At Allagash
Discussed in this post:
White, Allagash Brewing Co. Portland, ME. Witbier 5.2% ABV 13 IBU
Curiuex, Allagash Brewing Co. Portland, ME. Belgian Tripel 11% ABV 27 IBU
Belgian White, Blue Moon Brewing Co. Denver, CO. Witbier 5.4% ABV 9 IBU
Belgian White, Shock Top Brewing Co. St. Louis, MO. Witbier 5.2% ABV 10 IBU
Lion’s Garden, Allagash Brewing Co. Portland, ME. Belgian Strong Golden Ale 6.7% ABV
House Beer, Allagash Brewing Co. Portland, ME. Patersbier 4.5% ABV
Farmhouse Pale Ale, Oxbow Brewing Co. Portland and Newcastle, ME. Saison/Farmhouse Ale 6% ABV
(Beer information as it appears on Untappd)
At Allagash
Upon learning that Allagash Founder Rob Tod won the James Beard Award as the Outstanding wine, beer or spirits producer, the beer brothers head to Allagash to celebrate his win. There they meet with Bill, a friend, wheat beer enthusiast, and home brewer.
Pete: You know, they make all those wonderfully creative beers but I think it’s the Allagash White that pays the bills. 80% of their sales, I believe. It’s a Wit Beer.
Jeff: I think it might be a Wiezen. Wit is what I think I have after I drink their Curieux.
Pete: Yeah, I like Bulleit Rye Whiskey, and when I drink that I get a rye sense of humor. I think everything I say is funny!
Jeff: Right. I’ve experienced that. Bill, help us clarify these sometimes hazy beers. What is it about wheat beer?
Bill: Well, we only drink one kind, really, the Belgian white. I don’t know anything about the others. We just decided we like it.
Jeff: Then you started brewing your own?
Bill: Yes. It’s between Allagash White and Blue Moon.
Blue Moon has been mocked by craft purists, sued by Belgian brewers, and praised as a gateway from mass-produced beer to great craft beer. It was the 19th biggest-selling beer in the country in 2017. In 2018 the brand topped $338 million in sales. Anheuser-Busch markets a competing product called Shocktop that approached $99 million sales. Rob Tod began brewing Allagash White a year before Blue Moon was first brewed. Both were inspired by the same Belgian-style Witbier. All these popular witbiers also add coriander and orange peel (some include other citrus peel too) near the end of the mash boil.
Pete: And it’s different from what we’re sipping at the moment, Lion’s Garden.
Jeff : This menu calls it a Belgian Strong Ale with lots of malt. It says the citrus flavor is of grapefruit and lemon, and comes from dryhopping. Witbier contains no or minimal hops.
Bill: We put hop pellets in ours.
Jeff: This is a really good beer, despite the misspelled name.
Pete: And you seem to have sipped yours all up. I’ll get us more.
Pete returns with Allagash’s House Beer. A Belgian, kind of Saison-like. Low alcohol (4.5%). It has a definite sourness and bitterness that Allagash White lacks.
Jeff: This is very like Oxbow’s Farmhouse Pale Ale. Anyone who likes that would like this. Bill, what is it you like that keeps you brewing witbier?
Bill: It’s easy to drink. It’s refreshing. It’s easy for us to brew. Robin and I pick a date, spend about three hours, and we’ve got five gallons for the kegerator.
Later he messaged us to emphasize: The reason Allagash White is so popular is because of its drinkability.
Most of us would define drinkability using words like what Bill said: easy to drink, refreshing, etc. We might include reference to lightness, to degree of bitterness, the general idea of a drinkable beer being “I enjoy drinking it and I can drink a lot of it at once.” So there’d be overlap with the idiomatic terms “sessionable” and “crushable.” According to the Zymology episode of the -Ologies podcast, brewers use it to refer to the entire beer drinking experience from the initial odor through the first taste, the mouthfeel, the depth of flavor as the beer warms in your mouth, to the aftertaste.
What do you think? How would you define drinkable? Sessionable? Crushable? Would you distinguish between them? What’s a drinkable beer to you?
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