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.

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.

The Real McCoy (sort of)

So yesterday, I made fun of the short stubby bottles of Coedo Brewery and compared them to those of Chimay. Duh. I'm not thinking of the Chimay bottle, I'm thinking of the bottle. I'm stupid.

However, the traditionally bottled-up Duvel is now available in the US on draft. It's referred to either as "Duvel Single" or "Duvel Green," and it comes with an obnoxiously snooty website to boot. Of course I had to try it.

The elusive Duvel Green.

Duvel Green has a lower alcohol content than the classic Duvel, but it has many of the same spicy notes. It was inexpertly poured, sadly, with far too little head and much too much beer. That's right: I'm complaining that I got TOO MUCH BEER. The thing about Duvel (and many of the other high-octane Belgians) is that the high alcohol content obliterates some of the nuances in flavor, making much of their appeal is in their much more volatile aromas. A thick head in a tulip glass will help to trap those volatile compounds for your nose to vacuum up. No head and no headroom? Not a lot of aroma. Sad.

Duvel Green can get away with it though, because it's a much lower strength (6.8% abv instead of 8.5% abv) than the classic. Think it comes with a corresponding 20% reduction in price? THINK AGAIN. Of course, being at a gorgeous bar in SoHo didn't help price mitigation.

I picked up a lot of lemon peel and grass, with an undertone of fresh bread. It cut through my brunch of Croque Monsieur and fries, with Duvel's trademark spice pairing especially nicely with the creamy gruyere. No, it's not the classic Duvel, but it's a hell of a lot closer to the mark than Coedo.

Knock-offs

In a previous post, I derided Japan's Coedo Brewery of appearing to knock off the Chimay brand. I'm not linking to their website because it's full of flash and other infuriating website crap. However, here's a screenshot of their lineup:

My apologies on the size of this screenshot.

From left to right, that's Kyara, Ruri, Shiro, Shikkoku, and Beniaka.

It's got the same stubby bottle feel, same general color scheme, same luxurious feel. Same undersized pour too. Anyway, that red one, the Beniaka, was actually pretty good. So I had high hopes for the other two.

I tried the Shikkoku next. It's a schwartzbier, and I've had mixed successes with those. Sometimes they're insanely sweet (Xingu); other times, they're perfect (Full Sail Session Black).

Jet black pour

Apparently, Shikkoku is named after Japanese black lacquerwork, and it's pretty apt as an inspiration. This beer poured a very deep black, with a lot of roasted, almost charcoal qualities in the aroma. It had a very creamy head that lasted to the end of the beer, which wasn't terribly surprising given how small the beer was.

I should mention, without snark, that it was also really easy to drink. A lot of that had to do with the 5.0% ABV and a surprisingly dry finish for a schwartzbier. More of that had to do, unfortunately, with a very thin mouthfeel. I got some weak coffee flavors, maybe some brown sugar as well. But the nice aromas and inky blackness ultimately promised more than the flavor could deliver.

Two nights ago, I tried the final in the three (yes, there are two more out there in the world, but only 3 were available in my Japanese megamart. This was the white-label Shiro.

Shiro bills itself as an an unfiltered wheat beer with a "bright, smooth, slightly cloudy appearance." For an unfiltered beer, there's an awful lot of clarity in the glass. Otherwise, it was decent in its presentation, but once again, a wretchedly small pour.

That's a pint glass. Seriously. Maybe this beer is targeted toward people with Asian glow?

When I'm drinking a wheat beer, I try to find some banana or clove flavors, sometimes even bubblegum. It should be crisp and tart, without going too far into "sour." This guy didn't deliver on any counts. I got a lot of sour apple and a lot of just non-descript "beer" flavors with an alcohol bite that a 5.5% abv beer shouldn't have displayed.

There were two strikes against this beer, I think. The first was that it wasn't terribly fresh, and I think it may have just gotten manhandled in transit. The second was that I don't think I was eating it with a complementary foodstuff: fresh cherries. The cherries have been plentiful and cheap and sweet in NJ, so I've been enjoying them a lot this summer. But when paired with the beer, the cherries took on an astringency that negated any apple sweetness that I had managed to coax out of the beer. As a result, all that was left was a chemical bitterness. Small beer as it was, I didn't finish it - I ate the rest of the cherries instead.

Field Mouse's Farewell

I'm definitely a sucker for a cute label, and the Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project out of Somerville, MA has some of the folksiest and most lovely labels around. I mean come on, how can you resist a little mouse with a satchel slung over his shoulder? Of course the beer has to taste good too, and thankfully, Pretty Things makes some amazing beer.

This camera doesn't really do the beer justice.

The Field Mouse's Farewell poured a nice cloudy golden color, with a fluffy white head and an enticing aroma of light brown sugar and apples. It actually did look a little like a pale unfiltered apple cider. All of that sweetness in the nose gave way quickly to a bracingly (and unexpectedly) bitter sip on the tongue. Pretty Things gets a little wordy in their description of this beer though. "The hops are Strisselspalt from Alsace and Bramling Cross from England. We combined Belgian and English yeast strains (inspired by the proximity of Calais and Kent?). Oldy woldy worldy." Really? Oldy woldy worldy? Stick to beer - your writing is weird.

I will say, though, that the hops profile really gave this beer a huge kick of flavor. Unfortunately, the larger bottles in which this beer is sold means that by the end of the first glass, my tongue was crying out for something to cut the bitterness. I wish that this beer had been a little more balanced - maybe some sweetness in with all of that hops bite. I do, however, commend Pretty Things for varying up the hops profile: a lot of American hoppy ales are pretty one-note, like drinking a pine cone. Field Mouse's farewell delivered a lot of citrus, some pine, and quite a lot of pepperiness too. It might have gone well with some smoked cheese or cured meat: something with richness and oomph that could stand up to the flavors of the hops. I liked it, but next time I'll try to find a friend to share it with.

I swear this post was going to be timely.

The following is a reprint, in full, from the Boston Globe's Op/Ed page on July 23, 2011. I was still trying to figure out how to appropriate it for this blog's purposes when its timeliness ran out. So as a next best thing, I'm just re-running it in full, but here's a link. Enjoy.

It wasn't the shuttered state parks that prompted Minnesota’s governor and legislature to resolve a budget impasse. Nor was it the 22,000 furloughed state employees or the disruptions in services for the needy and the disabled. In the end, it was all about the beer.

The Minnesota state government shut down July 1, after Democratic Governor Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders failed to reach a budget deal. And for days, there was no end in sight. But on July 12, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that hundreds of bars would no longer be able to serve alcohol because state permits were set to expire. With no one on hand to issue new permits, there’d be no beer. The 10,000 places that sell liquor in the state were starting to see a depletion in stock, as inventories cannot be resupplied without a distributor tax stamp. The state had stopped issuing those.

And then, the unthinkable: Brewing giant MillerCoors was told to pull 39 of its brand labels from all shops, bars, and restaurants because it did not process its registration paperwork in time. The registration was set to expire on July 13.

Suddenly, Dayton and GOP lawmakers were willing to make compromises. The final budget deal, not much different from where the parties were before the shutdown, was negotiated less than 36 hours later, on July 15.

Coincidence? Maybe members of Congress, facing a much larger budget problem, should take a breath and have a beer. And thank their lucky stars that they can still have one.

I'm proud of Massachusetts as well for having seen the error of its ways on a new regulation passed last week. It would have required that brewers licensed as farmer-brewers grow 50% of the grains or hops they use to brew with. Without that distinction, Massachusetts brewers would be classified under the Federal rules enacted after prohibition, which mandate a three-tier industry of brewer to distributor to retailer. A brewer can't sell retail directly, so the rules mandate, unless it's a brewpub or a brewery tour, or, as in Massachusetts, a brewer-farmer. Here's the problem: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts doesn't have the field capacity for all of the brewer-farmers to purchase or grow 50% of the grains or hops needed. They just don't. Of course, the brewer-farmers licenses are a LOT cheaper than the regular brewers licenses, but I'm sure that didn't have anything to do with it.

So here's to Massachusetts for overturning that ridiculous rule. And here's to the New England Patriots. Football's back, baby.

oh dear...

Well, clearly, something went wrong... It would seem to the world that I enjoy drinking beer much more than I like writing about it, and that's not entirely true. It's just that hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now.

This same thinking, incidentally, might be why I kind of let all of July go in terms of going to the gym. There's a little counter on the gym login computer that shows the number of times I've logged in for the last 60 days. The highest I got was 30 - that was during Lent. Yesterday and today, the counter read 5, which means that the last time I was there regularly was about two months ago. Ouch.

What have I been doing instead? My colleague and I have been enjoying some good times at a Newark establishment called Port 44. We became regulars - the bartender would ask whichever of us showed up first where the other one was. One of my favorites: Siren's Wheat.

That's a good looking glass of beer.

Here's a beer that's drinkable on a hot day (of which, Newark has more than its fair share). It's a pretty low alcohol content (4.2% perhaps?) so it's great for a session, and because it's not too dark, it's pretty dry. I've found the darker the beer, the sweeter the beer (thanks to the Maillard Reaction). Siren's is good and dry - refreshing. And I don't need a lemon slice, thank you. It also goes to a good cause. Port 44 is owned by former cops, and 25¢ from each glass goes to fund a scholarship for the children of Police Officers, Firefighters, and EMTs. Not bad.

I say that Port 44 is owned by former cops, but that may not be for much longer. One of the few bright spots in Newark has been this pub, and now, it's for sale. Anybody want to sink $2.1 million into downtown Newark? Anybody?

Damn...

Anyway, for the next couple of days, I'm going to try to clear the notebook. It's a big notebook, and it's gotten pretty thick, so I hope you'll bear with me. As for Mr. West Coast? Maybe he's just out having too much fun.