Beer Advent Day 21 & 22 | Winter Bock & Final Countdown

Well, today wasn’t a bad day, although one of the beers in my advent calendar had gone bad as it had not sealed properly.  I opened it, poured it and right away could tell it had turned.  No carbonation at all and a sour smell.  I did taste it and the taste had turned also.  I will not include a rating of this beer only details about the brewery as I did not feel it was fair to rate a beer that had turned.

The beer today is from Fürst Wallerstein Brauhaus in Wallersten, Germany.  Founded in 1999, it is a large scale operation that produces malt based beverages including beer.  The beer that we had in the advent calendar today was their Winter Bock.  We have seen a bock before, they are a strong lager made in Germany with a variety of subtypes.  In this instance a winter bock is a bock that has been spiced, in this case with molasses and a bit of pepper, to give it a more winter warmer/ale style flavor.

There are not many details that I could find on the brewery, so I apologize for the curtness of this post.  As I said, the beer had gone bad, so I moved on to the next one!  I will post that as well today!

Two beers in one day, I must be spoiling myself!  Really, I had meant to post these yesterday as that is when I had tasted them.  Sadly it was a busy evening and there were a number of things to deal with and I did not get to them.  So, there will likely be three posts today as I have today’s beer to try as well.

The 22^nd beer from the advent calendar was a Winter Saison produced by the gents at Rooie Dop, a brewery out of the Netherlands.  Interestingly enough, while these gents do brew small batches at their own brewery located in Utrecht, their large batches are brewed by the Brouwerij De Molen who produced our 19^th beer!

Rooie Dop is a brewery that wants to make some flavourful and sometimes experimental beers.  They do a lot of collaboration with their beers and don’t really care about the rules for brewing particular styles of beer, they “care about flavor” as they say on their website.  The brewery was started y three friends some years ago.  Mark Strooker is the one who calles the shots at the brewery and is an IBU extremist according to his profile (I like this guy).  Overall the brewery sounds unique, creative, and over all talented based on being rated one of ratebeer.com’s 2013 best.

The beer we get to try today is a Winter Saison.  Again, Saison’s are broadly defined pale ales that are higher in alcohol content, highly carbonated and generally spiced.  They are traditionally a Belgian style of beer which means they include the wheat and barley malts which produce a creamier mouth feel.  This particular Saison is called “Final Countdown” and was produced using smoked malts and rye.  It was specifically made for inclusion in this year’s Advent Calendar and that is pretty exciting. Onto the beer!

Rating: 80/100

Appearance: Cloudy amber colored beer with good head that dissipates rapidly.
Smell: Smoke and apricot are right at the front.  Interesting combination that isn’t unappealing, actually.
Taste: Very smoky with a hint of fruit notes in there.  Sweet malty balance that goes well with the smokiness of the beer.  Reminded me a little bit of being at a  campfire though, which wasn’t wholly appealing, but not terrible either.
Mouth feel: Good carbonation, creamy mouth feel, light body.
Overall: Definitely a unique beer for me.  I’ve had smoked beers out of Germany before which taste like you are drinking the campfire.  This one was lighter and had that pleasant creaminess of a saison.  As a Saison I’d say it was good with a unique flavor balance and some risks taken that turned out pretty okay. 
Do I like it: I enjoyed this beer for the risk that was taken in producing it.  Adding smoked malts to a saison is an interesting idea that I didn’t know if it would work.  Overall it worked well enough to taste good, but I wouldn’t drink it again.