Beer I've Been Drinking

New Belgium Imperial entry good, disappointing

When you have something good, you want more of it. More, always more - that’s the American way, and that’s how we like it; everything bold and dripped in excess.

This is dangerous when we’re talking about things like fried chicken or energy drinks, but it can be a welcome addition to the beer world. Belgian monks doubled and tripled their ingredients to make richer, boozier beers that we now know as dubbels and tripels; meanwhile Germany loved its bocks so much they upped a little bit of everything and created the dopplebock, a malt bomb of epic proportions.

Here in the US, though, we’re slowly moving into the Time of the Imperial, when the best breweries are judged by their ability to imperialize one of their existing beers. Last week, New Belgium announced their official entry into the imperial annals with release of Rampant Imperial IPA.

Using the relatively new Mosaic and Calypso hop strains, Rampant is dry, light and hoppy. It’s unlike anything else in the New Belgium family, though there’s a definite nod toward older brother Ranger - Rampant is a boozy, pale version of its elder. Yet, there’s something missing, and in the beginning I couldn’t quite tell what it was. Until I dove into a little history, that is.

According to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), the idea of an imperial beer began with the Russian imperial stout, brewed thick and extra hopped for export from England to Russia. These beers, popular with the Imperial Court, have since shed their royal ties and have become a staple of American breweries, with the high-gravity, high-hop technique bleeding into other styles - most notably, the IPA.

Because brewers get bored easily, there’s a trend among top breweries to create envelope pushing imperial IPAs. And with good cause: in addition to Belgian trippels and quads and Russian imperial stouts, imperial or double IPAs (the term “double” and “triple” tend to be synonymous with “imperial” these days) routinely top the list of “The World’s Best Beers.”

Yet, while imperial tag is often used to signify a top-shelf version of a style - boozier, richer and way more expensive - we should get a little technical here. The BJCP doesn’t even use the term “imperial” except in reference to one of two specific styles:

• Russian Imperial Stout (ABV 8 - 12%) - classic commercial examples available in Sioux Falls include North Coast’s Old Rasputin and Deschutes’ The Abyss.
• Imperial IPA (ABV 7.5 - 10%) - classic commercial examples include Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, Surly’s Abrasive Ale and Dogfish Head’s 90-Minute and 120-Minute IPA, none of which are available our area, so excuse me while I cry for a bit.

Beeradvocate is a little more lenient in their classification taxonomy, claiming in addition to the stouts and IPAs an increasingly more popular style: the imperial pilsner (Odell’s Double Pilsner the most recognizable of this bunch). We could go super crazy here and say, sure, let’s claim the the dopplebock as an imperial style German bock, and dubbels and tripels as imperial style Belgian ales.

The surge in imperialism - especially with IPAs - has given the beer world some amazing brews. But it has also fueled a very troubling “bigger is always better” vibe, where instead of creating an imperial IPA because it tastes amazing, we’re creating imperial IPAs because they’re bigger and boozier. We’re filling a niche instead of creating something special. There’s a tradition of creating great imperial beers that are well regarded, but there’s a new trend trend in creating them for the sake of the style.

It’s hard to tell where New Belgium was going with Rampart. Were they attempting to fill a niche and bring the imperial IPA to grocery store aisles and backwoods bars everywhere - or did they really think that Rampart was a unique enough idea that it was necessary to move forward? Were they going for the tradition? Or the trend?

Rampant, a young upstart that out-boozes grandpa Ranger right out of the parks system - is good. Don’t get me wrong. It’s pretty good, and if I made it, I’d be proud of it. The issue here is that, as mentioned above, you have two directions to go with an imperial IPA - you can attempt to make the beer better, or you can attempt to make the beer stronger. Unfortunately, this fits into the latter - a stronger version of Ranger that feels both disappointing and unfulfilling.

Let’s make this clear, though - I am an unabashed Ranger disciple. I expect great things from a New Belgium pale ale. So when I say disappointing, I mean it in the same way one might if their daughter started dating a crust punker. You still love it, but, man, some bad decisions may have been made.

My love for Ranger set me up for unreachable promise: Rampant is good, but it’s not great. I hope I’m wrong on this one.

Building your own six-pack can be rewarding

Sometimes, making decisions is hard. Especially hard decisions like “which beer deserves a place in my fridge?”

When space is taken into consideration, the decision gets even harer. Buying a six-pack is an investment in beer and space - what if the beer is horrible, or, even worse, undrinkable? If that first one sucks, all you have is five more to fight through.

Enter the “build your own six-pack,” an exercise in choice and sampling, the cross-brewery example of the sample pack. The two types - either individually priced bottles or “any six for $8.99” - allow the average beer fan to break free from expectations and embrace the confusing nature of inhibition-free drinking. You get one shot at each beer - go crazy!

While “build your own six-packs” can be a little more expensive than the average six-pack, it’s also much more rewarding. Even better when you can place the onus of choice on someone else. Case in point: as an experiment for this column, I sent my wife, Kerrie, out to grab six beers I’ve never written about. Most of the beers she came back with were beers I’d never order at a bar, let alone purchase a six-pack.

The results of that experiment are below.

The Lineup

• Breckenridge 72 Imperial Chocolate Cream Stout
• North Coast Pranqster Belgian Style Golden Ale
• Anchor Brewing Humming Ale
• Wasatch The Devastator Double Bock Lager
• Summit Old 152
• North Coast Red Seal Ale

Breckenridge 72 Imperial Chocolate Cream Stout 72 Imperial does a good impression of a chocolate cream stout, but after recently downing an Odell Lugene I can’t help but think this concoction is a little too sweet for my tastes. If you like your chocolate stouts on the sugary side, this might be for you. As a bitters and malt guy, this is too much chocolate and too much sweetness. Also: WAY too much carbonation - this was much better as it warmed and settled.

North Coast Pranqster Belgian Style Golden Ale One of my favorites of the style, my only complaint is that North Coast beers aren’t instantly recognizable as a brewery thanks to their mismatched labels and lack of brand standards. Pranqster is what you want in a Belgian-style ale - floral and fruity and from a generation far in the past - but I get really frustrated the lack of brand cohesiveness from beer to beer. (This, of course, is proof I’m a weirdo.)

Sew a common thread between these beers, brand wise, and you’ve got one of the most revered and popular brands in brewing today. Unfortunately, most people don’t realize when they’re drinking from North Coast.

Anchor Brewing Humming Ale What a weird beer - bitter in a way I wouldn’t expect, flowery to a fault. I like it, but it makes my mind take too many jumps in logic; I don’t know whether I should focus on the floral notes or dive into the bitterness, my definition of ale being dashed against the same rocks that Humming’s anchor probably once stood.

With all of that in mind, you’ll also notice that this beer is fizzy. Super fizzy. Like a seltzer. So weird. I have no idea what to think. The description talks about history, which makes one begin to forgive the overall package. I wouldn’t seek this one out ever again, but it’s interesting enough that I wouldn’t hate it if it showed up in my glass.

Wasatch The Devastator Double Bock Lager My history with double bocks (dopplebocks, as the cool kids call them) is limited, but the last one I had - the very good Double Vision from Grand Teton Brewing - was paired with a traditional Bock from Schell’s. That pairing highlighted the thickness and boldness of a double bock. Double Vision was delicious. This one, The Devastator, is thin in comparison, and much too sweet for my developing taste.

I’ve fallen in love with the subtlety of German lagers, and this has no subtleness - it’s sweet and caramel, but this caramel is more “caramel in a candy bar” than it is “rich caramel malt.” I’ve had two beers from Wasatch now, and though they make good craft beer as compared to the traditional American corporate beers, they aren’t my favorite brewery.

Summit Old 152 If there’s anything I’m proud of in my journey from brash beer fan to blossoming beer taster, it’s the fact that I can determine the level of rye in any beer I taste. It’s high in here, and that’s why it’s wonderful: spicy and earthy, Summit’s Old 152 exemplifies what I expect from their special series of beers: daring flavors and bold statements.

I’ve had Old 152 a few times. I’ve never felt the need to order more than one, but I’ve also never hated it. It occupies that weird area of “very good beer” but not quite “beloved beer.” I love that I got to try it again.

North Coast Red Seal Ale And North Coast nails it again with Red Seal Ale, a redish amber ale that I love, despite the fact that it’s barely distinguishable from a traditional ale. That’s a knock on the style itself, as the beer is well made and tasty. Malty and hoppy, and beautiful to look at.

Beer dinner highlights bold flavors, experimental twists of sour beers

There’s little that will prepare for your first sour beer, outside of understanding that it’s not going to taste like the beer you’re used to. Last night, at Bros Brasserie, where New Belgium hosted a Lips of Faith-themed dinner, barrel master Lauren Salazar told us to imagine biting into a large sour apple - imagine the tartness, sweetness and intensity - and even that doesn’t quite live up to the hype.

Truth is, there’s nothing quite like a sour beer - a weird approximation of the drink you’re used to, tarted up and sweetened to the point of cider. And that’s because brewing a sour beer is the antithesis of everything you learn when you begin brewing - namely, that your beer must live and breathe in a completely sterile environment in order to control not only flavor and consistency, but to keep out the funky goobers that will ruin beer in just a few days.

I’ve found that sour beers fall in two taste profiles: sweet and fruity - things like Monk’s Cafe Flemish Sour Ale or Duchesse De Bourgogne, which are so far away from the typical “beer” taste as to seem mislabeled - or tart and funky - the result of wild yeast like Brettanomyces, like Boulevard’s Saison Brett or New Belgium’s La Folie.

Either way, it’s both a dangerous exposition as a brewer - what with the wild yeasts and the higher probability of a total screw up - and an exciting trend for us beer drinkers: creation of new taste profiles in an area where the old standbys have been pushed to the limit.

That’s not exactly correct, though. These aren’t new taste profiles - they’re just seeing a renewed awareness and appreciation. In reality, sour beers - especially like Flanders red ale or lambics - were the standard bearer of beers in the days before sanitation caught up with the brewing process. Open to the air and free to take on whatever it wanted, these beers would be overly sweet and tart (and sometimes totally ruined) by the wild mix of organisms that floated by.

This technique is still being used today - take, for example, Transatlantique Kriek, one of the Lips of Faith series beers we tasted last night. While the Lips of Faith line isn’t exclusively sour, there is a tendency for these experimental beers to take on some of those sour notes. Transatlantique is made in the old style of a lambic - sky open to the elements, ready to take on all comers - and for that reason it lands outside of the expected, taking on a sour, super-carbonated taste that pairs perfectly with its 45% cherry blend.

It’s a testament to the beers we had last night that Transatlantique - delicious as it is - was my least favorite. There were two fantastic takes on Belgian styles - a tart Tripel called Heavenly Feijoa and a dry maltbomb called Cascara Quad - that expertly took the experimental nature of Salazar’s barreling barn and paired them with old-style Belgian maltiness. And that’s without talking about Cocoa Mole, a nearly extinct beer that won the award for most inventive and best tasting beer of the dinner (pictured above).

But those sour and tart flavors showed up to party, led by New Belgian’s flagship Lips of Faith beer: La Folie. There is no mistaking its tendencies - this is a sour that pretends to be nothing else, overpoweringly tart with a bite that knocks your taste buds into submission. Not the best beer to start with, but a great beer with which to wish away the night. Pair it with a fancy cheese plate and you’ve got a dinner and drink to get excited about.

And that’s what sour beers are all about - pairing a bold flavor profile with the traditional beer ingredients. So while the Lips of Faith beer dinner wasn’t necessarily a celebration of sour beers, it was a celebration of good pairings: the pairing of the supertasting Lauren Salazar with the subtlety of barrel aging; the pairing of great beers and great food; the pairing of traditional styles and experimental twists.

Most of all, it was about the pairing of Bros Brasserie and the beer dinner - friends, drinks, food and location. Nothing sour about that combination at all.

Editor’s note: If you missed last night’s beer dinner, fear not: Lauren Salazar will be hosting a sour beer symposium at 7 p.m. tonight over at Monk’s. For $20, you get four unique sour beers, including GABF 2011 winner Le Terrior. Purchase tickets at Monk’s. Seating is limited.

My first beer: Pilsner Urquell and the challenges of green bottles

The first time I drank beer, it was from a green bottle.

It was Rolling Rock, so you’ll have to forgive me this one. I was a late bloomer to beer, thanks to a high-school dedication to being straight-edge, and so even the cheap stuff was new and exotic. I still remember the taste - carbonated funk, like a mix between the recycling bin at a fraternity and the expression of a woodland creature’s warning glands.

A skunk, that is. As in: that beer was skunked, yo.

“This is normal!” I thought, because I was a dumb kid who assumed this was normal. It wasn’t. But I wouldn’t realize it until I ran into my first favorite beer - on tap, no less - at the Tavern on Germain in St. Cloud.

Pilsner Urquell.

In the early 2000s, there was little in the way of craft beer on tap in a college town like St. Cloud - maybe some Summit, if we were lucky, but mostly the traditional mass-produced pale stuff. Yet, here, in this tavern that already stood out against the backdrop of college dance bars and television-ladened sports bars - sat a constant keg of foreign gold.

It was delicious to me. It’s what introduced me to the complexity of beer. And, more than anything, it taught me about the curse of the green bottle. Because the beer I later purchased to drink at home - from a six-pack full of green bottled beers - was only faintly reminiscent of what I had just poured from my pint glass at the Tavern.

With this, I was introduced to the effects of clear and green bottles on beer - the allowance of UV light, the degradation of flavor, the introduction to what we call “skunkiness” - but those effects aren’t usually so cut and dry. Green bottled beers don’t necessarily equate skunkiness - in fact, I now realize that the reason for the skunked taste in the two previous examples was as much time and fluctuating conditions as it was the green bottle.

Time and fluctuating conditions are the two things that Pilsner Urquell has a hard time controlling. The issue, in this case, isn’t the bottle. It’s the distance. Pilsner Urquell comes from a long long way away - Czech Republic, home of my wife’s ancestors and home to one of the world’s most beautiful cities, Prague.

Though you’ll never be able to pronounce it correctly without spending a few weeks in the Czech Republic, the pilsner we all know and love originated in the town of Plzeň, a location that not only stumps the tongue, but also forces us to find the “alternate characters” option for our keyboards. It was from here that the European pilsner got its foothold, and it was from here that Pilsner Urquell sprouted into a multi-national brewery with ties to giant conglomerates.

Pilsner Urquell is different from most giant breweries, however, in that it values some elements of tradition over the capitalistic trend toward accessibility and corner-cutting. They didn’t see the green bottles as a problem - they saw the method of shipment as a problem. So they kept the bottles and improved the packaging.

For this reason, Pilsner Urquell has dipped its toes into the “container wars” that beers like Miller Lite continue to wage against their foes. The difference, of course, is that Pilsner Urquell’s changes - cold shipping its beer and hiding its bottles from light during the entire trip from Europe - actually improve the taste of the beer. There’s no vortex neck or vent hole here. Just protection.

A lot of things have changed for Pilsner Urquell over the past few years. They’ve become a big name. They’ve adapted their brewing process. They have done everything they can to rid their beer of skunk - even going as far as replacing some of their hops with hop extract.

But to me, as a person who isn’t old enough to have experienced Pilsner Urquell at its peak, the beer is a lovely elixer of golden goodness - a beer that doesn’t wow in the minds of fancier craft beer connoisseurs, but in my mind is the perfect embodiment of what a European lager should taste like. It’s one part the collaboration of centuries of brewers, one part deep and important European history and one part subtle skunk. Most of all, it’s one part nostalgia for the bars of St. Cloud.

Celebrating the Bock

This past weekend was Bock Fest, an annual deep-winter festival staged at the old Schell’s Brewery in New Ulm, Minnesota. It’s a celebration of winter and its a celebration of beer, but most of all it’s a celebration of one of the most traditional forms of German beer - the bock.

I’ve never attended Bock Fest - an oversight I hope to remedy next year - but that hasn’t stopped me from performing a handful of one-person bock fests when January rolls around, especially when Schell’s releases its Bock, thereby announcing the official end of holiday season. One part caramel deliciousness, one part easy-drinking nectar of the gods, Schell’s Bock is all that’s good with malt and alcohol.

Full disclosure: I love this beer. I love this beer more than maybe a handful of other beers. I love this beer more than I love most people, save my family and my kids on most days. Sure, there are maltier and more caramel beers out there - see the entire line of Ayinger beers - and there are better Schell’s beers. But there’s something about these secondary winter months, when the novelty of snow and cold has lost its sheen and we’re stuck in that weird transition from winter ales to fresh spring offerings, that makes Schell’s Bock a perfect ally - a friend in the darkness, so to speak.

Bocks were originally created by Bavarian monks as a form of nutrition during lenten fasts, originating in the German town of Einbeck. Though Michael Johnson claims the term “bock” was a mispronunciation of the city name (Einbeck could be misconstrued for Ein bock, which is German for “billy goat”), I suspect the high alcohol content of the beers probably didn’t help pronunciation.

While the traditional bock is stronger and sweeter - a complete maltbomb that smacks of caramel without being too sweet - there are also stronger versions (doppelbock or “double” bock), hoppier versions (maibocks, which are a form of helles lager brewed to bock strength) and even ice brewed versions (eisbock, which makes me wonder why Natural Ice hasn’t got into the bock game.)

Knowing we were missing yet another Bock Fest, we instead invited a handful of friends over for our own Vilhauer Bock Fest - a four-beer tasting that spanned the spectrum of American bock offerings. We naturally began with Schell’s Bock, then moved to either side, grabbing a Maibock from Summit Brewing (to provide a lighter and more bitter compantion) and bumping up the potency with a Grand Teton Double Vision dopplebock. To temper our taste, we grabbed the most popular bock in the country - Texas-brewed Shiner Bock.

Because I’m an incredibly weak and biased man, I couldn’t let go of Schell’s Bock as the front runner. Subtle caramel and a hint of toastiness makes this more than your typical bock, and it’s worth every ounce of its 6.1% ABV. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised with Shiner’s offering - especially given its ubiquitousness. It’s nowhere near as good as the more traditional bocks, but those kids in Texas tried to put together a session bock that could still be consumed in the summer.

While I thought Double Vision was pretty good, I found it was a bit much in this context - a delicious beer that overpowered the lesser “single” bocks, content with being a boozy version of an old standby. I know I’d like it if I had it on its own - it clearly outclassed the more traditional bocks, but our minds weren’t ready for something to slap us in the face.

And then there’s the maibock. Half of the room thought it was great. The other half? They let it sit. Barely touched. Summit makes some great beers - and they do the “German beers from Minnesota” thing at a level that challenges Schell’s - but this maibock gave birth to some polarizing opinions.

We tried hard to emulate the spirit of Bock Fest - the bocks, the winter weather, the community - but unfortunately fell short in two key areas: we sat inside, thus robbing us of frostbite and beer gloves, and we went off track, bastardizing the event with something from Texas and something else with too much bitterness.

Then again, with this past weekend’s pseudo-blizzard, it felt like Mother Nature recognized the incompleteness of our Bock Fest experiment, sending only a partial storm as a guest to our mini-festival. It was a noble effort, but in the end it did nothing but strengthen our desire to do it right in 2014.

St. Thomas Bray and the Religion of Beer

We’re only a few days from Mardi Gras, which means we’re only a few days from one of the nation’s most amateur of holidays, ranking only under St. Patrick’s Day and just above New Year’s Eve as “the day you’re most likely to be accosted by a group of drunk people hoisting beads around your neck.”

What we often forget is that Mardi Gras is actually a religious event - the final hurrah before six weeks of contemplation and self-control. Mardi Gras aside - and regardless of your own personal affiliation or lack thereof, it’s hard to move past the fact that, at its heart, beer and religion are deeply intwined.

It’s not a surprise that, for many of us, it’s hard to hear the word “monk” and not instantly think of malty Belgian nectar and brewmasters in white robes. The rise of Christianity fueled the rise in beermaking, and though they weren’t the first to use beer as a religious tool (we can thank the Egyptians for that) the marriage of beer and religion for most of us begins with the monks.

This partnership - the partnership between hard working, pious monks and the amber waves of grain that help make beer so delicious - has led to some of the greatest beer ever produced: the Trappist style from France made its way to Belgium, and now the words “trappist” and “Belgian” are almost synonymous with amazing beers. Think Orval and Chimay, Westmalle and Westvleteren. These breweries gave us the dubbel and the tripel, and for that we should all be thanking our favorite diety.

Nowadays, nearly all beer fans celebrate the importance of Trappist monks in our understanding of what good beer should be. But not all of the connections between beer and religion are so widespread. Look only to the story of St. Thomas Bray, an Englishman who came to Maryland long enough in the late 1600s to fear for the state of America’s young churches and begin a fervent campaign to educate the nation’s churchless.

Though he worked hard at trying to improve religious standing across the soon-to-be-new-nation, the movement was ultimately a failure. It was his next passion - English prison reform - that would finally catch on. Bray’s new passion was to raise awareness of horrible prison conditions, arguing that prisoners are worth nothing if kept weak and miserable. His answer was, naturally, in food and beer - Bray developed a group of friends who would spread ministry through beef and beer on Sundays across the prisions.

These provisions were immortalized as Beef and Beer Dinners, a tradition that some churches use to replace the traditional Shrove Tuesday pancakes. There’s no need to gorge on bread and syrup, some churches say, when the final day before Lent could be spent partaking in two of the world’s finest consumables.

Here in Sioux Falls, the Beef and Beer tradition is alive and well. If you’re looking for a different way to celebrate Mardi Gras, maybe think about attending Church of the Good Shepherd’s Beef and Beer dinner. Or, go back even further and grab yourself a bottle of Westmalle Tripel and contemplate whatever it is you believe in the quiet of your home.

Either way, sure beats the typical Mardi Gras hurricane-fest.

On Adding Chocolate Milk: Odell’s Lugene

I was the child of an Avon customer. Each month, we’d get an Avon catalog, and each month I’d page through the catalog looking for toys. Therein lies a cruel joke - there were never toys in the Avon catalog, just kid-themed bath sets that opened my eyes to things like talcum powder and soap on a rope were long before I understood their practical uses.

Each month’s Avon catalog would also include a special promotion for their “scent of the month,” a flavor that carried over to an entire line of products - from shampoos to soap, perfumes to bath beads. One month it’s some fancy perfume flavor, the next a bastardized strawberry smell that’s more at home in a Starburst package.

I can’t help but think of those weird Avon shampoos whenever I see fruit- or spice-flavored beers. You’ve got strawberries and coriander. You’ve got passion fruit and prickly pear. You’ve got a sea of things that help your beer taste less like a beer, as if hops and barley were somehow so vile they required some kind of fruit addition.

This is harsh, and I acknowledge that. Not all flavor additions are the same. But for every subtle addition - a slight coriander spice or orange peel is wonderful in the right hefeweizen or witbier - there’s an overdone fruitiness (the grapefruit in Shiner Ruby Redbird comes to mind). Subtlety is key. But, often, subtlety isn’t in the program.

When I see beers that have added carmel apple spices, raspberry juice, or (god forbid) bacon, I tend to run in the opposite direction. Maybe it’s the clash of flavors. Maybe it’s just the cloying sweetness that some fruit additions bring. I can’t explain it. All I know is that if you want me to instantly question a beer’s motives, you should probably add some weird mix of fruitcake spices.

There’s one exception: stouts and porters. I can’t handle a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat (tastes like Robitussin) but one of the best homebrews I’ve ever had was a cherry porter. I wouldn’t even touch a Thomas Creek vanilla cream ale, but I really like Empyrean’s Dark Side Vanilla Porter.

And then there’s Odell’s new chocolate milk stout - Lugene, a rich, chocolately (duh) stout that coats the tongue and warms the stomach, its 8.5% ABV hidden under a sweet-but-not-too-sweet mix of melted candy bar and traditional stout. Even this description doesn’t do it credit. It’s not a chocolate bomb - a hopped version of a Mudslide - but a full-bodied stout that simply likes to dress up like a brown cow on the weekends.

The style - a chocolate milk stout - is misleading. This isn’t a stout made with milk chocolate, but a milk stout made with chocolate. Milk stouts - typically smoother, fuller and sweeter than their roasted brethern - are created using milk sugar (lactose) as an addtiive to the already sweet malts. The technique gives only a faint difference in taste, affecting the mouthfeel - YES I JUST SAID MOUTHFEEL - and leading to a smoother, milkier beer.

Maybe this puts some people off. Maybe there’s someone out there who loves a cherry wheat but can’t handle the idea of real milk chocolate in their stout.

Maybe it’s a case of what you can trust, and what you’ve been burned on. Someday, I’ll find a pumpkin beer I like. My mind will be blown. My world will be turned upside down. I’ll receive a hundred comments about “SEE I TOLD YOU SO DON’T BE A HATER.” But I’ll never know unless I give it a shot.

This Week’s Tab

Lugene Chocolate Milk Stout

Odell Brewing Company, Fort Collins, CO 8.5% ABV

Untappd: The Memory We Wish We Had

The human memory can only effectively hold a limited amount of information, which is why the human memory fails us so often by systematically forgetting appointments and marring names. With these limitations, we are forced to resort to databasing the things we know - calendars, contact lists, reminders, post-its covering the walls. My mother has a three-ring binder that included every author and book she’s ever read. I keep even the oldest Moleskin in fear I’ll need to recall a past triviality.

The other issue with memory is that it tends to become stunted with the addition of alcohol, which means as hard as it might be to remember appointments and names, it’s even harder to remember the various beers we’ve consumed, especially when you’re focused on variety and small-batch specialties. So there’s a need to write it down. There’s a need to create more lists.

The traditional way to do this is through a notebook. These notebooks can be simple spiral books or special beer-only tasting guides, each filled with taste notes and head quality and the number of legs or whatever it is you need to do to be taken seriously as a connoisseur. Of course, this requires you to always have your book by the ready, and it lends to the unfortunate combination of drinking beer and handwriting, which, the last I checked, gets progressively worse as the night’s tasting schedule winds toward close.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, this can be avoided. You may not have a notebook or scrap of paper or even a working pen, but I’m willing to guess you’ll have your phone. You’re already on there checking in to the bar or scanning Facebook while you pretend to listen to your friend or frantically trying to find the answer to some bar quiz question before time runs out - why not make that beer an official entry into the pub annals?

There are several apps out there - Beer Buddy, Next Pint, the hopefully-soon-to-be-released Tavern - but I’ve been partial to Untappd, which gives you everything you’d expect - tracking beers, the locations of those beers, badges, photo uploads, ratings, comments and wish list - without requiring you to go deeper. You can add as much or as little as you like. You can rate them any way you desire. You can pass on ratings altogether, if you want to go totally crazy.

In Sioux Falls, beer culture has expanded to the point that there’s an actual community feel to Untappd. Whether I jump on to preview which beer the hosts of the Off Sale Podcast are planning for the week or to get a glimpse at new beers in the area, I am connected without really being connected. Spend enough time on there and the breweries will start giving you a few virtual fist bumps. When asked by the Crow Peak corporate about whether I liked their one-off Crow-conut Porter, I was able to be truthful (“Thought I was going to hate it, honestly. Loved it.”) while backing up my claim with a four-star rating.

It’s worth noting that you’re not able to dive into BeerAdvocate territory with Untappd - there’s no five-tier scoring system or standard deviation for user scores - so your ratings will tend to be fueled by situation and relativity. I tend to score high, which is either a testament to my ability to find good beer or the lead piece of evidence that my palate isn’t as honed as one might expect.

Then again, the ratings themselves don’t matter much on their own. Our notebooks would have been just as random, with each of us tasting different things and measuring different amounts of head and logging different interpretations of color. It’s just that now, we’re able to pull out our phone, snap a picture and collect our badge. As if we needed more incentive to drink great beer.

On Tallgrass Brewing and the Subjectivity of Taste

We were standing in line for the PedalPub at Autumn Brew Review 2011 when a friend of a friend spotted us and wandered over.

“What brewery tasting are you going on?” he asked.

One of the great things about Autumn Brew Review is the PedalPub beer/food tasting tours. PedalPubs are a newer sight among the streets of Minneapolis/St. Paul - several seats, each with their own set of bicycle pedals, one driver and several taps. At Autumn Brew Review, they up the game by asking local chefs and national breweries to get together for a 20 minute beer and food pairing. It’s a welcome respite of exercise during a day that gets to be a bit excessive. It sounds horrible, but it’s the best thing you could do for your sanity.

We told our friend-of-a-friend that we had signed up for the session by Tallgrass Brewing, only to recieve an eye roll and a “Really? Tallgrass?” as if we had just agreed to eat dog turds and drink moss juice for the rest of the day.

We didn’t understand. We liked Tallgrass. Everyone likes Tallgrass, right?

Turns out, no. Friend-of-a-friend didn’t like Tallgrass, and walked away assuming we were tastless cretins, devoid of critical thinking and probably just biding our time until it was time to down some domestic light beer at the local bowling alley. One person’s personal taste had disregarded another’s. Subjectivity battling subjectivity.

Therein lies the battle of beer culture - and the battle in recommending and reviewing beers in the first place. What I drink, or what your friend-of-a-friend might drink, is tightly bound to our own personal perception - perceptions that others don’t have because everyone’s tongues and experiences and phobias and situations are different. We’re all very different. We’re all the most tender of snowflakes, not one of us alike, not one of us willing to land on the same combination of beer taste.

Turns out, Tallgrass Brewing’s turn on the PedalPub was one of the highlights of that year’s Autumn Brew Review, providing us some delicious food and some fresh-from-the-cask Oktoberfest. That love has expaneded into their regular offerings as Tallgrass made their way to Sioux Falls, complete with rows of obnoxiously designed cans, bright and bold with their over-the-top roosters and buffalos and 8-bit graphics.

8-Bit is worth the biggest mention. Buffalo Sweat - a smooth and bold Oatmeal Cream Stout that veers into bitter porter territory just enough for my tastebuds - gets all of the press as their flagship beer, but it’s their pale lager, 8-Bit, that really sets the scale high. Hoptastic and gimmicky (with a playful nod toward the new generation of Nintendo-raised craft beer drinkers and employment of the a Hop Rocket) 8-Bit gives Shift a run for its money in the hoppy tallboy craft can department.

I’ve been more impressed lately with their Belgian trippel, Velvet Rooster, which takes the cake for one of the most accessible trippels in the American cooler section while also rocking the most bold and recognizable can design of any beer at the store. Velvet Rooster is one part delicious malt, one part delicious sweetness, one part YEAH I’M GETTING A TRIPPEL IN A CAN.

My suggestion: don’t choose a four-pack on its own. Grab the eight pack sampler - you’ll get two of each of the three beers I’ve mentioned, plus their Oasis Ale, which is beyond fantastic - and enjoy some tall frosty cans of great beer, straight from your friends in Manhattan, Kansas.

You’ll probably love it. And if you don’t, that’s okay. You’ll get no eye rolls from me.

In Defense of Blue Ribbon

There was a time when Velveeta cheese was promoted as the ultimate meltable cheese, its value coming not from its quality and taste, but from its ability to be incorporated into a perfect nacho dip or grilled cheese sandwich. It’s not an artisan cheese. It’s not going to sit alongside the handmade charcuterie and aged cheddar on a $23 cheese plate - instead, it’s going to sit on a shelf at room temperature and survive a nuclear holocaust.

That’s all fine and well. There’s a need for function in the food world. But Velveeta has an added caveat that one might not expect: it is the finest example of its niche, and it actually tastes good in the right situations. There are cheaper, oilier and more horrible cheeses, and there are much better smoked and hand-crafted cheeses, and all of them are different. There is a place for Velveeta, and it deserves to be defended.

Which brings me to Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Pabst Blue Ribbon - or to use the shorthand vernacular, “PBR” - is both an intensely loved and much maligned beer. It is respected by its fans and reviled by its detractors. It’s both the finest example of its style and another frustrating example of coolness gone wild.

It’s hipster. It’s old school. It’s mass market swill. It’s cheap.

And that’s the thing. Love it or hate it, Pabst is exactly what you want it to be. And it doesn’t give a damn.

My defense of Pabst Blue Ribbon in three short arguments:

Argument #1 - Pabst is a hipster beer.

Nope. Actually, Pabst started as a punk rock beer. More specifically, PBR has always been a cheap bar beer. There is a careful distinction here that gets confused, as pop culture has mined and raided punk and underground culture for years in order to find the best and brightest of ironic statements. PBR fans weren’t born out of irony - they were born out of cheapness.

Ten years ago, PBR was dying in all but rural bars and small pubs that catered to those with no money. Young indie bands filtered into bars that would hold no more than 80 people and played shows to no more than 10. There was little money in these events - just the promise of exposure and the chance to play a little music.

Among these dives, one cheap beer stood out. It wasn’t Miller Lite, and it sure wasn’t Coors. It was Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Pabst has continued to give back, supporting independent music and sponsoring rock culture. And, as stores like Urban Outfitter searched for the next ironic old-timey thing to love, it latched onto PBR. There’s nothing wrong with that - its sales have gone up thanks to the added exposure - but it’s worth noting the next time someone calls PBR “that hipster beer.”

Argument #2 - Pabst is a crappy adjunct lager owned by Miller.

Yup. You’re right. Kind of. (Pabst contract brews with Miller-owned breweries, but is not a holding of the MillerCoors conglomerate.)

Who cares, though.

Yeah, I know what Charlie Papazian just said about craft beer and its specific definition, urging all of us to drop the major adjuncts in favor of smaller craft beers. I’d say that’s a good idea, but to drop all adjuncts and major brewery holdings is to lose track of the reason we drink beer - because we love variety, and even big beers can contribute some variety.

The simple fact is that, while it’s an adjunct lager brewed by Miller, it’s also one of the best of its style: the cheap American football beer, tailor made for drinking after a hot day in the yard or a cold day watching whatever sport you happen to watch.

It’s sweet and grainy. It’s full bodied, like Old Style or Yuengling. It’s not thin and watery like Bud Light or Miller Lite. It even won Gold Medal at the 2006 Great American Beer Festival (.PDF) for its style! It’s good. If you’re in the mood, that is.

Don’t take it from me, though. Despite its origins and background, Papazian himself approves, calling it in his tasting notes a “satisfying American classic.”

Argument #3 - Pabst is a fad, a product of internet culture, and it’s a tired meme.

Again, you’re right. And this is why I often find myself defending the virtues of Pabst Blue Ribbon - and, honestly, the entirety of my “adjunct big three:” PBR, Old Style and Grain Belt Premium.

Pabst Blue Ribbon isn’t just a fad. It’s a 168 year old brand that began in Wisconsin, where cheap beer and good beer are often interchangeable. That it’s popular with the cool kids isn’t a reason to deride - it’s, in fact, a reason to celebrate. PBR is a brand that has grown despite a lack of major marketing. While Budweiser and MillerCoors are spending millions on Super Bowl commercials, you can toast their excess with a can of Pabst. It’ll taste better, at least.

Monk’s House of Ale Repute now has Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap. Maybe it’s a nod to its clientele. Maybe enough people asked for it that they were forced into it. I won’t begin to assume the reasoning behind putting PBR in an upscale beer bar, except to say that Jerry Hauck himself said when I interviewed him last month:

“If I’m going to go for one of the American lagers, it’s probably going to be Blue Ribbon.”

Not a hipster. Not a fan of cheap beer. Not someone trying to prove himself by being ironic. Just a man who knows what he likes and understands the place of a can of PBR. (And maybe a vat of melted cheese.)