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.

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.

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.

Summer Beer Gone Awry

I've written before about my contempt for Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy. I hadn't heard of Shandy until I went to the UK - it's basically a mix of dry lemonade (a lemon soda that's got very little sugar in it, like an un-sugared 7Up) and cheap lager. Shandy, when made well, is refreshing and delicious: it's low alcohol, and the lemon flavors do elevate the lighter grassier notes of the lager.

Leinenkugel's on the other hand, sucks. A friend of mine ordered one over dinner while I went to the men's room. Why she did so is quite beyond me - we have had previous problems with Leinenkugel's products before. I seem to remember her and her roommate trying desperately to pawn off Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss to no avail, and eventually throwing out the remains of the case someone had purchased. It's pretty terrible.

Looks gross. Smells gross. Tastes gross.

Don't order this beer.

So this Shandy. Good lord. First of all, it came in the Boston Beer Co.'s glass for Sam Adams Lager, but it wasn't helped at all. Secondly, as you can see, it poured the color of dirty dishwater. The aroma was all sour lemon and white bread. In a normal shandy, one should smell a sweet lemon perfume. Here, it was like the lemon smell of churning stomach acid reminiscent of an aggressive college night out.

Flavor? Beer mixed with lemon pledge. Not pleasant at all. Gross.

Feel the burn.

Another painful day at the gym yesterday; another day of nursing my poor aching joints. My goal has been to sort of get my body used to being warm, as I am headed to Hong Kong in a couple of days. It's been my experience that as my body gets used to being warm, I tend not to react so poorly to heat when I'm in it. And Hong Kong is hot and humid. Severely.

I wish I were going to Hong Kong under better circumstances, but it's for a family funeral. My grandmother died a couple of weeks ago, and I'm off to the funeral this weekend. But of course, because it's on the other side of the world *and* I cross the International Date Line, I end up leaving on Wednesday morning and touching down at 7:00 pm on Thursday night. I'll line up a few blog posts, I hope, in the next two days. If not, well, it's not like prolonged absence is new around here.

I thought it might be nice, since I'm headed back to the old country, to try a beer that's a conscious echo of a different old country. Back in January, Mayflower Brewing from Plymouth, MA (duh) released a limited edition Imperial Stout. I wish I could link to something more definitive, but it's off of their website already.

Not a bad pour. This is a big bottle of a very big beer.

Mayflower Imperial Stout is strong stuff. It's a really dark pour that my camera doesn't do justice because the iPhone camera sucks at low lighting situations. A weak wisp of bubbles is about all this one could muster.

So the "Coopers Series" is all about reusing old barrels for aging (this is etymologically unsurprising), and the pedigree on this one rivals even my own. The barrels used to hold bourbon. Then they held Sam Adams Utopias. And then, Mayflower's own Barleywine, before they made the Imperial Stout. Pretty fantastic stuff. ...on paper.

Close-up of the bottle.

I wish I'd enjoyed the beer more, I'll be honest. I found the alcohol content distractingly high (10% abv). You can smell a lot of vanilla and caramel aromas left over from the bourbon and barleywine. Each sip is infused with a lot of bourbon flavors that do complement the deeply caramelized sugars of the roasted malt. It wasn't the flavors that were the problem at all. It was the alcohol burn. It felt really hot on the tongue, and the aftertaste of each sip was really warm. What we had here was a total lack of balance - the sip itself was pretty delicious, but the alcohol really got in the way, which doesn't always have to happen. Too bad.

Beer and Sports

I like watching sports. I like watching sports and drinking beer. I like watching sports and drinking beer when the team I'm rooting for wins. And while it's sometimes a necessity, I do NOT like drinking beer in sorrow when my team loses. As such, I LOVE being from Boston. Yes, it's a disappointment when my teams lose (oh, Celtics, what happened?), but the good times are worth it. Definitely.

Watching the Bruins win earlier this month, I cracked open a Czech pilsner in honor of David Krejčí (I'm definitely not going to drink Canadian during the series, no sir), and I was immediately pleased that I had.

There are diacritical marks on this beer's name that I can't produce.

Normally, I like beers that are darker, and as you can see, Žatec is a pretty light amber at best.n But surprisingly, that's what I liked best about it - it was refreshing without blowing out my taste buds and flavorful without being cloying. It had a nice grainy flavor on the tongue, and the carbonation wasn't overpowering. I rather enjoyed drinking it with a handful (or several) of corn chips, as the saltiness really brought something out of the beer while the plain toasted flavor of the corn accentuated the beer's sweetness. I also enjoyed drinking it while watching the Bruins win the Stanley Cup, as it made me happy.

And only the week before, I had traveled to Boston on Amtrak, and one of the best things about Amtrak is getting to drink on the train. Case in point, the following photograph:

Beer makes travel better as long as one is not doing the driving.

I spent a summer in Alaska and I learned that I really enjoyed drinking during the day. The light through the train window above proves that this is definitely still the case. And I truly do enjoy drinking while I travel, and Amtrak is quite a comfortable way to get from New York to Boston, without the hassle of the airports and definitely without the sketchiness of Greyhound busses. That's the Samuel Adams Boston Lager I'm drinking there. It's not the best Sam Adams offering (hello, Summer Ale, among others), but I do enjoy it a great deal. Unfortunately, it wasn't nearly as good as the Žatec above, but we'll give it extra marks for making my transit easier.

That weekend, I also made my first trip to Fenway Park this year. My brother managed to score amazing seats right behind the bullpen, and my girlfriend and I didn't have a row of seats in front of us, meaning that we could just get up and walk out of the stadium for beer or food whenever we wanted. Amazing.

Date night in Boston: Couple of Beers at Fenway.

We had a couple of Sam Adams Summer Ales, which I've already touted as deliciousness. But there's really something about enjoying a Fenway Frank while watching a thorough drubbing of the Oakland A's in delightful sunshine that makes that Summer Ale even more special. That nice herbal note from the grains of paradise and the outfield grass, the citrus twang against that generous smear of spicy mustard... All of these add up to a perfect outing.

I leave with this thought of Boston sports. Yes, we're smug. We're insufferable. We also won. So suck it.

Of Summer and Secrecy

So it doesn't exactly look like we've been doing our jobs now, does it? I mean, the numbers tell the tale: 7 posts in January, 1 in February, and only 3 each in March and April. And in May? This is the first one. Nope - we're just not drinking enough. Or if we are (and OK, I'll admit it - I am), then we're not writing about it. And that's a shame.

I'll try to have a bunch more reviews and posts up soon. I make no promises, especially since I've already derelict in my duties and it's the 25th. But I'll see what I can do.

As for now, I'm slowly switching back to summer beers. Summer beers aren't always the best tasting: they can be watery, a little sour, sometimes a bit too sweet. They're often pretty low alcohol to accommodate longer drinking sessions that are more apt to take place as the days lengthen. And a lot of the time, brewers think that because there's going to be less alcohol and we're going to drink more of it, there should be less flavor in the beer as well.

And really, that's crap. The fun summer brews are those that have a little citrus, maybe some extra spices, some bracing hop bite. Cascade hops can sometimes mimic the bright flavors of grapefruit; I think Centennial hops can taste quite lemony - both are welcome as a wonderful sour component to a beer that quenches the thirst like a lemonade. In fact, there are a few preparations of lager and "lemonade" that can be quite nice: in Germany, where it was "invented," it's a Radler; in France, a panaché; and in England (where I spent lots of wonderful time and money), it's a shandy. Keep in mind that this is a European lemonade: a dry sparkling lemon soft drink that's like Sprite but without all the sugar. See the Pimm's posting for more. Feel free to mix your own. Under no circumstances should one consume Leinenkugel Summer Shandy, which is a premixed abomination of a concoction in which tasteless lager is mixed with lemon pledge and bottled. Gross.

But last Friday (before a delightful dinner with a good friend), I enjoyed my first Samuel Adams Summer Ale, which is an old favorite. My affinity for Boston Brewing Company is no secret, and I do think that Sam Summer is one of the best summer beers around.

Finally, I had a weekend project last week, and that was to hide a full martini bar inside an innocent-looking briefcase. The results are spectacular, if I may say so myself. I realize it's not exactly fashionable to carry around a hard-cover attache case anymore, and it does make me feel a little dated.

This is like the Clark Kent of briefcases. Totally mild-mannered. Dull, even.

But once I open up the interior, I've got room for all the essentials. That's my gin of choice: Old Bombay (I find Sapphire a little harsh and astringent), a small bottle of Martini & Rossi vermouth, and a cheap but decent Vodka (not for me, but in case I'm feeling hospitable and a friend insists). Incidentally, the NYTimes did a tasting of super-premium vodkas about 6 years ago and threw in Smirnoff just for fun. The Smirnoff beat the Grey Goose, Level, Ketel One, and a few others - nice.

I really enjoyed constructing this. I have also really enjoyed constructing drinks out of it.

I also have a shaker, a miniature bottle of olives, some toothpicks, two shot glasses (for unadulterated drinking) and two collapsible cocktail glasses. And with Ivy League reunions coming up (snob alert!), I'm well-provisioned. See you after reunions.

Beeramisu and other delights

I don't cook with beer enough. Generally speaking, I'll happily crack open a beer while I'm cooking, but it's rare that the beer goes into the pan or pot, instead of into the chef. Chili is one dish that I put beer in. A few weeks ago, I made one with one of the Revolutionary Rye Ales I reviewed previously. My girlfriend thinks my chili looks too much like stew. She is wrong.

Mmm... Chili...

So when I discovered a way to use beer in a dessert, I was psyched to try it out. In launching forward to St. Patrick's Day, Serious Eats published a recipe for beeramisu.

Beeramisu, pre-devouring.

Take a regular tiramisu, swap out coffee for stout, swap out madeira for Bailey's, and you've got yourself a deliciously booze-tinged dessert. Instead of Guinness, which I find a little watery (I mean, hello, it floats on the top of a black and tan), I used Black Hawk Stout. On its own, Black Hawk is creamy, rich, and bitter, with very little carbonation. It's ink-black, with deep caramel and burnt sugar flavors, so I thought it might substitute in well for the coffee. Indeed it did.

It wasn't exactly easy to slice, but the flavors were nice.

The recipe I used from Serious Eats could use some tweaking: I'd cut back on the Bailey's being sprinkled over each layer, and go with more of the stout, as the final product needed a little more bitterness than a six-count dunk provided. This dessert got devoured, and rightly so: it's fantastic.

On a completely different, but just as delicious, note, I happened across three bottles of Coedo beer and was struck by how much these really looked like a Japanese knock-off of Chimay.

Japanese attempt at Chimay?

I drank the Beniaka this past week and was rather stunned by how nice it was. It's not the typical Japanese lager that makes one think fondly of Coors. Instead, it was a nice deep red, and had wonderful layers of caramel malt sweetness.

Apparently, brewed with sweet potato.

According to its website, which I will not send readers to because it is loaded with nonsense music and flash crap (google it if you must), "this premium lager features an aromatic sweetness in its amber tones [and is] a rare combination of high quality malts and 'Beniaka,' the roasted Kintoki sweet potatoes of the Kawagoe region." I'm not sure I tasted sweet potato, but I definitely tasted sweetness, and a depth of flavor I wasn't really expecting. I'm looking forward to trying the other two sometime soon.

Irish? Sort of?

St. Patrick's Day, that much-maligned, much-slighted, much-misunderstood holiday has come and gone, and with it, its poignant mix of the ridiculous and the sublime that reached its pinnacle this year in a lightly-accented Indian investment banker wearing a bright green Dartmouth sweatshirt and gaudy aviator sunglasses messily drinking out of a bag at 10 AM on the PATH train from World Trade Center to Hoboken while loudly discussing how much he loved reading Dubliners in college.

Anyway... As previously mentioned, I managed to find the "American Originals" sampler pack from Sam Adams. As a lover of variety, I enjoy sampler packs, as it allows me to try a multitude of tipples without having to buy four or six of everything. Two of everything is sufficient for me, and I have to say, this might be the first Sam Adams sampler that has really nothing to be ashamed of. The summer sampler has that noxious Blackberry Witbier, the winter sampler used to have a truly foul Cherry Wheat, and replaced it with a similarly bizarre (but not quite as mind-blowingly terrible) Chocolate Bock.

Sadly, not made with scotch.

But this one? Nice work. I really like the Scotch Ale, which pours a nice deep amber, and a suitably herbacious head. I liked how caramely malty it was, and how smoky the finish got. It's apparently brewed with peat smoked malt, which explains the smoke flavors, but there's also some nice hop bite that cuts through the haze. This was really very delicious.

Not very Irish. Also, not very red.

Not quite as delicious, but still good is the Irish Red. I would have liked a little more red color in this one, as the roasted quality of the malt was not readily apparent on the tongue. I drank this on St. Patrick's Day, or as we Bostonians like to refer to it, Evacuation Day. On it, we Bostonians celebrate the departure of General William Howe and his Redcoats from the City of Boston.

Anyway, the Irish Red is a little thin and watery, with a reasonably smooth yeastiness that adds a sort of buttermilk twang / cream thing. The hops weren't too aggressive, so a sweetness came to the fore as well. Now, to be sure, the Irish Red is kind of the runt of the litter for this particular sampler, but the fact that the schwag of the sampler is still plenty drinkable says volumes, when you think about the utter garbage that Sam Adams has produced in the past.

Crossing Cultures

We're maybe a month into the Year of the Rabbit, and it's been a good year for beer so far. I wasn't able to find a Chinese beer for my New Year's dinner, but a good Japanese lager did the trick.

Koshihikari Echigo - A golden lager for a prosperous year.

Japanese lagers tend to be pretty light colored - they're the color of pale gold, with a lot of grain and sugar on the nose. This one, Koshihikari Echigo, was no exception - I was hoping it would be a little more bitter, but there was a lot of rice and malt sugar that kind of threw off the balance a little bit. Usually, a sharp beer can cut through the oily finish of a Chinese stirfry and lift the more fresh, vegetal notes of steamed dishes. Without much of a hop presence, Echigo struggled with that second task, but its aggressive carbonation and crisp flavor shone through admirably.

And then, of course, there are the two most American celebrations this side of July 1: the Superbowl, and President's Day. The Superbowl is an event generally marked by its quantity and not its quality - its watchword is excess, and its patron saint just may be Animal House's Bluto. At the Superbowl, I cracked open another one of the Flying Fish Exit Series: Exit 4.

Flying Fish Exit 4. A taste of the turnpike.

Exit 4 is an "American Trippel," whatever that means. What I interpret that to be is a recipe that has its roots in Belgium, but which is then heavily inflated by American excesses. Kind of like rugby vs. football. Oh yes, I went there. As with much of NJ, this beer had two distinct phases: when ice-cold, this was a beautifully balanced beer, with wonderfully complex hop notes competing for prominence while imparting wonderful pops of bitterness and depth. The head was full of the aroma of resin, citrus, and all-around deliciousness. Unfortunately, once it warmed up, Exit 4 became sweaty, odiferous, and pretty nasty. The hops turned from fresh citrus to stale sourness, and what malty sweetness there had been was overwhelmed by an oddly acrid stench. Ladies and gentlemen, New Jersey. Ew.

Finally, President's Day: a day in which we celebrate our Presidents by buying automobiles. Makes sense to me. As good a time as any to break out the Sam Adams "American Originals" variety pack.

American Originals. Sarah Palin nowhere to be found.

From left to right, those are the Irish Red, Scotch Ale, Revolutionary Rye Ale, Noble Pils, Boston Lager, and White Ale. So Irish Red and Scotch Ale are American? Whatever. The ubiquitous Boston Lager hardly deserves a mention, and the White Ale was already a part of the Winter Sampler. For President's Day, I had a nice Revolutionary Rye Ale, which was a good deal redder than I had anticipated (I forgot to take a picture, but trust me). It had lovely orange and rye bread aromas, but I didn't really taste the rye on the tongue. Perhaps it's my proximity to New York and its caraway-studded rye loaves, but I'm a lot pickier about rye flavor than I used to be. I guess I wanted more sweetness, depth, and complexity. I also think I wanted more difference from the standard Sam Adams, and I missed that too. It's not a bad beer, but it's not different enough, I think, to be called Revolutionary.

Happy New Beer!

This is a time for celebrations, and some celebrations are tailor-made for a nice drink. Said Napoleon, "Champagne! In victory, one deserves it; in defeat, one needs it." While I'm not as down on champagne as Christopher Hitchens, I don't often reach for champagne when I'm thinking of celebrating. Instead, I'm much more eager for a beer, a cocktail, even a glass of wine. The thin astringency of champagne just isn't my thing, I suppose.

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout

So I'm ringing in 2011 with a few choice beers. Chief among them, the Bourbon County, from Goose Island. Make no doubt, this is a very big beer, with a ton of alcohol flavor. Most of Goose Island's offerings are nicely balanced, but the alcohol brightness (13% ABV) was in the forefront of this one. Backup notes include caramel and creaminess, but the there's a lot of vanilla in each sip (from the oak of the bourbon barrels). Some bitterness at the end (again, alcohol and dark chocolate). Great with dark chocolate. I also tried this with a very salty dark pretzel, and this beer actually intensified the saltiness. After only several sips, this beer warmed from within. Sipping only - this is heavy stuff. Very nice, but pretty tough to drink a lot of.

I'm reminded of a few other days of celebration I've experienced this year. Moving backward through the year, there were a few delightful beers over the Christmas table this year, and while I'm going to review the full Sam Adams Winter Collection later, one stands out particularly celebration-worthy. Old Fezziwig is the beer for which the Winter Sampler is really known – it’s the best of the selection by far, and represents well the jollity and festivity of its Dickensian namesake. Old Fezziwig is redolent of ginger, orange, and caramel malt, maybe some cinnamon and nutmeg as well, which also mirrors the spendthrift attitudes that got Old Mr. Fezziwig into trouble, since those spices would have been rather dear in Dickens’ time. It’s pretty great stuff, since the maltiness provides the backbone that this beer needs. Overall, there’s a good reason folks love this beer – it’s warming and fun without being cloying or muddy.

Brewery Ommegang: Three Philosophers

Further backward still, Thanksgiving was a delicious feast of turkey, stuffing, gravy, and Ommegang's Three Philosophers Quadrupel Ale. This is a wonderful blend of ale and lambic that pours slightly auburn and tastes wonderfully of cherry and raisin. Lots of yeast and some slight alcohol burn. It went beautifully with the roasted turkey and with the cranberry sauce.

And at the start of the fall, on Rosh Hashanah, I tried He'Brew's Jewbelation. Since this is He'Brew's 13th iteration of this annual beer special, the brewery celebrated their own bar mitzvah with this beer. It's pretty heavy on the tongue and in the belly, being very dark and deep. There's a mellow and sweet flavor with lovely roasted malt smoothness, but then halfway through swallowing, the alcohol kicks in and punches hard. Low carbonation in the glass and on the palate, with dull lacing left on the glass, the label says it says it has 13 types of hops and 13 types of malt. In the battle between those hops and malt, the hops definitely lose, sadly overwhelmed by malt sweetness and alcohol bite. It's pretty delicious, but it's candy-sweet and tough to drink a lot of.

So from the Jewish New Year to the Gregorian one, have a great 2011. 2010 was pretty wacky, with Lagunitas releasing its yearly reflection in the form of Wilco Tango Foxtrot. Subtitle: A Malty, Robust, Jobless Recovery Ale. It's punchy, with a lot of alcohol to sweep 2010 out the door. Nevermind that WTF (no kidding) was released in March. It's delicious, with lots of coffee and dark chocolate, with amazingly well-balanced roasted malt notes. So a swift and hearty goodbye to 2010. Raise a glass to 2011. Or several.

Holidays

So I feel like we've let the blog go to seed a bit, and that's a shame, because if there's one thing the Holiday season lets me do with abandon, it's drink a great variety of fun things.

We started this blog immediately after the California, New York, and Massachusetts bar examinations in July, and between the two of us, we've passed all three and obtained licensure in one. I was sworn into the Massachusetts bar two weeks ago. A classmate of mine was sworn in as well, and we went out for drinks afterward in celebration. Her father generously treated us to a delicious Schramsberg Blanc de Noir to toast our successes, and it was fantastic. There was an underlying sweetness that was brightened by a good hit of tart acid. Really enjoyed it - yay California!

We were joined by my girlfriend at the Publick House, in Brookline, MA, which serves some amazing beers, in addition to some relatively good food (mainly peasant staples, like mussels, long braises, and choucroute). My girlfriend had the Ommegang Adoration Ale. We've been having pretty good luck with Ommegang so far. If you'll recall, we tried the Abbey Ale a while back and we also drank their Three Philosophers over Thanksgiving (post to come), and we have found them all to be quite delicious. The Adoration definitely followed in that same vein - it was punchy and rich, with a lot of malt and citrus, with a molasses base that made the whole thing taste a bit like fruitcake. Unfortunately, it was about as heavy as fruitcake too, and while flavor-wise it was far too easy to drink for 10%, I am glad I only sampled it. A whole glass might have deadened my stomach.

My classmate had the Allagash White, which is a really lovely witbier from Maine. We've had it before, and it's really very milky gold in the glass. However, it has a wonderful citrus quality that lifts the palate and refreshes nicely. I think, however, it wasn't quite the season for it - when the weather gets cold, I prefer something dark and rich. The golden color of this beer made me think of, and long for summer.

Finally, I tried the Berkshire Brewing Company's Holidale. I should mention that this was supposed to be amber in color, but because of the dim lighting in the Publick House, I couldn't properly tell. At 8.5% ABV, this should have been easier on the tongue than the Adoration, but that wasn't the case. Instead, what caramel, citrus, or hops flavors were supposed to be in there were buried by a thick blanket of spicy alcohol, and it left me feeling like I was breathing fire instead of being gently warmed from within. Too bad.

I also want to mention, per the absurdity of the law, that I had the Sam Adams Winter Lager last week. It was a dark orange color, with a lot of spice. First, when cold, the spice was all from the 5.6% alcohol content, but as the beer warmed up, I got more hops, maybe some nutmeg, and definitely caramel. No cinnamon, though, which was odd, because that's the only spice the label promised. The end of the sip tastes like mulling spices, but they were very muddled and would be hard to identify separately.

What got my attention was that the label calls it a Winter Lager. This is fine, as it's a bock, which is a type of lager. However, it then says, in small print, that it is a "malt beverage brewed with spices." I'm always curious about why beer is sometimes also labeled as a malt beverage. Honestly, no idea. Finally, on the side of the label, "Ale in TX." Apparently, Texas throws out the mechanical distinctions of Ale (warm fermentation with a top-fermenting yeast) and Lager (cold fermentation with a bottom-fermenting yeast) to say that anything above 4% ABV is ale. Ridiculous.

Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier

As I am fond of pointing out to my Californian counterpart, lobster in New England is currently $4.49/lb. So last night, I helped myself to a fine specimen of a sea-bug, lovingly steamed, with plenty of melted butter. Delicious.

I also cracked open a Sam Adams Blackberry Witbier, because it was the only thing left in the fridge. It's part of the Sam Adams Summer Sampler, which also includes the Boston Lager, Sam Adams Light, Sam Summer, Pale Ale, and Latitude 48. Needless to say, everything (even the Light) got drunk before the Blackberry. Here's why.

As you can see, I did end up drinking it. That lobster was pretty salty.

Basically, this is what you get when you cross a middling wheat ale with a 7-11 blue raspberry slurpee, and it's about as refreshing as a piece of whole wheat bread slathered with blackberry jam. This is an unfortunate misstep by Boston Beer Company. Says the label: "Only a specific blackberry could bring the subtle flavor that we wanted for this brew." If subtle flavors were the goal, then this beer misses the mark badly. The only thing subtle about this beer is the hops, which only ends up bringing out the sweetness of the fruit and the insipidness of the grain.

Every sampler pack has a reject. In halloween candy, it's the Almond Joy bars. In Instant Oatmeal, it's the Apple & Cinnamon. And in this beer sampler, it's most certainly the Blackberry Witbier. I'm not saying "Boo-urns"; I'm saying "boo."

Sweet Liberty, Cradle Of

So the delay in getting this blog up and running was a giant 3-day fun-fest standing in the way of your correspondents and their beer: namely, the bar exam. For 4 weeks, I didn't have a drop to drink. No wine, no beer, no cocktails: nothing. I studied my ass off for that thing, and heaven help the person who reports to me that I have to do any part of it over.

In celebration of having completed the exam (or, in my case, two exams), I went out for a drink with some classmates. First stop was at Tia's on the Waterfront in downtown Boston, where I saddled up with a delicious local brew: Sam Adams Summer Ale.

OK fine. Sam Adams might as well be a national macrobrew at this point, given their coast-to-coast availability and ridiculous marketing apparatus (laser-etched nucleation points, anyone?). Still, the summer beer is a favorite.

Sam Summer is a great, refreshing summer beer. There's a ton of citrus, some light wheat flavor, and lovely spice. Also, at 5.2% ABV, it holds up well over a long period of time without becoming heavy, cloying, or totally messing with one's head.

Unfortunately, Tia's on the Waterfront does not have the same staying power. We left. Quickly. I mean really - $7 for a plastic cup pint? Please.

We found ourselves at Cambridge Common, in Cambridge, MA. It's right next to Harvard Law School, but since most of the law students were closer to the bar exam (or better yet, in other states), the jackhole factor was delightfully low.

I went with a Kennebec "Magic Hole" IPA, which has a terrible name. I ordered it off of the menu as the "Kennebec IPA," as Cambridge Common has the sense not to put such a dumbass name on its menu. Out of Maine, this had a lot of bitterness and a very sharp aftertaste, with really delightful astringency for a hot day. Once I cooled down a bit and tasted it again, it felt very shallow: not fantastic, but precisely what I needed that day. At about this time, my hand could again be used for holding my beer glass: stupid handwritten bar exam…

I was looking for a nice strong beer and found one in the Nebraska Hop God, a velvety smooth 9% ABV beer that should have come in a 10 oz. glass. Thankfully, the Common was out of 10 oz. glasses, so my server poured me a pint. There was to be a 4th beer this evening - those plans went out the window. There was some great pinecone in this, a good amount of citrus hop flavor without a lot of kick, and a malt sweetness that one comes to expect from the stronger ales. But a pint of this stuff did me in for sure. Oddly, this one goes really well with ketchup: the vinegar burned off most of the spicier flavors, leaving malt and alcohol on the tongue. Very peculiar, but not unpleasant.

I should mention the Rogue Hazelnut Brown that my girlfriend was drinking. At first, there was a great coffee & mocha base, but then the hazelnut started to seep in. I hate hazelnut. This felt like drinking a beer while sitting at Starbucks and having to breathe in all of that noxious filbert aroma. Gross.