Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Cellar Monday: Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron

Before I get to this week's edition of Cellar Monday, I wanted to give a brief recap of a beer event I helped organize last night in Montclair. After a couple months of back and forth mails with the beer manager at Amanti Vino and some of my NJ beer comrades, we settled on Sunday February19th for the first ever bottle share at Amanti Vino. We had ten to eleven people up in the classroom at any point in the night, and spent about three hours going through an assortment of beers both vintage and/or not available in NJ.

The complete lineup of downed soldiers
The whole lineup, with the exception of Noble Rot, generally went over pretty well. Some personal favorites (aside from the Black Tuesday and Pretty Things Our Finest Regards that I brought) include the Hitachino Nest 3 Days Ale (this beer was mashed in when the earthquake hit Japan last year, and the wort ended up sitting in the mash tun for 3 days before it went through the rest of the brewing process), Portsmouth Black Cat Stout (a Dry Irish Stout that packed a ton of flavor into a 5.5%ABV beer), and the Boulevard/Deschutes collaboration Conflux #2 (a witbier/IPA hybrid that was drinking very nicely despite being a couple months old). Hopefully it was just the first of many such events at Amanti Vino.

As for this week's edition of Cellar Monday, the beer of choice is Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron, bottled in November of 2009.


Winter 2009-2010 was when my cellar first started to really grow. I started a yearly tradition of adding some of Dogfish Head's big beers (specifically, World Wide Stout and Olde School Barleywine along with Palo Santo), and decided to check in on a bottle from the first set. From the second the beer hit the glass, I could smell the unique spicy and woody notes from the Palo Santo wood. They really assert themselves and dominate the beer. There's still some milk chocolate and caramel from the base beer, but those are very much in the background. The wood aging definitely seems to be much more prominent here than in fresh bottles that I've had. The body is still somewhat of a marvel for restrained and not heavy it is. It's not light by any means, but when I hear "12% Imperial Brown Ale" I'm bracing for something that's a bit more viscous. The beer ends up being a bit more easy drinking than one would expect because of this. I did enjoy my glass of Palo Santo Marron tonight, but I prefer the better balance between base beer and wood aging that I've found in more fresh bottles.

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