OB Ten FIDY in Denmark

Just saw that Oskar Blues Ten FIDY Imperial Stout is currently available over at Ølbutikken in Copenhagen. That is really good news for the Danes and for us up here in Scandinavia. So now I understand where the OB Ten FIDY maybe came from when it was spotted over at Akkurat today, at least that is my theory.

From the site it says;

Navn: Ten FIDY
Bryggeri: Oskar Blues Land: USA Øltype: Stout
Indhold: 330 ml Alkohol: 9,4 % Pris: 52 kr
Beskrivelse:
Dåseøl!!

Well 52 kr for this amazing beer, that is really a bargain. Imperial Stout pouring as motor oil in a can, great stuff!!.

For learning some Danish, it seems that "Dåseøl" means a beer on a can (burköl in Swedish).

Oskar Blues Ten Fidy earns "2007 Beer of the Year" Honor

Saw that one of my favorite beers all categories for 2007 has been awarded the beer of the year over at the Denver Post.

Yes, I surely agree with them saying;

Ten Fidy Imperial Stout comes roaring out of the revered Oskar Blues Brewery just in time to warm the Colorado winter. As the late Country Dick Montana of The Beat Farmers used to say, it's just the man for the job, with alcohol by volume at a bristling 10 percent. Don't be scared off by the can -- all of Oskar Blues' outstanding brews are packaged in metal.

The pour on this bad boy is rich and viscous, with a head like chocolate icing. The aroma is full of coffee and cocoa, and those hearty flavors wrap nicely around the hops and malt for a smooth, roasty fullness.

The oats used in the brewing process give Ten Fidy a satisfying roundness in the mouth. A hint of molasses balances the barleywine-like 98 International Bitterness Units. The high alcohol content is barely noticeable on the tongue (but trust me, have a driver or call a cab).

OB also report for those lucky ones that a small batch of FIDY (in cans and kegs) will reach some bars and stores in some other US-states in January.

So I guess it will be just luck if some FIDY would turn up over here in Sweden, sigh. I had the last can from my fridge during the New Year beer sampling, so now I can only try to remember how it tasted, :-).

A Happy New Beer Year...

We had a nice calm New Year back home and of course with a bunch of great brews from my "beer cellar". Hope you all had a great time, what ever you did and I wish all the best for 08.

Our beer menu for the evening event consisted of the following components and order;

New Years Beer Menu:
1. 2*Nøgne Ø Pale Ale 2006
2. 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze 2004
3. Cantillon Rosé De Gambrinus 2003
4. Shipyard Longfellow Winter Ale 2006
5. Great Divide Fresh Hop Pale Ale
6. Great Divide Hercules Double IPA
7. Smuttynose Smuttonator
8. Drakes Imperial Stout
9. Oskar Blues Ten FIDY (can)

Consumed but not part of the actual menu, mainly brought to the party:
10. Ridgeway Bad Elf Winters Ale
11. Rochefort Trappistes 10
12. La Trappe Dubbel
13. Anchor Steam Beer
14. North Coast Red Seal Ale
15. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (Bottle)

And yes we also had a full dinner during the beer menu and actually wine was consumed during the main course!

Regarding favorites, well then it must be the OB and the imperial stout, pours like motor oil, a amazing beer on can that I hope we soon can find at the fridges over at OT, plus the GD fresh hops which was a newcomer for me and a really fresh and hoppy pale ale that all of us enjoyed. And of course you can not forget the Cantillon that in this stored bottle from my "cellar" was dry as a dry Champagne counterpart, which worked very well with the starters.



Cheers!

QUICKTAKE: A master piece on a can...

What can you say, it can not be any better; A Imperial Stout from on a can from Oskar Blues Brewery, Lyons, Colorado. Bought Oct 10 over at Lyons, Colorado, which seems to be the first day this amazing beer was avaible in a can. So I bought 4 to get home (one was consumed on the bus back to Denver).

It was a great feeling to taste this beer back home and in my own living room, and just fresh from the fridge.

It can be only Oskar Blues that would come up with the crazy idea to produce a strong Imperial Stout (10% ABV) on a can. But what can you say, it can not so much better, and it surely works.

The beer pours like a very thick motor oily texture, black like the night. It has virtually no head. It has some very strong roasted coffee scent´and toffee are also present. And the great thing is that you can not feel any trace of alcohol, just some nice warmness fills you up.

We are already waiting for when this beer will be available over here in Sweden, based on the fact that we already have the current line up of OBs at severial places around the country. For example the Bishop Arms pubs has them and is practically seen as a house beer over at Oliver Twist.

Amazing to know that all these amazing beer cans are all being produced in this little barn over at Lyons (photo taken during our brewery tour in October and the same day as the stout was released as a regular beer).

My top 5 canned craft beers

The breweries in the US are producing more and more quality beers on a can. And people are getting to understand that a beer on a can is just not a poor macro beer like a bud or similar.

My US-canned beer experience is still not so big but it is increasing so much lately that I have decided to create a top list. So here is my contribution;

1.	Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout
2.	Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale
3.	Maui Brewing Big Swell IPA
4.	Butternuts Snapperhead IPA
5.	21st Amendment IPA

 

 

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UPDATED 090812

Removed and added 2 beers, the 21st IPA and the great IPA from Maui.

UPDATED 071225
Picture of the new IPA at Oliver Twist in the form of a IPA on a can;

UPDATED 071125
Seems the Darkness from Surly as a canned version was only in my dreams (but a good one).

So I have reordered and put in the IPA from Butternuts that I am 100% sure is a canned beer and something I have sampled a couple of times over at my local pub. They also has a pale ale in the form of "Pork Slap"!

GBTD-07 (GABF): 2nd Annual Boulder County Brews Cruise 2007

One of the best beer experiences I have had took place before GABF actually started. We first heard about the brews cruise through Jugge over at OT a few weeks before we went over to Colorado and something that we are very glad that we did not miss.

The Boulder Country Brews Cruise is a event arranged by the good people over at Left Hand Brewery and this was the second year that they arranged it. The concept is simple, for the bargain price of 40 bucks you get a t-shirt, a arranged bus that will take you to 4 different interesting breweries in the Denver area, breakfast and lunch, plus a bunch of lovely and interesting people to join you on the beer cruise.

Everyting started out in morning outside the convention centre where GABF was held in central Denver. A full bus of people started the journey for "breakfast" and the first beer of the day. Together with the normal beer crew we also got good company with the people from OT and Akkurat (local pubs in Stockholm). So we had a great group of people from Sweden to acompany the rest of the Americans on the bus.

First stop was Boulder Beer outside Boulder, a brewery with great beers like Mojo IPA and Hazed & Infused. We got some breakfast and the opportunity to check the brewery with a short brewery tour. Boulder Beer is really a pioneer as a micro brewery in the US if you recon that it started out so early as 1979. At that time the only existing micros was anchor in san fran and a few others. So its fun to see that the brewery is very lively and continues to produce new and exiting beers.

The journey continued and we ended up in Longmont and the Left Hand Brewery. We were met by Eric Wallace who is the founder and brewer of Left Hand. We all met him when he visited the Stockholm Beer festival in September and when we had a tasting round together with him at the OT booth.

So this was the second time we met and it was fun to actually meet him at his own brewery and hometown of Longmont. The beers were all excellent as they alway are. Had a amazing cask version of the milk stout that you could drink all night long, seems that this stout is getting better and better in my mind.

Together with the Imperial Stout also on cask this was probably the best beers we had during the beer cruise.

Jugge and the rest of OT gang disapeared during the end of the visit to Left Hand, so we had to leave them behind.


Seemed that they got the opportunity to have a additional sampling somewhere at the brewery, it was told that it was something new and exiting that Eric sneaked out of the brewery!

Next stop it was time for the Pumphouse Brewpub in central Longmont. Here we got lunch and a new beer of the day. What I remember I had the porter, which is quite nice as a beer, and very traditional to the style. Seems that Pumphouse is doing a full range of beer styles and is very focused on English style beer and following that tradition. A nice place for food and sports if you are into that.

The OT gang got back to the bus through the help of Eric W and a couple of Mountain Beer Mixers that was later passed on through the bus (which increased the mood on the bus, so when we later arrived in Lyons and Oskar Blues we had started to learn the Americans on the bus Swedish beer songs, or something, :-))





Last stop for the day was Oskar Blues over at Lyons which is really where the mountain region starts, so it is a very exiting place and a great place for such a amazing brewery. Located in a very small building, you here have a brewery, restaurant, bar and blues club.


We got some great beers (Oaked Gordon!) and got the oppotunity to check out how they handles the cans (yes, if you do not know it, this brewery makes all the beer in cans).


They now even has put their great imperial stout in a can, which is really a great idea, so I bought a 4-pack of the Tenfidy imperial stout to take back home. 4 amazing beers for the amount of 10 bucks, that is really a bargain.

Spent the last hour of the beer cruise at the outdoors terrace with a pint of OB and did not want to leave. You could probably have been sitting there for the rest of the day but the bus was leaving, so we simply had to leave and get the last pint of OB Pale Ale with us on the bus.

With some additional Swedish beer songs and some explanations about who we were at the front of the bus we continued the journey back home to Denver. Seems that everyone on the bus had a blast during the day and if you ever go to GABF I really recommend to get on the bus, this is really a good start of the festival and in some sense this was even more fun than the actual festival.

Also thanks to "J" over at The Beer Hermit blog for taking a nice picture of us when had the beers over at OB in the sun.

More pictures from this amazing day can be found here;

GABF07 (Left Hand Beer Bus Cruise)