You aren’t in a beer renaissance. In the 1970’s there were about two dozen shitty brands of beer in the whole country and by the mid 90’s there were about a dozen breweries running in every City. That was a beer renaissance. A lot of that new beer was only good in the sense that it was better than Coors.
Today’s variety is welcome to me, but far from stunning. All I want is a sharp, well-crafted ale that tastes of nothing more than hops and barley. You can keep your undrinkable IPA’s and sour vomit beers.
I’ve had a chocolate stout once. Look, if I want you to boil a bunch of Tootsie rolls in Michelob and decant the soppy mess into a bottle, I’ll get back to you. Once was enough.
Edit: that said, a local brewery makes Black Mocha Stout, without a smidge of actual chocolate in it, and it’s my favorite stout, rich and toasty and malty and weirdly perfect with onion rings.
to me, that’s UR DOIN IT RONG. The brewery I mentioned earlier has a couple fruit-flavored beers, and they keep it to just a “nose” or a hint of the fruit without being cloying.
Our local Rogue Brewery [del]has made a deal with the devil[/del] struck a deal with a local donut bakery and come up with a line of “beers”…each of which my family has gotten me to try just to see the look on my face. They are Voodoo Doughnut Bacon Maple Ale,Voodoo Doughnut Chocolate, Peanut Butter & Banana Ale, Voodoo Doughnut Lemon Chiffon Crueller Ale, Voodoo Doughnut Mango Astronaut Ale, and Voodoo Doughnut Pretzel, Raspberry & Chocolate Ale. Of these I think the Lemon Chiffon Crueller Ale was the worst, having the lovely aftertaste of lemon Pledge.
It’s hardly a new thing–since man discovered the joys of fermented malt, they’ve been putting all sun and sundry in there, including chicken, in a 17th century concoction known as “cock ale.” :eek:
There are actually lots of very good beers out there flavored with something other than hops. I’m generally more a malt-and-hops guy, but there have been fruit ales and spiced beers that I’ve grown to enjoy (like witbier, flavored with curacao orange peels and coriander, sahti flavored with juniper, the Belgian fruit lambics, etc.) I’m not so much a fan of the “dessert” flavored beers, though. Those are just silly.
Exactly. If you’re into that “beer purity law” stuff slavishly, then you’d have to eliminate a whole lot of Belgian beers, which, even disregarding the fruit beers and the witbiers, the stuff that is generally unflavored like the trappist beers, contain candy sugar. You can still enjoy your Stella, though.
How big is this advent calendar that it holds a whole beer?
I also like chocolate stouts and chocolate oatmeal stouts and other flavored beers. My current favorite is a banana bread beer. It tastes like a normal ale but it smells like banana bread. It’s awesome.
I agree with the majority here. A good stout should be reminiscent of of coffee and/or chocolate, but that should come from the barley, not from actually adding the flavors. For one thing, it seems like cheating, but more fundamentally, it threatens to destroy the rich subtle flavors I want from a good stout.
Last year, I discovered Oskar Blues Ten Fidy, which I loved. However, I didn’t realize they only make it in fall and winter, so I neglected to lay in a supply and had to suffer six months of deprivation. When the new batch was finally available this year, I was so excited, but then I found it way too boozy. I’m not sure what happened there. I’m going to keep it in cold storage for awhile to see if it mellows out.
