You might take your favorite craft beer for granted because you can find it almost anywhere, but some beers are more ephemeral. With limited quantities and restricted distribution, brewery special releases are often one-off opportunities. The window opens, and you get your chance. Then it’s gone. Some people stockpile those beers into a cellar full of magical elixirs, but I generally prefer to enjoy those experiences in the moment and trust that another peak awaits me in the future. Usually, I’m satisfied to savor the brewer’s craft down to the bottom of the glass and then move on. But sometimes, that’s not enough.
One of my lucky pleasures in life is that I sit on the blind-tasting panels for Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine®. In each session, we’re served a series of mystery beers to evaluate and score. After we’ve discussed a beer and turned in our comments, we finally get to know what we were rating. Last November, my panel was judging barrel-aged stouts. My favorite beer of the night was wonderfully complex. On top of the normal mélange of higher alcohol, rich malt, and barrel aging, this one stood out with a host of strong flavors that supported one another perfectly. It was deeply smoky, with a light spicy bite. Along with the expected mocha and malty depth, it featured a distinctive wash of cacao nibs and maple.
I didn’t just enjoy this beer. I was inspired by it. The key was the smoke, which is one of my favorite adjunct flavors. Around here, I’m recognized as Mr. Smoke. I’ve spent enough time at Spezial Brewing in Bamberg, Germany, that they recognize me and remember me between visits. A couple of local craft breweries have brewed my Spassmacher Rauchbier recipe. In my homebrewing, I’ve added smoked malt to a number of base styles, including a smoked barleywine, a rauchbock, and even a smoked Kölsch. That last one might not have been the best idea.
The beer the panel tasted that November evening convinced me that I needed to brew a smoked imperial stout. My goal is not to reproduce this beer but to capture its essence. To paraphrase the American comedy rock duo, Tenacious D, “This will not be the greatest beer in the world; no, this will be just a tribute.”
The first step was easy: identify this Ideal. It turns out that this dark, wicked nectar was Goose Island’s 2016 Proprietor’s Bourbon County Brand Stout. Great! Now I just needed to get some to study while devising my own recipe.
Screech! Not so great. Proprietor’s is one of those incredibly hard-to-find beers. Like all of the Proprietor’s releases, it was only available in Chicago for a short period of time, already past. That ounce or so I had in November might have been the only taste I get.
The Quest
I wasn’t quite ready to give up, though. “Incredibly hard to find” is not “impossible to find.” The trick is that you can find it on the secondary market. Sites such as The Beer Exchange or BottleTrade provide a place for collectors to connect and trade rare beers. The downside is that you either need to pony up some serious cash or have something on hand that people are willing to trade for.
I started down this path, but it was daunting. I found a few people who had the Proprietor’s, but my relatively limited cellar never included a match for a trade, and making a list of proposals seemed like an arduous task. I do have some very interesting local special releases, but none have the online cachet that Goose Island does. The cash trade value at the time was high enough to be discouraging, and that didn’t even count shipping.
I had pretty much decided to give up and trust my faulty memory, but I had people working for me in the background. Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine® Editorial Director Jamie Bogner came through with a simple local exchange. A great regional brewery had their own special release coming up, and I could make a bottle-for-bottle trade. This worked out great; it was quick and easy. Each of us got what we wanted, and it was good to connect with a fellow beer fan.
Planning the Tribute
Now that I have a couple of bottles of the Proprietor’s, I’m ready to move forward on my tribute beer. I’ll open one to taste again, so I can work up my recipe. The second bottle will wait until the tribute is done, so I can do a side-by-side comparison. Frankly, I’m a little worried about that first bottle. Will it still taste as good as I remember? It may be that it was the context of the other stouts that helped make it work.
I’m also concerned about how to balance the strong flavors of smoke, dark roast, and cacao nibs. A fresh taste will let me gauge the levels, but working out the recipe will be challenging.
Regardless, I have to reach for that ephemeral goal. Next week, I'll be opening a bottle of the Proprieter's, discussing my tasting notes, and talking about recipe formulation. Stay tuned!
Want to brew your own tribute? In Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine’s online course Introduction to Evaluating Beer, Josh Weikert covers the ins and outs of beer evaluation and shows you how to become a better brewer through learning to evaluate beer—both yours and that of other brewers. And in the online course Recipe Development from Start to Finish, professional brewer Matt Czigler, Founder of Czig Meister Brewing, covers the ins and outs of developing your best beer. Sign up for both classes today!