Oskar Blues Ten FIDY

Since the weather has been rather sweltering of late, I thought I’d kick back with a refreshing summertime beer style. What, doesn’t everyone think Imperial Stout, with its high alcohol, thick mouthfeel, and intense flavors, makes it the perfect quenching libation for these hot, steamy days?

I don’t tend to pick beer based on the season, I think it’s pretty obvious. So when I saw my last can of Oskar Blues Ten FIDY, a — you guessed it — 10.5% abv behemoth, in the fridge, I ignored his compatriots chilling alongside him and decided it was a one-beer night.

Oskar Blues has been brewing since 2002, and has sent beer to New York for almost as long. The brewery really came in with a flashy hook — the first to distribute all its craft beer via can, starting with its flagship Dale’s Pale Ale. Oskar Blues did a lot to dispel the myth that canned beer had to be bad beer, or taste “metallic”, or not be an ideal container for storing beer.

I’ve mentioned before how aluminum cans are “greener” than bottles. With aluminum, shipping weight is decreased; this also leads to more efficient, cheaper, less-fuel-intensive distribution. Then there are the taste arguments, where cans prevent “skunking” of the beer, as no amount of light of any type will penetrate a can and cause the chemical reactions in the hops that lead to that foul aroma and taste. It can’t get stale, either, as no oxygen can seep in. Plus, a can cools down faster than a bottle, and cans these days are lined on the interior with food-grade barriers to prevent the metal from affecting the liquid in any way.

So why do bottles persist? Looks, perception, and inertia. Bottling lines are prevalent and cheaper to install than canning lines, so fledgling breweries are kind of stuck with bottles if they aren’t willing to invest: either they contract-brew, where the contract brewery almost always will have bottling-only, or they want to get the beer to market quickly and as cheaply as possible at the outset, which means installing their own bottling line (or, sometimes, hand-bottling).

Oskar Blues describes Ten FIDY thusly: “This titanic, immensely viscous stout is loaded with inimitable flavors of chocolate-covered caramel and coffee and hide a hefty 98 IBUs underneath the smooth blanket of malt. Ten FIDY (10.5% ABV) is made with enormous amounts of two-row malt, chocolate malt, roasted barley, flaked oats and hops. Ten FIDY is the ultimate celebration of dark malts and boundary-stretching beer.” Right. So, marketeering aside, I should expect a roasty, very bitter, boozy stout? Sounds like a plan!

As expected, Ten FIDY pours a really, really dark, deep, opaque brown, not quite black. It resembles nothing so much as motor oil, a perception corroborated by the complete lack of a head no matter how it’s poured. Oh, sure, swirl it for a bit and a very fine, patchy skim of brown bubbles appears briefly, but that’s no head. The lack of carbonation does not detract, however, and I get all the aromas I’m after even without foam: roasted barley, of course, oily coffee, a bit of dark cherry way back in there, and it’s got a touch of sweetness as well. I’m surprised, really, that the beer seems to be reasonably dry, and masks the alcohol content well.

On to tasting. That roasted barley bitterness combines with the coffee notes and a faint malt sweetness to create a pretty tasty beer. I wish there were more of the touted hop bitterness to coat my palate, but it just seems to be overwhelmed in the myriad flavors that do dominate. The sweetness shortly gives way to unsweetened chocolate on the edges of my palate (if that even means anything), kind of a substitute for that lack of hoppy flavor. Unsurprisingly, Ten FIDY sports a thick, full mouthfeel, not alleviated by the low carbonation, which is perfectly fine for this style. The beer finishes with more cocoa and roast, fairly dry and fairly good. The boozy aspects of the beer just don’t appear until my glass warms to nearly room temperature, at which point I lose interest in gulping the last dregs.

Overall Ten FIDY comes across as a fine beer to have one of at the end of the night. It’s way too strong to properly enjoy the entire four-pack at once, but that’s probably a good thing. I’ve seen the four-can package in stores for as low as $10 — a steal — but expect to pay more like $13-14 around town.

Lots of brewers make an Imperial Stout — Brooklyn (Black Chocolate Stout), Smuttynose, Southampton, Victory Storm King (for a truly hoppy version of the style) — but few make them available in the summer months. However, a lot of stores will still have some on-hand, as Imperial stouts tend to age well in the bottle and will be good even several years after brewing. While I’m not that big a fan of a lot of Oskar Blues’ offerings, I love that the brewery cans such a wide variety of beer and I look forward to other breweries finally following suit.