To close out 2016, I pulled out my one and only bottle of the 15th Anniversary blend from Firestone Walker from way back in 2011. The barrel-aged blend pours out a hazy NE brown coca-cola color. This doesn’t taste old at all. Big bourbon oak mixed with rum notes. There is a bit of spice here too. Aroma is vanilla and bourbon. There is a little slickness on the tongue but a skosh bit of carbonation counteracts it. Other notes that I am picking out are coconut and leather. There is still alcohol burn here too. But hot chocolate defines this beer for me.
This edition is made up of the following:
Helldorado – Blonde Barley Wine (18% of Blend)
Sticky Monkey – English Barley Wine (17% of Blend)
Bravo – Imperial Brown Ale (17% of Blend)
Double Double Barrel Ale – Double Strength English Pale Ale (13% of Blend)
Good Foot – American Barley Wine (11% of Blend)
Velvet Merkin – Traditional Oatmeal Stout (10% of Blend)
Parabola – Russian Imperial Oatmeal Stout (9% of Blend)
Double Jack – Double India Pale Ale (5% of Blend)
Up from the Cellar – White Chocolate from The Bruery
I opened up my Bruery box for this post of Up From the Cellar and found that I either have anniversary or Christmas beers from the Orange County brewery that just held their Poterie anniversary. The only outliers were two bottles of Black Tuesday and one White Chocolate. So I brought up the WC. Once I hacked the serious wax from the bottle cap the beer pours a deep orange color and quite bubbly at first which took me aback. The aroma is white chocolate for sure but not as strong as remembered from past tastings which was the first hint of trouble.
I think I held this one too long by a few months because there is a little too much in the way of sour notes or should I say cider-ness to it. That means a loss of velvetness from the original which was very smooth to the point of 5 stars on Untappd from yours truly. The aged White Chocolate has a medicinal hump that eventually falls back into the vanilla/chocolate swirl but it takes too long to get there and only stays for a fleeting moment.
That is part and parcel with aged beer though. You try some that have lost just too much from the original.
Up from the Cellar – Gone to Plaid from Noble Ale Works
We return to the cellar and in honor of the Noble Ale Works wins at the recent Craft Brewers Conference, I have cracked open a Wee Heavy from the Anaheim based brewery.
Gone to Plaid pours a dark brown with red tinting to it. A woody sweet aroma greets the nose. Initially a little caramel sweet but a light drying bitterness closes the gap fairly quickly. This is a cheek warmer for sure. The label mentions fruit cake, toffee and brandy and I concur with that last descriptor the most. This has the weight of that spirit running through it.
I don’t quite remember when this was purchased or where but the Scotch Ale has been in my hands for close to a year and a half. This beer is based on a recipe from home Brewer Darren Shelton who won best of show at the Anaheim Fest of Ales in 2013.
The beer may have lost some brightness that would have added to the flavor by subtracting out done of the sweetness but I think this beer could have aged into something really port-like with more time.
Up From the Cellar – Christmas Ale from Anchor (2012-2013)
Up from the Cellar for December will be focusing on multiple vintages of the Anchor Christmas beer. I will be covering the years 2008-2014.
(You can check out last years review HERE)
2012 pours a dark brown color. There is a caramels sweetness here with an almost cola like sweetness. Getting a toasted bread type of note in the background too. A hint of the cherry note is underneath there lurking. But this year has held up nicely.
2013 The tree, pine, spruce notes are back! Good amount of spice and the cherry notes are gone! The cola note is in the back as well. Still lively as well. Good amount of bubbles which really helps the beer. Nice espresso foam lacing as well. Way in the back are some leafy hop notes too.
OK, I am changing the rules. 2012-13 are the winners. I will compare them to the latest incarnation. Previous to 2012, Our Special ale is just too cherry and slightly tangy to really recommend.
Up From the Cellar – Christmas Ale from Anchor (2010-2011)
Up from the Cellar for December will be focusing on multiple vintages of the Anchor Christmas beer. I will be covering the years 2008-2014. Today’s post goes back to 2010 and 2011.
(You can check out last years review HERE)
2010 This one tastes much like a regular, current year offering would taste like. Though there is a creeping set of flavors that remind me of the 2008 version. Tartness. Cherry like notes. But right now they are at bay and the malt is nice and there is a bit of bitterness to it still.
2011 Finally a beer without a red tint! The progression from year to year shows a marked growth from too sour-ish cherry back to the holiday themed taste that I am used to. But they are all of a piece. And flavors that are foreground in older vintages are bit players in later years. There is even a bit of chocolate notes in 2011. 2009 is such an outlier in comparison.
My winner though is the 2010. There is simply more hop bite here that covers the ferric fruit tang that is super prevalent in 2008 and still there in 2011.
Up From the Cellar – Christmas Ale from Anchor (2008-2009)
Up from the Cellar for December will be focusing on multiple vintages of the Anchor Christmas beer. I will be covering the years 2008-2014. And choosing a winner like college football does. Via a biased playoff.
(You can check out last years mega-review HERE)
2008 pours a near reddish color this year. The first whiff upon popping the cap is of Oud Bruin and cherry but as the beer warms up that fades off like the head diminishes. There is a decidedly fruit taste to this beer. Fruit punch primarily. Strawberry would be my next guess. It doesn’t taste bad per se but it is certainly more fruitcake and dried fruit than anything else.
2009 has a more pleasing aroma to it. Good start. And it is so different from the ’08. Cinnamon red hot flavor hits me first. Never had that in a beer before. That initial taste fades a skosh and the beer starts to taste better as it warms. There is a nice rich, full taste to this with what seems to be a darker malt bill to it.
It is kinda hard to pick a winner to move on to the next round against the victor of 2010 vs. 2011. The oldest and last bottle of the Our Special Ale had faded too much for me though it was offensive. So I have to pick the 2009, though the spice profile makes it an underdog for the next round.
Up From the Cellar – Fritz & Ken’s Imperial Stout from Sierra Nevada
Thanks to the generosity of Tomm Carroll THE L.A. beer scribe, the Up From the Cellar feature this month is jam packed. We each brought our bottle of Fritz and Ken’s Imperial Stout to see if the same beer aged in different ways would make a difference. Plus Tomm brought a fitting nightcap of an aged bottle….
Now I only have 1 bottle left from the Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary series. But it was worth it for this unique cellar experiment. Fritz & Ken’s Ale, an imperial stout, clocks in at 9.2%. Cellarable but on the lower end of the ABV spectrum to me.
Here is what I had to say when I first sampled it: An imperial stout that doesn’t reek of boubon! It’s about time. Nice stout base with a lot of warming alcohol. Surprisingly not super roasty flavored. Mild with a hint of cherry. pours dark black with espresso head to it.
Tomm and I compared our two bottles. Same beer. Both treated well. And yet the two displayed slightly different characteristics. Mine was a little thinner in mouthfeel with minor notes of chocolate along with a little bit of cherry hidden in it. His had a little more soy sauce taste to it and also more sparkle and a touch of smoke flavor too. Both had a bit of oxidation to them. The alcohol heat that I had when young had mellowed out of it. It was a perfectly passable stout. It would have been interesting to compare our bottles with one that had turned south because I feel this particular beer may have passed prime stage and it would have been good to see what those bad notes were and in what percentage they were present in our beers.
To finish up on a lighter note, Tomm brought out a bottle of Stone La Citrueille Cèleste de Citracado that was brewed with The Bruery and Elysian. A Yam/Pumpkin collaboration.
My review back in 2011 was: Not much in the way of pumpkin or yams but quite nice mix of lemon verbena and birch. Odd at first but this beer really grows on you. Pours light orange.
For a 5% beer that Tomm was worried would be a quick drain pour this was quite nice and still peppy after three years. There was no evidence of squash at all to my palate but the lemon verbena and spice notes were still going strong. Maybe that high flavor profile masked other issues but I didn’t get a sense of it being too old. There was still some bubbles to it as well. I don’t know how this beer has survived, but it has and it could probably go on longer as well.
Up From the Cellar – Supplication from Russian River Brewing
I finally broke down and brought up a Russian River beer, Supplication. Which the brewery website describes as a “Brown Ale aged in used Pinot Noir barrels from local Sonoma County wineries. It is aged for about 12 months with sour cherries, brettanomyces, lactobacillus, and pediococcus added to each barrel. Flavors from the cherries, Pinot Noir and oak balance each other nicely with a little funk from the brett.”
This beer has a 100% rating on Ratebeer. So it must be good. Here is my thumbnail review from 2010, “All I can say is TART. A great sipper filled with cherries in every sip. Only downside to me is that it really dries out the tongue. Had to have water handy to re-hydrate.”
The aroma of this beer is big. Kombucha style tartness just fills the nasal passages. This is, for sure, not a gateway sour. There is a bit of pie cherry in the nose but it is second fiddle to the sour.
There is a bit of Sweet Tart powdery sour notes in the first sip. Cherry is there as well. But there is something in the nose that just tastes off. Too vinegary at this point. If you search past the sour, there is a tiny bit of tannic flavor and a smidge of oak. But you gotta hunt that down.
The Verdict? I think this one passed prime and is sliding inexorably downward. The various bugs have gone too far with this particular bottle. Adding one off flavor that upsets the balance.
Up from the Cellar – Perserverance from Alaskan Brewing
This beer was brewed to celebrate the 25th anniversary of brewing by Alaskan Brewing Company. It was initially released into the wild in September of 2011
And this “limited edition Imperial Stout is brewed with glacier-fed water, birch syrup from the Alaska Birch Syrup Co., fireweed honey from BeeAlaskan Apiaries, brown sugar and an array of different malts including malted oats and a dash of our world famous alder-smoked malt”
Let’s see how the years have treated this rarity from up north…….The initial aroma is full of that alder-smoked malt almost to the point of bacon. The aroma is, quite frankly, a bit off putting. Some beers you just get sucked into and this one is doing the opposite. The taste is considerably better. The combo of the syrup and honey goes a long way to ameliorating the smoke notes.
The texture is quite smooth and for a Russian Imperial Stout surprisingly light. The combination of the sweet and the alder almost make for a minty type aftertaste. I double checked the BJCP Off Flavor Flash Cards to double check myself and see if the cellaring had gone sideways but from what I can tell, this probably hasn’t run into trouble. It may just be that the sweetness has faded more quickly than the alder smoke, unbalancing the beer.
I let the beer warm up a bit and the flavors did drop a notch in intensity with some licorice notes adding in as well. And my overall rating rose based on that fact. But it still is quite the Alaskan Rauch to it. I just wish it had a bit more muscular malt body and an easier hand on the smoke to balance the competing flavors. As it is, this is not one of my favorites.
Verdict? I have never had this beer before so I do not have a benchmark. I was darned lucky to find this on sale a year or so later. I would say that there wasn’t any issue with where I bought it nor with the aging but it would be interesting to see how this beer gets reviewed in years to come as others pull their bottles out of their cellar.
Up From the Cellar – Brux Domesticated Wild Ale from Russian River & Sierra Nevada
Refermented in the bottle with Brettanomyces bruxellensis, Brux will change and develop over time. Copper-colored, dry and complex, with slightly tart notes of green grass, pear, spice and lemon – this ale will progress in the bottle for many years.
That is part of the brewery description of the domesticated wild ale collaboration between Sierra Nevada and Russian River.
Back in July of 2012, I had these superlatives for the beer when I sampled it at the Surly Goat: “This is one tremendous beer. Pours a slightly hazy yellow. Barnyard funk greets the nose but does not overwhelm. The taste is sprightly with some funk and sour melding together. Some fruit notes tag along for the ride as well.”
But what do I think now that is has aged a bit. Can it possibly get better?
Short answer. No. Not that the orange color that replaced the hazy yellow is an issue. Nor is their a diminishment of barnyard funk. What has changed and not for the better in my view is that last bit of fruit has faded off into the sunset and for sunrise there is a bit of a band-aid note at the back end that is a bit gacky on the palate. And by gacky, I mean a flavor that erases the goodwill that came before and replaces it with a slightly rubber taste. There is a nice tartness here though and the first 85% of the beer is fine even though it doesn’t reach the heights of 2012.
The Verdict? Maybe this beer was in a trough. Some beers go through phases (like a teenager) where they are unlikeable. Would another year make this better? Or improve where it is? Won’t know now but that is the fun of experimenting with beer aging. The unknown.
