Utopias- the quest for the ultimate beer

By Mark Tichenor & Bruce Lish

There’s extreme beer, and then there’s beer that’s so hardcore it makes Imperial Stout look like diet cola. It’s no surprise that this überbeer comes from one of the pioneers of American craft brewing.

Every two years, the folks at Samuel Adams set out with the express goal of brewing the strongest beer in the world. This year’s batch of Sam Adams Utopias clocks in at a mind-blowing 27% alcohol by volume.

 Let me repeat that. 27%. A strong double IPA or Imperial stout might hover around 10%. Wine clocks around 12-14%. Most whiskies are 40%. That’s right, Sam Adams Utopias, a beer, is more than half as strong as Jack Daniel’s.

 Making a beer that mighty is harder than you’d think. Yeast is almost as self-destructive as most people. The alcohol it creates during the fermentation process is toxic to the yeast cells. Most beer yeast dies when the alcohol level reaches 9-12%.

 It took a lot of really smart microbiologists to develop a strain of yeast that could tolerate the extreme alcohol percentage of Utopias and other super strong beers. That’s right, these guys could have been curing disease and creating oil spill-munching bugs, but they’re engaged in the far more noble purpose of beefing up our beer to comical levels.

 Unsurprisingly, this biannually released beer, complete with elaborate solid copper packaging designed to resemble a miniature brew kettle, costs a pretty penny. The roughly 9,000 bottles released nationwide each carry a suggested retail price of $150, but you can currently find this year’s vintage selling online for upwards of $250, with asking prices for the 2007 Utopias touching $400.

 That translates into $14-$15 an ounce in Rochester beer bars, a price that the curious are more than willing to pay.

 The Tap and Mallet on Gregory Street bought two 24 ounce bottles, releasing the first bottle last Wednesday and killing the first on that same night as seasoned beer lovers and neophytes rushed the bar, their fists dripping with disposable income.

 “Everybody was really sort of surprised by it,” says Greg Horton, bartender at Rochester’s Tap and Mallet beer bar. “Those that weren’t familiar with it had no idea beer could be done like that.”

You can’t say Utopias tastes like beer, or in fact look and smell like beer. It bears more of a resemblance to a fine cognac (the finished beer spends part of its aging time in cognac barrels).  Utopias smells like a spirit, alcohol ravishing the nose but softened by vanilla and oak. There isn’t even a passing resemblance of a head, or carbonation.

 Utopias drinks more like a mellow aged cognac, with an oily mouthfeel, lots of vanilla and cherry at first sip and a mellow plum-like burn in the finish. It is completely unlike any other beer on this earth.

While the curiosity factor may drive initial interest, Horton points out that he did not pour two portions for the same customer that night. The expense of Utopias combined with its aggressive flavor makes it a beer for saving. Or hoarding. Or possibly the perfect special occasion.

At any rate, Samuel Adams Utopias is a real achievement, and a statement about how far American craft beer can go. Wonder what they’ll think of next.

Bruce is a certified beer judge and commercial brewer. Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at http://www.beercraftsite.com. Find us on Twitter @beercraft. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

I’m not much of an extreme beer fan, having gone on record as calling the big beer trend ‘gimmicky,’ ‘faddish,’ and ‘contrary to the social nature of beer.’ But only a fool closes his mind when he opens his mouth, so I keep trying them. Every now and then, a big beer blows me away, and not just in the sense of making me fall off the damn barstool.

Case in point: Avery The Czar Imperial Stout. 12.2% of murky goodness. It’s a sweet, vaguely chocolatey brew with a light, oily texture, with notes of raisin and roasted grain. For all of its alcohol and complexity, The Czar is surprisingly light on the tongue, and the flavor blend camouflages alcoholic flavor surprisingly well. Maybe too well. This beer will kill you, and, if you’re insane enough to order more than one, you probably deserve it.

You know, one of the things I admire about American indie brewers is their determination to keep working on improving mediocre beer styles until they’re perfect. The big beers on the market today are definitely tasting better than just a couple of years ago. They’re more refined, less brutish, less one-dimensional. Finally, extreme beers are deserving of the cult status they enjoy among beer devotees. It’s evident that there’s stil an element of the hobbyist in a lot of the people who make them.

I hope that never, ever goes away.

-Mark

Not many bars treat craft beer with the reverence The Old Toad shows. Over the years, the managers and student-servers of this venerable English pub have gone out of their way to teach Rochesterians about great beer, show what can be accomplished when airing beer and food, and highlighting some of the finest brewers in the country.

They did it again last night with Stone Fest. San Diego’s Stone Brewing Company is considered one of the finest craft brewers in America. Just mention the name Stone around beer dorks and watch them furtively crouch over so no one notices the growing bulge in their expand-o-waist pants.

The Toad really did it up with Stone. Four taplines were devoted to the uber-brewery’s beers, pumping out Stone Pale Ale, Double Bastard, 10th Anniversary IPA, and  2007 Old Guardian Barley Wine.

With the exception of the Pale Ale, these are big, explosive beers, uncompromising in the intensity of their flavor, and the skill with which they’re brewed is apparent at first sip. It’s almost like beer concentrate. The hop flavors dominate, I mean absolutely beat your tongue into submission, and yet there’s none of the sharp bitterness that makes beer unbalanced. Bitterness flaws are so common among barley wines that they’ve become an accepted part of the flavor profile, but the Stone Old GuardianI drank last night showed none of that.However, it was a year old, so the beer could have quite possibly rounded outwith cellaring.

The Pale Ale is rare in Western New York, and it’s the first Stone offering I’ve tried that didn’t wear the mantle of an ‘extreme’ beer (although many would argue the Stone IPA isn’t extreme either). It was refreshing in its restraint, tasting almost like a soft English pale ale instead of a hoppy American-style pale. Of course, I tasted the Pale Ale after the Double Bastard, so I’d lost all feeling in my tongue. Still, it was an eye-opening experience, showing a side of Stone I’d not yet seen.

Most of these delicious beers are ‘one and done’ for me. They’re just too much. As the night went on, though, it became evident that many of my fellow Stone fans didn’t share that problem. Still, everyone kept their pants on, and handled these huge, highly alcoholic beers with the dignity and restraint that craft beer deserves.

Sometimes, love is truly blind.

-Mark

Readers of this blog will be all to familiar with our generic stance on beer extremity, but we prefer not to paint ourselves into corners. With this in mind, I bellied up to the The Old Toad’s weathered bar and ordered a Boulder Mojo Risin’ Double IPA.

It pains me to admit how much I liked this beer, mostly because the name references a Doors song and I hate The Doors. All through high school I was subjected to their uninspired, organ-heavy boring, flat-voiced singsong pop. And everyone’s always like “Oh! Jim Morrison is such a great poet!” He was not a poet; he was a hack. ee cummings was a great poet. Ralph Waldo Emerson was a great poet. The guy who wrote “There once was a girl from Nantucket” was a better poet than Morrison, who once penned the line “If they say I never loved you/You know they are a liar.”  Jim Morrison can kiss my ass.

But I digress.

I was expecting a raw, bitter, overwhelmingly hoppy beer with a back end composed of harsh alcohol heat, but Mojo Risin’ is much more subtle than that. It’s buttery smooth without being cloying, and the intense bitterness is complemented by a malt smoothness that rounds off and effectively subdues the taste of the alcohol. This is a dangerous beer; it would be easy to absent-mindedly consume several pints while forgetting that it’s 10.5% ABV.

I’ve had this experience with a couple “extreme” beers lately. Could it be that the brewers who make them are growing a bit self-conscious about their single-minded pursuit of strength and bitterness above all else? If extreme beer turns into good beer, the American brewing community will realy have made its mark in the world of beer.

-Mark

Recently, we’ve taken some flak for turning up our noses at ‘extreme’ beers. Just to set the record straight, ‘extreme’ beers are every bit as valid as good beers that are skillfully brewed to style. To level the playing field, we shall now review an ‘extreme’ beer: Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale.

The beer pours a deep amber, almost ruby color, with a semi-persistent head that leaves some lacing on the inside of the glass. The bouquet is a veritable spice rack of fall dessert essences: cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, cardamom, you name it.

I must admit to being stunned by the flavor; this might be the best pumpkin ale I’ve ever had. Far from overpowering, the pumpkin comes through in the nose and melds nicely with the spices. Unlike many pumpkin ales, hops are still noticeable in the finish, contrasting beautifully with the beer’s slight sweetness.

At 9% it isn’t the most extreme beer in the world, but it’s going down a lot better than the Avery Mephistopheles and “The Kaiser” Imperial Oktoberfest we choked down earlier. I’m surprised at the quality of this pumpkin ale. Weyerbacher took a novelty style and actually turned it into a quality big beer.

If that’s extreme, we don’t want to be mild.