Last summer I tried the Lagunitas IPA and found it to be very good – very strong hop bitterness, but in balance with the overall structure of the beer.  This year, I found Lagunitas Maximus IPA – an even more potent expression with an 8% ABV content, and hop levels high enough to reach over 70 I.B.U. (International Bitterness Units).  For a bit of perspective, Lagunitas IPA has an IBU level of 45, and Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale clocks in somewhere over 100 IBU.

The strong hop level in Maximus is well balanced with a strong level of malt, which gives Maximus a summer-heat busting bitterness that is refreshing without being astringent.  Thankfully, it’s an “unlimited release” – i.e. a year-round production.  If you like high-hop beers, keep your eyes open for this – it’s not very expensive and well worth it.  I found it at American Beer on Court Street in Brooklyn.

I first tried Hitachino Red Rice Ale about 4 years ago, at a friend’s house, and I rather liked it.  I don’t buy it very often – even though it is an entertaining oddity, it’s not cheap.  However, I had some at a neighbor’s house recently, and it seemed an appropriate thing to write about.  Hitachino is from Japan.  Obviously they call it Red Rice Ale because they use rice in the recipe.  According to their website, they also borrow from sake fermentation techniques.  Now here’s where taste becomes a funny thing.  Like most other ethanol writers, one of the factors in the evaluation of a drink is the finish – the flavors and sensations one experiences in the mouth after swallowing and taking the next open-mouthed breath.  The finish on the Hitachino Red Rice Ale has an element strongly reminiscent of (of all things) Rolling Rock beer.  Ordinarily, that would be a huge detractor for an expensive exotic beer, because Rolling Rock is cheap and uninteresting.  But some of us know that part of the reason Rolling Rock is cheap and uninteresting is that they use rice in the recipe.  So what the hell am I talking about?  Well, here’s the thing.  There are many varieties of rice, and each has individual characteristics, but there is an underlying characteristic that IS rice.  So at the end of the day, Rolling Rock and Hitachino share a common signature element, but Rolling Rock is a cheap beer not worthy of repeat consumption, while Hitachino Nest Beer Red Rice Ale is an expensive exotic beer worthy of repeat consumption.  Go figure.  In the meantime, I sugggest getting a bottle of each and trying them side-by-side.  Maybe you too will be able to identify the rice finish, even though the beers are wildly different.

Last summer I wrote about Saranac beers, and I mentioned that Saranac Black and Tan is one of my favorites (and by that I mean I’ve liked it for about 18 years).  I also mentioned their Pomegranate Wheat beer, but I’d like to elaborate on that beer a bit.

Wheat beers are typically lighter on the palate and while many people enjoy them as a lighter alternative to beers like Sam Adams or Brooklyn Lager.  That lightness makes them almost bland to my palate, so I typically will balk at drinking more than one bottle of a wheat beer at one time.  What Matt Brewing has done for their Saranac line, however, is to add in some pomegranate juice into the beer for additional flavoring.  So I originally tried this a few years ago when it was part of their summer beer mixed pack, and found that the mild pomegranate flavor and tartness worked extremely well.  Apparently I am not the only one who felt that the mix worked well, as Saranac has begun putting Pomegranate Wheat out in 24 bottle cases.  I’ve also convinced 2 skeptical friends to try it, one of whom called me to say “Damn you, you were right again.” and the other said “that’s shockingly good.”  Now, that doesn’t guarantee that you will like it, but seriously speaking, it’s a great beer for a hot summer day.

Ah, Chimay.  A classic among Belgian beers, and one of the few true Trappist beers around.  What is a Trappist beer you ask?  A Trappist beer is brewed by or under direct management of the monks in a Trappist monastery/abbey, with the revenue going to pay the expenses of the abbey and support their social service programs.  Now, if you are an Orthodox Jew, you may be spluttering “but, but, that supports a monastery!”  I’ll answer with the following: it’s an unflavored Belgian beer, which makes it kosher according to the major kashrus agencies in the US; the OU allows it to be served in restaurants under their supervision; not all monks are anti-Jewish; and it’s damn good beer.  If you don’t want to drink it, more for me.

Chimay makes 3 different beers; Cinq Cents, Premiere, and Grande Reserve.  On a practical level, the Premiere and Grande Reserve are often referred to by the color of their labels – red for Premiere, and blue for Grande Reserve.  All three are excellent beers, but they carry a non-bargain price tag.  Cinq Cents is a classic triple, but Premiere and Grande Reserve are darker, richer products.  Being the intense flavor junkie that I am, I prefer Grande Reserve, but as their richest beer it’s also the most expensive.  Figure on about $13 per 750 ml bottle for Grande Reserve and $12 for Premiere.

As an academic point of interest, Chimay (and some of the other Trappist abbeys) also makes cheese.  If only that were kosher – it must be interesting.

Last Wednesday night, Chaim and I went to WhiskeyLive NY – a whiskey tasting event held at Chelsea Piers.  We attended courtesy of Avi Kadosh of Schnapps (East 4th Street and Avenue M in Brooklyn).  We arrived late, but we had the opportunity to try a few good whiskeys, and Avi was kind enough to introduce us to Josh Hatton, the founder of the Jewish Single Malt Whiskey Society, as well as one of the wirters of The Malt Impostor blog.  We also had the opportunity to meet a few distillery representatives.

So what did we try?  Well, first we tried Zachlawi Vodka – Skyview Wines had a table at the event, and unlike all the rest of the tables there, Skyview’s table was dedicated to their Kosher for Passover spirit offerings.  I’ve previously mentioned Zachlawi Arak and Fig Arak – their vodka is good too.  We also tried Blackadder’s Peat Reek, Ardbeg Corryvreckan, Compass Box Spice Tree and Peat Monster Reserve, Parker’s Heritage Collection Wheated and Heaven Hill’s Trybox Series Newmake Rye, Edradour Ballechin, Aberfeldy 21, and three bottlings under Bayway’s Whiskey Peddler line – a Glengrant 1995, Highland Park 1994, and Bruichladdich 1994.

All told, it was a fun evening, and we got to taste some excellent whiskies and meet some very nice people.  But there’s one item that I have to say really stands out from the rest, and that’s the Heaven Hill Trybox Series Newmake Rye.  If you’ve been reading my posts for a while, you may remember my writing a post titled “Moonshine should NOT cost $40 a bottle” in which I was less than charmed by Death’s Door.  Well, I am positively excited about Newmake Rye.  Here is an unaged spirit that tastes like the grainbill.  It starts out with dry rye flavor, but there is a pop of corn flavor in the middle of the palate that is the result of the 35% corn in the mashbill.  According to the Brand Ambassador at the table, part of the reason why the grain flavors come through so prominently is due to the low-proof distillation method, which makes intuitive sense – distilling to a lower proof means bringing more water through the distillation, which will carry more flavor elements along with it.  Now here’s the most exciting aspect – with all the flavor that they are carrying through the distillation, Heaven Hill is suggesting a retail price of only $25 for a 750 ml bottle.  With more than twice the flavor of Death’s Door, Heaven Hill is charging only 60% of the price.  And in comparison we’ll only mention the absolutely offensive $35 for a half-size bottle that Tuthilltown Spirits is charging for Hudson Whiskey.

Come May, I know I’ll be on the lookout for Newmake Rye.  Unlike some of the other unaged spirits out there, this is one to buy again and again.

I’ve already posted here about liking Sam Smith’s Imperial Stout, so it should come as no surprise that I like stouts in general.  But while Samuel Smith’s is a moderately obscure brand, just about everybody knows about or has seen Guinness, so why does Guinness need a write-up during the six weeks before Passover?  Well it’s simple.  The reason why this is coming up now is that someone just gave me a case of Guinness. 

Guinness is a classic stout, with all of the classic marks of the style – inky black color, deep roast malt flavors (which often are reminiscent of dark chocolate or coffee), etc… What sets Guinness apart from the rest of the stouts on the market are its place in the heart and soul of Ireland (the Irish credit Guinness with some amazing properties) and a signature sour element in the flavor profile that comes from the addition of sour Guinness to each batch.  Well, both of those plus the widget.  What the hell is a widget, you ask?  Apart from being an anachronistic reference to an amorphous technical device, when it comes to Guinnness a widget is a marvelous plastic doohickey.  Okay, okay, I’ll stop joking around.  Guinness is available in a number of different formats.  You have draft (tap or keg), bottle, widget bottle, and widget can (I don’t think they have regular cans).  Regular bottles are pressurized with carbon dioxide, just like any other beer on the market.  But remember the sour taste I mentioned before?  When you dissolve carbon dioxide in water, you create a small amount of carbonic acid.  In most beer, it’s not enough to impact the flavor, but when you add that to the sour flavor that Guinness already has, it starts to detract from the beer.  For locations that serve draft Guinness, special Guinness taps inject nitrogen into the beer, which helps create the signature Guinness head that takes so long to separate from the beer and even longer to go away (anyone remember the ad campaign “A pint of Guinness is built, not poured”?).  Fortunately, some truly brilliant individual or individuals developed plastic devices that can be filled with compressed nitrogen gas and inserted into bottles/can.  When the container is opened, the nitrogen releases into the beer, causing the widget to spin, whipping the beer into a froth pretty much identical to what you get out of a tap, thereby making draft Guinness something you can enjoy at home.  Widget bottles are awesome.

For the really curious geeks out there, if you vigorously shake an empty widget bottle up side down, you can get the widget down into the neck of the bottle, where you can grab it with needle-nose pliers and pull it out.  It’s kind of torpedo shaped with fins.  Yes, I’ve done it, and I’ll do it again sometime.