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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.