Colorado Brew Talk Video Episode 6: American Strong Ale Tasting

This week, we were tasting the commercial examples of Category 22B – American Strong Ale.

Our examples were Stone Arrogant Bastard, and Bear Republic Brewing Company’s Red Rocket.

Wouldn’t you know it, we ran into a little bit of a problem finding examples of another style that the all knowing Hamster Ball Select-o-matic (™) gave us, Czech Pale Lager (Category 3A). So we’re going to have to go ahead and brew that one, and we’ll have it on an upcoming episode.

As a matter of fact, we haven’t had any luck finding a Belgian Single (Category 26A), so right now the plan is to brew that up in parti gyle fashion when a group of us brew a Belgian Tripel.

For site / video news, we finished off our Brewer’s Advent Calendar for 2019, here’s a link to the main post if you’re interested in reading it.

Back to American Strong Ale…

According to the BJCP Style Guidelines for Category 22B, American Strong Ale, this is a strong, full-flavored American Ale that should be full of malty and hoppy flavor, and substantial bitterness.

High Hop Aroma, often with citrusy or resiny notes, and moderate to bold maltiness which supports the hop profile.

The flavor should have “medium to high dextrinous malt with a full range of caramel, toffee, dark fruit flavors”. Medium-high to high hop bitterness.

As I mentioned in the video, I had the opportunity to judge a couple of examples of this category in a local homebrew competition, and the examples I had were very rich and malty, and I picked up many of the flavor characteristics that the style guidelines spelled out.

With these examples, the Stone Arrogant Bastard was crazy hoppy. Lots of pine flavor and aroma, and it left a resinous coating on my palate. It seemd mode like a really big double IPA to my taste buds.

The Bear Republic had very high hop bitterness and flavor as well, but we could pick up some caramel and malt flavors.

I personally was a bit disappointed in the lack of malt punch from the Arrogant Bastard. I had it a long time ago, and I really remember that. Maybe I was drinking some old bottles of it and all the hop flavor had faded away, or maybe the recipe has changed.

We are certainly interested in trying some more examples of this category, and expand our knowledge.