Entertainment

Rough Draught: Beer to beat the Death Star heat wave

Christopher Bedford Former Editor in Chief, The Daily Caller News Foundation
Font Size:

We hear the most recent spate of D.C. weather was called a heat dome. Have no idea what the hell a heat dome is, but we’re pretty sure it’s like the Death Star. And like the Death Star, which was honestly pretty bad ass, the heat dome had some upsides — like all of the douches fleeing its path and leaving us to enjoy our beer alone in the city. We hear some cowards say our outlook is garbage and that the only reason we didn’t flee is we crashed our car, but that’s just a bunch of bourgeois propaganda, and anyone we hear spreading it is gonna get popped.

Even if that is why we were in D.C. during the heat dome, at The Daily Caller, optimism is key: When life gives you lemons, put up an emotional wall. Or just crack a cold one and pump up the AC.

Samuel Adams Barrel Room Collection’s New World Tripel

Like all good patriots, the gang in Boston likes to experiment, and their Barrel Room Collection is no exception. Aged in oak barrels, New World is bottle-conditioned, repping itself as a “a Belgian tripel with notes of spice and tropical fruit.”

To be honest, we were a little skeptical at first. Sometimes with these big, fancy bottles and crazy beers, brewers go a little overboard, getting heavy-handed or just plain weird. Here, not the case. And the first sign that we had a damn fine beer in our hands came with the sound of the cork.

With a champagne pop, New World poured forth a hazy, dark, burnt orange with a  thick, white head and heavy, almost champagne-like carbonation. So far, so good.

On the nose, we detected fruit and spices. Tangerine, really, with a little bit of pepper. Things were really picking up here.

Then, boom — a taste, and we were sold. Spice and orange with a little bit of a kick in the back of the mouth, it also carries that good ol’ micro-brew type of lightness. “It’s sweet,” one resident expert exclaimed, “but it’s not a heavy-sweet like a lot of beers are.”

Since we found a perfect beer for the summer, those poor fools at the beach were envious of our taste, our style and after we fried up some of that duck the Boston Beer Company suggested, our class.

Retailing for $9.99 in 750 ml bottles, this champ weighs in at a hefty 10 percent ABV.

Samuel Adams Barrel Room Collection’s Thirteenth Hour Stout

So now we were intrigued. If a delicate summer beer was so bomb, how about this dark Belgian stout?

“The 13th hour is the witching hour,” the bottle warned us, “and a time when strange brews can occur.”

Well, it was hot out, but thanks to a ping pong table and bar in the office, it was approaching the hour when a couple of us were still throwing back some research, and we thought, what the hell? Summer can’t be all light beer all the time, so we popped the bottle.

When this bad boy hit the glass, the first thing we noticed was the darkness. Serious darkness, with just bare hints of brown on the outside edges when held up to a light, and a fast-fading, dark brown head.

The beer has smells like chocolate and coffee — a wonderful malty sort of thing. But on the palate, it had a surprising sour-citrus taste in the back. Thirteenth Hour also had a lighter mouth feel than expected, and the whole deal wraps up with an unsweetened chocolate note. Surprising, really; delicious, definitely; and the apparent culmination of delicately balancing the stout and an oak-aged Belgian ale.

The folks at Sam Adams recommend some grilled, blackened tuna with this beast. And though that didn’t sound half bad to us, we didn’t have any tuna, so we paired it with tobacco and a big sloppy burger. And that was just fine. (RELATED: Cigar Hunter: A cheap Brazilian that doesn’t involve your girlfriend)

Also retailing for $9.99 in 750 ml, this beer isn’t messing around at 9 percent ABV.

Delicious beer news from TheDC

On July 11, Abita Brewing Company released their 2012 Satsuma Harvest Wit — an unfiltered beer “brewed with pilsner, wheat malts and oats” and “made with real Louisiana satsumas and spiced with coriander and orange peel.”

On July 12, Stone Brewing Company opened their third Stone Company Store location in Oceanside, Calif. And from this picture, it looks pretty dope.

After closing down two weeks ago while wild fires ravaged their Colorado Springs neighborhood, Trinity Brewing Company is back on track, releasing Electric Cucumber Saison on July 13. With “24lbs of cucumbers per barrel, and a large amount of basil,” this beer comes in at 5.8 percent ABV.

After an absence of over 5 years, Liefmans Goudenband Draught is back in the states, and just in time for Belgian Independence Week (July 14-21).

On July 16, Oregon’s Deschutes Brewery will follow its Missouri introduction by opening up the Kansas market for its Black Butte Porter and Mirror Pond Pale Ale.

On July 20Schlafly Beer of St. Louis is releasing their unfiltered Witbier on tap at their tap room.

On July 24Port Brewing Company brand The Lost Abbey will release their 2012 Bourbon Barrel-aged Santa’s Little Helper, with 22oz bottles selling at $15 a pop. The release party will be Christmas-themed and is designed to “collect toys and cash to benefit the Marine Corps Toys for Tots foundation.”

On August 1, Avery Brewing Company is releasing its newest version of The Beast — a limited-size, 15-17 percent ABV grand cru.

On August 2, the world celebrates the 2nd annual IPA Day.

On August 5, Avery Brewing Company of Boulder, Co., is celebrating its 19th birthday with The Nineteenth Anniversary Ale and an all-day party. Tickets are on sale now.

In September, Deschutes Brewery is releasing The Dissident — “a distinctive Flanders-style sour brown ale, with a fruity aroma and flavor.”

Follow Christopher on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel