Category: Vermont

Vermont: Odd Notion Fall ’09, Magic Hat, SoBurl

If Google is anything to go by – and it might well turn out to be – then I have clearly had a fair number of beers by Magic Hat. Like the buttery goodness. Like the quirky branding. Like the experimentations. This beer is one of there recent Odd Notions and I am told it is a stout, which it is, but was not told to expect smoked malt. It’s like a black thick stout with about 10% rauchbier added. Quite yummy stuff. Pours deep dark with a thin deep brown rim. Fine mocha foam verging on the burgundy tinged. It gives scents of cream, dark plum as well as a little roastiness. These continue in the swish with cocoa, earthiness, smoke, date, and a whack of other dark favours all in a reasonably big body which is also moreish. Quite the nicest stout I have had in a while.

Three bottles in each mixed 12-pack this autumnal season. Best of their special brews which I have had yet. Plenty of BAer love though they call it a Belgian dark unlike the brewery.

Vermont: Odd Notion Spring ’09, Magic Hat, SoBurl

Extreme. Experimental. Weird. Weirdo. That is my new sliding scale to express a facet of the craft brewing world, like the crap-snob continuum. Granted it is only half the scale, missing the BFW¹ – X3M portion to the left. But it is a good scale and Odd Notion Spring 2009 inspired it.

One problem with “extreme” is that right now it’s the centre of the pack. This beer points out that there is plenty of room beyond extreme, including places you will likely not visit again. Because this beer and those like it are weird. Last spring’s peaty brown ale called Odd Notion helped generate a lot of heat over diacetyl that I don’t expect to be repeated with this one’s poppy seed and agave flavours. Will not one defend the honour of the agave? Who stands for the poppy? None.

It pours an attractive orange amber with a nice sheeting white head. But the smell is like a fresh and well-crafted beer trying to replicate the smell of an old, off skunky one. In the mouth, it’s a bit like fancy hotel soap, the stuff you put on a bad sunburn made from cactus as well as that hard astringent poppiness. There is other stuff in there like a little orange marmalade and maybe a bilious note. It is hard to explain but for all that, this is not entirely off-putting given that (1) it is generated in large part by the poppy seed, a taste I took to when I worked in Poland and (2) I have been sunburned a lot and support the post sun burn lotion industry. But it is weird. Yet not quite a weirdo. Good BAer support.