Michter’s Original Sour Mash Whiskey

Michter’s is a name steeped in whiskey lore. Go ahead and google it, or better yet, pick up and old whiskey book and check the index. You should find that it was once a Pennsylvania distillery, dating from the days when Monongahela whiskey meant something. The company hit hard times on more than one occasion, however, and finally went bankrupt in 1989.

Michter’s was resurrected in the 1990s and bottlings of the old whiskeys were popular rarities for the balance of the century, after which brokered whiskeys began being blended into signature products. Which brings us to the bottle in question, released late last year.

Monongahela whiskeys were generally rye whiskeys, but Kentucky, where the company is now based, is known more for bourbon, which brings rise to the question of what precisely this 86 proof spirit really is. And it’s a question for which I have no answer, unfortunately, since the company is being rather tight-lipped about the whiskey’s constituent parts. But perhaps that’s for the best, since it allows an unbiased approach to the glass.

On the nose, I certainly get more bourbony notes than rye, with plenty of vanilla and caramel and a fair hit of chocolate, besides, along with orange and perhaps canned peach notes. On the palate, it begins soft and filled with vanilla, almost like a candied essence, before blooming into a mix of stewed fruit and caramel and – now, there’s the rye! – peppery spice. The finish is just off-dry and tongue-tingling with a mix of brown spice and pepper.

The company suggests this as “an alternative to bourbon or rye,” and I’d have to agree with that sentiment, since it displays characteristics of both spirit families. I’m happy enough sipping it straight, but am anxious to soon try it in a Manhattan, as well, although I suspect with a pretty robust vermouth.

 

On Beer and Baseball

While Torontonians revel in being finally allowed to buy a single, solitary brand of craft beer from a single, solitary stand as they attend the Blue Jays home opener tonight, my mind is on the approaching Friday and the official launch of a brewery that for its name alone deserves to have its brands sold at the ballyard.

I was first told about the Left Field Brewery a while back, and honestly I don’t know much more today than I did then, most of which I’ve culled from their website. But they were kind enough to both drop off a bottle of their beer, presumably in the hopes that I might write about it, and invite me to their brewery launch party this Friday at a bar called 3030 on Dundas Street West in Toronto.

There is an obvious baseball theme to the brewery and it’s reflected in the name of the beer they handed me: Eephus Oatmeal Brown Ale. (I’m a lifelong baseball fan, but I confess I didn’t know what an eephus was until I read on the label that it’s “a risky and unexpected high-arcing pitch that catches the batter off-guard.) In fact, it’s reflected in all the beer names thus far – 6-4-3 Double IPA and Maris* American Pale Ale – but since I only have the Eephus, that’s what I’ll address.

Deep brown with burgundy tones, the lightly sweet aroma of this ale has some cherry and roasty chocolate notes – vague memories of Cherry Blossom, anyone? The flavour stays sweetish and creamy up front before moving into a drier, fruity-roasty body with dried cherry, raisin and soft vanilla notes, finishing quite dry and mild to moderately bitter, but never quite losing its creaminess.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the flavour progression of this beer and look forward to retasting it and trying the others on Friday. In the meantime, Go! Jays! Go!

 

This Week in Drinks

Having not posted for almost a month, I thought that committing myself by publishing in advance precisely what I plan to write about in the coming week might be a good way to get back on track. That I didn’t get around to doing this until Tuesday doesn’t bode well, but what the hell, here it goes:

Tuesday: The arrival of the Blue Jays home opener seems like a good time to talk about a new brewery launching later this week, called Left Field Brewing. I’ve sampled one of their beers and I’ll tell you all about it.

Wednesday: Michter’s Original Sour Mash Whiskey is back, after a 23 year absence. This makes me happy.

Thursday: The folks at Labatt have released a pair of single hop beers under the Alexander Keith’s brand. Together we’ll se whether or not it was a good idea.

Saturday/Sunday: Pete Brown has a new book out and it’s set to start appearing in North American bookstores shortly, if it hasn’t started popping up already. I’ll tell you why you should but it.

In Which I Sample Bud Light Platinum

(Scene: Beer Writer enters liquor store intent on purchasing wine. Pleasant young lady stands near the entrance offering small sample cups of Bud Light Platinum.)

Pleasant Young Lady: Would you like a sample of Bud Light Platinum?

Beer Writer: Why, yes. Yes, I would.

PYL: Here you go.

BW: (Holds transparent cup up to the light and eyes the almost water-pale liquid suspiciously. Sips once.)

PYL: So, what do you think?

BW: Well… (Sips beer again, noting faint grainy, vaguely grassy flavours in an otherwise astonishingly bland beer.)

PYL: Do you like it?

BW: No, I actually don’t at all.

PYL: That’s fine, everybody has their own taste.

BW: Yes, they do. Thank you.

(Beer Writer, sporting an amused grin, walks towards the French wine section and picks up a bottle of Chablis. Fade to black.)

Beer Pricing: A Little Less Hyperbole, Please

In my morning edition of The Globe and Mail newspaper yesterday, wine critic Beppi Crosariol wrote about the Sam Adams Utopias, Boston Beer’s high-end, high-alcohol, outrageously complex beer, the tenth anniversary edition of which has just come up for sale in Ontario at a price of $114.95 for the 710 ml bottle.

While he does a pretty good job at describing Utopias and placing it within the current state of beer and brewing culture, Crosariol does get a little hung up on the beer’s cost, variously employing such phrases as “nosebleed prices,” “exorbitant prices” and “stratospheric prices,” and comparing it to “Rolex watches and Prada purses.”

Really?

A Rolex goes for tens of thousands of dollars, and although I know nothing about the cost of Pradas, I’ve got to assume by dint of their reputation that they hit the same sort of price points. So how, pray, does that equate to a $115 bottle of beer, one which is intended to be consumed in small potions over days or weeks, rather than minutes or hours. Or, in other words, more like a single malt whisky or cognac than a Coors Light or Bud?

To answer that question, or at least further the debate, let’s take a look at what it all means. The last time Crosariol wrote about something to be sipped and savoured over a lengthy period of weeks or months, the Balvenie 17 Year Old Double Wood, he described the $167.95 bottle as “expensive.” Not stratospheric or exorbitant, just expensive. Before that we had the 15 year old Nikka Miyagikyo with nary a mention of the cost, despite the Japanese whisky’s $189.20 price. So, double standard?

Now, how about breaking down the cost of Utopias on a per drink basis? There are 24 ounces in a bottle and, at 29% alcohol, a generous pour would be about 2 of those ounces, making for a dozen total servings. Do the math and that comes out to less than $10 a serving, or about what one might pay for a glass of ho-hum wine in a restaurant. Still stratospheric? I think not.

By coincidence, on the same day that Crosariol was simultaneously adulating and excoriating Utopias, Clay Risen was over at the New York Times bemoaning the rise of big bottle beers, suggesting that, counter to every indicator imaginable – store sales, restaurant sales, brewery sell-throughs – there is some sort of backlash brewing against “expensive” 750 ml bottles of beer.

Jay Brooks does a thorough job of dismembering Risen’s story here, so I won’t go much into it myself, but in keeping with the tone of this post, I would like to take a moment to address the supposed price-based revolt.

At a high of $30 in stores, these beers are in the same price class as many wines, including a good number that lack complexity equivalent to the best of such brews. (And to be fare, many that provide equal or better value.) Yet it would be a brave writer indeed who took issue with $20 – $30 wines as a group, implying that drinkers are sick of such high prices and long for a return to jug wine. Which is not to say that I in any way agree with Risen’s characterization of the emergence of 750 ml bottlings of beer as being part of “what is being called the “wine-ification” of beer” – really? By whom, exactly? – but rather that I see no reason to discriminate against beer simply because you can still buy a twelve-pack of Bud Light for ten bucks.

And as for those individuals interviewed by Risen who suggest that they recoil at the notion of sharing their big bottle of beer with anyone else, I have but one piece of advice: Grow up!

Sapporo May Shutter Nova Scotia Brewery

The drinks trade website just-drinks.com is reporting today that Sapporo, the Japanese brewing company that owns Sleeman Breweries in Canada, is planning to close down their Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, brewery if a buyer is not found before July of this year.

According to the story, the former Maritime Beer Company, born in 1998 and acquired by Sleeman in 2000, employs 32 people and produces a modest 27,000 hectolitres per year, a mere 2% of Sleeman’s total output. Sleeman Breweries’ president & CEO, Shige Yokoi, is quoted in the story as saying that the move is “difficult” but necessary in order for the company to achieve the efficiencies necessary to remain competitive.

Sapporo says that talks are ongoing with potential buyers, but that no deal has as yet been achieved.

People Bring Me Beer, I Drink It

Or, at least, that is sometimes the way it works. On other occasions, I run around the world trying to find the best of the best, and occasionally breweries are good enough to ship me samples of something I’ve specifically requested from them, usually beers I can’t manage to get otherwise.

And then there are those beers that just randomly wind up on my doorstep. These are a few of them.

There’s been a bit of a buzz around Toronto today about the St. Ambroise Érable, presumably because the same sales rep who put a pair of bottles of the stuff into my hands did likewise for others, like Jordan and Chris. So I might as well chime in, and before I read what either has said about it, I might add.

Unlike other maple beers I’ve tried, there’s no doubting the maple-ness of this brew, even cold out of the fridge and from a foot away, it smells like maple candy crossed with the caramel fudge I used to make in my mom’s double-boiler when I was a kid. It hits the palate sweet and more caramelly than mapley, but turns progressively maple-accented as it warms in the mouth, eventually becoming almost spicy with a drying hop that lasts through the bittersweet and ever-so-slightly cloying finish.

McAuslan has been known to play with post-fermentation flavourings – their Apricot Wheat is, or at least was the last time I checked, flavoured with apricot after it’s pretty much otherwise finished – and I suspect that is the case here, as well. Not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you. I have no problem imagining enjoying this with ham or a bowl of vanilla ice cream, maybe even glazing the former and topping the latter with it, too.

(The bigger McAuslan development, in my opinion, is that they are now canning their workhorse St. Ambroise Pale Ale. This is good news, indeed.)

I also had dropped off a bottle of Great Lakes Brewing’s 25^th Anniversary Bourbon Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout, and I’m quite happy for it. The best of the Ontario brewery’s quartet of anniversary releases, this is an engaging, if slightly simple, sipper that offers barrel notes in just the right balance with the prune, licorice and chocolate brownie flavours of the stout. It finishes a bit on the boozy side, but you should expect that of an 11% beer, and besides, the rest of it drinks far closer to single digit strength.

Oregon’s Deschutes Brewing sometimes sends me beer, bless their hearts, and one recent arrival was Hop Henge IPA. The polar opposite of the Red Chair NWPA I sampled from this brewery late last year, this 10.6% alcohol hop monster has a huge, herbal and resinous aroma – what those weed-smoking west coasters would call “dank” – and a big, hoppy, piney, grapefruit peel-ish flavour that marches over the palate, surprisingly without ripping it to shreds. That it feels more hoppy than bitter in the mouth you can attribute to a whole lot of fruity malt, but still, the hops rule every aspect of this beer.

I also have a bottle of Ontario beer importer Roland & Russell’s first foray into brewing, Stormy Monday, an 11% barley wine aged in calvados barrels and bottled under the imprint of the Bush Pilot Brewing Company. Brewed separately in two different breweries and then blended and barrel-aged, this ale has the aroma of a beery potpourri, with a huge perfume of clove and dried apple, some spicy florals and something curiously resembling Indian curry. (A check of the label reveals that to be cardamom, along with, I suspect, the figs and raisins. There are 25 ingredients in this beer, including seven malts, five hops, dried quince and juniper, for heaven’s sake!)

Unfortunately, the body doesn’t quite hold up to the complexity of the aroma. (Or maybe that should be “fortunately,” since that curry thing probably wouldn’t work too well in a barley wine.) First on the palate is a fairly simple caramel-fruity chocolate combination, and then the spices and mocha notes kick in – coffee and cocoa are two more ingredients – along with a decent hit of calvados and some spicy hoppiness. It doesn’t quite all come together for me, but it’s definitely going in the right direction.

The finish is my favourite part of this beer, not because it’s over but because it finally finds a cohesive flavour profile – brandy, raw cocoa, some sort of exotic, apple-accented coffee and lingering clove and alcohol.

Brewed in collaboration with Danish brewer Anders Kissmeyer, this is a beer to be faulted only for reaching too high, dreaming too big, and possibly having the contents of somebody’s spice cabinet accidentally tip into the brew kettle. Over time, I expect the spices will calm down a bit and create a more balanced whole, but that’s something for a future post.