Another Sunday and another visit from the St. Bernardus brewery. For a bit of history on the St. Bernardus brewery, I’ll refer you to my write-up of St. Bernardus Tripel.
Today’s visit is in the form of St. Bernardus Pater 6. This Dubbel-style Belgian ale is just 6.7% ABV, so drinking the entire 25 oz bottle was no problem — that is, once I managed to extract the stubborn cork!
Mikkeller is a relatively young brewery in Denmark, but in its first year as a full-scale brewery they were recognized as one of the best in the world. The Mikkeller website explains the brewery’s focus of creating complex beers is designed “to challenge the Danes’ taste buds with intense taste adventures, and some of the inspiration is found on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean where the American breweries aren’t afraid to play and break all the rules. Mikkeller wants to provoke some of this inventiveness in Danish beer brewing, so why not show the way?”
I chose a Mikkeller beer to celebrate BeerADay.net’s first 100 days and 100 beers. That day, I ran out of superlatives while extolling the virtues of Mikkeller’s Beer Geek Brunch. I had also purchased two other Mikkeller stouts — the Beer Geek Breakfast and Black Hole — and today I finally cracked open the Black Hole.
Hitachino Nest Beer XH
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Sometimes, you just don’t know what kind of surprise a new beer will present. That’s usually part of the fun, but Hitachino Nest Beer XH started off with a bang. This little bottle of Japanese beer held so much carbonation it quite literally shot up a geyser the moment I removed its cap.
As I held the dripping bottle over my waiting tulip glass (catching every drop I could), the distinct aroma of Hitachino Nest Beer XH hit me for the first time — and I began to lament the loss of those few sips of beer that puddled on the table in front of me.
XH’s aroma was like a musky cologne. It smelled strongly of brett yeast, with a dry/sour aroma like a gueuze and a sweetness that reminded me of cherry and oak. Subtle spice permeated the aroma, and above it all — lifting and delivering this complex fragrance — was the strong smell of alcohol.
Drie Fonteinen Doesjel
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This beer is a real snoozer — but that’s a good thing! The name Doesjel, according to the label, roughly translates as “snoozer” in Flemish, in a reference to the young yeasts which have gone dormant and altered the fermentation process.
Drie Fonteinen Doesjel (or 3 Fonteinen Doesjel, if you prefer) is “a blend of one, two, and three year-old lambic, fermented and matured in oak casks by wild yeasts carried on the open air.” If you weren’t snoozing through my previous experience with gueuze, you may remember that gueuze is a blend of young and old lambic. Typically, the younger lambic blend contains sugars and yeasts which create a secondary fermentation in the bottle. But not Doesjel.
The label explains:
“During re-fermentation the younger yeasts have inexplicably gone dormant — knocked off early for a long snooze, you might say — which halts the fermentation, assuring that you will taste the original flavors of the lambic in their purest form.”
Clipper City Heavy Seas Small Craft Warning
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No matter what you call this beer — Über Pils or Bock Lager — after you drink a glass, you’ll be sure to call it tasty.
Clipper City goes into more detail:
We call this beer an Über Pils – a pilsner style bock lager. Rich, malty, and well rounded but with a firm structure of noble hops. Surprisingly pale in color for such a powerful, complex beer.
The only other Clipper City beer I’ve had was Loose Cannon — a very tasty, floral IPA. Like Loose cannon, Small Craft Warning is part of the Heavy Seas line of robust, high alcohol-by-volume beers; and while past experience meant my expectations were high, you might also call them mixed. I wasn’t very excited about a pilsner, Über or not.
I poured Small Craft Warning into a fluted pilsner glass — etched, appropriately enough, with the image of a clipper ship. The golden beer was slightly hazy, with a surprising number of tiny white suspensions and a huge, exuberant head that threatened to erupt from the narrow glass.
