Just Fred — Beer of the Week

Beer of the Week is something I like to pull out every once in a while around here when something impresses me enough, for whatever reason, that it deserves a column of its own.  There are lots of fabulous beers that never get named Beer of the Week, and lots of weeks that never get honored with a beer, but that’s often because there is so much else swirling around the beer (a whole rest of a flight of beers to be drunk, a brewery to be toured, a festival to attend, beer friends to be made) that any one beer just becomes a small part of the overall story.   Beer of the Week is a simpler concept: one beer, one review, end of story.  Indeed, it’s where I started with this blog, and nice returning point every once in a while.

This week, we have a BotW because I made a resolution lately to stop being a stockpiler and to drink my ’special’ stuff when I feel like it, because, hey, life is short.  The exception, and of course there is always an exception, are the beers that I am deliberately aging.  However, I differentiate that scenario from just accidentally holding onto a beer for 3+ months because the time never seems right for cracking it open.  Even the name of this post’s BotW seems unassuming and weeknight appropriate: Fred.  Just Fred.  Ok, actually it’s Hair of the Dog’s Fred.  Still, what kind of name is that for a beer? All of their people-named beers seem to lend themselves to confusion.  Mentioning enthusiastically in front of my grandmas that “I really love Fred!” would get them so excited about the almost-given-up-on prospect of great-grandchildren that I might suddenly be the favorite grandkid again… that is, until they heard me praise Fred’s “spiciness”, at which point I imagine they’d feel intensely uncomfortable, never mind the consequences of letting slip that “I had Fred after dinner last night.” 

Seriously though, this is one hell of a beer.  It was light amber colored, with a thick, long lasting off-white head.  I poured it into tumblers (we don’t have a lot glassware at chez Hopster) for myself and my roommate Kathleen, and each had over a finger’s worth of foam that persisted as we drank the entire bottle.  Or rather, as I proceeded to drink the entire bottle after commandeering
Kathleen’s share when we realized how hoppy this was (hops just aren’t her thing). 

The aroma alone is pretty intoxicating, with intense floral and green hop scents and powerful baking spice aromas from the yeast and rye malt.  There was also another smell that came through “loud and clear”, actually the first thing I smelled upon pouring the beer, and that was sour green apple.  This is usually the smell of the chemical acetaldehyde, which is a flaw in just about all styles of beer (Except Budweiser, but then, who reads The Thirsty Hopster and drinks Budweiser?  No one I hope.  And if you do, let me know because your next craft beer is on me.  I just can’t in good conscience let you continue in this vein.  It’s like those mothers who get arrested when Child Protective Services finds out they’ve been off galavanting around and letting their kids forage in the garbage.  At least this is my understanding from what I see on Law And Order: SVU.  So please, think of my clean criminal record.  Let’s keep it that way — don’t drink garbage).  Anyway, the point is, the acetaldehyde was unmistakable.  It’s usually either a sign of a sanitation problem or a very young beer.  Considering (A) everything else that was so right about this beer, and (B) Hair of the Dog’s all around stellar reputation, I want to give this the benefit of the doubt and assume that it is something that will die down with more age or that was specific to this batch, or this crate, and the way it was handled.

Getting past the aroma and into the beer itself was like going down a deeper and deeper rabbit hole.  It’s a whopping 10%, and heavier in body than most 10%ers, with a thick, oily mouth-filling texture and noticeable alcohol warmth.  The hops & spice continue their dual reign in the flavor. and I imagine it’s those 10 varieties of hops in here that give the beer it’s “oiliness.”  I keep using that word, and it probably sounds off-putting, but I mean it as a sincere compliment.  If I had distilled hop oils in a vial, this is what I imagine that they’d taste and smell like, all flowers and nectar and resin.  Except, the bitterness wasn’t over-the-top.  It’s not benign at 65 IBUs, that’s for sure, but it shares time with the other elements of the beer.  The rye is more assertive in the flavor than in the aroma, overtaking some of the other spice components.  I think Hair of the Dog knows how to work with rye better than any other brewery I can think of, and I wish they’d put out even more rye beers. 

In all, this beer had just about everything I want in a beer: a dense and persistent head without a bursting and seltzer-y carbonation, a layered aroma that pulls in the best that each of beer’s three non-water ingredients has to offer, a luxuriously thick texture, a pungent and varied use of hops that avoids brutal bitterness, and a collection of spice flavors that shifts and shimmers and only gets stronger as the beer warms up.  Try it if you can find it, but be warned, even just one bottle was enough to entirely bowl over my expectations and nearly bowl over the rest of me.