Doppelsticke - Edition 1862
Uerige Obergärige Hausbrauerei

 

Birthday beer, January 2018. 750-ml bottle, a serendipitous find one night at State Line Liquors, Elkton, MD. Secondary label on back of bottle includes further details in German, filled in by hand: batch from 2015, bottle number 31, good through December 2018, 11.2% ABV, aged in rum barrels. I've been steadily looking forward to this for the two months it's sat in my cellar.

Poured promiscuously into a Stange and Willibecher. Presents a liquid birthstone, deep light-mottled garnet, with a centimeter of loose, fairly fast-dwindling linen head.

Smell is rum, yeast, unctuous fruit—dates, prunes, raisins—Belgianesque earthy tartness, cloves, anise, cola, and a whiff of cocoa.

Rum hits the tongue, like the nose, early and often, but there's a great deal more to this besides. Big notes of seriously mature fruit—fermenting grape, browned banana, spotty dates, prunes—and the soft, mellow tartness that comes with it are all over the place. Also prominent is the unmistakably unique flavor of roasted Magenbrot: a German confection, somewhere between a sweet bread and a cookie, prepared with anise, clove, cinnamon, and other Alpine seasonings. Combined with the ever-present rum, these flavors also evoke a good Kräuterlikör or spiced liquor. Secondary notes include dark smoky chocolate, tobacco, burnt sugar, cookies, sourdough-yeast, and just a hint of funk, more earthy or fungal than horsey or leathery. All this complexity jells surprisingly well into a tangy, boozy, spicy finish. On the whole, challenging but absolutely delicious.

Medium-bodied, as Altbier should be, and supple. Mouthfeel turns a touch slippery, mineral, & parching as the swallow approaches, but in such a way as to focus the mouth on the sugars, spices, and acid in the palate.

People who are new to Altbier will, for lack of precedent, sometimes compare it to things like brown ale or amber or Belgian strong dark ale. As an avid and frequent drinker of the style, I find these off the mark. Altbier is its own thing, with a long pedigree and unique malt and hop characteristics as a style. This one, however, truly does acquire transplanted characteristics through the extremity of both its fermentation and its conditioning. The funky tartness and fruit, in particular, are elements typical of an eclectic and ambitious BSDA. Although brewed in Düsseldorf, this is not a Düsseldorf Altbier in any standard sense. At the same time, it does fit convincingly within the larger tradition of Altbier, which includes styles like Dortmunder Alt (Adambier) that tend to be a bit tangy.

As luck would have it, I've spent time in the rum-producing parts of the world as well as in Germany, so I've been fairly well-primed to appreciate this novel fusion of tastes. But as newfangled as it is, it's also much more in touch with German tradition than I expected. In fact, I would say that this is a truer Altbier than Uerige's regular Doppelsticke, which is fairly explicitly intended for the US market (Doppelsticke effectively meaning "double secret," a coupling of multipliers aimed squarely at the Animal House of high-ABV American drinkers). By subjecting one of Germany's most established regional styles to the trendy barrel-aging treatment, Edition 1862 pays homage to a whole assemblage of distinctively German flavors in a way I've never seen before. This beer's qualities are admittedly not for everyone, and its quantities mean that it will likely only ever be for very few. But I found it a pleasant, highly complex, and utterly unique drinking experience that delivered impressively on most all fronts. The $60 I paid for the bottle was pretty steep, but given a suitable excuse (a big share, another birthday, etc.) I would happily do it again, and I'd definitely encourage anybody with interest and access to give it a try.