Commercial Review: Crooked Stave Surette Reserva (Dry Hopped)

Long before I started focusing on brewing saisons and similar beers, I was frequently seeking out any and all new saisons, sours, and similar beers.  While my focus now is more on homebrew, I still try to seek out great commercial examples of these beers.  As much as I homebrew, there are still so many commercial examples with unique ingredients, processes, yeast/bacteria combinations, etc., and trying them out is a great way to get a feel for something unique without having to brew a different batch.  This is great, of course, since I'm frequently coming up with way more ideas than I can possibly execute.  

I've been trying to get better about taking actual notes (meaning more than the 140 characters allowed by Untappd) when I try beers, and while I'm on my (hopefully) short brewing hiatus (twin boys born in November 2014!), I thought a good way to keep up the blog would be to have my thoughts on some commercial breweries and beer.  I'll start things off here with a beer review, and plan to include more commercial reviews, and also have brewery profiles where I will give background on a brewery, its equipment and production volume, special beers, and the person or people behind that brewery.  Brewery background is something I've really been focused on as I start very preliminary planning for eventually opening up my own small place.  Of course, to the extent possible, I focus on breweries specializing in saisons and mixed fermentation beers.  I closely followed/am following the development of places like Casey Brewing & Blending, Haw River Farmhouse Ales, and Wolves & People.

With that background behind us, below are some thoughts on Crooked Stave's Surette Reserva (Dry Hopped), which is a dry-hopped version of their standard Surette, which itself is a mixed fermentation saison that is part of their year-round lineup.  Per a response from Crooked Stave's Twitter account, the dry hops were a mixture of Pacifica, Motueka, and Wakatu.

Appearance: Pours hazy with a light peach color. There's an initial two-finger white head that quickly dissipates down into a collar around the edges of the glass, leaving a bit of lacing behind. No apparent rising carbonation.

Nose: The first whiff does not bring forward as much New Zealand hop goodness as I was expecting.  It doesn't quite explode with hop character like some other dry-hopped Crooked Stave beers have, e.g., Dry-Hopped L'Brett d'Or.  Instead, the nose is more muted, with faint hints of gooseberry and green grape.  As it warms, there's just a hint of oak.  It could use a little more oomph, but overall it's nice enough.

Flavor: Here's where the beer really shines.  While the hop character is still pretty subdued, the light Brett fruitiness and light-to-moderate acidity fit together quite well.  The mouthfeel is fantastic.  It could use a bit more carbonation, but the body is light without being too thin, and the acidity is slightly puckering, but certainly not to the point where it detracts at all from drinkability.  As with the nose, hints of barrel come through toward the back end.

Overall: A really nice beer that I would happily consume on a regular basis if given the chance.   It's fairly similar to the regular Surette, but with a bit more tartness and less oak and funk.  Although they don't stand out too much, the hops have to be contributing a decent dose of fruitiness, as this beer tends more toward the gooseberry, white-wine-type character you get from New Zealand hops, as opposed to a more stone-fruit character in the regular Surette.

Homebrew Thoughts: This is the sort of beer that I would really love to be able emulate on the homebrew scale.  I'm planning on getting some smaller barrels in the coming years, and would love to make sure that all of my saisons (or at least most of them, keeping a clean petit saison as a crushable, everyday brew) take a pass through.  The dry-hopping is something I love, and Crooked Stave has done a great job with.  Using tropical and citrus-heavy hops as dry hops in a wild and/or sour beer is a great idea, as they play off of the fruity character that many Brett strains create.  

Best Saisons & Wilds of 2013

In what will hopefully become an annual tradition, below is a list of my favorite saisons and wilds from 2013.  These are my favorites that I had for the first time in 2013, and not necessarily those that were released in 2013, though that is the case for most of them.  I will also hopefully go back and create a list of my favorites from previous years based on my old reviews.  Doing that, I should be able to go back to 2009.

It was great to go back and remember all of these beers.  It's amazing how quickly breweries around America have been popping up with a focus on saisons and wild beers.  It's a trend I hope to see continue, and will hopefully be a part of myself someday.

The list:

01. Sante Adairius Saison Bernice

Sante Adairius Rusic Ales Saison Bernice, my favorite
saison/wild of 2013.  A beautiful beer fermented with a
blend of saison yeast, Brettanomyces, and Lactobacillus.

Photo: rusticales.com

02. Hill Farmstead Juicy

03. Side Project Saison du Fermier

04. Ale Apothecary Sahalie

05. Hill Farmstead Civil Disobedience #5

06. Tired Hands HandFarm

07. Jester King Ol' Oi!

08. Oxbow Barrel Aged Farmhouse Pale Ale

09. Grassroots Brother Soigne

10. Crooked Stave Wild Wild Brett Violet

11. Backacre Sour Golden Ale

12. De Cam Lambiek Special

13. Peg's Barrel-Aged Pink Streets

14. Ale Apothecary La Tache

15. Crooked Stave Dry Hop L'Brett d'Or

16. Hill Farmstead Civil Disobedience #6

17. Prairie Artisan 'Merica

18. Rapp Brewing Gose

19. Oxbow Brewing Liquid Swords #7

20. Tired Hands Guillemot Prunus

21. Leelanau Good Harbor Golden Ale

22. Tired Hands Guillemot Nebula

23. BFM Sq. Rt. 225 Historical Saison

24. Goose Island 25th Anniversary Flanders Red

25. Drie Fonteinen Intense Red Oude Kriek

26. Pipeworks Flower Child

27. Girardin Fond Gueuze Bierpallieters

28. Oxbow Loretta

29. Bullfrog Oud 15

30. Prairie Artisan Gold

Orval's Brewmaster to Retire

Orval's brewmaster, Jean-Marie Rock, is set to retire after nearly 30 years at the brewery. He will be opening his own brewery, producing a beer utilizing "a method that brewers today have forgotten." An English translation of the interview (not that there are clearly some errors):

BROTH - Jean-Marie Rock is a little Elvis Trappist. It is he who in effect since 1985, gives the Orval taste we know it.He now wants to open a brewery. 

At nearly 65, he intends to make her childhood dream to create his own brewery Noirefontaine (Bouillon) and recreate a beer with a recipe forgotten all the brewers. The man, who has over 40 years of experience, develops a secret beer that Americans and the British were able to test and they are already fans. 

Jean-Marie Rock, why embark on this "adventure" when the time of retirement will ring?
I believe that as long as there different brewers, beer remains a flagship product of Wallonia. If I break my head to start this business, it is because I want to do something for our region. 

When your brewery open she? 

It takes six months to build. I hope that in a year and a half, we can drink the first beer.The project is on track for a long time. I am associated with a friend 15 years my junior.It sells equipment for breweries. We want to install on the N89, on the set of Noirefontaine, adjacent to the garage Arnould. 

This road is a beautiful showcase.At peak times, we calculated an hourly flow of 6,000 vehicles. Because of red tape, we lost a year. 

Your beer will she with a remote Orval? 

No. I'll just say this will not be a lager, but a special beer. I once made brews with a method that brewers today have forgotten.

UPDATE: Orval's new brewmaster will be Anne-Francoise Pypaert (link), who has been in charge of Orval's lab for the past twenty years.

Lost Abbey Veritas Series

Below is all the information I have collected to date regarding Lost Abbey's Veritas series. Big thanks to Beachbum1975 and his blog post (February 24, 2010) for much of the initial information I found regarding blends 001 through 008. Thanks to Beer Served Rare for the rumored bottle counts on 001 through 009 (minus 008). Information stated as coming from Tomme himself is based on what he relayed to a group of friends at the DC Lost Abbey tasting that he crashed. See the videos for that: Part one. Part two.

I will update this information as more becomes available. In the future, I'd like to find specific release dates for each release.


As an initial note, it's likely that each Veritas beer has more components than identified here. After the first blend, which has its components identified by actual percentages, it's likely that additional beers were used but have not been specifically identified by Tomme.

Veritas 001. This is a blend comprised of 2003 Cuvee de Tomme (40%), Old Viscosity (20%), and Red Stone Black Raspberry Mead (20%). The remaining 20% is unclear.

Approximate release: February 2007

Rumored bottle count: 420

Veritas 002. This release is a blend of Avant Garde (barrel-aged and bug-infused versions) plus Black Raspberry Mead and Old Viscosity.

Approximate release: September 2007

Rumored bottle count: 420

Veritas 003 . This variant is a blend of Amazing Grace, Angel's Share, and Cuvee de Tomme. Tomme said that it had cherries and a little bit of Cuvee de Tomme.

Approximate release: January 2008

Rumored bottle count: 840

Veritas 004. The components of one of the most-heralded blends were Cuvee de Tomme, Duck Duck Gooze, and Yellow Bus. Tomme says this was "Yellow Bus light," and used the same peaches as Yellow Bus, but had a different base.

Approximate release: November 2008

Rumored bottle count: 840

Veritas 005. This blend utilized an undisclosed sour base aged in French Oak barrels with wild grapes from Southern California (Temecula). According to Beer News, this beer was once known as Vino Veritas, though this may have been a reference to what became Veritas 007. Tomme confirmed that this used California native wild grapes that are not suitable for wine.

Approximate release: November 2009. Never available as a release to the public.

Rumored bottle count: 72

Veritas 006. This is a blend of Angel's Share (aged on Cabernet Franc grapes) and Sangre del Cristo (Phunky Duck with sour cherries). Other rumored additions include a soured version of Avant Garde, raspberry mead, and tangerines. Tomme indicated that this was "sangria," with a blend of red wine barrel beer and orange zest.

Approximate release: November 2009

Rumored bottle count: 600

Veritas 007. This was rumored to be the famed collaboration Isabelle Proximus aged on Cabernet Franc grapes. Despite this speculation, it's more likely that the base beer was aged in Isabelle Proximus barrels. This was originally intended to be a re-brew of Veritas 005, with a more readily-available type of grape, though it didn't quite work out, and this ended up as Veritas 007 instead of a re-release of Veritas 005. Thanks to BA Masterski for the tip. Tomme confirmed that this was Cabernet Franc grapes with a sour base.

Approximate release: February 2010

Rumored bottle count: 600

Veritas 008. The most-controversial of the series, this is the winner of Lost Abbey's "T.E.A." competition, aka "Traditional Experimental Ale." The base beer was called Mellow Yellow, which itself is Lost Abbey's Port Amigo Mexican Lager aged in wine barrels. The blend then received lemon zest and tea. Tomme said this was a yellow base beer with black tea.

Approximate release: August 2010, as one of the aforementioned selections of "T.E.A." beers at a Lost Abbey event. The bottles were released at the Fourth Annual Barrel Party on November 13, 2010. Each of the 125 attendants received one bottle, and had the option to purchase one additional bottle.

Rumored bottle count: ~250.

Veritas 009. "Veritas 009 is a substantial departure from earlier members of The Lost Abbey’s small batch experimental program, which were generally sour beers aged in French oak barrels for 12 to 15 months. Begun in late 2007 as dark base beer, it was sent to freshly emptied bourbon barrels from Kentucky’s Heaven Hill Distilleries. The beer aged for 15 months before it was moved into French oak barrels previously used for wine (primarily Syrah). Sour cherries were added and the beer was left to rest for another year and three months. Finally, in mid-2010, it was pulled from the barrels, blended, bottled and sent off to condition for an additional 11 months." Description courtesy of The Lost Abbey. Tomme said this was a black base with sour cherries.

Release date: May 28, 2011

Rumored bottle count: 1404

Veritas 010. This beer is rumored to have some sort of relation to Lost Abbey's famed Yellow Bus, as 010 is also a wild ale with peaches. Tomme confirmed this was a yellow sour with yellow peaches. These are different peaches than the ones used in Yellow Bus and Veritas 004.

Release date: November 5, 2011

Rumored bottle count: 250-300

Veritas 011.  From RateBeer: "Veritas 011 is a Barleywine aged in McCall Cognac Barrels for 11 months. We added some fresh nectarines over the summer and hit it with a splash of Brett Clausenii.

It is not sour and may only develop a bit a fruity Brett qualities over time, so we aren’t expecting a full blown sour ale. ABV is 12.85%."

Veritas 012.  From RateBeer: "Veritas 012 will be a Kriek - blend of blond sours with cherries.
Similar profile to our 2011 Cable Car Kriek"

Veritas 013.  From RateBeer: "American Sour with Peaches and Nectarines The 13th edition of the Veritas series is an experiment using 3 separate strains of Brettanomyces, before honey, Peaches and Nectarines were added. The beer spent around 2 years total in French Oak barrels. Notes of fruits Peaches and Nectarines, oaky wood, brown sugar and Toasted Granola with Brett character throughout."

Multiple Appearances. This is a list of base beers and which Veritas variants they have appeared in:

Amazing Grace: 003
Angel's Share: 003, 006
Avant Garde: 002
Cuvee de Tomme: 001, 003, 004
Duck Duck Gooze: 004
Isabelle Proximus: 007
Mellow Yellow: 008
Old Viscosity: 001, 002
Red Stone Black Raspberry Mead: 001, 002
Sanre del Cristo: 006
Yellow Bus: 004

* Label image courtesy if The Lost Abbey.

Allagash Coolship

Allagash looks to be preparing another batch of Coolship Red. Rob Tod a few pictures today, including photos of unlabeled corked and caged bottles, as well as of the blending session.

Resting bottles:


Blending:


Pictures via Rob Tod's Twitter feed.

Lambic News -- Cantillon Amphoras and Meerts

Cantillon recently let fans know that they are reviving the old practice of utilizing amphoras, aka clay pots, for lambic fermentation. Read the story here. Additional pictures of the practice were posted on Cantillion's Facebook page. A preview image is above.

In other lambic news, here's a tidbit on the somewhat-lost tradition of Meerts, which is essentially a table lambic made from the second runnings of a lambic mash. It's something I'd like to try brewing in the near future.

Hill Farmstead Profile

Here's a great profile of Shaun Hill and Hill Farmstead with some brackground information on Shaun and the history of the brewery. Courtesy of Seven Days:

Shaun Hill peers through a hatch into a large metal tank that resembles the Apollo space capsule. Steam coats his face and shaggy brown hair as he pours green hops pellets from a plastic container into the simmering beer. He steps down from a platform, sets a timer and starts to squeegee water off the brewery’s concrete floor.

Outside, the weather is wet and raw, but inside Hill Farmstead Brewery it feels like a sauna. Hill and his apprentice, 24-year-old Owen Miller, are brewing a batch of autumn saison, a Belgian-style ale that farmworkers would drink at the end of a hard day’s labor. While Hill minds the kettle, Miller rakes the steaming malt, oat and barley mash from the tank where the brewing began earlier that morning.

In this modest garage off a dirt road in rural Greensboro, 31-year-old Hill is using a blend of chemistry and artistry to create some of the most buzzed-about small-batch beer around. That buzz is coming not just from Vermont but from the broader beer world.

Since launching last April, Hill Farmstead Brewery has racked up accolades from beer buffs on websites such as BeerAdvocate, where last week Hill’s Ephraim Imperial IPA was ranked No. 2 on the list of Top Buzz Beers. Even more impressive: Three beers Hill brewed while working as a guest brewer for Nørrebro Bryghus brewery in Denmark won two golds and a silver at the 2010 World Beer Cup in Chicago this past spring.

“I have never seen such demand for beer from such a small producer,” says Jed Davis, co-owner and chef of The Farmhouse Tap & Grill in Burlington, which keeps three or four Hill Farmstead beers on tap. “Shaun is a rising star in the local brewing scene. Shaun Hill and Sean Lawson [of Warren-based Lawson’s Finest Liquids] both have this cult following.”

The cult remains a select one, since both Lawson’s and Hill Farmstead beers are currently only available at a handful of bars and restaurants. Hill sells growlers and bottles in his tiny retail shop at the brewery, but the lion’s share of the 400 gallons he brews each week is kegged for wholesale distribution to Vermont, New York City and Philadelphia. He hopes to break into the Boston market next spring.

Locally, Hill’s beer is on tap at The Farmhouse, Bluebird Tavern in Burlington, Blackback Pub and Flyshop in Waterbury, Three Penny Taproom in Montpelier, Claire’s Restaurant & Bar in Hardwick, The Parker Pie Company in West Glover, and Willy’s Restaurant in East Burke.

Beer is in Hill’s lineage. In the 1800s, his great-great-grandfather, Aaron Hill, operated a tavern at the bottom of Hill Road. That’s the same road where Hill lives and brews now, in an old clapboard farmhouse with hops growing vine-like up the side, on the 100-acre homestead where his ancestors settled eight generations ago. Their former taproom provided the inspiration for the brewery’s hourglass-style logo, which is branded on Hill Farmstead’s wooden taps and oak barrels and silk-screened on T-shirts for sale in the brewery.

“I came across the sign while visiting my cousin Lewis Hill, who lived up the hill,” recalls Shaun Hill. “I was sitting, drinking tea with Lewis, when I looked up and noticed this great sign that reads “A. Hill Entertainment.” Also on the sign was a carafe and a wine/libation glass. Instantly I knew what the logo should be for the brewery.”

On the day Seven Days visits Hill Farmstead, brewing the saison starts with 600 pounds of barley, oats, hand-toasted Munich malts, and flake rye for color and flavor. That’s mixed with 760 liters of water in an enormous, propane-fired mash tun.

When it’s done, the liquid wort is pumped into a cone-headed kettle, into which Hill dumps five tubs of hops pellets throughout the 75-minute cooking cycle. After that, the liquid moves through a heat exchanger to cool it to a temperature — about 70 degrees — at which yeast can be added without being killed. From there, the brew filters into five large fermenters where yeast joins it and the wort becomes beer.

In every spare second, Hill is cleaning his equipment, dealing with propane delivery drivers, answering the phone and filling growlers for customers.

Beer has kept Hill busy for a while: At the age of 15, he brewed his first batch for a high school science-fair project. He used malt extract, hops, water, a package of dry yeast and some raspberries to demonstrate how fermentation works. The result was a strange brew that was almost undrinkable, Hill recalls. He gave some to his teacher and poured the rest down the drain.

“I was 15,” he says. “I wanted to drink something fruity.”

But the experiment uncorked a passion, and the Vermont native was hooked on home brewing.

At Haverford College, Hill started a home-brewing club with money from the student council and permission to brew using campus stovetops. He used “clone” recipes to imitate his favorite beers but improvised liberally.

“I never brewed a recipe exactly as it said in the book,” Hill says.

After graduation, Hill moved back to Vermont and taught psychology and anthropology at North American Hockey Academy, an all-girls school in Stowe. He stopped in at The Shed Restaurant and Brewery for an after-work beer one day and noticed a job opening for a keg washer. It was his first paying gig at a brewery. Years later, he would be hired as the main brewer at Shed, where he earned a reputation for his talent.

Three years ago, Hill incorporated the business name Grassroots Brewing with plans to open a craft-beer brewery in or around Hardwick. But he couldn’t find the funds. After a stint at Trout River Brewing Company in Lyndonville, where he gained some “production experience,” Hill landed the guest brewer gig at Nørrebro Bryghus.

There he started the brewery’s oak-barrel-aging program and brewed the three beers — an imperial stout, a barley wine and a sour ale — that his Danish boss entered in the 2010 World Beer Cup after Hill moved back to Vermont.

Winning medals for them “was a nice validation,” Hill says. “It’s nice to know I actually know what I’m talking about and what I’m doing.”

The money came through, too. During his time in Denmark, Hill says, he connected with “brewers and beer geeks” who helped provide the $100,000 investment he needed to launch what became Hill Farmstead. Trout River loaned him a kettle, and The Alchemist Pub & Brewery in Waterbury loaned him a mash tun. Hill bought the rest of his gear secondhand.

Hill says his goal is to rebuild the farmstead in “all its glory,” making artisanal beer the way some Vermont dairy farmers make artisanal cheese. He originally planned to grow his own ingredients but says he quickly realized, “I’m not a farmer. I’m farming beer.”

Local sourcing isn’t always an option, either. Hill has had to rebuff local would-be hops growers who wanted to partner with him because, he says, they couldn’t supply the quantity or variety he needs. A sign just inside the brewery’s door warns, “No, we are not interested in your hop-growing project.”

Most of Hill Farmstead’s beers are named for Hill’s ancestors. Edward, an American pale ale named for his grandfather, is his best seller. Abner is a double IPA honoring Hill’s great-grandfather, and Ephraim is a triple IPA named for his great-great-grandfather.

“It’s a good way to reclaim my ancestry and heritage in Greensboro,” Hill says. “All these people are ghosts and wouldn’t be remembered without telling their stories. Someday I’ll be a ghost, and me doing this will be my own ghost story.”

Hill sometimes talks like the philosophy major he was, and he’s also named beers for his favorite thinkers. Fear and Trembling, a Baltic porter, honors the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. It’s made with maple-wood-smoked malts and aged in French oak cabernet and bourbon barrels. Twilight of the Idols, a winter porter brewed with coffee, vanilla beans and cinnamon, is also the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Hill uses words to describe beer that some would reserve for wine, such as “elegance,” “roundness” and “softness.” He sniffs his beer before he drinks it, cocking the glass to the side to get a whiff, and says he likes flavors that are “very bright.” He has a limited number of oak barrels — bourbon barrels from Sam Adams Brewery in Boston and wine barrels from California wineries — that he uses to age special brews made with raw honey, microflora or an especially high alcohol content. Hill Farmstead has also produced a series of single-hop IPAs to showcase individual hop flavors lost in typical blended-hop India pale ales.

“He’s definitely an artist and a philosopher,” says Scott Kerner, co-owner of Three Penny Taproom in Montpelier, where Hill’s Edward pale ale is the best selling of 24 beers on tap. “He puts all that into his beer. He is so anal about how clean he keeps his equipment and how precise his measurements are. It’s like a guy who spends his entire life editing and reediting a book so that it’s perfect.”

Hill Farmstead is attracting other brewers from far and wide who are eager to observe and talk shop with Hill. On the day we visit, Hill is assisted by Brian Strumke, a self-described “gypsy brewer” from Stillwater Artisanal Ales in Baltimore, who travels from brewery to brewery “spreading the craft-beer gospel,” as a recent National Public Radio profile put it.

Earlier in the day, Mike Lackey of Great Lakes Brewery in Toronto swung by Hill’s remote outpost as part of a four-day New England brewery tour. The visit ended with a beer exchange: Lackey left bottles of Orange Peel Ale and Sweet Pete’s Peach Wheat from Great Lakes, and took home bottles of Hill’s Fear and Trembling.

Chefs and restaurant owners are raving about Hill Farmstead, too. The Farmhouse purchases more beer from Hill than from any other brewery, according to Davis. Earlier this fall, the Burlington restaurant hosted a special beer-and-cheese pairing event with eight of Hill’s beers and cheese from Jasper Hill Farm.

Both Hill Farmstead and Lawson’s are planning expansions, so Davis sees “good things coming down the pipeline for beer lovers in this state.”

Hill’s expansion wouldn’t take him away from Hill Road — there’s still room to grow where his forebears farmed. He’d like to rebuild a barn beside the brewery that burned down years ago in a hay fire.

“If we can rebuild that barn, we could grow to four to six times what we are now,” Hill says. Because, in brewing as in life, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.