Bieken and Barbar: Two Honey-Loaded Delights

Bieken Ale
Br. Boelens, Belsele
750 mL capped bottle
8.5 percent ABV
Sampled: March 20, 2009

The nose comes off with a graininess more common to saisons but with that key ingredient – honey – right in the mix. The head fizzles out into a thin, almost nonexistent lace. The label claims Bieken a descendant off brews native to Land van Waas, undoubtedly in Flanders. But the ancient tradition of brews based on honey shines through in any culture.

There’s a little herbal bouquet and some heather to round it out. Bieken feels like the product of an old brewing era. The honey falls in the right spot, beyond all the mango and lemon flavors, snuggling up against the finish. Murky orange in color, only slight traces of that fruit bubble up.

To just call it honey and be done with it does Bieken a disservice – it imbues this brew with a soft, mellow palate that other ales with honey can only gawk at. As a result, it closes clean, without a trace of bitterness, the gift which honey gives to ale.

Bieken pushes forward with the spiciness of a saison, but not the other factors. Despite being stronger than most saisons at 8.5 percent, Bieken offers a much smoother drinking experience. Don’t let the light sediment bother you; it’s not even a minor hindrance because the smoothness carries over to Bieken’s every facet.

In the end, there’s really only one rating for a beer so rounded and strong.
Rating: 8.5/10

Barbar Ale
Ale brewed with honey and spices
(Coriander and orange peel)
Brasserie Lefebvre, Quenast, Belgium
11.2 oz. capped bottle
8 percent ABV
Sampled: May 22, 2009


Forget the elephantine name – this ale never lumbers or sways.

From the first whiff, the burnt orange melts into the undeniable ingredient, honey. Despite its expense, it makes an ordinary beer intriguing. Plus, it’s connection to beer runs deep and ancient.

Barbar’s taste follows the template of the nose, skillfully shifting from the orange to the honey richness. The thin lace still lends a nice creaminess, and the effervescence common to many strong Belgians never manifests.

The honey imparts softness to the taste, and keeps the hops (Styrian and Hallertau) from sneaking in any bitterness. The bitterness comes on the front end, thanks to the coriander and orange. Most Belgian ales might not meet muster of the Bavarian Purity Law, but it’s hard to argue with the results of the spicing.

Barbar deserves credit for dodging easy categorization, picking elements of tripels, Belgian wit, bier de miel and Belgian golden ales. Mashing them together here works wonders, creating ale that comes off complex and easy to quaff.

As much as I enjoy Barbar, it outpaces Bieken by a trunk at least.

Rating: 9/10

Stockyard Oatmeal Stout

Chicago, IL

Sampled: May 24, 2009

Trader Joe’s beers are too easily dismissed, but their alcoholic beverages are no different than their other products.

The specialty grocer contracts with craft breweries for its ales – the holiday ale is a Unibroue product, and I’m convinced this stout’s Windy City origins connect it to Goose Island, its outstanding craft brewery.

This ale hits all the stylistic marks. Oatmeal stout can easily miss the target – too many craft brewers want to push it to imperial extremes when this stout can express more complexity and taste at the strength of a session beer.

The roasted malt comes on strong with a chocolate bouquet. Molasses, oats, raisins and other flavors lurk beneath the opaque surface. The oats give rise to vanilla bean as the stout cruises to the finish, which eschews all bitterness. It just requires a pinch of oats in the mash to generate that taste, but it works here. The vanilla is a refreshing change, but it works better because the vanilla does not become obtrusive.

At $5.99 a six-pack, this is the most economic oatmeal stout on the market. Since Goose Island does not market in Tennessee, I do wonder whether this is the same stout or not. Three years have passed since my last Goose Island Oatmeal Stout. Trader Joe’s just opened down here. While I cannot compare the two, I will find it simple to stick with Stockyard for an affordable, roasted oatmeal stout.

Rating: 8/10

Lozen Boer

Brewmaster’s Collection Private Reserve

De Prouef Brouwery

Original ABV: 10 percent

ABV after aging: Unknown, but I’ll estimate 13-15 percent

750 mL corked bottle

Time aging since purchase: 30 months

Sampled: May 24, 2009

Year of aging finally means I can taste this quadruple Belgian I socked this away 2-and-1/2 years ago. Lozen Boer was one of the last beers I bought for aging in Columbus, but because you can’t break out a quad every day, it has sat longer than expected.

A quad can thrive after five or more years of aging, This ale proves it can hang with the big dogs of the style – Chimay Grand Reserve, Rochefort 12 and St. Bernardus Abt 12.

Creamy laces clings to the dark ruby body that appears unchanged from a young bottle. But the nose betrays its age. A sharp pepper reveals what the yeast culture has done during its time in the dark. Shoot, I can smell the pepper and a complementary molasses tones from across the room. Pepper signifies a heightened alcohol content

With time, the complexity of a young quad/abt enters new dimensions as a few flavors begin to dominate and others fade away. Lozen Boer winnows down its lineup to molasses and a finish ripe with dried fruit – dates with an undercurrent of raisins.

Even with the pepper, the alcohol sneaks up thanks to its unbelievable smoothness. Lozen Boer becomes dangerous if imbibing more than a glass.This sucker blows past the alcohol threshold for wines and straight into port territory.

While Lozen Boer comes off as balanced when sample new, it’s well worth the $10-12 expense to stand up a bottle in a cool, dark place for a few years. Quads mellow wonderfully with age, and anyone overwhelmed by the strength and complexity of a young bottle would enjoy the august, port wine developments aging produces.

Rating: 9/5/10 (I added a full point due to aging's effects).

Sensational Saisons: Great Lakes Grassroots Ale and Great Divide Saison Farmhouse Ale

Someone brews a beer for every season and any reason, but not suits me better than saison, the traditional harvest-time beers matured for the winter in France and Belgium.

While Ommegang’s Hennepin ranks as my favorite beer (period), I always yearn the sample other brewers’ takes, since the style comes with plenty of wiggle room for the brewer.In some ways, the style represents a coming-of-age ale for many microbreweries, because saison is largely what the brewer makes of it.

For this impromptu sample conducted in Columbus, I picked Great Lakes Brewery’s Grassroots Ale (when in Ohio, no other beer will suffice) and Great Divide Brewing Company’s Saison Farmhouse Ale, representing Cleveland and Denver, respectively. In fact, I read about Grassroots prior to my last Columbus trip. Knowing that one of my favorite breweries had ventured into saison territory had my mouth watering.

With Grassroots, everything starts and finishes with lemon – but what a bouquet it presents, because this ale was brewed in tribute to local growers. Lemon balm and lemon basil lead the herbal lineup that finds space for subtle chamomile and the essential saison spice, coriander.

Great Divide’s Saison finishes with a drier, grain tone emerging directly from a smoother shot of lemon. Many saisons veer toward softer citrus like orange but this one goes the lemon route as well. It’s so perplexing that people pick those god-awful lemon wine coolers, hard lemonades and water-down vodka beverages

While not typically a fan of beer brewed with rice – plenty of macrobrewers cut their malted barley with corn and rice – but with this ale, it has a soothing effect. Add in the four yeast strains present here, and this ale never becomes a mere sum of its parts.

Like its name’s origins, most saisons are fleeting and mercurial. Wait too long to drink it, and the yeasts begin to churn out a B-vitamin funk that gives the ale an unflattering asparagus-esque bouquet.

The great element of this style is alcoholic disparity. Saison can go as low as 4.5 percent of Jolly Pumpkin’s Bam Biere, or up into double digits, where some of Saison DuPont’s stronger strains reside. This pair lands on the lighter side, with Grassroots at 6.2 percent and Great Divide at 7.3 percent.

No matter the alcoholic level, the great trait of Saison is their sheer drinkability. On a hot summer evening, few beers this complex drink down so smoothly. Imagine something heavy and dark

Either of those two regional saisons would go perfectly with that setting. The beauty is that they fall into the same category, but share little outside of brewing style. They each take those lemon and herb characters but run in different directions with them.

I give the nod to Grassroots Ale, since its local ingredient jump out from the beer, while it isn’t strong enough to lead to intoxication after one or two.

Brigand

Castle Brewery, Van Honsbrouck, Belgium

9 percent alcohol by volume

750 mL corked bottle (bottled 06/2007)

Sampled: April 26, 2009

Forget about the Robin Hood facsimile on the bottle – sometimes the best beers lurk beneath head-scratchingly bad labels (see Bernardus, Saint). Almost two years after bottling, this might not be the ideal sample of the beer, but a sniff of its proper mix of orange and alcohol pepperiness tells me Brigand comes from Tripel territory.

The bubbly head condenses to a thin lace that almost vanishes entirely. This appears to be an effect of aging, since most Tripels usually feature the thick “ice cream head” of stronger ales.

The orange tones continue to dominate the flavor, with the pepper settling in as an effective backdrop. Tripels are among the most deceptive high-alcohol beers, a trend with Brigand does not buck. It comes across smooth with a small salvo of hop on the finish

With hop prices shoving beer prices ever higher, the $9 tag on Brigand makes it more than worthy at a time when some superior Tripels runs $12-$15. it’s a pleasant beer suitable for imbibing on a hot summer day – so long as you don’t lose track of its alcohol content.

Rating 7/10

Great Lakes Christmas Ale: A Personal History

The holidays might have been less than stellar, but one tradition has carried over well into 2009.

Thanks to old friend BC, I have spent the past two weeks working my way through two six packs of Great Lakes Christmas Ale - my favorite holiday libation, and easily the best winter ale I ever tasted.

I’m always thankful I didn’t discover it alone. Too often, being a devotee of good beer is a lonely existence; it’s a Flavorless American Lager World out there.

I remember the night well. After Braif, Nirav and myself helped BC and Abigail move into their Northwest Columbus pad in Fall 2004, the couple had us working folk over for a celebratory dinner.

Abigail picked out some mixed six-packs from the Kenny Road Market. As we each picked music while hanging out before dinner, we dove into the bucket of beers and everyone marveled at the Christmas ale. Our adoration of GLCA was so strong, I couldn’t tell you anything else Abigail bought. Nothing like it had come before; our beer worlds had been forever altered.

That winter, it became a regular libation, even at $10 a six-pack, a hike from my typical $6 Goose Island selections at the Sharon Square Beverage Shop. That skillful addition of honey, cinnamon and ginger pushes this ale into the stratosphere. I could no longer separate it from the season.

BC left town in August 2005, Abigail followed in October, but the tradition would survive the 800-mile gulf between us all.

At a 2005 dinner at the Winking Lizard, I landed my official Christmas Ale glass, which has served me well in years since. Before trekking down to Hilton Head to see BC and Abigail, I loaded a cooler with 12 Christmas ales, stocking us up for the week in South Carolina.

By Christmas 2006, the ale departed from store shelves and taps by the week before Christmas. The Winking Lizard last longer than any other pub, but other sad events intruded, so hunting down beer was far from my mind.

In Nashville, it wasn’t a matter of the separating GLCA from the season – distance did that for me.

But 2007 still brought plenty of GLCA. Bob’s Bar returned it to the taps in time for a November trip to Columbus. A few sixers held me over in December, and when back in Columbus for the Mumm-Terman wedding, Bob’s still had some kegs to empty. I gladly aided their cause.

I thought I had almost no chance of scoring some this year, so I turned to an old friend. BC dutifully carted around two six-packs in his trunk for several weeks, until I took ownership on New Year’s Eve.

Two weeks later, I’m slowly coming to the end. I’m down to a pair of GLCAs, and will every savor every drop.

Although I recently discovered that a liquor store in Bowling Green, Ky. (a one-hour drive) stocks Great Lakes beers, that won’t serve any good at this point. Those two are all I have until the tradition resumes in November.

Something tells me BC will once again be involved. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Everest of Hopheads: Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA

The Imperial India Pale Ale

12 oz. capped bottle

Aged: One year

20 percent ABV

Sampled: Jan. 11, 2009

Finally, 120 Minute IPA's lazy Sunday arrived.

As a self-professed non-hophead, I had no idea what to expect - a stifling, overdone hop bouquet that people drink just to say they drank it? I like my beer balanced - too many imperial IPAs fall victim to hop overdoses.

But I should have stuck with what I know about Dogfish Head and its high quality experimental beers. Aside from Immort Ale, I've never encountered a bad bottle from them, especially their high-octane IPA series. The 60-Minute is quite drinkable, the 90-Minute an acquired taste best drank as a nightcap.

The nose on the 120 Minute doesn’t emanate anything close to an IPA – it’s more single-malt Scotch and port wine than overhopped ale. As with those spirits, you can smell this over-the-top sucker across the room. There’s a lot of red fruits and a little peaty earthiness in the mix, punctuated by a stiff pepperiness.

Upon first taste, though, it’s unquestionably a beer, if not immediately identifiable as an IPA. The thin lace and effervescence also make its origins clear.

With a pretty bitter upswing at the tail end, the month of dry-hopping becomes evident. The stifling hop bouquets of many double IPAs or Imperial IPAs never comes to bear in the 120 Minute. The copper-amber body is actually much lighter than the 90-minute IPA, even though it sports double the alcohol strength.

Interestingly, the 120 Minute veers close in taste to Samichlaus or a well-aged Chimay Grand Reserve and St. Bernardus Abt 12. All high-alcohol ale should present itself so pleasantly.

It’s a surprisingly smooth affairs; the pepper bouquet never becomes obtrusive. That’s major hurdle for ales of this alcohol content, which Dogfish Head easily crosses.

Once again,Dogfish Head impressively pushes against beer’s limits, and in small doses, the 120 Minute is quite drinkable despite its heft. Those whiskey traces are a nice complement to the IPA characteristics this monster still sports.

But it comes with many caveats, the first of which is don’t dare touch it without a full stomach.

Rating: 9/10

Another Christmas Ale Miracle - A St. Bernardus Brew For the Season

St. Bernardus Christmas Ale

Belgian Abbey Ale

750 mL corked bottle

10 percent ABV

Sampled:Dec. 27, 2008

Noel indeed!

What a better Christmas treat than a new addition to Belgium’s finest lineup of ales?

Grabbing the last one stocked at the Jax Package Store in Cumming, Ga., I’m unable to lay one down to test the 15-year age claim on the bottle. But it’s a new St. Bernardus, so I couldn’t wait to sample it.

I can smell this Christmas Ale’s bouquet from across the room. Candied sugar, a slight molasses and raisins permeate the initial pass. Do I detect a little cinnamon and nutmeg ducking back beneath the more dominant flavors? As a package, it’s a remarkably earthy nose with a sparkling head and lace that rapidly thins down to wisps.

At first taste, St. Bernardus apparently delivered its Dubbel on steroids. But that comparison doesn’t only serves as a starting point – this ale goes in different directions.

For an ale clocking in at 10 percent ABV, it remains amazingly light and never succumbs to the pepperiness unavoidable with many stronger Belgian ales. The pepper frequently proves the limitations of beers with double-digit alcohol contents.

But the flavor rolls from the candied sugar and molasses into fruiter territory. Joining the raisin notes are hints of dates and plums with apples elbowing into the bitter finale. The fruit gives way to a roasted maltiness – chicory, possibly – and bows out gently for its size.

This reminds me of the Noel produced by Brasserie a’Chouffe, only more lively and festive. The other beer was darker than the normal Chouffe range, but lacked the complexity of its blond and brown ale brethren. St. Bernardus offers a nice diversion, as the St. Bernardus 60^th Anniversary Abt 12 from two years ago.

Eschewing the typical spices of Christmas ales, the brewers from Watou refine their techniques for Christmas to deliver another complex and mysterious ale

Maybe next year I can find one to sock away for a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Pasts in 2023.

Rating: 8/10