A couple weeks back, Yukon Brewing held a tap takeover at the Underground Tap and Grill in downtown Edmonton. As part of the line-up, Yukon offered up three editions of its Lead Dog Ale to allow for a vertical tasting. A fresh 2015 was put beside a 2014 and a 2013 for comparison. Underground offered up flights (with a bonus sample of the Midnight Sun stout) to facilitate the vertical.

I have done a few Yukon verticals before (here and here, for example), as the good folks from Whitehorse are quite generous about this kind of thing. But who am I to miss an opportunity to extend my observations on how beer transforms over time? So I gave it a go.

The 2015 tasted as one would expect Lead Dog to taste. Dark, cola brown with a strong aroma of caramel and cherry dark fruit. The flavour was rich with nut, dark fruit and deep coffee notes. There is a slight alcohol warming to the beer (as there should be with its strength). It is a full and rounded beer.

The 2014 maintained that dark fruit character in the aroma, but the caramel became more subtle and fell into the background a bit while some earthiness started to appear. In tasting, I found the coffee faded and the caramel became thinner. These changes increased the perception of the raisin-like dark fruit. It also made the beer seem sharper and less full-bodied. Still, it was very pleasant. If someone gave this to me blind I would still consider it an interesting winter warmer.

It was the 2013 where I really started to notice changes. The aroma was more subdued overall, with earthy character, some light sherry and a noted plum. Earthiness and a rustic prune dominate the flavour, complemented by a Thompson raisin fruitiness. Near the end a licorice and molasses character arises, lasting through the linger. The alcohol warming seems to come out a bit more than the other two, and it seems to regain some of its lost body. It seems the thickest of the three vintages.

I was struck at the rapid transformation of what is a fairly hearty beer. What got me the most was how the body sharpened and them rounded back out again, which is not what I would expect as it ages. My theory is that the caramel notes fade away to be slowly overtaken by earthy and oxidation roundedness. The 2014 likely presents the beginning of that shift and the 2013 shows the end.

Now, we have to keep in mind some (or much) of the flavour difference could be attributable to differences in the original beer. I have no doubt Yukon has great quality control and so Lead Dog is fairly consistent over time. However, it will not be identical year over year. It is possible the 2014 batch started life a bit thinner than the other two. There is no way to know without having taken notes of its character when fresh (I really wish people would give me three of four years heads up of these adventures!).

We are relatively safe to assume that, when fresh, the three beer were relatively similar, so we can be confident the changes are the effects of aging. Which makes the trajectory of the beer fascinating to observe. It is also interesting to compare this to my findings of a Lead Dog vertical a couple years ago (here). I wonder what the 2010 would be like right now?