This Week In Beer
So I may or may not have missed posting last week. A rare Monday night shift came up at work, and with no Cellar Monday and no major beer happenings, I decided to just hold off for a week and keep on schedule. It really has been a couple of quiet week on the beer front though. I happened to find myself in NYC anyway on Kentucky Breakfast Stout release day (Joel McHale stand-up performance/Community screening party) and decided to bounce around on the subway for an hour and hunt some bottles. I ended up with three bottles of KBS and a bonus surprise Speedway Stout for my efforts. They were definitely worth the time, as they're both fantastic beers, and the KBS in particular was nice to come home to after an insane day at work over the weekend. This past Wednesday I hit a milestone as I logged my 450th review on Beer Advocate, and did so with a bottle of Cantillon Fou' Foune that I'd been saving for the occasion. This lambic aged on apricots was absolutely phenomenal, with an absurd amount of fresh apricot aroma and flavor. If anything, my only complaint was that the funky/sour part of the beer was a little subdued. I'd love to get my hands on another bottle and let it age for 6 months or a year and see where its at. Hopefully the road to 500 reviews won't be too long, because I've already got another Great bottle lined up for that night.
Cellar Monday
I like to think that I have fairly decent taste in craft beer. I also like to think that I have a fairly solid grasp on what beers should and shouldn't be good candidates for aging. As a result I anticipate that most weeks this section will continue to highlight good drinking experiences I've had with a beer from my stash. Not every week can be a winner though, and I guess it was only a matter of time before I hit on a night like tonight and a beer like Cuvee de Tomme. Cuvee de Tomme is a big sour quad aged on cherries in bourbon barrels. At face value there are a lot of things that I tend to like in beers at play here, and in fact this has been a favorite of mine on draft at several beer festivals. As a result I traded for a bottle just about a year ago. The problem with that is, Lost Abbey is quite well known for dodgy QC/some of their bottled beers not conditioning properly and ended up nearly or totally flat. This one was he latter unfortunately, as I when I poured it not a bit of foam came together on top of the beer. The aroma was alright, with a bit of cherry and bourbon and tartness, but the flavor profile ultimately ended up making this one a drain pour. There was a huge soy sauce taste on the back end of each sip that, without the bubbles from the carbonation, just lingered on my palate until it was briefly washed away the next time I brought the glass to my lips. There was also a surprising amount of oxidation present for a beer that I believe has less than two years in the bottle. My best guess is that by nature of the beer being totally flat, there was no layer of CO2 in the bottle to protect it and it was left more susceptible to the effects of oxygen exposure than your average beer. Whatever the case, this isn't my firs flat bottle from the Lost Abbey, and it's a problem they've been associated with for a couple years now, so I don't think I'll be making any effort to get any more bottles from them in the near future.
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