The Best of 2009: #2

Surly Wet

Brewery: Surly, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

Style: India Pale Ale

ABV: 7%

Rating: 5 stars

Wet hop/fresh hop beers were all over the place this year, especially this fall, and though I may be a bit biased, Surly's was the best. For reference, here are the others I had and how I rated them:

Minneapolis Town Hall Fresh Hop 2009: 3.5 stars. Needed more balance, though I realize that's a difficult task for a fresh hopped beer. Tasted sweaty.

Two Brothers Heavy Handed: 4 stars for both Cascade and Willamette versions. Cascade had delicious burps. Willamette was a bit creamier.

Founders Dry Hopped Pale Ale: 4 stars. Lighter hops, metallic backbone.

Avery Dry Hopped IPA: 3.5 stars. Incredibly bitter. Smelled like clover.

Boulder Hazed and Infused: 3.5 stars. A good beer. As you can see, most of these are solid. But not that memorable.

Left Hand Warrior IPA: 4.5 stars. Easily my favorite beer from this brewery. Round flavor, lasting bitterness.

Great Divide Fresh Hop: 4.5 stars. "Better than Surly Wet? Close, but not quite. Delicious Delicious."

Deschutes Hop Trip: 3.5 stars. Sweetest of the bunch.

Like I said, fresh hopped beers were everywhere. So what separates Surly's effort from the rest? I don't know. Maybe it was because I was on hand for the beer's release. Everything tastes better when it's being unveiled for the first time. And accompanied by spring rolls. Maybe it's because I love that Surly touch; the grapefruit, the huge roof-of-your-mouth pull you get after every sip.

Perhaps, though, it was because this wet hopper, as opposed to most on the list above, improved as I emptied it. These beers have a tendency to wear me out after a full 12 or 16 ounces. This one had just the right amount of balance to accompany the big hop pulse. Don't get me wrong, I love my hops as much as the next guy. But this one didn't have the 'eating a hop plant' bluntness that many do. At the time of my first tasting, I called it a triumph. And I stand by that statement.

Milestone Beers

After nearly a two month absence, the blog is back.

As is the great beer. September was a bit of a break for me, when I tallied only 13 new beers. That ranks as the fewest for any month since I started tracking in mid-February 2008. The reason for this? I was nearing my biggest milestone beer to date; beer 500.

I had the perfect beer in mind, though I'd have to wait until October 7 to try Surly Wet, their highly-anticipated fresh-hopped IPA. Typically, hops are harvested and dried before being added to your favorite beer. With a fresh or wet hop beer, the hops are harvested and immediately added to the brew, without being dried. A hop head's dream. Surly shipped in 1400 pounds of Washington hops for Wet.

The release party, held at Uptown's newest Thai restaurant, Roat Osha, was crowded, and it probably didn't help that it coincided with a Twins playoff game. The beer didn't disappoint, even if the elbow-to-elbow bar felt more like a Saturday night in Dinkytown than a Wednesday at a Thai joint.

The beer: classic grapefruit and floral aromas, instantly identifiable as a West Coast IPA. It had been a long time since I'd had a hoppy delight, I realized. The taste featured more pine than citrus, and the bitter finish was awesome. I like to describe that sensation as something that sucks the moisture from the roof of your mouth and buries it down your throat. I love that feeling. A nice, long linger.

I've had a number of fresh hopped beers (and I had a handful more this week) and I've found that they are rewarding for hop purists, but even I sometimes struggle near the end of a pint. I need balance. But Surly Wet got better with each sip, and stood up after several tastings. A week later, I tried it along side four other fresh hop beers: Left Hand's Warrior IPA, Cascade and Willamette versions of Two Brothers Heavy Handed IPA and Town Hall's Fresh Hop 2009. Surly was still the best. Not that I'm biased.

I'd finally matched the accomplishment of drinking 500 different beers (in 21 months) with a deserving beer. I knew I'd struggled with this in the past, often forgetting when milestones were approaching or losing track of the beers I'd had. This time I nailed it.

Or so I thought.

Tonight, I re-calculated my archives to determine beers 100, 200, 300 and 400. Somehow, along the way, I lost track of a couple beers. Surly Wet was beer #502.

The milestone beers to date:

100: Michelob Ultra Tuscan Orange Grapefruit. What a mistake, but one that was entirely intentional. One must tour the basement before graduating to the penthouse. .5 stars

200: Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest Marzen. I don't particularly enjoy traditional Oktoberfests. 2.5 stars

300: Medalla Light. Puerto Rico's macro! Whatever. I was drinking a beer on a patio in Puerto Rico. 1.5 stars

400: Tyranena Bitter Woman in the Rye. Ooh! A chance here. But no, a major disappointment in my opinion. 3 stars

500: Sam Adams Oktoberfest. Blah. 2.5 stars

There will be more milestones to come, for sure, with the next biggest being my 1000th. I've got Surly penciled in for that one.

April's Fools and Finds

My latest batch of samplings has been incredibly polar. In the past week, I've added two five-stars to my tally (giving me ten out of my 360 rated beers), but have also been let down and borderline disgusted by a couple others. No more intro time wasted here. First the misses.

Tyranena Paradise by the Dashboard Lights

Brewery: Tyranena, Lake Mills, Wisconsin

Style: Imperial Porter

ABV: 7.5%

Rating: 3 stars




Don't confuse: I'm all about imperial porters, and I think we'll be seeing more of them soon. Here are the issues. I've noticed with Tyranena beers more than any other that the bottled versions fall far short of their draught counterparts. This was the case with Hop Whore, Scurvy, and now Paradise. Though I haven't had it on tap, I imagine it is much livelier, as the others were. In a bottle, it bogs you down.

Perhaps my taste buds weren't firing this particular night, or perhaps I had unfair expectations of the cherry aspect of this beer, but I didn't find it. And this from a Brewers Gone Wild! beer? I thought subtlety was an afterthought in this series.

More troubling was the beer's deterioration throughout the drinking process. I would given it a far more favorable rating if I'd only had a 4 oz sample, but by the last few gulps, this one had lost most of its bite. Got flat and dull on me.

This is one I'd try again, because I want to like it. Rather, I want to not dislike it.


Left Hand Juju Ginger

Brewery: Left Hand, Longmont, Colorado

Style: Herb/Spice Beer

ABV: 4%

Rating: 1.5 stars




On tap at the Happy Gnome. I am a huge ginger guy, love to use it when I cook, love me some ginger ale, ginger beer. I like ginger. Naturally, I was intrigued by a beer that substitutes freshly ground ginger root in place of half the hops.

Results were not favorable on this day. It smelled good, with major ginger punch bursting through. Big ginger is fine in the aroma, but it was too much for me when it came to the actual taste. It felt halfway between a natural ginger beer or real ginger ale and a beer with ginger notes. Not quite as refreshing as the former, not as punchy as the latter. I guess I'd rather have a full commitment. I want either a non-alcoholic, beautifully blended ginger ale or a satisfying, quenching beer with some ginger notes added. That's just me, I guess.

Now, the successes.

Surly 16 Grit

Brewery: Surly, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

Style: Imperial IPA

ABV: 9%

Rating: 5 stars

Putting this tasting off for a while, for reasons unknown. Maybe because I'm a bit tired of hop juggernauts these days. Everyone's doing a double IPA, and it's not hard to please me. I'd like to be a little more discerning. With that said, I imagined it would be hard for me to not like this beer. Surly, at this point, gets the benefit of the doubt on just about everything they do, and they deserve it.

The amarillo hops were beautiful in this one, and while I'm not too familiar with glaciers or warriors, I can't help but think they helped as well. I liked this one initially, but had fallen heavy for it by the end of the glass. If you can work me from a 4- to a 5-star in one tasting, you've earned that rating.

I particularly enjoyed the finish. Dry enough to make me want another sip, but not dry enough to suck the life from my mouth. I enjoy both, but I felt it balanced better without the big back end grab. There's still room in my beer log for double IPAs, it seems, and this one got me in just the right frame of mind to crack open

Russian River Pliny the Elder

Brewery: Russian River, Santa Rosa, California

Style: Double IPA

ABV: 8 %

Rating: 5 stars

Had this for a month or so, and I had been saving it for the perfect occasion. First, I thought the Gophers NCAA tournament game would suffice, but I found myself not in the mood. And I didn't see any worthy moments on the horizon, so last night became the night. Perhaps the 16 Grit restored my confidence in the style.

Now, Pliny, based on reputation, is both blessed and damned. I guess I'd generally call it one of the 25 or 30 highest-rated beers on earth. Thus, you know it's good. A beer with that many ratings isn't in that position by accident. However, it's a bit unfair to expect a brew to be the best you've ever had and build it up as such for the year before you get to try it. In a way, I wish the ratings were only available after you've rated it. If that were the case, though, I'd probably never try this one because the legend wouldn't exist in my mind.

So I tried to go into the bottle with as open a mind as possible.

The aroma emanates as soon as the cap pops, and I'm instantly swept away to a land of hyperbole and bow-down-edness. Impossible for me to smell those grapefruit hops and not crumble. Pliny has the look of a beer unparalleled in its freshness. Extremely lively carbonation, and the color was much brighter than most DIPAs I've seen. Plus, the bottle gives it that extra boost of class. Nothing flashy; plain colors, text and design. We don't need a fancy label. We're Pliny the Elder.

Balance is the key separation between the DIPA men and the boys. Pliny dove in as syrup, a sweet creamy smooth thing, only to bite the roof of your mouth as soon as you feel comfortable. I love that bitter drag--takes that sweet syrup right away. The round flavor left me wanting nothing.

Or does Pliny get a boost because it is so highly-rated? If I blind taste-tested this next to, say, a Goose Island Imperial IPA or a Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree IPA, would I be able to sense the difference? I think, because of the modest alcohol content, I would. The trend is to beef these babies up as much as possible. The Double Crooked Tree is a prime example, with the ABV at an astonishing 13.6%. At that point, haven't you become something other than an IPA?

That's the beauty of Pliny the Elder. Its 8% content is perfect. Not arrogant in either direction. Enough alcohol to feel, but not to the point that it dominates the taste.

After tasting, I had to reflect. What constitutes a five-star beer, and does this qualify? I decided it was definitely one of the ten best beers I've had, and that makes it deserving. What's the point in having five-star beers if you never give them out? Ten out of 360 (less than 3%) is a good rate for five-stars. Besides, who is the rating for? This blog? My records? Who cares? I loved this beer, so five stars it is.

Surly Mild

Had this on tap at the Blue Nile Saturday afternoon, the bridge between a weekend binge cleaning session and an extended family birthday gathering at the Mall of America. If you ask me, a beer or two is the least you can do to prepare for the megamall, as they say. Actually, it's probably not enough.

This was the first mild I'd had, though I can't quite be sure, because the style, from what I've gathered, is varied and the flavors many. I may have just broken an English language comma rule in that sentence. Anyway, this type of mild, the English Dark Mild variety, according to beeradvocate, is a British session beer characterized by low hops and low alcohol content. Well, if those are the conditions, Surly Mild qualifies.

To be fair, I dove into this one just after my first taste of a Surly Three, the third anniversary offering from the brewery. Three is classified as a braggot, brewed with 50% honey and 50% Munich malt, and let me be the whateverth person to say that the flavor is potent and delicious. In comparison, Surly Mild didn't stand much of a chance.

Maybe it was too early in the day (4:30ish), or maybe I was a bit too sick (stuffy nose), but I didn't get much aroma at all. Mild indeed. There certainly weren't a great deal of hops to wet my lips.

As for the taste, well, I can't much compare it to any other beer I've had, as it was markedly different. As a beer with 4.2% ABV, it lacked punch, but there was more taste than your average mass appeal 4.2% lager or ale. This is the part of the review where I'm reaching. I don't yet know enough about specific malts or how they taste, but what taste there was, I would surmise was due to the malts used. Al, when you read this, you can correct me. I got a very earthy vibe, not just the grassy hop flavor I get from many Euro beers, but soil and mineral flavors that give it a bit of depth without density.

Did I love this beer? No, certainly not. It's an easy drink, much easier than the palate-challenging beers we all love so dearly. And it doesn't make your face cringe like many low content beers would. It just doesn't have much to write home about. It's a bit plain.

So why does Surly make a beer like this? None of Surly's beers are mass appeal beers, I would argue, so they don't need to worry about pleasing a large sect of people. Mild isn't canned, and thus is available only to those diehards who seek it out. It certainly isn't a beer that would blow the diehards away. And frankly, it's not a beer I see the talented brewers at Surly finding enjoyment in pint after pint. I have one of these and think, OK, now I'd like to have any other Surly beer I've ever had.

Maybe it was a failed attempt. Maybe they wanted to show the Surly fans that they could make a simple, subtle beer. Certainly, not every beer a brewer tries can be better than the previous. And Surly has sort of dug their own grave on this one: why shouldn't a brewery be entitled to a couple duds? Mild isn't even a dud, but by their standards, it's pretty pedestrian. That doesn't change the fact that they've given us more than a handful of amazing beers.

Even so, there's a chance that Mild is a complete success. It's hard to imagine a beer more tightly fitting the name. I couldn't think of a better word for it, and by that standard, Surly Mild is a raging success.

Beers of the Year: 3. Surly Furious

Brewery: Surly, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

Style: India Pale Ale

ABV: 6%

Rating: 5 stars



Hard to knock anything about this beer. This one really put Surly on the map a couple years back, when it was hard to find. Now that it's available at most decent liquor stores and on tap in many bars, I feel like sometimes I take for granted just how good it is.

The color, for one, is unsurpassed. A delicious deep amber; close to red but with that rusty orange shine that almost certainly means good things are to come. Really nice head, and one that clings and stays as the glass empties. And of course, it has that Surly dry-hopped smell.

The brewers say that the key to this beer is the Golden Promise malt, a delicately cared-for barley from Scotland that gives this beer such intense hops. I guess I can't disagree there. The hops come from somewhere anyway.

Furious has the perfect blend of bright citrus burst, dry sticky mouthfeel and bitter pine swallow. There isn't any residual spoon left behind here. It's smooth. This in fact may be my favorite beer, but its availability taints its brilliance just slightly. For the price, though, it can't be beat. If I was dropped in a store with all the beer in the world and told I could spend my last $10 on any one six-pack (or four-pack in this case), I would immediately go for Surly Furious.

SurlyFest

Brewery: Surly, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

Style: Rye Beer

ABV: 5.5%

Rating: 4 Stars

This is a first in a series of fall beer dissection. The fall beer season, like the real season, is quite short, and the Oktoberfests and Harvests are quickly giving way to Winter Ales and Holiday brews. I initially thought I'd combine them all into one mega-posting in a sort of report card style. I gave grades and everything. However, the practicality of that quickly evaporated when I realized who was at the computer controlls. I'll do them one at a time. Anyway, about the beer.

A very Surly take on an Oktoberfest. Really, there isn't much of a link between this beer and any other Oktoberfest I've tried. From the cracking of the can, it smells like a Surly--wild hops, and this one's got a spicy rye scent with a bit more malty backbone than the other lighter Surly options.

So how to describe this beer to someone unfamiliar with the Surly scent without using beer jargon. Well, I guess that's something I'll have to work on. Actually, I don't really even know what jargon I'd use here, other than restating that I wouldn't mistake the instant hoppiness for any other brewer. It's certainly not a deep, heavy beer you might associate with fall. It pours a deep orange-red with a obvious presence of carbonation. You don't see a glass of this and think you're in for a throat-coating. You know it's going down less sticky than some of its fall counterparts.

I guess I can admit this; I would have no idea this was considered a rye beer without doing some recon work. Surly is sneaky--they mess around with established styles, but dance far off the floor. This is not an Oktoberfest, and any message board-poster who says it's "a nice and interesting take on the style" is just lying. (I realize I said precisely that just two paragraphs ago. I'm trying to cut back on message board reading.) It smells, tastes and fills your stomach not like a fall beer, but like a summer poolside one. I'm not sure Surly can do it any other way other than to escalate to a fully-fledged stout. I can't complain, because it's that Surly smell I love. Thinking about the smell makes me want one.

Surly Darkness

Brewery: Surly, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

Style: Russian Imperial Stout

ABV: 10.3%

Rating: 4.5 Stars

This is the big one. The beer that launched Surly's popularity. Currently ranked 6th on RateBeer's world list. By popular ratings standards, this is the best beer I've ever had.

On Surly's D-Day (stolen from history textbooks), a few of these bottles were distributed, but I wasn't lucky enough to get one. Plus, though I'd like to, I couldn't rationalize spending $100 on a six pack anyway. Luckily, Darkness is more commonly found on tap at bars in the Twin Cities, and The Blue Nile was my ticket.

It's not hard to find Imperial Stouts these days, and Darkness has similarities to many of them--pitch black color (the name isn't tongue-in-cheek), heavy molasses and burnt caramel smells. You see a glass of this stuff and you've pretty much mapped out your next hour. It's a nightcap.

Unlike most stouts, though, Darkness is incredibly drinkable. Almost guzzleable, and dangerously so. If you allowed yourself to, you could pound out a few of these in a three-hour bender, and pay for it in the morning. It's scary good. Darkness doesn't burn your stomach as much as warm it, and the coating of your entire mouth is heavenly. Now, I'm not the biggest Imperial Stout guy in the world, but it's tough to quibble with anything about Darkness. An incredible accomplishment.

Surly Smoke

Brewery: Surly, Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

Style: Oak Aged Smoked Baltic Porter

ABV: 9.45%

Rating: 4 Stars

The waitress at the Blue Nile offered us samples of this limited release--the barrel was getting down to the bottom. Had to accept, this one doesn't get bottled and is rarely found in bars.

I'd never had a smoked beer before, let alone one aged in barrels, so this was new territory for me. Kristie, my beer-hating wife, got a sample too, and her off-the-top-of-her-head thoughts are more eloquent than mine: "Smells like you took a glass of Guinness and you lit it on fire, then you licked out the dregs of the ashy glass."

Indeed, it tastes smoky. No carbonation at all in this one, and it had a very nice thin mouthfeel, unlike the Darkness, which I had later. OK, I promised I wouldn't use jargon, but I enjoy the word mouthfeel. Probably doesn't exist in regular conversation. The smoke flavor pretty much overpowers all other flavors, but I thought it was quite sweet in general. I would never had guessed it was 9.5% alcohol, and knowing that now explains why I felt the way I did afterward.

It's probably too late to get your hands on this one, but come next fall, find a beer festival somewhere in the Midwest and chances are Surly will be back with it. It's a unique and enjoyable beer.