Widmer Brothers had somehow until now not had a pale ale in their regular beer offerings.  They recently brought on line a lot of new capacity in their new brewhouse and I suspect that one of the early results of that new capacity is the permanent return of this great pale ale.  This is a really easy to drink pale ale, with a noted hoppiness that doesn’t permanently infest your sinuses or overwhelm the rest of the beer like some others that I won’t mention here.  The malt flavors are still evident and the mouth feel is very smooth.  I’m now torn about which Oregon pale ale is my favorite, Deschutes’ Mirror Pond or the new Drifter, but then, I’m not sure I need to choose: they’re both excellent beers.  The new labeling for drifter is nice, too, invoking surf images.  With the abnormally long and cold spring that summer imagery might be part of the appeal.  If you like pale ale it’s worth picking up a six-pack of Drifter, or if you’re here in the Northwest, grab it on tap.  It’s nice to see such a great beer follow on the heels of the disaster that was W’09.

We’ve been super busy lately and are behind on the blog.  Apologies to all!  In the meantime we had the chance to travel to San Francisco lately and had the chance to down a few pints of Gordon Biersch’s Marzen.  Gordon Biersch are a Bay Area company, but have restaurants spread around the country serving excellent food and beer in many cities in the United States.  I had had the Marzen before but it had been some time ago, so it was like a new beer this time around.  The color is very similar to that of Fat Tire, a reddish gold, but the taste is a lot less grainy but still with a strong malt taste.  The weather was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit the day I had a few pints and the beer went down well on the patio.  This is a good spring and fall weather beer and highly recommended for session drinking.  Enjoy!

We talked about Hook Norton brewery some time ago.  This is an old school brewer in Oxfordshire, England.  Their brew is and has been served at the pub where J.R.R. Tolkien hung out, the Eagle and Child.  They make a range of bottle-condition and cask-conditioned ales of high quality.  I recently was able to get my hands on a bottle of Double Stout here in the U.S.  It’s something of a rarity here so I was excited to bring it home.  The bottle did not disappoint.  This is a very English stout, tasting much more like a heavy British ale than like its Irish cousins.  That is not a down side, just a statement.  This is one smooth beer with a nice smell of yeast and malt and a great feel going down.  The bottle is really nice looking, too, if you put any stock in that.  I’m a big fan of Hook Norton beers and the Double Stout is definitely on the keepers list.

Since I normally have enjoyed Widmer beers and I felt bad about how terrible their W’09 Belgian Style ale was, I thought I’d review one of their best beers.  This is an amber ale and it’s not in an established style.  It’s a Widmer creation and it’s seriously good on any evening, in any time of year.  Lightly malted and lightly hopped, it’s a medium beer in many ways, but the recipe just works.  The inspiration is a convertible ride on a summer night and the logo is a dog hanging his tongue out over the side of the car.  Definitely appropriate.  But make no mistake, this is a great all season beer and you can’t go wrong picking up a large bottle or six pack of this one.  Here in Portland it’s available in 22oz bottles, six packs, and twelve packs.  I know that on the US East Coast it’s available in the same.  Everyone else worldwide are on your own.  But if you’re in Portland and want to sample one of the city’s greats, this is, in our opinion, one of the high flyers.

On Mt Hood here in Oregon you can ski nearly year round. Sure, the skiing isn’t great in the summer, but you can do it if you want to. On the other hand, the winter skiing is quite good. When you’re coming off the slopes (and not driving all the way home!) it’s often time for a little warmth. Luckily just below the town of Government Camp is the Mt Hood brewery. It’s Oregon, after all. One of the greats on tap at Mt Hood is the Pittock Wee Heavy, named for Henry Pittock, an avid outdoorsman and the man who built the Oregonian newspaper into a dominant force. His stately home is still operated as a museum by the city of Portland. But back to the beer.

This one is in the Scotch style: heavy, malty and mildly hopped.  Alcohol content is quite high, but like all good beers with high alcohol content, you can’t tell immediately from the taste.  The brewery holds a portion of each batch to be aged and then blended back into a future batch.

Here in Oregon there are other pubs around the state that serve this gem of a beer, so if you’re not in Portland no fear, you may be able to find it locally. The brewery states that none of their beer is sold outside of the State of Oregon, much to the loss of the rest of the planet.  But if you’re in Oregon, and anywhere near Mt Hood, it’s worth the stop for the Pittock Wee Heavy if not the scenery alone.

I’m usually a big fan of Widmer Brothers’ products. Nearly all of their beers are at least worth drinking, and some are excellent. So it was with pleasure that I tried the new Widmer W’09 release in the Brewmasters’ Series (W09). This one is intended to be a golden Belgian style ale described as having “an estery fruitiness with peppery tones.”  I was a little suspect about the description: the peppery part made me think bad thoughts. But it’s Widmer, right? How bad could it be? Train wreck bad.

Belgian ales are not generally heavily hopped.  There was that fruitiness you would expect in a Belgian beer, and the color was right.  Unfortunately there was a strong aroma of American hops and a bitter after taste that contrasted sharply with the malty, fruity goodness that is usually found in this style of beer.  Ok, so we wouldn’t expect it to be identical to Belgian beer: it’s not intended to be a precise copy.  That would all be well and good if the combination worked.  It didn’t even come close to pulling it off.  I had this particular beer on tap at the Widmer establishment and I can say it’s the first time in memory that I sent a beer back.  The waiter was not at all surprised if I read his expression well.  It speaks well to the Widmers, though, that there were no questions asked.

All-in-all a really disappointing showing from a well-respected brewery.  One for whom I have a particular fondness given that I live about a 10 minute walk from the brewery.  If you’re looking at a pack of Widmer W’09 in the grocery isle, take a pass and be glad you read this first.

I first had a Black Boss porter several years ago at a German restaurant here in Portland, known for their excellent import German beers: the Berlin Inn.  Black Boss, however, is a Baltic porter from Poland, the flagship product of Browar Witnica.  It’s heavy and thick, and delicious, packing a ABV in excess of 9%.  Other Baltic porters are excellent, but this is my favorite.  It’s common to describe other kinds of flavors found in beers.  I normally find that’s not terribly helpful, but in this case there really is a chocolate taste to the beer.  Being a Baltic porter, there is no burnt flavor, replaced instead by a heavy maltiness.

These are sipping beers, meant to last for an hour, not session beers to be drunk back to back.  If you drink it slowly, it’s a very enjoyable beer for an evening.  Don’t drink it in the afternoon unless you want to be asleep by 5 o’clock.

I’ve since had Black Boss several other places, including at the Krakow Koffehaus near my house in Portland.  But no one else have ever served it in a way that I first saw at the Berlin Inn.  As a float, with ice cream.  Yes, it sounds terrible and you’re now questioning my sanity.  But in all seriousness it’s great this way.  If you never thought you’d have a beer for dessert, with ice cream, no less, then you ought to pick one up and try it.  If you can find it.  It’s worth a search.

What began as a state-owned brewery late in the life of the Soviet Union (on death’s doorstep as it turned out), has become the largest brewer in Russia, under the control of the Scandinavian group BBH. Other than making excellent beer, one of the things that make Baltika unique is that each of its products is described not so much by name, but by number. The lower the number, in general, the lower the alcohol content and the lighter the malt. I have not yet tasted every one of their products (starting with the non-alcoholic “0″ and ending with the dark, heavy “9″), but the ones I have had have been from average to excellent.

“6″ is a nice, malty Baltic Porter, lighter in alcohol content than the Polish brews from Okocim, Zywiec, and Witnica, but still on the heavy side as it should be. Great for cold weather (hey, it’s from Russia). “8″ is a yeasty hefeweizen that works well on summer night, probably brewed for the endless days of high summer in northern Russia, the “white nights.”

Baltika is headquartered in St. Petersburg, where the main brewery is also located. But they have acquired and built 3 other breweries throughout Russia. The country is immense so shipping distances have to be reduced to make a product affordable. It appears the newest brewery is in Khabarovsk in the far East.

If you’re looking for something different, this company’s beers are worth a shot. “Russian” and “beer” are not words commonly paired, but the company have done a good job of rectifying that. Anything they do from here on out will definitely be better than the Soviet brew they produced in their first year of production.

I’m sure someone has tried to drink all of the numbers in one night. That can’t have been a good idea. We recommend drinking by number… but slowly.

Za Vas!

Trader Joe’s–a discount imported and gourmet foods store in the United States–has been issuing a yearly Belgian style Vintage Ale for the last few years at Christmas time.  These are brewed in Quebec, Canada by Unibroue, who have an excellent reputation.  We’ll do a feature on them another time.  This particular Vintage Ale is in the Belgian Dubbel style and carries a 9% ABV punch.  I wasn’t sure what to expect at first, but this is really a top notch beer, and unmistakably Belgian.  Unibroue have done an excellent job.  And it’s cheap for what you get.  $4.99 lands you a nice Belgian style beer.

Because this is a good one, I suggest going right down to Trader Joe’s (if you can in your region) and picking up a bottle.  I don’t always appreciate people trying to review a beer and naming lots of fruits and spices they detect in the beer.  I’ll save you that.  I’ll describe it in terms of other beers and what you taste.  The smell is that of a European hefeweizen.  The taste is heavier than a hefeweizen, however, and you can definitely taste that it is packing a punch in the alcohol level.  Not overpoweringly, so.  There is definitely a wheaty taste but the beer is substantially darker brown, so the wheat content is low.  If you like Belgian beer and want a nice light tasting drink with a punch for a winter night, this is a good one.

I liked it.  I think this spring I may work up a recipe for a similar beer and give it a shot.

In Oxfordshire there is a brewery that has been operating for a small fraction of the time that Franziskaner has operated. On the scale of breweries in Europe this brewery is new, founded in 1849 in the Cotswolds region. While many of the older breweries have been heavily modernized, however, Hook Norton continues to brew in the same brew house with the same steam-powered equipment that has been used for over a century. This brewery is one of only a few dozen family owned and operated regional breweries in the UK.

The company brews a range of traditional cask aged English beers, what is now known as “real ale.”  They also produce bottled beers of similar quality.  If you’re interested in the history of this living piece of English brewing history, you ought to check out their website, which has a trove of historical information and a virtual brewery tour.