Fuggled Beers of the Year: Between Orange and Brown

With pale out the way, let's move up the colour spectrum a little, into the realm of amber, orange, reddish hues, and even veering into brown - yeah baby, it's BOAB time...

Virginia

• Loden Vienna Lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Trilby Best Bitter - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Rules of Civility No. 73 - Dynasty Brewing, Ashburn

Honorable mentions: Tabolcloth - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville; Houndstooth - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville; CU Later - Patch Brewing, Gordonsville; Rules of Civility No. 99 - Dynasty Brewing, Ashburn; 1841 Steinlifter - Devils Backbone Brewing, Nellysford.

Given the breadth of the colour spectrum here, this could very easily have turned into the Selvedge show - they are knocking it out of the park with their Central European lagers, indeed Loden is currently my go to beer whenever I am in the taproom...however, for all my Mitteleuropaphilia I am still at heart a Brit, and best bitter is such a rare beast in these here parts, that Trilby nicks it by a short nose. Hopped with a modern British hop called Endeavour, served from either Lukr tap or the beer engine, Trilby is an absolute delight, with blackcurrant and spice being very much to the forefront, but with classic British biscuity notes giving structure and depth to a stonkingly easy beer to drink. I have become so enamored with Endeavour that I have started using it in my own bitters, and I think EKG just relegated to the Championship...

Rest of the USA

• Bauern Bock - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC
• L'il Nator - Tröeg's Brewing, Hershey, PA
• Sommerbier - Bierkeller, Columbia, SC

Honorable Mentions: Ungespundet - Notch Brewing, Salem, MA; Perpetual IPA - Tröeg's Brewing, Hershey, PA; Tumbler - Sierra Nevada, Mills Creek, NC.

I am just going to put this out there, I don't understand sampling culture. The idea of going from brewery to brewery every weekend and just doing flights seems pointless to me, as Dickens had Mr Swiveller say in "The Old Curiosity Shop"..."it can't be tasted in a sip!" I quite agree Mr Dickens, I quite agree. If I do a flight it is to find the beer I want to have a couple of pints of. Anyway, the winner of best BOAB beer in the rest of the USA is the absolute antithesis of sampling culture, is it a beer that requires the devotion of a maß. With a starting gravity of "only", if memory serves, 9° Plato, leading to an ABV of "only" 3.6%, I drank an awful lot of Bierkeller's majestic Sommerbier when I was in South Carolina over the summer, in a maß, naturally. Oh and I bought about 5 litres of it home to Virginia too. It is simply the perfect summer lager. Crushable, flavourful, and demanding of being drunk at length and in volume. Perfekt.

Rest of the World

• Maibock - Privatbrauerei Ayinger, Aying, DE
• Oktober Fest-Märzen - Privatbrauerei Ayinger, Aying, DE
• Kráľovská Taberna 12° - Nestville Beer, Hniezdne, SK

Even though my drinking tastes definitely lean toward the sessionable, there are times when I want something stronger, and so on one of my fairly regular jaunts to Northern Virginia for work I popped into the Wegmans at Gainesville to see what they had available. Unlike our local Wegmans, they had Ayinger's inordinately easy to drink Maibock, and of course I picked up a few 4 packs and enjoyed them in the early spring sunshine, sat on the front porch watching the kids run around like maniacs. Beautifully clean and crispy, but still full bodied and luscious, ideal for relaxing afternoons...

Unlike over categories, there is a clear winner here, for a few reasons. Obviously because it was a simply superb beer, but also the fact that while it was available and I was in that neck of the woods it was practically all I drank, and finally the fact that it has inspired me to make my own version of such a beer in my homebrewing plans for 2025, given a week or 2 of it is not enough. So Bierkeller Sommerbier take the BOAB crown, and I hope to see more beers like it in the future!

Doppeling Bock Down

Ah winter....I love it. Not for me sunshine, sand, and beaches. Give me darkness, cold, and the warming glow of a log fire, or a even a peat fire in a perfect world. It's also the time of year when I drink more of the bigger beers of the world, especially doppelbocks. My love of a good doppelbock, in common with many of my beer preferences, stirred in the Czech Republic and drinking Primátor Double, a 24° behemoth of a beer that made a great nightcap on long winter nights. Closer to home in both time and space, Trader Joe's does a lovely doppelbock called Winter Brew which makes regular appearances in the fridge at this time of year, which reminds me, I need to stock up.

With Christmas getting inexorably closer I thought it would be fun to attempt a mass doppelbock tasting akin to the one I did for Oktoberfest when that was the seasonal de jour. Alas, there are not nearly enough versions of the style available to make such a project worthwhile, there were though the following in my local Wegmans:

• Troegenator - Tröegs Brewing, PA
• Snow Blind - Starr Hill Brewing, VA
• Celebrator - Brauerei Ayinger, Germany

Given that I had a final bottle of Olde Mecklenburg Brewing's Bauern Bock sitting in the fridge ready for a mass tasting, I figured I'd get the quartet together and try then in a single sitting as the boys watched Krtek before bed. First we head north to Pennsylvania...

• Sight - beautiful garnet, half inch of lingering tan head
• Smell - slightly metallic, dried fruit, honey, touch of marzipan, grassy hops
• Taste - mostly honeyed toast, some maple syrup, stollen
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5

Perhaps it is because I love their Sunshine Pils on the rare occasion I can get hold of some but I was surprisingly disappointed by this, especially how understated it was for an 8.2% abv beer. I just expected more heft from it, the body was on the light side. Not bad, just not the big, chewy, beer I expected.

Closer to home for beer number 2, and of course I worked for Starr Hill for several years when Mrs V and I first moved to central Virginia.

• Sight - deep ruby red, thin, off-white head that dissipates quickly
• Smell - very light grass/hay, some bread, not much else
• Taste - toffee and bread to the fore, clean hop bite in the finish
• Sweet - 2.5/5
• Bitter - 2/5

Another bit of a let down. Not a bad beer, just not as complex as I would expect for the style. I found the body to be a little on the cloying side, but it was a smooth drink without any noticeable alcohol character.

Let's head further south now, to Charlotte.

• Sight - richer copper/light red, healthy half inch of rocky ivory head that lingers
• Smell - toasted stollen, light lemongrass, toffee, floral hops
• Taste - bready malt, dried fruit, some raisin and prune notes, cherries, slight nuttiness, and a hint of Dutch cocoa
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2.5/5

This was more like it, a lovely, complex beer that was still approachable and displayed plenty of Maillard character from decoction mashing. Definitely not a bashing session beer, but one that could definitely form the basis of a lengthy evening's supping in the pub.

Now for a trip abroad.

• Sight - deep red bordering on chestnut brown, long lasting tan head that lingers at about a quarter inch
• Smell - black treacle, sublte umami thing like soy sauce, winter spices, prunes, floral hops
• Taste - rich treacle, minus acrid burnt flavour though, fruit cake with lots of booze soaked stone fruits, raisins, cherries, dark honey
• Sweet - 3.5/5
• Bitter - 2.5/5

This is one complex beast of a beer, so much going on, each mouthful revealing more layers to the beer. While it is definitely sweet, and a touch syrupy, it isn't cloying as the clean lager fermentation ad hop bitterness snap everything back into line in the finish.

Four very different beers, but I found myself with a very definite order of preference:

1. Bauern Bock - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, NC
2. Celebrator - Brauerei Ayinger, Germany
3. Troegenator - Tröegs Brewing, PA
4. Snow Blind - Starr Hill Brewing, VA

Bauern Bock wins out largely because I can imagine myself being sat in the biergarten in Charlotte, under the lighted trees, enjoying several of these on draft with friends, but then finishing out the night with a Celebrator. Hopefully I will be able to persuade the in-laws to swing past the brewery on their way up for Christmas....