Upon Tasting J. W. Lees Vintage Ale

Ah! Sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you...

J. W. Lees Harvest Ale: vintage 2001, rich, full-bodied, potent, racked into a wooden pin whose prior resident had been Lagavulin's peaty, salty whisky, and allowed to slumber since then.

All the longing, striving, seeking, waiting, yearning...

The folks at Sean Bolan's Pub in Federal Hill, Baltimore, MD purchased a wooden pin (5.4 gallon cask) of this elixir in 2002. They aged it undisturbed in their cellar for one year. They tapped it for us unworthy ruck last evening, Thursday, 6 March 2003.

The burning hopes, the joys and idle tears that fall!...

Here was a worthy successor to the late lamented Eldridge Pope Brewery's Thomas Hardy barley wine: a lusty 11.5% alcohol level yet still a beer, nearly still but with a whisper of spritzig, revealing itself with peel after peel of complexity. The carbonation was mere points over nil, but that seemed appropriate for quiet sipping and contemplation. No sparkler was used so the beer tumbled nearly headless from the wood.

In appearance, J. W. was burnished brown and copper, the age in wood having contributed several degrees of shade to that of the bottled version. The aroma, in order of appearance: a quick whiff of pencil graphite, then waves of dark rum, raisins, dried plums, peat, sea air, Scotch whisky, vanilla, shortbread biscuits, malted milk candy, and the pungent aroma of a roaring fireplace. The body was all soft shoulders and dangerous curves, the aromas reappearing as flavors in teasing combinations, different with each sip.

Smokiness of the Lagavulin-soaked wood lounged blissfully in the finish, a counterweight to J.W.'s voluptuous maltiness and potency.

Sean Bolan's served the ale befittingly at a temperature of 55 or so degrees. One's afterglow was several degrees more ardent.

'Tis the answer, 'tis the end and all...

Early in the evening, a gentlemen walked into Sean Bolan's looking for a mainstream 'lite' beer. Failing that, he settled for a Sam Adams Light.

Looking around, he noticed several of us sniffing our goblets. "Why do you keep smelling your beer," he asked? "Try one," we suggested. He did. And Mikey, he liked it! "Never had anything like this before!", he grinned broadly as he drank the glass empty.

Cask beer usually shines best as a vessel for fresh, session-styled, and complex bitter or mild. J.W. Lees Vintage Harvest Ale is an exception to that rule.

With apologies to Victor Herbert, I sell this beer for Legends, Ltd.

Cask ale is NOT cloudy.

Here is how a local brewpub recently announced its cask ale:

There are 3 main differences between real ale and conventionally dispensed ale. First, real ale is served unfiltered (cloudy) where as the yeast in conventionally served ale has been filtered out to give it a "clear" appearance. Second, real ale is served at "cellar" temperature (50-55°F)
unlike conventional ale which is served much cooler. Finally, firkin real ale is lightly carbonated so it almost appears "flat" compared to your conventional ale.

NO, NO, NO ... NO!

That's a description of something I wouldn't want to drink.

What real ale is ...
It is a method of producing and serving ale in its freshest and most flavorful state.

What real ale isn't ...
It is not cloudy; it is not warm; it is not flat.

Let's say instead:

1) True cask beer is served cold. Anyone who thinks that 50*F is warm should try setting the thermostat to 50*F in their house during the winter. Temperatures below 42*F begin to numb the tongue, masking malt flavors. Adjunct-rich mainstream beers proudly disdain the use of flavorful compounds. Thus, it's SAB-Mill-Bud-Coors which are served with ice shavings floating in them.

2) A true cask ale is wonderfully carbonated, at 1.8 volumes or a bit more, which is just enough to deliver the aromas of the hops, malt, and esters, and sufficient to develop and hold a nice head.

In fact, a properly poured or pulled cask pint will naturally produce a pint-sized (sorry!) version of the Guinness-cascading-head without the artificial injection of extraneous nitrogen.

More than that - excessive gassiness - masks malt flavor. And cask ale doesn't bloat the drinker.

3) Cask ale IS NOT CLOUDY. Poorly made cask ale might be cloudy. But I repeat, cask ale IS NOT CLOUDY!

True it isn't filtered. But that's a good thing.

By not being filtering it, a cask ale retains many flavorful compounds that would otherwise be stripped out. Yeast remains in the cask to naturally carbonate the beer (and to provide the drinker with a complete Vitamin B complex). A careful pour by a publican will leave most of that yeast behind

A cask-conditioned beer tasted next to its filtered, gassy, nearly frozen, and flavor-deprived cousin will always delight.

Ebulum Ale - a review

cask of Heather Brewery Ebulum Ale (Scotland)

Dark, dark, dark. The head had lighter mocha tints. Strong roast and baker's chocolate aroma and flavor with a hint of winy fruit. The grist contains roasted barley, hence the stout-like character. The brew is infused with elderberries, which appeared as this hint of fruit, as opposed to the sickly-sweet character often encountered in US microbrew fruit beers. The 6.5% alcohol wasn't apparent..until a couple of pints had been consumed!

This is the best product (cask or bottle) I have tasted from this brewery, excluding a few marvelously fresh bottles of Fraoch I sampled last year from a just delivered shipment. Paradoxically, those bottles tasted fresher and more complex than casks of Fraoch delivered at the same time.

Tasted 4 February 2003 at Max's on Broadway in Baltimore, MD. The firkin had been broached for 24 hours and then served on the bar, at 50*F, open to atmosphere, and gravity-drawn.

Christmas Ales

My favorites at Max's on Broadway's Christmas Tasting Tuesday evening:

• Cask Dominion Winter (sort of a strong Belgian amber with notes of a dubbel)
• Cask Gales Christmas (at 8.5%, unusually strong for a British beer, thick and sweet with lots of apple-rum-raisin flavors like a liquid fruitcake; out-of-balance really, but it just seemed so right for the season)
• Draft Winter Reserve from Clipper City (a flavor-BALANCED American IPA at 8%)
• Anchor Our Special Ale ( Cottonwood tree on the label, indiginous to California and Arizona. The flavor reminded me of the German Christmas cookie -Pfeffernüsse).

RCH's Ale Mary - a review

RCH is a fascinating little brewery in Cheddar country north of Dorset, England. (The initials stand for the name of the hotel - Royal Claridge Hotel - in whose back room the proprietors began the brewery before outgrowing the digs.) Its cask ales are consistently well-made and stellar even on this side of the pond.

Ale Mary's fun begins with the label, where this impudent inscription wraps above the portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots: "a well-executed bottle-conditioned ale".

Pour the beer into a LARGE glass and allow a minute or so of anticipation for the great mass of goo-goo eyed bubbles to escape and form a spumous head. Then...what an aroma! It's like the smell of a fresh-from-the-oven fruitcake wafting in from the NEXT room with a vase of long-stem roses nearby. That is, it's there but not cloying. The label claims the beer was infused infusion with ginger, cloves, cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, and pimento(!). [The exclamation point for that last ingredient is mine.]

The flavor and finish with the verities of English-style bitters: a biscuity maltiness and a bracing dryness. But, at 6% alcohol by volume, Ale Mary is stronger than the average UK bitter. And, for all the spices used, the beer is quaffable and well-balanced.

In 2001, Ale-Mary was awarded Bottle-Conditioned Beer of the year at the Great British Beer Festival.

tasted at the Brickskeller, Washington, DC, 15 Nov 2002
500-ml crown sealed bottle