Jack's Abbey

It's a great time to be a beer lover in New England.  It seems like a few new microbreweries pop-up every couple of years.  One that has intrigued me since they've come on the scene in 2011 is Jack's Abbey Brewing in Framingham, Mass.  What caught my attention about these guys is that they are dedicated to brewing lagers and doing so with plenty of creativity.  Let's face it recipe creativity and commercial lager brewering haven't typically gone hand in hand.  On top of that a lager microbrewery in the US and even more so here in New England is a real rarity.  Okay so Jack's Abbey breaks the mold so the next question is, are their beers any good?  A few of use tried their "Smoke and Dagger" beer on Cask at the recent NERAX cask ale festival in Haverhill.  We all liked it a lot.  It is lightly smoked dark lager.  When I visited the brewery they told me they only used about 10% smoked malt but it's enough to be noticeable.  But they have a lot more beers to choose from.  So I had no choice but to go and investigate this new, upstart brewery.  So a couple of weeks ago I headed up there on a late Friday afternoon to do just that.

They're just outside Framingham center in a small industrial park off of route 135.  I had trouble finding the place at first so I gave them a call and got directions.  Its set in an old brick industrial building and you walk right into their retail storefront.  The first thing you see is the growler filling/sample serving area that consists of an about 8 ft bar with some stools to sit at.  On the wall to the left is some Germany brewery paraphenalia (coasters, etc.) hinting that the guys running the brewery have done some personal R&D into lager brewering and drinking in Germany (a very good sign).  There's a big glass window behind the serving counter giving the customers a view into the brewery shop floor.  I  noticed what appeard to be a large walk in largering room.  Next to the window is a whiteboard listing all the beers they currently had on tap.  They had an impressive selection of 7 beers on tap at the time.  I got there just in time to get the last growler of Dopplebock as they took that off tap and put the newly release Baltic Porter on right before I arrived.  What timing!!

One of the things that immediately struck me is that there were a handful of customers sitting at the serving counter enjoying plenty of samples while waiting for growlers to be filled.   The folks at Jack's Abbey are plenty generous with their visitors.

They were very busy filling growlers for locals popping in and stocking up for the weekend.  I knew it was going to be a significant wait but I didn't mind since plenty of samples were to be had in the meantime.  They asked me what I wanted and my reply was "One growler of each!".  This brought some curious looks from the other customers but when I explained that I came all the way from the Cape just to try their beer and I would be damned if I left without one of each I think they understood.  Now they just thought I was crazy from driving all the way from the Cape.  Oh well. 

While waiting and enjoying samples I scoped out the brewery, the tshirts for sale, paraphenalia, etc. and talked about beer with the other visitors. 

I was there for about 1 hour and probably sampled at least one of each beer while getting all seven growlers filled.  They gave me a free beer glass as a souvenier and of course I bought a TShirt.  I haven't been clothes shopping in a while and my wardrobe is beer and sports based so buying a TShirt was kind of mandatory.

The guys that own and run the place are really nice folks and very hospitable and you can tell they really enjoy what they're doing.  I look forward to going back and now that I'm on the last growler as we speak (Baltic Porter btw) a return visit is imminent.

Here's the rundown of the beers I left with:

Jabby Brau - This is the one probably most like a standard Pilsener or even Bavarian Helles lager.  Their weakest beer at 4.5% but tasted quite good.  Unfortunately as I got near the bottom of the growler it got really murky and not very drinkable but luckily I didn't have that problem with the others.

Smoke and Dagger - Dark and a bit smokey but not at all heavily smoked.  Probably my favorite beer of theirs.

Hoponius Union - A super hoppy lager. They call it an India Pale Lager (eyeroll) but it's a seriously tasty beer.  I broke this growler open last weekend at a feast we had at my house and everyone that tried it liked it a lot. 

Cascadian Schwarzbier.  -  Bloody hell I don't remember drinking this one.  I think I opened this at the tail end of a long brew day.  A dark lager with loads of citrusy hops.  I wish I could remember it.

Hey Diddle Diddle - Double India Dunkle Lager (another eyeroll).  Okay basically a amber lager with loads of hops in both quantity and variety.  To my surprise, I really enjoyed it.  I prefer a smooth, nutty, almost sweetish Dunkle so I figured this one would be somewhat revolting but not so.  Another growler that bit the dust on a brewday.  Maybe I drank this one first, at 8% ABV, and that's why I don't remember the other one?

Saxonator Dopplebock - Enjoyed this at Dana's brewday last weekend.  Not bad.  I think Dana and I both agreed that we liked the Cape Cod Old Man Winter Ale better.  I really think it's hard to create a truly great Dopplebock without a triple decoction and I don't think Jack's does that. But maybe I'm wrong.  Don't get me wrong, this beer was very good and the growler died a respectable death but it didn't quite stack up to some of the great Bavarian/Franconian bock beers I've had.  But I'd buy it again, just for the record.  I've been spoiled when it comes to bock beers.

Framinghammer Baltic Porter - I'm having a glass of this now.  It's thick and strong (10% ABV).  There's no doubt when you first taste this that it's got a kick but it's more of a pleasant alcohol warming taste combined with plenty of malty/chocolate/roasty flavors.  They could have called this an Imperial Stout and I wouldn't know the difference.

Jack's Abbey is a stellar addition to the Massachusetts beer world.  I'm heading back for refills soon. 

Dogfish

Sometime around New Years I decided to collect a batch of different Dogfish Head beers and give them all a try.  My main reason being that I really hadn't drank any Dogfish beers in a few years and I was a bit intrigued by the variety coming from them that I saw on the store shelves.  Plus I figured they deserved a fair shake and a slice of my liver.

This turned out to be a bigger challenge than I thought.  Firstly, they've got a shit ton of different beers to choose from and finding them all at the same store was pretty much impossible.  Secondly, some of the beers are expensive and to try all of them would put a big dent in the wallet.  Lastly, most are strong beers so having more than one in a single session would be tough.  So this all wound up taking me about a month and visits to multiple different stores in the area.

End result is that I tried about 14 different beers.  Out of those there were 7 that I can honestly say I liked a lot and would spend the money on again.  3 that were good but not memorable and only 4 that I didn't really like at all.  The clunkers for me were Hellhound, Pearl Jam, Chateau Jiahu, and Raison D'Etra.  Hey to each his own let's move on.  Ta Henket, 90 min IPA, and Chicory Stout were beers that I thought okay but nothing I'd buy off the shelf again given the choices out there today.  The ones I liked in no particular order:

60 minute IPA.  I know, I know.  It's everyone's obvious choice.  The beer that I'm guessing pays a lot of the bills at Dogfish.  It's a great beer and very easy to drink.  I did have some of this years ago and forgot that I really liked it.  They've got it on tap at the local BBC and now it's one of my go to's when I'm there. 

My Antonia.  I guess you'd call this a Imperial Pilsener or something to that affect.  I like the name My Antonia better.  This is arguably my favorite of the whole lot.  Thanks go to my friend Aaron Bennett for providing some background atmosphere to our beer sampling.  It was a good New Years Eve.  We tried many beers including I think 3 Dogfish ones.

Probably the one that surprised me the most, since my expectations of it were low for some reason, was the Palo Santo Marron.  A dark, rich, strong brown ale that is aged in wooden vessels.  This is one of the new regular beers that you can get in a 6-pack or maybe just a 4-pak?  A wonderful beer that comes in at a whopping 12% but it's a dangerous 12 because you really can't tell that its quite that strong.  I could easily knock back 4-5 of these then realize after it was too late what I had done.

Sah'tea - I can't really even begin to describe this beer.  It's brewed with Juniper Berries and a whole slew of other ingredients and is a bit reminiscent of a weizen beer.  Well go figure it is fermented with a German Weizen yeast.   Too many flavors to get my head around but who cares I really enjoyed it and want to try it again so that's good enough for me.

Pangae - How can you really go wrong with a beer brewed with ginger?  Unless you don't like ginger for some strange reason.  Weird name for a beer though.  Pangae is one of  the map selections when you start a game of Civilization IV or V.  It's not a beer.  Whatever, I liked the beer a lot.  I bet some of the people in the Dogfish marketing department are a bunch of stuck up wine drinkers.  They're probably drinking a glass of Pinot Grigio right now while the come up with the next pretentious beer name.  Just saying.

Speaking of weird names the next two top the last.  Namaste and Theobroma.  Really?  What the fuck is that?!  This is beer we're talking about for cry eye!!  Well they are great beers anyhow.  The Namaste is a great summer beer and Theobroma is another weird recipe with things like Ancho Chilies (no idea what those are) and cocoa nibs  (what's a nib?).  Whatever it is it works though.  Two more lovely beers to round out my favorites list.

So there was recently a brouhahah over on the Beer Advocate forum about overrated breweries and Dogfish's name was brought up by a lot of the posters over there until Sam C. of Dogfish should up and gave them a smackdown.  Seriously though I really don't think Dogfish is overrated at all.  They're putting out a huge variety of beers and many of them are terrific beers.  If I had any complaint at all it's only that some of them are expensive but then again they're not beers that you'd be drinking all the time and a lot of these 22oz beers on the shelf these days are just as costly.  Overall I'm impressed and more importantly there are more than a handful that I want to drink again.

But now I can take a rest from Dogfish and move onto another brewery.  Jack's Abbey in Framingham up next.