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Sal and I stopped in at opening time to try the Ola Dubh tasting on Thursday. It certainly was an adventure.

Ola Dubh is brewed by Harviestoun Brewery in Scotland. It is their Old Engine Oil dark beer matured in casks formerly used to age Highland Park whiskies. Novare Res is offering four different versions of Ola Dubh: the 12, 18, 30 and 40. The numbers refer to the age of the whiskies formerly in the casks.

We had the Ola Dubh 12 at NERAX. I can attest that these are very expensive beers. At NERAX the 12 was wonderful, with a delightful molasses note.

Tasting the four beers tonight was a formidable exercise. Our beers arrived at varied temperatures, which made a difference. The cooler temperatures held back complexity and emphasized the whiskey notes. Things got better as the beers approached a common, room temperature.

When we arrived the 12 had not dropped yet and was a bit murky. At NERAX we also found that the 12 needed an extra day to drop.

The differences among these beers are subtle but noticeable. The 12 tasted the most like a traditional stout. The 18 showed a bit of tar and was lovely. The 30 was my favorite, very smooth. It was less complex than the 40, but seemed to present more of a beer experience than the 40. The 40 was round and mellow, and offered more of a beer-whiskey synthesis on the palate.

At $35 this is not an inexpensive experience, but it is truly unique. I doubt you’ll ever see this opportunity again. A good strategy is to take a friend and share the flight – 8 oz is a generous pour of these beers.

Enjoy!

Yes, I know that just about every other beer blog in the country is reporting this, but as a recent convert to the cult of homebrewing, I’m excited that our brothers and sisters in Utah can now proudly, and legally, show off their skills with barley and hops. There are an estimated 7,000 homebrewers in the state.

On March 24, 2009, Governor Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. of Utah signed into law legislation (HB 51) that makes homebrewing beer legal. The ‘Exemption for Alcoholic Beverage Manufacturing License’ was sponsored by Representative Christine A. Johnson and made Utah the 46th state to legalize homebrewing. The US Government made homebrewing legal on a federal level in 1978. Since then all but four states; Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma have made homebrewing legal.

‘Home-brewing is a healthy and vibrant hobby in Utah as evidenced by the outpouring of support HB 51 received in the 2009 Legislature,’ commented Rep. Christine A. Johnson. ‘Many thanks to the American Homebrewers Association for thorough education, great committee testimony and association members who flooded elected officials with emails of support.’

Utah is the only state to have legalized homebrewing in the last decade, but hopefully it will not be the last. There is currently an active movement to legalize homebrewing in Alabama, and the AHA has heard from homebrewers in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Oklahoma who are interested in starting movements in each of those states.

BeerAdvocate.com has the full article.

Small Beers are a style of beer rarely seen these days. NERAX is fortunate to have not one but two of these cask ales on offer this year. Small Beers are the product of a brewing technique that dates back to medieval times, parti-gyle brewing.

In an article in Brewing Techniques magazine Randy Mosher said this about parti-gyle brewing:

“One technique that has almost disappeared from modern practice is parti-gyle brewing. This technique involved drawing off the first part of the mash and using it to make strong ale or barley wine, then remashing the grain and drawing off the second runnings for a more ordinary, weak and watery concoction called small beer, the light beer of its day.

The fabrication possibilities of the time made it relatively easy to construct large wooden mash tuns, but the technology required to construct equally large kettles had yet to be developed. Consequently, English ale breweries often made three brews from a single mash – strong (XXX), common (XX) and small (X) beer. In fact, this is the historical basis of the categories of Belgian Trappist beers: triple was made from the undiluted wort from the mash, double was made from the runoff from reflooding the first mash, and single was made from a subsequent infusion.”

The first of our beers is from the John Harvard brewpub in Connecticut, and the second is from our very own Marshall Wharf Brewing Company in Belfast.

The folks at Marshall Wharf initially set out to make a Barley Wine. That beer reportedly finished off in the 12% range. We’re not getting that beer at NERAX, but I’m sure looking forward to trying it somewhere here in Maine. The small beer, Little Toot, was a natural part of the Barley Wine project. It’s not finished yet, but it seems to be headed for a range of 4.1%-4.5%  This one on cask should be a lot of fun.

The weekly Thursday beer special at Great Lost Bear features Harpoon Brewery this week. Their well-known IPA and Celtic Red Ales are available for the usual $2.50 a pint, but who hasn’t had those? Of more interest is their 100 Barrel Series Catamount Maple Wheat, also for $2.50 a pint, and their Leviathan Series Baltic Porter. A 13.5 oz pour is all you’ll get of this 9.5% ABV monster, but a couple pints of that might be deadly, so the smaller serving is a pretty good idea. The Catamount Maple Ale pours

[a] beautiful orange-ish copper color, totally clear, just like all Harpoon brews. Big ‘ol carbonation, with tiny bubbles wildly swirling around to create a rather healthy looking, thick, frosty off-white head…The aroma is really inviting, with a big whiff of sweet, yet smokey Vermont Maple syrup. The spicy, herbal wheat balance is very good, with the wheat, hops and heat really adding to the nose complexity.

The BA folks outdid themselves with that description, but it sure sounds tasty. I really need to see if I can find some of this at the RSVP, as my Thursday night volleyball league prevents me from getting some straight from the tap. For those not similarly engaged, stop on down to Forest Ave’s beer block and grab a pint! Oh, and that Leviathan Series page lists a Quad as their newest offering. I will hunt this one down–it sounds wonderful.