Tasting Notes: New Glarus Enigma

Appearance: Pours a dark but translucent pinkish red.  Thin light pink head, which dissipated quickly, with no lacing.

Aroma: Funky and tart.  A barnyard funk, but still a sour cherry tartness to it.

Mouthfeel: Light.  Rolls right off the tongue.  More carbonation/effervescence than I was expecting based on the small head.

Flavors:  Tart at the front, then cherry and vanilla come out.  Almost tastes like canned cherry pie filling.  Finishes with a little barnyard funk, a touch of vanilla, and a very strong sour apple sourness.

Overall: Not my favorite sour or fruit beer, or even my favorite New Glarus sour or fruit beer.  Definitely nothing bad about this brew, but nothing really excited me either.  This might actually be my least favorite New Glarus beer so far, and it's hard to put a finger on exactly why.  Where their other sours and fruit beers not being overtly or offensively sour, and their hoppier beers being a bit malty comes across as balance and finesse, and even approachability across styles or even to non-beer drinkers, this one just seems too sweet, light bodied, and bland for a barrel-aged sour, but not quite malty or mild enough to make it an approachable session beer.  Again, definitely nothing bad about this beer, but if I had a fridge full of the full New Glarus lineup, this would probably be my last choice.

Tasting Notes: New Glarus Raspberry Tart

Appearance: Pours a deep but translucent amber, with a slight red tint.  Effervescent, with lots of little bubbles rising while being poured, and while sitting.  Interesting for such an effervescent beer, also had a decent sized, off white, almost light caramel colored head, with great retention, but minimal lacing.

Aroma: Sweet and tart raspberry.  Just a tiny bit of funk.

Mouthfeel: Fairly light, but does leave a little bit of a syrupy sensation behind.

Flavors: Well balanced.  Starts out just the right amount of tart, noticeable but not offputting.  Gets sweet, without ever being syrupy or sickeningly sweet, with a subtle vanilla note, and rounds out just tart enough to pucker your lips a little bit and leave you wanting more.

Overall: Good beer.  Tart enough to please us sour-lovers, but balanced and gentle enough that even people who might not usually drink sours could drink it.  Sweet enough to please some unlikely beer drinkers, without being syrupy or tasting artificial like some popular framboise.  A great beer to introduce a wine or cocktail drinker to craft beer.  And a great fruit/sour beer to introduce a beer drinker who might not usually drink them.  Not a lot of malt or hop flavors, but also not quite the same as a lot of better known fruit beers or sours.  Definitely will be picking up some more of this when I am back in the dairy land.

How To Taste Beer, Wine, and Spirits

So we all know how to drink, right?  But how do you taste a beer, a wine, or a spirit to get the most unique and thorough tasting experience?  Here's a few helpful hints:

Prepare
You shouldn't smoke, brush your teeth, or eat or drink anything with a strong flavor for about 15 minutes before you taste.  Also, use appropriate glassware.  If you are tasting specifically to hone your palate, or blind tasting, or doing any other type of formal tasting, you will want a clear glass that allows a good view from all angles of your beverage of choice.  You will also want something with plenty of room to breath, and a tapered opening.  This will allow the aromas to fully develop in the glass, but also concentrate them on your nose and palate.  Snifters and red wine glasses make great tasting glasses.

Look
You want to look at the beer, wine, or spirit first, especially if you are blind tasting, or tasting against a certain style or varietal.  You are looking for several things: color, shade, opaqueness, haze, sediment, etc.  With sparkling wine and beer, you're also looking at the carbonation.  Are the bubbles large or small?  Do they rise quickly or slowly, or do they just kind of linger at the sides of the glass or the top?  With beer in particular, is there a head?  What is the color and consistency of the head?  Does it hold or dissipate quickly?  Once it dissipates, does it leave lacing on the sides of the glass?  Give the glass a slow swirl.  Especially with beer and sparkling wine, be gentle.  When you swirl the glass, does the beverage leave "legs" or streaks on the glass?  This is a good indication of texture, and can give you some clues about residual sugar as well as alcohol content of what you are tasting.  All of these factors can provide important clues as to what you're about to drink, or give you some indication of the  quality and the adherence to style guidelines and prototypes.

Smell
Our taste buds only taste sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami.  The rest of what we perceive as flavor is actually tied to our sense of smell.  In order to fully appreciate a drink, we should smell it before we taste it.  Give the glass another gentle swirl.  This will release more smells  inside the glass.  Several short sniffs are better than one long one.  Especially if you are in a place with other smells, try to isolate the smells of the drink.  Don't be afraid to stick your nose right in the glass.  Or, make a cup using your hand, or even waft the aromas of the beverage toward your nose.  If you are blind tasting, look for smells that stick out as telltale aromas of certain styles, then narrow it down from there.  If you are not blind tasting, run through some smells you might expect from this particular spirit, beer style, or varietal.  Use the opportunity of smelling the beverage to pull out fruit, caramel, chocolate, or other notes which can easily be confused with sweetness, and make note of them so you can use them later.  Let your mind run wild.  Our sense of smell is closely linked to a lot of emotional memories, which can mean that smelling a drink can be the most enjoyable part about tasting it!

Taste
Yes, you finally get to taste the spirit.  There are a lot of things you're looking for here, and I find that the best way to get them all is to actually taste in three separate sips.
The first sip, wash the beverage through your mouth.  Wash it over, under, and around your tongue.  Make sure it hits the tip of the tongue, the back of your throat, the roof of your mouth, and swallow it.  Although it is a myth that we only taste certain tastes on certain parts of the tongues, the receptors for each taste are distributed differently in each part of the mouth.  Swishing the drink over everything allows you to perceive the tastes at different parts of the mouth and tongue.  Pay particular attention to sweetness and bitterness here.  Sweetness can be tricky, and this is where the smells you picked up on earlier come in.  Sweetness in alcoholic beverages comes from residual (unfermented) sugars.    Do you get sweetness when you are more focused on the basic flavors of the drink?  Or is a chocolate, caramel, fruit, or other flavor giving an illusion of sweetness?  Finally, use this as an opportunity to assess the mouthfeel and body of the beer, wine, or spirit.  Does it glide right off your tongue?  Does it leave a sticky, syrupy residue?  Is it somewhere in between?  Does it make you pucker up?  Does it leave parts of your mouth dry and thirsty for more?  This can tell you a lot about the characteristics of a beer, wine, or spirit.

 The second sip, swallow the beverage, and immediately exhale through your nose.  This will give you a rush of "flavors" as your sense of smell kicks in to process all of the vapors left behind from your drink.  This should be the most intense part of the tasting, allowing your senses of smell and taste to interact completely.  Look for the same smells you got when you smelled, as well as any new surprises.  Do the flavors all come at once?  Is there a taste you got when you first took the sip that fades into another mid-palate, and yet another as you exhale?

Finally, just take a sip.  Drink it like you would if you were at the dinner table, or at a party with friends.  Hopefully your perception is enhanced by the whole exercise of tasting.  At the end of the day, though, your overall impression should be based on what you enjoy or don't enjoy on a daily basis.  Is the flavor pleasant?  Do all of the things you've tasted before blend together nicely, fight for attention, or each stand out individually?  Is one dominant over the others?  Does one particular flavor linger on the palate?  Most importantly, now that you have (hopefully) gained a better understanding of the wine, beer, or spirit, how do you like it?  Is it your new favorite, one you can't wait to have more of, a good choice, or not for you?

Tasting can be both fun and educational.  Blind tasting is a great way to develop your palate.  Tasting a product (even one you've had a million times) in a more thoughtful and structured way is a great way to become more familiar with it, and hopefully gain a deeper appreciation.

Tasting Notes: Avery Samael's Oak-Aged Ale

This bottle is from Batch 5, bottled in April 2009.

Appearance: Pours a very dark, toffee brown, with a caramel colored head, which though thin, had pretty good retention.

Aroma: Boozy, sweet, chocolate, dark fruit.

Mouthfeel: Heavy, full bodied, but not as syrupy as I would have expected from a beer with over 16% ABV and as much sweetness on the nose.

Taste: Caramel, chocolate, booze, sweet.  Picked up a lot more caramel and less chocolate on the palate than on the nose with this one.  Definitely a booziness (as would be expected from a beer with this ABV).  Almost a sherry or port flavor.  Plum and oak on the finish, which lingers for quite a while.

Overall: Interesting beer, and definitely have to be ready for it and expecting it to enjoy.  It mellows a little as it warms up and breathes (as any 4 year old barleywine probably would).  Unlike some other barleywines, this beer is not aggressively hopped, leaving the malty, boozy, and sweet flavors in the spotlight.  Great beer, and unlike a lot of quads, barleywines, and other sweet and boozy beers, it actually comes in a 12 ounce bottle, which is great!

Tasting Notes: Shipyard Export

First of all, sorry for the awful photo.  I just noticed you can't read the label, and the head is not there.  Next time I drink one of these I may just re-upload.  Now, on to the beer.

Appearance: Pours a light amber with a hint of caramel or orange color to it and a slight haze.  Nice medium-bodied white head to it, which went away fairly quickly, but left some nice lacing.

Aroma: Malty.  Corn, cereal, no fruit or hops on the nose of this beer.
Mouthfeel: Medium bodied.  Definitely not syrupy or heavy, but also not going to roll through like a lager or some other blondes or golden ales.

Flavor: Definitely get the same malt as on the nose, albeit more cereal and less corn.  A little more caramel, fuller malt flavors.  Also a hint of spice, maybe allspice or clove.  Finishes with a crisp hop bite, and no real lingering flavors.

Overall:  Meh.  Nothing bad about this beer.  It's just probably not something I would go out of my way to buy again.  It's got the same flavors and aromas as a macro-brewed adjunct lager, but a little more body, some caramel sweetness, and some spice.  After years of associating that corn smell and the malty start with a slightly hoppy finish with the big guys, it's had for me to really think of them differently, even with a little extra sweetness and some spice.

Styles of Gin

Gin is one of the groups of spirits with the most variation within styles.  While two well vodkas, or two well rums are likely to have a similar taste, as are two top shelf vodkas or two top shelf rums, every gin is distinct.  The legal definition of gin (in the United States) is simply "an alcoholic beverage of no less than 40% ABV that possesses the characteristic flavour of juniper berries."

This clearly leaves some room open for interpretation, as is clear from the range of products on the market.  There are a few major categories which, although flavors vary even within the categories, can help tell a little bit about the gin.  I am going to list them in the order I think most American drinkers are likely to encounter them in.

London Dry gin is the most common type of gin.  It is dry, focuses primarily on the juniper flavors, and is generally fairly crisp and clean.  Tanqueray, Bombay, Boodles, Beefeaters, Seagram's, etc. all fall within this category.

New American gin is basically any gin which fits within the legal definition of gin, but not necessarily within any of the other styles.  Generally speaking, although not always, they tend to put more of an emphasis on citrus, floral, or herbal flavors, than London dry.  Hendrick's is probably the best known new style gin.

Sloe Gin is not really gin (any more).  It is a liqueur which uses a gin base, blackthorn berries (also known as sloe berries) for flavor, and is oak aged.

Genever (several different spellings exist) is starting to make a come back, but is actually the original style of gin.  It is attributed to the dutch.  This is a style which can be made from malt wine or a mixture of malt wine and sugar cane derived spirits, which are the redistilled with juniper and other gin flavorings, and are sometimes aged.  The key difference is that the grain (in oude genever) or other (in jong genever) spirits, as well as the aging when that takes place, are expected to actually contribute to the final gin flavor.  Where other styles focus on a crisp, clean spirit that highlights the clean flavors of gin, genever has more of a rough, grain spirit flavor.  Bols Genever and Genevier are the best known examples.

Old Tom gin is a sweeter style than London dry.  It actually predates London dry, as during early days of gin distillation, the alcohol and distillation flavors were so strong and offensive, that sweeter flavorings were needed to make gin palatable.  It is the gin originally used in a Tom Collins.  There are not a lot of well known brands of Old Tom gin, but the names for brands within this category usually include "Old Tom" or "Old English" right in the name.

Plymouth Gin is similar to London dry, but more earthy in flavor.  It must be produced in Plymouth, England, and as of right now, there is only one brand of true Plymouth Gin, coincidentally called Plymouth Gin on the market.