Category: Aging

A First Good Beery Question In 2018 To Ponder This New Year’s Day

People complain. People complain that folk complain. It’s quite odd given people complain all the time about the value of this or the value of that. From donuts to computers to cars to the location of your house, people question and complain every time that feeling creeps up where what was assumed to be worth it turns out to have been a bit of a bust. Given most don’t get a regular supply of vintage samples (or, for that matter, quietly get paid by brewers to review and comment back on the QT as a trade consultant) but, no, actually have to live with a limited set of bank notes from which to draw upon, the question of value is always relevant. Beer isn’t all that special. So, it was good to see this topic bust out over New Year’s Eve:

What are they talking about? Well, late model Fuller’s Vintage Ales, of course. See, yesterday a few hours before that tweeting session started by Boak and Bailey (but with an image which would have destroyed my thin veneer of dramatic tension just now) I opened and started writing about a FVA dated 2008 which led me to exclaim this:

Crash the Stash Day #2: Fuller’s Vintage Ale. Let me check around to see what to expect. Seriously? The brewery is selling these for £100 each? £100?!?!? Glad I spent $6.95 CND almost a decade ago.

This was only news to my conscious self as Martyn had alerted me to the fact almost a year ago when I started a post about working my way through my stash of maybe 16 or so bottles of the stuff from 2007 onward. So subconsciously, I was at least prepared. And I girded myself for the question through drinking these beers, aged and new, since at least 2005. But the reality is that at least from a theoretical point of view, even after having a pleasant enough 2008 era bottle yesterday, I have eight bottles left with an alleged value of around $750 Canadian.

I was pretty clear in my mind that the 2008 was not worth $170 CND or £100 that the brewery was asking. Don’t get me wrong. It was a very good beer and I am delighted that my 45 year old self left such a treat for my 54 self to enjoy over a New Year’s Eve afternoon. Don’t get me wrong. It was yummy. But it had no value which corresponded to what was being asked when I look at it from a few points of view.*

On a relative value scale, were I magically able to use it as free currency $170 would get me and the family a very nice dinner out with drinks at a reasonably good restaurant here in my fair city. Or five tickets to our OHL hockey team with beers and hot dogs and maybe a t-shirt. I would have much preferred those achievable experience to my 90 minutes solo with the ale in a tulip glass. Even though it was a very nice beer in a tulip glass.

As an opportunity cost consideration, I could have left the beer capped and watched its theoretical price rise over a few more years.  By drinking it I am destroying the future increased value, racing well past actual inflation. But that depends on the future buyer being there and the beer not only holding its intrinsic value as a consumable but increasing in sheer tastiness over time. One issue was it started to feel like it was past its best at nine years. Folk would be noting this in the G.D. social media therefore ruining my prospects. How dare folk chat freely?

On beer trading marketplace, if it truly had that value I should be able to sell it back to Fullers or at least my government retailer for something expressing the wholesale current value. It’s been kept in a cool dark cellar and subject to optimum protection. As usual, my claims to provenance were impeccable. If I go back through my tax records I would likely be able to find the receipt for buying it. I expect it would say I spent something like $6.95 CND. Yet… the box was gone and the label encrusted with a bit of mould. Who would want that? I couldn’t sell my Captain Scarlet Dinkie toys in that condition – and I wouldn’t anyway so stop asking. Any in any event, there isn’t actually a buy-back program. Because there isn’t actually a market for the inflation-laced price.

As for the bottle itself, it was a bit like me facing my fifty-fifth later this year. Maybe a bit past it but still performing well. Took a long time in the glass for the bitterness to face a bit to reveal the toffee and pale malt below. I noted as follows:

Plenty of pith, orange zest and minty bitter hops over toffee malt. Lingering bitter finish with a hint of licorice. Less of a cream heart than the 2007 opened a few weeks ago… I have the end of it in a tulip glass now an hour and a half in. It could easily be a very well-made well-designed fresh strong ale that I might buy for a regular price. In no way a disappointment like that sad Stone vertical.

Frankly, I enjoyed the 2007 I had a few weeks ago a bit more. So, is the idea that the brewery is selling at that value a good one or a bad one? Is this a rip off or a smart advertising campaign? One thing I like about it is how the sticker price gives me confidence that I did the right thing by sticking a few aside as I did. They are also saying, screw you white whale hunters – we control this marketplace ourselves. But that is like the silly idea of “brewer’s intention” or, if we are already mocking 2017, “brewery’s cartoonish can label designer intention” in that it doesn’t really give me much value related to the price point being offered. The drink itself has to stand up for itself. And it did. To a degree. But not that degree.

No, in the end the price being sought now is not reasonable. But it does give me the warm conceit that I was once a clever lad. And I can drink to that. And I might just as that 2009 is up next.

*And, frankly, can you disagree with me unless you’ve bought one at current offered prices? Hmm?

That Musty Box Of Fuller’s Vintage Ales

First conclusion of the experiment: the boxes are far less mould caked
when not left in a corner of a cold room for a decade.

OK, it wasn’t so bad. I was worried there for a bit but its gonna be OK. Turns out I have doubles. I have leeway. But, come to think of it, this box holds ten years of Fuller’s Vintage Ales, 2007 to 2016 and it’s high time I tucked into them. First, I bought them and tucked in right away. Later, I would do some comparing and contrasting, like the .05 v .10 and the ’06 v ’11 but I didn’t keep it up. I just stock piled.

I used to stockpile. Like those Stone Vertical Epic Ale annual releases. Like the Thomas Hardy ales. I ended up giving away Stone’s 05-05-05 to 12-12-12 more out of a sense of boredom than anything. By the end of the project it was a parody of itself. Reports were that a third were great, a third were fine and a few plain sucked. Such is the path of big US craft. Yet, they gave more joy to those gifted than my THA’s are given me now. Yik. Malt reduced to soy sauce. Hops now only offering the residue left after I boiled down my childhood ’45s. So glad I saved them. So, tonight I begin my attack the box at the back of the cellar.

First up and this Fuller’s Vintage Ale 2015 is not giving me the joy. There’s an astringent green vegetable taste in the middle of my pint where, you know, rosy cheeked English youth gathering in autumn’s harvest should be gamboling… cavorting even. But it’s clear and the colour of a love match between a lump of amber and a chestnut – which I will grant you is a bit of a range. And it raises a good head. As ale it is not fouled. BAer review speak of a wooden bitterness. I get that.  Don’t want it. But I get it. Yet… as it sits it moves from astringent green vegetable to astringent exotic orange-like citrus fruit you couldn’t pronounce but thought you would buy anyway because “hey, it’s Christmas!” and then you find it dried out a bit at the back of the shelf weeks later, closer to February than December. Which is better. I now get some husky grain. I can even see Seville marmalade from here. Even if made by my cray cray great-aunt well past her marmalade glory days. Household helpful hint: open this and let it breath for an hour.

I had to wash both bottles of the 2014. The first one I pulled out was stored upside down and it’s showing a need to sit for a bit. Cloudy. And both have stage one designate substance issues on the box and label. In the mouth, again with the musty staleness. Gonna let it sit a bit but at least its not paying homage to a green pepper. Later. Better. Still maybe infanticide as the flavours have not resolved. There is a hay loft grainy dry as well as a a rich earthiness. If my garden compost tasted like this I’d be ecstatic. Thinking about it, Gouda and mushrooms on toast. That would work well with this. Later still, the narrative is adds a dry stone aspect. I am now walking on a path on a hot day through rocky fields like those in our nearby fine wine region.  The hops after an hour have a rich sweet field herb and mint aspect. I once owned a scythe and an acre garden needing tending. This is taking me back there.

[More later. An on-going project… until it’s all gone.]

A few days later, the 2013. Bottle washed and cap popped. Cold. Canadian cellar in February cold. Gotta let it sit but the first sniff and sip are promising. Cream, grain and rich sweetness.  Unlike its two juniors, nothing off yet. Receding beef brothiness shifting towards sweet stewed apple. But mainly a mouthful of husky graininess. And cream. Brie cream, though. The cream made by the Brie cows. There’s something going on there. A Brie thing. Brie-like. Maybe. Thick viscous stuff. But no earthy brooding and nothing like Seville marmalade. Fresh and open an hour later. A lovely beer.

One more week has passed. The 2012 just opened had a far less challenging bottle. Cold from the final few boxes in the beer cellar it is stunning, exemplifying what I absolutely love about great beers. Masses of cream cut orange marmalade.  I curse 49 year old me for not buying cases and cases of this. Kumquat even. I say that as a man who just this very afternoon roasted two chickens stuffed with kumquats. Just saying. Go eat kumquats if you don’t understand. Tangy, fresh, intense, bright citrus. I am pouring half an inch at a time into a dimpled pint mug and ramming my nose in, sucking the aroma in deeply.  [That, by the way, is how to drink fine beer according to me.] As it warms, the graininess starts to assert itself. So now it is like wholewheat bread with a double cream and marmalade spread. I should be graphing this, with different brightly colour lines tracing the taste every fifteen minutes. I am going to leave it there. I am having a moment. OK… ten minutes later weedy herbal notes as well as a nod to beef broth come out. Stunning.

Beer At Yule: La Moneuse SWA, Brasserie De Blaugies, Belgium

We’ve had a look at a few beers from Brasserie de Blaugies: Darbyste , a fresh figgy saison (that I was calling a lambic for some reason); Saison d’Epeautre spelt saison; and La Moneuse, their rustic straight up saison. This is the final of the brewer’s four brews to try. It’s an upgrade of La Moneause, their 8% special winter ale or SWA from the 2004 bottling that I have held in the now very attractive stash from last winter to this one.

After the cage was removed, the cork barely needed a touch to pop out of the mouth. The beer pours a slightly clouded amber butterscotch with a fine thick rich off-white head. Fabulous in the mouth, a great pale ale starting out with a light pear-lemon sour tang followed by honey apple juiciness morphing into pale malt bread crust grain subsiding into a hint of white pepper and pear at the end of the end. There is a hint of nutmeg in the yeast but the whole thing is pretty restrained and keep in balance.

Plenty of BAer love. A really wonderful saison that you should hoard and keep to yourself.

Ten-Penny: Another Maritime Canadian Beer Disappears

When I was in undergrad in the early 1980’s, just before New Brunswick’s Hans Haus sorta failed at lift-off and Nova Scotia’s Granite Brewery took off, I mainly drank beer made by two breweries that made beers that were pretty much like beers in the rest of Canada, except they were made by Moosehead’s Dartmouth brewery and Oland’s in Halifax’s north end. The brands we bought were local and we were loyal to the beers of our province like Old Scotia, Schooner, Keith’s and Oland’s Ex. One beer me and my pals did not have such fondness for was Moosehead’s Ten-penny ale but we no longer have to fear this beer as Halifax’s Daily News reports:

A Maritime brew is heading for extinction, but it won’t leave many drinkers crying in their beer. Ten-Penny Old Stock Ale is soon to be a memory in Nova Scotia. Bottled by New Brunswick-based Moosehead, Ten-Penny is already off the shelves at most Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation stores. But at what seems to be one of the last bars in HRM to sell Ten-Penny, it’s not exactly flying out of the cooler. “We have 26 left and we put it on our sign outside, so we’re trying to trick people into coming in and buying it before it’s gone,” said Kendall Burton, general manager of the Lion’s Head Tavern and Grill.

If you can’t sell Ten-Penny at the Lion’s Head, believe me, you have an issue…justsayin’. And don’t order the salad. Anyway, if old style Schooner was the beer your uncle drank (or at least he did before that day when it magically began to taste exactly like Labatt Blue) Ten-Penny was the beer your grandfather drank because it smelled like his shed. The professors at my small undergrad bought it, one suspects for the same reason that anyone did: so no one would steal one on you. It was musty and even musky stuff with a pale malt funk that has the power to catch on the gag reflex even as a 20 year old memory. While it is enjoying strong US sales, the Moosehead brewery in New Brunswick is the remaining rump of the east coast empire after the Dartmouth branch ceased operations in the 90s. The brewery describes the beer in this way:

Ten-Penny Old Stock Ale: Ten-Penny is a robust ale brewed using top fermenting ale yeast, more malt and hops for extra body and higher alcohol content (5.3% alcohol by volume). Its unique flavour has made it the choice of Maritime traditional ale drinkers for decades…

That description is almost as kind as the decision to cease production.And while the two whole reviewers at BeerAdvocate say it was not anything to look forward to in its last incarnation either I am sure there are those that will regret this decision and if you are one of them feel free to vent. I make no judgment. We are here to help.

On Reading “Best Before” Labels

One of our neighbours from down the street brought us a large bottle of beer in a nice gift bag when they came to our pre-Christmas levy. It was a bottle of Picaroons, from a brewery in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Nice, appreciated gift. My only concern is that the Best Before date reads:

G250 Feb0198

Should I: chuckle?; call the police?; close the blinds permanently?; move? Am I reading the date incorrectly?