One New York Life

Wagner Valley Brewing: Sled Dog Trippelbock

Brewed By: Wagner Valley Brewing
Brewed In: Lodi, NY
ABV: 10.0%
Type: Bavarian (style) Lager
Awards: Triple Crown Winner

• Gold Medal: World Beer Cup 2004
• Gold Medal: 2004 TAP NY
• Gold Medal: 2003 Great American Beer Festival

What They Say: This traditional Bavarian style lager is brewed in early winter and aged until our annual release in mid-spring. Its dark mahogany hue is visually enticing & represents this bold, heavily bodied complex bier. Flavors are intense & chewy, with molasses, caramel, & lingering dark sugars that are incredibly smooth & creamy yet humbly complex. This special brew towers with alcohol that is enhanced by modest carbonation.

Why I Picked It: This is the fifth and final beer from Wagner Valley Brewing. I didn’t actually purchase this beer when I visited the brewery. Instead, I eventually ordered form their website as a throw in when PLR and I bought some wines for delivery. Wagner Valley’s delivery was prompt and efficient. They got the bottles in the mail the next day and I received them two days after I placed the order. Granted, this is shipping within NY, but it was out the door more efficiently than even Amazon.

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Presentation (5): Only sold in 750-ml bottles, Wagner goes with a wine-shaped bottle with the dark-glass. The label is a simple image of a husky dog. The image is kind of generic, but I like that the beer has a mascot. 3

Originality (5): There aren’t many American breweries that do Trippels. There are even fewer that do them well. This tripel is full of the heavy, sweet, robust flavors usually reserved for porters and stouts. I find it intriguing before opening the bottle. 4

Body (10): One of the few beers I’ve ever had that smells sweet without smelling yeasty. It pours a beautiful dark amber with a minimal tan head and little lacing. The bottle describes the carbonation as “modest” and I’d have to agree. The carbonation is perfect for the complex flavoring. Obviously, the brewery wants this beer to linger in the mouth for a bit before swallowing. The carbonation is mild enough to not shut down the tastebuds while active enough to enhance the complex flavors. It also manages to be crisp and refreshing amongst all the heavy flavors. Body and flavor match perfectly. 10

Taste (10): Immediately evident are the heavy molasses and caramel flavors. Full-bodied doesn’t even really begin to describe it. The sweet, delicious, lingering sugars combine with just enough bitterness to balance this beer in to one of the most complex things I’ve ever tasted. I could argue notes of maple, molasses, sugar, caramel, and chocolate — but I’m not positive what, exactly, I’m tasting. As someone who doesn’t much care for extreme bitter hoppiness, preferring sweet flavors and malts, this is fantastic. It manages to pull off all this complex sweetness and bitterness without being dry. I don’t even know how that’s possible. 10

Efficiency (10): This is amongst the smoothest Big Beers I’ve ever tasted. The 10.0% ABV is masked both under a smooth sweetness that’s both awesome and dangerous. The buzz kicks in within half-a-pint. The knock here is its limited availability. Wagner Valley’s limited distribution range means Snobs not local to Lodi, NY are looking at over $30 per bottle. My bill for shipping from Lodi, NY to New York, NY was $31 after tax, shipping, and bottle deposit. Add two points to this score if you’re a Snob within Wagner Valley’s small distribution zone. 8.

Versatility (10): Helping to prove this beer’s versatility, it comes with a recipe tied around the neck. This is a beer you could honestly give to a person who claims to not like the beer. I WISH I was in a position to be able to purchase this on demand and I BEG the Wagner people to find a distribution outlet in the city. Please call Whole Foods. I visited — you must be organic-ish. 10

The Snob Sez: It’s hard for me to tell anyone to spend $30 on a single bottle of beer. Honestly, there are likely equally as efficient options easily available and local. However, if you’re also a wino looking to try something different, grab this along with Wagner Valley’s award winning Riesling and fantastic Cayuga white. Go directly to Wagner’s website and order this. You will not be disappointed. It did not quite knock Blue Point’s Toasted Lager out of the top slot, but it’s closer than anything’s ever come. If I lived in Central NY, I might have to readdress the score.

Final Score: 45 (of 50) — Great beer.

Wagner Valley Brewing Dockside Amber Lager

Brewed By: Wagner Valley Brewing
Brewed In: Lodi, NY
Type: Porter
ABV: 5.8%

What They Say: Only handcrafted once a year when the maple sap runs, this true, incredibly smooth dark robust porter is brewed with fresh East Kent Golding hops & has wonderful dry roasted & chocolate malt tones. Subtle molasses and vanilla notes are balanced by pure NY “Sugar House” maple syrup. This small seasonal batch is released annually near the first day of spring.

Website: Addressed in Part One (Sled Dog Doppelbock).

Why I Picked It: This is the fourth and final beer that I put in my sampler pack. Also, I was sadly disappointed by Tommyknocker Maple Ale so I wanted to give a porter a shot. I don’t usually drink porters at this time of year (and this seems like an odd choice for a spring seasonal) but the taste I got from sampling was way too good to pass up.

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Presentation: This another beer in which the website image in not the same as the current bottle. I like the new label much better than the one on the website. It took until the fourth beer, but it’s the cheesy, low-rent image on the label that I don’t like. The version on this bottle is blinged up. It’s got a rustic wooden theme to go with the “Sugar House” name, plus a non-symmetrical silhouette of the Finger Lakes across the bottom. This is a much cooler label. Love it. 5

Originality: Maple Porter is a little more of an explored territory than maple ale. 2

Taste: The flavors of even a generic porter support the sweetness of maple syrup much better than does an ale. In this beer, the bitter chocolate malts play a delicate balance with the sweet maple syrup. Surprisingly, the hint of vanilla in this is much more obvious than in Saranac’s Vanilla Stout. As a porter, it would be unfair of me to take points for it being too dry. Oddly, this beer’s flavors get more distinct as it comes to room temperature. The maple gets bolder as the beer gets warmer. 9

Body: It pours a thick, stouty black with a relatively thick, tan head. Minimal lacing and the lack of head led me to believe the carbonation would be nil. Surprisingly, though, the carbonation was much more distinct then I was expecting. It’s a pleasantly thin body to balance with the huge, heavy flavors. If the body here was too thick, combined with the heavy flavors would make this beer nigh-undrinkable. 8

Efficiency: Unlike with the maple ale, I didn’t find the maple flavor in the porter to be so sweet to regulate consumption speed. But, the distinctive drymouth of the porter combined with heavy flavors were. This beer is a heavyweight, filling me up after just two. The big ABV makes up for some of those limitations but it’s just too heavy to make up for all of them. As was mentioned earlier, the flavors actually get heavier as the beer warms up. I’m not sure exactly what that should do to an efficiency rating. 7

Versatility: This is a heavy, high ABV beer that isn’t really for beginners. However, if you’re a fan of porters and are looking for something that packs a punch before dinner, go for it. 7

Final Score: 38 of 50 – Great beer.

Wagner Valley Brewing Dockside Amber Lager

Brewed By: Wagner Valley Brewing
Brewed In: Lodi, NY
Type: Vienna (style) Lager
ABV: 5.1%
Awards: Bronze Medal – 2002 Great American Beer Festival

What They Say: This medium-bodied Vienna style Lager is rich in caramel maltiness. The clean ruby hue shows impeccable detail to the historical style. Brewed with only imported German and Vienna malts, its delicate, smooth flavor and aroma are perfectly balanced to provide a soft yet crisp world-class lager.

Website: Addressed in Part One (Sled Dog Doppelbock).

Why I Picked It: This is the third of the four beers I brought home with me from Wagner Valley. I don’t really remember this one at all from the tasting. Since he went from light to dark, I’ll presume this one was, if not first, pretty early on.

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Presentation: According to the bottle: Throughout the 19th Century steamboats were in their prime on Seneca Lake transporting people and produce from one end of the lake to the other. As I said previously — the Wagner Valley beer labels are serviceable but don’t seem very polished. The product is very good but there’s nothing about the labels that make them pop. I guess with a primarily local distribution they don’t see a reason to step-up the marketing. Probably valid. I give it an extra point for the creative names. 3

Originality: I’m going to go ahead and say an “amber lager” has been done by just about everyone — including Budweiser. 1

Taste: As I do more of these, I’m usually a fan of any beer claiming “caramel malts”. Most of them taste similar. The marketing blurb claims a “crisp taste” and that’s a very good description of the beer’s flavor. The taste was extremely crisp and refreshing while cold. The aftertaste was a little drier than I care for but the caramel sweetness was delicious and perfectly balanced with malty bitterness. 7

Body: A very dark amber lager with a minimal head and almost non-existent lacing. I was pleasantly surprised that the carbonation was much lower than expected. Lower carbonation is always a good thing as super carbonated beers just taste like carbonation. This is a great example of the style. 7

Efficiency: This is a delicious version of a Vienna lager with an average alcohol content. The flavor’s extreme dryness is a detriment to fast consumption and it lacks an ABV high enough to offset it. I also noticed the bitterness became more pronounced as the beer approached room temperature. If I could give the beer a sliding efficiency rating based on relative temperature, I would. Instead, I’ll just rate the average trending up. 6

Versatility: While I do love the beer’s flavor, its uses are limited. Caramel malts, while tasty in a standalone or a slow-drinking beer, have their limits. The sweetness and dryness doesn’t pair well with meals and I don’t know if it would be particularly refreshing on a thirsty summer day. But the decent alcohol content make this an excellent option for a slow Sunday sixpack. 6

The Beer Snob Says: Other products from this brewery blow this beer out of the water. If you’re filling a sampler pack, shy away and go for the more unique offerings.

Final Score: 30 of 50 – Good beer

Wagner Valley Brewing Grace House Honey Wheat

Brewed By: Wagner Valley Brewing
Brewed In: Lodi, NY
Type: American Pale Wheat Ale
ABV: 3.8(!)%

What They Say: An incredibly smooth well-balanced golden American Wheat Ale. Brewed with fresh, locally crafted clover & wildflower honey. Its light malty sweet character finishes very clean & crisp. A perfect accompaniment to food or a lawn chair!

Website: Addressed in Part One (Sled Dog Doppelbock).

Why I Picked It: This is the second of the four beers I brought home with me from Wagner Valley. In all honesty, if I’d known of the 3.8% ABV, I probably would have gone with something else.

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Presentation: According to the bottle: Grace House dates back to the 1840s and is the Wagner home. I don’t know, the Wagner labels are perfectly serviceable. Wagner Valley is written across the top of the oval label and the inside of the oval is images specific to the beers. The names of the beer are written across the oval on a banner. For some reason, these labels just don’t catch me. I can’t say why, though. 3

Originality: I like beers with honey. I’ve liked them since Dundee’s Honey Brown was just a beer and not High Falls’s faux-craft beer. As has been well-established, I challenge anyone to send me a better beer than Samuel Adams’s Traditional Ginger Honey Ale (and why I don’t recognize Beer Advocate as a real website with their B- rating for it). The territory is generally unexplored and points to Wagner Valley for using some local products in their brews. 4

Taste: This is an extremely light and refreshing beer. The taste of honey is bold thoughout. Ultimately, though, the overall taste is somewhat thin and the low ABV makes it a beer I’m not going to hunt down. Serviceable, and I’m a huge fan of the sweet honey flavor domination, but ultimately I wouldn’t buy this over, say, Honey Brown; which gives far more bang for the buck. 3

Body: A very thin, golden, super-carbonated ale. The overcarbonation kind of works with this beer. The only way I can describe it is that the carbonation, flavor, and light ABV makes this beer tend toward a honey-flavored soda. While that’s probably not a great property for a beer, it does actually help the flavor in this particular case. 5

Efficiency: We here at Those Beer Snobs disapprove of wine coolers. 1

Versatility: But, hell, drink a case… you’ll be fine*. Just don’t drink too many of them or the honey-sweetness might attract a hive. 6

The Beer Snob Says: This brewery’s other offerings blow this beer out of the water. If you’re filling a sampler pack, shy away.

Final Score: 22 (of 50) – OK beer

Check out other Wagner reviews and more beer reviews at Those Beer Snobs.

* – We here at Those Beer Snobs also disapprove of drinking full cases of beer at one sitting… unless you’re our Big Show… who used to case race with his roommate.

If you can imagine, following a day of chugging sampling wine, the morning didn’t come early. We got motivated around 9:00 so we could make full use of the breakfast buffet to build a solid morning drinking base. We silently made the executive decision to only go to two places rather than three before checking in to the next hotel which was both another sampling place and relatively close (by New York City terms) to other places. Fortunately, the first place was about 50 miles away so we spent about 17.5 hours driving to it.

Wagner Valley Brewing and Vineyards: PLR, God love her, managed to find one vineyard on the wine trail with a brewery and a beer sampling. The woman assembles a Danny Tanner Clipboard Of Fun like no other person. We did the wine sampling, then I did a beer sampling, and we chose to have lunch here before purchasing some of their products. This was, by far, my favorite place. Not just because of the beer (which didn’t hurt) but really because the people were the nicest and most knowledgeable. The guy who did the wine tasting seemed like he enjoyed his job, was approachable and didn’t make me feel foolish for asking questions. He gave backgrounds on how each type of wine is made and the type of grape in it whereas everyone else just gives you a list and pours your glass. He was the only person the entire trip to tell me that the “RS” on each wine meant “Residual Sugars” and was a measure of a wine’s sweetness. He was the first one we didn’t feel ripped off tipping. His equal was the guy who did the brewery tasting. He told me about each beer type and what ingredients were used and warned me off the IPA. It’s like he knew me. We also had lunch here and sat out on the back porch overlooking the vineyard and lake. The place was fantastic. Sadly, I wish I lived closer as they also have weekly Pub Nights all summer. I’ll go in to a little more about the brewery as part of the Wagner Valley Brewing Beer Snob series. Stay tuned.

Following the Live Bait Vending Machine it was well-past check-in time for hotel two. On the ride back, we decided to make one more stop as we clearly didn’t have enough to drink yet.

Rock Stream Vineyards (website down at the time of this writing): This place was… interesting. Traffic for the Seneca Lake Wine & Cheese Weekend was just starting to pick up as we arrived. This place had a cheese spread that was only for the people who had wine and cheese tickets. As we were sampling, I noticed the music (which had been playing in the background since we came in) switched over to Divinyls I Touch Myself. That, in itself, was a bit strange — but it is a place for people 21 and over so the song wasn’t that inappropriate. As the song progressed, I realized that, in fact, it was not Divinyls, but the woman who, I think, owned part of the vineyard singing a Rock Stream Vineyard themed version of I Touch Myself. Seriously. “I don’t want annnnything else. When I drink Ro-ock Stream I touch myself.”

Have you ever something dawn on you at movie slowness? Like the final scene in The Usual Suspects when Kujan identifies Kaiser Soze? With the music building in your head and everything? This best describes the building horror as I realized what was being played. Not only that, but the “recording studio” was in the loft space above the sampling room. We could see where the magic had been made. I truly wish I could tell you the other songs that came up during our watching-a-bad-comedian uncomfortable sampling as the singer laughed about the song with some of the other customers. “Yeah, that’s me!” There was also an unidentified male singer/guitarist. She wasn’t the only guilty party.

The best part about this place was the older, non-songbird woman handling our sampling showed me the proper way to pair chocolate with a port. It was delicious and I probably should have bought some, but I didn’t. I think we bought one bottle here before dashing to the car Dukes of Hazzard style with me sliding across the hood. I’m not sure my door was fully closed before PLR peeled out of the parking lot. The look I got when I suggested we should have picked up a couple of their CDs was epic.

Up next: Glenora Wine Cellars

Wagner Valley Brewing Sled Dog Doppelbock

Brewed By: Wagner Valley Brewing Company
Brewed In: Lodi, NY
Type: Doppelbock
ABV: 8.5%
Awards:

• 2002: Gold Medal – Tap New York “Best Craft Beer in New York State”
• 2005: Silver Medal – Great American Beer Festival German Style Strong Bock

What They Say: A true Bavarian style Doppel (Double) Bock specially brewed with only imported Munich Malts that provide this Bier with intense, yet exceptionally smooth dark caramel and molasses flavors. The huge up front malt character has a wonderfully smooth strong alcohol presence that is balanced by imported Tettnanger Noble hops, making this bier incredibly rich and complex.

Website: Wagner Valley’s website (and for a decent portion of the region’s other wineries) is done by Spider Graphics. The Spider Graphics website looks frighteningly similar to my short-lived and ill-fated web design firm INL Designs. Sadly, the images of mine have been lost in various computer copydowns, but the font, shape, and layout are incredibly similar. What this tells me is my business model — be the “go-to” web design consultant for as many local business websites as possible — probably would have worked. Ah, 2003 — back before this grand NYC experiment began. Regardless, this site is kind of what I’d expect from a small design firm. I’d guess that Spider Graphics has about 10 templates and they use them for every client. This layout, for example, is very early 2000 fantastic (confirmed by the calendar page which has a 2003 copyright mark and a “best viewed in Netscape(!) 7 or Internet Explorer 6(!) or later”. I have no real problem with this website other than it looks a little low-rent. The flashing “Buy Online!” button that creates a new menu is a little cheesy. I’m also generally not a huge fan of blue backgrounds and navigation all over creation. But, good for Spider Graphics. At least now I know if I want to retire to New England and fix up the terrible websites of Maine Bed n’ Breakfasts that the market is viable.

Why I Picked It: PLR and I went to Wagner as part of our trip to the Finger Lakes Wineries. I did the tasting there. Their six-packs were a standard mix-n-match price at the brewery. I’ve never seen this brewery’s products outside Central New York, so I picked five different kinds. This is the beginning of a month-long series looking at Wagner Valley’s beers.

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Presentation: The labels on the website are not up to date with the current bottle’s labels. Honestly, I kind of like the old version (Spider Graphics gets them for hosting, too. Well done, gentlemen) a little better. That would have been a 3. The current incarnation is not. 2

Originality: I honestly don’t have much experience with bocks short of the Sam Adams version. I know that the “doppelbock” is a reasonably well-visited concept, but at least not by everyone. 2

Taste: With the description warning me of Munich malts with heavy caramel and molasses notes, I was expecting this to be a sweet explosion. Fortunately, it’s not quite as sweet as the ingredients suggest. As expected, the aftertaste was quite dry and bold, but that’s the style. Really, the sweetness from the caramel and molasses in the initial taste was plenty enough to counteract the bittery dry finish. Overall, a tremendously sweet, tasty beer. 8

Body: The dark-reddish malts color the beer. The beer pours to almost no head. The beer has a surprisingly bold carbonation for the complete and total lack of head. I expected a little more body but it was satisfying nonetheless. It was right on the border between heavy and light without ever committing. This beer could have made the mistake of going a little too syrupy with the big flavors and high alcohol-content and I commend them for preventing that. 7

Efficiency: A big, satisfying flavor at 8.5%. Efficiency perfection is almost tempered by a bold aftertaste and a dry tongue. But, a six-pack of this 8.5% goodness can be yours for $9.99. If you deliver me a high ABV beer for under $10 you have delivered me something that hits all the right notes on the efficiency rating. The only thing possibly more efficient than this is the Trippelbock, but I won’t hold the goodness of one beer against another. 10

Versatility: This beer is really more versatile than it has any right to be. The flavor is tremendous for the ABV and not so strong to scare off a casual drinker. Unfortunately, the sneaky ABV makes this something to be enjoyed in the comfort of your own home and not much else. 7

The Beer Snob Says: You should go to their website and order this. Unless you live in one of the banned states.

36 of 50 – Really good beer.

If you liked this review, check out this and my other reviews on Those Beer Snobs .com.