Saturday, December 31, 2011

New Year's Resolution

Blog more and also less sporadically. Starting tomorrow.

...at least I didn't miss December entirely. But this is only true because I'm on the West Coast and I got an extra 3 hours to post.

In that vein, here's something I'll be posting soon.

What a cute stubby bottle.

Also, remember how Session has twist-off caps with rock-paper-scissors underneath? This is what ended up under the Fest, along side two of its non-holiday brethren.

Fruitcake beats scissors. Duh.

Happy New Year, kids.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Fall, Part 5 - Weather is Weird

So this past month, we've had 30 degrees and snow and we've had sunny high 60s, so I thought I'd channel that unpredictability with this post.

First, the ridiculous snow we had. Dear winter - go the hell away. Seriously - roads got sloppy, tree branches snapped under the weight of heavy snow, and I lost internet access for a whole two days. Horrible, I tell you, horrible!

Goose Island Mild Winter - another winner.

So we pray for a Mild Winter (see what I did there?). Goose Island's Mild Winter is a delicious malty treat of a beer. It's a nice deep brown with a great sweet aroma wafting up from a nice fluffy head. The first sip was beautifully smooth, with just a touch of bitterness on the back end to balance everything out. I couldn't really smell anything, but that might just have been a stuffed nose on my part. I had a hard time tasting any of the "spicy rye flavors" that Goose Island was touting, but I really enjoyed the beer's overall richness and dark fruit flavors. And Goose Island's got some slight balance issues (their IPA is aggressively hopped and their Bourbon County Stout could kill) but this one settled down nicely.

Sledding is very wintery.
Hockey Skates - also wintery.

I enjoyed the label as well - nice view of the Chicago Hancock tower on one side, and the Willis (née Sears) Tower on the other. I've become a pretty big fan of the city of Chicago over the last decade, and both it and the beer are worth a return visit.

Serving suggestion.

Ps. What's a Willi Glass?

And then there was that two week period of gorgeous late summer days and mild evenings, not even a week after the snow. In celebration, I grabbed a really nice Sierra Nevada Summerfest.

Sierra Nevada has the most scenic labels.

I'm usually pretty enamored of Sierra Nevada. Their Pale Ale is distinctive and delicious with just the right amount of bite for a good all-around beer. I wish I liked the Summerfest as much, I'll be honest.

Not a bad looking pour.
Color was off on the camera though.

I think a lot of the problem was just that I'm not as in love with lager these days. There was some great grassiness hay on the nose, and the pour was the pure bright gold of summer. It had, as it promised, "a crisp, refreshing finish," but I guess I didn't taste any of the "delicate spicy and floral hop flavor" that I was promised.
Overpromise + Underdeliver.

I think Summerfest's greatest strength is in how mild it is - I could put a lot of these back without overwhelming my taste buds, because there wasn't a lot of flavor there.



It did not take me long to finish this beer.

Maybe in the depths of August that's really necessary, but on an Indian Summer day in November, it was nothing more than my pathetic attempt to hold on to the fleeting sunshine.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Fall, Part 4

The sequential naming of all of past four posts has a point - I've been quite taken by the beauty of Autumn and its harvest bounty, and I'm much happier eating (and drinking) seasonally. As I've said before, I'm a marketer's dream, which isn't far from my first point. What is seasonal cuisine anyway, but nature saying "limited time only!"

Mmm...

Of course, the pinnacle of limited time only is, of course, the McDonald's McRib. Like Maine sweet shrimp or the best New Jersey tomatoes, the McRib is available for a tantalizingly brief moment, during which the truly devoted are eager to partake of nature's bounty.

Lovingly scattered onions

I mean, let's talk about this thing, right? It's a spongy slab of pork goodness shaped, with humor, as if it had ribs. It's "smothered," as the ads say, in tangy barbecue sauce, with two pickle slices and a smattering of real onions strewn across its textured meatscape. That barbecue sauce is pretty thick and heavy, and it paints a messy swath across the box, one's hands, and one's lips.

Bread is weird

This bun is hilarious - it appears at first glance to be toasted (I mean, it's got that irregular brown shading that one finds on actual bread that's been actually toasted), but the soft squishiness of the bread-like-substance shows it might as well have been painted on. But the whole of the sandwich is significantly greater than the sum of its parts, and because it's "limited time only," I'm all over this thing.
But what to drink? I tried a few seasonal varieties and found them sadly lacking - the Otter Creek Oktoberfest, the Sam Adams Octoberfest, even the basic Sam Adams Boston Lager. Nothing really had enough umph or backbone to complement the sharp onions, savory pork, or tangy bbq sauce. So I ended up looking a little outside the box to the other things that might complement slow roasted meat by-products and ended up with a true winner.

Big bottle of delicious

Samuel Smith's Yorkshire Stingo was exactly what this sandwich needed. The old oak barrels impart an amazing sweetness and lush roundness to the flavor.

What a color

The roasted malts provide a lovely caramel flavor with buttery toffee notes. On its own, this is already a lovely beer.

Hell of a pedigree for a beer


There's a bit of sharpness from the alcohol that cuts through the richness of the pork (this is a strong 9% abv), while the caramel flavors meld with the onions for a really amazing sweetness. And the aroma of apple cider in the beer was the perfect accompaniment to the fatty, squishy pork.

Part of this balanced meal.

Overall, the Yorkshire Stingo was bold enough to stand up to the smothering spice of the barbecue sauce, producing a truly heavenly pairing that elevated both elements. I'll be waiting, beer in hand, for the next time the McRib comes around.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Fall, Part 3

So I'm definitely a little behind. I love drinking beer and I love talking about beer, but there are a few times at which I'm not wild about picking up my laptop to write about it. My bad. There's also a TON of beer in my fridge that I'm also a little behind in terms of drinking. Trust me though - I'm working on it.

So there's a lot of beer in here. Hmm...

So my distaste for pumpkin beers is well known. I'm not wild about pumpkin as an ingredient, and I do not like it in beer. I do not like pumpkin in bread, I do not like pumpkin in pie, I barely enjoy pumpkins in catapults. I'm terrified of them when they're drenched in glitter.

But damn if suddenly come Labor Day, the liquor stores aren't flooded by pumpkin beers of every kind. It's rare to fine one that I like. Well, it's rare to find one I'll buy, which means it's even that much harder to find one that I like. I am a huge fan of the Sam Adams variety packs (see the Spring pack - I bought the Summer one, but didn't review much from it). So hooray for the Fall pack, which I started off on two posts ago. I ended up having to take home two of the Harvest Pumpkin beers as a result. And I have to say, they weren't horrible.

Nice copper color.

11 pounds of pumpkin go into each barrel, they say. At least it's actual pumpkin, and not 11 pounds of pumpkin pie spice. I appreciated that it wasn't too sweet, wasn't too heavily spiced, and wasn't frankly, an average pumpkin beer. I couldn't smell a lot of fruit on the nose - the aroma was bready and yeasty instead. The body was smooth, the mouthfeel was pretty nice. And then at the very end there might have been some cinnamon and other spice on the finish. It wasn't candy-like, but there was enough caramel malt sweetness to remind me that this was a fall beer. Really, not bad.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Fall, Part 2

I'm a marketer's dream - the moment something is marked "limited release" or "seasonal offering," I will almost certainly buy it. Sometimes it works out. Other times, it really, really doesn't.

I even have apples in the background. Fall is fun.

Now, I'm not willing to write-off hard cider just because it's not beer, or because it seems really girly. I enjoy a good cider. This is not a good cider. I should also mention incidentally that this is one of those situations where I really REALLY wished I could have just bought a single rather than a sixer.

"Hint of American White Oak."
I don't think hint means what you think it means.

So Woodchuck Fall Cider has "a unique taste and special aroma" does it? This is a situation where the whole is so, so much worse than sum of its parts. Cinnamon (check), nutmeg (check), American white oak (check), add together to produce a sickeningly cloying artificial flavor (check, and mate). Here's where I think this thing breaks down - I think it's just too many things that kind of work together.

Apples and cinnamon is kind of a standard flavor combination. Nutmeg is in a lot of apple pie recipes, so let's throw that in. At this point, this cider could have been fine - probably the apple equivalent of pumpkin beer. But they had to go and use American oak for the finishing.

Oakiness, in fine wine, is a result of aging in oak barrels. It's what gives a wine complexity, with flavors of caramel and butter and, yes, vanilla. Apparently, though, cheap winemakers age their wine in steel vats and just toss oak chips into the wine. This allows for less of the caramel and butter and rich flavors, and tends to highlight ONLY VANILLA. Woodchuck sells its sixer of Fall cider for, oh, $9. Do you think they use fine oak barrels, or oak chips (wikipedia even suggests that oak powder can be used? gross).

It was a really cute label too.
All Autumnal, with nice colored leaves.

So this cider doesn't taste like Fall as much as it tastes like a poor Yankee Candle facsimile of Fall. I tasted a lot of vanilla, a lot of sugar, barely any hint of apple, some coconut (I think by this point my palate was totally shot), and what under any other circumstance would probably have made me think of a dish of potpourri. I didn't finish mine. My fiancée didn't finish hers. And now I have four freaking bottles of it stuck in my fridge.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Fall, Part I

I love Fall. As a child of the Northeast, I am giddy when the mercury dips into the sixties, the air clears of summer pollen and the hideously draining scourge of humidity. Fall is a time of crunchy leaves and roasted meats, a time of bountiful harvests and sweet, sweet football. It is, in a word, PERFECT.

Shiner Sixer. Odd, but we'll get to that later.

It's also a great time to get out and try more beer. Darker beers, with their delicious caramel flavors, are perfect for Fall. Summer can keep its golden Coronas and weak Bud Lights, Fall is a time for beers with layers of substance and flavor. Of course, breweries aren't stupid - they're wising up to the fact that the "eat locally, eat seasonally" movement is a major player in the way consumers are willing to evaluate food purchases, and they're doing the same. Not so much with the "eat locally" thing, but they're sure willing to exploit seasonality. Case in point, two variety packs I purchased this past month.

Sam Adams Harvest Collection

The Sam Adams Harvest Collection and the Shiner Family Reunion. Now, I realize that the Family Reunion isn't exactly an 'Autumn' collection per se, but it's definitely pushing the maltier and darker roasts that are typical of the fall season. Both have provided interesting drinking, and I'll be writing more about them in the weeks to come, but I wanted to start with the Sam Adams Bonfire Rauchbier.



According to the neck label, this Rauchbier (literally "smoke beer") is brewed with "specialty malt ... dried over an open fire, giving the brew a distinct smokiness." That it did. I was discussing smoked meats with my fiancée (ooooh, French...) last night, and she mentioned that she's not wild about aggressively smoked meats because she starts to feel "smoked" herself. I get that. I love a good smoked salmon platter or polish sausage, but after a while, you kind of feel like you've been chewing on cigarette butts. I've had smoked beers that approached that level of preservation - stuff that made me feel like I needed a thorough cleaning. This was not one. The smoke here was distinct, but not overboard. And that's where the difference lies.

The nice fluffy head trapped a lot of the aroma of smoke.

I got a great smooth beer with a good amount of toffee sweetness that balanced out the light smoke flavor. I couldn't really taste any hops, but I probably would have missed them if they were there. Instead, I got a nice aroma and flavor of a lightly smoldering campfire. I was disappointed to find that I only got two in the twelve-pack.

This was a very easy drink. Delicious.

Also, while the label said that the Rauchbier has been brewed "since 2004," both the box and the website indicate that this is a "new flavor," with the website proudly stating that this was "[f]irst brewed in 2011." Strange.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Nostalgia begets whiskey

I was at my friendly neighborhood booze shop recently and happened to see a bottle of Leopold Brothers American Small Batch Whiskey.  I'm actually familiar with the brand.  Leopold Brothers, currently located in Denver, Colorado, originally operated a brewery and distillery in Ann Arbor, Michigan where East Coast and myself went to law school.  I really loved their Ann Arbor location.  Leopold Brothers was a place where you could drink, play board games (checking them out from the bartender), or have a pizza and catch the game.  Now, when they were in Ann Arbor they produced beer, gin, pisco, and vodka, but not whiskey.  So, for the sake of nostalgia I picked up a bottle.



Leopold Brothers claim that they produce their American Small Batch Whiskey in the pre-prohibition style, which is to say that they barrel at a lower proof (98 instead of the modern 125), ferment naturally without refrigeration, and distil the corn and rye over a whole day instead of flash-boiling.  Interestingly they claim that by barreling at a lower proof this allows "more of the whiskey to come into contact with the barrel, allowing the mild brown sugar and molasses notes that come from the charred barrels to shine through."  I'm not sure how that's true, unless the lower alcohol content means that the "angel's share" is smaller.  Anyway, the real question is how does this pre-prohibition whiskey stack up?

For the record, I'm drinking this neat.  First, the whiskey is very clear and light in color.  Leopold Brothers doesn't state on the bottle or their website how long they're aging the whiskey in the barrel but I wouldn't think more than a year and certainly not more than two.  It's similar in color and clarity to hard cider or a desert white wine.  It has a mellow smell, mostly yeast and alcohol.  The taste is similarly mild and distinctly unlike most bourbon.  The whiskey is sweet, tasting slightly of vanilla and corn syrup.  It's not cloying, but it is mellow and pretty one-dimensional. 

So my verdict?  I wouldn't buy this again or order it at a bar, but it wasn't bad.  I'm actually intrigued to try some of Leopold Brother's other whiskeys.  They make a "New York Apple Whiskey" that I might have to seek out given how much I love hard cider and Calvados.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Devoid of Flavor

I went on a vacation to Florence after college - it was one of those things that Ivy-league students do. I know full well how pretentious that sounds. You know what? Bite me. :P

Anyway, my friends and I were using the Let's Go series of guides, because Ivy graduates only trust other Ivy graduates or somesuch. The entry for Florence discussed a restaurant that was good and cheap, and yet totally devoid of atmosphere. I think it actually said "totally devoid of atmosphere." Being a curious and contrary lot, we became fixated on what such a restaurant would entail, and decided to go. Turns out it was a great decision - the reviewer had written up the pizza parlor on the ground floor, but the heart and soul of the restaurant, La Mangiatoia, was in the basement, and it was: a. full of locals, and b. amazing, and c. still really cheap. Sometimes it pays to poke around in a review and see what the reviewer meant. I hope you do with my little write-ups. Push back if you think I'm wrong.

On that note, the following blurb was written up by Eric Asimov of the New York Times in this weekend's Magazine, specifically in the Drinks portion. I can't permalink to his blurb itself, so I'm going to rip it and quote the whole thing. Reprinted here entirely without permission:
--

Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Lite: Is There Any Difference?

BY ERIC ASIMOV
Denis Carrier

It's true that the craft-beer movement of the last 30 years has exposed a lot of Americans to the idea that good beer is complex, flavorful and distinctive. It's also true that Americans buy an enormous amount of terrible beer. Six of the 10 best-selling beers in the United States are light beers, including Bud Light at No. 1 (it outsells No. 2 Budweiser by more than 2 to 1), Coors Light at No. 3 and Miller Lite at No. 4. Because huge budgets are devoted to television advertising, industry analysts say that light-beer sales are "marketing driven." Basically, what the beers taste like is less important than the effectiveness of their ads — Bud Light's "Real Men of Genius" or Miller Lite's "Be a Man" campaign or Coors Light's labels that turn blue when properly cold. And apparently there is a need for the latter — sales of Bud Light and Miller Lite have declined for three straight years as Coors Light has shown modest growth.

I recently sampled the best-selling light beers to see if there was any palatable difference between them. The results: Coors Light offered no smell and no taste, but as the label indicated, it was indeed cold. Bud Light, which promises "superior drinkability," had only the faintest hint of bitterness but was otherwise devoid of flavor. Miller Lite was the clear winner. It seemed almost robust by comparison, but still hardly bitter. For added thrills, I drank a Michelob Ultra, the 12th-best-selling brand. Now here was a beer that truly tasted like nothing — no smell, no taste, not even the cold sensation of the Coors Light. If you want to drink basically nothing, Michelob Ultra is for you.

--

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Black Chocolate Stout

This is the first beer anyone totally geeked out on me over. It was a fellow faculty member at a middle school I was teaching at a decade ago, and he was positively giddy over finding Black Chocolate Stout in stores again (it's generally only available October through March).

Being an impressionable young lad, I went out and purchased a four-pack, and was impressed immediately by the full on flavor of flavor. See, up until then, I had been in college, and had been exposed only to the very finest light and chuggable "getcha drunk" lagers that New Jersey could offer. By contrast, the Black Chocolate Stout is a sipping beer.

My camera sucks. In actuality, this beer devours light.

First off, it pours an absolute ink black: a quality not well-captured by the camera on my iPhone, nor by the light-colored things that are reflected in the glass. I mean it - I got the sense I could write on parchment with this beer. In previous pours, I have also managed to cultivate a nice creamy head (with a color not unlike that of the head of a Guinness, but much more flavorful). Somehow, that wasn't happening for me today.

I smelled a lot of cherry and roasted coffee in this beer. Unlike many of the beers I've had of late, both of those aromas were present in the flavor beer too. But wait, as they say, there's more. I ended up getting that namesake bitter chocolate, also some lovely toasted bread and a lot of caramel. This is a beer with a flavor that lasts.

At 10% above, it's not a multiple-bottle kind of a beer (at least, not for me), and there's a considerable alcohol presence as well. I do find that as it warms up (inevitable, given how long this beer kind of insists I wait in between sips), some nice vanilla flavors peek out as well, and the heat in the alcohol makes a winter evening a little bit warmer.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Put it in a box

The boyfriend and I visited Paso Robles and the Santa Ynez Valley this past weekend and enjoyed wine tasting in both regions.  We generally like to visit smaller vineyards, where you might find the winemaker or his or her spouse at the tasting bar.  There's just a better feel to the smaller places, where folks are still very much pouring their heart and soul into the wine.  But I'll get off my soapbox.  I'll be reviewing quite a few of the wines that we purchased on the trip, but I thought I'd start with the most unexpected find: quite good boxed wine.



We were at the Hidden Oak Winery in Templeton, CA.  First let me say that Hidden Oak Winery is located on a beautiful piece of property, with great views of the region, and that we had a great experience in their tasting room.  We found some Merlot there that we really liked and were informed that it came in a box.  Four bottles of wine in the box for the price of 2.3!  You can't argue with that deal, and I've increasingly heard about winemakers attempting to try boxing their wine, despite America's aversion to the boxed stuff based on experiences with Franzia at undergrad.  The thing is that with the box, the wine lasts much longer once opened (assuming you're not going to finish a bottle in an evening) and does not appreciably diminish in quality once opened because of the vacuum seal.

But, is it any good?  We thought that Hidden Oak Winery's 2006 Merlot was good enough to bring home a box.  As you can see from the picture, the Merlot has a dark color, and while you can't appreciate it in the photo, it's a really nice dark ruby color.  It has a relatively weak nose of red fruit.  Now, even though the wine comes in a box it is a 2006 vintage and does require some time to breathe.  When I first poured myself a glass I found a bracing acidic aftertaste.  Luckily, that quickly faded as the wine opened up.  Hidden Valley's '06 Merlot is very fruit forward, with a mellow tannic finish.  The fruit flavors (raspberry, currant, and cherry) are quite nice, and the wine is well structured.  You can tell that the tannins have faded with time, and they balance the fruit nicely.  Finally, it's a fast-moving wine in my opinion.  There's not much of a long lingering finish here, which some folks will like and others would no doubt criticize.  My verdict - it's a good value and high quality, and should pair well with grilled meat and seafood.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Quick Trivial Post

Well, it's no big secret that I'm a big dork. I love beer, I love thinking about beer, and I love beer trivia. And frankly, I love trivia of all kinds. Make that *almost* all kinds.

There's a company out there called "Stump! Trivia" which franchises out questions from a central repository and puts them into the hands of local trivia monkeys across the country. These people sign up often because they like trivia, but more often because they like alcohol and attention, and this is a reasonably easy way of securing cheap access to both.

Case in point, at Cornerstone Tavern in Manhattan, which features unremarkable (but generally inoffensive) food and reasonably attentive waitstaff. And trivia on Wednesdays. Oh right. And $1 Rolling Rock mugs. Recipe for awesome.

There are 13 beers on this table. That cost us $13.

Here's the problem: their trivia monkey sucks. They use Stump! as their source of questions, which means we get nineteen questions and two 10-question sheets over the course of 2.5 excruciating hours. We also get a woman who can't pronounce anything that looks remotely foreign, and who comments that she doesn't have to be smart because she's got a giant rack. I've been three times. Except for the $1 beer, I don't ever think I want to go back.

And I don't have to! We found a better place for bar trivia. Hooray for Drunken Smartass Trivia at Dempsey's Pub. Better questions, better beer, better location, better starting time, slightly higher price, suck it, Cornerstone.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Still summer?

It's the weekend after labor day and I'm watching Penn State hosting Alabama. Mr. West Coast, I'm sure, is thrilled that Iowa is up against Iowa State. Fantasy football has started. I'm pretty sure this means it's fall.

And yet, the summer sun is shining, it's gorgeous here in Cambridge, MA, and the breeze is warm. Maybe it's still summer? I found a singular bottle of Cisco Brewery's Summer of Lager. Maybe it's just denial, but I was looking for a last gasp of summer, and I went with it.

A promising beer. Sometimes promises let you down.

It pours a lovely gold color with a light ephemeral head that smells of grass and herbiage. Unfortunately, it also has a distinct aroma of mushroom earthiness, something that would continue throughout the beer, much to its detriment.

What happened to the head? Same thing that happened to the flavor.

Each sip had a pretty hearty "beery" flavor with a lot of grain and a decent malt foundation. The Cisco website touts this beer's "hints of citrus" and "light, refreshing flavor." Crap. This beer is straight-up sour. But even worse than that, there's a musty fungal aroma that works its way into each and every sip. Just checked in on Iowa - tied in overtime. West Coast must be having a fit. Speaking of West Coast, the label on the Summer of Lager indicates a conscious echo of the Summer of Love, and I think perhaps all that the brewers at Cisco brought back to Nantucket from San Francisco was a love of sourdough. Gross.

There's probably a reason there was only one of these left. Maybe summer really is over.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Expanding the beat.


The ladies over at Jezebel have a post up today entitled How Much Alcohol To Drink So You Never Die. I found it amusing, and for some reason it actually caused me to reflect on my on drinking habits.  Over the past year I've made an effort to drink little alcohol during the work-week, and instead do my drinking over the weekend.  While this change has probably been overall good for my health, it is a major change for me.  During law school, I'd frequently enjoy a beer with dinner.  Now that I've been cutting back on drinking during the week I find that I'm not drinking as much beer as I used to.  I enjoy a wide variety of booze including most wine varietals and spirits.  Lately, I've been spending more and more time with wine, whiskey and scotch rather than strictly drinking beer.

So, while my previous posts have been devoted to beer, I've decided to broaden the purview of your noble West Coast correspondent to include these other beverages.  I'll still cover beer, but less frequently.  I hope that this change will be welcome. I certainly will have much to say -- I'm well informed on wine but a whiskey novice.  And, since I'm located in San Francisco, I've ready access to some of the finest vineyards in the world. Look forward to some dispatches from Paso Robles starting next weekend, as the boyfriend and I are taking a weekend to do visit the AVA for wine-tasting and see my favorite band in concert.

On a slightly related note, I learned today that there is no proof that Ben Franklin said that "beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" (or similarly attributed quotes). Instead, Ben Franklin wrote this about wine:

We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. The miracle in question was only performed to hasten the operation, under circumstances of present necessity, which required it.

This finding was clearly an auspicious omen for the newly expanded project.   A toast then, to beer (still proof God loves us if you ask me), wine (in vino veritas), and whiskey (the water of life).  Cheers!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Beginning a New Session


East Coast is a far better beer photographer

I recently had the pleasure of drinking one of the beers our East Coast correspondent previously enjoyed in March, Full Sail's Session Black, a black lager checking in at 5.4% abv. Like East Coast, I'm generally suspicious of black lagers. This could be because one of my favorite beers, Death & Taxes by Moonlight Brewing, is so exemplary that other black lagers seem terribly disappointing in comparison.

I found the Session Black to be good, although not as good as Death & Taxes. First, I have to say that the Session Black has a fantastic nose. It smells slightly yeasty but also has notes of coffee and chocolate. It has a slight smoke and chocolate flavor that is pleasant but ultimately too insubstantial. I understand that the brewmaster is walking a tight line, trying to add flavor without making the beer heavy, but I really felt that the Session Black was too light for its nose. I think this has a lot to do with how carbonated the beer is. It really feels like you're drinking seltzer when you take a sip. This doesn't drive the beer into "would not drink again" territory, but it's a mark off what is otherwise a very pleasant lager. All in all, it paired quite well with the grilled bratwurst and tomato salad that I was having for dinner, and I'm not at all worried about finishing the bottles left in the fridge.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Pretty Things

Labor day, or indeed, any holiday, is a great day to take stock of the important things in life. Things like safe labor conditions, job security, maximum hours, minimum wage: all of these are part and parcel with the importance of American labor. And I'm pretty thankful for all of those.

A portion of Spitzer's taps. I don't have a wide-angle lens.
Pretty Things is right in the middle.

This past weekend, I had a few friends in town, and we went around lower Manhattan on a bit of a walking tour. We came across a beautiful bar called Spitzer's Corner, a lovely spot on the Lower East Side with 40 taps. So really, my kind of place. My girlfriend at the time (more on this in a moment) identified a small tap as bearing the logo of the Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project from Somerville, MA, and I knew I had to try whatever it was.

Turns out, it was amazing. I've written about Pretty Things before, as I have really enjoyed their offerings. This one happened to be their Hedgerow Bitter, which Spitzer's describes as "a whole new kind of hoppy."

A welcome cold beer on a surprisingly warm and humid day.

It poured nicely, with a lovely copper color and a fluffy white head that trapped all manner of aromatic oils. The aroma was surprisingly absent, just a faint whiff of grass, but the sip was powerful indeed. Hedgerow looks consciously to the Old World - by calling itself a "bitter," it evokes the flavors of the great English bitters (Pretty Things uses all English-grown hop varietals in this beer as well). However, they put a distinctly American spin on the English tradition.

Nice lacing on a very, very nice beer.

Hedgerow jacks up the hops and creates a wonderfully crisp flavor profile, pumping up the bitter grapefruit and grassy hay qualities while downplaying the malt sweetnesses that one might expect from a nice amber ale. The finish is bracingly dry and floral, but the mix of those flavors is so delicious I couldn't help but continue.

I should clarify that "girlfriend at the time" thing, I suppose. After saying goodbye to my good friends from England, said girlfriend-at-the-time and I walked from the LES to The High Line, a beautiful elevated park above Manhattan's meatpacking district. And it was there that I proposed to her, in a small turn-off above 25th Street.

Yet another pretty thing.

And so, my girlfriend-at-the-time has become my fiancée. Lucky, lucky me.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Draft

I like a good draft beer. It tastes fresh, clean, full of carbonation and life. It's delicious stuff, when it's done well. But unless you live by an amazing beer bar, there's just no way to get an amazing variety of beers the same way one can with a bottled selection.

Last night was my Fantasy Football draft, and already, I have awoken to severe buyer's remorse. It's amazing how a good solid week of planning, of making sure the numbers are solid, the rankings are there, etc. can all go straight down the toilet on the back of some very minor tweaks. Like finding out I draft 9th of 10, or discovering that because the draft order reverses itself, that there are 16 picks between my 2nd and 3rd round pick. So I did the only thing I knew to do. Crack open a beer.

The best part of the draft. Before anything has happened.

I've covered Samuel Smith brewery before on these pages, and I'm a fan. I tried their Imperial Stout, which was a delicious 7.0% abv. Their website says to serve with Espresso, Stilton and walnuts, cheesecake, steak au poivre, caviar, or coffee trifle with roasted almonds. I enjoyed mine with panic and a side of why the hell did I just draft that player?!?

It pours a fantastic opaque black with a wonderfully creamy tan head. The aroma is promising, like I'm maybe going to be OK this year instead of drafting a useless Tony Effing Gonzalez. First sip, I get wonderful molasses and coffee flavors. I settle in and wait for my draft turn. Foster, Peterson, and Vick drafted - nothing I couldn't explain or deal with, though I was disappointed. Ended up with Darren McFadden. OK, ok...

Lacing on the glass is fantastic.

More sips - this beer is really rich in the mouth. It's almost akin to drinking beef broth, it's so satisfying. But it's incredibly smooth and easy to drink, so I'm not noticing the timer ticking down or the 7% abv.

Panic. I don't like to draft a QB this early in the draft, but if Vick is already drafted, and suddenly Rodgers and Peyton are as well, maybe I should jump on the QB bandwagon? This beer is going to my head, and now I only have 2 minutes to decide on my pick...

Did I really drink half a glass in the first three rounds?
Uh oh...

Tom Brady. Wait, what? Two picks later, LeSean McCoy gets drafted. I'd long ago decided to take McFadden over McCoy, but McCoy should have been picked up 2nd. I'm an idiot. Drink more beer. A lot of dark fruits coming into the fore, like plums and raisins. I'm really liking this beer.

I need to top off my glass and empty the bottle.

I wait a while. Drink more beer. Dark bitter coffee and malt sweetness are battling it out, and I'm just loving every sip. My turn again? About now is when I realize most of the good running backs and wide receivers are gone. Panic... Reggie Wayne.

What? A guy who depends on having Peyton Manning throw to him? Peyton, who's been come off the injured list? I'm insane. I pass up known quantities for the likes of Plaxico Burress; I even pick Ahmad Bradshaw. Blurgh.

I don't love my team, but I love this beer.

First order of business: dumping some of these players for good ones. Second order of business: buying more Imperial Stout. This stuff is amazing.

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Truth in labeling

I collect beer labels. It's fun. There's a lot of great beer out there, and I'm kind of a sucker for a silly or fun label. Then again, sometimes beers go too far.

Sometimes label collecting can be a pain in the ass, especially when breweries, perhaps out of aesthetics (Hitachino Nest) or environmentalism (Dogfish Head) use all-paper labels. Or Stone, out of Escondito, CA, which prints directly onto the bottle. Or Flying Fish, whose labels seem to be made of some sort of vinyl.

But I've got four books of labels and I'm continuing to collect more. However, one side effect of my enjoyment of beer labels is that while I'm drinking and writing, I tend to look at who's making the beer and what it's called, and less at a classification of the style of beer. In some sense, I think this reflects my reluctance to compare a beer to its theoretical archetype (see philosophical post) as well as a lack of intricate knowledge of the very many varieties of beer. Incidentally, birthday's coming up in a little less than two months. *cough*

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I've gone through all of our past posts and, with only one exception, tagged the type of beer reviewed therein. Let's face it: in the wake of Hurricane Irene, I didn't really have much else to do today. I've tried, as best as I can, to use the styles of beer listed by Beer Advocate, a leading beer review / education website. However, I'm not going to be nearly as pedantic as they are - no need to split between American Adjunct Lager and Adjunct Lager. However, I do hope this helps in comparing beer against beer.

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Whirlwind

As you can see, I've been clearing out the notebook for a while. After a flurry of once-a-day posts, I'm moving to once every few days. I hope not to fall into the once a month funk that engulfed this blog for the majority of last season. Readers have been very good at getting on my case about more frequent posting. You know what would help, readers? Send me beer. That'll get me posting more often, that's for sure.

Of course, at the moment, I'm hunkering down for Hurricane Irene, and we'll see how that goes. One of the things I've enjoyed this past week is having an excuse to pull up weather maps. I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for geography. I used to be able to spend hours just staring at a globe or a map or an atlas. I could blow a whole afternoon exploring on Google Maps or Google Earth. So Sam Adams' Latitude 48 IPA is really just pandering to me.

The 48th Parallel North is what Sam Adams calls the "hop belt," a narrow band in the Northern Hemisphere in which hops flourish. I've come down hard on Sam Adams before for their excessive use of hops, but here (in an IPA) I'm pretty open to liberal interpretations of balance.

Good looking pour.

There's a really thick head on this beer, and it laced down the glass rather attractively. There's wonderful grassiness and a lot of grapefruit on the nose, but the aroma isn't bitter the way some other IPAs sometimes are. There's actually an undercurrent of sugary sweetness in the nose, which I found very pleasant.

Even prettier lacing.

The sip was a little harder to get behind. It's an IPA, so I do expect to be smacked in the face with a pine cone. Oddly, instead of pininess, I got a lot of bitter citrus (lemon and grapefruit) and some weird tinny metallic flavors as well. There was a decent malty backbone that did balance out the beer so as not to lean toward puckeringly or bracingly sour. Nonetheless, that metal flavor was rather off-putting.

Dinner was less than thrilling, sadly.

I ate it with a dish of cold sesame noodles and some roast chicken, two flavors that should have really complemented the IPA. They didn't: too bad.