HoppySlosh gets spoiled rotten!

"Fancy coming over to help me with a bottle or two?"

Altruist that I am, I hastened to aid a friend in need, so last Friday evening found me at Dennoman's table, enjoying good company and the result of an absolutely unbelievable feat of brewing bravado.

Booze'n'buddies. And some strawberries just off screen.

As a warmer-upper, the gracious host plumbed the depths of his fridge and dug up a bottle of this:

Beer and metal. Booya!

EyeHateGod are a New Orleans based band (here, see if you can stomach this if you don't believe me), and Three Floyds apparantly have brewed a beer in their honor. If you listened to their music, then it'll come as no big surprise that it's a black brew (or "dark" at the very least).
Black IPAs tend to cater to hops ànd malt lovers both, but this particular example is a full-on hops bomb. Not much roast or coffee undercurrent to be found here, but instead, what you get is a relatively dry, yet firm-bodied IPA which is, well, black-to-darkish. Pretty unique for an IPA (of any color really) as it doesn't play on the sweet, caramelly backbone so typical of Douple IPAs, and instead lets the hops sing in all their glory. Hard to name them specifically, as there's so much going on all at once: citrus fruits, pineapple, sweet tangerines and a wee bit of soft resin.
This was my first 3F ever, and if it's any indication of the brewery's skill (they got voted Best Brewery Anywhere on This Planet so I'm guessing it is), then this is a one to watch.

Beer: In the Name of Suffering
Brewery: Three Floyds
Style: BIPA
ABV: 7.1%
EBU: -
EBC: -
Served: 500ml bottle

Strawberries kept the the palates entertained while the host descended into to Inner Sanctum of his humble abode: the cellar.
More on Denno's cellar later. Time to roll in the big one.

On a Friday evening.
How much more decadence can the human body take?

The Bruery is one of the current pinnacles of radical craft brewing. Their Black Tuesday, named after the day when a terrible brewing accident caused permanent burns to the head brewer, is realistically impossible to acquire here in Belgium, unless, of course, you are the infamous Dennoman.

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Interludium

As the evening wore on and the topic of conversation drifted from beer to the weather and back again, Dennoman recounted his meeting with a generous share holder of a brewery whose name eludes me at the moment. Bottom line of the story was that Denno walked away with a ridiculous batch of nigh-impossible-to-find-or-at-the-very-least-heftily-priced bottles of brew.

Altruism, it seems, has not yet become extinct, and to altruism then do I dedicate this interludium.

Denno, I've made arrangements with the Vatican; once the forms are back, stamped and papally sealed, Saint Dennis(*) it is.

Saint Cephallophore, more like.

*) Dennis, apparently, is derived from the Greek name Dionyssos, which happens to be the name of a god involved with boozy beverages and wanton indulgence. Coincidence? I think not.

Interludium ends about here

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Black Tuesday then. A nice, thick seal of wax was barring the way, and after some careful manhandling (bottle-handling?), StDennis managed to open the bottle and FFFFFFUUUUUUU get some tissue oh fuck oh fuck shit damn and buggeration she's gonna blow!

Blow she did, leaving dubious stains with promising smells all over the pristine table top. Quite impressive how a beer of such relentless caliber still manages to gush. I suspect the neighbours suddenly looked up from their TV show, sniffing the air and wondering what that smell was.

Because as soon as you open it (and, admittedly, spill some), the scent hits you full on. This is a powerful, potent monster of a beer, layered, nay, stratified with boozy bourbon, thick dark oak, soy sauce (*), petrified vanilla pods and a surprisingly playful whiff of something I couldn't quite put my finger on. 

*) "Kikkoman Soy sauce", spoke StDennis to his disciple, who marvelled but held his tongue(°). But indeed, smelling the capsule later on, the soy sauce thing makes sense, despite sounding icky. A thick, meaty tang of salt and umami, bordering on a fermented pong. By itself, a bit upsertting, but in the broader scope of things, utterly fitting.

°) theriouthly, I wathn't weawwy howding my fongue of courthe.

This is one of those beers which makes the eyelids droop as soon as you take a whiff. A smile blooms across the lips as the fumes rise up and it feels almost sacrilegeous to take that first sip.

But heathen than I am, sip I did.

Epiphany says Love Brew.

We need a new word to express epiphany. Eureka doesn't cut it. Saint Arnoldus Bless My Beard will only do for the unshaven. For the moment, a baffled Holy Mother of FuckDamn will have to suffice, but it barely reaches the ankles of WTF-ness washing over me when that first sip of brew oozed sludge-like from the glass into my mouth. Viscous, thick and oily, yet fiery with booze at the same time. It doesn't pour, it doesn't trickle, it doesn't even insinuate. Like a lazy hungover snake covered in brimstone, it undulates across the palate, into the gullet, slowy sliding down into the stomach, leaving a trail of glowing happiness in its wake. I'm not waxing poetic here, it's the honest truth: this beer positively radiates yumminess.

There's so much going on in here, it's hard to collect one's calm, but, truth be told, after a couple of sips, the calm hits you like a velvet hammer anyway: this is a boozy beer indeed. At 19.5% ABV, it's probably wiser to think of this more as a beer liqueur, even though it is, technically as well as spiritually, beer. StDennis confirmed my guess that the extreme alcohol content is achieved through superior brewing skills, combined with ageing in some seriously damp barrels, rather than through physico-chemical envigoration (aka Eisbocking). And yes, by the time we hit the bottle's bottom, those almost-twenty-percent were hard to disregard.

But it's not just booze. There's the bourbon, obviously, which is such a ridiculously perfect companion to this style of beer. Together with the barrel itself, it infuses the rich dark malts with such earthy, and contrastingly ethereal essences that the senses really becomes somewhat lost. There's wood, vanilla, some solvent, a distant hint of dark dried fruits and maybe just a tiny touch of anise. What's really striking is how lusciously smooth it all is: there's not a hint of harshness or brutality to be found, despite the face-on extreme nature of the beer. 

It's beers like this which make me realise Belgium really is a bit of a backwater where creative brewing is concerned. We're good at what we've been doing for the past few centuries, I'll give us that. But a few devoted craft breweries aside (I'm looking at De Struise Brouwers, and maybe De Dochter van de Korenaar and a select few others), we simply don't have the balls or the ingenuity to take beer to this level. And to be honest, most Belgians I know are not ready for this much beer in their beer. The current national consensus seems to be that Draught Guinness (at a mass-produced and hardly matured 4.1%ABV) is a radical, extreme beer, which most people I know equate with all stouts, and uniformly don't like. I've a feeling most of my fellow-countrymen simply wouldn't know what to do with a beer of this magnitude.

This beer is extreme, I'll not naysay that, but it is such a delight to drink, and, perhaps more important still, to share. It's a beer which singlehandedly embodies the spirit of sharing, of casual congregation and collective hedonism. And if one can hedonise in the company of a saint, then one can really count oneself to be blessed.

Beer: Black Tuesday
Brewery: The Bruery
Style: Barrel Aged Imperial Stout
ABV: a staggering 19.5%
IBU: 40
SRM/EBC: 100 / 200+ (almost as black as Samuel L. Jackson)
Served: 750ml wax-sealed bottle

St-Dennis, you da MAN!

Greetz

Jo

PS: while I don't have a picture of StDennis' cellar, I do have first-hand reports about the treasures locked within. First-hand as in I've been there. Yes, you can start doing that Wayne'nGarth thing now.