A few years ago when I first started brewing beer I would go to a brew on premises facility my then boss had told me about. After each round of brewing I would wait the allotted number of weeks then go back and tackle the labor intensive task of bottling my brew, a process that included infusing the beer with a shot of carbon dioxide. Once while talking beer in the guise of work my boss told me that his latest batch of beer had gone terribly wrong. He had tried to ferment his beer in the bottle by adding extra yeast, a process known as bottle conditioning. What he wound up with was bottles that exploded in the middle of the night. I’m sure a sleepy, balding man in pajamas wildly brandishing a pistol was a part of the story as well.
Boulevard Brewing Company of Kansas City has hazarded the pit fall of bottle conditioning with their Lunar Ale and have came out much more successful than my Andy, my old boss. Lunar Ale is a sweet, chocolate brown concoction that fizzes a little more than one would expect, a benefit of cask conditioning. It tastes to me like a couple of the fine Belgian beers I had back in February 2008 when a friend and I took off on a whim from Nashville and wound up sitting at the bar of the Thirsty Monk in Asheville, North Carolina. Like those fine Belgian efforts Lunar Ale is heavy and fulfilling with a whisper of clove on the palate, a beer to drink as a desert or on night’s when one or two will do it. I had it after a supper of grilled pork chops, potato salad, and sliced hot house tomatoes. The beer was sweet and fulfilling after a good meal, and a desire for strawberry short cake topped with whipped cream only vaguely crossed my mind.
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