Fri 11 Jun 2010
When Benito comes over to taste wine, he habitually brings a gift, and today was no different from other occasions. Traipsing through the door, he handed me a black and silver can and said, “Try the beer that drinks like a port.”
The beer that drinks like a port? Nay, brethren, like a porterhouse steak!
This was the Ten Fidy Imperial Stout from the Oskar Blues Brewery of Lyons, Colorado, population 1,400. Oskar Blues fomented a suds revolution in 2002 by “bottling” its stupendous, hand-crafted, weirdly named brews in specially lined aluminum cans.
Ten Fidy refers to its alcoholic strength — 10.5 percent — though the can of which I partook stated that it was 9.5 percent. No matter. Ten Fidy is in every sense the hand-held equivalent of a Dodge Ram 1500.
Imagine, if you will, a snifter-style goblet that holds a beer the rich shiny mahogany color of coffee dregs, such as Beowulf might quaff in Jutland’s endless night (had coffee and its dregs been available to that legendary hero; of such comparisons are resonant metaphors made). Imagine, then, that this primordial liquifaction smells like the world’s strongest coffee whose beans have been roasted to the point of being caramelized with a handful of roasted barley and the darkest of dark, bitter chocolate. (The word “roasted” shows up a lot here.) Flavor-wise, you take a jolt of thermonuclear-strength espresso, jazz it with a dollop of bitter Italian amaro and black-strap molasses, dark brown sugar, sassafras and prune juice, with, to top it off, another handful of deeply roasted barley.
This is not, as you can ascertain, the sort of beer that you snatch from the ice-chest, chug-a-lug like a demon and then do a belly-flop in the pool. No, this is a contemplative brew, and, as Benito implied, requires solitude and slow, thoughtful sipping at room temperature with a plate of Stilton cheese, some walnuts and an apple. Or, I’m thinking, a hot, open-face roast beef sandwich.