Did you ever wonder if you could drink a beer with someone that was in a different place? Who was in a different time? Maybe with a person who is not on Twitter? I have a friend who is not on Twitter. He lives in France. From what I have learned, there are only two
ways to communicate with him. Send him a
message on WhatsApp, or go to France and visit him.
I learned a new way today.
WhatsApp actually has a call feature.
It works very well. If you have a
friend in France, I urge you to call that friend using WhatsApp. It felt like he was on the same continent. Maybe just a few towns over. We discussed a beer. We spoke for a like an hour, and it was extremely enjoyable. What's most impressive, is neither of us really like to talk on the phone, or to other people, and I’ve seen him pretty recently. Today was weird. Very weird. It was also awesome.
The reason we spoke for so long is we were discussing a Hitachino XH. It’s an 8% strong ale aged in
Sake Barrels. I searched the internet
far and wide, and all I was able to locate on Sake Barrels is that they may
potentially be made of oak. Hitachino seems to be owned by the Kiuchi Brewery, but the website is under Kodawari. They are imported into the States by B. United. I stopped there, and didn't dig up the name of B. United's distributor in the Philly area. I purchased my bottle at The Beer Store in Malvern. It was recommended to me by a handsome former colleague. They have a pretty tremendous selection, and if you are in the area, and like pretty colors, and have an hour or so to walk around, I highly recommend it.
This brings me back to my buddy that lives in France. We have been discussing trying to discect a beer that we can both get our hands on for some time. Brooklyn and Boulevard distribute in France, and the Philly area gets it share of Belgian Ales that would be available there. For one reason or another, we ended up with these Japanese beers. I was surprised to find out that the flights from each are almost equidistant. Philly to Japan is about 2.5 hours longer than from Paris. I shouldn't make assumptions, but am assuming that the beer takes much different journeys to each destination. Would there be a difference? Would one taste completely different?
So here we are. Two kind-of-young, handsome, smart men who are both unemployed and really good at picking out
delicious qualities in beer. We found a
beer that we both had access to, and
according to the dating codes below, seemed to be brewed fairly close to one
another. Then we drank and discussed
them. And this is what happened…
I consider myself an informed consumer, and I was super interested in the date coding on the bottle. It must be amazing to buy beer in France, and probably most other countries. You walk into a place and pick
up a bottle and a “brewed on” and “best before” date are clearly listed. (the French bottle above is on the right hand side, dates on the lower left of that picture.) I generally have to roll the dice, but a six pack, bring it home, put individual bottles under a
black lite or heat the invisible ink up and hope that the IPA I just bought is less than 6 months old. I don’t understand why we don’t have that
here. So, in summary, we both got bottles that appeared to be brewed within two months of one another.
The beer poured a nice, deep, rich, brown color. Similar to what you think you would get with a Belgian Dubbel.
My friend who is not on Twitter was the first to point out soy sauce, which I had to
agree with. Definitely in the nose, and
there was a salinity to the body of the beer.
It sounds bad, but was more interesting. Recently, I’ve been drinking a lot of beer
from my beer cellar closet, and it was almost an oxidation note. Either way, it was definitely salty, and
because of the style may have popped a little more than your standard Gose. It was a nice addition. We finally decided on calling it umami. We both agreed that whatever we were tasting was definitely from the influence of the barrel. There wasn't any oak or vanilla notes that you may get from barrel aging in other beers, but the Sake barrels definitely had an influence on some of the notes in the liquid.
Very close to the top, we found baked apple and pear. There were plum notes. All characteristics that you would expect to find in a Belgian Dubbel style. I picked out a sugar/sweet quality, and couldn’t put my finger on it.
Eventually, a very handsome man from France said molasses, which is a description that I can definitely get behind. There was definitely a
certain part of the beer that came off with a syrupy/candy sugar note. As it warmed, some citrus/orange notes presented. I didn't really get those, but could see where he was
going. The fruit definitely got a little
more bright/tart as it got up to room temperature.
All in all, I think this was a pretty good beer. The experience of drinking it with someone
that’s 6 hours ahead and 5 thousand miles and who knows how many kilometers, on the other side of the planet was definitely more interesting
than the beer. If I ever came across it
on tap, I’d definitely get another. And
if they marketed it a little more alongside the sake, I’d probably buy a bottle
of that too, in order to see if I could pick out some additional notes that the barrels may be giving to the beer. If I decided I wanted to
get into a Chimay, but found this at a similar price point, I’d take this. It might not be as good, but it’s definitely
a little more interesting and was fun to pick apart.
If you have any suggestions or experience on what types of beers may be available for future episodes of IMOL, please feel free to let me know. If you see this beer, it's definitely worth trying.
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