Long Trail Brewing to purchase Otter Creek

Andy Crouch is reporting that Long Trail Brewing is in the process of buying Otter Creek/Wolaver's. More micro consolidation. He's got some good speculation on the bigger picture, too, and it ties in directly to the situation at Penn. Interesting times.

Otter Creek World Tour: don't get me wrong...

Just got the latest press release from Otter Creek, and ran down through it, checking the headers (their press person, the very helpful Kate Corrigan, always pulls out the important stuff, a good practice)...Ski deal (yeah, it's Vermont, like that does anything for me, no news), Wolaver's newest organic, Pat Leavy's All-American (huh, kind of interesting, they got an Oregon farmer to grow organic hops. Cool), new Otter Creek Imperial Series (oh, yeah, like Mister Session Beer's gonna talk about that!), Mud Bock brewing again (cool, an old OC fave returns), and the Spring seasonal Kölsch...

Hey. Wait a minute... No new World Tour beer? Say it ain't so! I know I didn't like the last one that much, but the Otter Creek World Tour was a brilliant idea and there were a lot of well-executed beers there! I hit Reply and asked Kate what the hell was up with this!

Heh. Should have actually read the damned press release. The Mud Bock marks the homecoming tour of the Otter: America's part of the world, after all. This year will be all American styles, and that could be fun, too. You can go to their website and "Vote for the Next Beer." I voted for Cream Ale, just to piss off all you hopheads.

Otter Creek Sphinx

I'm up late on a regular Friday night chat session I've been doing since 1993; same bunch of guys, we're on about our fourth chat service. We talk about beer mostly, but a lot about life, food, family, and...Amish women (I mostly blame Guy Hagner for that).

But tonight was Bomber Night, the theme was drinking big bottles of beer. So I grabbed a sample I'd received: Otter Creek World Tour Sphinx, an "Egypt-inspired multigrain ale brewed with honey & chamomile." Maybe. But it's not going well. It's very tart, to the point of gut-ache, though I don't think it's soured. I think the brewers meant it to be this way, and I don't know why. It's tangy, tart, and it's not very quiet in my stomach.

I like the World Tour series; on the whole, they've been excellent. The Baltic Porter I had a couple weeks ago was delicious. But this isn't doing it for me. I'd run from this if I saw it again.

Otter San

Otter Creek continues the World Tour -- to be honest, I hope they never stop, because this has been one fun ride. I thought it was a gimmick at first, but there have been some damned good beers in the series (unfortunately, what I thought was the best name -- Otterbahn, a weizenbock -- seemed to have packaging problems and was sour).

The latest is Otter San, a "Japanese-style beer brewed with sake yeast." And yes, it's brewed with rice ("of course," as the label says) and koji, the weird little fungus they use in sake.

There are Hallertauer hops, but they used a light hand: this is about layers of sweet, with just a leavening of bitterness that keeps it from being sticky. You drink this beer -- I had it with spicy tuna sushi, cliche maybe, but I like sushi -- and you'd swear there were flowers in it somewhere from the aromas' and flavors' light edges; they're sweet and a bit exotic. Very good job making this beer so interesting: there are twisting curls and veins of different sweetness running through this, it's almost like a napoleon of layers of grain character: first the malt, then the flowery edge, then the doughier rice sweetness, then a nutty-edged pastry note... Definitely deserving of some thought.

I like it more as it warms and as I taste more different flavors. Don't drink this too fast; let it develop, and you'll develop a liking for it.