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.

Expanding the beat.

The ladies over at Jezebel have a post up today entitled How Much Alcohol To Drink So You Never Die. I found it amusing, and for some reason it actually caused me to reflect on my on drinking habits.  Over the past year I've made an effort to drink little alcohol during the work-week, and instead do my drinking over the weekend.  While this change has probably been overall good for my health, it is a major change for me.  During law school, I'd frequently enjoy a beer with dinner.  Now that I've been cutting back on drinking during the week I find that I'm not drinking as much beer as I used to.  I enjoy a wide variety of booze including most wine varietals and spirits.  Lately, I've been spending more and more time with wine, whiskey and scotch rather than strictly drinking beer.

So, while my previous posts have been devoted to beer, I've decided to broaden the purview of your noble West Coast correspondent to include these other beverages.  I'll still cover beer, but less frequently.  I hope that this change will be welcome. I certainly will have much to say -- I'm well informed on wine but a whiskey novice.  And, since I'm located in San Francisco, I've ready access to some of the finest vineyards in the world. Look forward to some dispatches from Paso Robles starting next weekend, as the boyfriend and I are taking a weekend to do visit the AVA for wine-tasting and see my favorite band in concert.

On a slightly related note, I learned today that there is no proof that Ben Franklin said that "beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" (or similarly attributed quotes). Instead, Ben Franklin wrote this about wine:

We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy. The miracle in question was only performed to hasten the operation, under circumstances of present necessity, which required it.

This finding was clearly an auspicious omen for the newly expanded project.   A toast then, to beer (still proof God loves us if you ask me), wine (in vino veritas), and whiskey (the water of life).  Cheers!

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.

Pretty Things

Labor day, or indeed, any holiday, is a great day to take stock of the important things in life. Things like safe labor conditions, job security, maximum hours, minimum wage: all of these are part and parcel with the importance of American labor. And I'm pretty thankful for all of those.

A portion of Spitzer's taps. I don't have a wide-angle lens.

Pretty Things is right in the middle.

This past weekend, I had a few friends in town, and we went around lower Manhattan on a bit of a walking tour. We came across a beautiful bar called Spitzer's Corner, a lovely spot on the Lower East Side with 40 taps. So really, my kind of place. My girlfriend at the time (more on this in a moment) identified a small tap as bearing the logo of the Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project from Somerville, MA, and I knew I had to try whatever it was.

Turns out, it was amazing. I've written about Pretty Things before, as I have really enjoyed their offerings. This one happened to be their Hedgerow Bitter, which Spitzer's describes as "a whole new kind of hoppy."

A welcome cold beer on a surprisingly warm and humid day.

It poured nicely, with a lovely copper color and a fluffy white head that trapped all manner of aromatic oils. The aroma was surprisingly absent, just a faint whiff of grass, but the sip was powerful indeed. Hedgerow looks consciously to the Old World - by calling itself a "bitter," it evokes the flavors of the great English bitters (Pretty Things uses all English-grown hop varietals in this beer as well). However, they put a distinctly American spin on the English tradition.

Nice lacing on a very, very nice beer.

Hedgerow jacks up the hops and creates a wonderfully crisp flavor profile, pumping up the bitter grapefruit and grassy hay qualities while downplaying the malt sweetnesses that one might expect from a nice amber ale. The finish is bracingly dry and floral, but the mix of those flavors is so delicious I couldn't help but continue.

I should clarify that "girlfriend at the time" thing, I suppose. After saying goodbye to my good friends from England, said girlfriend-at-the-time and I walked from the LES to The High Line, a beautiful elevated park above Manhattan's meatpacking district. And it was there that I proposed to her, in a small turn-off above 25th Street.

Yet another pretty thing.

And so, my girlfriend-at-the-time has become my fiancée. Lucky, lucky me.

Draft

I like a good draft beer. It tastes fresh, clean, full of carbonation and life. It's delicious stuff, when it's done well. But unless you live by an amazing beer bar, there's just no way to get an amazing variety of beers the same way one can with a bottled selection.

Last night was my Fantasy Football draft, and already, I have awoken to severe buyer's remorse. It's amazing how a good solid week of planning, of making sure the numbers are solid, the rankings are there, etc. can all go straight down the toilet on the back of some very minor tweaks. Like finding out I draft 9th of 10, or discovering that because the draft order reverses itself, that there are 16 picks between my 2nd and 3rd round pick. So I did the only thing I knew to do. Crack open a beer.

The best part of the draft. Before anything has happened.

I've covered Samuel Smith brewery before on these pages, and I'm a fan. I tried their Imperial Stout, which was a delicious 7.0% abv. Their website says to serve with Espresso, Stilton and walnuts, cheesecake, steak au poivre, caviar, or coffee trifle with roasted almonds. I enjoyed mine with panic and a side of why the hell did I just draft that player?!?

It pours a fantastic opaque black with a wonderfully creamy tan head. The aroma is promising, like I'm maybe going to be OK this year instead of drafting a useless Tony Effing Gonzalez. First sip, I get wonderful molasses and coffee flavors. I settle in and wait for my draft turn. Foster, Peterson, and Vick drafted - nothing I couldn't explain or deal with, though I was disappointed. Ended up with Darren McFadden. OK, ok...

Lacing on the glass is fantastic.

More sips - this beer is really rich in the mouth. It's almost akin to drinking beef broth, it's so satisfying. But it's incredibly smooth and easy to drink, so I'm not noticing the timer ticking down or the 7% abv.

Panic. I don't like to draft a QB this early in the draft, but if Vick is already drafted, and suddenly Rodgers and Peyton are as well, maybe I should jump on the QB bandwagon? This beer is going to my head, and now I only have 2 minutes to decide on my pick...

Did I really drink half a glass in the first three rounds?

Uh oh...

Tom Brady. Wait, what? Two picks later, LeSean McCoy gets drafted. I'd long ago decided to take McFadden over McCoy, but McCoy should have been picked up 2nd. I'm an idiot. Drink more beer. A lot of dark fruits coming into the fore, like plums and raisins. I'm really liking this beer.

I need to top off my glass and empty the bottle.

I wait a while. Drink more beer. Dark bitter coffee and malt sweetness are battling it out, and I'm just loving every sip. My turn again? About now is when I realize most of the good running backs and wide receivers are gone. Panic... Reggie Wayne.

What? A guy who depends on having Peyton Manning throw to him? Peyton, who's been come off the injured list? I'm insane. I pass up known quantities for the likes of Plaxico Burress; I even pick Ahmad Bradshaw. Blurgh.

I don't love my team, but I love this beer.

First order of business: dumping some of these players for good ones. Second order of business: buying more Imperial Stout. This stuff is amazing.

Truth in labeling

I collect beer labels. It's fun. There's a lot of great beer out there, and I'm kind of a sucker for a silly or fun label. Then again, sometimes beers go too far.

Sometimes label collecting can be a pain in the ass, especially when breweries, perhaps out of aesthetics (Hitachino Nest) or environmentalism (Dogfish Head) use all-paper labels. Or Stone, out of Escondito, CA, which prints directly onto the bottle. Or Flying Fish, whose labels seem to be made of some sort of vinyl.

But I've got four books of labels and I'm continuing to collect more. However, one side effect of my enjoyment of beer labels is that while I'm drinking and writing, I tend to look at who's making the beer and what it's called, and less at a classification of the style of beer. In some sense, I think this reflects my reluctance to compare a beer to its theoretical archetype (see philosophical post) as well as a lack of intricate knowledge of the very many varieties of beer. Incidentally, birthday's coming up in a little less than two months. *cough*

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I've gone through all of our past posts and, with only one exception, tagged the type of beer reviewed therein. Let's face it: in the wake of Hurricane Irene, I didn't really have much else to do today. I've tried, as best as I can, to use the styles of beer listed by Beer Advocate, a leading beer review / education website. However, I'm not going to be nearly as pedantic as they are - no need to split between American Adjunct Lager and Adjunct Lager. However, I do hope this helps in comparing beer against beer.

Whirlwind

As you can see, I've been clearing out the notebook for a while. After a flurry of once-a-day posts, I'm moving to once every few days. I hope not to fall into the once a month funk that engulfed this blog for the majority of last season. Readers have been very good at getting on my case about more frequent posting. You know what would help, readers? Send me beer. That'll get me posting more often, that's for sure.

Of course, at the moment, I'm hunkering down for Hurricane Irene, and we'll see how that goes. One of the things I've enjoyed this past week is having an excuse to pull up weather maps. I'll admit it: I'm a sucker for geography. I used to be able to spend hours just staring at a globe or a map or an atlas. I could blow a whole afternoon exploring on Google Maps or Google Earth. So Sam Adams' Latitude 48 IPA is really just pandering to me.

The 48th Parallel North is what Sam Adams calls the "hop belt," a narrow band in the Northern Hemisphere in which hops flourish. I've come down hard on Sam Adams before for their excessive use of hops, but here (in an IPA) I'm pretty open to liberal interpretations of balance.

Good looking pour.

There's a really thick head on this beer, and it laced down the glass rather attractively. There's wonderful grassiness and a lot of grapefruit on the nose, but the aroma isn't bitter the way some other IPAs sometimes are. There's actually an undercurrent of sugary sweetness in the nose, which I found very pleasant.

Even prettier lacing.

The sip was a little harder to get behind. It's an IPA, so I do expect to be smacked in the face with a pine cone. Oddly, instead of pininess, I got a lot of bitter citrus (lemon and grapefruit) and some weird tinny metallic flavors as well. There was a decent malty backbone that did balance out the beer so as not to lean toward puckeringly or bracingly sour. Nonetheless, that metal flavor was rather off-putting.

Dinner was less than thrilling, sadly.

I ate it with a dish of cold sesame noodles and some roast chicken, two flavors that should have really complemented the IPA. They didn't: too bad.