Battle Beer Stout Beerfest

I didn't get to go to the Great American Beer Festival this year, but fortunately there is still beer for drinking here in Pennsylvania. Dr. Tom and I decided to have a beer tasting to celebrate the beginning of fall with some stout. With the variety of stout styles and places that brew stout, we did two head to head tastings and one random beer just for the variety.

The head to head competitions pitted two chocolate stouts against one another and two imperial stouts. Choosing one contender from the UK and one from the US in each category, we drank:

Rogue Chocolate Stout vs Young's Double Chocolate Stout

Sam Smith Imperial Stout vs Victory Storm King

While at the store, we wanted another beer but didnt want another head to head, so we bought a sixer of Dominion Oak Barrel Stout. A perfect choice since we were playing the card game Dominion (it's like Magic the Gathering....yes we are nerds).

We started with the Rogue which has a nice chocolate flavor with some pleasant bitterness. Dr. Tom described it as drinking a candy bar. A strong start to this battle beer. Next up was the Young's double chocolate, a less intense chocolate and didnt have the creaminess that I was expecting (it came in a normal bottle, not in the nitro can that I am used to). While the Youngs was good, the Rogue was much better and the clear winner.

For battle imperial, we started with the Sam Smith. Smokey and meaty. It smelled a little like port with a bit of apple on the tongue. Dr. Tom kept saying candy apple or spiced apple, something he thought was obvious in the beer, but I didnt pick up on it as strongly. The Storm King fought back with a big kick of bitterness. Actually that was about all that we got from it. Sitting here drinking one as I type this, I am tasting a lot more than bitterness but I think maybe with the 3 preceding stouts, the bitterness was the only thing standing out in comparison. Normally I am a big fan of Storm King, but it just didnt match up well tonight. The winner in this battle was Sam Smith.

Finally we just sat and drank the Dominion (smooth, with vanilla and oak flavors) while playing Dominion and discussing the beers overall for the evening. Dr. Tom ranks them as follows:

1. Rogue Chocolate Stout

2. Sam Smith Imperial Stout

3. Dominion Oak Barrel Stout

4. Young's Double Chocolate

5. Storm King

I would switch the Dominion with the Sam Smith, just because I was not a big fan of the port flavors I got from the Sam Smith. Also, I would move the Storm King up in the rankings just because I do enjoy a nice bitter kick in the face.

A Wine Drinker's Beerfest

I got a call from Dr. Tom requesting help drinking his first shipment from a beer of the month gift he got for Christmas. Obviously I cannot turn my back on a friend who needs help, so I picked up some beer and we had a mini beerfest. The other participant in the tasting, Abby (Mrs. Dr. Tom) is a big wine fan and not so much into beer. I wrote down some of her reactions so we could get the wine drinkers perspective on the beer.

On to the beer...

Saranac black and tan: The smell of this beer immediately reminded me of Guinness. With the beer of the month package, Tom got tasting notes on each of the beers. Normally I don't pick up on a lot of the flavors described, but Tom and I both immediately agreed on a strange one: apple peel.
Abby: " I am having trouble taking this seriously"

Choc Beer Miner Mishap: This is a black lager, a style that I rarely drink. Also I had never heard of the brewery before and I was quite impressed. It had a coffee and chocolate in the nose. The taste had the type of bitterness you expect from a pilsner and a smoke quality in the after taste.
Abby:"It smells burnt." "I just burped up the other beer, it tasted good." She preferred the black lager to the black and tan.

Choc Beer Basement Batch: This is choc beer's pale ale. Each of us had a different take on the nose.
Me: orange citrus, Tom: pine and citrus, Abby: lemon cleaner
The flavor is less intense than the aroma, but was pleasant and not very harsh or bitter. Tasted a little like grapefruit. Abby disagreed about the bitterness and kept sticking out her tongue trying to rid it of the bitterness or something.

Harpoon UFO Pale Ale: This is an unfiltered beer and it is crazy cloudy. It smelled kind of like honey and according to Tom, a little bit of cinnamon.
Abby:" It smells sweet." (I of course told her that sweet is not a smell, and we may have gotten into an argument...)

At this point we were playing a card game and didn't really review the next two beers, Saranac IPA and Sly Fox 113 IPA. Abby did describe the Sly Fox as smelling exactly like a Cannu Chenin Blanc (a wine). Crazy.

Waiting for good results

I finally tried the red ale turned amber ale that I brewed in early October. I brewed on the 3rd and did not taste until the 30th. In this case, waiting longer to drink the beer turned out the be a good idea. Nick and Greg actually kegged the beer a week or so after brewing and panicked when they tasted it. The descriptions I got included "tastes wine-like," "over extracted grains," and "kind of funky." I was kind of bummed that it looked like a failed brew, but I thought if we waited a bit longer, the beer would figure itself out and get to tasting right. Fortunately that turned out to be the case, and from looking around on the internet and re-reading some of my old brewing notes, it seems to be the trend. The longer you let the beer sit, the better. As Alton Brown always says: Your patience will be rewarded. As far as I can tell, the more stuff you throw into a beer during brewing, the longer it takes for all the flavors to get sorted out and settle into a palatable beverage.

Anyway, I tasted the beer on Friday without making any tasting notes but here is my memory of the beer:

It poured kind of a murky brown, probably because I forgot to add the irish moss and no one wanted to experiment with using egg whites as a fining agent. Oh well. Now we know officially that it is an amber ale and not a red ale. The head was pretty creamy with small bubbles. The retention was good but not great. The smell was not very strong, I think the keggerator is a bit too cold for this dark of a beer. The taste was mostly the toasted malts and it finished with a nice bitterness. The bitterness was a cross from what you would expect from the hops plus the burnt grains. I liked it. There was not a great hop presence, but every now and then I could taste the hop pellets. The only strange thing was the smell as I drank the beer. Once the glass was about half empty, I could really get my nose in there. The smell was weird. There was a weird fruit (cherry maybe?) and a little bit of funk. Maybe this will disappear, maybe not.

Over all, I am pleased with the way it turned out. I just need to keep in mind the impatient people brewing with me. Either I need to find beers that are quick from grain to glass, or convince them to wait for the beer to be ready before drinking.