Travis Sengaus
Enjoy these devilish brews to scare in your Halloween
While there are different histories and cultural perspectives on Halloween many believe that this is the night when the dead and the living mingle. The celebration of October 31 dates back to the time of the Celts and sprang from celebration of the Celtic New Year or Samhain (sow-en). When the Romans invaded Britain they brought with them their own customs and festivals. People would as they do today dress up as ghosts skeletons angels and devils. They would parade through their villages lighting bonfires and dancing with torches.
Halloween is a great excuse to celebrate all things scary and for beer enthusiasts it could be a reason to try something a little different and maybe just a little forbidding. Here are some devilish brews to awaken your deceased taste buds.
Hobgoblin is an English brown ale from Wychwood brewery in England named after the guardian forest spirit of English folklore. This Hobgoblin is a nighttime mischief-maker and a deliciously dark potion. One of the Wychwood’s slogans is “What’s the matter lager boy afraid you might taste something?” No doubt you will — this beer is made from a sturdy rich brown malt base and has a balanced
bitterness. It also carries large notes of fruit wood nuts and the earthiness of the forest with a good dose of the impish spirit the beer is named after.
Oregon’s Rogue brewery creation Dead Guy Ale is a fusion of lager and ale styles amusingly named a heller-bock. This loosely German Maibock-styled lager made from Rogue’s infamous Pacman ale yeast. The label art depicts a grinning skeleton with a beehive on his head sitting atop a barrel of beer while enjoying a mug of this hellish brew. Dead Guy is a dangerously bitter brew with a crispy creamy and creepily malt presence a deep rich caramel flavour and a slightly macabre purple-y sunset hue.
Maudite the name of this big brunette she-devil Belgian ale means “the damned” in French and comes to us from the Unibroue brewery in Quebec. This brew has an evil spicy nature and has a sneaky eight per cent alcohol content with a gentle and underlying dark fruitiness. The label art reflects the Francophone legend of the Flying Canoe (the Chasse-Galerie) a tale about a group of woodsmen who get lost on a voyageur expedition and make a deal with Satan in order to fly home in their canoe in time for a New Year’s Eve party.
Although the beers above may be daunting to try the scariest beers at your liquor store are the ones that come in clear green bottles and have been over- exposed to light. Many brewers will tell you that hops just like grapes in wine is the soul of their beverage. But hops just like vampires don’t like the light and as little as 45 seconds of exposure to fluorescent light will start to decompose the hops and let loose ghastly emanations of sulfurous tastes and odours — not nice even for the undead.
The cloak of darkness provided by brown bottles and the tomblike shelter of aluminum cans will protect the soul of your beer. Boo! Or in this case brew!