Down glass shot. #beer #abita

Churchkey is bringing back the flat top beer. My take - this is a lot of extra work for the sake of nostalgia rather than more flavorful beer.

What do you think - good thing or bad?

Just tried Dogfish Head Noble Rot. Interesting beer. Saison made with botrytis infected voignier grapes. Very light. A little sweet. Definitely tart.

An interesting experiment, but not sure I’d make this a repeat purchase. My dollars will go back to Bitches Brew, 90 Minute IPA, and other favorite stand-byes from Dogfish Head.

Tallgrass 8-Bit Pale Ale: “The beer of retro gamers everywhere.” Pretty cool that they outsourced this to their fans. 

While Tallgrass was putting the finishing touches on Velvet Rooster, the world’s first Belgian-style Tripel in a can, they sent out a survey to ask their fans what kind of beer they should brew next. 500 fans responded and the overwhelming request: a super-hoppy pale ale. 8-Bit Pale Ale is the answer to that plea.

Tallgrass balances 8-Bit’s large dose of hops flavor by brewing the beer with a strong malt backbone, which helps balance the hops’ edge without hiding it.

8-Bit’s name and can design were inspired by the classic video games of the early 90′s, when gray game cartridges ruled the world and the 8-bit graphics of these early systems left much to the gamer’s imagination.

In case there was any doubt Prohibition was a bad idea….

Interesting perspective from a brewer.

The Great American Beer Revival: a cool little video/infographic about the rise, fall and rise of American small breweries. Definitely worth 2 minutes.

Ever wonder how a beer (or whisky) canning line works? Wonder no more. 

New Belgium now has 42,000 local fans in 38 markets and 400,000 across all of its Facebook pages, including 107,000 for Fat Tire, its best-known beer. It set out to figure out how valuable they are this fall by asking Facebook fans to fill out a survey, which nearly 3,000 completed.

Based on the findings, they concluded that the typical fan bought $260 worth of New Belgium beer per year, assuming that respondents drank 10 beers a week and that New Belgium made up 25% of their consumption, which adds up to $50.7 million spent yearly by unique Facebook fans.

New Belgium committed roughly $235,000 to its social-media presence last year that was mostly dedicated to Facebook, including both app development and advertising. 

Interesting look at what one of the leading craft breweries is doing in the social media space - and how you can (or can’t) put a value on that. If you’re skeptical about these results, Beer News has you covered with a great, critical response.

What do you think? How much is a Facebook fan worth and how much should craft breweries be spending on social media?

Reuters reports that the global beer market grew 2.7% in 2011. 

This is a whisky blog, but we’re also big beer drinkers here at Whisky Party - particularly when it comes to interesting micro brews.  So we were pretty thrilled when Dodgy Drammer came across Ola Dubh.

Ola Dubh is a an ale, best described as a stout, from Harviestoun Brewery in the UK.  That by itself wouldn’t be all that special, but Ola Dubh has been aged in ex-Highland Park whisky casks.  It comes in three styles - 12 year cask aged, 16 year cask aged, and 30 year cask aged - and each bottle is sold separately (at least here in NY).

According to the (hard to navigate) website, Ola Dubh (aka “Black Oil”) is “a nod to the classic Imperial Porters (and stouts) of the 19th Century.”  It is bottled at 8% abv and is the first beer of its kind to actually name the distillery from which it stocks its whisky casks.  It is also unique in that each bottle is numbered and can be traced back to its original cask.

Tasting Notes

Distillery Notes:The distillery does not differentiate between expressions in the tasting notes on its site. That’s a bit odd to me considering the bottles sell at different price points, have different packaging, and after trying two, have clearly different taste profiles for each expression. That said, here are the official notes:

Retaining the appearance of used motor oil from which the beer gets its name, it is deep dark brown, dense and oily.  On the nose there are notes of truffle oil and cocoa as well as faint smoke and heathery peat from the whisky casks.  Although lighter in body than its appearance suggests, Ola Dubh is pithy oily, salty, and bitter on the palate.  The finish is exceptional; burnt and bitter notes with an interplay of late hop characters, orange oil, fruity tartness and then delicate fragrant smoke.

Ola Dubh 12 Year

My thoughts: Chocolate and a hint of smoke on the front.  It is definitely lighter and less creamy than a Guinness or a Bellhaven stout.  The whisky comes through in the finish via a small bite, some bitterness, and a hint of the honeyed character of the Highland Park 12.  I’m not a big drinker of stouts, but this is a great, great beer.

Dodgy Drammer: A crisp stout with a floral and othwerise complex nose.  The palette was lightly chocolatey and nutty up front, with a good sense of smoke picking up in the middle and a honey and scotch sweetness to finish it off.  Excellent, and one of my favorite beers that I’ve tried this year, which is saying a lot.

Old Dubh 30 year

My Thoughts: I enjoyed this considerably less than the 12 year.  Still lighter than a traditional stout, with the same chocolate and smoke intermingled throughout, but I found the Highland Park influence much less prominent, and at times barely detectable.  A good beer, but nothing special and certainly nothing to splurge on.

Dodgy Drammer: More complex (than the 12), and the scotch was more woven throughout.  As such, the individual elements of it were less detectable, although smoke along with some spices (nutmeg?), a smooth, sticky, and subtle sweetness, and oak come through the malty and slightly roasted ale.  Excellent.