For fall.

As the summer crashes to a halt at last, I thought I’d rejoin the world of the internet (hello, internet!) to remark on some delightful beer styles that suit the crisp weather of fall. As a general rule, the color of the beer I want to be drinking darkens proportionally as the temperature drops: while t-shirt weather demands something light in color (I tend to crave IPAs, lately), fall calls for more amber-hued beers. If I really want to go seasonal, altbiers and pumpkin ales are a couple good avenues. Although I also enjoy a pleasant festbier for October, I have to admit that I haven’t had any that really jump out at me lately, so I’ll have to gloss over them here. Recommendations, as always, are enthusiastically accepted.

Pumpkin beer can seem like a confectionary novelty. Some of them are certainly vile cover-ups for inferior flavors, and even my favorites are unlikely to make it into the highest level of my beer bracket. When done well, though, the vegetal edge of the pumpkin and the kick of spices are pleasantly warming. Southern Tier’s Pumking is an unexpected favorite of mine: it stays just this side of cloying while playing up flavors of vanilla, cinnamon, clove, and a bit of mild squash finish. It tastes more like a pumpkin pie than a few pumpkin pies I’ve had. Much as I love it, I do prefer it in small doses: drinking a full goblet of the stuff can be like overdosing on your Halloween candy. I prefer to balance out a taster with something more mild and drinkable.

I’ve expounded before about my love of altbier: it’s a style that gives me a really strong sense-memory of all my favorite aspects of this season. It’s crisply malty, and a good alt reminds me of the smell of dry leaves as you crunch through them. From a brewing perspective, altbier is distinctive because its yeasts evolved to thrive at a lower temperature than what’s usual for ales. It’s mild and drinkable: I prefer the more traditional type to the sweeter (sticke) alt. Our friendly local German-style beer pros Metropolitan Brewing make a pleasant alt called Iron Works. I last drank it beside a fire a while back, because I enjoy doing appropriate things.

Hops, individually.

“Beer is too bitter!” Yeah, that’s the hops’ fault, but not all hops are bitter, and so not all hoppy beers are bitter. A beer’s bitterness is the result of alpha acids in the hop cones, which degrade and soften as a beer ages. There are dozens of hop varietals. Many of them have been crossbred specifically to elicit a specific flavor profile; others are the result of terroir, the characteristics of climate and soil. Lots of Belgian hops have a floral, citrusy tang to them; English hops tend to be milder, and their beers focus more on malt profiles. American hops, though - those are the ones that are bitter, and they provide the reputation.

Some beers use only one hop varietal, like Bell’s Two Hearted (which is all Centennial hops) or Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout (all Willamette). But the vast majority of beers are brewed with multiple hop varietals in order to impart more complicated flavor profiles. Right now, Mikkeller, a traveling “brewery” with a home base in Copenhagen, provides the best way for average folks to learn about hops, by brewing an identical beer recipe with equal quantities of different hop varietals. The result is the Single Hop Series, a set of IPAs so strikingly different that it might change the way that you think of hops.

I haven’t had everything in the Single Hop Series - more come out every month, it seems - but I had the good luck to try five on tap in one sitting the other week, and I wrote some brief notes about each.

Mt. Hood was peppery but very mild, with almost no odor. Tasted like lemongrass, with a slight dryness as it warms.

Amarillo, a Pacific Northwest hop, had a grassy aroma with a light, pine-y funk. Very dry finish, tasting like grapefruit. (Some people have said that Amarillo hops taste like weed… I’ll leave that one as an exercise for the reader.)

Sorachi Ace is a Japanese hop varietal with huge lemongrass, honeysuckle, and umami flavors. I named Brooklyn Sorachi Ace, a saison brewed to showcase the hop’s unusual flavor, my favorite beer of 2009. Mikkeller’s offering is a massive achievement on its own, with an upfront sweetness and an earthy finish.

Bravo tasted like cherries. Probably the most unusual single hop beer I’ve had yet. Light aroma of cherry, fig - and finished with chamomile. Almost no bitterness.

Columbus started mild, with some biscuity flavors in the middle, and a dry pepperiness at the end. I think by this point, my palate was getting fairly confused, though.

I’ve also had Mikkeller’s single hop beers, although bottled, and not in a row, for Nelson Sauvin, Cascade, Tettnang, East Kent Golding, and Challenger. There are dozens more. I hesitate to call any of them better or worse than one another; they’re meant to teach people about what hops taste like in a relatively impartial and controlled setting, and can maybe lead people down interesting roads in the future. For instance, if you like the Tomahawk single hop beer, Brasserie d’Achouffe’s Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel is a natural progression, because it prominently features Tomahawk hops, going so far as to advertise them on the back of the bottle. Lots of good breweries are open about what varietals they use in their recipes, and it usually requires little sleuthing to figure them out.

Knowing what kinds of hops you like can help you make considerably more informed decisions when choosing among many beers. Good bartenders know the basics about what all goes into a beer, or at the very least can tell you why a pacific northwest IPA tastes different from an English one. And when you’re done with trying enough single hop beers, you can have ten of them at once…

Dark Lord Day recollected

Although it now seems ages in the past, I’ve intended to do a quick recap of Dark Lord Day, and I reckon that’s better done late than never.

I’m always faintly suspicious of events that seem geared towards spending a lot of money to get something other people can’t have. I’d prefer if scarcity and bragging rights weren’t part of the conversation around how good an album is, or how delicious a beer is. However, I love few things more than having a bunch of strangers share space and be really nice to each other, and that was my Dark Lord Day experience. Every time I’ve gone (this was my fourth year) has been at least somewhat fun as a chance to swap cellars and talk flavors with friends and strangers. This year’s event was finally unencumbered by the logistical crises that have ruined some folks’ impressions of the entire enterprise.

The lines were orderly, the security personnel were professional and well-informed, and the scratch-off lottery-style tickets were a fair and fun way of choosing who got the chance to buy the super-extra-fancy stuff. (I found some more background on the fancy ticketing and the extra-rare Dark Lords over on the Ladies of Craft Beer blog). Our Group A tickets enabled us to get in and out of the whole event in just about three hours by my recollection: a real improvement over the full-day odyssey of previous years.

We swapped hometown beer stories and poured some brews with our neighbors in the line, and we traded some things from our cellar for some interesting Lost Abbey bottles from a Californian. I had some hard cider in a paper cup printed with unicorns and rainbows after commenting to the person in the DJ booth that I liked her unicorn cup. It was basically convivial as all get-out; despite any ambivalence I feel about lines or crowds or throwing money at rare things, it was a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

This year’s Dark Lord itself I didn’t get a chance to sample until a couple weeks later, when I gifted a bottle to a friend who immediately handed it back to be shared. I’m impressed with this year’s version: some maple, smoke, and more of a mellow fruitiness than previous ones, as I recall.

To sum up my views on beer and the cheery sense of community brought upon by drinking it in a parking lot in Indiana with a bunch of other humans: we all get what we get out of this life, and if we can enjoy sharing some delicious beverages with each other while we’re here, I think that means we’re doing something right.

Anheuser-Busch v. Goose Island.

Anheuser-Busch is taking over¹ Goose Island. There is a lot to process, but I want to focus on three things.

Shareholders

Goose Island has claimed that the reason for the takeover is because they want greater distribution and higher volume. But dozens of major American craft breweries labor under the same constraints, and the result is actually sort of positive: a sort of regional vernacular of beer, where availability is piecemeal and affects residents’ perceptions of what’s out there.

If you travel at all, and keep an open mind, this means that you will not be short of interesting new unknown beers to try. And lest you think this doesn’t affect large breweries like Goose Island, last year I spoke with a colleague at SxSW who had never heard of New Belgium or Fat Tire, because they don’t yet distribute to New York. Chicago didn’t get Stone until last year, Firestone Walker until November, or Smuttynose until two months ago - and we still don’t have Deschutes.

Brewers appear largely proud to nurture small communities. Three Floyds and Russian River have both gone on record saying they’re happy to serve the handful of metros near the brewery. Their small batches enable them to select the best ingredients and provide more careful quality control.

There are exceptions, of course: Surly is ramping up production so that they can reenter Chicago sometime at the end of the year. Regardless, A-B taking over Goose Island raises some essential questions about breweries’ scalability and long-term efficacy, and they affect every brewer. Today provided a watershed moment in the industry.

Budweiser is an engineering achievement if nothing else. Anheuser-Busch creates billions of cans of Bud every year, and they all taste the same. They have tamed the agricultural fluctuations that can affect hop and barley crops, and managed to create something that does not perceptibly change.

In comparison, craft beer is more like the farmer’s market, subject to crop yields and fickle yeast strains. Can A-B’s engineering be applied to 312 without losing something essential? Or Bourbon County Stout, or Midway IPA, or Sofie, or Juliet?

Whether you think they can, I believe, affects where you come down on the debate. It’s good for business, and good for Goose Island, but it has the high risk of being a disaster for consumers, with lower-quality goods sold at high prices in larger volume.

Anheuser-Busch is a publicly traded company. They are rightly indebted to the interests of shareholders to reduce costs and increase profits. I’m reminded of Sam Calagione’s remarks once that, if Dogfish were a publicly traded company, he would be thrown out. Either way, I have yet to see a publicly traded booze company turning out goods at the same level of quality and artistry that Goose Island has over the last five years. And while that sounds bleak, I would love to be proven wrong. Hell, I’m begging to be proven wrong.

Greg Hall’s departure

Of no mention anywhere on major press releases, and only alluded to halfway down a handful of news articles, is brewmaster Greg Hall’s departure from the company. He’s the son of Goose Island’s current president, and while he hasn’t yet commented on the matter, I have to assume that he is leaving because of the takeover.

Greg has become the public voice of Goose Island, a large part of the way that the public perceives the company. When he rants that “sour is the new hoppy” to anything with a pulse, he sways the conversation among craft beer enthusiasts - and lo, now New Belgium, Deschutes, and Allagash are now coming out with incredible sour beers². Greg’s departure risks leading Goose Island to an artistic vacuum when it comes to their higher-volume beers.

I have faith in Goose’s brewing staff to step up to the challenge of losing Greg, but it’s still a challenge, and the last thing that they need right now is new challenges to pile on.

The brewpubs

The brewpubs are being spun off as an independent company, not controlled by A-B. I think this is a good idea, but only as much as I wish the takeover hadn’t happened at all. It will likely provide Goose Island with the artistic freedom that they now desperately need.

¹ People have objected to my use of the word “takeover.” However, when two companies merge by consent, and one of them gets over 50% stake in the other, that is precisely what it is. Goose Island’s accounting is shifting to A-B, and it is now indebted to shareholder interests. When it’s not by consent, the term is “hostile takeover.” (Thanks to my friend Leah for clarifying these definitions.)

² If you aren’t going to your corner store and buying bombers of Vrienden and Le Terroir right now, you’ve got some explaining to do. Unless you live in New York, of course. Then you have an excuse.

green beer day, observed

I have an indeterminate amount of Irish heritage and a thoroughly Irish name (Erin go bleargh, etc), so I enjoyed St. Patrick’s Day as a kid because it was a time when we got to eat a delicious heap of corned beef and mashed potatoes and put green food coloring in basically everything. (I was easily amused. Nothing has changed on that front.) Since moving to Chicago I have observed to my dismay that everyone here celebrates a different holiday, which I will dub Green Beer Day.

In accidental honor of Green Beer Day, I recently drank a delightful beverage that did not taste like the Chicago River (which is basically what the free-flowing dyed Bud Light of our lovely metropolis probably tastes like, I reckon). I’ve long been curious about the German tradition of serving weissbier with woodruff syrup, so I asked about it at Diamond in Brooklyn the other night. I guess interacting with bartenders I’m unlikely to see again makes me more apt to ask a bunch of potentially inappropriate questions, like “Can I smell your woodruff syrup?” The bartender had described this stuff as herbal, and I briefly worried that I’d be spiking a perfectly good beer with something like Underberg. It smelled pleasantly of vanilla and lightly citrusy spice, though, and it added a really nice light undertone to my Bayrischer Banhof Berliner Weisse. Rather than having the very forward banana and clove of an unadulterated weisse, it was a little more balanced, mild, and lemony. It also turned my beer a weak chartreuse color, which I enjoyed (again, easily amused).

I hope to find woodruff syrup for sale somewhere soon; I could also see it being a fascinating cocktail ingredient. That was definitely the best (and possibly the only) green beer I’ve had so far in life.

My favorites in each style, briefly

My birthday is coming up, so I threw a party. I selected the beers by writing down all the styles I could think of, came up with my favorite beer in each style, and then buying single bottles of everything I could. (Some of these, like Leffe Brune, are no longer available in the United States, or were one-off batches, or are available on tap only.)

So this is completely subjective, prone to fluctuations in taste, and (being two days old as of this posting) already heinously inaccurate. But a few folks asked me to post the list, and I figure it might be a good way to go through some really respectable beers and get an overview of more traditional styles. It was a nice exercise to go through, but I wouldn’t put a whole lot more stock in it.

Belgian

• Singel: Witkap-Pater
• Dubbel: St. Bernardus Pater 6
• Tripel: Westmalle
• Quadrupel: Rochefort 10
• Pale: de la Senne Taras Boulba
• Strong pale: de Dolle Bos Keun
• Brune: Leffe
• Strong dark: Achel Extra
• Flemish red: Rodenbach Grand Cru
• Saison: Dupont Fôret
• Biére de garde: Dupont Avril
• Scotch ale: Scotch de Silly
• Belgian stout: de Dolle Special Extra Export
• Lambic: Cantillon St. Lamvinus
• Gueuze: Drei Fonteinen Oude Geuze
• Witbier: de Regenboog Vuuve

German

• Altbier: Uerige Sticke
• Berliner weisse: 1809
• Hefeweizen: Piece Top Heavy
• Dunkelweizen: Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Dunkel
• Märzen: Spaten Oktoberfest
• Maibock: Capital Maibock
• Doppelbock: Celebrator
• Pilsner: Stiegl
• Rauchbier: Aecht Schlenkerla Oak Smoke
• Kölsch: Reissdorf
• Schwarzbier: Flying Dog Dog Schwarz
• Zwicklbier: Paracelsus
• Samichlaus: Samichlaus

British/Irish

• Barleywine: JW Lees Harvest
• English IPA: Sam Smith’s India Ale
• Porter: St. Peter’s
• Dry stout: Beamish
• Wee heavy: Traquair Jacobite
• Bitter: Coniston Bluebird
• Mild: Revolution Workingman
• Nut brown: Dogfish Head Indian Brown (untraditional, but sue me, it’s great)

American

• Black IPA: Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous
• Imperial IPA: Three Floyds Dreadnaught
• Imperial stout: Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout
• California common: Anchor Steam
• Fruit beer: New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red

On BFM.

Last week I was briefly in our nation’s capital for my job, and because I am a lady with Correct Priorities, I did exactly two things that were not directly work-related while in DC: I visited a record store and a beer bar. The beer bar was the utterly unparalleled and amazing Churchkey. I am just going to insert a paragraph break right now for y’all to follow that link and check out how awesome Churchkey is (although I am sort of baffled that their beer menu is an Excel file? I guess that’s for ease of updating. Anyway, here’s that paragraph break):

So! It is my usual methodology when I travel and drink beer to get something that I know I can’t get at home and/or haven’t heard of. With a tap list as vast as this one, that’s an easy task, and I went directly for BFM La Douze, a pale ale brewed with sea salt and American hops. Although I wasn’t terribly pleased with the only other beer I’ve had that’s brewed with salt (Leipziger Gose - I recall a vaguely chemical aftertaste that threw me off), I’ve never been unimpressed by BFM’s beers, and this one was pretty darn tasty: light-bodied and crisp with just a bit of fruit balancing the salty dryness.

Because we are nerds together, I told Nick about La Douze once I got home and we went into simultaneous rant mode about how much we enjoy BFM. It is a pretty well-known fact that I am a sucker for crazy imperial stouts, and Cuvee Alex Le Rouge is a remarkable one of those. I am still not sure exactly what makes a Jurassian Imperial Stout (other than being made in Switzerland, I guess), but apparently it involves Russian tea, black pepper, vanilla, and deliciousness. The pepper nicely counterbalances the aggressive thickness of a hearty 11% alcohol beer. It’s one of the more successful sweet/savory flavor-piles I can think of in beer. I just pulled a bottle out of my cellar and was reminded that the label says “Extremely Complex.” Excellent. If you can’t get your hands on big-deal beer-nerd-beloved American imperial stouts like Surly Darkness or Founders Breakfast, this one really gives them a run for their money in my humble opinion.

In the course of our very rigorous and scientific research for this post, Nick and I split a bottle of La Dragonne, served hot as per the bottle’s instruction. It has a pretty tasty star anise and apple brandy thing going on, but that thing doesn’t really get much more complex as far as I noticed, and I wasn’t that into having a full mug of it. It would be better in a smaller portion, I think, or as a really mindblowing sauce for a dessert. Some beers are just meant to be desserts instead.

This concludes my bloviating regarding the tastiest brewery in Switzerland (that I know of so far). Cheers! Go drink La Douze and Alex Le Rouge if you can find ‘em.

BFM.

Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes is based in Saignelégier, Switzerland, operational since 1997 and owned by Jerome Rebetez. They do not do anything boring. Perhaps the closest that they come to boring is La Salamandre, a wit, but even this is not very boring. Their annual cuvée is made with nothing but the essentials, but this is not boring, either. They do not make many beers, and the beers they do make do not come in very large batches, so they require some sleuthing to find, but still: none of them are boring.

Many secular Belgian breweries make adventurous beers with all sorts of fruits and spices blended in. There are traditional lambics, of course, which age whole fruit with a sour yeast strain, but many Belgians are comfortable with raiding their spice racks. De Regenboog made headlines a few years ago with their astringent, gorgeous ‘t Smisje Wostyntje Mustard Beer; de Dolle’s Stille Nacht is one of the spicier beers around, with hints of clove and nutmeg fighting against an enormous, boozy malt profile.

This has crossed the pond, of course. These days, North American craft brewing connects more strongly with Belgian traditions than German, and this shows in all kinds of beers, like Dieu du Ciel’s singular Route des Épices, Deschutes’ The Dissident, and Dogfish’s Chicory Stout.

Switzerland doesn’t have much in the way of its own beer traditions, but BFM hews to this trend pretty fiercely. Almost all of their beers are spiced. They make beer with black tea, green tea, and smoked tea. They make an uncarbonated beer that’s meant to be served warm, which they call aprés-ski, brewed with honey, cinnamon, star anise, orange zest, cloves, whole cardamom pods, coriander, and juniper berries. They make a beer, Douze, with salt.

The real standout, however, is Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien, which is a barrel-aged(!) biére de garde(!!) that clocks in around 11%(!!!). Roughly, biére de garde is the table beer equivalent of a saison, mostly lemony, rarely over 4%, made in northeast France. De Saint Sylvestre’s Trois Monts is a great example of the style. That said, Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien does not taste like any biére de garde you’ve ever had. My favorite beer bar in Chicago provides these tasting notes:

Treads the boundary between port, wine & beer—aged in wooden casks previously used to age Merlot, Cabernet, Whisky and then Grappa; then finally blended from different casks for optimal balance & complexity. Amazing nose featuring cinnamon, wood, fruit, spirits, licoricey, [with a] vegetal dryness. Palate features grapes, chocolate, vanilla, brown sugar! Smooth & velvety, turning slightly vinous w/very subdued bitterness. Long port-like finish. Great with rich foods like duck, balsamic vinegar or very dark chocolate. Only 1,000 bottles released for [the] US market in 2006. Named in fond memory of the late brewery cat.

It’s a solid analysis, but I’m surprised at how much they downplay Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien’s tartness. Saisons - especially traditional ones like Dupont or de Pipaix - tend to have light notes of lemon and sour apple, which are scaled back a tick, but still present, in biéres de garde. But Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien approaches some Flemish red ales in its tartness. It creeps up on you, hitting hard towards the middle - especially unexpected since most Flemish reds and lambics put the sour notes up front. This isn’t surprising given that the tart flavors are a byproduct of fermentation, and Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien is so high in alcohol (meaning it was fermented for a much longer time than par), but that makes it all the more important in any sort of analysis.

Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien was written up in the New York Times two years ago. BFM also make one-off batches of Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien that are straight bottlings from various barrels; of these, my favorite is probably the trousseau “TR5” version, but all of them are worth investigating. Actually, everything from BFM is worth investigating, but you already knew this.

A handful of beers Erin loved last year

Happy new year, y’all! As we all consign 2010 to oblivion, here are just a handful of beers I really appreciated in the course of that year. I didn’t make a list of beers that were first released in 2010, and in fact I have little or no idea when these beers were first made. They’re all ones that I personally tried for the first time this past year, and they’re all pretty remarkable.

Here they are, in order from lightest to darkest:

Surly Bitter Brewer: Oh, how I adore Surly; they rank consistently high among my favorite American breweries (dismayingly so, since they no longer distribute to Chicago). This deep golden ESB perfectly balances drinkability with being insanely flavorful: a little biscuity and rich, a little bitter on the finish, but also mild enough to sip on for hours.

De Graal Gember: After some Google-sleuthing, Nick and I are pretty sure that this is a remarkable Belgian pale ale that we had together at La Trappe in San Francisco this fall. Every sip was different: it’s spiced with ginger, which was definitely in there, but there were also some notes of honeysuckle or maple and fresh greens. I really need to have this again so I can be more articulate about it, and also so I can have it, because I like that whole chimerical-flavors thing.

Two Brothers Bare Tree (2008 vintage): Barleywines are not high up on my list of favorite styles - I generally find them too cloying and alarmingly raisiny - but this wheat wine singlehandedly encouraged me to reconsider. The raisin flavors that put me off in traditional English barleywines like J.W. Lees were almost entirely gone in this wheat wine - instead, it tasted like pears and the rind of a really good soft cheese. (This is a compliment; I would possibly actually eat cheese rinds all day if given the opportunity. Please do not ever give me this opportunity.)

Maui CoCoNut Porter: Like Bitter Brewer, this is a drinkable, reasonably low-alcohol canned beer that I would probably drink almost every day if I could buy it in town. It’s nutty and chocolatey without being too sweet or overwhelming. This is like if a macaroon were a beer, and I can completely get behind that.

The Duck-Rabbit Milk Stout: I’ll freely admit that this partly makes the list because of my abiding nostalgia for North Carolina, my erstwhile homeland. At the same time, I don’t think I gave this beer enough credit back in the day when I could buy it at the corner store: it’s very pleasantly rich and roasty for a milk stout, with some coffee notes and a bit of almost plum-like fruitiness. The label says “The Dark Beer Specialist” and they are not kidding, there.

Rare Bourbon County Stout: It was probably worth standing around in a parking lot in the extreme horrible nasty cold of a November morning to have the privilege of spending a buttload of money on this beer. It’s unbelievably smooth and insanely complex, and I hope it will only become more so after hanging out in the cellar for a few years. I think it’s fair to say that this beer is to regular BCS as fancy handmade furniture is to Ikea: while both things might be perfectly serviceable, even elegant, one of them clearly has the edge on craftsmanship. Among all the very many barrel-aged stouts I’ve had, this is a profound stand-out.

BrewDog Tokio*: I had a little bit of an internal debate about including this beer on my list, because I think BrewDog’s constant extreme-beer one-upsmanship is a little bit pointless and a little bit eye-rollingly macho, but this really was a fascinating beverage. It’s apparently brewed with cranberries and jasmine, and I love both of those things, but it packs so much in that the tartness and sweetness is both subdued and complimented by all the coffee-like bitter roasted flavors and an alcohol bite that reminds me of port wine. If I had to choose any of the thick, complicated concoctions called extreme beer, this one would rank pretty high.

What are your favorites of this past year?

nickd’s Top 10 Beers of 2010

Too many great beers came out this year. Here are my favorite ten. This is long. I’m not sorry.

10. Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes Bière Ambrée Parfumée au Tarry Suchong

It’ll be a cold day in a warm climate before a proper rauchbier hits this list, but here’s something to hold you over in the interim: an amber ale brewed with smoked tea.

BFM are known for making some rather adventurous efforts; for example, their Cuvée Alex le Rouge is made with vanilla and black pepper. But this is something else. Its subtlety is more like tea than coffee; it really only makes sense over a couple of sessions; and its flavors develop in a way that’s very unlike most extreme beer.

While aggressively smoky, there are a lot of bright, fruity flavors that only reveal themselves at the end of a glass, and the heavy malt profile generously balances the nontraditional ingredients.

9. Green Flash/St. Feuillien Bière de L’Amitié

Unlike #4 on this list, St. Feuillien aren’t exactly well-known for collaborations. A monastery that’s made beer since 1125(!), who make one of my favorite-ever tripels, this is their first collaboration ever – and with a rather unlikely American brewery to boot. What a coup for Green Flash – and what a beer to boot.

Bière de L’Amitié is one of the driest tripels I’ve ever had, with a very potent American hop profile, pine and citrus flavors replacing the floral aroma in normal St. Feuillien Tripel. But the spices really shine here, which I always suspected were in St. Feuillien Tripel, but were too difficult to consistently detect in fresh batches. Somehow, the hops make the spices come through so well in the finish, it’s difficult to not take another sip immediately after.

A few months later, Duvel released a beer called Tripel Hop, which was quite similar in character, if a little less assertive. And of course, Orval’s Jean-Marie Rock collaborated with Steven Pauwels at Boulevard in St. Louis last year.

I’m really happy to see abbey breweries collaborating with west coast breweries. I want more data points on this front, because it speaks to a flexibility that we haven’t yet seen abbey beers display.

8. Lagunitas A Little Sumpin’ Wild

This is a wheat-based strong pale, brewed with yeast from Westmalle, and hopped to near-IPA levels. (Despite the name, it is not made with wild yeast.) Train wreck, right? Weird malt for the style, too-earthy and too-spicy yeast for the hops, and too much hops for everything else. It would be a modest crime if they took Westmalle’s yeast strain and used it like that.

But it works – and pretty marvelously. A Little Sumpin’ Wild is a highly effervescent, carbonation-stinging, light-bodied pale given the ingredients list, and for this much flavor complexity (and the 8.9% ABV) it’s criminally drinkable. A Little Sumpin’ Wild became my barbeque beer of choice this summer, with just enough body that you know you’re drinking something that demands a little attention. And it holds up well to any sort of grilled food.

7. Brooklyn 2010-11 Black Chocolate Stout

Our long national nightmare is over: Brooklyn Black Chocolate doesn’t suck anymore. Let us never speak of the 08 and 09 vintages again. Let us instead conduct highway robbery, buying this stuff for $7 for a four-pack. Beer of this quality could easily go for $20. It’s one of the best values out right now.

The 2010 vintage gained some of the sharpness of 07 while losing most of the dark fruit funk of more recent efforts. it’s clear that more attention was put into this batch, and the payoff is just tremendous. This beer is near-singlehandedly helping me get through winter, and if you like solid stouts that are brewed with simple ingredients and no bullshit, you’re probably nodding the whole way through this paragraph.

6. Victory/Stone/Dogfish Head Saison du BUFF

2010 was the year of the saison. Almost every brewery that I cared about released an adventurous saison, often with lots of nonstandard ingredients blended in: herbs, lemon zest, lemongrass, peculiar hop varietals. It made for a pretty nice summer: refreshing beers that could still be inventive, pushing the boundaries of what turned out to be an astoundingly flexible beer style. Of everybody’s efforts this year, Saison du BUFF ranked among the best.

Because all of the brewmasters involved here are insane, they decided to release a saison with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. I was initially skeptical of this, thinking it a cheap gimmick to garner interest (this is Dogfish, after all), but it’s pulled off really well. Part of this is likely due to the varying proportions of each herb; this tastes more like a rosemary saison than a saison with all four. But with this much expertise involved, we probably weren’t going to get something heinously imbalanced.

Batches were made at each of the three collaborators’ breweries, but my favorite is probably Dogfish’s, with the best water source of the three, and a much earthier yeast strain.

5. New Belgium Ranger IPA

New Belgium’s most famous beer is Fat Tire, a malty, drinkable amber ale with light body. New Belgium’s most famous flagship beer is La Folie, a barrel-aged Flemish Red with five different kinds of malt. Their best summer ale is lightly tart, with lots of sour apple flavor. Recently they brewed a collaboration with Allagash that used Brett yeast and Belgian endives. Oh, and they just made a sahti. Historically, this has not been a brewery that has cared much for hops.

Which makes Ranger all the more astounding. This? From here? There’s no explanation for it. There’s no precedent for it. It was released to mixed reviews from fans who expected something far more aggressive. But I think it’s a world-class IPA, easily the best I’ve had this year. It’s a classic Pacific Northwest IPA with hop flavors that run way more with Belgian IPAs like de Ranke’s XX Bitter and Poperings Hommelbier. It walks the tightrope of being clean and drinkable while remaining continually assertive. No other brewery, short of maybe Russian River, could have conceived of this beer.

Due to its restraint, it’s also a great IPA for teaching people about IPAs. I would not give bottles of 90 Minute to novices, but I would give (and have given) bottles of Ranger to just about anybody, especially those who think IPAs tend to be too bitter.

4. Terrapin/de Proef Monstre Rouge

I don’t remember the last time I had a beer from de Proef that wasn’t a collaboration. They rent their equipment to de Struise and Mikkeller; they bring other brewmasters to work with them in Belgium; they fly to other parts of the world and work there. For whatever reason, though, they seem to refuse to make new beers of their own.

Perhaps we’re better off for it. The fourth in an annual series of beers where de Proef’s brewers invite Americans to make a batch with them in Belgium – earlier incarnations were with Port, Allagash, and Bell’s – this “imperial Flemish red” has little precedent. The only beer I can reasonably compare it to is the absolute choir-of-angels facefuck that is de Dolle’s Oerbier Reserva; but Oerbier Reserva is merely fermented for a long time, it’s not made like this. They started with Terrapin’s imperial IPA, and then they added rye malt. You’ve never, ever had a Flemish red as aggressive as this one, both in body and flavor. Good on them for furthering the style – and who knows what weird cross-Atlantic blends we’ll hear of next year.

3. Half Acre Ginger Twin

Half Acre killed it this year. A half-dozen of their 2010 beers could hold their own on anybody’s year-end best-of, but this one stood out: an imperial red rye IPA. It may not have had the most hops or the most oh-no-you-di’int label, but it was the most well-crafted beer they made this year – and it had some pretty excellent discounts to boot.

Ginger Twin is very fragrant and strong for a 7%. The pine-y, bitter hops are very nicely offset by a huge rye malt profile, and flavors of grapefruit balance a huge spiciness at the end. If you don’t like really aggressive, spicy rye pales, this probably won’t be up your alley, no matter how balanced it is. But for the rest of us, there’s Ginger Twin, again and again.

2. Goose Island Brewpub/Chuck Sudo Sai-Shan-Tea

Last year, my favorite beer was Brooklyn’s Sorachi Ace, a saison brewed with Japan’s only native hop varietal, with flavors like honeysuckle, lemon zest, and valerian root. Brewmaster Garrett Oliver chose a saison because it would get out of the way, showcasing the unusual hops.

This year’s #2 is brewed with Sorachi, too, but only as a bit player: the real star is a lemongrass tea that works with the hops to form something wholly unique. And the beer itself is much more assertive: yeastier and earthier than Sorachi Ace, meant to hold its ground.

Sai-Shan-Tea was a keg-only one-off at a brewpub near my place, but it was one of the best beers that Goose Island made this year. If there’s any justice, it’ll come back in 2011.

1. Dogfish Head Bitches Brew

I’ll admit I despaired a little at making this call. Dogfish Head are one of the most high-visibility breweries in North America, if not the world. They are exceptionally good at their marketing, which means their one-off extreme beers tend to sell out quickly. Exacerbating the problem, they teamed up with the estate of Miles Davis to create this beer, whose label is indeed the album cover of Bitches Brew, released in honor of its 40th anniversary.

So it sold out even faster than it probably should have, and a lot of it went to jazz collectors. I didn’t hear of bottles lasting more than a few hours in any store in town. I know very, very few craft beer fans who got to try this beer when it was released – and good luck finding a bottle anymore. (They are brewing a second batch, but they don’t yet have an ETA. Given how long it took to make the first run, I wouldn’t hold my breath.)

That all said, I’ll be damned if I found a beer that was more inventive, boundary-pushing, and just plain brainfuck delicious in 2010. The honey and gesho root made for one of the smoothest beers at that ABV that I’ve ever seen – released at the perfect time, and I imagine it’d somehow get even better in the future.

The honey is backgrounded, presumably to form mouthfeel – about the opposite of what I expected – and there are almost no hops in the front; what you mostly get is a very mellow malt flavor, with some dark fruit notes from the gesho, and caramel in the finish. Sweet without being cloying, chocolatey without being too smoky, and with almost no alcohol heat even in fresh bottles, Bitches Brew is one of the most balanced and restrained beers I’ve ever had, and one of the best Dogfish Head beers I’ve had in the past five years. It’s a staggering, endlessly rewarding achievement.

Honorable mentions:

• Huisbrouwerij Boelens Santa Bee
• Duvel Tripel Hop
• De Molen 2010 Rasputin
• Mikkeller Rauch Geek Breakfast
• Bell’s Oracle
• Bell’s Batch 9000
• Dogfish Head/Three Floyds Poppa Skull
• Capital 2009 Barrel-Aged Autumnal Fire
• New Belgium Eric’s Ale
• Revolution Samadhi
• Revolution Gomorrah
• Half Acre Double Daisy Cutter
• Goose Island Bourbon County Rare Stout
• Flossmoor Station/Fiftyfifty/Lucky Bucket Collaborative Evil