Allagash Four Ale

This is one of the best beers I've had...ever...in the world. The world. You have to be tolerant enough of the very forward sweetness of this beer to be able to appreciate all the other complexity in, around, and behind it.

Can't get it near me as far as I know (believe me, I've looked), but had a bottle left from a trip to VT and tasted it for the second time last night. Check this beer out if you can get it!

They apparently use four malts, four sugars, four hops, and four yeasts to ferment it four times (the fourth being bottle conditioning). Sounds complicated.

I'm curious as to how many times you can ferment a beer outside of the bottle - an infinite amount? Do you think they filter out yeasties in between each stage of fermentation? Or just before bottling/adding conditioning yeast? Otherwise wouldn't you have an arsenal of bottle bombs on your hands?

Also, they say what kinds of sugars they use but don't give any hints about hops, malt, or yeast. Anyone care to speculate?

It's quite a nice beer...as are Musette and Interlude. The Dubbel, White and Black weren't bad but didn't match up to the those three.

brewt00l said:

It's quite a nice beer...as are Musette and Interlude. The Dubbel, White and Black weren't bad but didn't match up to the those three.

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I think that white and blacck are good representations of their style, and I would prefer a white over almost any wit on the market.

The Curieux, the Hugh Malone, the Fluxus... Honestly, Allagash is at the top of their game. They don't screw up much.


As for the OP. The different stages of fermentation probably have to do with when they add the sugars. What I could see happening is them doing the initial fermentation, then adding one sugar and a new strain of yeast. And then repeating that process.

As for the malt and hops bill, I am sure if you look up a fairly normal quad recipe, the malts would be close. I'll have to drink it again to even guess at the hops, but I'd probably be wrong.

You should email them. Brewers are pretty good about answering questions.