Trivia: Iconic Beers
30-Jul-2020
Hobgoblin Ruby Ale
Wychwood Brewery, England
Wychwood Brewery is situated in Witney, Oxfordshire, England. It's flagship Hobgoblin ale has become something of a legend.
This magical ruby beer’s sweet caramel and fruity aromas tease the taste buds. Brewed with smooth and rich Chocolate and Crystal malts & a blend of Fuggles and Styrian Golding hops. Expect a delicious full-bodied toffee flavour and a fruity finish of figs, raisins and dates.
Hops: Fuggle & Styrian Golding
Malt: Pale Ale Maris Otter, Crystal & Chocolate
Fun Fact: Beer of choice for Prime Minister David Cameron when he and President Barack Obama exchanged bottles of beer from their respective countries.
31-Jul-2020
Daily Trivia: Iconic Beers
The actual bottle comes with nothing printed on it. The embossing you see here is done by grey marketeers post sale; imitating prints from the Trappist style beer glass produced by the monastery.
Westvleteren XII
Westvleteren Brewery
Widely considered "Best beer in the world."
Westvleteren is a brewery founded in 1838 by the monks of Trappist Abbey of Saint Sixtus in Vleteren, Belgium. The brewery brews three beers; 5, 10 and 12. All three of them have acquired an international reputation for taste and quality; out of which Westvleteren 12 is considered by some to be the best beer in the world and also one of the hardest beer to procure.
Westvleteren 12 is a masterpiece in its complexity but wonderful in its simplicity. The exquisite smooth taste of caramel and chocolate goes perfectly well with the sweet raisin and nutty notes in the aroma.
Beer is brewed by monks using single malt and single hops in a limited amount, dogmatically following medieval methods and tools without taking help from modern science. Of the 26 Trappists who reside at the abbey, five monks run the brewery, with an additional five who assist during bottling.
According to the monks, these beers are produced as a source of income for the Monastery and they sell them at non-premium rates only to allow the Monastery pay it's bills and keep performing the philanthropic work. For nearly two centuries they have continuously dodged the popular demand of expanding, for they believe they simply "Don't have to."
ABV: 10.2%
Style: Trappist Abbey Quadrupel Beer
Hops: Northern Brewer Hops
Malt: Pale Ale malt, Belgian Candi Sugar (Possibly)
Yeast: House Yeasts (passed over and domesticated in the same brewhouse for generations over centuries)
Fun Fact: One can't order or obtain beer from anywhere else but the abbey itself. Beers are distributed every morning by monks directly from the abbey itself by a token system. 6 bottles per "Car Number" every month is the strict limit.
A decade old bottles still aging in a cellar.
Daily Trivia: Iconic Beers
Dogfish Head's 90 Minute Imperial IPA smashes the roof top of our "Iconic Scale"
13-Aug-2020
90 Minute Imperial IPA
Dogfish Head Brewery, Milton
Dogfish Head are one of the torchbearers of 90s' craft brewing revolution in US and one of the most iconic craft-breweries in the world. Sam Calagione, it's owner, has a rock-star status in the craft-brewing community and is one of it's most recognizable faces.
They were subject of a 6 episode TV series called "Brew Masters" on Discovery channel showcasing their day to day adventures in brewing.
In 2001, the Brewery introduced a beer, the nine percent alcohol 90-IBU 90 Minute IPA. Dogfish Head had always prided itself on brewing “off-centered” beers by “adding all sorts of unconventional ingredients and getting kind of crazy,” as a brewery. With 90 Minute, Dogfish Head innovated not with ingredients but by introducing a new process. By adding hops continually while brewing instead of all at once, the Dogfish Head team created a beer with massive, evolving hop flavors cascading over a firm malt backbone.
Dogfish Head has continued to introduce unique brews, but 90 Minute IPA may be its most iconic achievement.
About the Beer:
“An imperial IPA best savored from a snifter, 90 Minute has a great malt backbone that stands up to the extreme hopping rate. 90 Minute IPA was the first beer we continuously hopped, allowing for a pungent—but not crushing—hops flavor. Tasting notes: brandied fruitcake, raisiny, citrusy.” - Sam Calagione
Aroma: Hops and malt compete for dominance with notes of citrus, tropical fruit, lightly roasted coffee, honey, sweet chocolate, caramel, slight spiciness. When you close your eyes and smell it, you get a darker beer.
Flavor: Moderate grain sweetness and straightforward hops bitterness. Fruity—starfruit, lemongrass, tropical fruit—sweetness of honey, chocolate, caramel corn. Crisp finish with lingering sweetness. Too sweet in the finish.
Overall: A complex malty beer where the hops play second fiddle to the malt.
Everybody loves Sam Calagione!
Dogfish Head creates a beer to pair with the legendary Jazz album "Bitches Brew"
Daily Trivia: Iconic Beers
20-Aug-2020
The beer has a unique lingering flavor described as "Afterglow"
Elephants & Beer - A Concept, that seems strangely befitting, at least to us
うん、この黒
SanktGallen Brewery, Japan
Un, Kono Kuro - The Elephant Dung Beer
For many, the story of Japanese craft beer starts in 1994, the year when tax laws were altered to allow smaller breweries to enter the field. One company, SanktGallen Brewery, managed to get a head start on the rest of the domestic industry by exploiting an almost absurd loophole in Japan’s strict regulations.
Named for the Swiss brewery that received one of Europe’s first official brewing licenses, SanktGallen began producing craft beer a full year before Echigo Beer was granted the first microbrewing license in Japan.
The beer, which is called Un, Kono Kuro, is a pun on the Japanese word for crap, Unko. It's made using coffee beans that have passed through an elephant.
The Sankt Gallen brewery called the beer a “chocolate stout”, despite it not containing any chocolate. The coffee beans used in the beer come from elephants at Thailand’s Golden Triangle Elephant Foundation, which cost over US$100 per 35 grams.
Like Kopi Luwak, the beans pass through the digestive system and arrive at the other end. Unlike with the civet cat, most of the beans perish in the process. 33 kilograms of beans go in, but only 1 kilogram of usable beans emerge out the other end. The beans are definitely a candidate for one of the top 10 weirdest beer ingredients.
Released for the first time on April Fools 2013, this beer sold out within minutes of becoming available.
The "Afterglow" is Haunting
Usually people talk about aftertaste when drinking beer but with Un, Kono Kuro the word afterglow is much more common.
After downing the last drop, slowly rising from your throat and mouth what you feel is an afterglow. The combination of bitter and sweet caramel-chocolate-toffee notes stays fresh and lingers in your head.
When I personally tried it, there was an unfamiliar warm caramel-chocolate aroma that accompanied through the entire beer. For some time after, I could still feel as if my body was saturated with the warm pleasant scent.
Luckily this wasn't the last time I could possibly try it though. Apparently, the beer is available round the year, on tap at select few bars in Kanagawa, Japan.
25-Aug-2020
DailyTrivia: Iconic Beers
One of the most influential beers of all time, It kick-started the IPA/APA trend.
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Sierra Nevada Brewing Company
"Amid the changing tides of the craft-beer industry, the iconic green label remains as strong a force as ever, appealing to dive-bar devotees and the country's most respected brewers alike."
- Michael Jackson
(Beer Critic, Writer)
The Cult of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale,
Your Favorite Brewer's Favorite Beer
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is a remarkable beer: Groundbreaking upon its release and still a critical and commercial darling all these years later, the beer’s focus on American hops has established it as the country’s signature pale ale.
“We honestly had no idea it would have such staying power or such an impact. We brewed our original homebrew recipe—using lots of whole-cone Cascade hops and 100 percent two-row malt—and embraced natural bottle conditioning." explains Ken Grossman, founder and owner of Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. about his humble homebrewing roots that have resulted in a brand .
Grossman and Paul Camusi, fellow homebrewing enthusiasts, started the Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in 1979 in Chico, the California city where Grossman owned a homebrewing-supply shop. They released it the following spring—basically a homebrew recipe writ large and relying on Cascade hops for its bright, citrusy aroma.
Cascade was the first American-developed hop to be used to give commercial beer its aroma. Before its introduction in the early 1970s, through the U.S Department of Agriculture hop farm in Corvallis, Oregon, only European varieties could do the honors. Then came Cascade, initially through Coors and then through Anchor Brewing’s Liberty Ale in 1975.
Grossman, the driving force behind the recipe’s creation and still the head of Sierra Nevada was not aware of Anchor’s use of Cascade in Liberty Ale. He just knew he liked the hop-forward taste. It reminded him in part of the old Ballantine IPA, one of the first beers that really piqued his brewing curiosity.
The hoppier focus of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale helped it stand out as more brewers crowded into the marketplace in the 1980s and 1990s.
ABV: 5.6%
Style: India Pale Ale
Hops: Cascade
Malt: Pale Ale malt, Caramel Malt
Yeast: California Ale Yeast
Fun Fact: In 2011, Sierra Nevada brewing company made their recipe public for all homebrewers to try. I am sharing the original recipe with my annotations in brackets(), since some parameters in brewery recipe chnages when converted to homebrewing setup.
Flash
Sale
Hurry, while the offer lasts!
The company premise is known as Maltser's Disneyland:
Frequent Beer camps and Beer festivals are a staple of the brewery
Introducing
KVEIK
An absolute Beast of a Yeast
Now make a great beer in just TWO DAYS
Ask any homebrewer in India about his biggest challange brewing beer in India and the answer most likely would be to hold fermentation temperatures bellow 20 C.
But what if I told you that...
- You can brew a great batch of beer or wine at upto 42C? And yes... higher temperature is actually preferable.
- Throw a beer batch on Wednesday, finish fermenting on Thursday, get it carbonated and ready to drink by friday same week.
- Throw a fruit wine batch on Monday and drink it on Saturday same week.
- No need to make yeast starters for higher gravity beers.
- No need to cold crash beer or wine for clarity.
Vials of liquid "Kveik" Voss yeast will be availbale on Alephont beginning from Monday 21st Sep '20.
Trivia: Iconic Beers
Pliny The Elder
Russian River Brewing Company
Style : Double IPA - Imperial
ABV : 8%
IBU : 200
SRM : 10
From : Russian River Brewing Co.
California, United States
Avail : Year-round
Notes
Pliny the Elder is brewed with Centennial, CTZ, and Simcoe hops. It is well-balanced with malt, hops, and alcohol, slightly bitter with a fresh hop aroma of floral, citrus, and pine. Reportedly 3 oz (86g) of hops are used per gallon (3.8 liters).
The Name
This beer is named after Gainus Plinius Secondus, or Pliny The Elder, a Roman author, lawyer, naval man and naturalist who first mentions the botanical name for hops in his writings - lupus salictarius, which translated from latin means Wolf Among Willows.
Description
Long before the haze craze or the advent of now-commonplace acronyms like NEIPA and DIEPA, there was Pliny the Elder—the grandaddy of them all. Brainchild of brewmaster Vinnie Cilurzo, the 8% ABV hop-bomb debuted around the turn of the 21st Century. And it catapulted the standing of his nascent Northern Californian brewpub into a mecca for craft beer fans everywhere. It is considered "The World’s Most Sought After Double IPA."
ANCHOR STEAM BEER
ANCHOR BREWING COMPANY
Style : California Common Lager
ABV : 4.9%
IBU : 33
SRM : 9
From : Anchor Brewing Company. California, United States
Avail : Year-round
Notes
Anchor Steam is brewed with Briess's Pale Ale and Caramel malts, no adjuncts. Low amount of Northern Brewer hops are used in the boil. Taste notes can be described as Earthy, Caramelly and slightly floral. Anchor Steam Beer owes its deep amber color, thick, creamy head, and rich, distinctive flavor to a historic copper pot brewing process like none other.
The Name
The name "steam" came from the fact that the brewery had no way to effectively chill the boiling wort using traditional means. So every night they pumped the hot wort up to large, shallow, open-top bins on the roof of the brewery so that it would be rapidly chilled by the cool air blowing in off the Pacific Ocean. Thus while brewing, the brewery had a distinct cloud of steam around the roof let off by the wort as it cooled, hence the name.
Description
With roots dating back to the California Gold Rush, Anchor Brewing Company is America’s first craft brewery, founded in San Francisco in 1896. Today, Anchor combines the time-honored art of classical brewing with carefully applied, state-of-the-art modern methods, producing handmade beer from all-malt mash in a traditional copper brewhouse.
The company’s flagship beer, Anchor Steam Beer, owes its deep amber color, creamy head and rich, distinctive flavor to a unique brewing approach. The name Steam Beer refers to Anchor’s original practice of fermenting the beer on San Francisco rooftops in the cool climate. In lieu of ice, the foggy night air cooled the fermenting beer, creating steam off the warm open pans. In 19th-century California, brewers found a strain of lager yeast which would ferment at higher temperatures. Anchor were first to use these yeasts to produce a lager commercially. Brewing process involves fermenting a blend of pale and caramel malts with lager yeast at warmer-than-usual temperatures – more to temperatures used for ale – in shallow, open-air fermenters. Additional carbonation follows regular fermentation through an all-natural process called kräusening.
“In my mind, it’s the (world's) first craft beer” - Randy Mosher
Trivia: Iconic Brews
Year1898, Beer barrels being carried in Horse wagons
HOP ROD RYE IPA
Featured Hops: Cascade, Centennial and Columbus
Malts: American Pale, Rye, Munich and Crystal
Yeast: BRBC Ale Yeast
Overall: This high gravity IPA is brewed with 18% rye malt. A high performance, turbo charged, alcohol burnin’ monster ale with dual overhead hop injection with a good dose of rye and caramel malts ensure a sturdy chassis to carry all that flavor. The rye malt adds a spicy character that takes this beer to the winner’s circle!
Hop Rod Rye took the craft beer world by storm when it first came 20 years ago, Rye malt saw new wave of popularity solely thanks to this beer
Tasting Notes by Beer Experts
"A russet-colored beer with a chunky head of foam and a big, rye bread nose balanced by spicy hops. The 8 percent ABV beer has 18 percent of rye grain—a massive amount. Biscuity and bready grain fills the mouth, with bitterness coming from both the dark rye as well as the hops, with some tart fruit notes and spicy hops. There’s some sweetness in the finish, but hops and rye add bitterness along with tangy fruit. A big beer with the rye calling for Polish dishes alongside."
- Roger Protz
Author: Complete Guide to World Beer, 300 Beers to Try Before You Die.
Editor: CAMRA Good Beer Guide.
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"A tan head rises over the reddish-amber liquid. Hop aroma leaps from the glass, blending with peppery rye notes. The palate is full-bodied, even slightly thick, with broad bitterness coating the tongue like a blanket. Sweet malts peek out from underneath. The malts hold their own into the semi-sweet, fruity/hoppy finish. A riot of flavor that achieves its own crazy balance. Find yourself some genuinely spicy jerk chicken and go to town."
- Garrett Oliver
Brewmaster: Brooklyn Brewery
Author: The Brewmaster's Table
ABV: 7.49
Color: 9.25
IBU: 78
Original gravity: 1074