Similar to Utopias, Colossus started out with what Wagner calls “a lower-gravity feeder fermentation,” with simple sugars added later on to spur the yeast into a renewed feeding frenzy. Primary fermentation took about 12 days; secondary fermentation, 30 days. During the aging, Wagner spiced the beer with coriander and cinnamon (the latter is easily detectable even though only four ounces were added). The beer was bottled in one-liter, wax-sealed, swing-top bottles and sold for $35 a bottle. Look for the remainder of the lone batch to be released around the holiday season at DuClaw’s four affiliated bars and a few other Maryland outlets. Wagner will also be pouring samples at the Brewers Association of Maryland Oktoberfest in Timonium, MD on Oct. 10.( Check out www.duclaw.com for additional details.)
If you’re lucky enough to get a bottle, Wagner recommends letting the last couple ounces go flat, then popping a glass into the microwave and heating it at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. “It totally changes the complexity, the flavor, and the aroma.”
Still another possible member of craft beer’s nuclear club is Grand Lake Holy Grail Ale from Grand Lake Brewing Co. in Grand Lake, CO. Brewer Eric Kohl whipped up a single 100-gallon batch of this super barley wine in 2003, using 700 pounds of pale malt. The original gravity, he said, was beyond the ability of his instrumentation to measure. The beer might have reached 20 percent ABV, he estimates, but, at any rate, it’s no lower than 17 percent ABV.
Kohl says he added no sugar to the wort. “I got into an argument with Jim Koch, who said it wasn’t possible to brew a beer of that strength with all malt. I wish he would have told me before I did it.”
Originally, noted Kohl, his beer “had a weird, almost Belgian characteristic, but now it’s more like a cross between a tawny port and a sherry, with a liqueur kind of quality.”
Kohl intended to age the remaining 15 gallons of his beer in blackberry whiskey casks and sell them later this year at his brewpub for $40 for a swing top-style liter bottle.
