Recently, I was lucky enough to venture up to Portland, Maine where I was able to visit some of my favorite breweries and no trip to Portland is ever complete without a stop at Allagash Brewing Company. There, I was able to pick up one of my favorite Allagash beers ‘Sixteen Counties’ but I was more curious about their coolship beers. Now, for the uninitiated, coolship is a brewing technique where hot wort (unfermented beer) is poured into a long, shallow pan so that the beer will cool down and during this process wild yeast from the air will mix with the wort to cause wild fermentation. It is an interesting process that deserves its own blog entry, but it produces fantastic sours. While I have had one to two coolships in the past I was turned onto something interesting, ‘Ghoulschip.’ A beer made and poured into the coolship on Halloween night made with pumpkin, toasted pumpkin seeds, and molasses. While pumpkin beers are not a favorite of mine this one was way too interesting to pass up and let me tell you, this beer is spooky good.
‘Ghoulschip’ pours into the glass a cloudy, straw-colored yellow with a small white head. However, after rolling the bottle and getting the sediment out, you are rewarded with a much darker yellow and an even cloudier result. It has strong notes of toasted pumpkin seeds and molasses that blend together almost seamlessly. The taste is fantastic. The initial sweetness from the pumpkin and molasses gives way to an unrelenting sourness that lingers far after the beer is gone. Coming in at a respectable 7.7% ABV, this beer won’t haunt you as the night goes on. ‘Ghoulschip’ is a unique beer in that each batch is different due to the wild yeast the collects during the coolship process and while this is my first ‘Ghoulschip’ it will not be my last.
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