samer/thoughts

The other thing they do at the Brick is concentrate on the beer. The food that you get as part of a tasting is often an afterthought, except on Belgian beer tasting nights. One of RFD's signatures, though, is the food. Cooked in beer. Cuisine de bier is how the Belgians refer to it. This tasting also concentrated on the food with the beer. All the courses were matched to the beers and the ribs were cooked with the Raison.

While the Pain Relievaz were bringing down the house with such tunes as "I Got Busy with an AB² Sales Girl" and "Worst Brew Day" with such memorable lines as "... stuck my brewer's hose inside her heat exchanger ..." and "... we get more tail than a labrador retriever ...", we were having our taste buds and brain cells pummeled with their brews and RFD's food.

Here's what I had, in order, and what I thought:

I picked up a pint (14 oz actually, and RFD is good enough to state that up front as opposed to bars that call them pints) of the 60 Minute IPA³ as I waited for my friends to get there. This is a 6% ABV⁴ beer brewed with Warrior and Amarillo hops⁵ for about 60 IBU rating. It is light in color with a strong hoppy aroma and very nice bitter aftertaste.

Once my friends got there, we were served the Shelter Pale Ale. A solid pale ale with a nice earthy aroma delivered by the Willamette and Columbus hops. This beer clocks in at 5% ABV and 30 IBUs.

While waiting for the show to start we all ordered a pint of the India Brown Ale. This is one of my favorite recent finds -- I discovered it at Hard Times Cafe a couple of months ago and have had it a half dozen times since then. This is a big beer, a cross of a brown ale and an IPA with a touch of sweetness left over. It is dark brown in color with a nice hoppiness and a roasty taste. With 7.2% ABV and 50 IBUs, this is big bold beer by most brewer's standards. Dogfish are just scratching the surface, though.

After the India Brown, it was kind of difficult to appreciate the more subtle ApriHops. That was brought out with fried green tomatoes, and they did complement each other. The ApriHops was the disappointment of the lot, even though it certainly was a nice beer. 6.6% ABV, 45 IBU and 65 lbs of apricots go into this beer. The apricots add a smoothness to this beer, and that is rather disconcerting after the boldness of the India Brown.

When you think lager, you generally don't think of big beers. Sure, there are bocks and double bocks that can knock your socks off, but they are hugely malty events. The next beer to come out was Dogfish's first lager, Prescription Pils. A fine example of a Pilsner, this is nice and clean with a bit of domestic noble hops. They refer to it as an Imperial Pilsner, and at 9% ABV and 40 IBUs, this is Imperial in every way. Fantastic.

Another of my favorite beers was up next, served with ribs that were cooked with it. The Raison D'Etre is a fantastic concoction brewed with beet sugar,
green raisins, and Belgian yeasts. Did I mention it is fantastic? Don't take my word on this: go buy a six pack and try it. Go ahead. I'll wait.

It was good, wasn't it? I told you. And at 8% ABV and 36 IBUs, it is a damn good thing that you are back home reading this. The ribs were finger licking good, too.

Just when you thought they could not go any further, out comes the 120 Minute IPA. Some stats:

• Brewed to 45-degrees plato
• Boiled 120 minutes
• Hopped with high alpha⁶ American hops
• Dry-hopped daily for a month
• Aged for a month on whole leaf hops
• 120 IBUs
• 20% ABV

Let me repeat those last two figures: 120 International Bitterness Units -- this is an extreme amount of hop oils. 20% Alcohol By Volume. 20% people. This beer should be nothing more than sugary sweet. While it has quite a bit of residual sugars, it is so well balanced by the massive amount of hops. At one point Sam said, "thank god for sadomasochistic yeast strains!"

This beer was married with a sweet potato pie, and I just cannot describe how well the tastes melded. The sweetness of the beer and honey that was drizzled over the pie complemented each other amazingly well.

That was it for us. Plenty really. More than plenty. But, just for the record, Beer Guy Dave also had available for purchase the Old School Barleywine (15% ABV), Raison D'eXtra (stronger version of D'Etra) and (in bottles) Immort Ale (11% ABV).

That makes 10 of Dogfish's beers in one place, nine of which were on tap. Dave, I salute you for injecting some life into the DC beer scene and for introducing us to some twisted old school beer focused hip-hop.

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¹ IBU: International Bitterness Units. A measure of the amount of bittering compounds found in the beer. A beer with a 100 IBU rating would be undrinkably bitter if not balanced with malt or other flavors.

² AB: Anheuser-Busch. The big bad boy of tasteless "beer".

³ IPA: India Pale Ale. A style of beer created by British brewers back in the day when India was a colony. To get their beers to India before they spoiled (a four month journey), they increased the amount of hops used in brewing. The hop oils, in addition to giving many beers their bitterness and aroma, also act as a preservative. The tradition of this beer continues today but without the long journey and rest times, the beers wind up being quite hoppy and tasty.

⁴ ABV: Alcohol by Volume. This is a measure of how drunk you are going to get. Double this number and you have the "proof". Most beers lie in the 5%-6.5% range.

⁵ Hops: A plant related to the cannabis plant. Brewers use its flower to add bitterness, flavoring and help preserve their brews. Hops are usually done in two additions, with bittering hops going into the brew kettle early to leach them of their oils so that their acids (see below) can contribute their bitterness and flavoring hops going in late to add their aroma so their oils can contribute flavor and aroma. Some brews are also "dry" hopped by adding the hops to the fermenter.

⁶ Alpha and beta hop oils acids: Hop oils acids come in various designations, but the most common are the alpha and beta oils acids. Hops high in alpha oils acids produce huge amounts of bitterness in the finished beer. Particularly when tossed into the boil for two hours.

Thanks to Thomas Cizauskas for the corrections.