When I opened the Coolship Resurgam—one of Allagash’s rare barrel-aged beers—I once again felt the lump of the all-too-familiar beer-lover’s paradox. A rush of anticipation as I poured the deep gold liquid into a tulip glass, burst of citrus and oak and funk floating in the air, followed by an undeniable pang of regret because the Coolship Resurgam (bottled on March 12, 2013) was the last in a small cache of the brewery’s limited-edition beers that I’d secured several months back.
Part of the brewery’s Coolship series, the creation of brews like the Resurgam trace back to 2008, when Allagash built their coolship—a large, shallow pan used to cool wort overnight using ambient temperatures, where yeasts naturally start to form. The next day, the coolest wort is transferred to the barrels, the mad alchemy of fermentation begins, and the beer ages until the brewmaster’s sage-like taste buds determine it’s ready. And when one of the four beer types in the Coolship line is ready to be released—gradually, in painfully small batches—it’s done unannounced.
So…yeah, finding more is largely a fool’s errand, one that’s all too familiar to the beer-obsessed.