Founders Sumatra Mountain Brown

May 18, 2016 by Steve Leave a Comment

American Brown Ale, Texas Brown Ale or as Founders calls this beer ‘Imperial Brown Ale’ generally describes a malt forward beer, a pumped up version of an English Brown recipe with hops like Cascade aggressively added and the ABV often much higher than the British original. The Oxford Companion to Beer notes that American Browns use “(r)oasted and caramelized malts are used heavily enough to skirt the edges of the porter style’ and nearly all have ‘notable hop aromatics’.

THE BEER

Founders Sumatra Mountain Brown bottle is subtle compared to many of their own labels for beers such as Backwoods Bastard and Breakfast Stout. More like Black Rye. The brown and yellow color palette seems to hearken back to an older time, preparing us for a simple beer. Imagine our surprise then, when I spied that this brown was brewed with Sumatran coffee (yes, hence the name) and comes in at a whopping 9% alcohol by volume. This is not a working man’s sipper at the pub. Founders describes the beer thusly:

This bold, imperial brown ale gets its body from a team of malts including Caramel malt for sweetness, flaked barley for dense foam, a bit of Chocolate malt for its deep color and Aromatic and Munich malts to add even more depth. German and Perle hops add a touch of bitterness to balance the malty sweetness. The addition of rich Sumatra coffee takes this perfectly balanced imperial brown ale to a decadent level.

TASTING NOTES

Cracking open Sumatra Mountain, the addition of Indonesian coffee is evident. Dave and I both felt it reminded us of the percolator or instant coffee aromatics one finds in beers like Weyerbacher Sunday Morning Stout. The picture above looks nearly black but as it poured the color is a ruddy brown. The tan head is foamy and lingers a good time for a 9% beer. What you taste is big on roasted malts and of course coffee, nothing percolator about how it comes through in the flavor. Really nice use of the java, with some pop of hops right at the end, with mild bitterness. The mouthfeel is amazingly creamy! Apparently due to the flaked barley, making it highly drinkable, and the beer finishes dry. Great brewers don’t brew high alcohol beers, they make great beer that is high gravity. Drinking Founders Sumatra Mountain Brown I got no hint it was anything above 5%.

CONCLUSION

Founders Frangelic Mountain Brown was another 9% ABV coffee beer, released as one of the more underwhelming of the Backstage Series in a large format bottle. Despite not setting off the beer geeks fervor, it was a tasty beer with strong hazelnut notes (BarleyWhine.com gave it an 8.0).

Founders Sumatra Mountain Brown comes in at the same 9%, with big coffee notes, dry with a medium body, although minus the hazelnut flavoring. I’m not sure these beers vary greatly in their recipe, which is a good thing. Offering 6 packs of a coffee forward imperial brown ale is a great addition to the Founders lineup. Brown ales, especially those with nuttier notes or coffee, are often gateway beers for those entering the good beer world. As such, Sumatra Mountain would be a great choice to try if you are starting out looking for a craft beer with a balance of flavors, albeit leaning towards the sweeter malt side. This is a fine beer, delivering on what it promises. One of the better straight ahead coffee beers around. find yourself a ~~6-pack~~ 4-pack and you will not be disappointed.

8.0/10

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Founders Black Rye

February 3, 2015 by Steve Leave a Comment

In 2014 the BJCP announced their first update in four years. It brought the elimination and addition of many styles, including full representation of a number of IPA variants, with black IPA and rye IPA coming out of the specialty category. Right on queue, Founders chose early 2015 to bring back their short lived 2006 dark rye IPA known simply as Founders Black Rye. While it doesn’t fit perfectly in either style, the beer is an interesting hybrid of the two.

Founders Black Rye

THE BEER

At first glance what we have here is a stout, or porter. Getting anywhere close however lets your olfactory sense know this a different creature. A Cascadian dark or black pale ale perhaps? No, there is something spicy lingering.

A few years back a good friend, Hop Bunny G of HopBunnies.com, told me how she was loving rye beers at the moment. I confessed I wasn’t sure I could tell rye malts, like those in Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye IPA, from the stuff in Wheat Thins. Recently though, having had more exposure to them, I am starting to pick out that pumpernickel aroma and spicy kick that rye adds to a beer. This is what you take in when smelling a fresh poured Founders Black Rye.

TASTING NOTES

Fresh, Founders Black Rye has a piquant pine nose, awash with dry hop aromatics, showing that this is intended as an IPA, to be consumed fresh. Don’t age beer, especially this one. The head is large, light brown, with foamy bubbles that last a good while and cling to the glass. The mouthfeel is medium, with less thickness to the body than we might expect in a beer this dark, with good carbonation. The taste is another surprise, while the malts give a subtle Heath Bar flavor, they are not oily or as present as a hoppy porter. The spiciness from the rye blends with the pine, although without much roasted sweetness. The finish is slightly astringent, and mostly dry and clean.

CONCLUSION

Founders Black Rye is a conundrum of an ale. Even with the expanded BJCP categories, it defies style definitions, existing as complex rye IPA, hidden within the coating of “de-bitterized black rye malts”. The overall effect is a complex, tasty brew. Not likely the first choice for hopheads, Black Rye offers a great way to get a huge hop taste, in a more complex IPA. A real winner you should pick-up and try yourself.

7.5

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Founders Backwoods Bastard: 2011 vs 2014

January 27, 2015 by Steve 1 Comment

Founders Backwoods Bastard, the bourbon barrel aged version of the Dirty Bastard scotch ale, with its 10.2% ABV and huge flavor profile, seemed like a decent candidate for cellaring. For this review, Dave and I compare a 2011 to the most recent release from 2014.

Craft beer enthusiasts often look to mimic wine lovers habits. But while Opus One is conclusively considered to be better having laid down for years—depending on vintage—beer is a more suspicious candidate for this treatment. What most beer guys don’t know however, is that most wines yield a diminished experience with age. In our opinion, beer is best enjoyed fresh. Other than a few specific, high ABV styles, at the margins, beer is not improved with age and most often made worse. Despite our feelings, Founders Backwoods Bastard was considered a prime candidate for aging. And a fine chance to experiment with long term cellaring.

Neither of us are fans of the wee heavy/Scotch ale beer style. The unbalanced malt bombs remind us of the most simplistic failures of English style barleywines or old ales, with less body. As such, Backwoods Bastard was a happy surprise when we first sampled it, the barrel-aging adding layers of complexity and a roundness to the Dirty Bastard base beer. Fresh, Backwoods Bastard is a favorite. The hope that it could improve with age granted me the patience to keep from cracking two Founders gems for three years.

THE BEER

Dave Engbers often tells the tale of how the early days of Founders nearly saw the fledgling brewery go belly up. Brewing the first beer they were passionate about, the aggressive wee heavy Dirty Bastard—our base beer—brought back the excitement to the owners and their customers.

The transformation from Dirty to Backwoods Bastard involves time and aging in bourbon barrels. While this technique is common in imperial stouts, less wee heavy or scotch ales are barrel aged. The 2011 and 2014 releases have the same 10.2% ABV, and as far as we know, same recipe.

TASTING NOTES

2011

Starting with the older beer, the 2011 Founders Backwoods Bastard (bottled 10/13/2011) pours out cloudy and brown. Minimal head of white microbubbles forms, but dissipates quickly. On the nose, 2011 has hints of vanilla, caramel and cardboard. Taste of the older Bastard is sweet malts with vanilla, oak and toffee, all quite muted. The flavor profile reminds us of an English style barleywine that has sat for a long time. There is a lack of depth in the flavors mid-palette. The body is med/thin, with only the slightest carbonation scooting it down. The finish has just enough hops to retain a slightly bitter kick, giving this beer a bit more complexity. The sweetness stays around, helping to mask the high alcohol content.

2014

Coming out of the bottle with an observably higher carbonation, the 2014 Backwoods Bastard (bottled 9/24/2014) is ruddy brown, with greater clarity than the vintage bottle. The nose is huge blasts of bourbon, all the vanilla and oak along with a candy sweet note. Flavors are equally huge, following the nose the taste erupts vanilla and oak from the bourbon barrels, paired with a sticky sweetness, leaving only a hint of the high alcohol content. The body remains on the thinner side of medium, but with better carbonation powering the big beer across the palette. The finish is still sweet, with noticeable hops sneaking in on the finish, with the booze showing itself.

CONCLUSION

When I put a few bottles of Founders Backwoods Bastard down to cellar, the hope was simple. With age, see some of the boozy finish disappear from the beer, while retaining the amazing bourbon sweetness. Unfortunately, what we got in our three year old beer was a shadow of its former glorious self. Meanwhile, the relatively short three months since our 2014 Bastard was released had pleasantly muted the potent burn Backwoods Bastard can display when fresh.

With cellaring, beer lovers gain an outlet over which to brag, and lust over others hordes. And yet, every day beer sits, even at the perfect temperature, humidity and darkness, it fades away. So too sadly is the case for our 2011 Founders Backwoods Bastard. The fresh bottle is an amazing, treat, perhaps the most bourbon forward beer we have sampled. The aged, at least one going back three years, retains little of what makes it worth tracking down. And for the cost of around $13.00 per four pack, there is no reason to enjoy it at anything but the beers peak numminess.

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What is the Best Session IPA?

June 5, 2014 by Steve Leave a Comment

Best of Series: What is the Best Session IPA?

The Oxford Companion to Beer reminds us that one definition of light beer is “a beer with lower alcohol than most…” Which might make Joseph Owades ‘Diet Beer’ the first mass marketed session beer after Prohibition. A while back, while reviewing Lagunitas’s then new DayTime IPA we introduced the concept of a beer with the massive hop presence of an American IPA, without the higher alcohol content or heavier body. But is it the best session IPA? Since then, just as Gigapets displaced Pogs, higher ABV beers are slowly losing popularity to lower ABV styles such as sours, saisons, and heavily hopped ‘session IPAs’. With summer ever so slowly approaching through the indefatigable polar vortex, it seems time to pick which low alcohol beers are worth packing for a long, sticky day on the disk golf course.

[tribulant_slideshow gallery_id=”1″]

WHAT IS A SESSION BEER?

Who the hell knows. Lew Bryson who writes ‘The Session Beer Project’ pens fine prose, and is bit of a zealot when it comes to this session beer thing. For him, 4.5% alcohol by volume is the upper limit allowed by the style. 4.6% is right out. SEO wizards Beer Advocate offer up 5% as the proper ceiling. But these all seem to look back to dour old England, where the beer was nearly flat, cask conditioned mediocrity, chugged from 20 oz imperial pint glasses. In a modern American “craft beer bar” you are lucky to get even a 16 oz pour, as the cooler glasses and mendacious ownership trump traditions of the old empire. With unlimited ice water and a menu full of fresh, local, organic offerings of house made hummus, and charcuterie (You didn’t know we have our own butcher here?) getting drunk is more a challenge, than a inevitable problem one must plan ahead to avoid. So for our purposes here, if a brewer calls a beer an “easy drinking” or “session drinking” and mentions big hops, its a session IPA.

THE BEERS

Fat Head’s – Sunshine Daydream IPA: Hugely floral and citrus hop dominated IPA with great malt backbone to balance with a subtly bitter kick of a finish: 4.9% ABV
Stone – Go To IPA: Big hops on the nose of this citrus and pine loaded IPA with a thin body and crisp dry finish: 4.5% ABV
Founders – All Day IPA: Tangerine nose, thin body with a delicious mostly pine hop loaded taste, with significant bitterness: 4.7% ABV
Southern Tier Farmer’s Tan: Dank hoppy nose, decent pine and tropical fruit hop flavors, with some biscuit malt and bitter, dry finish: 4.6% ABV.
North Peak Brewing – Wanderer Session IPA: Smells of malt but taste is nearly all of grapefruit, floral and spicy hop notes, with some malt and bitter finish: 4.2% ABV
Ithica – Green Trail IPA: Soapy nose on this west-coast style leads to a sweet malt base finishing dank, oily and bitter: 6% ABV

CONCLUSION

All five beers tasted were capable of bringing some traditional IPA elements such as a bright hoppy nose, bitterness, or tropical or pine flavors. All are also thinner in body and dryer in finish than a traditional IPA or APA. Fat Heads, Stone and Founders all stand up well against Lagunitas Daytime. Southern Tier is similar, just not quite as flavorful. North Peak is quite drinkable, although the caramel malt taste is different. There are so many brewers doing this style I’m not certain if we discovered the best session IPA, but the top three are all recommended for the style as very hoppy light beers. For our money though, we will still most likely reach for a 6% ABV APA like Row 2/Hill 56 or Alpha King for our sessions.

Founders Frangelic Mountain Brown

July 14, 2012 by Steve 1 Comment

Founders Frangelic Mountain Brown is, simply by its name, intended to be a variation on a brown ale. But confusingly, RateBeer.com considers the latest release in the limited Backstage Series, an American Strong Ale. What the hell? It has ‘Brown’ in the name and the label reads “Brown ale brewed with artificially flavored hazelnut coffee”. Sure sounds like a ‘brown ale‘ to us. Beer advocate calls it a brown ale, so why the discrepancy with RateBeer? It turns out, this simple sounding style is anything but.

Beer Advocate distinguishes between English Browns and American Browns such as they dub Founders Frangelic Mountain Brown. To them, English browns are sweeter, reminding them of a mild with pumped-up crystal malts. The American version, in their words “may have additions of coffee or nuts” , “also encompasses ‘Dark Ales’ “, and “(t)he bitterness and hop flavor has a wide range” as does the alcohol. British beer historian and writer Martyn Cornell believes differently, arguing that English Brown Ale is in fact not a style at all, containing everything from blends of amber and darker ale like Newcastle, to the un-blended, black-brown Manns Brown Ale. The Oxford Companion to Beer, ( ironically given his early criticism of the tome) is in agreement with Martyn, calling the term ‘brown ale’ “not much more useful than the term ‘red wine’ “. So, as long as it is colored brown and not of Belgian or German make, it can be lumped in to brown. Unless it has above 5% ABV or so, then RateBeer is going to call you a strong ale. Which brings us back to the beer of the hour.

A brewpub exclusive for many years, Frangelic Mountain Brown makes its bottle debut as the fourth beer in the 750ml limited run Backstage Series. These are beers that have never been bottled, giving people who cannot make it to Grand Rapids, the chance to try their rare beers. It has been very successful, with the fervor for a few of the beers such as Canadian Breakfast Stout, reaching Tom Cruise on the couch levels of nutty. Thankfully, FMB comes with less hype, in large part due to growler fills being generally available at Founders, and the lack of complex brewing techniques like barrel aging. But this is a coffee based beer from one of the world’s most adroit brewers of java brew so there is still a lot of expectation that this will be a winner.

TASTING NOTES

Founders Frangelic Mountain Brown darts into your olfactory system from the moment you uncap the bottle. Hazelnut, coffee and caramel dominate the nose. The semi-translucent, shoe-leather brown body is topped with a pale khaki head is surprisingly full for a 9% brew, but dissipates quickly. The scrumptious taste is a mix of the hazelnut coffee, some biscuit malts, caramel, and a pop of bitter hops in the finish. While not a big hop profile, the bitter finish adds a welcome complexity to the beer. The nutty elements are somewhat reminiscent of a local brew, Willoughby Brewing Company’s Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Porter. The body is that midpoint between pilsner and stout we call ‘medium’. The finish is medium-dry and the high ABV masked like so much Everclear in a frat party’s harry buffalo.

CONCLUSION

Among the hundreds of brewers who occasionally brew a coffee based beverage, Founders has proven themselves among the best. Founders Frangelic Mountain Brown in no way diminishes that reputation. We review a lot of coffee beers, and while not the flavor monster Founders coffee based stouts (Breakfast stout, KBS) are, this brown ale is that rare mix of complex, delicious flavors, paired with high drinkability. With the least fanfare of any beer in the series so far (and worst label) this one should be an easier score than its Backstage Series brothers. Take advantage and go pick up a bottle or two if you can. Not one for the cellar though, as the coffee flavor will likely fade, as will those subtle hops, so drink this one fresh!

8.0/10