Chicagoist's Beer Of The Week: Pipeworks Brewing DateSugarYeastMagik
By Jason Baldacci in Food on Sep 6, 2013 7:00PM
When we choose what beer to feature as our Beer of the Week, we normally prefer to write up something easily found around town if one is willing to look. But every now and then something a little more elusive pops up that's just too tasty not to write about.
Recently, the folks at Pipeworks brewed a special beer in collaboration with Fountainhead Executive Chef Cleetus Friedman called DateSugarYeastMagik (like the Red Hot Chili Peppers' record you heard almost every single day during the early to mid nineties). It's a Belgian-Style Dubbel that's brewed with dates, Belgian candi, dark demerara sugar and fermented with a Trappist Ale Yeast. It pours a deep orange-amber that is almost burgundy in the glass. The dates in the brew are very present on the nose along with a nice hint of raisin, while on the palate the malt profile is the bell of the ball, as we're hit immediately with a burst of juicy richness that holds steady through the finish. Throughout the mid-palate we pick up wonderful minerality along with a touch of poached pear and caramelized peaches. The demerara sugar lends an extra layer of complexity that is reminiscent of an aged rum, but it doesn't smack you across the face. At 9% alcohol content, DateSugarYeastMagik is a sweet but not cloying expression of several different sources of sugar coming together to make a full-bodied spin on a classic Belgian style of beer.
Belgian Dubbel is very malt-forward and a relatively sweet style of beer. While DateSugarYeastMagik does throw a bit of a curveball, it still remains jam-packed with a lot of those traditional attributes we find in most Belgian Dubbels (dark, dried fruits, candied orange, maybe even a little cocoa powder or baker's chocolate). If you're going to try this one with food, we'd recommend preparing a dish that's as bold and rich as the beer itself. If you're up for braising some pork shoulder or roasting a leg of lamb, you could find a match made in heaven. We'd probably steer clear of anything too spicy and certainly shy away from anything too delicate, as the richness of DateSugarYeastMagik will likely overpower most lighter foods. We probably wouldn't go for seafood with this beer, but something like roast duck could be absolutely divine, especially if there was a cherry sauce involved.
DateSugarYeastMagik is a limited release in 22-ounce bottles that were scattered across the city, and the only place we've seen it on draft is at Fountainhead.