According to Wikipedia: Brouwerij Westvleteren was founded in 1838 inside the Trappist Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren in the Belgian municipality of Vleteren. Trappist monks from the Catsberg monastery, located in France, founded the St Sixtus monastery in 1831 and began brewing in 1838. The brewery was the only Trappist one to retain the copper vessels throughout the wars—the other breweries had the copper salvaged by the Germans for their war efforts. In WWI this was primarily due to the abbey not being occupied by the Germans, but instead was caring for wounded allied troops. In 1931, the abbey began selling beer to the general public, having only served beer to guests and visitors up until that time. In 1946, the St. Bernardus brewery in nearby Watou was granted a license to brew beer under the St Sixtus name. This agreement ended in 1992; St. Bernardus still brews beers of similar styles, but under their own name. The brewery currently employs three secular workers for various manual labor tasks, however the primary brewing is done by the monks only. It is the only Trappist brewery where the monks still do all of the brewing. Of the 26 Cistercians who reside at the abbey, five monks run the brewery, with an additional five who assist during bottling.

Thanks to a friend traveling in Amsterdam, I got the rare opportunity to try the #1 Beer in the World, Westvleteren 12.

Murky brown/purple pour with noticeable sediment. Very much like the 8, a thick off white to light brown head forms a nice cap atop the brew. Huge hit of dark fruits on the smell, more plums and the like than the caramel malts and raisins present on the 8. Boozy and malty. My word this is good. The flavor of the dark fruits is nothing short of spectacular. Robust, bold, big flavors. Malts, booze, fruits, all balanced together absolutely perfectly. Full body. Nicely carbonated. Dry finish. The mouthfeel really keeps you sipping on this one. No doubt one of the best beers I’ve ever had. I just can’t put the glass down. So drinkable, so delicious, basically perfect.

Name: Breakfast Stout

Brewer: Founders

Style: American Double/Imperial Stout

Original Tasting: October 22, 2010

Darkness, brown head that doesn’t stick around for a long time, but laces nicely as I drink.  Really smells like I’m about to drink some coffee with a little chocolate in it. Earthy tones as well.  I was ready to hate the taste. I really was. But wow, I get the hype. Smooth chocolate starts it off, like a melted candy bar. Then it takes a backseat to the coffee, which isn’t too dry or too much like coffee, its just an enjoyable flavor. Then it all subsides to a wonderful aftertaste.  Full bodied and heavy. Creamy, but smooth.

Score: 4.58 A+ (rDev +3.3%)

Cellared On: February 27, 2011

1 Year Tasting: September 13, 2011 (Bottle dated 9/10/10)

The appearance is pretty much the same. Deep, dark brown pour with a light brown head. Not a great retention, but the lacing is great. The coffee aroma, as expected, has really stepped back. This has become a chocolate bomb with hints of vanilla and molasses. Gotta say the taste has stepped back already on this guy. I remember fresh FBS being absolutely top notch, this taste is ordinary. Chocolate, molasses, a bit watery. Reminds me a lot of their Imperial Stout, but not quite as good. The defining characteristics that made this a great beer have gone. Not quite as full bodied, certainly still creamy. Carbonation is still fine but the finish is not as dry. Drinkability is fine, but overall this aged version is but a small glimmer of its former phenomenal self, but I do still like it.

Score: 3.55 B (rDev -24.8%)

Next Tasting: September, 2012

Stone Brewing Company is one of the premier United States breweries, and is well recognized across the globe. It was founded in 1996 by the now quite famous Greg Koch and Steve Wagner in San Marcos, CA. They sold a keg of Stone Pale Ale on July 26, 1996 and never looked back. After moving to Escondido, CA in December of 2005, Stone saw Port Brewing Company/The Lost Abbey move into their old facility. Opened in November of 2006, the Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens is a MUST SEE for any craft beer enthusiast, and is consider the top beer location in the United States.

One of their more recent releases, the Imperial Russian Stout (IRS) is the beer of focus for this week. I was lucky enough to come across a 2010 version of it a few months before the 2011 was released. So I placed it in the cellar and waited. I’m glad I did! I always enjoy trying a beer to its aged self, to see if future aging would prove fruitful. Also, the Stone webstore had IRS glasses for sale, figuring it would make for a good picture, I ordered two and enjoyed the beer it was made to be enjoyed. Let’s see how the IRS held up.

They look exactly the same. Light-er brown pours with a big light brown head. Retention is great and the lacing down the side of my Stone IRS glasses is very nice. A ton of malts on the aroma for both versions, but the 2010 has a stronger malt nutiness. The 2011 is full of chocolate instead. A very light hoppiness coming through on both. The 2011 has a bit more of a balanced smell. Although neither are mind boggling. The taste of the 2011 is much more robust than the 2010, which seems to have thinned out a bit. Tons of chocolate, subtle maltiness, some roasty flavors and a dry finish. Full and heavy body. Like I said before the 2010 is a bit more thin. They are both carbonated very well. I sadly thought this was going to be better. The 2011 is clearly the better of the two, but neither are over the top delicious. They are both solid, and I would recommend them to anyone, but top notch? No.

Cigar City is a brewery everyone should be used to by now, this is my 3rd post from the brewery! You can also read about Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout (Week 16) and their collaboration with Mikkeller, Nielsbohrium (Week 29). I haven’t spent a lot of time talking about Cigar City the brewery, as I have been too focused on their beer. But I found a great article written by the creator of the brewery, Joe Redner:

My path toward opening a brewery began in 1994 when I traveled to Portland, Oregon, for a wedding. Prior to this trip to the hops-laden land of the Pacific Northwest, I’d only dabbled with the few craft beers and imports available to me in Florida. I’d certainly never had freshly-brewed craft beer. In Portland, my taste buds were exposed to beers I’d never imagined and to freshness and craftsmanship I’d never tasted. I became a beer lover during that trip.

In the years that followed, I began to plan my vacations and travels around beer destinations, always on the lookout for new beer experiences. Years later, I took up home brewing. In 2004, I started writing a column about beer for the St. Petersburg Times which allowed me to spread the good word about American craft beer to a mostly non-beer-focused audience.

In the back of my mind, I dreamed of bringing the vibrancy and creativity I’d discovered in the craft beer scenes of other regions to Tampa. There was no single “aha” moment for me. I just started taking small steps toward making the dream a reality. In the beginning, it consisted of getting an idea for what startup costs might be. Then, I began figuring costs for raw ingredients, rent, build-outs and salaries. Later came the year-long search for startup money.

Back when my dream was still just a dream, I concluded that my hometown of Tampa hadn’t always done the best job exporting its unique history and culture. I wanted to educate people about the town I loved as much as I grew to love craft beer. I made up my mind that spreading the word about Tampa and its Cuban-American heritage and its past as the world’s leading producer of cigars would be an integral part of what I’d do at Cigar City Brewing. With that pretty basic mission statement – make interesting beers and share Tampa’s history – I finally sold my first batch of commercially-brewed beer in March of 2009.

As for the beer, and the names we’ve all come to love from Cigar City: This Russian Imperial Stout is named for Gregory Zhukov. He was a WWII General and a man bold enough to appreciate the rich, complex flavors of a beer brewed to fortify a body through the Russian winter. And now the review. My God. The darkest, thickest head I have ever seen. Period, more than Hunahpu. Dark brown in color to almost black. Creamy, lacing beautiful as it finally recedes down the glass. It leaves a cap not unlike whipped cream to introduce you to the beer. Are those hops I smell? Certainly some, mixed in with coffee. Molasses, coffee, smoke, and a ton of chocolate. No alcohol is noted at all. The chocolate really dominates the beginning of this beer’s taste, followed by the molasses and smoke. At this point in my mind I’m thinking about how sweet this beer is, that was not to last. You get nailed with coffee, roastiness, and a bone dry finish. Thick, creamy, extremely heavy. Carbonated well. No hint of the 11% ABV. This beer is simply phenomenal. I wonder what age will do to it, but I have to figure the coffee would step back the the chocolate would take an even larger part of the beer, if not thin out a bit. Very, very good fresh.

Living near a major city like Washington DC, I have unique opportunities like the one that occurred this week. Cantillon’s Zwanze Day. The description from the website is quite lengthy, but certainly worth a read:

Since lambic is a type of beer produced through spontaneous fermentation, its characteristics will by definition vary from one batch to another. On top of this, the types of barrels, fruits and hops used during production can sometimes cause the beer to mature in new and unexpected ways.
For this reason, I have for several years been experimenting with my lambics and trying out new kinds of blends, barrel woods and fruits.

Some of these beers, such as Blabaer, Goldackerl or Don Quichotte, are intended for sale outside Belgium while others are produced exclusively for consumption at the brewery.

It’s interesting to note that even for brewers the inner workings of lambic continue to have a mysterious side to them, with on occasion surprising results. The kind of experimentation I do is important to me because it allows me to learn more about my beer and look at it from different angles. Following on from this, to make a distinction between these experimental beers and Cantillon Brewery’s other products, in 2008 I made the decision to call this beer Zwanze.

Taken from the Dutch dialect spoken in Brussels, the word «zwanze» describes the typical humour of the city’s inhabitants, which is characterised by a finely-balanced mix of self-deprecation and exaggeration. I quite like the idea of my lambic «Made in Brussels» having the same jovial and slightly derisive spirit as the people of Belgium’s Capital City, and of it also taking a light-hearted look at these blends, which I admit can seem a bit strange at times.

In 2008, I blended 20-month-old lambic with rhubarb and was happy to see that the beer’s acidic taste struck a very nice balance with the plant’s tartness. The following year, we decided to cold-soak elderberry flowers and the resulting product was so different from other lambic-based beers that we decided to start producing it under the name Mamouche.

The 2010 vintage of Zwanze was a white beer developed together with Yvan Debaets. It was a top-fermented product but, because of the specific bacteriological environment of a lambic brewery, the beer was certainly naturally inoculated and as such it was in fact a mixed fermentation beer.

In keeping with our approach to brewing and selling beer, as well as out of respect for the product and the attitude implied with the name Zwanze, we don’t want these vintages to become marketing tools designed exclusively to make a few bucks. A case in point: Zwanze 2010 was bottled with numbered stickers, and after one bottle had been sold at the brewery for 6 euros another one ended up on eBay less than a week later with a price tag of 80 euros. Because of my dedication to my work as a brewer and out of respect for the product itself, it is very important to me for prices to stay reasonable. Unfortunately, there are those out there who couldn’t care less about spontaneous fermentation beer but who do care a lot about making easy money. For this reason, it has been decided that not a single bottle of Zwanze 2011 will be sold by Cantillon Brewery.

The story behind Zwanze 2011 is one of friendship between a brewer of organic lambic and an «organic» winegrower, Olivier Lemasson. In a lot of ways, working with lambic is similar to winemaking, and so we in fact have much in common with viticulturists who use a biodynamic approach to agriculture. Although our products are different, we speak the same language: that of devotion to our respective trades, natural methods and harmony with nature. Olivier Lemasson, who produces Vins Contés, is an organic viticulturist in the French region of Val de Loire who works with what are often long-forgotten local grape varieties.

In 2010 we tried something new by blending lambic with Pineau d’Aunis. The result was quite surprising and wine-like with specific accents of fruit, pepper and other spices, both as regards smell and taste. With Olivier’s approval, and despite a substandard harvest due to poor weather conditions, we recreated the same beer for Zwanze 2011. I subjected it to some very limited cold hopping using Bramling Cross hops, which yields a slightly bitter fruitiness. My friend Rob Todd of the Allagash Brewing Company calls it the «kiss of the hops», and I’ve decided to use this fantastic expression. The balance struck between the lambic, the grapes and the delicate bitter fruitiness is surprising yet very pleasant.

As a side note, in 2010 I had called the first experimental batch Pinot d’Aunis Lambic while making use of the term Pinot in the sense of the Pinot gris, noir or blanc grape varieties. Despite the fact that this incorrect use of the name stayed on the brewery’s blackboard for several months for everyone to see, nobody ever made a comment to the effect that the right term was actually Pineau. Ultimately, I only discovered that I had made a mistake while looking for information on the wines produced by another renowned biodynamic winegrower named René Mosse. But on the other hand, since we are talking about Zwanze, so in other words a good joke, I think I’ll stick with the name Pinot d’Aunis and hope that the purists will find it in their hearts to forgive me.

So to recap, there will not be any bottles of Zwanze put on sale so as to avoid any overpricing. On top of this, contrary to what was done with the Zwanze in previous years (with 80% of the production going into bottles), 2/3 of the Zwanze production for 2011 has been put into barrels. The goal here is to try to make certain that Cantillon enthusiasts everywhere will have a chance to taste the beer while short-circuiting those whose just want to make a fast buck.

In order to create an ephemeral event for this ephemeral beer, I decided to have all these barrels opened and enjoyed on the same day, when possible at the same time, by our friends throughout the world in places like Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the United States, Japan, Canada, France and Belgium.

Churchkey in DC was one of only 20 bars in the world to get a keg, and it was to be tapped at 3pm. Alongside 2011, they had bottles of 2010, and Cantillon Iris all for sale. I enjoyed a couple ounces of each!

Zwanze 2010

Hazy yellow pour with a small white head. Very little head remains. Acidic smell full of barnyard funk. I liken it to a sour saison with cherries underneath. The acidity and funk start the taste off, followed subtly by the cherries. The cherries finish it off cleanly, nice and tart. Light, acidic, a tad under carbonated. Dry throughout, especially on the finish. Very funky, the cherries were only noted in the background. The funky saison really took over. I really enjoyed it overall, but wanted the fruit flavor to be a bit more forward.

Zwanze 2011

Clear red/pink pour with no head. The smell is far more fruity than the 2010. Grapes, cherries, hints of funk underneath and much less acidic than 2010 overall. Very fruity taste for a Lambic. Grapes and cherries really take this beer over, it is a very interesting taste. Very dry, under carbonated, light and drinkable. This was a lot better than the 2010. The taste is more full, great balance. Solid.

Iris

Very hazy yellow pour with a nicely sized white head. A nice cap of which remains atop the beer as I drink. The smell is very balanced. Acidic, funky, some cherries. None seem to overpower the others. Seems to be a bigger taste than the Zwanze’s. Like the smell, it is balanced, both the funk and the fruit play together nicely. Light to medium body, carbonated well. Not very dry overall. While the flavors are bigger, I still preferred the Zwanze’s. This was a very well balanced and a very good beer.

I got very lucky and was able to manage a couple bottles of Goose Island’s 5000th Batch, which was brewed as a porter. The bottle is so interesting, a re-used label with Batch 5000 and the date smacked on by a computer…and that’s it. There is really not a lot of detail out about this beer, so I’d like to give a description, but none exists!

Goose Island as a brewery started in Chicago in 1988, and has grown rapidly ever since. Recently, the brewery was bought out by inbev (the company that owns, among other breweries, Budweiser), but they insist they are sticking to their roots under the new ownership.

As for the beer, it pours brown with a creamy light brown head. The lacing on the glass is very nice. Huge notes of chocolate and roasted malts on the smell. A bit creamy with underlying hops. A lot of very dark chocolate really dominates the taste. Molasses provides some balance to the strong hit of chocolate, and a smokiness finishes the beer off. A very interesting tasting beer, but the chocolate is a bit too harsh for my tastes. Heavy, not as light as most porters I’ve come across. Very dry throughout. No hints of booze. The flavor on this beer was so strong that it put me off a bit, the drinkability is not very high. Perhaps if the chocolate and molasses blended a bit better with other flavors, this could have been great.

When this week rolled around, I knew I had something special on hand. The recipe below, for a Rodenbach Grand Cru Cherry Pie really caught my eye, and I immediately went out to acquire the supplies.

Looks delicious right? Well getting the supplies turn out to be a bit more difficult than I expected. Apparently Cherry Preserves are not easy to come by, and Rodenbach Grand Cru is not readily available. I made a judgement call and went with Duchesse de Bourgogne (another Flanders Red Ale, that I decided would provide the same tart cherry flavors the Grand Cru would otherwise lend).

Following the recipe, I allowed the cherries to sit and absorb a bit of the Flanders Red overnight. Seeing that the bottle was already popped, I decided to sample a bit myself! Below are the pics, and a review

The beer pours a clear red to brown pour with a small light brown head. The very bubbly head really does not last long. Hints of vinegar, and a lot of tart cherries waft from the glass. Having just combined the beer in the dough recipe and soaking some tart cherries in it, the cherry smell really comes out well for me. It has been a long time since I had this beer last (on tap at Zeno’s Pub), and wow my palate has certainly evolved. The vinegar/sour flavor adds a nice accent to the very tart cherries. The lip smuckering taste really keeps you coming back for more. Light and carbonated well. The dryness of the beer coats your mouth with flavor as you drink. Great beer. Can’t wait to see how the pie turns out. Flavorful, tart, delicious.

I assembled the pie and readied it for the oven!

How delicious do those cherries look?

Above the pre-baking and below the post!

And now to top it all off with some whipped cream, open up a bottle of Hanssens Oude Kriek, and enjoy a boatload of tart, mind boggling-ly good, calorie filled cherry pie

The beer pours a nice, clear, red without any head. Looks to have a low amount of carbonation. Very tart smell, the vinegar and barnyard funk are strong but not dominant. A ton of cherries are noticed, sweet, wonderful cherries. The taste is extremely acidic, but the tart cherries and funk aren’t to be outdone. Very intricate taste that keeps you coming back. Acidic, low carbonation, not terribly drinkable. A sipping, after dinner beer for sure. This was great, paired nicely with the pie. Couldn’t do more than a glass though.

The pie was delicious. Tart, sweet, decadent, delicious. I would love to make this again.