Harpoon Leviathan Barleywine Style Ale

As I recently learned, barley wine is not wine at all, but rather, strong ale. Wikipedia has some good information on this for further reading. The basic idea is, more flavor, and a higher alcohol level than most other ales.

We tried Harpoon's offering after getting a quick sample on the Harpoon brewery tour. I am very impressed. Complex is a word that gets thrown around a lot when describing how things taste, but it really applies here. Dark, bitter, sweet, and VERY complex. This beer has a long, ever-changing finish, with caramel and tropical fruit, among other flavors. Two thumbs up!

Harpoon Brewery Tour, Boston, MA

This past Saturday I and my better half took our first ever tour of the Harpoon brewery, located in the South Boston Seaport. We've both been wanting to tour Harpoon for years, but the time was never right. Finally, we found ourselves with a Saturday morning to spend in Boston. So, after a Dim-Sum brunch in Chinatown, we headed out to the brewery.

I've been on a couple of winery tours, and at least one other brewery tour, and enjoyed them all. I like learning about how things were made, and I'm always amazed at what it takes to produce food and beverages at even a modest scale. The Harpoon tour did not disappoint. As expected, we were given an overview of the process of creating and cooking wort, and brewing the final product. We got all the dirt on yeast strains, water purification methods, protein strands and all the other good stuff that goes into brewing. The real unexpected treat of the day, though, was getting to sample raw beer (prior to filtering and carbonation) drawn straight from the bottom of one of the tanks. The IPA we tried was cloudy, and, as you would expect, a little flat. But it had a lot of flavor. It was way cool.

After the tour we retired to the friendly confines of the Harpoon store, where we got to sample from among about nine varieties, including Leviathan Imperial IPA, Oak Aged Dunkel (this year's 100 Barrel Series offering), UFO Raspberry Hefeweizen and Leviathan Barleywine. Of the last, more later.

It was a great tour on a great day. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes beer, or Boston.

Cold weather and holiday beers

As the summer of 2010 morphed into the fall (now quickly becoming winter ... 9F this morning), I have made an effort to take a step back from the IPA side of things, and tried to embrace the darker, more malty, and less citrus-y world of brown ales, Oktoberfest offerings, and winter lagers. I have tried this in the past, usually without success. I tell myself that my beer tastes are too one-dimensional - that I need to branch out from Harpoon IPA, Red Hook Long Hammer, and Stone Ruination. But each time I've tried, I've gone running back "home" to hop-head land, having been let down by the dark and malty crowd.I had reached a point where, if you couldn't taste the hops right up front, I couldn't enjoy the beer.

This time, I really tried to adjust my mindset prior to taking the leap. I've also been reading "The Naked Pint", a very thorough volume on all things beer. The authors do a good job of explaining the differences between different beer styles, and highlighting the best characteristics of each. This adjustment of mindset helped me to know what I was looking for in the world outside of Simcoe and Cascade.

I think this approach has helped, and I am finally developing a taste for malty brews. (There, I know you'll sleep better at night now.) Over the past month or so, I, and my better half, have shifted our beer buying and tasting to brown, malty, sometimes sweet and sticky, brews. I intend to write about at least a few of them in the coming weeks. Suffice it to say, I'm glad I stuck with it.

Unrelated post - familial bragging

My big sister, Alison Kenney Paul.