Introducing Contestants – Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout

It’s been a busy week at the beer tournament, but I’m determined to get intros up here of every beer and every brewery that I’ve heard back from.  Incidentally, if you ever take the time to call or email people at craft breweries, they tend to be overwhelmingly happy to get back to you and help you out.  People in the business of beer tend to be cool.


Anyhow, back to the Stout at hand, or in my case, in hand.  Brooklyn Brewery is a craft brewery located in – wait for it – Brooklyn, NY.  They have a pretty wide variety of beers, and you’ve probably noticed quite a few of them if you go into any decent beer store.  The easiest ones to spot are the giant numbered ones Local 1 and Local 2.  They  have a ton of others, including (naturally) the Black Chocolate Stout.


This is the first one I’ve reviewed where the taste is indisputably chocolate-infused; the label doesn’t lie, and they do it well with the natural malts of a stout.  BBCS checks  in at a hefty 10% ABV, which fits the style just fine.  Chocolate and a hint of alcohol dominate the nose. The mouthfeel on this one is a tiny bit stingy and bubbly, which is a stark contrast to some of the other contestants in the tournament.  I prefer something a little more smooth, but I’m curious to see how that influences things come tournament time.  I’m not the only judge, and I’ve never polled the others about their preferences. 


 
(Thanks to Ben H. and the good folks at Brooklyn Brewery for the pic!)


The beer pours a nice dark black with a brown head, both fine colors for the style.  I thought this was a defining characteristic of the style until the other day at a restaurant.  I ordered a Lone Rider Stout (a local brewery) and at first thought they had gotten my order wrong.  When it came back, I was shocked to find that I could see through the beer.  It looked more like a dark lager.  It ended up tasting pretty nice and fit the stout mold, but I just couldn’t get over the color.  The aftertaste is slightly bitter and chocolaty, but overall quite pleasant. 


I’m a big fan of this beer.  As far as predictions for the event -  I really have no idea how far this will go.  It’s got a tough matchup with a much pricier beer in round 1, Southern Tier Choklat (for now – recall that there may be some switching before May Day), but part of the reason for this tourney was to see if the higher prices on some of these beers are truly merited. It’s a tough call, but I could see it pulling off the upset, which would bring it head to head with (I have to believe) Ten FIDY, which is going to be a tough out.  This beer is fully capable of shocking the tournament, despite being seeded 15th (seeding is done entirely by price).  


That’s one reason I’m a huge fan of this – I can honestly say it’s in the same league as the best in this tourney while being almost half the PPOz of some.  I’m very curious as to where BBCS ends up.  In my “personal seeding,” where I did this by personal preference rather than price, this would probably be sitting pretty in the top five or six.  I’ve made no secret of my love for FIDY, Breakfast Stout, and Allagash Black, but this beer belongs in that class, along with BORIS the Crusher, Southern Tier Choklat, and a few others that I’ll get to in later posts. I don’t mean to universally heap props at the beers in the tourney, but in fairness part of the reason for many of the selections was that I knew them to be good.


Some of the contestants were added by trusted recommendation, BTW, so don’t necessarily take my lack of endorsement as a thumbs down.  For instance, I’ve never tasted our current #1 seed, Schafly Reserve.  The good people at The Perfect Pour in Elkridge, MD (the best beer store I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some damn good ones – the Foodery in Philadelphia is a close second) recommended that one, along with the Sam Smiths.  Sam Adams and Guinness were added purposefully to be the underdogs (and because I’ve had both of them and they are indeed respectable).  This wouldn’t be much of a does-price-matter experiment if we didn’t throw in the most readily available examples of the style.  I have some judges coming in that believe it impossible for a beer to be better than Guinness.  And no, they… okay… he isn’t Irish. 


Anyhow, I’ve managed to go way off track in this post.  The point is, welcome to Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and best of luck.  It’s good, it’s chocolaty, and it has what it takes to make it deep in the tourney.  We’ll see how it all ends up!

Introducing Contestants – Oskar Blues Ten FIDY

Hoo boy.  Next up on contestant's row is Oscar Blues Ten FIDY – and no, I didn’t fall asleep on the shift key.  That’s how they spell it.  Seriously – check out their site.

Oskar Blues is an American craft brewery in Lyons, Colorado that puts out a ton of delicious stuff, but perhaps the most distinct thing about them is that all of their beer comes in cans.  Seriously.  In their own words (from their about us page) :

Why cans? “We thought the idea of our big, luscious pale ale in a can was hilarious,” recalls founder Dale Katechis. “And it made our beer immensely portable for outdoor enjoyment fun.” Katechis and his crew then discovered other bennies of aluminum cans. “Cans keep beer incredibly fresh by fully protecting it from light and oxygen.”

And unlike cans of old, the modern aluminum can is lined with a coating so beer and metal never touch. Cans are also easier to recycle, free of glass breakage issues, and less fuel-consuming to ship. (35% of the weight of a bottle of beer is the bottle itself.)

I have yet to find one of their beers with any hint of what I think of as canned taste, so I’m inclined to take them at their word.  It is still a little weird, though I do enjoy the fact that I can sip a Ten FIDY at my apartment complex’s pool.

As for the beer itself, take a look at this beauty.

(Thanks to Chad M. and the good folks at Oskar Blues for the images in this post.)

Ten FIDY clocks in at 9.5% ABV, making it a nice heavy beer.**  It pours like a kind of thick coffee that you can’t see through, and it tastes delicious.  This is one of my favorites as well, and it has a very smooth mouthfeel to it and a very malty nose.  I’m a sucker for a beer with good nose (the aroma you get off the top of a nicely poured glass, which is noticeably absent in T&A beers).  I can definitely taste the hint of chocolate and caramel, and I love the “coated” feeling this one leaves in your mouth after you take a sip.  There is definitely a little bit more sweetness here than in some of my other favorite beers, but FIDY does well to toe the line without crossing over into super-sugar-insanity. 

As for predictions – I think this one has a shot to take home the title.  I picked FIDY to lose a close match in the finals with Breakfast Stout, but there is no reason this can’t pull out the win.  They have a tough road to the finals; both Southern Tier and Brooklyn Black are similar styles, and they’ll have to take on  one of them in round 2, and I suspect they’ll have to get by BORIS the Crusher in the semis. 

You can get FIDY at nice beer stores in NC and MD.  I’m still waiting for the day when I can go to my favorite bar and see this though.

Someday we’ll get there.  Someday.  Flying Saucer, I’m looking at you.  Make it happen.

** Update from Chad M. at Oskar Blues – Ten FIDY is indeed now brewing at 10.5%.  The can I was looking at while posting this in was old and had an ABV posted at 9.5%.  Not sure how old that makes my can (I bought it two days ago), but on a side note, I can confirm that even apparently older cans of FIDY don’t pick up any taste from the can.  The beer is still great.

Introducing Contestants – Founders Breakfast Stout

The Contestants, of course, are the beers – they’re the ones competing for the grand prize of… well, being the tastiest.  I’ll be doing a quick profile of each of the tournament hopefuls as May Day approaches, as well as intros to each of the judges.

To start off the introductions, we’ll start with one of my favorites (and my pick to take it all, if you’ll recall), Founders Breakfast Stout.

(Thanks to Dave E. & the good folks at Founders for sending me the nice pic of Breakfast Stout)

Founders Brewing Company is a Grand Rapids, MI based craft brewery that has been around since 1990 with a mission to make interesting, complex beers that beer lovers will love.  There’s a bunch of other stuff to be found in their portfolio of beers, but Breakfast Stout was the only one we put in the tournament (because I couldn’t get my hands on any of the hyper-rare, hyper-awesome Kentucky Breakfast Stout anywhere other than the Flying Saucer, and sadly they wouldn’t let me take the keg home).  You can get most of the Founders beers at Total Wine here in Raleigh (I recommend the North Hills and Brier Creek locations), though God help you if you’re looking in Maryland.  Never tried to find it in DC or Virginia.

Founders Breakfast Stout is a wonderfully flavored, malty, chocolaty, coffee-y, oatmealy stout.  Hence the name; it really tastes like a smorgasbord of all those things, which definitely gives the feeling of “breakfast” to me.  I’ve always thought malt tastes like non-sugary cereal, so perhaps I’m odd in that respect.  It clocks in at a respectable 8.3% ABV.  That sounds high if you’re a T&A beer fan (anybody with commercials involving… well… T&A), but for those of us on the high-end beer circuit, that’s middle-of-the-road.  It’s easy to drink and the alcohol doesn’t really impact the taste.

The reason this one stands above the rest to me is the balance of the flavors.  There are a lot of chocolate stouts, a lot of coffee stouts, and a lot of oatmeal stouts, many of which have some flavorings from the others, but I’ve never found another one that balances them all quite so well.  This also avoids the trap that some flavored stouts fall into where they are absolutely overpoweringly sweet.  There’s always a certain sweetness to a malty beer, and stouts are known for so being, but you can go too far.  I had a vanilla stout from a brewery that I was otherwise a fan of (I forget exactly which) one time and it was just sickening.  Liquid sugar is not what I want in my beers.

Announcing the first ever Tournament of Stouts!

To begin this blog, I am announcing the first ever Tournament of Stouts, to be held on the first day of May, 2010.  This will indeed be an epic brawl – 16 stouts enter, only one emerges as the supreme champion of Stout beer.  The entrants were selected based on a number of criteria, but mostly the following.


1. I could find them by searching through a handful of excellent specialty beer stores in Maryland, the District of Columbia, or North Carolina.


2.  They are classified as Stouts.  This is a fairly simple thing to validate; the most this is pushed is to include the excellent Allagash Black, described as a Belgian stout on various sites.  Other than this one, I’ve never seen a Belgian Stout, and I thought it vital to include.  Incidentally – in case Rob Tod (owner/founder of Allagash, with whom I’ve drank and chatted twice at events in Richmond and DC) is reading this, it’s an absolute crime that you can’t buy Allagash Black by the bottle in Raleigh, NC.  Can you please bitch-slap your distributors to get that to the Raleigh area?  Total Wine is the easiest and most popular store to get it into, and I would totally buy a bottle every week or so.


3. I must not hate them.


4. They must not be insanely expensive.  There was only one beer disqualified for this reason, though I’m still tempted to include it if I can get a few people to go in on enough to make the tourney.


I’ve decided to seed the beers by price per ounce – if you cost more, then in theory you taste better, right?  We’ll put that to the test once and for all. I’ll be introducing you to the judges later in this blog; the only firm requirement is that you’re a fan of stouts.  In no way will this be a world-famous grouping of beer gourmands (at least, not until after this blog gets world famous, which it totally will).  I’ll also be introducing you to the contestants (the stouts).  There will be more tournaments like this in the future, perhaps leading to a final four beers of various types; we’ll see.  Right now, we’re judging stouts in a 16 stout single-elimination tourney.


The rules of the Tournament of Stouts:


1. For each matchup, every judge must drink at least one ounce (I’m hoping to find convenient disposable cups for two-ounce pours) and have a glass from which to smell the nose of the beer.  You have to actually swallow beer to properly taste it, unlike wine, so drinking is required.


2. In the event that the voting is tied (there is no restriction on the number of judges to force that number to be odd), the winner is the beer with the cheaper PPO (price per ounce) rating.  If the beers are still tied, everyone keeps drinking samples until a winner can be decided (though such a close vote is carefully documented).


3. No judge should be drunk at any time during the process.  Many of these beers are high proof, but be careful to judge as sober as possible.  You don’t have to be in driving shape the whole time, but you should be coherent and able to take notes on the finer points of the taste and smell of whatever you are drinking.  Our judges will be provided with saltines, pretzels, and water during the judging process.


4.  All judging must be done blind.  By blind, I mean that you absolutely must not know which matchup you are tasting.  The judge only decides between beer A and beer B, not specific breweries or brews.  Doing otherwise could introduce a bias.  Note that this requires you go through the semifinals and finals before finding out who won the semis; otherwise you would know who you were judging in the final matchup.  The semis have beers A vs B and C vs D, and then the winners battle it out (as do the losers, in case you want a 3rd place beer) before the losers are announced. 


With those rules in place, here are the preliminary seedings for the 2010 tourney.  The number beside each is the PPOz rating (price per ounce multiplied by 1000.  Why multiplied by 1000?  Because it makes the numbers prettier, naturally).

1. Schafly Reserve – 591
2. Southern Tier Choklat – 528
3. Hoppin Frog BORIS the Crusher Oatmeal Stout - 500
4. Great Divide Oak Aged Yeti – 453
5. Allagash Black – 433
6. Thirsty Dog Siberian Nights – 416
7. Oskar Blues Ten FIDY – 354
8. Weyerbacher Heresy Imp Stout – 250
9. Young's Double Chocolate Stout – 236
10. Sam Smith Imperial Stout – 235
11. Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout – 235
12. Sam Adams Imperial Stout – 229
13. Founders Breakfast Stout – 208
14. North Coast Old Rasputin – 208
15. Brooklyn Black Chocolate – 166
16. Guinness - 125

First, a note about how the PPOz was determined.  I purchased the beers at various stores and used the highly scientific price (before tax) divided by ounces purchased to determine this rating.  It’s entirely possible that wherever you are, Guinness is cheaper.  I don’t really care; it would be wonderful if we had a sampling of places where all of these could be regularly found, and then averaged the PPOz rating for them. I am going through a lot of effort to get this tournament together, but driving to dozens of beer stores throughout the mid-atlantic / northern southeast region of the US to find stats on average prices is out of my reach/desire. 


Second, there absolutely are notable omissions from this list.  There may be one or two changes before the tourney starts.  I’m particularly keen to ditch one of the Sam Smiths to avoid having two beers by the same brewery, so something is likely to change.  As far as why things were omitted, see the (far) above listing for why I included/excluded things.  If you think a beer should have been included, please, please comment. I’ll do my best to include it next time.  I know that not all of these are in the same league, but I felt it would be patently silly not to include, for example, Guinness, to see how well the cheaper beers would do (and the cheap ones are not necessarily the ones I personally don’t think will make it very far).


I wish I could have included De Molen’s Hel et Verdomenis (Hell and Damnation), but at over $1 an ounce, I simply couldn’t justify buying a whole lot of it for a party.  That may change (and it would easily be the new #1 seed, having a rating of 1103), but for now it’s out.


The intro to each judge will include their guesses as to who will win the whole shebang, but I’ll go ahead and list mine for good measure.  For those that provide them ahead of time (and I’ll try to get this from everyone), I’ll post their prediction brackets.  The matchups are shown below.
--------------------------------------------
1 - Schafly Reserve - 591
16 - Guinness - 125
8 - Weyerbacher Heresy Imp Stout - 250
9 - Young's Double Chocolate Stout - 236
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5 - Allagash Black - 433
12 - Sam Adams Imperial Stout - 229
4 - Great Divide Oak Aged Yeti - 453
13 - Founders Breakfast Stout - 208
--------------------------------------------
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3 - Hoppin Frog BORIS the Crusher Oatmeal Stout - 500
14 - North Coast Old Rasputin - 208
6 - Thirsty Dog Siberian Nights - 416
11 - Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout – 235
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7 - Oskar Blues Ten FIDY - 354
10 - Sam Smith Imperial Stout - 235
2 - Southern Tier Choklat - 528
15 - Brooklyn Black Chocolate - 166
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Of these, I feel like the favorites are Allagash Black, Founders Breakfast, and Oskar Blues Ten FIDY.  My personal bracket has Founders over Oskar Blues in the final, though I think that Allagash ought to finish 2nd or 3rd;  I just see it having a hard time getting past my favorite to win it all, Founders Breakfast Stout, in the 2nd round.  I also think Oak Aged Yeti got a particularly crappy draw; they deserve to make it out of the first round, but as it stands I don’t see how they’ll do it.  Schafly makes the semis here in a walk, but I think only because of the favorable seeding.  I don’t see Heresy or Young’s Double Chocolate making much noise beyond round 1.  My big-time upset alert is Brookly Black Chocolate v. Southern Tier Choklat -  BBC is quite good, and could easily overtake its (far more expensive) opponent.  That should be a fun one to watch.  With these brackets, I see BORIS the Crusher ending up 3rd, which is fairly close to where I’d rank them by personal preference; I’d have them either 3rd or 4th, with the rest of the top four rounded out by Founders Breakfast, Ten FIDY, and Allagash Black (in no particular order). 


Anyhow, further brackets, predictions, judges, and beers will be introduced as this blog goes on.  I hope you all enjoy the tourney as much as I will being the judge.


Duff Out.