Topic Archives: Biere de Champagne/ Biere Brut
Victory Jubilee, a sparkly toast to 21 years
Victory Jubilee, a biere de champagne and unique departure from many of the brewery’s styles is hitting shelves now.
Style, Biere de Champagne.
You don’t see a lot of this style running around the American brewing industry. Think of it as the Belgian way to compete with high-end wines. A Belgian ale that undergoes fermentation with champagne yeast. The resulting beer features a lot of that fruity, esthery, phenolic character, with an effervesce of a sparkling wine/champagne.
Victory Jubilee creates just that – a sparkly, effervescent beer with nice fruit notes from German Blanc hops. A great way to toast Victory’s 21 years of brewing in Pennsylvania.
Join the Jubilee as we toast 21 years of Victory! This lush and decadent BIere de Champagne has been fermented with Champagne yeast to marry the lively and effervescent character of sparkling wines with the rich, fruit-forward flavors of Belgian-style ales. German Blanc hops impart aromas of pear, apple, and white grape while citrus and spice flavors culminate in a crisp, wine-like finish.
Victory Jubilee is now a 750 milliliter bottle release.
Style: Biere de Brut
Hops: German Blanc
Availability: 750ml Bottles, Draft.
Debut: January, 2017
12% ABV
Infinium Batch 2. What’s Different, Plus Beer Cocktail Recipes
Sam Adams/Weihenstephaner’s 2nd collaborative batch of Infinium has shipped and hitting the shelves over the next week or two.
What’s different this year?
The brewers enhanced this year’s beer by dry hopping with fresh Hallertau Mittelfrueh hops late in the brewing process, imparting a fresh yet delicate citrusy hop character.
In a Boston.com interview, Jim Koch elaborates on this years batch:
…We wanted to amp up the sort of fruitiness of it, particularly the tropical fruit notes in it. It’s got a lot of pear, apple and we wanted to bring some sort of mango maybe. We wanted to bring up the fruit notes, while still keeping it very dry. So it’s a very dry taste. But it’s interesting. It’s dry without being thin and it has to do with using malt rather than grapes because malt will give you that body and texture while at the same time giving you that acidic dryness and then we wanted to get more of the fruit notes in it again because as a brewer the yeast seems to expect more fruit notes from a malt and we have the ability to use both beer yeast and champagne yeast.
New this year are some interesting Sam Adams beer cocktail recipes to be made with Infinium.
- The Mr. Adams: 1 oz black pepper syrup (simple syrup combined with black pepper) ½ oz apple cider¼ oz fresh lemon juice Garnish: Lemon peel Glassware: Champagne flute, straight up
Fill glass halfway with Infinium. Shake black pepper syrup, cider and lemon juice in a shaker. Strain shaken mixture into glass. Garnish with lemon peel.
- Into The Woods: 1 oz fresh lime juice 1 tsp fresh rosemary1 pinch of grey saltGarnish: Preserved lime and a rosemary sprig, grey salt rimGlassware: Pilsner glass, on the rocks
Rim glass with grey salt using simple syrup. Muddle rosemary, lime juice and grey salt. Shake with ice and pour contents into rimmed glass. Top with Infinium. Stir gently, and garnish with lime and rosemary.
- Winter Rush: ½ oz pumpkin bitters (or orange bitters with pumpkin extract added)Splash of lemon juice1 tsp sage¼ tsp smoked saltGarnish: Crushed dehydrated cranberries for rimGlassware: Pilsner glass, on the rocks
Rim glass with dehydrated cranberries using simple syrup. Muddle sage, salt and lemon juice. Shake with pumpkin bitters and ice. Pour contents into pilsner glass. Top with Infinium and stir gently.
NEW: Mikkeller Nelson Sauvin Brut
One of the newest offerings stateside from Mikkeller – Nelson Sauvin Brut. It’s a Bière Brut with brett, aged in Austrian Sauvignon Blanc barrels. The Nelson Sauvin hop used in the beer is famous for a wine-line flavor profile. It’s bubbly, grab a champagne glass. It is a bruit edition of the Nelson Sauvignon brewed last year.
About Brut:
Brewed by base malt and mashing and fermentation with added enzymes to achieve as high fermentability as possible. Forboth bitter, taste and aroma hops are used the New Zealand hop variety ‘Nelson Sauvin’ which is named after its grape characters that bring memories to the New Zealand white wine grape Sauvignon Blanc. The yeast is used both champagne and brettanomyces and because the enzymes are beers fermented very far down, and thus the end result is a very dry beer. After fermentation the beer has been 5 months in casks of white wine from Austria Weingut Kollwentz and gained additional character.
Style: Bière Brut (wine barrel aged)
Taste Expectations: Oak, grapes, vanilla, green apple, banana. Light booze overtone. Bubbly.
Availability: 750ml bottles. Wrapped.
9% ABV
Sam Adams/Weihenstephan Infinium
This beer has gotten a lot of beer geek buzz over the past few months. The chance to finally try this beer for yourself has arrived. Infinium is a very unique collaborative effort, and definitely one of the most elegant packages for a brew I’ve seen in a while. Read up on the story before you pop the cork. Pinky fingers up everyone.
Backstory:
Our brewers worked for two years with the world’s oldest brewery, Germany’s Weihenstephan, to create this unique new beer style. A groundbreaking brew, made with only the four traditional ingredients: malted barley, hops, water and yeast, Infiniumâ„¢ is a crisp champagne-like beer with fine bubbles and a fruity, spicy aroma. The crisp clean malt character and delicate fruit notes in this beer are complemented by a slight citrus flavor from dry hopping with Bavarian Noble hops. Bottle conditioning adds another layer of complexity and light spice notes.
The challenge was to create a new one-of-a-kind, champagne-style beer, while operating within the confines of Reinheitsgebot; the German Beer Purity Law dating back to 1560 which allows the use of only water, malt, hops & yeast. Using these four classic ingredients and the traditional brewing process to reach their end goal would require the brewers ofSamuel Adams and Weihenstephan to innovate like never before. Combining their 1,000 years of brewing expertise and creativity, the two brewers created a groundbreaking brew that’s crisp and champagne-like. It’s light and dry yet complex, with a sparkling effervescence.
Our brewers rearranged the brewing process to create this ground-breaking beer, reintroducing the mash process into the brew kettle and the fermenter. The process used to brew Infinium is patent pending, and allowed our brewers to create a beer unlike any ever brewed under the Reinheitsgebot. Infinium is dry-hopped with Bavarian Noble hops for a light citrus flavor. Its then bottle-conditioned with a traditional Belgian yeast and fermented in the champagne-method to add another layer of flavor complexity, a bright clarity, and a fine carbonation to the beer.
Style: Biere de Champagne/ Biere Brut
Hops: Hallertau Mittlefrueh, Spalt Spalter, Tettnang Tettnanger and Hersbrucker Noble Hops
Malts: Custom blend of two-row malted barley, malted spring white wheat, and malted oats
Yeast: Samuel Adams ale yeast, Belgian yeast
Taste Expectations: Effervescent, slightly hoppy with a touch of earth. Bready, bit of sweet malt. Very dry.
Availability: 750 ML, Corked/Caged. One time collaboration.
Cellar? Suggested to drink by June 2011
10.3% ABV
