Aloha! ...Oregon?

One of the nice things about my fiancée is that she likes beer. It's nice to have someone to try a bottle of beer with, or to kick back and have a beer with, or shop for beer with. It helps when you also think that person with whom all that beer is happening is really cute.

Another nice thing about my fiancée is that her dad likes beer, and they have cool things in their house including beer from bygone eras. What follows is one such beer.

A True Oregon Experience?

Behold, Star Brewing Company's Pineapple Ale. You know you're in for a treat when the interwebs note that it's been closed since 1996. Says a positively ancient article from the Portland Business Journal, "Wayne Anderson, president and chief executive officer of Star Brewing, said the company expects to close its Portland brewery by late September and move the operation to Phoenix. The company will be reborn as Phoenix Ale and Lagering Co. and consumers in the Southwest could start quaffing its brew by February 1997." However, that proved to be too optimistic: Star never made it to Phoenix, and shut down instead. A quick google search reveals that Wayne Anderson is now the chief sales manager of Oskar Blues, so at least he's landed on his feet.

I don't know why 1894 is featured on this bottle.

But back to the Pineapple beer. There's indication then that this beer is around 15 years old, since an article in Country Living from 1996 notes that the Pineapple Ale was added at that time. Here's a quote from the article: "Though Star features such high-flying comets as an Alt, I.P.A., and an Imperial Stout, it is the Raspberry Ale that puts ink on an account ledger. "It's an abomination to mankind," [Owner Scott] Wenzel overstates, "but it represents 44 percent of our sales." Star has just added a Pineapple Ale to its line." The art is screened onto the bottle directly, so it's held up nicely. As my future father-in-law opened the bottle (with significant trepidation, I might add), we were all shocked to hear the breaking of a potent seal.

Real live bubbles. Who'd have thought?

Bubbles! Actual carbonation survived for 15 years in this bottle. Impressive indeed. The aroma was all sugary sweetness and while I wouldn't have been able to pick "pineapple" out of the aroma if asked directly, I suppose after a while I started to detect some hints of the ripe tropical fruit on the nose. It wasn't a bad pour either - good ruddy copper color and a fluffy head that stuck around a while.

"Surprisingly tart" is not a descriptor I would use.

Flavor was really out there. True to its aroma, this was a super sweet beer. I tasted none of the Perle & Willamette Hops that were so lovingly highlighted on the bottle. Nor do I think I got much of the 2-Row, Munich, or Carastan 30-37 malts. What I got was sugar and maybe some very sickly-sweet pink bubblegum.

A Vacation In A Bottle!

In my dream vacation, I'm drinking a different beer.

When I was a kid, my Dad used to crack open cans of Dole pineapple chunks to put on cottage cheese. I, being wholly uninterested in the cottage cheese, would spoon the pineapple juice / syrup out of the can. The flavor here was not far removed from that sensation, and it left me in much the same state: speedy sugar high followed by crash.

Sediment. Not nearly as much as a beer this old should have had.

We were totally impressed that this beer had held up for as long as it had. Between the four of us, we ended up finishing a nice tasting of this bottle, though I'm pretty sure I was given the lion's share. This beer went down quite easily, I have to say, but it sat weirdly in my stomach and I would not recommend it again in case another bottle is somehow found.

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.

Chunky beer

One of the descriptors I use in writing and talking about beer is that it's "thin," and I thought perhaps that bears some clarification. It could be a function, I suppose, of viscosity, but more than that, it's the way the flavor sits on the tongue. A thin beer washes out and leaves very little taste to savor after it's done. By contrast, a nice complex, deep, and full flavored beer has layers of different flavors to dig through. Sometimes what I want is a thin, uncomplicated beer, like a Sam Adams Light (a review for another time) or even a Budweiser. But I had to go pretty far back in our blog archives to find a thin beer that I actually enjoyed - most of the time, I want something that tastes beery, that tastes of grain and hops and malt and sometimes of vanilla, coffee, or dark chocolate.

This next beer is one that, in truth, I had a tough time with. I've liked Abita Beer ever since being clued in to their existence by a law school friend from New Orleans. What gets exported to up north is often a mystery, but much of what I've had (Amber and Turbodog) are quite nice. Purple Haze, not so much.

Not a bad looking beer, and quite a nicely designed label.

Anyway, they brew a series of Harvest Beers designed to highlight, as they say, "the finest Louisiana-grown ingredients." One of these is a Satsuma Harvest Wit. Satsumas are delicious: they're little mutant oranges with loose skins and amazingly sweet juice. My girlfriend's mother grows them atop a hillside outside of Los Angeles, and they are without a doubt some of the best citrus I have ever tasted. Amazing. So when I saw beer made with Satsumas, I was intrigued.

It poured a very hazy gold color, with not a lot of head. There's an orangy aroma, but lacking in the brightness that differentiates a satsuma from, say, a navel. Definitely also a characteristic sourness on the nose that wheatbeers can sometimes take on.

The first thing I noticed was that it was very highly carbonated, which surprised me, given the lack of head. The second thing I noticed was that the flavor of the citrus didn't come through at all. The aroma was what pushed the flavor into the realm of oranges: without smelling a clearly orange scent, I don't think I would have automatically thought of satsumas while tasting this beer. Otherwise, kind of a middling beer.

OK, that's just gross.

I tend to pour pretty aggressively, and I like a bit of sediment in my beer, as I think there's quite a lot of flavor to be had in spent yeast (just ask the good people at Marmite). But I was unprepared for exactly how "chunky" this beer was. On a lark, I held the beer up to the light. Shocking.

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.

Beets Suck

I'm usually a pretty big fan of Magic Hat. Their #9 is a nice pale ale with an apricot twist, and it's a good local beer (yay Vermont) so I can take comfort in that when I order it.

I was intrigued by the tap pull of the Wacko, which featured what I thought was a heart with weird vines behind it. I saw it from pretty far away, but decided I'd order it. When it came to the table, I wasn't sure if I'd been given the right thing - it was a really bizarre magenta color. Turns out, that's no heart. It's a beet. Holding a guitar and microphone. It's a thing out of a nightmare.

A giant beet with hair. Truly the stuff of nightmares.

Wacko is brewed with beet sugar, which gives it a hot pink color. I'm not sure you can taste the flavor of beets (I mean, this beer didn't taste of dirt, so that's a start), but I'm really not sure the beet color does the beer any good. It's freaking pink, and the last time I saw a pink beer, I was mocking a table of Philadelphia Phillies fans at Boston Beer Works.

Funny side story - my buddy Russell and I were going to try getting walk-up tickets to a weird interleague Red Sox game: Philadelphia at Boston. If tickets were not an option, then what we would have spent on tickets would go to beer at Boston Beer Works across the street. Well, no tickets. Boston Beer Works has some strange brews on hand, and one was a blueberry ale with actual fresh blueberries in it. It functioned like a poor man's lava lamp: a blueberry would sink to the bottom of the glass, become the nucleation point for a bunch of bubbles, and then float to the top, where the bubbles would detatch, making the berry sink. Cute, but not for me. The aforementioned Phillies fans? Big table of 'em, all drinking pink beer with watermelon spears stuck in the glass. Gross.

It's bad when beer is the color of vomit, though it does remove some of the guesswork after of a long night out.

So anyway, what I didn't like about the Magic Hat Wacko wasn't just its ridiculous pink hue, but the flavor, which was quite middling. You could smell the grassy earthiness of the beets, but the beer itself just tasted of grain sugar, much like an American Macrobrew. Thin on the tongue, not bad, but not good.

Beer should not look like gatorade, even a little.

And that color. I still can't get past that godawful color. I bought a single bottle of it again just to grab the label. As an illustration, here's a cherry gatorade next to a glass of Wacko. That's just disturbing.

Last Season's Beers

As East Coast points out, I have fallen a bit behind. Just remember these beers the next time that Autumn comes to the bay area.

A beer that I should have talked about several months ago is the Bruery’s Autumn Maple. The Bruery is located in Orange County, CA, and I tried this beer at one of my favorite beer-bars, Pi. I found the Autumn Maple to have a strong roasted yam flavor with notes of alcohol and maple. Despite these sweet flavors the Autumn Maple is well balanced and not at all cloying. I’ll be checking out another Bruery offering soon.

I finally had the pleasure of tasting another one of the Russian River Brewing Company’s beers, this time the Consecration. The Consecration is barrel aged in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels and unsurprisingly pours with a reddish color. I found it both sweet and tart, and tasted lemon cake, minerals and rhubarb with a finish reminiscent of coconuts. I’m not sure why I fixated on those very specific flavors, but I did.

My favorite beer this fall was from Moonlight Brewing Company. Moonlight makes Death and Taxes, what I believe is one of the finest Lagers in California. I absolutely love it, and when the bartender alerted me that she was carrying another one of Moonlight’s beers, the “Homegrown” Fresh Hop Ale I immediately ordered a pint. I was not disappointed. The Homegrown is an exemplary beer, with a nose of apricot and citrus, crisp minerality, and a strong hop profile. The Homegrown is brewed with hops immediately after picking and you can taste it. Definitely worth checking out if you can find some.

Now that I'm back on the horse, look forward to a review of several winter brews later this week, while they're still in stores.

Departures

Last Wednesday was my last day at work. I've been working at a really fun firm in Boston for a couple months, and have truly enjoyed learning from them. I was hired over beers, and I departed over beers. And had more than a few drinks with the attorneys after hours, so really, not bad. I'm moving to New Jersey, to take a job in Newark, so this blog will certainly stay bicoastal. That is, if Mr. West Coast gets off his ass. Punk.

The founding partner of the firm is from Vermont, so I picked a Vermont beer on our first outing: Magic Hat #9. It's pretty widely available, and I recommend it. Their own marketing doesn't really help, as they describe it in really stupid terms. Nonetheless, the beer is tasty, with a pretty refreshing bitterness that's balanced nicely with a sweetness that's neither sugary nor malty. It takes a couple of sips to identify, but that's the flavor of apricot, and while I've had bad experiences lately with fruit beers (hello, Sam Adams Blackberry Wibier), #9 has been a perennial choice. Perhaps not a favorite, but not a bad one either.

I should mention that one day, when our computers were down for 30 minutes, my boss invited us to grab a beer and put our feet up. There was a Brooklyn Lager, a Bud Light, and an Anchor Steam. Boss took the Bud Light. So while yes, the bosses like beer, I think that one still drinks like a fratboy. I had the Brooklyn Lager. Delicious as always.

On the last day of work, we had our traditional Monday Morning Meeting (at 5 pm on Wednesday, natch), and we got two sixers. Brooklyn Winter Ale and Dogfish Head 60-minute IPA. The Brooklyn Winter Ale was nice and warm, with a smooth drinkability that was most welcome after a long day's work. It wasn't harsh or spicy at all, just really smooth malts and a deep caramel. As for hops, I know a lot of people tasted some hops, but I didn't. This one was just really nice and smooth.

This Brooklyn Winter was consumed at my girlfriend's house, but it's the same beer.

The 60-minute IPA was delicious too. I've tried Dogfish's 90-minute (amazing) and their 120-minute (far too sweet and weird), so I was excited to get to try the 60. It's hoppy, alright, and for my taste, this is pretty much like eating a pine cone. Basically, this is to Bud Light what the modern gins are to vodka: bright, aggressive, and unabashedly unbalanced. It's not a bad beer, and it was drinkable when ice-cold. As it warmed up, the bitterness really took over, and it got kind of undrinkable.

And then, out at the bar (and after a well-made martini with three olives), I had a nice Shipyard Prelude. I really liked this one. I was a little surprised to find it a little stronger than expected (6.8% ABV), since it didn't feel so on the tongue. It oddly tasted a bit like butterscotch (basic winter-beer caramel flavors plus maybe some unctuous fattier notes layered on top), but I also tasted some banana and raisin as well. It wasn't heavy or cloying, was refreshing without being dry, and was a great last beer to have with friends before heading out into the cold.

Magic Hat Winter Howl - nevermind the fact it's in a Harpoon glass.

Oh wait, we're having dinner? At another bar? Um, OK. Actually, we returned to the same bar (and indeed, the same table) I was at when I was hired. I'm a pretty sentimental person, so I ordered another Magic Hat, this time, the Winter Howl. It was really nice, and not nearly as heavy as might be expected from a beer that color. That said, I got lots of coffee, some dark chocolate, and maybe raisin from each sip. Too bad my steak and ale pie was so watery - the beer was delicious.

It’s not you, it’s me

So, I was shopping earlier this week, and in honor of the whole Autumn thing I decided that I would pick up some pumpkin beer from one of those artfully arranged displays in grocery stores highlighting whatever is on sale. I grabbed a four pack of Dogfish Head “Punkin Ale.” This is a Dogfish seasonal beer which is 7% ABV. Dogfish has been making the Punkin Ale since 1994, starting before the brewery was even open for business.

Let me start by saying that I love a lot of Dogfish’s offerings. I think that their Chicory Stout is delicious and that their IPAs are exemplary. However, I did not enjoy the Punkin Ale. I found it incredibly sweet. The sugar and the alcohol together created the sensation of having sugar crystals biting into my tongue. It reminded me of when I was in high school and kids would eat sugar packets at the Village Inn. I definitely tasted the allspice, cinnamon and nutmeg (as advertised on the label of the bottle). There was also some malt and, as I said, lots of sugar. What was missing though was the pumpkin flavor. Now don’t get me wrong, there was a subtle undercurrent of pumpkin. But that entire delicious meaty pumpkin flavor was overwhelmed by Pumpkin Pie Spice.

Now, I'm not saying they used McCormick Pumpkin Pie Spice, just that it tasted like it. And as a baker who grinds his own spices, I guess that's a bit of trash-talk for you, Dogfish.

So, I still have 3 more bottles of Punkin Ale. I’ll give it another whirl and see how things go. I want to love Punkin Ale, but Dogfish, I think that this time it may be me, not you. You see, I’m guilty of not liking a lot of white ales anyway, and there is some flavor profile overlap with the sweet spices in this brown ale and some white ales that I’ve had before. Maybe we need a second opinion. What do you think, East Coast?

Capital!

So despite my initial two posts, east coast means all of the east coast: not just New England. This correspondent just got back from DC, where he celebrated the nuptials of two lovely friends of his.

DC is a funny place. It's got a huge number of out-of-state license plates on its roads, for all who come to the capital to serve the nation and its many constituencies. And it doesn't really have a lot going for it, culinarily speaking either, except maybe for Ben's Chili Bowl. Damn, that's some good eating…

So I walk into a store, and there's Dogfish Head from Maryland, Sam Adams from Boston, even Bell's from Michigan and Kona, from Hawaii. The most local stuff - National Bohemian, isn't even from DC. So unless you know a dude who's basement brewing or are willing to chance it on some local brewpub, you're out of luck on this whole "locavores" thing.

Which isn't to say you can't find good beer: you're just not going to be drinking locally. I went out with friends to the Brickskeller, which is listed in Guinness as "the bar with the largest selection of commercially available beers." Now, that may be, but our night, at least 5 beers we ordered were unavailable. Also, if you're a wuss, they also serve Bud Light and Bud Light Lime. FYI, this was kind of a mob-review: I tried every one of these, but didn't finish all of them.

In honor of a class I took on Icelandic Saga, I tried the Viking Premium Gold, which is a very generic lager. While deeper flavored and having much more citrus than anything that's so golden really ought to have, Viking is still pretty thin. Side note: dear Vílfilfell, and all other breweries who are using plastic decals instead of easy-to-remove paper labels: cut it the hell out. I collect beer labels, and plastic decals are freaking hard to remove well. PS. dear Vílfilfell: make better beer.

Tried the Ace Cider from Sonoma, CA (sorry, Steve) but it was sour, thin, and pretty wretched overall. At least it wasn't as sweet as other hard apple ciders can get. Refreshing, but I'm just not a cider kind of guy.

Founder's Java Porter is delicious and creamy, with a lovely hint of vanilla. Hailing from Grand Rapids, Michigan, I didn't get a lot of coffee in this one. Nonetheless, a fantastic, jet black beer with real depth and smoothness.

Also up from Founders was the Cerise cherry fermented ale. This was nice, with a lovely cherry flavor that didn't taste artificial. The cherries (for which Michigan is famous) were refreshing and tart, and the fruit flavor faded out of the way into a delicious ale. If I didn't think I'd be laughed at, I'd probably order this more often.

While we're on the fruit thing, one friend ordered the Sea Dog Apricot Wheat Beer from Maine. Sadly, it smelled a lot nicer than it tasted: unbalanced and yeasty, this one didn't have much else to recommend it. Stale, nasty, thin, gross. No thank you. Actually, screw the "thank you." NO.

In the meantime, I also had a Fix 1864 Spezial. Beer Advocate says that this is a retired beer - I don't think it is, but that doesn't mean I don't think it should be. Supposedly, the "National Beer of Greece," this was about as unpleasant as one might think Greek beer would be. Thin, watery, and redolent of stale white bread. Also, it's brewed in America, so it's not like our hands are totally clean on this one either.

My girlfriend ordered a Williamsburg AleWerks [sic.] Washington's Porter, from Virginia. It's really dark, with a pretty intense head and nice lacing. However, it over-promised and under-delivered: it was thin, with a fruity raisin-ish flavor and an astringency that evoked stale burnt coffee. Disappointing.

Also tried a "Sweaty Betty" Blonde from Boulder, CO. Our waiter warned me off, but the name sounded too good to be true. And in truth, it was a lot less objectionable than the waiter had led me to believe. It's rather easy to drink, with good grapefruit and orange aromas, and very little hop on the tongue. Instead, it's pique comes from its rather heavy carbonation. Not great, but definitely not as bad as the waiter had said.

Finally, a real revelation of the night: Oskar Blues Old Chub Scottish Style Ale. $4.00. Canned. Everything that says "stay away from me and order something Belgian." Wow, was I wrong. This stuff is pretty fabulous. It's dark brown with no head to speak of and very few bubbles, and its beautifully smooth finish leaves almost no trace of its 8% abv. Great roasted flavors, malt sweetness, and wonderful balance. These suckers are dangerous.

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."