. The peppers are ancho chilies. It is available in 12 ounce bottles within Prairie’s distribution region, where 13% ABV beers are permitted.

TASTING NOTES

Prairie Artisan Ales Bomb! is a dark brown pour with a significant head of micro-bubbles that dissipates in short time. Nose is filled with coffee, cola, chocolate, chilies and alcohol. The carbonation is impressive in this 13% ABV stout, leading to a mouthfeel that is think and slick. Taste echoes that nose with even more coffee, which borders on overly bitter, sweet malts playing the counterpoint to espresso, and a vanilla element creating a delicious blend. The heat from the peppers is subtle enough to only slowly show itself after a few sips. Many spicy beers do well in small samplings, this one works throughout a much large tasting, even the full 12oz bottle. Finish is vanilla, coffee the chilies and booze.

CONCLUSION

This beer is crazy good. As a fan of coffee beer I appreciate java being thrown in with the vanilla, peppers, and chocolate. For those that do not drink coffee, the espresso roast might be a tad bitter, even if you like some coffee beers, but that is the only downside to what is an impressive stout.

9.0/10

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The Bruery + 3 Floyds Rue D’Floyd

May 10, 2014 by Steve Leave a Comment

The Bruery + 3 Floyds Rue D’Floyd : Black Lord

GODZILLA VS SPACEGODZILLA

Beer collaborations abound. One of the first American sour ales I loved was Marrón Acidifié—an imperial Oud Bruin—a collab from The Bruery and Cigar City. This beer was for me, a big success. Two up and coming craft brewers from different markets, coming together to make something that represented the sour program from The Bruery as well as the wood aging expertise of Cigar City.

Now, with The Bruery coming together with 3 Floyds, brewers of many great hoppy beers like Alpha King, and Zombie Dust, as well as much sought after darker offerings like Moloko and of course the (in)famous Dark Lord. A pairing with the brewers of massive imperial stout Black Tuesday and its variants Mocha Wednesday, Chocolate Rain, and Grey Monday, could only bring a HUGE dark beer with bold adjuncts. When it was announced that members of The Bruery’s Hoarders and Reserve societies would be able to buy both collaborations between these two craft beer titans, Rue D’Floyd and Floyd D’Rue, excitement was palpable. Perhaps not since Godzilla teamed up with Mogeura to fight SpaceGodzilla have such powerful forces combined for the cause of awesomeness.

Godzilla collaborates to stop SpaceGodzilla from brewing kombucha

Then came the reality. These would be dark beers, imperial porters, and they would be trebuchet bombardments of flavor, each coming in over 14% ABV. Rue d’Floyd is aged on bourbon barrels for 1 year and finished “with vanilla beans, Portola coffee, TCHO cacao nibs and cherries prior to bottling”. Sounds amazing right? But then this sobering note: “Please consume by 6/30. This beer may contain Lactobacillus. Please keep refrigerated”. Yikes. These beers were brewed at The Bruery’s facilities, where recently infected bottles such as White Chocolate and Cacaonut have caused the Orange County company to issue the rare explanation of the problems and issued credits for beers that were sold with active, unintended microbes. This was in our opinion a stand-up thing to do. A practice not followed by all breweries that sell expensive, infected beer. They also seem to have stepped up quality assurance, testing the heck out of their beers for problems, not wanting to sell bad beer or deal with crediting angry customers.

TOO BIG TO FAIL

Testing for problems sounds good, but what to do when you have spent thousands on supplies and time, had another brewer fly out to collaborate at your facility, and invested a year barrel aging not one but two beers, both of which were promised to members of your pre-paid beer societies as exclusive to them. Lots of money was given to The Bruery in anticipation in part of the 3 Floyds collaborative bottle, and now they have found it is possibly infected with Lactobacillus, the bacteria that gives sauerkraut and Berliner Weisse their signature sour elements. Not an intended element for a chocolate, coffee based porter.

So with all the investment put in to these beers, contrasted with all the investment put in quality assurance and building a brewery with a reputation for doing right by its customers, what does one do with a beer that might go bad? The solution they came up with to resolve the conflict between expectations and the bottom line on one hand, and reputation on the other: a ‘Drink By’ date.

So the Hoarders and Preservation society members are left to decide if they want to buy something that may have a very short shelf life. By definition, hoarders would normally be all over this beer, cellering 5 for a later date or to trade. The disclosure limits those opportunities greatly. For some in the craft beer community, the assumption is that the beer already has turned sour. Is that the case or, one wonders, will it be a false positive? Will it be the white whale of beers people talk about for years but can’t access because sales were low and everyone drank them up immediately? Can lacto even live in a 14% ABV beer? Or is Rue D’Floyd really too big to fail?

THE BEER

As stated earlier this is an imperial porter, weighing in with 14.4% ABV, aged on bourbon barrels for 1 year, then piling ‘roids on ‘roids Lance Armstrong style, added vanilla, coffee, cocoa nibs, and cherries. The pedigree is there, hopefully these two breweries who use roasted malts to brew much sought after stouts can do the same for porters. And there is that perky lacto problem, will it be a problem tasting the beer 3 weeks after its release, in early May of 2014?

The Bruery 3 Floyds Drink By Date — Drink By Date

TASTING NOTES

The nose, or scent of the beer is always the first thing we take note of, as it can inform a lot of what is coming, as well as alert us to potential problems. Thankfully, the aromas coming off Rue are nothing but delicious coffee, chocolates, vanilla, dark fruit and a hint of alcohol. Amazingly the oil black beer pours with a modest chocolate brown head, unusual for a beer of with such high alcohol content. Considering this aged a year on bourbon barrels, the solid, if fleeting carbonation is a welcome surprise.

Tasting this thing brings huge flavors. Sweet bourbon flavors up front with subtle oak start off, followed by roasted coffee elements, a kick of vanilla and a hint of bitter coffee and booze in the sweet finish. As it warms even more oak comes forward, and the finish reveals the tart cherry flavors which meld with the other elements to make an amazingly delicious and complex brew. Just stunningly good. No trace of a lacto infection is present at this time to my palette. Loved this beer.

CONCLUSION

Rue D’Floyd was consumed on May 2nd, 2014. Fresh, this beer is a perfectly complex blend of vanilla, coffee, chocolate and tart fruit nearly overwhelming yet highly drinkable. Quite simply, The Bruery 3 Floyds Rue d’Floyd is most delicious porter I have ever tasted. As a lover of stouts, I am happy to say that this big porter tastes better than even Black Tuesday, or Dark Lord. Obviously, the potential infection will keep most craft beer fans from tossing a bunch of these in the cellar. But that may be a good thing. Coffee and vanilla flavors are notorious for fading, meaning no matter if the infection is prevalent or not, Rue D’Floyd should probably be drunk up as close to bottling date as possible. And even if it does eventually take on some acidic notes, didn’t porters historically have a bit of a tartness, or a sour element?

10/10

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Stone Espresso Imperial Russian Stout

August 5, 2013 by Steve Leave a Comment

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Stone Espresso Imperial Russian Stout

Starting in 2011 Stone began releasing reworked versions of both their barleywine, Old Guardian and imperial stout, IRS. I don’t recall 2011’s BELGO Old Guardian, but the Belgo Anise Imperial Russian Stout was not widely popular. Anise was a bold, but polarizing flavor. If the first odd year reception was look warm, would round two be any better?

Packaging description: Like the classic version, this Odd Year edition was brewed in the authentic, historical style of an imperial Russian stout, but with the addition of several hundred pounds of espresso beans from our friends at Ryan Bros. Coffee. Layers of flavor and complexity augment an already enigmatic brew, leaving this darkly delicious libation positively brimming with deep, rich espresso flavors that meld beautifully with the roasty bitterness of the dark malts.

THE BEER

Lovers of coffee beer, we taste a favorite brewer’s take on a coffee stout with Stone Espresso Russian Imperial Stout.

2013 , another odd year brings two new odd beers: Stone Old Guardian Oak-Smoked, and Stone Espresso Russian Imperial Stout. For anyone who has even skimmed this site, you know what a passion we have for coffee beers. With a stellar brewery like Stone taking a shot at a coffee stout, there was no doubt a bottle or two would hit the cellar.

TASTING NOTES

Pours with a nice khaki head of bubbles of modest size. In bold contrast, the beer, like the original, Espresso IRA pours void black. The scents of well roasted coffee, chocolate, roasted malts, hops and dark fruits floods the senses with immediacy. With such an inviting nose, Stone Espresso Imperial Russian Stout has a lot to deliver. Thankfully, this stout brings it in spades. The taste unabashedly servers up coffee, vanilla, chocolate, subtly biting hops, and sweet malts. Big bold flavors are Stone’s calling card and this beer continues the tradition. The ABV is 11% but there is almost no hint of booze. A creamy and think body fits the style, coating the mouth with coffee goodness. Espresso IRS finishes with a nice dry, bitter note.

CONCLUSION

Stone Espresso Imperial Russian Stout is a mouthful to pronounce, though if you get your hands on a bottle, one mouthful will not be enough. This imperial stout amplifies the natural roasted malt tanins of coffee and chocolate with the edition of Ryan Brothers espresso beans to make a magnificently sweet and bitter, dark beer. A huge coffee ale that delivers what it promises. Find a bomber of this odd year edition before it’s gone, and enjoy one of the best java and beer combinations around.

9.0/10