Date Night Resurrected

My mom was in town last week to lend a hand with Miles while Jesse had a business trip to DC. On Friday night, she offered to spend some quality time with her grandson (we really had to twist her arm) so Jesse and I could spend a couple of hours alone. We chose to dust off our date night tradition and headed out to Cascade Brewing Barrel House on Belmont Street. 

Cascade specializes in sour beers, which is a welcome variation in my opinion to the sometimes overly "hoppy" northwest brews. I am partial to more complex Belgian style beers, especially those that are spiced and dark. My first sour beer was in the form of a rather popular cherry lambic a few years ago -- a starter variety for sour beer drinkers or lambic with training wheels. Two years ago at the Cheers to Belgian Beers festival here in Portland, we sampled a local sour that was pretty awesome. In preparation for our trip to Belgium and Germany last fall, we decided to do our own sampling of Belgian varieties of lambics. We determined that some were very much an acquired taste -- with flavor descriptions that included "horse blanket" -- and others were rather delightful.

I was excited that Cascade Brewing managed to stay on the delightful and complex spectrum of sour beers and provided a spectacular evening of beer sampling. We started off with a glass of their special Cherry Bourbon Double Red and a glass of Bourbonic Plague. According to their menu:

Cherry Bourbon Double Red (11% abv) is a sour double red aged in Maker's Mark oak barrels for 9 months. The beer is then aged with sour pie cherries, fresh sour pie base and bourbacide. The result was a wonderfully tangy beer that had hints of bourbon. I was amazed at how much you could really taste the cherries. This was one of our favorites of the evening.  

The Bourbonic Plague (12% abv) is aged for 14 months and consists of strong dark porters aged in oak wine and bourbon barrels that is blended with dark porter that was brewed with cinnamon and vanilla. This is probably one of the best beers that I've tasted in a very long time. Its flavor was complex, slightly sour, and full-bodied, but not heavy. I was skeptical about ordering a 12% abv beer, because in Belgium that was almost a guarantee that you'd get a syrupy heavy concoction. This beer was exactly the opposite. Seriously, you have to try the Bourbonic Plague.

We also sampled Cascade's Bourbon Gold Yeller II (in photo on the right), and the '09 Beck Berry. The Beck Berry was outstanding (pictured on the left), but the Gold Yeller II just didn't stand up to the Bourbonic Plague, Cherry Bourbon Double Red -- I wish it had been one of our first sips rather than our last. We took home a bottle of the Bourbonic Plague to enjoy sometime in the near future, since I'm not sure when we'll get out there again in the next few months. However, I can't wait until our next visit so we can try more of the many beers on tap!