So there it was… a Captain Lawrence Smoke from the Oak Gift Pack just sitting in the corner of my apartment. It wascooingly calling to me while I type away on my laptop… tugging at my tastebuds. Thus far, I have been a fan of all the Captain Lawrence limited releases… Golden Delicious, Rosso e Marone, Cuvee de Castleton… so I could not wait to rip into these 75 ounces of smokey goodness. But then I got to thinking… 75 ounces of 10% ABV beer… that’s like drinking half a case of Brooklyn Lager which is a bit much – even for me – on a weeknight. And on an empty stomach? That’s madness.

There was only one solution… call up a bunch of foodies and beer geeks (aka my friends over at Serious Eats), order up a giant pot of Barbeque goodness, and dive in to the smokiest culinary Royal Rumble yet on IDrunkThat… Captain Lawrence Smoke From the Oak vs. Hill Country Barbeque.

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Summer is over. Any way you want to cut it, any last heat wave that comes rolling in, Labor Day has come and gone. So put away your seersucker suits and white pants, fall is upon us. And with the nail in the summer’s pervertible coffin, it’s time to drink up all those delicate saison’s and farmhouse ales to make room for fresh hop brews, pumpkin beers, and the influx of winters bevy of imperial stouts.

Upright Brewing’s Four Play is one such summer beers that I’ve been sitting on for a while now since my last trip to Portland. A young brewery barely over a year old, Upright has been making waves in the PDX beer scene turning out amazing belgian inspired brews from a town best known as a hop-lover’s paradise. Four Play is their commemorative one-year anniversary brew.

“Four Play is a Belgian-style sour beer that has been aged since March of 09 in Pinot Noir barrels with an addition of cherry puree, lactobacillus and brettanomyces to sour and dry out the beer. It is very tart, dry and complex like a wine with notes of oak, pinot, wheat and terroir. The beer is very limited with only 5 kegs being produced and 80 cases of 750ml bottles.”

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Despite summer’s last hurray this week, fall is right around the corner. And while pumpkin beers are already lining the shelves of better beer stores and bodegas alike, is best to let those sit for a while (or – in the case of Southern Tier’s Pumking – buy them up and store them) and enjoy the original fall seasonal; the Oktoberfest beer. Without getting all beer-geeky, back in the days before refrigeration (or if you live in a Brooklyn apartment like I do) it was impossible to control temperatures and brew in the summer. So in March (hence Oktoberfest beer’s other name, Märzen) a dark, copper beer of higher alcohol would brewed and stored up through the summer months to be enjoyed in the fall.

Well, fall is upon us and while I’ll be spending the next few month’s enjoy traditional examples of the oktoberfest style from Ayinger, Spaten and Weihenstephaner, American brewers are once again bringing a new twist on the traditional.

That means its the perfect time to time to pull out Avery’s The Kaiser Imperial Oktoberfest, an 9.3% ABV punched up version of the traditional brewed annually in August and released the following year. Like all Oktoberfest beers, The Kaiser has a big malty backbone, amber-brown color and bone-white head. It wafts like caramels, marshmallow fluff and assorted dark malts. But where The Kaiser really stands out is in the taste as it is filled with powerful candied-apple flavors, underlying hints of lime peel, subtle floral notes and a very pronounced, spicy finish. The combination of red-apple flavors and a peppery finish really makes The Kaiser a unique beer with a lot of complexity when you want it and a good old fashioned drinking beer when you don. Plus, with a manageable price tag, it’s one that you can revisit throughout the season. Its worth noting that The Kaiser does pack an obvious presence of alcohol but seeing how it has already aged a year before it hits the shelves, I think aging it further would only mute the unique pepper notes and is not worth the trade off.

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Style: XXXX Mild
Brewery: Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project (Cambridge, MA)
ABV: 10.5%
IBUs: 75+
Availability: single brew, limited release

In Dickensian London, “mild” ales weren’t necessarily the watery dark beers we know today. The term “mild” indicated that the beer was sold young, rather than aged. So here you will find a young and hoppy beer from the past.

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Style: Wild Ale, Barrel Aged Brown Ale
Brewery: Captain Lawrence (Pleasentville, NY)
ABV: 7.5%
IBUs: unknown
Availability: single brew, limited release

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