Down the Hatch
Published: April 16th, 2008 10:06 PM
Last Modified: April 16th, 2008 11:26 PM
Photos courtesy Midnight Sun Brewing Co.
The Mars IPA is part of the brewery's series representing all the planets.
Trip to a quiet Abyss helps ease the brunt of bad times
Nikiski home-brewers have hands full with all kinds of successes
Drinking nonalcoholic beer proves thespians suffer for their craft
Down the Hatch: Shake off winter with new blood at Snow Goose brew pub
Down the Hatch: Fletcher's got the rhythm for his beer and his band
Gabe Fletcher pulled off his welding helmet and poured me a beer, Mars Belgian red ale, the first in a series of planet beers by Midnight Sun Brewing Co.
Fletcher runs the brewery and describes the company's overarching mission as the quest for distinct beers. "We try to come up with new styles," he said. "There's no such thing as a Belgian chocolate milk stout (the second beer in the series, Earth). There's not a Belgian-style imperial red IPA out there that I've heard of."
The Planet series comes on the heels of the popular Sin beers, which embodied the liquid form of Lust, Gluttony, Pride, etc. and which are still available at the brewery and in stores around town.
A Belgian style of beer making courses through these brews. The brewers often use multiple yeast strains and two or more methods of cellaring the beer in a single batch. Ben Johnson designed Earth, which soaked in Bergenfield cocoa before hitting the filter last week. The beer will debut at the Tap Root Cafe on May 8, with a formal release at the brewery the following day.
The rich, red beer called Mars already orbits local watering holes and stores. With a deliciously sharp edge that rounds out at the finish, the beer marks the first recipe by brewer Kourtney Gheen, who sounds more than pleased with the outcome.
"It actually came out better than I thought," he said. "I was going for a smooth beer at first and then went for more hops after sitting down with Gabe and making it more of a Midnight Sun beer. But I also wanted to make it a different take on an IPA."
It certainly tastes complicated, robust but busting out of the mold at the same time.
The rest of the celestial series includes Mercury, a Belgian-style small beer spiced with Indian coriander (another style you don't see every day); Venus, a Belgian-style quadrupel spiced with star anise and cellared in oak barrels previously saturated in cabernet sauvignon; Jupiter, a Belgian-style champagne tripel beer made in the method of a true champagne; Saturn, a Belgian-style harvest ale; Uranus, a Belgian-style beer fermented with 100 percent brettanomyces, a bacteria that produces strong, idiosyncratic flavors; Neptune, a Belgian-style sour dark strong ale aged in oak whiskey barrels; and poor, disrespected Pluto, a Belgian-style golden strong ale aged in French oak chardonnay barrels.
Some might want to ax Pluto from the planetary lexicon, but not Midnight Sun. Why would a brewery founded on celestial radiance want to narrow its scope?
Making beer this way -- by which I mean experimentally, even artfully -- means taking a lot of risks. It costs more money to produce, package and market the beer; it takes a certain kind of bravado to accept that things might not turn out quite right.
Brewers certainly understand how beer changes with each new ingredient, transfer and stage in the brewing process. But the evolution of beer is unpredictable, just like the cosmic universe in which we live.
Fletcher remembers one beer, M, that veered off course more than once. It was a 10th anniversary beer, the 1000th batch, and everyone had high expectations.
"No one even made beer like that," he said. "We boiled it like five hours, aged it in three different barrels and so on. When it was done fermenting, it tasted awful. It wasn't until we blended all the barrels that it came together."
He may think of the brewery's beers as distinct, but I see it differently. When a brewery and head brewer align -- when they both embrace not just the idea of exploring the edge but a commitment to it -- you end up with beer that tastes out of this world.
Get yours before it runs out.
Find Mars now at the brewery, 7329 Arctic Blvd., for about $8 a bottle, $17.50 per growler. You can also find a mighty tasting spring beer called MeltDown Double IPA for about $6 a bottle around town and $12.50 a growler at the brewery. Find out everything you want to know at www.midnightsunbrewing. com.
On the town
Glacier Brewhouse (274-BREW, 737 W. Fifth Ave.) is throwing a big beer dinner with a bounty of invigorating dishes at 6 p.m. Thursday. Buy tickets now because there are only 22 at $70 a seat.
Check out a bit from the menu: an Italian plum lambic aged four years in wood barrels as an opener, followed by Glacier's Double IPA paired with crab bisque, scallops, goat cheese and caviar; Big Woody Barleywine, Imperial Blonde and cask-conditioned IPA paired with a cheese plate; But Brown Ale served with peppercorn smoked quail salad, asparagus, morels and truffle; Jim Beat Stout with spiced crusted lamb, potatoes, braised fiddlehead fern and craft brew jus; and the Raspberry XXX with chocolate cherry terrine with white chocolate porter ice cream and fresh berries.
• Find Daily News reporter Dawnell Smith at adn.com/contactdsmith or call 257-4587.
ADVERTISEMENT
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.
© Copyright 2008, The Anchorage Daily News, a subsidiary of The McClatchy Company 
Contact Us | Newsroom Contacts | Communication Forms | Subscriptions | Advertising | Terms of Use
Daily News Jobs | RSS Feeds | ADN Store | Newspapers in Education | Privacy Agreement
