City by the bay... with the food and the beer

Some time before the Winterfest, I left the chilly college on the hill with our multiple feet of snow and negative degree fahrenheit temperature. The destination: San Francisco. The excuse: SPIE Photonics West Conference. I had a talk to give there along with a few other people from our institution, so we carpooled to Manchester airport with suits in tow and checked in for what was sure to be a warmer couple of days. At the airport, I discovered this:

Moooooo Bella

It claimed to be an automatic ice cream making machine. I had to try it or live forever in regret for not knowing. I bought the cup for the ice cream at the cafe adjacent to it (would have been cooler if it had supplied its own, though, and I just swiped a credit card) and selected black raspberry flavor with chocolate chips mix in. The cup fit in a small rotatable plastic holder inside, behind which a mess of whurr-ing noises started up. Eventually the cup tilted backwards and a cup-sized scoop of ice cream was extruded into it from behind. The ice cream looked churned and hand-scooped but tasted awful with an over-frozen hard gummy consistency. Someday when I have time I will invent a better automatic ice cream machine.

We arrived in SF and checked in to our hotel around dinnertime; with two full days of conference ahead we were not about to let the night go to waste. S and R split a taxi with me to the Italian area of town within walking distance of Chinatown and also many well-advertised strip clubs. We went to S's usual dining establishment when he comes home to SF, Caffe Sport. The wait, however, was 45 minutes so we wandered around Chinatown and ended up at a Thai place snacking on satay, fish cakes and iced tea before our reservation was up. I hadn't realized until that point how very much I miss good Thai iced tea and good chicken satay living in Hanover. Even the pickled cucumbers tasted magical.

Fish cake with fresh pickled cucumber

By the time we got back to Caffe Sport they had plenty of tables open. We sat down and split a bottle of the house Chianti along with plates of penne con pesto and scampi all' Antonio. The pesto was pretty good and the scampi sauce was a remarkably smooth and stable emulsion for one lacking butter or cream.

The beginning...

Penne con pesto

Scampi all' Antonio. Crazy yellow-green lights.

After dinner and about 3 glasses of wine each, we split a taxi to Toronado which is the place to buy Lost Abbey's Cable Car. At this point, it was well after normal bed time our-coast-time and the day of travel so recently in the past didn't help things. We each powered through a pint nonetheless and I got to savor some Pliny on tap while enjoying the crowded but beer geekish scenery of the bar. I really, really wanted to buy the Cable Car. Unsure of whether R or S liked sours along with travel-induced sickness setting in (not to mention the price tag), I decided against getting a bomber to drink by myself. I bought a bottle of Pliny and a La Folie to take home instead.

Oh Pliny, you were so yummy.

Wall of liters...

...and more of the wall. One of each, please, for the cellar?

Some taps, some funky artwork.

At this point, it would have been wise to go back to the hotel... which we tried to do but for the incredibly sketchy taxi driver we had randomly hailed who refused to take credit cards despite the clearly functional card reader on his dashboard and who drove us around in a circle. Earlier in the night, some colleagues texted that they were at a bar/restaurant called Absinthe and by crazy fortuitous luck we wound up adjacent to it at an intersection. R, who is a New York native, then proceeded to lay the smackdown on our cabby:

R: Our friends are at that bar over there! You can just let us out on this street please.

Cabby: But you said you wanted to go to {hotel name}... *proceeds to pass the bar and continues driving*

R: YOU WILL LET US OUT NOW AND YOU WILL SIGN THIS RECEIPT.

Our friends were still sitting when we arrived, so we ordered a sidecar and told them about the cab. J and P wanted to hit up another beer bar and we walked there with the group to sober up in the warm night air. I honestly can't remember the name of the second beer bar but it paled in comparison to Toronado. Exhausted and slightly groggy, we caught our final taxi of the night back to the hotel just before 1am.

Stay tuned for a followup entry on dim sum, sushi and beer hauls!

Hill Farmstead Winter Festival

We've been having quite the winter here in the Upper Valley this year. Snow, snow, snow and more snow. Needless to say, I haven't been venturing out of the area too much, but Jen and I did get away last Saturday to the Hill Farmstead Winter Festival in Greensboro VT. The Hill Farmstead is a quaint little brewery in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, but the brews coming out of this place are anything but. Ranked as the 34th best brewery in the world by Rate Beer and the best new brewery of 2011, the Hill Farmstead has been making quite a name for itself. In addition to the brewery's Rate Beer accolades, the Hill Farmstead currently has 8 beers in the 'Top Buzz Beers' list on Beer Advocate, which is more than any other brewery in the world. So you can see why Jen and I thought it was worth the 1.5 hour drive north to attend the festival.

We arrived at the brewery a few minutes before the fest and gladly took a stroll around the area to take in the beautiful scenic views. The brewery is quite isolated from the rest of world and every time I come I feel like I'm walking into a fairytale, where time moves slower, nothing is rushed and the beer flows freely. It's always worth the trip.

Once the doors opened, the beers started to flow as did the conversation and live jazz music. I don't recall the name of the band, but they did some great John Coltrane covers, including Giant Steps, which is one of my faves.

However, the best part of the fest was the tap list. Hands down, this is one of the best tap lists I've ever seen in one place. Check this out:

Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel
Mikkeller Beer Geek Bacon
Amager Rye Porter
Nogne Ø Imperial Stout
Grassroots/Mikkeller Limoncello
Cantillon Fou' Foune
Hill Farmstead Art (Barrel Aged Arthur)
Hill Farmstead Abner
Hill Farmstead Foster Black Rye
Hill Farmstead Flora
Hill Farmstead Iced Coffee Stout (15ish%)
Lawson's Finest Double Sunshine
The Alchemist Dark and Dank
Half Acre Daisy Cutter
Ballast Point Sculpin
Jolly Pumpkin Maracaibo Especial

Jen and I made our way through quite a few of the draft beers by sharing pours and I think we both agreed that the Hill Farmstead's Iced Coffee Stout, The Alchemist's Dark and Dank and Cantillon's Fou' Foune were the highlights of the day. The Iced Coffee Stout was so smooth and silky with well roasted coffee and chocolate, plus the 15% ABV was hidden so well you would have guessed it was 5% if you didn't know otherwise.

Iced Coffee Stout

Dark and Dank was a new brew from The Alchemist which turned out to be a delicious IPA brewed with dark malts and a large addition of hops. Lots of sweet caramel notes in this one. Hopefully it makes an appearance at the pub sometime in the near future. And of course Cantillon's Fou' Foune was just as tasty on tap, if not more so, than out of the bottle. The nose was filled with the classic Cantillon barnyard funk and the taste was laced with apricot and peach sourness throughout. One other interesting note was that this version on tap had a noticeable increase in grassy bitterness compared to the bottled versions I've had. I'm guessing it's due to the freshness of this keg or potentially batch variability. Either way, it did a really nice job of bringing out some of the earthier aspects of the beer, which I appreciated.

Fou' Foune

In addition to the delicious beers there was also a nice selection of food, including generously sized cheese samples from the cellars at Jasper Hill. One of the cheese samples, Winnimere, was actually washed in Phenomenology of Spirit (one of the Hill Farmstead beers) and paired excellently with a baguette and some dried figs.

To cap off the event, I splurged on a sample of 1998 Drie Fonteinen 50th Anniversary Oude Geuze. At $25 a pour, it was the most I had ever spent on a sample of beer, but was it worth it? Yes. One of the best, if not the best, gueuze I have ever had. Imagine beautiful, floral, citrus funk mixed with hay and oak while maintaining balanced acidity and sourness throughout. Perfect. One image that kept coming to my mind was liquid flower petals. Truly a work of art. Sad that there are so few of these left.

Anyways, Jen and I had a great time at the festival and I can't wait for the next Hill Farmstead event, which should be in June. It sounds like it will be an entire weekend of special beers on tap and possibly the release of Damon, the first Russian Imperial Stout from the Hill Farmstead. Also, I checked out this barrel in the back corner of the brewery before leaving. Not sure if it will ever be released, but a smokey version of Cab barreled Phenomenology with black currants sounds pretty tasty to me.

Drie Fonteinen

To kick start the new year here at Food and Fermentation I decided to pull up some recent reviews from one of my favorite breweries, Drie Fonteinen. Last month Jen and I were lucky enough to get our hands on some bottles of the recent Malvasia Rosso release from Ølbutikken (thanks to Rachel and Jeppe!); and on top of that, our local tasting buddy, Dave, brought over an '02 Red Label Oude Gueuze Vintage. December was a pretty awesome month all around for lambic and gueuze, but these two bottles were definitely the highlights.

The Malvasia Rosso, also referred to as Drie Fonteinen's Druiven Gueuze (druiven = grapes) was actually bottled in 2003, but was just recently released last fall at Ølbutikken in Copenhagen. Only a limited number of bottles (300-400) were for sale and this release also marked the first time that the beer was available for off-site consumption. Previous vintages of Malvasia Rosso have been for sale at European bars like Akkurat, but the consumer is only allowed to drink the bottle at the bar. Needless to say, I was quite excited to see a few of these bottles arrive at my doorstep.

Drie Fonteinen's Malvasia Rosso, like most Belgian lambics, contains a wheat base beer that is fermented with wild yeasts and other microorganisms. The yeast and the various microorganisms produce alcohol in the beer, but also give it much of the prized funk and sourness that is highly sought after in traditional lambics. To add to this already complex beer, the head brewer/blender, Armand Debelder, then added red malvasia grapes and allowed the beer to age further in oak barrels. This specific vintage of Malvasia Rosso was then bottled in 2003 and allowed to bottle condition until late 2010.

Anyways, on to the review. The bottle was served at cellar temperature (slightly cool) and upon removal of the cage I almost got a cork in my face. Luckily I wasn't directly over the bottle, but I still needed to act quickly, since we had a bit of a gusher on our hands. Fortunately there were three glasses right in front of me and we ended up losing very little of the bottle. The beer itself poured a slightly hazy tangerine-orange with a thin ring of white bubbles on top. Nice color, but no lacing of any kind. However, the aroma was great. Dry earthy funk, light orange citrus and oak barrel notes with a touch of dark fruit (grape). Quite refined and well balanced, but it was the flavor that stole the show.

Crisp barnyard brett with tangerine citrus, tart apple and a touch of grape on the tongue. Lots of funk and a medium level of constant sourness. The execution on this beer was perfect. All of the Drie Fonteinen funk that people love, but then another level of complexity and smoothness that I have not experienced with any other lambics, save for Cantillon's Blåbær. This is truly an amazing beer and one that should be sought out by all lambic/gueuze lovers. As a side note, the brett character at this point is well balanced and the beer may continue to improve for another year or two, but it is drinking extremely well right now. So if you have a bottle, I highly recommend drinking it in the near future before the brett becomes too dominant, unless that is to your liking.

In addition to the Malvasia Rosso, our local tasting group was also treated to a bottle of '02 Oude Gueuze Vintage (thanks Dave!). This beer is much like Armand's regular Oude Gueuze, but the Vintage labeling denotes that only the finest barrels at Drie Fonteinen were blended to make this batch of gueuze. Not that any of their barrels are bad, but the barrels in this blend were hand picked as some of Armand's finest. Another special note about the '02 vintage is that the label is different from the rest of the other Oude Gueuze Vintage vintages and the dates are hand written instead of printed. To add to that, the '02 vintage is regarded as one of the best of the Oude Gueuze Vintage, so a best of the best if you will.

This beer, like the Malvasia Rosso, was another beautiful work of art from Drie Fonteinen. With eight years of age the aroma was gorgeous. Earthy and floral with orange citrus, oak, barnyard funk and wet hay. A bit of lemon zest and vanilla worked its way into the nose as well. Probably a touch better than the nose on the Malvasia Rosso. Absolutely outstanding.

The taste was also quite good, but not at the same level as the nose. Many of the same notes, but the brett had become a little too dominant. Lots of dry earthy notes mixed with citrus and a funky sourness. The mouthfeel was crisp and dry with light carbonation. Definitely brett heavy. Makes me kind of wonder what this beer was like 3-4 years ago.


As far as gueuze go though, the '02 Oude Gueuze Vintage is one of the best I have ever had and the nose is phenomenal. One of the few noses I have ever rated as a 5 on BeerAdvocate. Drie Fonteinen knows their stuff and hopefully someday I'll be lucky enough to come across a bottle of Millenium Gueuze or one of the J&J's from Drie Fonteinen. If that happens I'll make it priority to post about it on here.

Cheers and Happy New Years!

Enten - Eller

"Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it."
-Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or)

Not here at Food and Fermentation. We try to savor every moment, bite, and sip of the delicious food and brew that comes across our path. The post for today is one that I've actually been meaning to write up for a week or two now and it looks at an awesome collaboration between the Hill Farmstead Brewery and Cigar City Brewing. A while back, these two breweries got together to brew a pair of beers named Either and Or, which are two huge Black IPA's that clock in at 11.2% ABV. Pretty sweet. Anyways, the names actually come from Kierkegaard's 1843 work, Either/Or, which focuses on both the aesthetic and ethical life styles, but ultimately finds both flawed and suggests religion as the most fulfilling path. Whether you agree with Kierkegaard's conclusions or not, most of his works are fairly enlightening reads, especially if you have a sweet spot for philosophy.


Having graduated from St. Olaf College, which has about 11,000 book volumes of work revolving around Kierkegaard in the St. Olaf Kierkegaard library, I have had some decent exposure to his work. However, I personally find Camus' existentialist thoughts to be more in line with my own thinking than Kierkegaard's, even though some find Camus to be more of a novelist than a philosopher. Either way, both authors spark some interesting conversation, especially when paired with a well crafted beer(s), and what better beers to get the mental juices flowing than the Either and Or pair.

Both beers pour essentially black, but after swirling the glass a bit, Or delivers a much stronger hop punch on the nose than Either. Further inspection of the aroma pulls out some roasty dark malts and the sweet addition of Ty Ty honey. The taste, however, is the highlight, at least for Or. Both beers were aged on cedar, which is a pretty interesting addition, considering that 99% of beers that are aged on wood, are aged on oak. The cedar, especially in Or, melded perfectly with the earthy/grassy hop notes, giving the beer another dimension filled with tasty, toasted, cedar wood.

Or was definitely the highlight for both Jen and I, but Either was quite good as well. The only downside to Either was that it dropped the hop profile of Or and instead focused on the sweeter side of things. This lead to a muddled and somewhat cloying end to the beer, but in the general scheme of things it still provided a malty and complex brew that was fun to drink. Overall, these were two interesting beers and I would definitely pick up another bottle of Or if I had access to it. Hopefully Cigar City and The Hill Farmstead team up for another collaboration in the future. Both breweries are brewing some pretty amazing beers and you should definitely check them out if you haven't already. In meantime, pick up some Camus and a good beer. The combination is excellent.

Rum Pancakes

What's the best rum you have ever had? "Rum and coke" is not a valid response.

Many weeks back Matt and I hosted a beer tasting at his posh bachelor pad for a few handfuls of friends and their family. There was I introduced to Goslings Old Rum in what could possibly be my new favorite style of sipping glass. The flavor of the rum: amazing. So rich, complex and silky with a big slightly spicy vanilla-ed barrel presence. Needless to say I was on the hunt for it thereafter. I picked up a bottle at Julio's, nestled in a wooden display box with a viewing window. Being used to beers I poured an entire snifter full and only managed half of it over the course of the night. The remaining half (about a shot) sat in the glass, covered with Saran Wrap, for a few days before I decided something must be done.

Lucky for me it had been another late day at work so I didn't go with my initial inclination to add it to a batch of baked sweets. The following morning after sleeping in and forgetting all about it, I was throwing pancakes together with a leftover carton of half and half when, bleary-eyed, I spotted the glass. Lacking the better judgment that comes with consciousness, I threw it in the batter. Problem solved, I thought.

Almost. The rum messed with the pH a little and brought out the soapier flavors of my baking soda. I simultaneously realized the batter wasn't sweet enough and added a few more tablespoons of sugar which seemed to even everything out. The result?

I named it Phil. The one on top. The others are nameless.

Picture perfect pancakes with a deliciously complex barrel-aged rum flavor. Awesome with the thick real maple syrup I buy off a guy at work and stock the house with. Factoring in the price of the shot of rum, these pancakes were pretty expensive but hey, live a little I say.

Grade B baby!

To recreate this recipe, take your favorite 2 person serving pancake batter and add a shot of rum plus sugar to taste. In other news, want to see what 1/57th of a stick of butter looks like?

1/57 of a stick is approximately the residual on four butter wrappers, by weight.

So if you are counting calories out there (first of all I pity you but second of all), take comfort in the fact that using four whole stick of room temperature butter in your recipe is really sparing you ~0.5% of those butter calories... unless you use those wrappers to grease your pan. Then all bets are off.

Heady Topper

Well, I'm currently finishing up some bioluminescent studies in the lab, but figured I would post a brief update on the beer festivities from last weekend. At around 7 am on Saturday, Jen, Dave and myself made our trek north to the Heady Topper release at The Alchemist in Waterbury, VT. We arrived around 8:45 am with some decent snow flurries and were relieved to see that the line outside of the pub was not too long, so we parked and headed to the closest shop with coffee and food. As much as I love beer, it's hard to beat a fresh cup of coffee in the morning, especially when it's snowing (the sausage, cheese and egg bagel was pretty good too).

After getting some caffeine in the system we ventured back outside and made our way to the Heady Topper line, which had grown a little bit, but wasn't too bad yet. For those of you that don't know, Heady Topper is an 8%, 120 IBU, double IPA brewed by John Kimmich at The Alchemist. Besides being a delicious DIPA, it is also the first beer to ever be bottled by the brewery, mostly as a response to the huge demand for the beer. People have even tried to hand bottle this under the table, so that they can walk out (illegally) with a bottle to go. Therefore, it was not surprising that well over a hundred people were in line when the pub opened at 11 am.

Once inside the doors we paid for our 3 bottle limit of Heady Topper and moved down to the end of the bar where they were serving $5 pints with a free glass. Of course I grabbed a fresh pint of Heady Topper from the tap, which was packed full of hops and grapefruit bitterness like usual. Jen on the other hand picked up a pint of The Alchemist's pumpkin saison, which was also quite good and really brought out a lot of rustic, earthy, pumpkin flavor.

With pints in hand we moved over to where they were hand wrapping bottles of Heady Topper and picked up our allotment. In addition to the free glassware, The Alchemist also had free hot dogs for everyone and you got a bottle opener and a Heady Topper pin with your purchase of 1-3 bottles. This release was definitely classy and I think everyone agreed that it went very smoothly. I'm really hoping they decide to do another bottle release in the future. I'd love to be able to take some of their wilds and other stellar offerings home with me.

After enjoying some fresh Heady Topper and pumpkin saison, we dropped off our bottles in the car and headed over to the Blackback Pub, which is just across the street from The Alchemist. Blackback is an awesome little craft beer bar that usually has 8 or 9 beers on tap and tends to showcase some of Vermont's finest brews. Today was no exception. Blackback had a fresh keg of Lawson's Paradise Ale and The Hill Farmstead's latest saison offering (Dorothy) and winter porter (Twilight of the Idols). Along with the local offerings they also had Stone's Lukcy Basartd, Dogfish Head's Olde School Barleywine and Petrus Aged Pale just to name a few. Having already gotten my hop fix from the Heady Topper I asked for a pour of Twilight of the Idols, which was an excellent choice, especially with the cold winter weather outside.


Tipping back the glass revealed complex layers of vanilla, cinnamon and dark chocolate, which were all encased in a smooth, velvety, body of liquid. Great stuff, but I already knew that before ordering, since I had been lucky enough to have this once before at the Farmhouse Tap & Grill in Burlington, VT. Once my glass was empty, we decided to shove off and make our way down to the Warren Store in Warren, VT. The Warren Store is well known by beer enthusiasts in the northern Vermont area, because it is the only store that sells Lawson's, period. The only other places you can get Sean Lawson's beers are at a few select farmer's markets from time to time or from him personally.


Anyways, since we were only about 20 minutes away from the store, it would have been a shame not to go. So we headed on down and actually got to meet Sean there when we arrived. After tasting a delicious sample of his upcoming Barrel-Aged Fayston Maple Imperial Stout we picked up a bottle of the Chinooker'd IPA, the Maple Nipple and the Red Spruce Bitter and headed on home. As usual, we had a great time up in the Waterbury/Warren area and hopefully we'll be back this winter for some skiing and of course beer sampling.

AIChE, Salt Lake City, and Recent Brews

So it's definitely been a few days since the last update on this blog. November has been an extremely busy month, but at least a good one. Work is going well and some tasty brews have crossed our path. The month started out with me flying to Salt Lake City and presenting at the annual AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineering) conference. I thought the talk went pretty well and there seemed to be some genuine interest in the enzyme therapeutics we're developing for bacterial biofilm disruption in the airways of Cytstic Fibrosis patients.

Salt Lake City itself was fairly picturesque. A very clean city with a mountain backdrop and lots of interesting architecture. Below are a set of pictures from the city starting with the conference center and then some pictures from the Temple Square area. Pretty hard to miss the Mormon influence on this city.


After walking around Temple Square for a bit, I decided to head over to one of the local breweries. The brewery, Squatters, was just a few blocks from the downtown Marriott I stayed at and looked like a good place to grab a snack in between conference talks.


The pub area of the brewery had a nice open feeling to it with a raised ceiling and fireplace. This would definitely be a nice place to hit up during the winter after a few runs on the ski slopes. After checking out the beer menu I decided to grab a bottle of Hop Rising, which is their current double IPA (DIPA). The brew clocks in at 9% ABV, 75 IBUs and is only served in the bottle format at the moment. My first thought when receiving the bottle was that 75 IBUs seemed a bit low for a DIPA, and I was right. Hop Rising is much more of a malt bomb than a hop bomb and unfortunately the 9% ABV was not very well masked. I'm probably spoiled with all the awesome Vermont DIPAs I have access to here in New England, but this beer probably wouldn't hold up well against most DIPAs across the country. That being said, I still really liked the atmosphere of the pub and the rest of their brews may be a better representation of the brewery, but Hop Rising is not worth checking out in my opinion.


After flying back from Salt Lake City, I was greeted by some awesome packages in the mail. The first of which contained some very exciting brews from North Carolina and the second held some fairly hyped sours from Oregon. From the NC package (thanks to cmrillo) I pulled out a Barrel-Aged Sexual Chocolate for a local tasting. This brew clocks in at 9.75% ABV and is the regular Sexual Chocolate Russian Imperial Stout that Foothills brews, but is then aged in Pappy Van Winkle barrels before being bottled. Compared to the regular version, the barrel-aged version definitely steps things up. I loved the nose and flavor on this one. A strong, but not overwhelming, bourbon presence lasted throughout, adding hints of vanilla and oak to the already well defined cocoa presence of this beer. The only let down was the mouthfeel. It appears that the barrels probably thinned this beer out a bit. I'm not really complaining, but it would nice to see this brew with a beefier body. All in all though it was quite enjoyable and a well executed example of the barrel-aged stout style. Wish I had another for the cellar.


At the same tasting we also busted out one of the Oregon sours from Cascade Brewing in Portland Oregon. I felt a bit sour (haha) about this beer before I even opened it, due to the ridiculous prices Cascade was charging for shipping, but I tried to put those behind me as I opened the bottle. The brew happened to be Cascade's 2009 GABF gold medal winner, Bourbonic Plague. The base beer in this sour is an imperial porter brewed with cinnamon and vanilla and then aged in bourbon and wine barrels with lactobacillus. Overall, I thought this was a pretty impressive brew from Cascade. Definitely a heavy hitter at 12.1% ABV and the complexity on the tongue was fairly impressive. I thought the nose was overwhelmed by the alcohol, but the flavor delivered almost everything I was expecting. Lots chocolaty porter notes mixed with vanilla, cinnamon and tannic/grape oak. I would have liked to have seen a little more bourbon barrel in the blend, but the wine barrels still did a nice job. As usual, the lacto was on par with the rest of Cascade's brews and delivered a nice crisp acidic tang to the beer.


One of the last beers I'd like to note (besides the latest Hill Farmstead /Cigar City collaboration, which will be coming in the next post) is a 2005 vintage World Wide Stout from Dogfish Head (thanks JAHMUR). This beer is probably one of the oldest beers I've had, besides some the J.W. Lees Harvest Ales, and is a great example of what proper cellaring can do for some beers. World Wide Stout starts out with a lot of cellaring potential due to it's 18% ABV. Cracking a fresh bottle of this is still quite enjoyable, but has a lot of alcohol heat. However, after 5 years of aging, the alcohol virtually drops out of the flavor and you are left with a smooth, sweet, complex stout that serves as an excellent after dinner drink / dessert. The ABV will still catch up to you if you're not careful, but it goes down extremely easy. The only draw back with this amount of age is that the beer becomes rather sweet, so it's best to split a bottle with a few other people.


If you're interested in trying your hand at aging beers, then I would recommend Dogfish Head's World Wide Stout, J.W. Lees Harvest Ale, as well as Avery's The Beast. I had an '06 Beast a month or two ago and the beer had transformed from a decent Belgian Dark to a delicious English Barleywine. I've also got a 2007 Avery Mephistophele's Stout in the cellar along with a 2008-2010 vertical of Stone's Imperial Russian Stout and a 2009-2010 vertical of Stone's Double Bastard (strong ale). All of these beers should age well and I'll report back when I open them sometime down the road. In general, imperial stouts, barleywines, strong ales, gueuze, Belgain quads and a few other styles often cellar well and can even improve upon the fresh version of the beer.