Taking your taste buds for a ride

It’s often too easy to pick a beer based on its style, but how often to pick up something based on what kind of flavor trip it could take you on? With new brews striving to separate themselves from what's already crowding the shelves, we now have a constantly updating selection bringing flavors you never would have thought possible.

Voodoo Doughnut Mango Astronaut Ale - Rogue Ales & Spirits, Newport, OR

This incredible and crazy sounding ale is part of the “Voodoo Doughnut” series and is a collaboration between Rogue and Voodoo Doughnuts, a “craft” doughnut brand from Portland, Oregon.

Voodoo is most famous for its maple and bacon pairing for their Maple Bacon Bar doughnut, which was the theme for the first brew from the Voodoo Doughnut/Rogue Ale series. This time around, they tackled a brew in the theme of the Mango Tango doughnut, a doughnut filled with mango jelly, topped with vanilla frosting, and coated with a tart, orange flavored powder. In ale form, this 5.5% appears light amber in color and smells like fresh sliced mango. The aroma is so fresh, clean, and enticing and on first taste, the brew bursts with mango flavor, followed by a clean yeast ester and mild bitterness. It comes across as if it’s based on a classic amber-style recipe with a major does of fruit flavor.

This is a great one to pick up to experience and for sharing with friends and family because it’s so inviting and easy-drinking. I also suggest trying others in the series if you want to experience the extreme end of the Voodoo series, such as the Maple Bacon - it’s truly unique!

Salted Caramel Brownie Brown Ale - New Belgium Brewing Company, Fort Collins, CO

I don’t know about you but New Belgium already had me drooling at the mere mention of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and then you factor in the name of the beer itself: Salted Caramel Brownie Brown Ale. The whole concept of this brew is simply to appeal to my innermost, cake, caramel, and chocolate loving girl-self and more importantly, to promote the Protect Our Winters campaign.

With this campaign, the two companies want to promote awareness of the effects of global climate change, and create a call-to-action using the labels of the beer. That way, by enjoying this brew, you might be so inclined the share the cause and the beer, and that is something you absolutely want to do.

This brown ale pours a lovely and deep brown color and smells like a cross between a coffee shop and a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream parlor, full of vanilla and creamy sweetness. The first thing I notice in the taste is a slight salt water feel and flavor that carries the toffee and chocolate to the front and center. The chocolate then becomes a cloying and pleasing salted caramel finish. It actually finishes like just having had a piece of salted caramel, with the salty and buttery flavors left over. It’s a sublime brew, crafted by two outstanding companies who aimed to deliver a taste of decadence in a seasonable 6.3% brown ale.

St. Bretta Citrus - Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project, Denver, CO

The style of brews that have seen some of the most recent growth is sour and farmhouse ales. Gone are the days when the thought of lactobacillus or brettanomyces (lacto and brett as they're more commonly known) getting anywhere near a fermenting batch meant crying over a purposefully spilled beer. Now, some breweries culture brett, a genus of yeast, and lacto, a kind of bacteria, specially for they're ability to create a tart or “funky” characteristic to introduce to a brew because of the unique flavors they impart, and many beer connoisseurs crave.

Farmhouse ales are brewed with yeast strains that impart a large amount of their own character. Crooked Stave is no stranger to the ways of these types of brews and have continuously created some of the best sour and farmhouse ales available. The St. Bretta, as the name would suggest is fermented with brett, which imparts a earthy, musky flavor that reminds you of being out on a farm. This brew smells of citrus and a light earthy funk, and tastes like a dry, orange and orange peel heavy witbier. The fruit flavor and dry flavors go together in an unexpected and pleasing way, making this a really fantastic entry in to the world of alternatively fermented ales.

This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 4:55 AM with the headline "Taking your taste buds for a ride."