My neighbor, Brent, turned 50-years old a few weeks ago. We shared a few beers to celebrate – a gruit and a homebrew.
Posca Rustica
Brent brought over a gruit – Brasserie Dupont’s Posca Rustica. A gruit (rhymes with fruit) is an old style of beer made with bittering herbs before hops were a part of beer making. The recipe for Posca Rustica is based on archeological research at The Archeosite D’Aubechies. I loved the bitter herb nose and frothy quality of this pungent tasting ale. The label on the bottle described this Belgian-based ale as originally made for the Romans around 64 AD.
Bourbon Barrel White
Not to be outdone, I pulled out a collaborative homebrew – Bourbon Barrel White, by Black Bears Brewery and Three Wortmans Brewery. I love this beautiful Belgian tripel with a bourbon nose & taste along with Belgian esters and flavors. It has a lovely white head and Belgian lacing.
I only have a few of these wonderful beers left, so I was glad Brent really appreciated it. As all homebrew experiences, this one was quite a production. First, the beer was brewed in Dbear’s Grainfather and stored at Black Bears’ home brewery. During the final days of the Bourbon Barrel White’s incubation, it was transported to the Three Wortmans Home Brewery where it soaked up the flavors of my bourbon barrel for about 6 days. On day four, we actually had a group tasting to determine if the beer was ready to bottle. We waited a few more days to get just a little more oak and bourbon flavor.
Bottling day was quite a production. Months earlier, I had requested the recipe for the sausage made at Tröeg’s Brewery. To my surprise, Tröeg’s Executive Chef, Christian, provided their recipe. So I invited the gang over for a sausage and bottling party. In the morning we made Tröegs’ sausage – 10 pounds worth. Later in the afternoon, we bottled the Bourbon Barrel White. We organized an assembly line for this. We used a corker rented from Maryland HomeBrew to insert the corks. Someone else installed the cork cages on the bottles and I put the labels on using a whole milk paste. Over the course of the day, we had 8 or 10 people helping out with this fun beer/sausage fest.
We split up the bottles among the two home breweries. A few weeks later we dared to compare our attempt at making an Allagash Curieux to the real thing. We used a blind triangle test. A triangle test offers to each taster, two of one beer and one of the other. There are two tests. First, can the taster identify the unique beer? Second, can the taster identify which beer is which? There were 6 tasters. Surprisingly, the two brewers, Dbear and I, failed to identify our own beer. Just another demonstration of our miserable palates. We all agreed that our Bourbon Barrel White stood up well to Curieux.
Enough rambling for one day. Happy belated birthday, Brent!
Cheers!
Warren
Wonderful day even if it was a sausage fest, BTW the sausage was great and the pumpkin beer brewed later that day with the WLP530 was amazing. Very productive day!
Yes, I had forgotten we made a Belgian pumpkin beer as well. It was a long, yet rewarding, day. The WLP530 yeast was responsible for many tasty beers!
Warren, thanks for a fine present and the mention. Nice job with the descriptions. Who would believe a homebrew would overshadow a beer as fine as the Posca, but it did. It was so mellow — no “in your face” bourbon nose, just a well rounded treat for all the senses. I’m glad the delay in our getting together was well spent by the beer getting better in the bottle. Kudos to all involved. Looking forward to meeting you all at Pint Night.
Your welcome! I’m always looking for excuses to share a beer. And thanks for introducing me to Posca – my first gruit!