As temperatures remain in the “ridiculous” level, but the rare warm-up just bring male skunks out of hibernation looking for trouble, let’s take crack open a beer made for taking the edge of the cold. Once again I have been gifted with a sixer of the latest from Baderbräu Brewing Company for my consideration. Naked Selfie.
Naked Selfie is described as a “Black India Pale Lager,” which needs parsing like a 6th grade grammar exercise: “India Pale” would mean a recipe that started out as an India Pale Ale, with higher hopping rates than the average beer. In this case, the main hops are the Ella varietal from Australia, which Baderbräu’s web site says add an anise quality. “Lager” means it’s fermented at cold temperatures with bottom-fermenting yeast, for a “drier” taste than an ale. “Black” notes the use of dark-roasted malts. We have here a compendium of all the currently popular styles for us beer geeks.
As it happens, this beer pours a light brown color with a pale center in the glass, lightened by a flood of tiny bubbles, under a puffy, grayish foam. Its smell has a pleasant, basic “beer” quality at first sniff, then evokes wheat toast with honey on it, and lacks the harshness of the usual roasted grain. The taste offers up more malt roastiness than than the smell suggested. This is followed by resin bitterness of the hops, with any extra spiciness subdued under the malts. There are a lot of different tastes at work here, any of which could throw the entire beer out of balance, but this one manages to keep everything moving on an even keel.
The total sits nicely on the tongue and upper palate, and suggests a pairing with a semi-sift cheese, but especially with bacon. But that part you know.
You may also know that Baderbräu founder Robert Sama, who revived the brand that had been Chicago’s first packaged craft beer back in the 1980’s, has announced work on a production brewery to take over making the beer from Stevens Point Brewery in Wisconsin. The South Loop building at 2515 S. Wabash Ave. is scheduled to starting making the beer in Our Town sometime this summer.
