What Can Brown Do For You?

Like my West Coast colleague, I found it hard to deny that Autumn is really here. The mercury is falling, students are once again crawling over Boston, and my fantasy football team is screwed after week 1 (seriously? Losing by 2.5 points? I hate you Tony Gonzalez). It's definitely autumn again.

Oktoberfests are generally darkish lagers, but being an Ale-man myself, I went with the Sierra Nevada Tumbler Autumn Brown. It seems that Mr. West Coast is nosing in on the East Coast with a review of Dogfish Head. Right back atcha, buddy.

So yeah, this Tumbler Autumn Brown. I'm generally a Sierra Nevada fan. I like their Pale Ale. I like their Porter. I've even enjoyed their Celebration ales. And this one held such promise. It poured a nice and dark chestnut, with a deep and very long-lasting head. Oddly, there wasn't much of an aroma, but initial sips brought out some really deep roasted malt flavor. It was almost salty on the tongue, with smooth sipping and unobtrusive carbonation.

You can already see the aggressive carbonation. Honestly, I tend to pour violently in order to get a nice thick head (which tends to release a lot of beautiful aroma), so I figured I'd gotten it all out of the beer. How wrong I was...

At least, I thought it was unobtrusive. Turns out, the bubbles, for some reason, don't fully effervesce out of the beverage until it is safely locked inside one's stomach. This leads to tremendous discomfort as one inflates from the inside. Like a time-release capsule, or the beer equivalent of a double-action baking powder. One release of, well, gas in the beginning; then a second release when it's a little less welcome.

So yes. Delicious, but it made my tummy hurt. I think this is probably better on tap: that way, the carbonation gets out of the way early and harmlessly.

I also tried the Brooklyn Oktoberfest, and I'm sad to say it's not fabulous. It's nice and sort of chewy at first, with a really nice depth of toasty amber flavor. And then halfway down the pint, when it starts to warm up, citrus and bitter notes push to the fore, which are also quite welcome. Unfortunately, toward the end, the alcohol harshness took over and it got tremendously sour and unpleasant. So there you have it - 3 beers in one, two of which are pretty good, and one that sucks.

I'll be taking the suggestion in the last post and trying some of the Dogfish Head Punkin Ale soon. Fingers crossed...

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?

Costco? Really?

Costco makes beer. I will repeat this.

COSTCO MAKES BEER.

Growing up in Massachusetts, where blue laws continue to restrict the sale of intoxicating liquors in towns across the commonwealth, the fact that Costco even sold beer was revelatory. And now they make it? This bears investigation.

Note: Wikipedia claims that Costco is the largest retailer of fine wine in the world. Who knew?

OK, so they don't actually brew it, but it's got their Kirkland Signature logo and typical boring packaging on it. Initial reports said this was brewed by Gordon Biersch in California: the same folks who make Trader Joe's house brand. Mine, however, are from New York Brewing Company in Utica, NY, which definitely makes this an East Coast brew. Nevermind that Costco is from Washington State.

Yup, those are apple cider donuts. It's September in Massachusetts. You know you want one.

Kirkland Signature beer comes in a 24-bottle variety pack of four different flavors, and they're honestly not bad. They do have some problems with either balance or texture, but the flavors, surprisingly, are quite refreshing and good. Let's go worst to best.

Kirkland Signature Pale Ale
Immediately, I'm hit with a soapy lemon-citrus aroma and flavor that's pretty thin on the tongue. It's astringent but not unpalatable. Unfortunately, all of the flavors are at the front end of the sip, with absolutely no follow-through or finish except for a buzzing dryness. The alcohol oddly took the reins and drove the flavor considerably. This wasn't a beer I particularly enjoyed, but it would likely be pretty refreshing on a hot summer day. I want to say this had "clean aromas" but really, it was just the aroma of cleaner.

Kirkland Signature German Lager
OK, this is definitely the wrong color for the lager I expected (more golden brown than blond), but it's was pretty delicious. It was malty, with medium body and lovely depth of flavor. Imminently drinkable, I think this beer was a conscious return to a Bavarian lager and a corresponding rejection of the American macrolager that Costco otherwise sells an enormous amount of. I was surprised, and ultimately encouraged, by Costco's direction with this beer: by rejecting the Budweisers and Millers of the world, Costco is showing a willingness to promote better beer, and that's a good start.

Kirkland Signature Amber Ale
With darker roasted malt comes deeper flavor. That's the idea, right? I was glad, then, that the Amber Ale picked up some good malt depth, with a little bit of sweetness and roasted goodness along the way. Unfortunately, this remained thin on the back end of the sip. While this isn't a bad beer at all, it does take a curiously long time to develop any additional layers of flavor on top of the basic "grain - yeast - hops" profile. Once it does, though, its bigger yeasty flavors do complement sandwiches and other starch-based foodstuffs, but it trades-off in commensurately diminished refreshment.

Kirkland Signature Hefeweizen
This one was really aggressively carbonated and had a lovely depth of flavor. Decent malt sweetness dominated, and gave way to a really smooth aftertaste. Per the mold of a Hefeweizen, there wasn't a whole lot of hop bitterness going on, which made it the easiest to drink of the four. I missed some of the spicier notes that hops can bring to the mix, so this felt a little unbalanced in that regard. Nonetheless, this was overall the best of the four. It was solidly beer flavored, wasn't too rich, and held an excellent and long-lasting finish.

So overall, definitely a good buy. At $18.99 per 24-pack, this was a great deal, but above and beyond that, it was decent beer. I hope Costco learns from its missteps and tweaks the Pale Ale more, because it's not fabulous. But at less than 80¢ per bottle, I could be begrudgingly drinking this because it's cheap, and I'm not. I'm drinking it because it's tasty.

Slow News Day

Welcome to the slow news cycle... August has always been pretty lazy and boring, which is generally how I like things to be. Low on content, high on snark? Sign me up.

But when the Metro, that free and already content-thin newspaper that's distributed en route to the subway by 45-year-old vendors who have a look of pleading desperation in their eyes, decides to put a story about man-boobs, or moobs on its front page, I've had enough. Thankfully, September is here. Wha-wha-whaaaat? Where did my summer go? Oh right, it was eated by teh bar exam. Dear bar exam: get bent. I want my summer back. And not just more August - I want the good parts, like July.

We've both now discussed some canned beers: I've extolled the virtues of the Oskar Blues Old Chub, while Mr. West Coast just enjoyed the Anderson Valley Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema. Just as there's a movement toward the technological breakthrough of the screw-top wine bottle, there's a growing preference for the magic of canned beer. No more beer-skunking UV light penetration; ease of manufacture and shipping; durability - all of these things are great virtues for a beverage-containment-unit. Why don't more people use it? Maybe because we've come to associate the can with the noxious macro-brews that dominate the American market. Maybe the fresh-foods mantra has gotten to us, and we no longer trust anything that comes in a can (except for San Marzano tomatoes - those things are amazing). This demands more research.

In the meantime, more adventurous eaters (yes, I said eaters) can try deep fried beer. Via gawker.

Finally, if anyone's in the market for a kitchen redesign, may I suggest the BeerVault. Pretty...

Yes, I realize I'm re-posting instead of generating content. What can I say? It was August for far too much of last week. I'm off to the supermarket, to see what's left on the shelves after the swarm of hurricane-crazed shoppers went through after Gov. Patrick declared a state of emergency.

Farewell Beers

Recently a good friend of mine made the decision to go to leave San Francisco and attend law school in Minnesota. Being the good geeks that we are, he and I decided to play a last round of Settlers of Catan (German Game of the Year, 1996, check it out!), drink, and reminisce before he began the long drive to the frozen North. I picked up a couple beers to enjoy, the Anderson Valley Brewing Company’s “Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema” and “Piraat Ale,” a Belgian produced by Van Steenberge Brewery.



We first drank the Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema, 5.6% ABV. The beer is apparently called the Cerveza Crema because it “has become a favorite among many of our Hispanic friends, so it is named in their honor.” I am also a huge fan of the Cerveza Crema. It may have been the 80-something degree heat but this beer was damn refreshing. The taste is creamy and smooth, with notes of wheat, vanilla, and a mild alcohol bite. Clocking in at a whopping 4 IBU, you may be unsurprised to hear that there was no hop taste to speak of. My sister described it as reminding her of an Almond Joy. I’m not sure that’s really correct, but it gives a nice reference point for the creamy and sweet taste of the beer. Lest you be worrying, “I don’t like sweet beer,” I can assure you that unlike other sweet beers I’ve tasted, this was not in any way cloying. Bravo to Anderson Valley Brewing Company, I’ll be checking out your other options soon. As for the rest of you, get to their “beerfinder” and go get Crema.

Second, we popped open a bottle of the Piraat Ale, 10.5% ABV. The label declared it to be one of the “top 5 Belgian beers” or some other nonsense. It certainly has a pretty label, which I was unable to photograph properly, as you can see below:



The label states that the beer is a “Belgian IPA,” but it’s definitely not an IPA. Although it has a kick of alcohol (10.5% abv) it has none of the strong hoppy flavors associated with an IPA. Maybe this was just an error in printing, because the beer is a fine regular Belgian pale ale. The Piraat pours with a nice foam, but as you can tell from the picture that foam fades away fairly quickly. I found the beer to be quite sweet, with only a mild bit of alcohol heat and hops at the end. The beer had that Belgian malt and yeast taste that is typical of Belgian pale ale, as well as a bit of spicyness. I’m not sure I’d call it one of the top 5 Belgian beers that I’ve tasted, but it was a solid Belgian pale ale.

A Philosophical Question

So both of us are readers of Serious Eats, and a link came through today that I found interesting. Not interesting as in "wow, that's cool," or interesting as in "fascinating." More interesting as in "wow, this guy's full of crap."

Specifically, the blogger, Jeff, asks whether beer can be perfect. A few choice edits to tease out of the post:

• "Bill [a fellow beer judge] declared, boldly, that there's no such thing as a 50-point beer. A 49--theoretically possible. But no such beer exists that could not be improved upon."

• "If you don't believe in a perfect beer, then each sniff and sip is forensic; you're looking for the imperfection. Imperfections may be objective or purely a matter of taste. . . . I taste it meditatively. I try to see what the brewer was doing. . . . A beer must be perfect on its own terms--the realization of the brewer's highest goals."

If we may assume the best of brewers that they wouldn't send out or ship crappy product, then Jeff's relativism, in my opinion, means that every beer is perfect, since the brewer's highest goals would be to produce a beer about which he or she can be proud. And that's ridiculous. And even if we don't assume the best of brewers (imagining that they're weighing the cost of perfection against expected profit) we'd conclude that the guy who brews Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale (or any other beer either of us isn't wild about) sent out beer he's not proud of because it's not in his economic interests to do so. Even then, if that's what the brewer's goal is, then perfect! - hooray. Somehow, I don't think Steve agrees that the DBA is perfect. But the guy who made it thinks it is. So cheers to that guy? Really?

Jeff also gets into some religious motif I'm not even going to wade into. And a commenter named "dr wort" decided to provide (copy & paste) a dictionary definition of the word "judge," as if the definition will help us wade through the argument somehow. Real helpful.

In his first post, my co-blogger put up some numerical scores for beer. I see nothing wrong with this, but I found his comments are much more compelling and informative, and ultimately, more useful than his numbers. For me, it's not about a score - it's about whether I liked the beer at the time, what I thought about it, and whether I can describe it in words. We're allowed this kind of wishy-washy descriptor: we're blogging about beer because we love it, not judging it for competition, I'll grant, but I'd much rather write a paragraph about a beer than attempt to assign a score or a grade, especially when nobody can agree on what a perfect 10 even means.

Vacation Beer Review Part 1 - California

Your West Coast correspondent has just returned from a two weeks of well deserved vacation. The first ten days or so were spent driving down the California coast, and the remainder was spent in the socialist paradise of Toronto, Ontario. Having now made the drive down the Coastal Highway I cannot recommend it highly enough. It’s definitely worth doing before shuffling off this mortal coil.

Although the focus of the California trip was on hiking and wine-tasting I did somehow manage to consume some California beer along the way. First up, the Acme Pale Ale:



I had the Pale Ale while waiting for my dinner reservation at the Big Sur Bakery. Incidentally, the food there was so delicious that the boyfriend and I headed back to the restaurant for breakfast.

The Acme Pale Ale checks in at 5% ABV and is produced by the North Coast Brewing Company. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I’d already had another one of North Coast’s beers before, the Scrimshaw, which I would recommend highly to pilsner fans. I'll definitely be checking out their other offerings soon.

As you can see from the picture, the Acme Pale Ale has a beautiful almost pumpkin or roast squash color and light foam. The nose is very mild and the beer has a great crisp taste. The Acme has a mild citrus and hop flavor to it, and it is an extremely refreshing beer after a long day of hiking (and undoubtedly extremely refreshing without the hiking as well). Highly recommended.

Our second beer is the Firestone Walker Double-Barrel Ale (DBA), 5% ABV. The DBA is produced by Firestone Walker, which is located in Pasa Robles, CA. Apparently they are the winners of Champion Brewery/Brewmaster award from the Brewers Association World Beer Cup (an event that it sounds like I simply must track down tickets to) in the mid-sized category for the past three years. The beer is an English Style Bitter/Amber Ale, and ours was poured from a bottle.



As you can see from the photo, there was virtually no head from the pour. I almost wonder whether the bottle had been mishandled in shipping or by the restaurant. The DBA had a maple color and had a strong sweet and hoppy taste which ended with a finish a wet stone. Honestly it was not my favorite beverage of the whole trip. I found the sweetness unpleasant and didn’t like the finish or the lack of carbonation. However, given Firestone’s long list of accolades I’ll probably be trying their Pale Ale soon.