Happy New Beer!

I had a wonderful holiday. I got to go home and see my family, and I got to go out West and visit my fiancée's family too. And I had an awful lot of vacation days I needed to use up. As such, I had a lovely chance to try some delicious East and West coast beers. Over the next month, I'll try to get through the whole notebook. This may take some time - there were a lot of beers. Like I said, I had a wonderful holiday.

The holiday season may be over in terms of Advent, Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's, et al., but Winter seasonals are delicious throughout the cold and dark awfulness that typifies January through March. That is, many of them are delicious. Some of them suck. Today's beer is not one of those: this beer is good.

Fest!

Session Fest is the holiday brew from the good people at Full Sail Brewery, out in Hood River, Oregon. It's a refreshingly light beer in a season traditionally marked by dark brews, which I appreciated. I don't know much about the style (Full Sail invokes a "Czech-style strong lager . . . called polotmavé or literally 'light dark or semi-dark'") but Session Fest is themed by its colors too. They wanted a red beer with a white head and a green label. Not too subtle in terms of symbolism, but they succeeded.

A good amber is tough to photograph

in crappy apartment lighting.

As discussed prior, I'm not sure Session, as a label, fits within the classic definition of a session beer. A session beer should be lower alcohol, under 5% ABV, but needn't be a flavorless affair. At 6.2% ABV, Session Fest isn't really a session - they do get away with it, I suppose, by packaging their beer in an 11 oz bottle? Maybe?

Speaking of packaging, their bottle caps are adorable. Session seems to have replaced the "rock" in their rock-paper-scissors scheme with "fruitcake." I bought Session Fest as a single, so I don't have any other reference points, but I wouldn't mind another purchase to check under more caps. The naughty - nice markings are a nice touch too.

The beer itself pours a nice reddish-amber, and they got their white head in order as well. I got a lot of grassiness and toasty bread on the nose. It's got a surprisingly spicy flavor - the well-toasted malt serves as a nice background to an undeniably peppery finish. It's so different from the other two Session beers that I'm happy to have the trio to choose from. I do wish that they had the balls to make an actual session-style, but a low-alcohol brew is a summer conceit, and I can't really complain from the depths of January. Nice work.

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.

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.

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.

--

I love this post for two reasons: 1. it's full of snark, and 2. it's blatantly elitist. As mentioned earlier this summer, about once a year, I drink a lot of Bud Light. I've had all four of those light beers up there, but not all at once, and I'd like to follow Mr. Asimov's and try to do a side-by-side comparison of all of them.

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.

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.

Victory is mine.

Sometimes it's good to have a nice, light beer. Something that's not too heavy, something that's not too aggressive. Something flavorful, but which plays nice with others.

A few of the most recent beers I've written about are not those kinds of beers. Those are beers that obliterate the food with which they are enjoyed, and they blow out the palate pretty aggressively. That's not always a bad thing, but sometimes it's nice to taste your food too.

Especially when the food is a nice, juicy, perfectly cooked burger at Mel's Burger Bar by Columbia University. I went with my brother and was very pleasantly surprised to find a pretty fantastic burger and tater tots. I'm totally a sucker for tater tots.

Pennsylvania's own Victory Brewing Company makes a wonderful pilsner called Prima Pils, which I've seen in stores but never purchased. Pilsner lagers aren't always that appealing to me: I tend to like darker beers with more oomph behind them. But that day, I was in a lager-y mood and just wanted something refreshing. And the Victory Prima Pils was damn near perfect and full of surprises.

Sometimes I'm so thirsty, I forget I need to take a picture before drinking half the beer.

I got a lot of grass, hay, and flowers right up front as I approached the beer. The aroma was pretty heavy, which is another thing I don't tend to find with a pilsner. It was a clear golden pour with a thin head (what you see in the picture is after a wait for the burgers), which didn't last long (nor did it lace at all). Pre-burger, I tasted a lot of hops and honey, with maybe an undertone of sweetness. It made the tater tots pop as well, since the grassier flavors and aromas of the beer accentuated that lovely golden-brown caramelized potato goodness. And with the burger, the hops were strong enough to cut through the juicy fat of the meat. Overall, couldn't have asked for more.

Hong Kong

So I'm in Hong Kong for another 9 hours. I've been here for the weekend and a bit more attending to some family business, and I had a hankering for a beer while I was here. Small problem: Hong Kong doesn't really have a craft beer scene to speak of. Like seriously. NOTHING. You know what's everywhere? San Miguel and Carlsberg. Gross.

What they do have is a bar in Causeway Bay called East End Brewery, which isn't a brewery at all. They do serve Brooklyn Brewery products though. But really, did I go from Newark to Hong Kong to drink Brooklyn Lager?

The names of the house beers are on the ceiling.

Not on the taps, not on the menu, but on the ceiling.

Their house beer is HK$52 per mug, and during happy hour, it's two for one. Just pulled up the menu and it's supposed to have been HK$48 per mug. I totally got hosed out of HK$4. Or as it is known in America, 50¢ US. Bastards. Anyway, it's made by Hong Kong S.A.R. Brewing Co., a company that doesn't even have a website.

Aldrich Bay Pale Ale. I'm pretty sure...

I tried the Aldrich Bay Pale Ale. It's, um, pale, I guess, even though it's the darker of the two beers? Also, not very flavorful. Also weak (below 5%). Poured a decent orange color with a good creamy head. No aroma of hops though, which is one of those things that should be apparent in a decent pale ale.

Decent lacing on the Aldrich Bay.

Flavor was bready, with a sweet finish that was pretty nondescript. Basically, like white sugar. Not much to recommend it. Boring, really.

Too Soo Brew. What does that even mean?

And can you tell the difference between this one and the Aldrich Bay above?

Second, there was the Too Soo Brew. It was a touch more pale (it's a lager), but it had everything a hot climate like Hong Kong needs: refreshment and lightness and a reasonable ease of drinkability. Bud Light tried to tout its "drinkability" last year. What that campaign sounded like was "we're too afraid to make beer taste like beer." But unlike Bud Light, Too Soo tastes like beer, just like a pretty light beer.

Too Soo - no head retention, no lacing. But free bar peanuts, so... yay?

It's more crisp on the finish than the Aldrich Bay, but put the two side by side, and they look virtually identical. Like people from Hong Kong. That's racialist.

Anyway, East End Brewery isn't a bad place on its own. It's got a good beer selection and both English Premier League and Major League Baseball on the TVs. It suffers from one basic problem: it's in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kongers just don't really care for beer enough to make it worthwhile to microbrew.

ps. The dateline for this post is going to show up as California Time (thanks, Mr. West Coast). But let the record show that this post goes up on Monday, August 22, 2011 at 11:38 pm local time, Hong Kong.

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.

"American" Beer

A few weekends ago, I attended my college reunions. It was phenomenal: a 3.5-day fun-fest of thumping music; hot, sweaty alumni trying to pretend to be hot, sweaty undergraduates; and beer, lots of beer. It's a general rule of thumb that the older the class, the better the beer. At the 5th reunion, there's Budweiser and Bud Light. At the 10th reunion, we added Hoegaarden to that, but only for one night. The 15th had Yuengling; I think the 30th had Magic Hat. But as for the majority of the weekend, we had two choices: the red tap or the blue tap: Budweiser or Bud Light. Neither option is ideal, but when in Rome, one does as the Romans do.

But now that I've reentered the real world, I'm very, very happy to be drinking beer that once again tastes like beer. However, my experiences over Reunions weekend segue into an interesting story that I found the day after memorial day. The advertising journal Ad Age reported that Budweiser was branding itself as the prototypical "American" beer with some super-patriotic beer cans. This despite the fact that Budweiser was purchased by the Brazilian-Belgian firm InBev to create Belgium-based Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V. three years ago.

America Rules

Now, Budweiser and Bud Light have long been associated with the "American Macrobrew" style that is as ubiquitous as it is devoid of flavor. I once drank a €1 Budweiser offered up by a bar in Europe as a palate cleanser between real beers. The point that Ad Age was driving toward was this: "The average consumer has a short memory," said Harry Schuhmacher, editor of Beer Business Daily. "The fact that Anheuser-Busch was bought by a foreign company was all over the news ... but then it died down and people went about their business."

Notes beer historian Maureen Ogle, in the Ad Age article, "Consumers drink beer, they don't obsess over who owns what." I'm reminded of the Beer Summit held by President Obama two summers ago after the Henry Louis Gates mess. The President drank Bud Light, Sergeant Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department drank Blue Moon, and Prof. Gates had a Sam Adams Light. Note: Biden, apparently, drank Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer (a choice that was "mostly ironic"). The Wall Street Journal tried to stir the pot, noting that Bud Light was technically foreign, as was Blue Moon (owned by Molson Coors, a Canadian company).

This is a "chocolate freedom"

But really, the best thing to come out of that article was the discovery that, while George W. Bush was still pissed off at "Old Europe," the White House referred to chocolate souffles as "chocolate freedoms." source for photo above.

Douchetastic Beer

Happy memorial day. It's the start of summer and it's the start of grilling season. It's also the start of bad beer season, as lamented last week. Miller Lite, for instance, is offering "taste points" for "epic prizes" to "save my summer." My summer will certainly need saving if I'm caught drinking Miller Lite.

Anyway, so it's summer in New Jersey, which means watching out for jackasses wearing Ed Hardy clothing. It also, unfortunately, also means watching out for people drinking Ed Hardy beer.

Thankfully, this stuff is pretty easy to recognize: it's decked out in the same tattoo-festooned crap that is so easy to find on the bridge & tunnel crowd. There are two: a lite and a regular. Both are godawful.

I am ashamed for having purchased this.

The regular is surprisingly dark for a summer lager, but one can never be sure if that color is real. The smell? Stale fraternity basement. The sip is thin and lousy, with corn sweetness and no real bitterness at all. It's just a watery mess that made me regret dropping the $1.50 on it.

Whoever makes this beer doesn't like beer.

The light is, well, it's worse. Like somebody let wonderbread ferment in a pint glass of water and then pissed in it for good measure. I have nothing else except to say not to drink these beers. Ever.

Illness.

...makes one not wish to drink anything other than gatorade and chicken soup. Sorry.

I do have a bit of a rant, just while I'm at it though. Last week, a bunch of us tried to make a reservation at Sushi Azabu, and while we were rebuffed from the sushi restaurant below, we did have a lovely meal of "Japanese-inspired-Italian" on the ground floor. What threw me most was that our bartender, very meticulously and neatly dressed, poured our beers into stemless wine glasses. Everything else was just-so, but beer in a wine glass, particularly one without a stem? Bullcrap.

Look, I'm not indifferent to the desires of Belgian beer aficionados who demand their beer in a goblet or snifter or some such glass. I've experienced it and I love it too. But when serving a middling Japanese macrolager like Sapporo, put the stemless wineglasses away and give me a pint glass - something I can comfortably hold, that doesn't make me feel like I'm drinking out of a red plastic cup. Frankly, I'd even have preferred the red plastic cup.

Session Beer

I remember in one of my first beer columns for my old school newspaper, my editor flagged the term "session beer" as a possible typographical error. Now clearly, I don't make errors. But aside from that, I'm not sure "session beer" is a terribly familiar term in the US. A session beer is a beer that's light enough to make a leisurely afternoon drinking without becoming too intoxicated, but that's got enough flavor to support sustained interest as well. Usually this means under 5.0% ABV, though the UK definition is actually under 4.0%. There are plenty of American macrolagers that will satisfy the first requirement (Bud, Coors, Miller, and their light equivalents), but would you really spend an afternoon drinking Budweiser? Me neither.

The challenge is getting a clean hop crispness that stimulates the palate without overwhelming it. Old Speckled Hen is a favorite of mine, but only on tap, where it registers only 4.5%. The bottles and cans, it's 5.2%, which is fine, I suppose. It's bright and flavorful, but a little too malty to be fully refreshing. I do appreciate that it reminds me so much of my time studying at Oxford, and its increasing availability in the US is wonderful news.

My first real session of session beers occurred at the seaside town of Levanto, in Italy. I was there on a singing tour, but we had a free day, so my friends and I found a nice cafe on the boardwalk.

Peroni on the boardwalk: Levanto, Italy.

Ultimately, we drank through their supply of Peroni over the course of four hours. Peroni's not a great beer, but it's crisp enough to sustain interest. We were drinking the regular Peroni - the Peroni Rossa is darker, more malty, and a little too flavorful for a session (though in a one-off setting, I'd take the Rossa, as the classic feels a little watery at times).

Full Sail Session Lager

Now, Full Sail, out of Oregon, has two great session-style beers. I say "session-style" because neither is technically under that 5.0% ABV threshold. Nonetheless, they're really tasty, and because their bottles are smaller, there is less alcohol in each glass. Session Lager is a wonderful little beer with good hopping and clean grassy hops. It's got a light bitterness that's super drinkable, and it's both tasty and reasonably light. Also, the short stubby 11 oz. bottle makes drinking a lot more relaxing.

Full Sail Session Black: A full bottle pour.

And Session Black makes for a wonderfully drinkable dark beer that isn't too heavy. To be sure, I have had some lousy luck with black lagers - usually they're syrupy, sweet, and kind of unpleasant. But this one was great. Despite its much darker color, I found the flavor differential quite mild - yes, there's dark roasted malt and grain, but the flavors aren't so saturated that they overwhelm. Instead, there's a very refreshing finish to this beer that made me want to continue drinking.

I should mention, incidentally, that the undersides of the caps have Rock-Paper-Scissors logos on them, providing a convenient way to decide who buys the next round. And as for Rock-Paper-Scissors, it also shows a fun playfulness and whimsy. Nice job.

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.

East. Far East.

Well, I've been a little preoccupied with the day-to-day routine of my job, though that has a lot less to do with the demands of the position and a little more with the snow that keeps getting dumped on Newark. For real - it's snowing again tonight.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've started into a new job and moved into a new apartment, and the one thing that saddens me the most is that I don't have a local bar near my place. Actually, the thing that saddens me the most is that the heat in my apartment is controlled by the elderly owner of the building, and I think she's trying to get us all to grow tropical fruits in our bedrooms. It's 77 degrees in my apartment right now. So beer helps with that.

Like drinking banana-flavored pancake syrup.

Today, I'm drinking the Ginga Kogen "Silver Bottle" Weizen. I'm a little concerned that the bottle isn't silver - it's dark blue. But the label is silver, and I suppose that's what they mean. There are antelope on this label, and I was heretofore unaware that there were antelope in Japan. This beer is very pale, with an aroma of sour hoppiness that I wasn't a huge fan of at first. The head disappeared quickly, and what's left has a sort of unctuous quality on the tongue. Initial flavors of citrus melted into a very sweet core of banana esters, with a hoppy bite that clears the palate at the end. It sits rather heavily in the stomach as well: something about being so thick and yet so stingy with the carbonation, I think. Ultimately, the sweet banana flavor and syrupy texture will take a lot of getting used to, and I just don't think I'm willing to make that effort. Delightfully, the Ginga Kogen website also doubles as a tourism shill for the region.

Hello? Hello taste? Where are you?

Bonus Beer: Yebisu Premium. This was a very thin lager with very little in the way of hops, depth, or backbone. Instead, what I got was honey and sweetness. Yebisu is marketed as an "all-malt beer," and while that's just fine, there was none of the caramel sweetness that I have come to associate with malt. Instead, it was a very one-dimensional sweetness that I didn't quite care for. Yes, I tend to be a dark-beer snob, but I have absolutely enjoyed a good many lagers. This just wasn't one of them.