This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 4:23 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
January 7, 2008
I tend to pick up some interesting beers on the weekends and thought that adding “weekend reviews” of the more extreme, newly released or hard-to-find beers to Brewsweek would be a nice feature. First up is a unique release from the Flying Dog Brewery, Collaborator Doppelbock. I say “unique” because Flying Dog considers this beer to be the first Open Source Beer to hit the market in the United States. From the label attached to the bottle:
We started with a basic Doppelbock recipe and solicited suggestions from homebrewers on our blog. We took your comments and crafted this Doppelbock, aptly named Collaborator. The blog, recipe, and label are online at opensourcebeerproject.com, if you’d like to brew some yourself!
Indeed, you can visit opensourcebeerproject.com and see the project discussion from start to finish. Now for the review:
- Appearance: Comes corked and caged in a 750ml green glass bottle with the tag mentioned above. Both the label and tag carry the standard Flying Dog artwork of Ralph Steadman and are printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper. I should mention that removing the cork was a bit of a chore, and I resorted to using a corkscrew which left me picking pieces of cork out of the head. The beer pours a deep red-copper color with an inch of beige head that holds up well and leaves a nice lacing down the glass.
- Smell: Musky, with hints of fruit surrounding heavily toasted malt. I wasn’t able to pick out any aroma from the Mt. Hood & Warrior hops.
- Taste: Starts off with an earthy, almost moldy taste before it settles down and hits you with the strong malt flavors. Towards the end I noticed the subtle hop bitterness and the prick of tiny carbonation along the sides of my tongue.
- Mouthfeel: More thin and watery than I was expecting from the heavy malt taste & aroma. There was a good level of carbonation and the 8.3% ABV wasn’t overpowering, making it easy to drink.
- Drinkability:All-in-all, I’m not sure I’d drink this beer again…especially at $17. The musky aroma, moldy taste, and water mouthfeel left me thinking I bought a bad bottle which became “corked”.
My score: C-
Beer Advocate score: B+ (very good)
Rate Beer score: 3.21/5.0 (60%)
Tags: Flying Dog, beer review, Collaborator Doppelbock, open source beer, free as in free beer
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