2011 Beer Review #10: Boulevard Brewing Company Sixth Glass Quadrupel

No, I'm not dead! Hooray!

If you're wondering about the twoish-week gap between posts, it's because I came down with a pretty miserable cold shortly after my last post. And also because Indiana was hit with the worst freaking ice/snow storm I've ever seen and I was completely iced/snowed in my house for two full days with a cold and a sick wife and a sick toddler. If ever I've needed a beer...

But I'm back! I'm back with a Valentine's Day present from my lovely wife, who's apparently completely on board with this whole "what the hell, I'll drink anything once" attitude I've had lately. She knows full well my love of Tripels and decided that a Quadrupel was the logical next step. And really, that's hard to argue with.

As I understand it, Quadrupels are somewhat contentious within the beer geek community. Not everyone agrees that the Quadrupel is in fact its own style; some people consider the Quadrupel merely a strong Belgian ale possibly (but not necessarily) branching off from the Trappist style. My regular readers (if indeed I still have any) know that I'm concerned less with styles and categories than I am with does this taste good, so the exact taxonomy of the Quadrupel will have to be settled somewhere else (and probably by people who aren't all that much fun to drink with).

Something I've noticed about every Tripel and Quadrupel I've ever bought is that they're very particular about how you drink it. Tripels and Quadrupels demand, apparently universally, to be drunk out of a tulip glass, which has a large bulbous body that narrows considerably near the top before widening at the opening. This glass is meant to retain the head and display the aroma, both important characteristics for judging a Tripel or Quadrupel.

I don't have a tulip glass. My birthday is in September if you feel like remedying this situation. The closest thing I have is a set of very wide-bodied wine glasses, so that's how I enjoyed the Boulevard Brewing Company's Sixth Glass Quadrupel. According to other reviews I've found online, this beer is noted for its massive head, but they must have been drinking out of the correct glassware because I didn't have that experience from my wine glass. What I did notice was a dark amber color and an aroma of caramel and toffee. Darker than I expected, but by no means unwelcome.

Similarly, the taste was very sweet but balanced well with a rich woody flavor that helped to partially mask the presence of straight alcohol. And at 10.5% alcohol, that's a big job that this beer isn't completely up for--you'll notice the strength sooner rather than later, and then you'll notice it again later. There's no bitterness here at all, and once I started on my second glass I noticed that this beer has a lot of flavors in common with whisky. Understand that I see exactly nothing wrong with my beer tasting like whisky. I've had worse beers, is the point here.

So even if Quadrupel isn't technically its own style, The Sixth Glass is a very worthwhile, complex beer that deserves a slow consideration. It's not my favorite, and it's hard to imagine anyone who might find it the best beer ever, but it's certainly got an appeal as a dark-horse, surprising beer that most people should find enjoyable at least.

2011 Beer Review #9: Bee Creek Hoosier Honey Wheat

After a Christmas/New Year's filled with presents of delicious beer, I finally ran out of gift beers and found myself perusing the selection at a local liquor store. I was encouraged to see that I haven't even come close to sampling all the many varieties available--it's a long year, after all, and I want to keep finding new beers for as long as I can. But when I saw the label for Bee Creek's Hoosier Honey Wheat featuring an adorable cartoon alcoholic bee, I knew I'd made my choice. Local brewery with local ingredients--that's socially responsible drinking!

So I took a 6-pack home with me and poured myself a glass. The beer has a nice clear golden color and a definite honey aroma. A lot of sweetness in the air as well--even from just smelling it, I can tell this is from both the malt and the honey. Sure enough, the first taste is very sweet. I'm not terribly experienced in either drinking or making craft beer, but I'm already second-guessing the brewmaster: Isn't this beer malty enough without adding the straight-up sweetness of honey?

It's not a bad beer by any means, but it's very, very sweet. And I've got five more of these things to plow through before I can justify getting something new. Still, I'm drinking for science--if I'm going to continue to seek out new beers and new breweries, I'll just have to drink these overly sweet beers and get over it. So I grabbed another bottle and had a drink. And this time, it wasn't nearly as sweet. It was much smoother and more complex right from the bottle. What?

And here's where I've learned something about beer drinking. See, the first bottle got poured into a pilsner glass, which has a much wider opening than a standard bottle. That wider opening allows the beer to "breathe" better, giving off a stronger aroma. So when I drank out of that glass, I was smelling the beer as much as I was tasting it, which apparently concentrated the beer's sweetness and made the whole thing come off as cloying. Drinking out of the bottle, I couldn't smell it as much, so I could get the other flavors present in the beer. For the record? Mostly banana.

So I ended up glad I bought a full six-pack, because otherwise I would have written off the Hoosier Honey Wheat as cloying and obnoxious. No matter how you drink it, it might be too sweet for your liking. Still, it's got enough going on that I'd be willing to give the rest of the Bee Creek lineup a taste sometime.

2011 Beer Review #8: Brugge Tripel de Ripple

Beer and pizza. Pizza and beer. For most people, that pairing suggests a dorm room littered with empty Budweiser cans and Domino's pizza boxes. And in a way, that kind of makes sense: Cheap pizza goes best with cheap beer. Don't get me wrong, I'm not above cheap pizza or even cheap beer. I prefer a craft beer if I can get it, but there are times--say, when your favorite sports stadium only sells craft beer out of two stands that are both way the hell away from your seats--when a man just wants something fizzy and mass-produced.

But if you're at an upscale pizza place like Pizzology, drinking a "macrobrew" straight out of the bottle is just a waste. Great pizza demands great beer! So when I found out my local (seriously, just a few blocks from my house) upscale pizza place also serves a Tripel from Broad Ripple's Brugge Brasserie, I jumped at the chance. One of my favorite styles of beer on draft at my new favorite pizza place? Yes please.

The Tripel de Ripple arrived in a proper tulip glass with a nice-sized head on it. It's a cloudy golden color and boasts a rich, fruity aroma of banana and...is that pear? But don't be mistaken, there's a distinct spiciness in the aroma as well. Like any good Tripel, this beer has some great complexity going on, at least in the aroma.

And like any good Tripel, it's also packing a wallop. Most Tripels boast an alcohol by volume of 8% or more, and according to our server the Tripel de Ripple sits at 10%. Oh, Tripels are also notorious for sneaking up on a person--you probably won't (and shouldn't) notice the alcohol with all the other flavors going on. Drink a Tripel with caution.

For the record, I was cautious with the Tripel de Ripple, but it definitely wasn't easy. Just as the aroma promised, there were good strong banana and pear flavors, with a combination of lively carbonation and spice flavors to keep it from approaching actual sweetness. This is one mightily delicious beer. And true to the style, I didn't start feeling any alcohol buzz until I'd just about finished the glass. If you were to drink several of these in a row, you could easily send yourself to Dizzytown before you meant to.

Still, if you can resist the awesomeness enough to stay responsible, the Tripel de Ripple is well worth the willpower. Brugge's website is sadly lacking any notes on their individual beers, so I can't tell if the Tripel de Ripple is a year-round brew or a seasonal offering. Either way, it's one I'll gladly drink again, any time of year.

2011 Beer Review #7: Sun King Malus Π

Thanks to a recent snowstorm that canceled our previous evening plans, my wife and toddler and I found ourselves having dinner at Chatham Tap in Fishers, where I had the opportunity to try the Malus Π witbier from Sun King Brewing Company. I've been a fairly regular visitor to Sun King's tasting room for several months now, but I must have missed the memo about the Malus Π because last week was the first I'd heard of it.

First, a brief linguistic note: Malus Π as a name is an incredibly nerdy reference to apple pie. See, the Latin word malus means apple, and the Greek letter Π is pronounced in English like "pie". So the beer tells you what it's meant to taste like: It's brewed with crabapples and cinnamon. Someone has put their degree in classics to...well, maybe not good, but certainly some kind of use.

So why was I skeptical about this? I mean, beyond the fact that crabapple and cinnamon aren't things I'm used seeing in a beer? It turns out that in addition to meaning "apple", the Latin word malus can also mean "bad". How deep did Sun King's brewer take this nerdy joke? Is he trying to warn me that this is a cloying, appley girl drink impersonating beer?

A quick check of the color reveals, as expected, a cloudy golden color. The aroma was also sweet and cinnamony. The taste? Appley. Cinnamony. Our server described this as a cider rather than a witbier, and it's hard to argue with her assessment. It's got more of a cider sweetness than a beer maltiness, but it's not overly sweet like 99% of every hard cider ever. Really, this is a pleasant surprise--it's smooth and sweet without being too sweet or seeming like something aimed at the under-21 crowd. I wouldn't have thought it possible, but the Malus Π really is a worthwhile cross between apple pie and beer. I'm not missing this next time it shows up at the Sun King tasting room.

2011 Beer Review #6: Tusker Lager

#9 in my Beers of the World 10-pack is Kenya's Tusker Lager, which touts itself as the unofficial national beer. I don't have any way to prove or disprove this claim short of buying a plane ticket and renewing my passport, so I'm perfectly happy taking this claim at face value.

Tusker Lager is the unofficial national beer of Kenya, based on all the research I didn't do.

But being or not being Kenya's unofficial national beer doesn't affect the taste, and taste is what we came here for, right? Let's pour a glass and see for ourselves why Tusker may or may not be so popular.

The color is a very clear, very light yellow. There's not much in the aroma, but I could tell there was honey in there. The taste was similar: Honey, and very little else to speak of. It wasn't cloyingly sweet or anything, but there definitely wasn't any complexity going on. It's a very straightforward, malty lager with some honey added in. It goes down plenty smooth, and I'm sure I could drink more, but it's hard to think of a reason to track this stuff down.

2011 Beer Review #5: Flat12 Porter

Right before New Year's, Indianapolis got its newest brewery in the Flat12 Bierwerks. Located in the Holy Cross neighborhood on the city's Near Eastside, Flat12 boasts an impressive lineup of six year-round beers with two seasonal brews (and the promise of more seasonal brews to come!). Best of all, it's about two blocks away from my brother's house. Now I can get delicious local beer and see my favorite nieces in a single trip!

When I visited on January 2, the tasting room was offering samples of the Upside Down Blonde, Half Cycle IPA, and Flat12 Porter. Each beer had plenty to recommend, but I walked out with a growler of the Porter, feeling pretty good about a beer style that I don't usually go for. I enjoyed the 2-oz. sample cup, but would I feel the same way after a full pint?

The only way to tell, of course, was to pour myself a glass. It's probably not fair, but I deliberately wanted to have this back-to-back with the Breckenridge Vanilla Porter to get a sense of the style, since I don't really have any experience with porters.

The head was light brown and filled about 1/3 of the glass. The color? Darker than dark. I held the glass up to a light to get a sense of the color, and hand to God, the room got darker. Light cannot escape the surface of this beer. This porter means it.

Speaking of aggressive, the first thing I noticed about the aroma was coffee. Lots of coffee. After a couple sniffs, I was also able to smell freshly-baked dark bread that's been soaking in coffee for a day or so.

The taste is also dark. The coffee flavor is certainly prevalent, but there are chocolate and caramel hanging out on the edges. The mouthfeel is definitely reminiscent of a heavy dark bread. At the back, I could taste some bitter flavors that almost certainly came from the malt rather than the hops. It's not as sweet overall as the Breckenridge porter, but it's certainly more complex and feels more like a "grownup" beer.

I don't really like coffee (in fact, I gave up caffeine entirely several years ago), and I had to persuade myself to try a porter. After this, I'm glad I did. If you want to give porters a try, there's a great one just east of Downtown Indy.

2011 Beer Review #4: Breckenridge Vanilla Porter

As it happens, my International Smattering of Beers included two American beers--one from the Elevator Brewing Company in Columbus, OH which I already drank and enjoyed, and this Vanilla Porter from Breckenridge Brewery in Breckenridge, CO. But the good news is while not every beer is technically international, the two domestic beers were quite tasty.

I've never been much of a porter person, but after doing some reading about the style, I'm not really sure why. The ideal porter is malty, with dark and complex flavors including...chocolate! Alcohol plus chocolate! What's not to like?

The Vanilla Porter is nice and dark. Opaque dark, I mean, like a porter should be. I had to hold it up to a light just to see the rich brown color properly. It formed a tan head between 1/4 and 1/3 the size of the glass. On the first sniff, I notice coffee dominates the aroma. But there's definitely a sweetness in the air as well, due no doubt to the vanilla. I also detect some chocolate scent. This is looking promising.

Strangely, the flavor goes in almost opposite order. From the start, there's chocolate flavor even as I continue to drink. As I hold the beer in my mouth for a moment, I get a frothy vanilla sensation, and at the very back is a soft coffee flavor. The aftertaste blends chocolate and coffee, and if I really pay attention and look for it, I can taste a faint hinting of hops, just enough to take the edge off the sweetness. The label promised this would be "partakable", and it's very easy to partake of.

This would be a great beer to give to anyone who thinks that all dark beers are bitter or thick like Guinness. If there's such a thing as dessert beer, this is it.

2011 Beer Review #3: Henninger

Another beer from my Christmas International 10-Pack, Henninger Premium Bier looks at first pouring like a mass-produced lager that offers nothing special. It's got a clear, golden color that's maybe a tad darker than the bright yellow that characterizes so many lame mass-produced brews. The head is foamy enough and mostly disperses quickly (I'm including this note because I'm told head is important and not because I know enough to make any quality judgments based on the information).

The aroma offers the first clue that this might be different. There's more earthiness in this aroma than I noticed in my last excursion into the mystery 10-pack. Sadly, my nose is even less refined than my palate, but I think I smell apple. At the very least, we have aroma! Actual flavor can't be far behind!

And sure enough, we have flavor! There are hops in this beer, working in concert with malt to provide something like complexity and artfulness. The initial sip doesn't seem to offer much, but holding it in the mouth for a moment allows a light, fruity flavor to come forth. And sure enough, at the back lurks bitter hops to take some of the edge off the sweetness. I won't pretend this is the best beer ever, and I'm sure most experienced beer tasters would disdain it as mass-produced swill, but for the moment I'm taken in enough to declare it the better of the two beers I've tried tonight.

That all said, this isn't something I could come back to quickly. For one thing, it's really really sweet. The hops are doing what they can to balance things out, but they're fighting a losing battle. I still prefer my beers nice and malty while I learn to appreciate hops more, but this is just too much. Also, I mentioned the apple flavors, right? Well, it's apparently very similar to apple juice in that it raises all kinds of hell with my stomach. As I'm writing this, I'm still not through the pint and I can already feel my stomach cramping up. That's not a winning recipe--who wants their beer to kick them in the gut when there's a whole wide world of beers that play nice with Daddy's insides?

If you're following along, I've now tried 7 of the 10 International Grab Bag beers (I lost my tasting notes for the first 5, and anyway those don't count because I had them before New Year's) and only one of those was genuinely a bad beer. Henninger might take the prize so far simply by virtue of being more than an international version of Budweiser. I've deliberately held back a bock (quite possibly my favorite style) and a porter, so I fully expect the pecking order to change a bit before this is all done.

Henninger is definitely worth a try, but anyone who's sensitive to apple juice should consider themselves warned. If you have friends who won't give up Strongbow for actual beer, Henninger is a great transition beverage.

2011 Beer Review #2: Union Export Brewery's Peter's Brand Classics Lager

Through the magic of Christmas, I recently came into a grab bag of international beers. Halfway into a 10-pack, I've already come to expect very little--after all, at less than $20 for 10 imported beers, there's only so much quality to be found. But if I've learned anything, it's that sampling beer is largely a risk-free endeavor: Good beer, after all, is good; and bad beer is at least beer, so you're usually going to come out on top no matter what. I'll make one exception for the jalapeno-flavored demon brew that Satan himself put in that international 10-pack, but it's still running at a nonfailure rate of 4 out of 5. I figure if that's enough to recommend gum, it's an acceptable rate for beer.

But the burning question now is, can Beer #6 out of my international 10-pack deliver the goods, or at the very least be inoffensive and not cause me to spit-take on an otherwise perfectly good game of Minecraft?

Starting off, we're not looking good. For one thing, everything about this can screams "generic". I'm not even sure I have the title right--I've read online that this comes to us from InBev, but the can claims to come from something called Union Export Brewery. In either case, all signs are pointing to mass-produced lager. But in the interest of science, I opened the can and poured the contents into the nearest pint glass.

You know how they say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover? They were wrong. Sometimes, it's perfectly fine and completely accurate to judge a book, or in this case a beer, by its cover. The color was indistinct from any mass-produced American ballpark beer. The aroma was nonexistant. Seriously, I pushed my face into the glass far enough to get foam up my nose and still smelled exactly nothing. And the taste? Exactly what I came to expect: Malty, with barely enough hops to justify calling it beer. It's not bad by any means, but it's definitely not a craft beer and not something I'm going to track down again.

2011 Beer Review #1: Upland Wheat

For my first beer review of 2011, I revisited one of my first experiences with craft beer: Upland Brewing Company's Wheat Ale. I can't remember exactly when I first had this beer, but it's one I've gone back to several times and always enjoyed, and yesterday's offering was no different.

I usually enjoy being a budding beer snob, but sometimes I'm perfectly happy drinking cheap American swill. I'm talking specifically about going to Colts games at Lucas Oil Stadium. But good news, everyone! If you're willing to hunt one down, the stadium features two stands with Upland's Wheat Ale and Dragonfly IPA. And that's how I found myself drinking perfectly good craft beer out of a horrible plastic cup during a frustrating, sorta-lousy football game. What a way to start my year of beer reviews, right?

Still, even with so many factors working against it, that Wheat Ale is one tasty brew. It's a great introduction to craft beer, even in its color--a nice cloudy gold that's similar to, but much more interesting than, the standard Bud-Coors-Miller offerings. I didn't think to sample the aroma, but I'm not sure I would have gotten much considering the plastic cup (and having so many other lesser beers open near me wasn't helping anyway). Besides, we don't buy beer to smell it--we buy it to drink!

And oh, the drinking. Light and citrusy, with a nice clean finish. It's hard (for me, at least) to gauge the balance of malt and hop flavors because of the lemony taste, but please don't take that to mean that the citrus overpowers the rest of the beer. Really, everything here is working well together to create a delicious brew that just about anybody can (and should!) enjoy. If you've liked Blue Moon in the past, get ready to leave it behind.