Posts Tagged ‘hybrid’
Dogs + Fishes, Beer + Wine
Shanken News Daily recently alerted us to Dogfish Noble Rot. It is:
a wine/beer hybrid that combines traditional barley, hops, water and yeast with winegrapes. Named for the grape fungus botrytis, which is associated with Sauternes and Tokaji dessert wines, Noble Rot uses Viognier and Pinot Gris grapes sourced from Washington’s Alexandria Nicole Cellars. The 9%-abv offering will be available in about 27 states this week, priced at $13 a 750-ml.
The statement of composition on this product looks a bit redundant, with two references to grape must — but upon closer review it nicely underscores the distinction about adding the grape must before and after fermentation. I wonder if the must added before fermentation could or should be considered wine. Dogfish explains:
The first addition is unfermented juice, known as must, from viognier grapes that have been infected with a benevolent fungus called botrytis. This noble rot reduces the water content in the grapes while magnifying their sweetness and complexity. The second is pinot gris must intensified by a process called dropping fruit, where large clusters of grapes are clipped to amplify the quality of those left behind. “This is the absolute closest to equal meshing of the wine world and the beer world thats ever been done commercially,” says Dogfish’s Sam Calagione.
The Washington Post apparently saw this beer a long time ago and added many crucial details:
Thousands of years ago, notes Sam Calagione, our distant ancestors didn’t draw a semantic line in the sand between beer and wine. Whatever fermentables they had, whether grain or fruit, went into a common pot to produce their unique tipples.
What is noteworthy is that the grapes and the grain each contribute about half of the fermentable sugars.
Given that beer and wine are taxed and regulated differently, did Calagione get any flack from alcohol regulatory authorities? “The only challenge was that the TTB [Tax and Trade Bureau] wanted a better description of at what point we added the grapes,” noted Calagione. For the record, the botrytis-infected must (the unfermented grape juice) is added after the boil, and the pinot gris juice post-fermentation, primarily for extra aroma.
Calagione estimated that he made about 4,400 cases of Noble Rot and expected it to linger on shelves until May. He anticipated prices of $12-13 for a 750-mililiter bottle. That will scarcely recoup his costs, he added. “I paid $62,000 alone to transport a tanker truck of temperature-controlled grape must from coast to coast,” he noted.
Aside from the joy of experimentation, Calagione confesses that he had another reason for producing this beer: “We always wanted to see if a beer with the word ‘rot’ in the name would actually sell.”
We’ve seen plenty of beers and whiskies aged in wine barrels, and beers that look like wine and we will be on the prowl for actual beers with actual wine added. It sounds better than wine with beer added.
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Just One Letter
Sometimes, just one letter can make a big difference. As with TEQUIZA versus TEQUILA. One is beer and the other is quite different.
TTB/ATF first allowed this brand name in 1997, for a malt beverage with natural flavors. A 1999 approval is shown above on the left, and the most recent approval is on the right above. Just a few months after the the 2008 approval, Anheuser-Busch apparently killed Tequiza in favor of Bud Light Lime. At this point, it’s gone almost without a trace, like Champale, Zima and other fading memories.
A lot of the branding stayed the same over the course of twelve years and 29 label approvals. But the legal description got trimmed considerably, during that time, to remove all references to the “NATURAL FLAVOR OF MEXICAN TEQUILA.” This part apparently went too far for the Tequila industry, or TTB, to accept, even if the brand name and agave references did not.
By way of another example, from the movies, Little Fockers probably would not be PG-13 if spelled with a u.
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Happy Ten Ten
We have not seen wine products with added beer or hops. But here, just in time for epic Ten Ten Ten festivities, is beer with added wine or something very closely akin to it.
Vertical Epic is made by Stone Brewing of Escondido, California. It is classified as Ale Brewed with Muscat, Gewurztraminer and Sauvignon Blanc Grapes and Chamomile. We find it interesting that TTB could have, but apparently chose not to, say something like, please remove the grape names as they tend to misleadingly suggest that this is wine. The back label has some good information, such as pointing out that this is the ninth in a series, beginning with a 2/2/2002 beer and so on, “Each one released one year, one month and one day from the previous year’s edition.” The back label also has a helpful link to “a detailed home-brewing recipe.”
Stone’s blog, with lots of videos, further explains:
Initiated in 2002—when the notion that Stone might still be around in 2012 was more hope than certainty— the Stone Vertical Epic Ale series has given Stone brewers an avenue for creative expression while helping spread the good word about the benefits of cellaring beer.
Stone Head Brewer Mitch Steele, who studied enology at UC Davis and spent 8 years toiling as a vintner in his early days, made the trek up to South Coast to watch the grapes that would become 10.10.10 go from vine to juice.
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hybrid, ingredients, policy, unlikely combinations
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64 Proof Beer (More or Less)
Time Magazine calls the above beer one of the world’s strongest. It looks to be considerably stronger than any beer that the US rules can tolerate. In other countries, Tactical Nuclear Penguin is sold as a beer, at 32% alc./vol.
But this approval shows that, under US rules, this “Super-High-Alcohol-Beer” is actually a distilled spirit (Spirits Distilled from Grain). The Time article explains how BrewDog uses low temperatures to get the alcohol content so high:
the brewery was able to attain the high alcohol content by freezing the beer at a local ice cream factory, at temperatures as low as -6°C (21°F), for 21 days. Alcohol freezes at lower temperatures than water, and removing water from the solution increased the alcohol concentration.
Under US law, such manipulation of the alcohol may be treated as distillation. The Time article points to two even stronger products that at least start as normal beers (before becoming tactical or nuclear):
The drinking games continued in February when a German brewer, Schorschbrau, released a 40% ABV beer called Schorschbock. The BrewDog boys fired back a few weeks later with high-octane concoction Sink the Bismarck!, which checks in at 41%, enough to reclaim the “world’s strongest beer” mantle. …
There is no sign that these other two have been approved for US sale at all yet, let alone as beer.
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hybrid, nutrition, policy, would you approve it?, would you drink it?
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Absinthe in a Can?
It looks a fair amount like Tourment Absinthe, but this time around it’s beer. Or, more specifically, Tourment “Absine Refresher” Gargoyle Citrus is a malt beverage with wormwood and other flavors. The product is made by City Brewing Company of La Crosse, Wisconsin, and it has also been approved in a Bohemian Berry version.
From time to time, TTB explains that there is no specific US standard for “absinthe,” so we wonder if it was really necessary to drop the TH out of ABSINE.
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