Dogfish Head Red and White

Rating: 2

Dogfish Head Brewery
Milton, Delaware
Style: Belgian Wit
ABV: 10.0%
750 ml

Pours a lovely strawberry amber color; the head isn't huge, and dissipates quickly (it was quite lightly carbonated, with tiny bubbles). Given what we read on the label about the production process, there was a surprisingly faint nose (the beer is fermented with pinot noir juice, coriander, and orange peel, and is part-aged in pinot noir barrels). The taste, however, is more assertive, with plenty of fruitiness, and hints of raisin and sherry. There's a very light spiciness, but the fruit notes are very much at the forefront, even in a beer of this complexity. One drinker also found it to have a surprising malty quality. It doesn't have the heavy alcohol taste of many 10% beers: they've done a good job of achieving a balanced, drinkable final product. The label is a piece of art in itself, a departure from the usual simple style of Dogfish Head packaging.

De Ranke Père Noël

Rating: 2

Brouwerij De Ranke
Wevelgem, Belgium
Style: Belgian Strong Pale Ale/Seasonal
ABV: 7.0%
750 ml

Pours a rich amber color with solid, not spectacular head; the head dissipated quickly. A lightly hoppy nose, and quite a hop wallop with the first mouthful - an intense flavor that showcased the best of hops with little astringent bitterness. Even with this being a De Ranke production, we weren't quite prepared for the hoppiness: we had paired it with food better-suited to a more traditional winter beer. Once we realized that the food pairing wasn't ideal, we focused on the beer itself, and concluded that it is an exceptionally drinkable brew.

Southampton Biere de Garde

Rating: 2

Southampton Publick House
Southampton, NY
Style: Biere de Garde
ABV: 7.2%
750 ml

Massive amount of carbonation, I struggled to pour the first glass. Hazy orange color, a lot of the bubbles stuck around and hit the top of my mouth as I drank this beer. Crisp dry beer with moderate malt and hop character. Has the basics of biere de garde down really well, not a huge amount of complexity past that. Overall a quality, drinkable biere de garde.

My other Southampton review.

Redbones' Northwest Beer Dinner

After years of broken promises to attend this event, we finally got around to booking seats at the thirteenth edition of Redbones' Northwest Beer Dinner.

We're not able to compare with previous years, but this was a fun opportunity to try some unfamiliar beers from a selection of Washington and Oregon breweries. While they serve Northwest brews for several weeks around the time of the dinners, they reserve some of the best kegs for the event itself, and according to some of the speakers, we were drinking, in some cases, seasonal brews no longer available anywhere else.

The full selection of beers was as follows, roughly in order of serving:

Pyramid Broken Rake Amber
Pyramid Thunderhead IPA
Pyramid Imperial Hefeweizen
Elysian Immortal IPA
Big Time Firecracker
Rogue Chocolate Stout
Elysian Dragon's Tooth Oatmeal Stout

The event takes place downstairs in Redbones, and we were seated with strangers since we didn't have enough people for a full table; the beer inevitably made this very convivial.
The beers were served at the table, and while there were occasional hiccups as to what exactly we were drinking at any given time, in the end we did sample all seven options. The food was regular Redbones fare, or at least those items they chose to serve on the buffet line, but was generally very tasty. Interspersed with the food and beer, we had brief talks by some of the visiting brewers; these were a little dry to start, but the final two were more entertaining (though they all spent too much time talking about the wonderful Northeastern brewing tradition!).

Later in the evening, one of the owners asked trivia questions in exchange for (many) prizes, although she seemed more interested in heckling than in actually asking questions (we can't complain: we had quite a haul of loot).

As for the beers, based on my quick survey, the Amber, the Immortal IPA and the Chocolate Stout were our three picks of the night; the Amber was a great, drinkable, malty-hoppy start to the evening, while the IPA was on the drinkably hoppy side. The Chocolate Stout really had a rich chocolately aroma and taste, which made it dangerously consumable, in a good way.

By contrast, we weren't huge fans of the Imperial Hefeweizen, which might have really been a Weizenbock, though there wasn't much clarity on that point.

We were agreed that these smaller beer events are starting to become our preferred method of encountering interesting new beers, or locally unusual brews.

Smuttynose Wheat Wine Ale

Rating: 2.5

Smuttynose Brewing Co., Portsmouth, NH

Style: Barleywine

ABV: 11.0%

1 pint 6 fl oz bottle

Part of Smuttynose's "Big Beer" series, this entry is brewed with 53% wheat and 47% barley. It pours with a modest head (one finger width), and has a deep amber color. The aroma is fruity, and reminded us of Cambridge Brewing Company's Arquebus Summer Barleywine, though this one was a little sweeter-smelling. We couldn't detect any hint of wheat on the nose, and the same was true for the taste: with an 11% alcohol content, this is very solid barleywine, with a slightly syrupy quality. It's an enjoyable sipping beer, but perhaps not quite as distinctive as the label implied. Or, rather, not as distinctive on the palate as it was in the production process, but that may be our fault for expecting a beer with a hefty alcohol content to be subtle!

Cambridge Brewing Company

After taking in the Red Sox World Series victory parade (2007 vintage on a wonderful Boston autumn day), we crossed the Charles to check out what the CBC had on tap. In the spirit of the day, many of the lunch specials had a ballpark theme - an Italian sausage sandwich, a Fenway quesadilla with hot dogs, and so forth.

We tried two current specials, the Kriek du Cambridge and the Aestas Ale. The former is an intensely sour Kriek, with the wort inoculated with various kinds of wild yeast sources, including one developed using Cantillon beer. It was an excellent example of the genre, very tart, extremely drinkable, and surprisingly good with a spicy vegetarian chili. The Aestas Ale is an "American Mild", based on an English mild bitter, and hopped with English Challenger hops and American Amarillo. It had a great, hoppy nose, and a lower alcohol content perfect for a session beer - which is what it's explicitly billed as.

We were a little miffed by the service, however - a rarity for this spot. The only other guests at the bar knew the head brewer, and he brought out multiple different samples for them to try, free of charge. At a busy time of day, it might not have been so noticeable, but treating us so differently - he never even looked in our direction - was quite strange when we were the only other ones there. He even tapped a keg for the beer engine so that his friends could sample it, and when we asked the bartender what the cask ale was she didn't know, and emphasized that it wasn't available until 5 (though we knew that not to be true!). She never bothered to find out what the beer was, despite the fact that we were clearly interested. It's a shame: this is a good bar, with excellent beer and food, and the service on this occasion let them down (normally, it's top notch).

Zinnebir Crianza

Rating: 3

Brasserie de la Senne
Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, Belgium
Style: Lambic
ABV: 7.0%
750 ml bottle

Imported straight from Belgium in my suitcase. Uncorked the bottle and had foam on my floor within seconds. Surprisingly the beer settled down and didn't maintain a lot of that carbonation. Light straw color. I'm used to the strong, very carboned gueze beers in the 750 bottles. This is somewhere in between that and kegged lambic.