Tonight I’ve chosen another one of those unavailable-in-Morris beers, this one was part of that three-fer I purchased at that package store in New Lenox. I remember perusing the craft beer shelf there and marveling over the beer names I hadn’t heard of before. Tonight’s beer was brewed by the Lagunitas Brewing Company out of Petaluma, California. I had seen one or two Lagunitas beers before back in town, but never this one. This one was different.

The beer in question was called Brown Shugga’ Ale. The single label on the body of the bottle, gave me all the information I needed to know. Under the name was the phrase, “Sweet Release.” It instantly became obvious to me that this beer used brown sugar as an ingredient in the brewing process. And from the O.G. listed, copious quantities of it. The ABV was listed at being 9.84%.  The process of turning sugars into alcohol will be demonstrated on a large scale with this beer. The sixpack carton found its niche under my arm and became one of three review selections I paid for at the checkout.

Saturday night, upon further review, the label yielded other information goodies. One little tidbit  was presented in the style of Sergio Aragones, the cartoonist for Mad Magazine who doodled in the margins. Around the border of the label was:

We believe this Ale is Something Unique. Feeding Brown Cane Sugar to otherwise Cultured Brewery Yeast is akin to feeding Raw Shark to your Gerbil. It is unlikely ever to occur in nature without Human Intervention. And it looks weird besides. But it has happened and now it’s too Late.

That message gave me pause as I tried to envision feeding raw shark meat to a gerbil. Nonetheless, the brown sugar part sounded sort of like a Frankenstein experiment gone awry and I wanted to be part of it. I purchased the beer with eight bucks change from my twenty. (Illini-bucks and Zimbabwe dollars are very similar.)

With most of Saturday dedicated to family affairs and Super Bowl party preparations, I was thankful to finally have some time to sit back, relax and write about a Frankenbeer. I’m thinking that it’ll be a little sweet, eh?

The beer poured up sporting a nice, thick, creamy yellowish-white head. The liquid was a beautiful amber color and there were billions of micro-bubbles floating to the top. A slight hint of malt was all that greeted my nose.

The first sip hit my palate. Looks like we’re in store for another wildly bold brew with all ingredients in a starring role. The front of the sip carried the unique sweetness of the brown sugar. The dark malts filled in the middle and then the big slam of hops at the end. The beer is almost overly sweet but it’s not cloying. The beers tastes light on the tongue, the direct opposite of a thick black stout. The big hop kick at the end was like a kid leaving home and slamming the door behind him.

The sweetness is by far this beer’s biggest asset, hitting one right in the chops fresh out of the blocks.    A too sweet beer is many times a turn off, but in this case we have two polar opposites present in each sip of this beer. The sweet in the front and the bitter at the back play quite well off each other. This beer will most certainly keep your taste buds quite busy.

The label sports some interesting numbers, the first of which is the Original Gravity of the wort. In this case it’s 1.100 which is outrageously high. It was saturated with sugars from the start. The yeast will lower that number quite a bit, turning the sugars into alcohol. This brings up the second number. This beer has an ABV of 9.84%. Lots and lots of the sugars in this case were converted into alcohol. The last number indicated that this beer had a rating of 51.1 IBUs. Nicely bitter. I’m sure that 51 IBUs in any other yellow beer would push it toward the Pale Ale scale. In this case, it’s the hoppiness of this beer that offsets the sweetness quite nicely, thank you. It’s like putting horseradish on your Polish sausage. That kind of taste enhancement.

This could be considered a celebration beer, or a dessert beer, but certainly not a session beer. Have this beer after your team wins the Big Game at the bowling alley. Have one after that huge prime rib dinner. Hell, have one after a Big Mac. This beer is very smooth, nicely sweet, rich in body with a crispness at the end that may raise your eyebrows. Be careful, though. The alcohol may creep up on you and whack you upside the noggin. This is a beer to always consider for special occasions. A little will go a long way.

The SixPackTech ratings for Lagunitas Brown Shugga’ Ale are:

Taste: A- > Your tongue will be out of breath trying to keep up with the tastes.
Smoothness: A- > A silk thread with a knot at the end.
Drinkability: B+ > I may have one more. Or two. Three?
Bang for the buck: C+ > 2 bucks a beer for this taste rollercoaster.
ABV: 9.84% <– Drinker discretion advised.
Wife’s all-encompassing opinion: Not too dark. Almost smells fruity. (sip) Hmm. I almost get a raspberry-ish taste. (sip) Little drying but it’s got a lot of flavor. (sip) Actually that’s pretty good. (sip) Oh, yeah. (sip) Not bad at all. (I think my wife has a Martian tongue. Or maybe Neptunian or Jovian.)

(BA) – (RB)

Brown Sugar

Mick frikkin' Jagger

Lagunitas Brewing Company

Appropriate to the subject at hand.

For tonight’s after-work brewski, I’ve chosen one of the three sixpacks I purchased last week at that Village Liquor store in New Lenox.

What drew me to choose this particular brand of beverage was the artwork on the carton. It depicted a woman, obviously from the 1920s or ’30s wearing one of those typical bowl-style hats that the ladies of that era wore. The picture appeared to be a pencil drawing and the woman in question was wearing a snarky facial expression and a low-cut dress. The name of this beer was Dirty Helen Tavern Style Brown Ale. That must be Helen in the picture. In addition, hanging off one of the bottles like a Do Not Disturb motel doorknob announcement, was a handbill which touted 2009 GABF Gold Medal Winner! Best American Brown Ale. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

The beer came from east of the Michigan Lake, having been made in Noblesville, Indiana by the Barley Island Brewing Company. I must say that this is the first I’ve heard of them and Dirty Helen. It’s refreshing to get a beer that’s unavailable in Morris. (I must find that beer distributor salesguy again and interview him on just how distributing beer in Illinois works.)

The label on the bottle said:

Bold, delicious handcrafted ale with the reputation of a legendary tavern owner.

My curiosity hit warp drive. Who was this Dirty Helen?

In my owns words, let me sum it up what I found out about Dirty Helen:

Dirty Helen was the nickname given to Helen Cromwell, the owner of the Sunflower Inn in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from the ‘30s through the ‘50s. She was a one time gal-pal of Al Capone who helped him along the lines of rumrunning and prostitution.

Helen had the foulest mouth in the state. Her favorite drinks to serve the clientele were House of Lords scotch and Old Fitzgerald bourbon. Once, when a group of sailors visited her establishment, one of the boys ordered a martini. What ensued was one of the most vile, and foul worded tirades the young lad and witnesses had ever heard. To say she cussed like a sailor was an understatement. She and the lad remained long time friends after that. The legend fits the picture on the bottle. We salute the Barley Island boys for dedicating this beer in the name of Dirty Helen.

One other point of interest has me a little confused. This is the first time I’ve encountered the “tavern style” moniker for a beer style. Nowhere on Beer Advocate could I find what a tavern style was. Google yielded little else. Chalk another one up to the boys at Barley Island for coming up with this beer style.

Let’s finally get down to business and have some beer, shall we? With the picture of a foul-mouthed broad in a tavern ambience of the 1930s in my head, I popped open the first bottle (no twist-off) and poured.

On pouring the first glass, the head started to form up right away. Up it came and I had to hold off from pouring the entire bottle contents into the glass as there was just no room. The head came up a good two inches’ worth of thick creamy foam. The beer was a nice dark brown in color and had a lot of medium sized bubbles rising to the top. The aroma was that of a nice dark malt. This should be good.

The taste was very, very interesting. Many flavors came out. The maltiness came first followed a microsecond later by both the sweet and the hoppiness. The sip finished on a nice hoppy note. This was quite the surprise.

Once again, I’m reminded of the hoppiness of an American pale ale in each sip of this beer. The malts are plentiful and robust giving off a tongue pleasing sweetness. The hop kick at the end is the uvula slap that reminds you you’re drinking a serious beer. Sort of Dirty Helen’s foul mouthed barb as the concoction is finally swallowed.

As the sips progressed, I started to get used to the sweet and bitter of this lusty brew. The blendation of the ingredients of this beer was absolutely perfect, making for an adventure of tastes right in my mouth. Each of the flavors stood out but none in particular stood out. We have another case of gustatory synergy where the outcome is greater than the sum of the parts.

• Of note: Since the beer comes up with a rich, foamy head every time, the last little bit in the bottle has to wait for some room to become available in the glass. I had noticed that upon pouring the remainder of the bottle, the beer in the glass clouded up. I noticed the same thing with my last homebrew. It must be bottle conditioned. The cloudiness came from the remains of the spent yeast. It added nor deleted anything from the taste. That gave credence to the unprinted homebrew-style bottlecaps each beer was sealed with.

I was surprised to learn from the Barley Island website that this beer had only 24.5 IBUs; it tasted higher than that. I then wondered how they could measure to a tenth of an IBU. But at 4.3% ABV this would make for an absolutely stunning session beer. I could see stretching this taste out over quite a few hours. Cheese? Yes. Pizza? Oh, yeah. Bacon? I’m in heaven!

This is an absolutely wonderful beer. It’s just chock full of taste and the ultimate hop kick to the tonsils is its crowning achievement. Stack this up against Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale and compare the tastes. I’d say this one is a cut above specifically due to the dark, sweet malts used. If you see this beer at the store, snatch it up. Better get two. You’ll want to visit Dirty Helen again because that’s the kind of gal she is.

The SixPackTech ratings for Barley Island’s Dirty Helen Tavern Style Brown Ale are:

Taste: A- > A giant, gift-wrapped present for your tongue.
Smoothness: A- > Like a flapper’s nylon-covered thigh.
Drinkability: A > Like a long run on a game of 8-ball.
Bang for the buck: B+ > Even at 9 Illini-bucks it’s absolutely worth it.
ABV: 4.3%

(BA) – (RB)

Dirty Helen

Helen Thomas

References:

Helen Cromwell
Martini story Comment 2.
Old Fitzgerald, House of Lords
And the image below: