An Imperial Procession: Drake’s Stouts at City Beer Store

As someone who loves all things that come in matching sets (I once spent 5 hours at IKEA picking out a wardrobe because all the complimentary options were just too overwhelming), I am naturally a fan of split batches of beer. There’s no better way to understand yeast than to taste two beers that started from the same recipe and yet end up completely different due to those microscopic brewers’ helpers.

Though I’ve seen many blended beers recently (two or more beers brewed separately are mixed to form a single final product), I’ve seen very few commercial split batches (a single wort is brewed and then split into two or more batches to be fermented separately to form multiple final products). On one hand, this doesn’t make too much sense to me: wouldn’t split batches be a great way to save time and money as a brewer? Brew one wort, get two beers? On the other hand, economy and quality often don’t move hand in hand. It’s hard enough to craft a recipe for a single great beer, and thus harder still to brew a wort flexible enough to ferment into two different, yet still amazing, brews.

With this in mind, the series of Imperial Stouts brewed by Rodger Davis, formerly of Drake’s Brewing Company, is a feat. Not only did he coax four unique beers out of one base recipe, but he had the patience to age some of them up to four and a half years in oak barrels. That’s longer than some marriages, longer than I’ve been of legal drinking age, and longer than I can imagine waiting to serve anything that tasty. Then again, patience has never been my strong suit: Of the two bottles of Angel’s Share I picked up on Saturday, one has already met its happy demise in the bellies of appreciative beer drinkers (more on this in a later post).

The line-up I tried at Thursday’s Rodger Davis Night at City Beer Store was:

1. Imperial Stout aged in pinot noir barrels for 8 months (9.5%)
2. Imperial Stout aged in bourbon barrels for 2 ½ years (10.5%)
3. Imperial Stout aged in port barrels with blueberries and brettanomyces yeast for 4 ½ years (11%)
4. Imperial Stout aged in port barrels with cherries and brettanomyces yeast for 4 ½ years (11%)

Whew! Those last two have so much going on – any one of those features (the barrel aging, the fruit, the brett) would be enough to make a more-interesting-than-your-average beer. I tasted them in the order listed above to work my way up the ABV and aging spectrum.

At the end of the night, my favorites were the bourbon (#2) and the port-cherry-brett (#4) beers, though I was drinking alongside two friends, Brandon and Will, who both liked the pinot (#1) the best. Unfortunately for the blueberry beer (#3), it was nobody’s favorite, and thus the quest for the ever elusive high-octane blueberry beer that doesn’t disappoint continues.

All the beers were a deep, dark, espresso-like color, with a small off-white head. They could have been your average stout… until you get close enough to catch a whiff of the boozy aromas wafting out of our 5 oz. taster glasses.

The pinot put off the strongest chocolate aroma. I think the red wine from the barrels emphasized that characteristic, while the sourness of the last three hid some of the stout roastiness. This was particularly surprising in beer #2, which wasn’t a brett beer, but which was sour nonetheless. Tasting it next to beer #1, I would never have guessed they had come from the same recipe if I hadn’t already known. The first was smooth and creamy, while the second was bold and disconcerting, almost like a Flanders Brown Ale in its sourness. I preferred the second, mostly because I think it’s hard to beat bourbon barrel as a pairing for a dark strong beer, as a matter of taste (not fact). That said, the bourbon and oak flavors weren’t quite as big as I would have expected in a beer aged for 2 ½ years. Vanilla flavors, which can come from both the oak itself and the bourbon with which it’s been saturated, were nearly indiscernible.

After sampling back and forth between the first two, and being pretty pleased with each as individual beers and as an example of the magic of split batches, we moved on to beers three and four. Moving from the unexpectedly sour bourbon barrel to the very intentionally sour blueberry and brett beer highlighted the difference between the two types of sourness. The bourbon barrel was more of a high-acidity flavor, the same type found in certain blends of coffee, and caused by the roasting process. By contrast, the blueberry brett had a rounder sweet-and-sour tartness. The cherry brett beer had this as well. However, it seemed to work better in the cherry beer because the cherry flavor harmonized with the brett, while the blueberry flavor contrasted with it. Cherries themselves are sweet and sour, and the resulting beer had an integration that the blueberry beer lacked. It tasted sweet and blueberry-like first, followed by the brett sourness, which tasted a bit too strong following such a sweet flavor. This is not to say the blueberry beer was exceptionally sweet, this was no alcopop, just that the flavors never seemed to work together. In discussing this beer the next day with Sam from Better Beer Blog, we wondered how a blackberry Imperial Stout would do, since it would be sweeter than cherries or raspberries (often used in beers), but more sour than blueberries (not used very often).

I’m not sure when, how, or where, these beers might be available again, but I recommend them to anyone with an interest in barrel beer, or in learning more about how to parse the flavors of beers by drinking similar brews side by side.