In honor of Beer Week (and the fact that I haven’t gotten to this until now), I’m doing a vertical tasting of the 2011 and 2012 Anchor Our Special Ales. Yes, it’s February, but isn’t every day like Christmas when you’re opening a fine craft beer?
Actually, this kind of happened by accident. Normally I’ll have, say, 8-14 bottles in the fridge at any given time, usually of three or four different varieties, and I’ll stock up as needed. For some reason, as I continually replenished my supply, one last bottle of 2011 Our Special Ale kept hanging around. By about last July or so, I decided to hold on to it on purpose until the 2012 was released, and taste them together.
Which brings us to this day. Without further ado:
Color — both pour an almost identical deep brown, almost black. The 2011 has a bit more of an amber tinge to it, otherwise there’s not much difference.
Nose — the 2011 has scents of caramel, molasses, maybe a touch of smoke. The 2012 has more pronounced spice, with clove, nutmeg, and a bit of anise.
Palate — the 2011 is a bit sweeter, with flavors of burnt sugar, sweet toffee, butterscotch and black licorice. The 2012 offers more bitterness, with pumpkin spice, bittersweet chocolate, coffee and cinnamon.
Granted, comparing any two Our Special Ales is problematic, as they change the recipe every year (and keep it top secret, at that). Still, Anchor pretty much keeps a house style even with tweaking the profile slightly each year, and it’s interesting to see what a year in the bottle does. In general, at least with the last two vintages, the spice component has definitely mellowed after a year, and the bitterness has given way to the sweet flavors of toffee and butterscotch.
Gee, that was fun. Maybe I’ll start a tradition and hold on to one of the 2012’s until the next release. Merry (belated) Christmas to all, and to all a good Beer Week!