Maker: Bell’s, Comstock, Michigan, USA
ABV: 8%
Purchased for $15/6 pack (Hollywood Market, Madison Heights, Michigan)
Appearance: Ruddy brown with a short-lived head. Leaves a thin, lacy layer of foam on top.
Nose: Toasted malt, cherry juice, faint alcohol
Palate: Easy drinking but flavorful. Relatively fruity. Sweet, toasty malt, leather, plum juice.
Finish: mixed berry, hops, roasted malt.
Parting words: Bock is a style of beer that drinks like an ale but is brewed like a lager. It’s also one of my favorite styles. Bock has a long history in Germany but was hard to find in the US for many years. The microbrewer movement changed all that and now almost every small brewery makes one or more. The story goes that the style was originally made in the Lower Saxon town of Einbeck, but the name was corrupted to ein Bock (a billy goat) by brewers in Munich. That story sounds fishy to me, but beer history is not my field, so I’ll let it go for now. At any rate, most bocks carry a picture of one or more goats on the label as a play on the name.
Doppelbocks (i.e. double bocks) are brewed at a higher ABV than the standard bock. They usually have a name that ends in -ator as a tribute to the first brewers of the style, the Paulaner Franciscan friars, who called their beer Salvator. Consecrator is a good example of the style, but as noted above it shows more fruit than most. It still works very well, though. I don’t normally buy beer that’s this expense (I admit that I probably overpaid), but this one is just worth the price. Consecrator is recommended.
Sipology 