Friday Beer Blogging – Attack Of The Killer Cassis

More un-summerlike beer to report on. What do you feel like on a hot, sticky day in the early half of August? It ought to be the opposite of big, light enough that the most prominent characteristic is citrus and the clear bite of carbonation. Of course I’m nuts.

I started off this week with an Old Foghorn barleywine from Anchor in SF, CA. People tend to approach a barleywine with respect because the style, developed from the already-intense English Old Ale, celebrates specific gravity (sugar content) over practically everything else. A light spritz of barley malt (think lager) leaves a faint taste of citrus if the fermentation leaves behind any taste at all. In ales the added residual sugar adds a riper palate that usually complements the extra hops rather than standing on its own. Multi-fermented Belgian styles layer on the malt to the point where your palate reports back hints of peach, cassis, cardamom, banana, oatmeal, and on ad infinitum. The palate has an odd way of integrating the minutiae of malted sugar, such as the other day when I sniffed a peppery blend of dark Maryland reds and my nose reported back gunpowder. Barleywine can have 8-12% ABV but the top-fermenting ale yeast never gets anywhere near the bottom of the style’s massive infusion of barley malt, the alchemical dregs of which practically assault your palate. As much as any style out there, barleywine is a sipping beer.

In my view Foghorn does the style justice. The nose promises spice, citrus and hops under a receding head (it’s a bit much to expect foam from barleywine). The beer itself goes down surprisingly easy for the style, practically inviting with its intense, complex fruitiness and balancing hops. I have had barleywines that bluntly assault you with gravity and make bottoming out a 12-oz glass feel like work (Bigfoot comes to mind) but Foghorn isn’t anything like that. I even thought briefly about ordering another. 98% of BAers concur.

On the subtler side of fruit I mostly agree with BAers that the Aventinus double bock from Schnieder & Son (Germany) is a gift from heaven. Eight percent ABV puts it at about the same level as Anchor’s barleywine, a big beer by any measure, but you can tell right away that the specific gravity isn’t even on the same planet. Here’s a rare achievement, a light-drinking beer with receding hops and a surprisingly enthusiastic head that delivers an intense, complex upfront fruitiness that resolves quickly into that lingering aftertaste that one expects from wheat beers. This would sit at the far end of a two-dimensional spectrum from big-hopped American ales: sweetish, balanced to the point of underhopped, spicy and surprisingly unassertive for its ABV. Cache a few if you manage to find it.