Beers from New Hampshire’s Smuttynose Brewing are readily available in the area, but I’ve not taken full advantage, and my initial foray into their catalog was a little disappointing. That being said, I had not checked out anything from their Big Beer Series, which all seem to be pretty interesting. They’re seasonal beers made in limited quantities, and while some beers show up every year, others get shuffled around to make room for new beers, though they sometimes return a few years later. Even if a beer is lucky enough to come back, the brewers like to tweak and experiment with recipes from batch to batch.
For example, Gravitation is their Belgian style quadrupel, that style that’s not quite a style, a sorta Belgian Strong Dark Ale that conforms to certain loose parameters that no one wants to define (of course, this didn’t stop me from trying). Anywho, this beer was first brewed in 2009 and it came in at… 6.6% ABV? That sounds more like a dubbel to me, but then, here we are a few years later, and the 2011 edition I just drank sports a whopping 12.5% ABV. Not quite double the alcohol, but damn, these must be dramatically different beers.
Smuttynose Gravitation 2011 – Pours a murky amber brownish color with a small cap of light colored head. Smells deeply of sweet, dark fruit and brown sugar, maybe even molasses. Taste is again filled with those sugary sweet, dark fruits (raisins and plums) and tons of brown sugar/molasses/candi character too. Booziness comes out in the taste as well. Getting a rum raisin kinda feel out of this, a little on the hot side, but it works. Maybe just a hint of spice too, though whatever is there is overwhelmed by the residual sugars… Mouthfeel is rich and creamy, well carbonated yet very smooth. I usually expect a certain amount of dryness out of a quad, but this doesn’t have much of that… It’s not sticky either, but it is thick and heavy, full bodied, almost chewy, with lots of booze and some of that alcohol warming factor as you drink. It’s an enjoyable sipper, a little hot, but well crafted and distinct. A-
Beer Nerd Details: 12.5% ABV bottled (22 oz. bomber). Drank out of a goblet on 10/12/12.
Well, consider me impressed. I will now have to seek out some more Smuttynose big beers, though I’ve got quite a backlog of bombers in my cellar that I should really drink through…