Drink of the Month(s)

Drink of the Month highlights Long Trail brewery this month. New England breweries tend to focus on British and German styles, as opposed to the new American styles highlighted by Northwestern breweries - and none do it better than Long Trail. Like Boston Brewing Company (Sam Adams), their flagship beer is an adaptation of alt, a German style of ale that predates lager brewing ('alt' means old). With pronounced maltiness and use of German hops, I find this beer to be more satisfying than the typical American ale. Long trail also makes a very nice British IPA, which is unusual since most American breweries tend to go the Northwest IPA route. Long Trail's best beer, though, and one of my favorite beers in general, is Double Bag. This delcious heavyweight is a stickebier (secret beer) - a heavy alt. Presenting with 7.2% abv, this is definitely not a session beer, unless your session is in front of the fire on a cold New England night. Mighty tasty, though. I seldom find myself out of the mood for a double helping of Double Bag.

And like Spring in the Northeast, April's Drink of the Month was a little late in arriving. Here it is:

The Drink of the Month for April is Ipswich Brewing Copmany's Oatmeal Stout. This Stout lives up to it's name, with a riot of dark malts, toasted oats. Brewed in the American style, this jet-black beer has liberal amounts of Northwestern hops to compete with the aggressive use of dark malts in an all-out assult on the senses. The beer has a fabulous chewy, grainy texture that took me three tries to approximate in my homebrewery (and won first-place medals once I did). Large amounts of home-toasted steel-cut oats turned out to be the key! Ipswich Oatmeal Stout is not a beer for the delicate palate, but if you like dark beer in general, and American-style stouts in particular, there is none better. Drink this beer by itself (it will overwhelm any food it is paired with) and as cold as possible - it is particularly suited to chasing the sun away on warm summer nights. Ipswich was bought by Mercury Brewing Company not long ago, a move I feared would alter the character of this signature stout. Fortunately, Mercury seems not to have messed with the recipe. Distribution took a dive for a while, but they seem to have ironed that out as well.