The Black Angel

Pouring ‘one out for your homey’ may have become a white boy cliché years ago, but the honest sentiment behind it — to share your spirits with the spirits — dates back centuries.
The distiller’s version of this superstitious notion is called “angel’s share,” and was first stumbled upon by booze-men on both sides of the pond, both in Scotland and Kentucky. Naturally. Whiskey makers there would transfer their goods over to wood barrels for aging, in the hopes of instilling their grain juice with some of that sweet oak sap. But then when they’d go to bottle the stuff they realized that some of it had plum disappeared. The angels were sipping their share… Or, if you’re sober enough for science’s explanation, evaporation was claiming a small percentage of the liquid into the ether.

Offering up samples to ghosts has been less a part of beer brewing here in the States for the simple reason that few brewers have the patience to store their booze for the time it requires to submit it to the elements. The good folks behind the Lost Abbey beers decided to change that by squirreling away their Angel’s Share brew for more than six months in brandy barrels. And boy, did the surfer angels of Carlsbad, California find the stash or what! They skimmed the suds clean off the top: A bottle of Angel’s Share is bone-flat, like a peaceful lake or a stout poured once for a party and left out for a week. The color is black but not ‘Black Album”-black. It’s somehow blue-black velour with a tinge of amber-waves. Wafts from the glass boast several sweet pantry spices — but especially vanilla-cognac-cream. Impossibly strong and pungent, there are gluts of glucose here. Cane sugar lip gloss over beer breath.
The first time we enjoyed this beer, our friend was pouring. He’s plugged into the beer bar scene and yet he’d driven all the way to North County San Diego to wait in line with the other fans. The wait was two hours and the bottles cost $25 a pop. Everyone was limited to two per person. We didn’t quite get it. Then we sipped this sweet black grease, took it in deep, and smiled back at him curling our outstretched hand into a incredulous fist. It was all we could do to keep from pouring a small share onto the clean wood floor.
Soundtrack: Black Angel’s “Black Grease”
Dairy Pairy: Blu Di Bufala, Italian raw buffalo milk blue