ABV over 10 – The Tap Takeover

Beer Review: Southern Tier’s Rum Barrel Aged Pumking

Name: Rum Barrel Aged Pumking
Brewing Company: Southern Tier Brewing Company
Location: Lakewood, NY
Style: Pumpkin / Yam Beer
ABV: 13.4%

From Southern Tier Brewing’s landing page for the beer:

Back in 2014 we had the good fortune of finding a cache of rum barrels which we quickly filled with Pumking making what was affectionately called “Rumking.” We were lucky to have found more barrels, and in 2018, found some of the best we’ve ever used. This batch is at least as delicious as versions past.

Imagine our inimitable Imperial Pumking Ale as the captain on the high seas, flying the Jolly Roger. The ‘King sails for ports unknown in this limited release. Rum Barrel Aged Pumking has been kept like secret treasure in the hollows of the brewery, patiently awaiting discovery. Yo ho ho!

Enjoy Rum Barrel Aged Pumking now, or keep it hidden standing upright in a dark and cool place until you can say ‘anchors aweigh!’

Drinkers who enjoy pumpkin beer, especially those in the Northeast, may have asked themselves when reading my post about pumpkin last week, “What not even one of Southern Tier’s Pumking offerings?” After all Southern Tier is one of the leading brewers of the “dessert beer / pastry stout” style of beers and Pumking has been making the rounds for over 10 years now (2007). Well, I’d wanted to try one of the variants for the past couple of years and decided to go with the biggest one of them all, the Rum Barrel Aged variant (represented by the Pirate Pumking on the far right in the image below).

I’ve had the regular version, Pumking seemingly every other year and for a while Warlock was actually my favorite pumpkin beer (until they changed the recipe last year). It is still a good beer (or was last year), but enough about the other members of Pumking’s family. The remainder of this post focuses on Rum Barrel Aged Pumking, which is now part of the “Barrel House Series” at Southern Tier.

The beer pours a perfect golden orange, hinting at the pumpkin and rum flavor. As I brought the glass to my nose, I was punched in the face with the strong, sweet aroma of rum. When I gave another whiff, I was punched again by that sweet rum aroma. Did I mention the beer has a strong aroma of rum? Because there’s a lot of rum on the nose of this beer.

The nose doesn’t lie…my first sip was a big hit of rum, sweetness (maybe a little big of brown sugar?) and some pumpkin spice. Most of the barrel aged beers I’ve had are in the whiskey family – bourbon, rye, or whiskey. I typically don’t gravitate to rum, not that I don’t like it, just not my thing. But here, the rum is a welcoming warmth.

The pumpkin spices come in after the beer sits for a bit, and the full pumpkin character shines or glows. There’s a line of sweetness that the rum enhances in the typical pumpkin spice character, which makes for a really unique take on a pumpkin beer. Or at least for my palette and 50+ pumpkin beers I’ve consumed over the years.

Another thing I found impressive about the beer is that the character of the base beer – Pumking – is still very strong despite the big punch of rum. Pumking has always stood out from other pumpkin beers for me – something about the spice and nuttiness (I’d almost say pecan-like) sets it apart. This really is like Pumking turned up to 11, so if you like Pumking, chances are very good you’ll enjoy this beer.

I feel like the statement I’ve most often made on this blog is to let the beer warm and get closer to room temperature. Well, the statement applies here to the Rum Barrel Aged Pumking. To the point that I’d recommend letting the beer sit for five or ten minutes before fully enjoying it.

At 13.4% ABV, this is either one to share or enjoy over the course of an evening. I took almost the entirety of watching a really good horror movie (The Witch, a little over 90 minutes) to enjoy the beer. Given that letting the beer sit in the glass allows the beer to breathe and the flavors to come alive, you’ll want to take your time with it, too.

I’ve recounted how much I enjoy Southern Tier’s beer in the past, but this is the first “new to me” beer from them I’ve had in almost a year (last year’s new take on Warlock and 3 Citrus Peel Out) but overall, I’ve had nearly 30 beers from the venerable NY brewery and this is a standout from them and worth hunting down.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4-star rating.

Untapped badges earned with this beer:

Gourd to the Last Drop (Level 11)

Fall is in the air and the holidays are just around the corner, but pies and jack-o-lanterns aren’t the only things pumpkins are good for. Pumpkin beers have grown in popularity, bringing with them a delicate balance of malt and spices. That’s 55 different beers with the style of Pumpkin / Yam!

Beer Review: Ballast Point’s Victory at Sea

Beer Review

Name: Victory at Sea
Brewing Company: Ballast Point Brewing Co.
Location: San Diego, California
Style: Imperial Porter with Coffee and Vanilla
ABV: 10%

From the beer’s description on Ballast Point Brewing Company’s Web site:

A big porter crafted to weather any storm.

Our Ballast Point Victory at Sea Imperial Porter is a bold, smooth brew with just the right amount of sweetness. We infused this robust porter with vanilla and San Diego’s own Caffe Calabria coffee beans. The subtle roasted notes and minimal acidity of the cold brewed coffee, balances perfectly with the sweet caramel undertones of the malt, creating a winning combination for your palate.

Ballast Point is one of the largest craft brewers in California, although no longer “independent” since the brewery was acquired by Constellation Brands (who also own Modela Negro, Corona, Funky Buddha in beer and Modavi wine and Svedka Vodka, among others) in 2015. Regardless of that, Ballast Point has been crafting popular and acclaimed beers since 1996. I’ve had a handful of their brews and liked about half of what I’ve had (especially their California Kölsch and Piper Down Scotch Ale) but of everything Ballast Point brews, this beer appeals to me the most.

Porters are one of my favorite styles and I’d wanted to give this well-regarded interpretation of the style a try for a while. I has a little hesitant to commit to full six pack at the price point, but fortunately, my favorite bottle shop (Gary’s in Hillsborough, NJ) sells some single bottles which is how I procured this one. Like most porters, this one pours a deep black and tops off with a slightly tan head. As a dark beer lover, it looks appealing and the aromas of coffee and vanilla are really inviting. The first taste gives off strong vanilla and coffee flavors with ample sweetness. The beer is relatively full bodied and definitely full of flavor. The flavor that lingers the most; however, is the vanilla. Even more than the coffee.

I’ve come to realize that vanilla, for all the suggestions and metaphors for vanilla being plain and boring, is a tough flavor component to pull off successfully. Especially in beer. I’ve had quite a few vanilla porters and stouts and more than one has given a really strong unpleasant aftertaste with few exhibiting a perfectly balanced vanilla component of the beer. Here with Victory at Sea, for my tastebuds, it is a nearly perfect execution of the vanilla. There’s only a slight lingering aftertaste from the vanilla, but the pleasant taste up front far outweighs the lingering at the end and kept my rating at a 4-bottle-cap review for untappd.

The ABV of 10% in this one isn’t too pronounced in the flavor profile. Then again, I took my time drinking the beer as a “dessert” so the alcohol didn’t affect me too much. However, that relatively high ABV should be taken into consideration if you’re having more than one or two of these dark, delicious beers.

At one point in Ballast Point’s brewing history, this beer was available only as a 22oz bomb and on draft, but a year or two ago, the beer became available in 6 packs.. It has since become an extremely popular seasonal favorite and I can see why. There are a few variants, including a barrel aged variant to help celebrate Victory at Sea Day making this an “Event Beer” for Ballast Point and folks who enjoy the beer around the country

Recommended, link to Untappd 4-star rating.

Untapped badges earned with this beer

Heavy Weight (Level 49)

You like it thick and dark. Your beer! What did you think we were talking about? That’s 245 different beers with the style of Porter or Stout.

Sky’s the Limit (Level 18)

You don’t always intend to go for beers with a double digit ABV, but when you do, you make it count! Cheers to you, but be careful, 10% and up can really pack a punch. That’s 90 different beers with an ABV of 10% and up.

Victory at Sea (Special/One Time Badge)

Prepare the ballast and hoist the sails. You’ve made a date with darkness, so you’re in for a decadent journey through notes of vanilla, roasted cold-brew coffee, and caramel. A bold and rewarding choice you’ve earned the “Victory at Sea Day” badge for your treasure chest!

Beer Review: New Holland Brewing’s Dragon Milk Stout

Beer Review

Name: Dragon’s Milk
Brewing Company: New Holland Brewing Company
Location: Holland, MI
Style: American Imperial / Double Stout
ABV: 11%

From the beer’s description on New Holland Brewing’s Web site:

Rich, Roasty, and Creamy with Heavy notes of Vanilla and just enough familiar warmth from Oak Barrels. Reminds us all that life’s events – big or small – are worth celebrating. A stout with roasty malt character intermingled with deep vanilla tones, all dancing in an oak bath.

Few beers have as great a name as this one – Dragon’s Milk. Something magical is conjured in the mind with this name and there is a tradition to the name, too. Dragon’s Milk is a 17th century term used to describe the strong beer usually reserved for royalty. From some older information New Holland put out for this beer, “This strong ale was aged in oak for over 120 days. The aging process extracts flavors from the wood, which contribute to its complex character.”

While a great name is all well and good, the beer must live up to the name. In the case of New Holland’s best known beer, the contents of the bottle (or if you’re lucky enough, the keg) more than meet the expectations laid down by the name. Also an unplanned thing is reviewing “Dragon’s Milk” after a beer called “Skull Splitter.”

The best-known craft brewery in Michigan may be Founders, and rightly so. One of their best known and most renowned beers is Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS). Again, rightly so. But for all the hype surrounding KBS, Dragon’s Milk as a Barrel Aged stout is an excellent stout and not one to be overshadowed. Also, it is far easier to find and acquire this brew, at least here in NJ. There are variants on the beer I haven’t seen and only heard about, but this fantastic brew is a wonderful barrel-aged stout.

Straight off the pour, the bourbon and vanilla aromas make their presence known. The beer pours a beautiful black that makes a statement: This Beer is Potent. I let it sit for a few minutes before giving in and having a taste drinking in the aromas for a few minutes. Yes, this beer lived up to my memory of first having it about 7 years ago. Like Backwoods Bastard, the aroma of this beer is just as good as the taste. Rather than letting it sit on the table between sips, I was holding it to bathe in the aroma.

Like a lot of bourbon barrel aged stouts, Dragon’s Milk is a beer to be enjoyed slowly. Not a beer to guzzle or drink quickly. Not just because of the 11% ABV, but also because this is a beer that you want to enjoy for all the flavors swirling in your choice of glass. I’ll beat the drum again, but like most higher ABV beers, stouts especially, Dragon’s Milk is a beer whose flavors become more pronounced (i.e. delicious) as it warms to room temperature. The beer smells so damned good it is tough to not have a sip immediately. Do that sure, but let most of the beer warm for a few minutes before drinking more than that first sip.

The first time I had this beer was on tap at a wonderful restaurant/beer bar in Pennsylvania about 45 minutes from me – Isaac Newton’s – about 6 or 7 years ago. If you live in the NJ/PA region and are close enough to Isaac Newton’s, do yourself a favor, take a drive to enjoy some great food (incredible burgers, delicious meatloaf, excellent short ribs).

Shortly thereafter, I procured a four pack and enjoyed the beer periodically, but I saved one of those four for a special occasion. At the time, I was at a career crossroads, so I figured I’d save the beer until I landed a job I really wanted. Well, that “last beer” aged about 4 years and that time in the back of my fridge did wonders. I recall loving the beer, here’s my 2011 untapped check in.

This is the 2011 bottle that aged for four years

As it so happened, my father gave me a variety of beers which amounted a half of a case of beer for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, including some Dragon’s Milk. I am also in the midst of a career upgrade right now, having started a new managerial role yesterday (November 13). I enjoyed the aged bottle from 2011 on the first day in the then new position I started in 2015 and I “closed the circle” and had the new bottle of Dragon’s Milk on the last day in that role on the Friday of my last day in that role, before assuming promotion which began yesterday.

So, that was the small history lesson of me and this beer. Clearly, it is a beer I enjoy and one that any stout lover should be getting on a regular basis. Most of my friends who enjoy stouts talk about this beer with reverence so I suspect most beer folks do know about it. I’ve seen this in four packs for about $15 or $16 near me, which isn’t cheap, but well worth it when you consider that going to a bar and having a few beers of far lower quality will cost you potentially more money.

Highly Recommended, link to Untappd 4.25-star rating.

Beer Review: Heavy Seas Blackbeard’s Breakfast

Beer Review

Name: Blackbeard’s Breakfast
Brewing Company: Heavy Seas Beer/Clipper City Brewing Co.
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Style: Porter / Imperial Coffee Porter
ABV: 10%

From the beer’s description on Heavy Seas Brewing Company’s Web site:

Blackbeard’s Breakfast is a robust porter with a new world twist. Aged in bourbon barrels and brewed with Chesapeake Bay Roasting Company’s Dark Sumatra coffee, this porter is flavorful and complex. Featuring unique English malts, this brew will have strong notes of caramel and a slight nut character. Paired with bourbon notes and the sumptuous Sumatran Coffee, Blackbeard’s breakfast will please coffee and beer connoisseurs alike.

Heavy Seas has been brewing beer out of Maryland for over two decades and their beers can be found on shelves up and down the East Coast. I’ve had a couple of their beers, found them tasty (especially The Greater Pumpkin) so when I saw this beer at my local bottle shop a few weeks ago, I knew I’d want to give it a try especially since Porters are one of my favorite styles of beer. There have been debates for years in the beer community about the differences between porters and stouts, I just know I like both.

I’ve had my fair share of “Breakfast Stouts” the best of which come from Founders. Not many Breakfast Porters, though. As the description above indicates, this one has the added complexity of having been aged in bourbon barrels.

The most noticeable element of this beer is how dark it is. The beer pours even more black than the Allagash Black I reviewed a couple of weeks ago although not quite as thick. The head on Blackbeard’s Breakfast is a tannish brown and makes for an appealing looking beer. The second most noticeable element is the aromas of coffee and bourbon.

The bourbon and coffee elements hit you straight away and are present throughout the beer. I’d say the two flavors blend together to the point that they are one flavor. Usually when beers are aged in liquor barrels, the liquor is a secondary presence. Not quite the case here, for me they came together as one flavor, or at least two halves of a whole flavor rather than a layered set of flavors, if that makes sense.

The 10%ABV for this beer isn’t immediately noticeable, although the bourbon presence lets you know this isn’t a beer to drink quickly especially given that it was in a 22oz. bottle. I find myself saying this often, but I took my time with this one, enjoying the beer over the course of well over an hour. The flavors came out only a little more as it warmed, which made for a really consistent flavor for all 22oz of the beer.

I appreciated that the aging in bourbon barrels really reduced the bitterness of that coffee can sometimes impart in a beer. If anything, the coffee-bourbon flavors overpower the flavor of the beer a little bit. Coffee and bourbon are flavors I happen to enjoy a great deal, so that was fine by me.

All told, Blackbeard’s Breakfast is a flavorful beer that should please beer drinkers who enjoy coffee-infused beers, porters, or beers aged in bourbon barrels. At the price point I purchased it (only $8.49 for the bottle) I would consider it a bargain. I know I’ll be grabbing a bottle next year should Heavy Seas brew it again.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4-star rating.

Beer Review: Dogfish Head Oak Aged Vanilla World Wide Stout

Beer Review

Name:Oak Aged Vanilla World Wide Stout
Brewing Company: Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
Location: Milton Delaware
Style: Stout / Imperial Stout / American Double
ABV: 16% IBU: 70

From the beer’s description on Dogfish Head’s site:

Rare and often rumored about in the darkest corners of the beer community, World Wide Stout is dark, rich, roasty and complex, and lingers somewhere beyond the limits of the average beer.

Brewed with a ridiculous amount of barley, we’ve now taken this Dogfish Head classic and aged it on oak with real vanilla beans! With a little tender love and care we foster this beer from smooth, sweet wort into the big, bad blackend stout it always longed to be. Its bold, port-like complexity goes great with (or as) dessert.

With its high ABV, this is an excellent candidtate for cellaring, so grab a few bottles to enjoy now and lay the others down for a few years.

I seem to be making my way through some of the foundationial Northeastern Craft Breweries on these beer reviews without even planning it, having reviewed great beers from Tröegs and Victory in Pennsylvania and Flying Fish right here in New Jersey. Few breweries and brewers have as much respect in the world of craft beer as Dogfish Head and Sam Calagione. From experimental brews to beers that are icons in the American Craft Beer landscape, Dogfish Head has been brewing it all since 1995 and Sam even had a TV Show (Brew Masters).

One of their semi-regular releases is World Wide Stout, big 18% Stout that catches a hefty price tag. One bottle can be pricier than a six-pack of a quality beer. I was foolish when the beer was released last year, I didn’t pick up a bottle. However, I was not going to let this Oak-Aged Vanilla variant go off the shelves without picking up a bottle.

My, oh my am I glad I picked up a bottle.

The first thing I did after pouring the beer in the glass pictured above was nothing. Just look at how pitch black and beautiful that beer looks. I wanted to let it sit for a bit, come up to room temperature and breath to let the flavors come alive. Strike that, I took a big whiff of the beer and there was a great punch of vanilla.

I was slightly nervous, I have to admit. I’ve had a couple of beers with vanilla beans or some kind of vanilla component and I was a little disappointed, the vanilla was too over powering in those beers. I won’t name names, I try to focus on the positive when talking about specific beers here at the Tap Takeover. Knowing the quality of Dogfish Head’s beers, I really should not have worried. If the aroma was a hint of things to come (and it was), the vanilla here was quite present but not dominant.

The first sip was just sublime, the roasty flavor of a stout comes through, there’s a little bit of the oak, but that vanilla shines through so well. Like I said, it doesn’t hit you in the face and overpower you, but it is a noticeable, perfect blend with the stout flavors you’d expect along with a hint of the oak.

The beer is a whopping 16% ABV and isn’t too noticeable on the first sip, but the more you have of the beer, the more the potency comes through. Again, not in an overpowering way, but as a perfect element of the gestalt of this beer.

One other element of the beer that surprised me was the high IBU at 70 IBUs, when I saw that I earned another level on “Hopped Up” badge (for beers with an IBU over 65). A lot of these higher ABV stouts have a large hop presence, but there was no real bitterness to the beer, the hops were just slightly noticeable to me at least. Again, a perfectly applied component of a delicious beer.

A sipping beer to enjoy over the course of 45 minutes or so, or “slow, easy drinking” as I said on my untappd comment. This one helped me through the finale of Game of Thrones. While the show delivered some of what I expected, the beer went above and beyond to the point I was sad when there was no more.

This is an outstanding beer that I cannot recommend enough, if you are able to track down a bottle. I know I will because I want to see how this beer tastes a couple of years from now.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4.75-star rating.