Happy new year everyone!
Apologies for my tardiness in publishing new stuff lately, but I have been working on several other projects and the blog posts just sort of fell by the wayside. But I promise improvement in that, and if you enjoy reading my stories, there are some cool developments in the pipeline.
Apologies for my tardiness in publishing new stuff lately, but I have been working on several other projects and the blog posts just sort of fell by the wayside. But I promise improvement in that, and if you enjoy reading my stories, there are some cool developments in the pipeline.
A new year is here. The end of the year is always a time
for reflection and many people will come out with overviews of their favorite
music, moments, earthquakes, or whatever else makes them tick. What makes me
tick more than anything is, ofcourse, beer. I have drank quite a lot of it in
2017 and have kept track of this in an app called Untappd.
This app is a sort of social media platform for beer drinkers, where you can find ratings, descriptions and photos of countless different beers. You can also make friends, talk and send messages and ‘toast’ each others post, similar to liking someone’s photo or remark on Facebook. I personally don’t really use the social media aspect of Untappd, because I waste enough time on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram doing that, but the beauty of Untappd is the statistics section, where you can see exactly which beers you drank, from which country they came, what rating you gave them etc.
Unfortunately, the statistics section in Untappd is not so sophisticated that it can give you superdetailed overviews, but it works for most queries. One thing that I can’t get out of it, for example, is how many different beers I drank in a specific time frame. I wanted to see exactly how many different beers (or ‘Unique Check Ins’ in Untappd terminology) I had added to my list in 2017, but this is not possible, unless you want to basically scroll through your feed for 2 hours or so and mark them off on a note pad or something like that. However, I can give you a ball park figure and tell you that I drank about 330 new beers this years. To close out my beery year in style, I thought I’d give you an overview of the best new beers I drank in 2017.
Before we get started, let me explain some ground rules for how I went about this.
“New” in the context of this list means that it is a beer that I drank for the first time between January 1st 2017 and December 31st 2017. This does not mean that it is a beer that was on the market for the first time, or even necessarily that I drank it for the first time, but merely that this is a beer that I had not previously checked in on Untappd since I started using it in May 2013. So theoretically, this can be a beer that has been available for 30 years and I drank 250 times before May 2013, but not since. There are some of these occurences in my total record for 2017, but none of these have made this list.
“New” can also refer to a new or different version of an already existing (or checked in) beer, provided that it is really new or different. On the Untappd app, there are people who check in Coors Light (2017 batch), Coors Light (2016 batch) and so on. This is clearly ridiculous as Coors Light has been the same for decades so there is no notable difference between one from 2016 and one from 2017.
If, however, you have a beer that was originally barrel aged on bourbon casks, but is now aged on cognac casks, that does qualify as a new beer. (The Dutch De Molen brewery is very good at this. They regularly release beers in 5 or 6 different barrel aged varieties). Similarly, if you change the recipe of a beer to such a degree that the difference in taste is clearly noticeable, that also qualifies as a new beer.
Finally, let me state here that this list is in no way conclusive, definitive or complete. For reasons of brevity, I have stuck to 5 beers. If I wanted to make this story a comprehensive overview of the beers I drank this year, it would run into the dozen of pages. (Even now, I have already written an entire page and we haven’t even started yet).
My records aren’t 100% accurate either. When you drink a lot, you inevitably forget to make notes of certain things, especially late at night, so there are beers out there that are not in my record but I definitely drank. This doesn’t matter. Few extensive records of anything in this world are 100% accurate so I certainly wouldn’t expect one based around alcohol to be. The list is in random order, as the type of beer you drink and how you enjoy it depend on a number of environmental factors, such as the weather, what you drank before, what you ate with it etc. I love big imperial stouts, but when I’m on a beach in Southern Spain and it’s 35 degrees, I’m just as happy with a can of lager.
A final rule I made myself adhere to, was that I could only nominate 1 beer per brewery, otherwise this story would most likely have been called ‘The 5 Best Founders beers of 2017’
Enjoy!
Prairie Ales/Evil Twin- Barrel Aged Bible Belt.
Oklahoma City may not stand out as a brewing hot spot to most people, and it isn’t, but Prairie Artisan Ales is sure making its mark. They teamed up with the legendary Evil Twin again for a second version of this beer, and this time they barrel aged it. The beer is a big, heavy, imperial stout, brewed with cacao, chillis, vanilla and coffee beans. The beer is then barrel aged on Heaven Hill whiskey barrels for 9 months. The result is breathtaking. I drank this beer only once, in the BierCab bar in Barcelona, but it sure made an impression. The flavors are intense, every sip lasts for minutes and at the end you sit there, staring in the middle distance, wondering to yourself “What the hell just happened there?” It is an absolute beauty. Treat it with caution though, because it packs a punch at 13% alcohol.
8 Degrees- The Holly King Barrel Aged Imperial Stout.
Oklahoma City may not stand out as a brewing hot spot to most people, and it isn’t, but Prairie Artisan Ales is sure making its mark. They teamed up with the legendary Evil Twin again for a second version of this beer, and this time they barrel aged it. The beer is a big, heavy, imperial stout, brewed with cacao, chillis, vanilla and coffee beans. The beer is then barrel aged on Heaven Hill whiskey barrels for 9 months. The result is breathtaking. I drank this beer only once, in the BierCab bar in Barcelona, but it sure made an impression. The flavors are intense, every sip lasts for minutes and at the end you sit there, staring in the middle distance, wondering to yourself “What the hell just happened there?” It is an absolute beauty. Treat it with caution though, because it packs a punch at 13% alcohol.
8 Degrees- The Holly King Barrel Aged Imperial Stout.
This may sound like the run up to a lame pub joke, but in 2010, a Kiwi and an Aussie set up a brewery in Ireland. Over the past 7 years, their beers have become a favorite among the craft beer crowd in Ireland and, quite recently, they introduced their own barrel ageing programme. This initially resulted in a trilogy of beers called The Good, The Bald and The Fearless (Barley wine, Imperial Stout and Farmhouse Ale, respectively) and this year they added to this with 2 beers for the festive season: The Oak King and The Holly King. While The Oak King, a Belgian style pale ale, is a very tasty beer in itself, it does not quite measure up to its big brother, The Holly King. An Imperial Stout, aged in French oak barrels, it is big and full of flavour, yet smooth and subtle. With tastes of red fruit, chocolate and ofcourse the oak from the barrels, this is a great beer to enjoy by the fire place on dark winter days. Or in the pub, that will do just fine too.
Galway Bay Brewery/Boundary – Harmonic Convergence Barrel
Aged Barley Wine.
You didn’t think this article was going to end without a Galway Bay Beer in it, did you?
Since its inception in 2009, the Galway Bay Brewery has kept Irish beer lovers happy with a steady stream of great beers. This year was no different, with new IPAs (Regular Legs was a personal favorite), a Saison and several other tasty beers coming from the West Coast. It looked for most of the year that Rando Calrissian, a Black IPA that proved surprisingly popular across the country, was going to take the crown but then, a few weeks before the end of the year, Harmonic Convergence hit the shelves. I have tried it on draft about 10 times and, damn, this is a fine brew. It’s big, heavy and malty. It's smooth and strong and, at 12% alcohol and with a year of maturation on whiskey barrels, it makes you glow. Which is just what you need on a chilly winter night. I recommend you act quickly if you want to get your hands on it, because supply is limited. The draft version is, alas, gone already, but you might be able to pick up a bottle here or there.
Hertog Jan Grand Prestige Barley Wine, Barrel Aged on Goose Island BCBS Barrels.
You didn’t think this article was going to end without a Galway Bay Beer in it, did you?
Since its inception in 2009, the Galway Bay Brewery has kept Irish beer lovers happy with a steady stream of great beers. This year was no different, with new IPAs (Regular Legs was a personal favorite), a Saison and several other tasty beers coming from the West Coast. It looked for most of the year that Rando Calrissian, a Black IPA that proved surprisingly popular across the country, was going to take the crown but then, a few weeks before the end of the year, Harmonic Convergence hit the shelves. I have tried it on draft about 10 times and, damn, this is a fine brew. It’s big, heavy and malty. It's smooth and strong and, at 12% alcohol and with a year of maturation on whiskey barrels, it makes you glow. Which is just what you need on a chilly winter night. I recommend you act quickly if you want to get your hands on it, because supply is limited. The draft version is, alas, gone already, but you might be able to pick up a bottle here or there.
Hertog Jan Grand Prestige Barley Wine, Barrel Aged on Goose Island BCBS Barrels.
If you go back to the introduction of this story, you will
see that I mentioned something about the theoretic possibility of beers that
have been available for 20 years or more showing up on this list. This is sort
of the case here. I have drank Hertog Jan Grand Prestige many, many times
in my life. Hertog Jan is still my
favorite Dutch brewery, despite the fact that they have been bought out by one
of the big boys. I still love the beer as much as I did 20 years ago. Hell, I
even have the brewery logo tattooed on my arm. Grand Prestige is an amazing
beer that could have easily made this list, if it weren’t for the fact that I
had had it before. A couple of hundred times. Grand Prestige is a Big Beer with
deep flavours that, like other well-made barley wines, will make you glow.
As I said, the brewery was bought some years ago by Inbev, the biggest brewing conglomerate in the world. This may seem like a negative development, but keep in mind that being part of a bigger company is not always a bad thing. You see, Goose Island from Chicago is also part of Inbev these days. While Goose Island makes a whole range of excellent beers, including IPAs and wheat ales, most people will only think of 1 thing when you drop the name Goose Island, and that is Bourbon County Brand Stout (BCBS). Originally developped as a one off special edition to celebrate the brewery’s 1000th brew, it turned out to be so good that it immediately achieved cult status and became one of the most sought after beers in the world. These days it’s a bit silly, and as the popularity of craft beer is spreading, so is the name of BCBS. Every year around the release date, a tidal wave of hype crashes across the world of beer and people fall over themselves to get their hands on a bottle. One beer store in Holland, that had managed to get their hands on 100 bottles, found people lining up around the block more than a day before the bottles went on sale. Mind you, there was a maximum of 1 (one) bottle per person and that one bottle cost 20 Euros. I personally don’t buy into hypes like that. I am convinced that when I do eventually taste it, it will be one of the best beers I ever drank, and I’ll be more than happy to fork over 20 Euro for a bottle, but I’m not lining up overnight for anything. Not even beer.
But I digress. To get back to Grand Prestige- As both Hertog Jan and Goose Island were now part of Inbev, this opened up the way for collaboration. Hertog Jan could use Goose Island’s extensive knowledge of barrel aging and Goose Island could take the opportunity to release one of Europe’s famous beers in the USA.
Hertog Jan eventually released 4 different barrel aged versions of Grand Prestige: Port, Cognac, Bourbon and Goose Island BCBS. (Okay, they made a 5th version, aged on Macallan Scotch barrels, but that was never released and was only made available to brewery employees and guests at the invite-only launch party at the brewery. In any case, only 200 bottles were ever made so you’ll never taste it.)
Despite the fact that Inbev has a world wide distribution network, Hertog Jan was never exported to Ireland, so I cherish my trips to Holland, when I can get it at pretty much every shop.
When I heard about the Grand Prestige Barrel Aged project and a release date that was far removed from my presence in Holland, I cursed twice but then had peace with it. I thought about asking people to get me a bottle, but beer is heavy, shipping it is costly and I don’t normally succumb to requests of sending rare Irish or American beers over to Holland if they can’t get it there. It’s too much hassle, you can’t drink every beer that is ever released and sometimes you just have to take no for an answer.
As I said, the brewery was bought some years ago by Inbev, the biggest brewing conglomerate in the world. This may seem like a negative development, but keep in mind that being part of a bigger company is not always a bad thing. You see, Goose Island from Chicago is also part of Inbev these days. While Goose Island makes a whole range of excellent beers, including IPAs and wheat ales, most people will only think of 1 thing when you drop the name Goose Island, and that is Bourbon County Brand Stout (BCBS). Originally developped as a one off special edition to celebrate the brewery’s 1000th brew, it turned out to be so good that it immediately achieved cult status and became one of the most sought after beers in the world. These days it’s a bit silly, and as the popularity of craft beer is spreading, so is the name of BCBS. Every year around the release date, a tidal wave of hype crashes across the world of beer and people fall over themselves to get their hands on a bottle. One beer store in Holland, that had managed to get their hands on 100 bottles, found people lining up around the block more than a day before the bottles went on sale. Mind you, there was a maximum of 1 (one) bottle per person and that one bottle cost 20 Euros. I personally don’t buy into hypes like that. I am convinced that when I do eventually taste it, it will be one of the best beers I ever drank, and I’ll be more than happy to fork over 20 Euro for a bottle, but I’m not lining up overnight for anything. Not even beer.
But I digress. To get back to Grand Prestige- As both Hertog Jan and Goose Island were now part of Inbev, this opened up the way for collaboration. Hertog Jan could use Goose Island’s extensive knowledge of barrel aging and Goose Island could take the opportunity to release one of Europe’s famous beers in the USA.
Hertog Jan eventually released 4 different barrel aged versions of Grand Prestige: Port, Cognac, Bourbon and Goose Island BCBS. (Okay, they made a 5th version, aged on Macallan Scotch barrels, but that was never released and was only made available to brewery employees and guests at the invite-only launch party at the brewery. In any case, only 200 bottles were ever made so you’ll never taste it.)
Despite the fact that Inbev has a world wide distribution network, Hertog Jan was never exported to Ireland, so I cherish my trips to Holland, when I can get it at pretty much every shop.
When I heard about the Grand Prestige Barrel Aged project and a release date that was far removed from my presence in Holland, I cursed twice but then had peace with it. I thought about asking people to get me a bottle, but beer is heavy, shipping it is costly and I don’t normally succumb to requests of sending rare Irish or American beers over to Holland if they can’t get it there. It’s too much hassle, you can’t drink every beer that is ever released and sometimes you just have to take no for an answer.
So imagine my surprise when an acquaintance, someone I had
never met in person but knew through a craft beer group on Facebook, sent me a
message informing me that he would be coming to Dublin in November and would I
want him to bring a bottle of Grand Prestige Barrel Aged?
I explained him that I never asked people to carry over heavy stuff like beer because I probably wouldn’t bring beer from Ireland to Holland either. He insisted that it was no problem at all and he could even bring a second bottle, the BCBS version if I wanted one. Well, if it really wasn’t a problem, yeah sure. A few weeks later, I was the proud owner of not one but two bottles of Grand Prestige Barrel Aged. Happy days.
The first bottle, Grand Prestige aged on bourbon barrels, went down a treat. It had all the hallmarks of the ‘regular’ Grand Prestige, but the ageing process had brought a couple of extra layers of flavor to the table. Bourbon, vanilla, wood tones, they all combined beautifully with one of my old favorites from back home.
Very impressed with all this awesomeness, I let the second bottle rest for another 2 weeks and then the moment was there. Hertog Jan Grand Prestige aged in Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout barrels. To give you an idea what is going on here, let me explain the process. Goose Island brews their famous Bourbon County Brand Stout. They then age it in bourbon barrels for a year. And then they take those barrels and age the Grand Prestige in them.
This bottle, unlike the bourbon aged version, had a crown cap rather than a cork, so I flipped it off and poured my first glass. I let it settle for a couple of seconds and took my first sip. Even now as I write this, 2 months later, I still struggle to find the words to describe it. It was phenomenal. There was so much depth of flavour. It was so beautiful that I wanted to cry. I have been drinking for nearly 30 years now, and must have drank at least 1500 different beers, but on maybe 10 occasions have I been so impressed by a beer as I was now. It made me think of the movie Ten, starring Dudley Moore. In the movie, in which he pursues what he considers to be the most beautiful woman on earth, he is asked by his therapist
“On scale of 1 to 10, how beautiful is she?”
‘11’.
That is how good this beer is. It was breathtaking.
I explained him that I never asked people to carry over heavy stuff like beer because I probably wouldn’t bring beer from Ireland to Holland either. He insisted that it was no problem at all and he could even bring a second bottle, the BCBS version if I wanted one. Well, if it really wasn’t a problem, yeah sure. A few weeks later, I was the proud owner of not one but two bottles of Grand Prestige Barrel Aged. Happy days.
The first bottle, Grand Prestige aged on bourbon barrels, went down a treat. It had all the hallmarks of the ‘regular’ Grand Prestige, but the ageing process had brought a couple of extra layers of flavor to the table. Bourbon, vanilla, wood tones, they all combined beautifully with one of my old favorites from back home.
Very impressed with all this awesomeness, I let the second bottle rest for another 2 weeks and then the moment was there. Hertog Jan Grand Prestige aged in Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stout barrels. To give you an idea what is going on here, let me explain the process. Goose Island brews their famous Bourbon County Brand Stout. They then age it in bourbon barrels for a year. And then they take those barrels and age the Grand Prestige in them.
This bottle, unlike the bourbon aged version, had a crown cap rather than a cork, so I flipped it off and poured my first glass. I let it settle for a couple of seconds and took my first sip. Even now as I write this, 2 months later, I still struggle to find the words to describe it. It was phenomenal. There was so much depth of flavour. It was so beautiful that I wanted to cry. I have been drinking for nearly 30 years now, and must have drank at least 1500 different beers, but on maybe 10 occasions have I been so impressed by a beer as I was now. It made me think of the movie Ten, starring Dudley Moore. In the movie, in which he pursues what he considers to be the most beautiful woman on earth, he is asked by his therapist
“On scale of 1 to 10, how beautiful is she?”
‘11’.
That is how good this beer is. It was breathtaking.
Founders – Doom Imperial IPA aged on Bourbon Barrels.
Founders is my favorite brewery in the USA, and one of my
Top3 breweries in the world. I can’t tell you exactly when I first started drinking
Founders, but I quickly realized that they know how to make amazing beer in
Grand Rapids, Michigan. As luck would have it, the company that imports
Founders for Ireland does a lot of business with the pubs that I am a regular
at, so there is always a steady supply of Founders beer and all new releases
stop off in Ireland first.
Apart from their core range of IPAs, rye ales and stouts, Founders is particularly famous and loved for their Barrel Aged programme. They release 6 barrel aged brews each year, and one of the highlights on the beer calendar is the annual release of KBS, their Imperial coffee and chocolate stout, aged on bourbon barrels. It is one of the most highly praised beers on the planet and on Ratebeer.com, one of the world’s leading beer appraisal sites, it has a score of 100. (Yes, the scale is 1-100)
Apart from their core range of IPAs, rye ales and stouts, Founders is particularly famous and loved for their Barrel Aged programme. They release 6 barrel aged brews each year, and one of the highlights on the beer calendar is the annual release of KBS, their Imperial coffee and chocolate stout, aged on bourbon barrels. It is one of the most highly praised beers on the planet and on Ratebeer.com, one of the world’s leading beer appraisal sites, it has a score of 100. (Yes, the scale is 1-100)
This year, we were particularly well supplied with KBS in
Ireland, and I have drank it quite a lot. It would easily have made this list
if it weren’t for the fact that I had had it numerous times before 2017.
Fortunately, Founders does not rely on KBS alone, and I considered several
other of their brews. In the end it came down to DKML, Double Kentucky Malt
Liquor, a malt liquor aged, you guessed it, in bourbon barrels, and Doom, an
Imperial IPA also aged in bourbon barrels. They are both whopper beers, with
14.2 and 12.4% alcohol respectively and it could have gone either way.
I ultimately chose Doom, because I think that the bourbon barrels work just a little bit better with Doom than they do with DKML.
Doom is a big brew. It is dark gold in color, pleasantly hoppy and has a malty taste to the back of that. The bourbon barrels give it a deeply boozy flavour and it is a beer that is sure to make you happy. Should you ever see Doom somewhere, get it. You won’t regret it.
I ultimately chose Doom, because I think that the bourbon barrels work just a little bit better with Doom than they do with DKML.
Doom is a big brew. It is dark gold in color, pleasantly hoppy and has a malty taste to the back of that. The bourbon barrels give it a deeply boozy flavour and it is a beer that is sure to make you happy. Should you ever see Doom somewhere, get it. You won’t regret it.
There you have it. My 5 favorite new beers of 2017.
As I said in the intro, this story could have been 30 pages long if I had wanted to highlight every noticeable aspect of my year in beer. I visited several beer festivals, of which Hagstravaganza, the birthday party of the White Hag Brewery in Sligo, was undoubtedly a highlight. 20 brewers, 60 beers, many of which had never been poured in Ireland, and a 1000 beer fanatics sure make for a good party. I already have my ticket for this year’s festival so watch out Sligo, I’ll be back.
Also worth mentioning is the Beats, Beer and Boogaloo festival in Tisno, Croatia. I went there, courtesy of the Galway Bay Brewery, after winning a photo contest on Twitter and it was brilliant. The festival was mainly focused on funk and Northern soul, music wise, but also had a large selection of craft beers available, mainly from breweries in the Balkans and Central Europe. I discovered a great many new brews that I would normally not have come across and, this being Croatia, the weather was spectacular. So a big thank you to Will, Jason and Mick from Galway Bay for making it happen.
Another highlight in my year was my first trip to Canada. For 2 ½ weeks I travelled from Toronto around Lake Eerie, taking in 10 breweries and ending up back in Toronto. The highlight of the trip was undoubtedly my visit to the Founders Brewery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was great to be at the source of all those amazing beers. It took me 10 hours on a Greyhound bus to get there and back from Detroit, but it was totally worth it, and once the staff found out that I had come all the way from Ireland, just to visit Founders, they kept buying me beers until I stumbled out the door around closing time. It was a night I will never forget (except for the end maybe, but hey..)
Also worth mentioning are Batch Brewing in Detroit, Great Lakes in Cleveland, Big Ditch in Buffalo and Left Field Brewing and The Only in Toronto.
One of the great things about the craft beer scene is that you can be 5000 miles from home, but when you show an interest in brewing and the local area, you are treated as a long lost friend and given a warm welcome. It’s great to be part of that.
So with that, let me wish you all a, somewhat belated, Happy New Year. I will keep you up to date on my beery whereabouts throughout 2018.
As I said in the intro, this story could have been 30 pages long if I had wanted to highlight every noticeable aspect of my year in beer. I visited several beer festivals, of which Hagstravaganza, the birthday party of the White Hag Brewery in Sligo, was undoubtedly a highlight. 20 brewers, 60 beers, many of which had never been poured in Ireland, and a 1000 beer fanatics sure make for a good party. I already have my ticket for this year’s festival so watch out Sligo, I’ll be back.
Also worth mentioning is the Beats, Beer and Boogaloo festival in Tisno, Croatia. I went there, courtesy of the Galway Bay Brewery, after winning a photo contest on Twitter and it was brilliant. The festival was mainly focused on funk and Northern soul, music wise, but also had a large selection of craft beers available, mainly from breweries in the Balkans and Central Europe. I discovered a great many new brews that I would normally not have come across and, this being Croatia, the weather was spectacular. So a big thank you to Will, Jason and Mick from Galway Bay for making it happen.
Another highlight in my year was my first trip to Canada. For 2 ½ weeks I travelled from Toronto around Lake Eerie, taking in 10 breweries and ending up back in Toronto. The highlight of the trip was undoubtedly my visit to the Founders Brewery in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was great to be at the source of all those amazing beers. It took me 10 hours on a Greyhound bus to get there and back from Detroit, but it was totally worth it, and once the staff found out that I had come all the way from Ireland, just to visit Founders, they kept buying me beers until I stumbled out the door around closing time. It was a night I will never forget (except for the end maybe, but hey..)
Also worth mentioning are Batch Brewing in Detroit, Great Lakes in Cleveland, Big Ditch in Buffalo and Left Field Brewing and The Only in Toronto.
One of the great things about the craft beer scene is that you can be 5000 miles from home, but when you show an interest in brewing and the local area, you are treated as a long lost friend and given a warm welcome. It’s great to be part of that.
So with that, let me wish you all a, somewhat belated, Happy New Year. I will keep you up to date on my beery whereabouts throughout 2018.
Cheers
Lennard
