Cooperstown Strike Out Stout

Strike Out Stout, 4.60% ABV, 12oz (bottle)

Color: A thin but tight head emerges when poured. This seems to be characteristic of Cooperstown beers. The color is impeccable, a deep ebony with a slightly purplish hue.

Tasting Notes: The nose is smoky, yeasty and contains an intense blast of dried coffee – resembling the scent of dried beans, not the drink. An interesting analogy comes to mind, that this stout’s aroma oddly reminds me of a soy latte. On the palette it is no less compromising, but monolithic rather than eloquent: the body is silky and bulky, supported by huge roasted malt sweetness and a condensed gust of coffee/smoke. Despite the pronounced flavors, a lack of hop bitterness makes it quite easy to drink. So far, Guinness Extra Stout seems to reign supreme in its balance of hop and coffee flavors. A round, clean finish strengthens the soymilk connotation further. Highly enjoyable, solid and unadorned, this is what I really like about Cooperstown’s ales.

3/13/09

Cooperstown Old Slugger Pale Ale

Old Slugger Pale Ale, 5.50% ABV, 12oz (bottle)

Color: This pale ale forms a moderate yet delicate head when poured, unlike the vigorous Sierra Nevada. Intriguingly, the ale emits a hue of copper-red which resembles amber ale.

Tasting Notes: The nose is equally singular: excluding the standard citrus, apple-aromas, malt and bready flavors of pale ales, there’s a buttery – butterscotch like tang. According to information from beeradvocate.com, this is a result of the employed strain, “Ringwood Yeast” gone haywire. If chaos is good, this is it! The body is firm, thick, and not heavily carbonated; malt and butterscotch comprise the central flavors, with very mild hop bitterness embellishing the overall depth. These flavors create an overall simple yet endearing profile. A clean finish with only slight hints of residual butterscotch concludes this eccentric but lovable ale.

2-21-09 Cooperstown & Ommegang brewery trip, Pt.1: A week after ending a long-distance relationship, Brendan, Charlie and I set out to visit both the Ommegang and Cooperstown breweries in Cooperstown, NY, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. It was a welcome trip for a change of mood – a boys’ trip, too! Our little gang of three set out around noon, aiming to hit Ommegang first, with their cave-aged Abbey Ale as our target of acquisition. Before I return to the details, a little briefing would help. Ommegang is a relatively young microbrewery established in 1997, specializing in elegant, rich Belgian-styled beers, currently on the rise to national (and dare I say international as well) stardom. Cooperstown, on the other hand, is a small family-operated brewery (relative to Ommegang, it’s basically an ant compared to the macrobreweries) somewhat overshadowed by its neighbor. This charming little brewery’s expertise lies with the English Ale tradition, with some innovative American touches. Etc. etc. blah blah blah…let’s get back on the road. The weather was spectacular: a clear azure sky and unfettered sunlight illuminated the meandering fields of snow between Binghamton and Cooperstown; a truly gorgeous winter day. We reached Ommegang roughly around 1:30 PM…

3/01/09

Cooperstown Benchwarmer Porter

Brewery: Cooperstown Brewing Company, Milford, NY, USA

Benchwarmer Porter, 6.30% ABV, 12oz (bottle)

Cooperstown is another great American Microbrew Brendan managed to get me into. It is located in Milford, NY, an hour's drive from Binghamton, also home to the Basball Hall of Fame. Family-operated and producing on a small-scale, it is truly a microbrewerey, in contrast to the larger "craft breweries" such as Anchor or Sierra Nevada. Unsurprisingly, Cooperstown's ales are only available in New York state and various locations on the East Coast. However, being the country crazed about Baseball as they are, one select beer pub in Tokyo, Japan also holds their products. I will be writing about our trip to the brewery in later posts. Stay tuned.

Color: This bruiser pours a medium – thick head, with foamy bubbles. The color is extremely dark, with only faint traces of amber projected.

Tasting Notes: A surprisingly fruity nose emerges from the porter, contrary to my expectations of coffee and roasted malt. The fruitiness evokes dry prunes or ripe fresh plums, a little exotic (!) for a beer modeled around a down-home baseball theme. Underneath it all is some earthy malt tones. The roasted malt flavors (not coffee) becomes immediately evident on the tongue; the body is smooth and creamy and the higher carbonation differentiates it from a stout quite definitively. What about the hops? There’s a fine dose of hop bitterness addressed in this benchwarmer – some subdued citrus, musky bitterness and mineral flavor, adding to the nuance. The finish is a little too clean, however – as if the benchwarmer farted in the Fenway and a gust of wind cleaned it up in an instant.

Comment: A very exciting porter to say nonetheless, Cooperstown’s Benchwarmer is a fair reminder for me that modern porters do differ from stouts! This porter has the great features of some hoppy beers, and surely leans closer towards the beer-ish side of dark brews. Some reviewers on Beer Advocate seem dissatisfied with its hoppy and bitter flavor and are disappointed to find little coffee/chocolate notes in this bruiser; perhaps if they approached it less as a stout than a hoppy beer (in the vein of Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale), a different outcome may occur!

1/06/09