Skip the Bliss, Pass the Peppercorns and Salt

When any beer touts its extras emphatically, the flavor had better match the hype. There are beers with which it's hard to go overboard -- stouts, porters, for example. A brewer can throw a ton of additional ingredients and the beer can turn assertive. For lighter styles, a little spice can go a long way. Not all brewers successfully navigate such straits.

Brasserie du de Ciel Route des epices
Sampled: Dec. 16, 2012
Subtlety and low alcohol content masked the most creative rye ale I've tasted. It sat in the cellar since Labor Day because of my amazing ability to confuse the amount (11.5 ounces) for the alcohol content, which was actually a reasonable 5.3 percent ABV.

At first taste, Route des épices (Spice route) tastes pretty pedestrian. Some burnt orange and rye spiciness emerges, flanked by a narrow vein of lemon and grain textures, but only faint traces of peppercorns. 

Give Routes des epices five minutes and the secret ingredient soars. Brewed with green and black peppercorns, hints of spice lurk around the edges. The peppercorns blanket the palate with an elegant heat that lingers.The mix of green and black peppercorns becomes evident and boosts the spice bouquet's complexity.

After the last sip, the ambient heat carried on  for 10-15 minutes. Another inventive brew from an inventive brewery north of the border. Route des epices is a rye beer for the ages, an experience necessary for any set of taste buds. 

Terrapin  Side Project 18: Liquid Bliss Peanut Butter Porter
Sampled: Dec. 29, 2012

This porter was the biggest libation letdown in ages.

Beers like porters and stout can handle a lot of additional ingredients, so I get fiery when I run into a beer that settles for half measures. Sure, traces of peanut butter, Reese's cup and roasted peanuts emerge, but they mostly reside in the background.

As a porter, not all is lost. There are notes of chocolate, vanilla and sassafras on top of the standard medium body, but this beer should have pushed the envelope more. I wish I could criticize Terrapin for bludgeoning my taste buds with peanut butter, but at times, it's barely perceptible.

Liquid Bliss could have been impressive. Instead, it's just another porter boldly touting its ingredients while using them meekly.


Nothing lost about Verloren
Put an owl on the bottle and I'm already hooked. Sam Adams went one better and filled it with a seldom-seen style, Gose, a wheat ale from Leipzig, Germany. Stuck in East Germany for decades, it has finally received some attention from U.S. brewers.

Verloren has a bright bouquet of coriander, cracked wheat grain and Clementine oranges below a fine lace. Verloren's principal spices, coriander and salt, interact throughout the body. It has the haze of an unfiltered wheat ale but shared relatively few characteristics with the better-known hefeweizen.

The malted wheat has no traces of banana or cloves but has rich tones of honey and a lemon finish. Verloren can boast a better honey flavor than most ales touted as honey wheat. 

Part of Sam Adams small-batch series, which has rapidly churned out some reward experiments. Verloren is more than worth the hunt. Craft-brewed gose tends to come in small, brewery-exclusive batches. Sam Adams serves as a strong conduit for bringing gose to the masses.