The Festival of Barrel Aged Beers (FOBAB)

The Festival of Barrel Aged Beers is an event that happens annually in Chicago. It is both a celebration and a competition for barrel aged beers. The only qualification to be entered in this competition is that it must be aged in some sort of barrel. Wine Barrels, Sour Barrels, Oak Barrels, Bourbon barrels, Any Wood Barrel goes! The event is an open tasting with dozens perhaps 100s of jockey boxes. There are so many taps that there is barely ever a line, each group of 4 or so taps is manned by a person. You're never waiting for a sample for long, water is provided as a palet cleanser and there is food availible to purchase. This is a well run event with 2 sessions, and no beers are only availible at a single session.

(read more after the break.)

Review: Cinnamon Treacle Old Ale

Cinnamon Treacle Old Ale
Appearance: Dark with a billowing head, The pour may have been a bit too aggressive as the head was just billowing.

Aroma: Neutral, not too much going on except the sweet smell of caramel malt.

Flavor: Neutral; Pretty Mild not enough treacle or cinnamon.

Mouth: Really good, Just the right amount of carbonation

Overall: Mild, this would be a good mild, not too flavored, not too booze, not too hoppy, very neutral. The next iteration of this style will be a bit more treacly, maybe some treacle in secondary, I dunno. It needed more dark treacle.

Rating: I sure made a great mild. Too bad I was shooting for an old ale. This needed something, more cinnamon, more treacle, bourbon barrel aging, something... I'd give it a C for average, because that's what it was.

Blackberry Pacific Gem Pale Ales

A few new types of hops are coming out of New Zealand these days and landing in my local home brew stores. These hops have a completely different set of flavors from the Noble German Hops, or the 'C' hops of the Pacific Northwest. One of the hops I'd like to try out in a beer is the Pacific Gem breed. This breed is said to 'fill the brew house with enticing aromas during kettle additions and has been described as producing oaken flavors with a distinct blackberry aroma.' This description could make this the perfect hop to make a black berry pale ale. A nice hoppy beer with bitter and sweet properties from a hop whose flavor should lend blend with the fruit addition for a nice complexity. If both the bitterness from the hops and the sweetness from the fruit can come through in the final product this brew could be a winner.

(read more after the break.)

Three Floyds 15th Anniversary

Saturday 11/12/11 was 3 Floyds 15th anniversary. They brew some fantastic beers. There was a 6 hour line to get into this event. Not for me though I knew better and arrived 2 hours early, I was about 20 minuttes from getting beer in the line.

The Beer: The Anniversary Beer was a super stout called Ballerstout which was made from Darkness, Darklord, Beer Geek Brunch, and Black Albert. Other beers to buy were Brandy Barrel Aged Dark Lord, Several Sours and One Off 3 Floyds Products. We got 4 Brandy DL and 1 Conquistador De Muerta. I got to sample Ballerstout outside in the beer tent. It was really good, It was very drinkable for being a big stout. The flavors were a perfect mesh of the strengths of the various components of the beer. It had the dark fruits from Darklord without the overall viscosity, it had the hop flavor of Darkness without being as intense, It had the coffee of Mikkeller without being too astringent.

(read more after the break.)