Welcome to a new year and a new semester at the Brew Ha Ha. Hopefully everyone had a blessedly intoxicated winter break. We’ll kick off our first few weeks with themed beer investigations, starting with “angry” ales this Friday, and turning to India Pale Ales next week. After that, who knows what’s to come?
Our first “angry” ale this week isn’t so much angry as it is sour. In fact, it’s just that: a sour ale from Fullsteam Brewery in Durham. At the moment Fullsteam has on tap something they’re quite creatively (and deceptively) calling their “Sour Mashed Sweet Potato Ale.” The story behind this limited-release beer has nothing to do with sour mash whiskey, sadly, but derives its name rather from Fullsteam’s regular “Carver” sweet potato lager. From what I apocryphally gather, the grains normally used for the Carver were recently infected by a strain of bacteria known as lactobacillus under mysterious circumstances, and this soured the wort. When that wort was then reused, it turned into a sour beer, and thus a star was born. The “Sour Mash” is a hazy ale, with something close to the consistency of a hefeweizen. It’s tart without puckering, and at the same time it has a milky mouth feel. For fans of sour beer, it’s somewhere in
between the Belgian stubbornness of “Three Philosophers” and the citrus-utopia of New Belgium sour beers. I highly recommend this, but it won’t last long, so get yourself out to Fullsteam Brewery in downtown Durham as soon as you can.
Next up is Stone Brewing Company’s Double Bastard Ale. This is something of a two-hearted ale, or simply put a very, very, very strong ale (11% ABV), and Stone has tried to market it as an aggressive, no-holds-barred type of beer, for obvious reasons; hence its “angry” status. The back label of the beer takes the form of a diatribe, haranguing complacent beer-buyers for being conformists and dandies. The problem is, though, that while the beer lives up to its self-given reputation for hard-assness, it’s doesn’t live up to the standard of taste. On the pour it’s smooth and mildly carbonated, with a nutty brown color. And then you smell it. Oh that smell! The first thing that hits you on the nose is rubbing alcohol, or nuclearized grapefruit. This beer actually smells like the brewing process that probably produced it, which is to say, it stinks. In fact, this might be the beer equivalent of a stinky cheese: hard on the nose, easier on the
palate. The problem is, it’s not so easy on the palate. Under the overwhelming influence of alcohol, it’s hard to make out many other flavors in this beer. It’s not citrusy, and has hardly any noticeable hop flavor. It’s bitter, but not the good kind of bitter. Burping it up reminds me of my last tequila binge, if that gives you any idea. It also coats the mouth with a mostly indistinct residue, though it could be the sugary aftermath of malt liquor. Whatever it is, it leaves a dry mouth-feel. The most distinctive thing about this beer is definitely its smell; I find it difficult to drink, and not very rewarding.
Finally, we have something of an exotic rarity: Skull Splitter Ale from the Orkney Islands. Named after the 7th-century Viking Earl of Orkney, this ale pours as red-brown as the color of Thorfinn Hauskaluif’s hair might have been, if we actually had records of it. It pours a nice, fine head, and has a fruity malt smell on the nose; the bottle claims hints of figs, but I can’t detect them. On the palate it’s velvety and malty, with a toasty aftertaste. All around an interesting beer, but probably not worth the import-prices you will have to pay for it in stores. At the very least, you can take inspiration from its namesake to go raping and pillaging throughout the land.
That’s it for this week’s chronicle of angry ales. Check back next Friday for a rundown of a few different IPA’s you might not have encountered. Until then, happy drinking, and don’t let the news get you down!
Photo courtesy Carpe Durham.
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