Brasserie Des Rocs Triple Imperiale (8/10)

Brasserie de l'Abbaye Des Rocs is a brewery started in 1979 in a small Belgian village.

Triple Imperiale is a Belgian strong dark ale, one of my favorite styles.

It pours a nearly opaque dark brown with finger and a half thick off white head.  The photo at left was taken after my first sip and after the head had gone down quite a bit.

The aroma is sweet, caramel, and malty.  If I hadn't known it was a Belgian beer, I might not have picked it out by the aroma.

The flavor starts with a kind of barrel-aged woody note and a strong malty sweetness.  There is a mild bitterness from the hops, but not an unpleasant one. I get some caramel in the middle, too.  There's a bit of dark fruit, like a raisin, to it also.  It's not as complex and flavorful as some Belgian ales, but still quite good.

I'm giving it an 8 out of 10.  Beer Advocate rates it a 93 or "outstanding".  Rate Beer gives it a 99 overall.  They apparently liked it a bit more than I did, which is unusual for a Belgian ale.

According to Beer Menus, there are only a few places that offer this in bottles and they're all over 300 miles away from us.  I had this particular glass at The Winking Lizard on Bethel when it was available on draft there.

De Proef and Left Hand Wekken Sour Belgian Ale (9/10)

Thanks to the Rare Beer Club, I have the bottle of Wekken Sour Belgian Ale you see in the photo at the left.  This beer is a collaboration between the brewers at Colorado's Left Hand Brewing and their counterparts at De Proef Brouwerij in Belgium.

Wekken Sour combines De Proef's classic Flemish sour ale with Left Hand's Wake Up Dead Stout.

The beer pours nearly pitch black in the glass with a thick tan head that eventually subsides to a thin layer on top of the beer.  It leaves behind thick sheet-like rings of lacing that gradually reincorporate into the beer, with only small spotty bits of foam left behind.

The aroma is complex.  Malt and cherry dominate, but you'll also pick up a hint of hops in there.

The flavor is probably more complex than the aroma.  If you sip carefully, you'll get the bitterness of the dark roasted grains from Left Hand's Wake Up Dead Stout, along with its bittering hops.  You'll taste the Stout's significant malt presence, too. Although it contains De Proef's sour cherry ale, and it's even called Wekken Sour, it's really not a sour beer.  The sourness seems to balance out some of the bitterness and malt in the stout to create something that's different from both beers, but complementary.  The cherry flavors in the De Proef ale marry well with the malt in the stout.  The sourness lends a kind of balance to the stout's bitterness.  You might also taste a bit of licorice, maybe a hint of leather, and prune or raisin.  As I write this, I've tasted about half the bottle and I'm still finding subtle new parts of the flavor.  It's most definitely a "sipping beer".  If you guzzle this one, you're doing yourself, and the brewers, a disservice.

As of this writing in July 2015, Beer Advocate and Rate Beer have no official scores for this.  That's not surprising, since the Left Hand web site tells you that the only places you'll get to taste this beer are at Left Hand's Colorado Tasting Room or as a member of the Rare Beer Club. It's difficult to rate this.  This isn't a beer I would buy on every trip I made to a local retailer, even if it was available here locally.  On the other hand, it's the kind of beer that's not just an enjoyable drink. It's actually quite a fascinating experience as well.  If it was available, I'd buy it a few times a year just to sit back and sip thoughtfully, like a fine wine.  The intensity of the experience and the flavors in Wekken Sour lead me to give it a 9 out of 10.   In fairness to other beers I've rated a 9, I'd probably drink the others much more often, but this would definitely be in my "for a special occasion" rotation.

Members of the Rare Beer Club can order this beer at $46.95 for two bottles, $67.95 for four bottles, and up for larger quantities - while supplies last.  You can also try it at Left Hand's tasting room in Colorado.  Sadly, you probably will not be seeing a bottle here in Ohio.

BJ's Brewhouse Jeremiah Red (7/10)

BJ's Brewhouse is a chain of restaurants which feature beers brewed by the chain's own brewmasters.  Jeremiah Red Ale is one of the house beers.  I had the glass pictured here at the Tuttle Crossing location.

Jeremiah pours a clear copper with thin off white head that dissipates within seconds.

The aroma is malty with not much else going on.

The flavor is a nice balance of malt, hops, and sweetness.  The result is a very drinkable and pleasant red ale, though nothing you're going to get terribly excited about.

It's available at the chain's locations around the country.

It's 7.3% alcohol by volume and rated at 25 IBUs.  The price at the time I tried it was $5.25 per pint.

My rating of 7 out of 10 fits in neatly between Beer Advocate's 83 (good) and Rate Beer's 56 overall scores.

Victory Red Thunder Porter Aged in Wine Barrels (8/10)

This beer comes from Victory Brewing Co. in Downingtown, PA.  It's a porter aged in wine barrels.

Red Thunder pours a nearly black dark brown color with finger thick tan head that lasts a minute or so and then becomes a thin layer across the top.

The aroma is a curious mix of fruit, wine, and malt, no doubt owing to the porter's natural characteristics and that of the wine previously held in the barrels.  There is a hint of sourness to the aroma as well, kind of a sour cherry like aroma.

The flavor is incredibly complex.  The first thing I notice is red wine and a strong oak element.  Behind the oak is a sweeter red wine flavor, followed by the malt and hops of the porter itself.  Finish is bitter, with an astringency to it.

In the end, this is one of those beers I'm glad I got to try.  I can't imagine myself craving this one or jumping at the chance to have it again, though.  It's like many things in life.  Once you've had the experience of it, that seems to be enough.  Who knows?  Maybe six months from now I'll wish I'd bought more bottles of it.

I picked this up on sale at Kenny Road Market.  That was a couple of weeks ago, so it's unlikely they still have it in stock - but if it sounds like a beer you'll enjoy, you may want to check with them.

Beer Advocate gave Red Thunder an 88 out of 100.  Rate Beer gives it a 95 overall.  As for me, I think it's quite an interesting beer, and also a good one.  In my mind, the "interesting" part weighs a bit more than the "good" part here, but I'm not a huge red wine fan or a big porter fan.  I like drinking this more than most wines or porters I've tried, so I'm going to give it an 8 out of 10 just based on the complexity and the overall experience.

At 8.5% alcohol by volume, it's a relatively strong beer, though certainly below Ohio's current 12% limit.  This is something you'll want to take into account when you open the bottle.

Avery Nineteen Belgian Tripel (7/10)

Avery Brewing Company of Colorado produced this Belgian style Tripel Ale to commemorate their 19th anniversary in 2012.  I sampled the beer in 2013, but am only writing about it now in 2015.  Time flies...

The Tripel style is one of my favorites when done well.  The BJCP style guidelines indicate that a Tripel should have a complex aroma with moderate to significant spiciness, moderate fruity esters, and low alcohol and hop aromas.  It should be yellow to gold in color and have good clarity, along with a long-lasting creamy white head.  The flavor should mix fruit, spice, and alcohol with a soft malt character.

Nineteen pours a slightly cloudy pale amber color with finger thick white head that lasts a minute or so.

The aroma combines hops and Belgian fruity/spicy notes.  Hops dominates the aroma.

The flavor matches the aroma.  Hops is the primary element, with the malt, fruit, and spice elements taking a back seat... somewhere near the license plate.  Although I liked Nineteen all things considered, it was hoppier and more bitter than I like my Tripel ales to be.  Those are are bigger fans of the IPA and hoppy styles will probably find this an accessible Belgian style beer as it contains the hops you're looking for.  To me, it was like a nice Triple that someone poured a few shots of IPA into.

When the beer was available for sale in Ohio, I found it at Savor Growl and Savor Market on Indianola.  I haven't encountered a bottle since I purchased the one pictured here in late 2012.  At the time, it cost $9.99.

How To Pick The Less-Bitter Beer Using a Bit of Science

You’ve probably noticed a number on craft beer labels, menus, or advertising labeled “IBU” (or “International Bitterness Units”).  This rating attempts to estimate the amount of the bittering compounds from hops that are dissolved into that beer.  A beer brewed with a small amount of hops has a lower IBU rating than one brewed with a lot of hops. 

This never explained to me why I could taste an India Pale Ale (IPA) rated at 70 IBUs and a stout rated the same, and find the stout to seem much less bitter than the IPA.  I wondered if perhaps the brewers of the stout miscalculated their IBU rating, or changed their recipe without updating the label.  The answer is much simpler than that.

As with many things in life, there is (or at least should be) a level of balance between the hops and the malt used to brew a beer.  Generally speaking, an IPA has a lower malt amount of malt than a stout.  This means that for any given IBU rating, the IPA will seem more bitter because there is less malt to balance out the hops bitterness.  The stout, having much more malt, needs a larger amount of hops to offset the natural sweetness of the malt used to brew it.  Thus 70 IBUs may not seem very bitter in a stout, but will be quite bitter in an IPA.

If you’re trying to guess which of two randomly selected beers will taste more bitter than the other without opening them, here are some ways to do that:

•  If the two beers are the same style (e.g., two pale ales), look at their IBU rating.  The one with the higher IBU rating will usually be the more bitter of the two.
• If the two beers are different styles (e.g., a Kolsch and a Dubbel), the IBU rating tells only part of the story.  If you can get the “original gravity” number for the beer and its IBU rating, you can use the BU:GU ratio (discussed in a moment) to identify the more-bitter beer.

As you gain some experience with the BU:GU ratio, you can determine approximately what ratio suits your beer taste.  That will help you pick beers to drink that you're more likely to enjoy.

Calculating BU:GU Ratios

If you have both an original gravity figure and an IBU figure, you can use the BU:GU rating to identify the more-bitter beer of the two.  The down-side is that many brewers do not share their original gravity figure.  Even those who share it don’t always report it the same way.   Rogue provides their original gravity as an unlabeled “degrees Plato” figure.  BrewDog provides it as a four-digit number.  Others provide it as a typical specific gravity rating like 1.056. 

Let’s look at an example.  I’m being offered BrewDog’s Punk IPA and Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale (a Maibock style beer).  Both are rated at 35 IBUs, but they’re different styles.  How do I compare them?

BrewDog’s web site says the starting gravity of Punk IPA is “1056” (which is usually reported as 1.056).  We discard the 1 and treat the rest as our gravity number (i.e., 56).   At 35 IBUs, its BU:GU ratio is 35:56 or 0.625.

Rogue’s web site says the starting gravity of Dead Guy Ale is 16 degrees Plato.  Using a handy web calculator, I convert that to 65.4 specific gravity.  This makes Dead Guy Ale’s BU:GU 35:65.4 or 0.535.

Since Punk IPA’s BU:GU ratio of 0.625 is much higher than Dead Guy Ale’s 0.535, we can be confident that Punk IPA is going to taste more bitter to us than Dead Guy Ale.

Estimating GU for a Beer

Although many breweries do not publish their starting gravity figures, you can estimate them.  While brewers can and do develop their own recipes for different styles of beer, in order for a beer to look and taste like an example of the style, the brewer can’t stray too far from the general recipe for the style.  For example, if you added dark malted barley to a wheat beer, it will no longer look or taste like one.  This need to stay “within a certain range” of the style gives us a way to estimate a beer’s original gravity so that we can compare it to another.

Following are some common beer styles and their typical average starting gravities:

• Belgian Dark Strong Ale: 92.5
• Belgian Golden Strong Ale: 82.5
• Belgian Single: 49
• Belgian Tripel: 80
• Belgian Witbier: 48
• Berliner Weisse: 30
• Biere De Garde: 70
• Bock: 70
• Bohemian Pilsener: 50
• Brown Ale: 47.5
• Brown Porter: 45
• California Common: 49.5
• Doppelbock: 77
• Dortmunder/Export Pilsener: 52
• Double Stout: 76
• Dunkel Weizen: 51
• Dusseldorf-style Alt:  47
• Eisbock: 104
• English Bitter: 35
• English Mild Ale: 33
• English Pale Ale: 50
• English Special Bitter (ESB): 42
• English Strong Ale or Extra Special Ale: 53
• Export Scotch Ale: 45
• Foreign Stout: 62
• Fruit Beers: 57
• German Pilsener: 47
• Heavy Scotch Ale: 37.5
• Imperial Stout: 85
• India Pale Ale (IPA): 60
• Kolsch: 46.5
• Light Scotch Ale: 32.5
• Maibock: 67
• Marzen: 58
• Munich Helles: 48
• Oktoberfest: 58
• Old Ale: 65
• Robust Porter: 52
• Russian Export Stout: 100
• Saison: 56.5
• Stout: 43
• Strong Scotch Ale: 78.5
• Sweet Stout: 56
• Vienna: 51.5
• Weizen: 51.5
• Weizen Bock: 72.5
• Witbier or Wit: 48

To use this table to compare two beers, use your calculator to take the beer’s listed IBU rating and divide it by the value in the list above for the closest style.  

Brasserie The Musketiers Troubadour Magma (5/10)

Every so often, I'm not paying attention when I pick up an unfamiliar Belgian beer.  Generally speaking, that's not a problem.  I find most Belgian beers at least drinkable, if not good, great, or fantastic.  So I wasn't paying close attention when I picked up Brasserie The Musketiers' Troubadour Magma Belgian Triple IPA.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that the India Pale Ale (IPA) style is one of my least favorite, if not the last favorite.  I generally find them to be nothing more than a glass full of hops. I want more from my beer than that.

Nevertheless, I decided to give Troubadour Magma a fair shake.

It pours a lovely coppery amber color with two fingers of off-white head that lasts quite a while.

The aroma of the beer is very hoppy.  Grapefruit and pine dominate the aroma.

The flavor starts malty and slightly sweet for just a second.  Then a tidal wave of hops washes over all that malty goodness and beats your tongue with plenty of hoppy bitterness.  The finish is bitter, but less so than I'd expect for an IPA, much less a "triple IPA".

Given that the folks on Beer Advocate tend toward the IPA side of the fence, it's not surprising that they like this beer more than I do.  They rated it 88 or "very good".  Rate Beer actually loved it, giving it a 97 overall.  Because I dislike IPAs in general, this beer does nothing for me.  I am rating it a 5 out of 10.

I'm not sure where I picked up this particular bottle.  It may have been at Weiland's, Palmer's, or Savor Growl.

Brothers Drake Peach Rush Mead (8/10)

I've been a fan of Brothers Drake Meadery here in Columbus ever since I tried their Apple Pie Mead at 101 Beer Kitchen in Dublin.  It was such a delicious beverage that I couldn't wait to sample everything else they made.  The best way to do that would be to visit their location near Fifth Avenue and High Street. Thursday night, my wife and I did just that.

The bartender allowed us to sample the various mead varieties that interested us, including the Blueberry Chai, Bergamot Blue, Scarlet Solstice, and Honey Oak.  They were all good in their own way, but I really liked Peach Rush.  It had a nice mix of honey sweetness and fresh peach flavor.  The barrel aged version of Peach Rush was also quite nice.

As you can see from the photo at left, Peach Rush pours a slightly hazy gold color.  It's not carbonated, so there's no head and no lacing in the glass.

The aroma is an enticing blend of honey and peaches.  The aroma hints that this will be a sweet drink, and in fact it is... though not as sweet as the Apple Pie mead.

The flavor combines the best elements of honey and peaches into a single drink. There's a slight warming element from the alcohol that fits in well with the rest.  The glass pictured here went down far too easily... and was soon followed by a glass of the oak-aged version.

Because I was a first-time visitor and purchased a full bottle of Peach Rush, I was offered two tickets to come back in the future for a tour of the facility.  Being very interested in how Brothers Drake works its magic with honey and yeast, I'm looking forward to that return visit.

Peach Rush is available at a number of bars and restaurants around town, in addition to the meadery's taproom.  I've seen it on the shelves at Kenny Road Market and Whole Foods in Dublin in particular.

Brasserie D'Achouffe McChouffe (6/10)

McChouffe as poured at The Winking Lizard Tavern

The official Brasserie D'Achouffe web site describe McChouffe as "an unfiltered brown beer which is refermented both in the bottle and in barrels. Its fruity bouquet conceals a hint of bitterness."

It pours a dark brown with a two-finger-thick beige head of medium coarseness that lingers a while.  It gradually reincorporates into the beer.

McChouffe has a malty aroma with a hint of the usual Belgian spice and dark fruit elements.

The flavor of the beer is unusual.  It is very dry like a red wine.  There is an earthy and slightly bitter component as well. Some Belgian spice gets through.

Although Beer Advocate (where it gets an 89/100) and Rate Beer (96/100) disagree with my rating of 6 out of 10 for this beer, they do agree that this beer isn't as good as La Chouffe that I reviewed last week.

The bottled version of this beer is something you don't routinely see on the shelves in Columbus beer stores.  I often see it at Weiland's Gourmet Market and sometimes at other places.  You'll find this brewery's products more consistently at The Winking Lizard than at most retail shops I've visited.