As harbingers of spring, brewery conjures "magical" beers

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The Beer Geek

As harbingers of spring, brewery conjures "magical" beers

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Mac Evans

Columnist

February 20, 2009

Margot D. Miller

**POTENT POTIONS:** Magic Hat Brewery Company creates unique beers for spring. Many of the brews in its current variety pack have hints of citrus flavors.

If Willy Wonka really existed, he would not own a chocolate factory. Instead, he would run a large microbrewery in Burlington, Vermont, doing many of the magical things that he is told to do in legend, but with beer.

Magic Hat Brewing Company is, by all standards, a successful hippie brewing company. It is constantly creating one-time only brews, and provides infinite fan-submitted wisdom under each of its bottle caps (examples below). The art on the box of the Spring Fever Variety Pack is a half-bird/half-guitarist with a Mardi Gras mask and number nine pants—an appropriate mascot for any promotion for this brewery. The company Web site is a further exploration into what one can only imagine the beer factory is like, especially a beer factory with a purple-suited chocolatier in charge (although more accurately we are dealing with someone more like a bearded mad-hatter with sunglasses and a robe). The Web site will give more abstractions and details to their brews and—oh, my god, the bird/guitarist hatched from an egg and is playing Devendra Banhart at me. Let me get to the box:

Odd Notion Spring '09 "It's Crazy to be Lazy"

Odd Notion is the ever-changing seasonal beer released by Magic Hat and debuted with their 12-packs. We were treated to pre-prohibition and winter Odd Notion, and now is the spring variety—a classic European Pilsner flavored with agave and poppy seed. It's very light and very drinkable, and has a nice smell and texture. The flavor is somewhere between the bitter pilsner, the sour agave, and the sweet poppy taste. This is a great beverage for shorts-weather Maine (40 degrees), when there's some sort of glimmering hope that the snow might melt before Ivies.

#9 "Great Beer is Quite Near"

I have already praised the sheer drinkability of #9 at the end of last semester, and as with any Magic Hat Variety Pack, #9 is present to hold down the fort. There is a balance of fruity apricot flavor (which makes it delicious to most taste-testers) and dry pale malt, combined with a spicy hop flavor that makes this beer easily the best experiment to come out of the Magic Hat Brewery. Other breweries have tried to emulate the taste, but #9 is the father of this concoction and still has the best recipe around.

Circus Boy "Feed the Nation with Imagination"

The unfiltered cloudiness of Circus Boy is the Hefeweizen wheat beer in this motley crüe of beers. It has an herbal aroma to it, and clove is the most prominent. It has a lemony tang mixed with a bready, hoppy taste, which doesn't combine badly, but isn't that exciting either. So far, this is definitely the weak link; there are much better Hefeweizens out there, and Circus Boy could best be called a wheat beer. That being said, Magic Hat does not produce a terrible beer, and despite its drawbacks, Circus Boy is a nice addition to the variety pack.

HI.P.A. "Quaff with Care or poorly you'll Fare"

I'm not really a fan of India Pale Ales or very hoppy beers, but I'm going to try to put aside these normal grudges so as not to downgrade the highly-hopped I.P.A., Magic Hat's "Spring SeasonAle." The label features a woman's face under a very large headdress, and the initial review states that this beer is a blend of English and American hops and malts.

The recurring pattern of herbal spiciness and a lemony taste to the beer is present here, as well. It has a hoppy bite from the beginning of the sip to the aftertaste in the mouth. The taste in the mouth, however, is not as grainy or hoppy as the smell, and is surprisingly smooth. It has an almost grapefruit-like taste to it. From what I can tell, this a pretty well constructed I.P.A., and a well constructed beer; I don't regret starting this even though I don't really like hoppiness or I.P.A.s.

Magic Hat is going to have its annual Mardi Gras Parade next weekend, which will take over all of downtown Burlington. I believe the golden tickets have already all been found, but if you have that weird hippy friend at University of Vermont you want to visit, next week would be an interesting time to go.

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