Beer I've Been Drinking

A Beer Infusion/Steeping Glossary

foodfalls — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:02:31 -0400

Last week was American Craft Beer Week, and, more than ever, it seemed to also be American Steep Your Beers In Other Things Week. In addition to a handful of rare brewery-supplied beers and cost-saving specials, nearly every decent beer hall in town had SOMETHING that was firkin’d, foss’d, infused or hop-rocketed.

Which got me thinking: what does the average person DO with terms like “firkin,” “foss,” “infusion” and “hop-rocket?”

Nothing, probably. The terms are hard to decipher and they often overlap. You can firkin in a Foss, and you can infuse with a hop-rocket, and seriously these are terms you need to learn to be a beer reviewer ON TOP OF the impossibility of defining mouthfeel, bitterness and general aroma notes.

Don’t worry, though. Because I’m a seasoned professional and because I genuinely care about your beer intake, I want to de-mystify these words for you.

Because you’re the best readers in the world.

(And, because you NEED to understand the significance of a grapefruit-infused Crooked Tree IPA from Dark Horse, if you ever get the chance to try one.)

The Putting Beer In Things (And Putting Things In Beer) Glossary

Barreling

There’s putting stuff in beer. And then there’s putting beer in stuff. Take a discarded bourbon or whisky barrel - or, in the case of something like Odell’s Brewing Amuste, an old oak wine barrel - and you’ve got the crucial ingredient for higher-priced and boozy-tasting (read: probably delicious) barrel-infused beer.

The key: a beer soaks up the residual awesomeness of the liquor that came before it. The classic example is Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout - a beer that’s not only rare, but splintered (try the Bourbon County Coffee Stout, or the Cherry Rye Bourbon County Stout, for example) and sought after more than any other major beer outside of California. For good reason - a good year rates 100 or more. A bad year drops down to a measly 98.

Then, there’s the wine-barreled beers, which take on a musky red-flavor that’s surprisingly refreshing. I’m no wine fan, but I get it. At least, I get it when it’s mixed with beer.

Dry-Hopped

When we say “dry-hopping,” we mean “dry-hopping at the tap,” which is often done via firkin infusion or hop-rocket. Case in point: you can throw a pile of Citra hops - one of the more recent of super-popular and probably overrated hops (but don’t tell my taste buds about it, because they CRAVE Citra at all points of every day) - into a pile of delicious beer and suddenly your west-coast IPA or milk stout or whatever-it-is now takes on the subtle tropical-ity of Citra.

Taylor’s Pantry has started hop-rocketing Odell IPA with Citra hops. I haven’t tried it, but I can only imagine it’s fantastic.

Firkin

A “firkin” is a measure of volume - according to journalistic stalwart Wikipedia, it’s a a quarter of an ale or beer barrel - but more recently it has become a vessel for cask beers. If you ever hear of a bar “tapping a firkin at three o’clock,” you can be assured that you’re going to get a cask version of a beer you’ve already tried, but infused with some kind of fruit or vegetable.

It might sound gross. It’s not. It’s delightful, in the right situation (a chili-infused firkin of a stout or porter might be the epitome of veggie/beer pairing). It’s also all the rage. Look for a visiting brewer, a sales rep with some hats to give away, and an eager bar filled with beer nerds.

Fass

Until Thursday’s Schell’s Takeover at Monk’s, I had never heard of a Fass. I can’t even find it on the INTERNET, you guys. I can tell you this, though: it’s a beer container. Except plastic. I think. I dunno. My Foss’d Schell’s Pilsner was the highlight of the night, and that’s even when it was followed by a glass of Schell’s Firebrick, one of the best Vienna Lagers ever created.

HopRocket

This is the act of passing a beer through a machine called a HopRocket. It is a blast of fresh hops without the risk of an overtly vegetable taste - as if you let your beer rest on a batch of beets for too long. HopRocketing can be awesome. Or, it can be masked by the already strong hops in a beer.

Best done in a beer that’s not too-hop forward, but horrible in a beer that’s not supposed to be hopped in the first place. (Please, in the name of St. Bernardus, never hop-rocket a Belgian ale or Oktoberfest. PLEASE.)

Infused

You put something in a keg, and it infuses into the beer. Grapefruit in an IPA. Plums in a Belgian quad. Dry hops in pretty much anything. Infuse it, and it’s probably decent, because most brewers aren’t likely to RUIN their beer by putting stupid things in it.

No hot-dog-infused porters. No chili-pepper-infused hefeweizens. No grass-infused Grain Belt, unless you just mowed your lawn and caught a few strays.

What Else?

These are the terms I kept hearing over the past week. There are more. If you can help shed light to the weird foreign glossary we encounter as craft beer connoisseurs, list them in the comments below. And, add your own altered definition to these above. The language of beer in the past decade is a language that’s evolving. Your dry-hopping is another’s infusion; your firkin is another’s pin.

Let’s progress this language. Let’s make it clear for the rest of the world.

Celebrate American Craft Beer Week By Trying Something Different

foodfalls — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:42:13 -0400

To some, craft beer is a kind of art. The focus is on the artisanship of brewing - on locally sourced materials and hand-crafted small batches. To others, craft beer is a fight against monopolization, where the only enemy is the Tri-Headed Dragon of Bud-Miller-Coors. To most, craft beer is about taste - better beers, better ingredients, better flavor.

I don’t believe we can call one beer “better” than another. I don’t believe the monopolization of beer leads brewers to “fight back.” I don’t even believe artisanship is crucial - I know a lot of people who make good beer out of spare parts and laziness.

To me, craft beer is about choice.

It’s American Craft Beer Week. And it’s time to celebrate our choices.

On any given week, I might never try the same beer twice. It’s a testament not only to the variety present in craft beer, but to an availability that even those of us in the middle of the midwest take for granted. We have access to an awful lot of great beers here in Sioux Falls. We have more choice now than we’ve ever had in the past. It’s our duty as beer fans to take advantage.

This embarrassment of riches - hundreds of breweries lining our liquor store shelves, competing for our attention - gives us an opportunity we might not otherwise have: perfecting our taste.

I’m not here to tell you that one beer is better than another. That’s impossible. There’s no such thing as a bad beer - just beers that don’t meet our own sensibilities. Taste defines preference, and our tastes are all different. It’s that dedication to differing tastes that has helped the craft beer world explode - the idea that we each like different things, and chances are there’s a market for every style imaginable.

My challenge to you, as a celebration of American Craft Beer Week, is to explore the choices we have in front of us. Let’s take to the racks and grab something new. Grab something weird. Grab something you’re afraid you might hate. Admit you hate it. Revel in the fact that you hate it, because now you KNOW you hate it and you can try another style.

Make a point to try some of the local breweries sprouting up around our state. Grab a few beers from relatively unknown breweries. Buy something with a horrendous label, or with a silly name, or with whatever else it is that’s kept you from trying it in the first place.

Most of all, remember that beer is made by people. American Craft Beer Week isn’t about beer - it’s about the breweries and people who make beer for us. It’s about a group of people who, through their own hard work and persistance, have decided that they’d rather spend their working hours - or their spare time - helping to provide us with an extra level of choice.

Craft brewers rarely get into the business because they want to be rich. They get into the business because they want to give something back. They do it because they love the process, the experimentation, and the results.

Go ahead. Put back the 12-pack of whatever it is you usually get. Grab something a little different. Start walking the path. Celebrate the choices we have before us, and move forward with appreciation of the time, talent and dedication American craft brewers put into each batch - for their fans, their families, and for us.

Happy American Craft Beer Week, everyone.

Tasting Witbiers in a Vacuum: A Comparison of the Style

foodfalls — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:05:07 -0400

In a vacuum, nearly any beer can have its strong points. This is the struggle of beer reviewing - we can only make judgement within our own experience, using our own situation, within the vacuum that is our own life.

This past weekend, I encountered this vacuum firsthand. The beer was an White Rascal, a Belgian wit (aka: Witbier) from Avery Brewing. The situation was that it was delicious. The struggle was that I couldn’t figure out if the beer actually was delicious or if I was simply excited to be a few step closer to summer and the beers that make it great.

Was this beer from Avery - a hard-to-find brewery in our area, given their recent pull from Minnesota shelves - as good as I thought? Or would I be just as happy with a Blue Moon? Was I satisfied with the beer itself or the opportunity to try the style again after a weird and horrible winter?

Let’s do a tasting.

I gathered Neighbor Amy and Wife Kerrie and settled down with a handful of witbiers - those coriander-spiced and orange peel adorned beers that have been made famous by Coors Brewing’s Blue Moon franchise. From cheap to expensive, American to Belgium, well known to relatively obscure, we sampled up and down the tasting board and came to one conclusion:

Beers are hard to judge. And witbiers all begin to taste the same after a while.

The lineup: * Blue Moon (Coors Brewing) * White Rascal (Avery Brewing) * White (Lakefront Brewing) * White Label (Wasatch Brewing) * Witbier (St. Bernardus)

Tasting was done blindly, and we all had differing tastes, but it was clear to all of us from the beginning which of the five was Blue Moon - a darker beer that slid too far to the wheat side of things and offered a one-note, flat flavor. Blue Moon is exactly what it’s supposed to be: a Belgian wit for the BMC faithfuls - an introduction to the style, but not a great example. Blue Moon ranked last on all of our lists.

The space between Blue Moon and the rest wasn’t as wide as one might think, however. Kerrie and Amy had trouble with the St. Bernardus - the highest rated beer of our group, according to BeerAdvocate - for its lack of sweetness compared to the other witbiers. It was nutty and dry, closer to what we’d think of a standard wheat beer, with its spices muted and a crazy champagne-like carbonation.

Why did this high-rated beer fall so flat on our group? No idea. Perhaps the traditional witbiers has been bastardized by us Americans - in other words, maybe THIS was the standard taste and all others were TOO spiced. Maybe we got a bad bottle. Maybe we don’t know anything at all. Heck, maybe it was the weather.

None of it matters. St. Bernardus ranked poorly in our house on that day. Sorry, monks.

We’ll skip over Lakefront’s White, which was tart and sour and not very great - and jump to our two favorites: Avery’s White Rascal and Wasatch’s White Label.

I’ve talked about White Label before, but this time I suggest you go grab some. In comparison to the rest of the Belgian wits we tried, Wasatch was more complex and flavorful - refreshing after a long day and surely wonderful as a dinner beer. Avery’s White Rascal was delicious - and it came in a can! - but you can’t get it anywhere close to here so you’ll just have to trust me on this one.

In the end, we ranked Avery and Wasatch at the top and Blue Moon clearly on the bottom, but these rankings fall into that weird vacuum. Even comparing the beers to their brothers and sisters, we had issues with judgement. What does the genuine style consist of? What would the rankings be like if Kerrie’s favorite witbier - [Boulevard Zon] - was available? Are my tastes off because, when it comes down to it, I’m not the biggest witbier fan?

There are only two answers.

Taste is relative. And it doesn’t matter - as long as you’re enjoying the beer you have in front of you.

Spent Grains: Beer's Most Resourceful Byproduct

foodfalls — Wed, 01 May 2013 09:35:40 -0400

The art of brewing is an art that’s mostly free from waste. Hops dissolve and are filtered out into a mush that can easily be composted, while nearly every ounce of water and malt is used and transformed by the yeast. In the end, the only things that are wasted from your brew recipe are the energy needed to brew - heat, movement, time - and certain containing vessels.

Breweries like New Belgium in Colorado have taken great pains to lower their environmental output, harnessing their spent energy to help fuel future batches of delicious beer. Even in the case of the packaging, resourceful homebrewers and old-school breweries keep track of returnable bottles to use for future beers.

Still, at the end of a recent brewing session, I realized that after the hops were composted and the water was settled and the yeast had started to work, I had one thing remaining - a pile of spent grains, steeped at the start of the brewing process and left to dry out on our counter.

Spent grain is essentially a combination of husks, starch and some residual wort - rich in nutrients and full of fiber. I could compost them. But, those spent grains are easily the most usable byproducts of the brewing process. Here’s a few examples of what can be done with spent steeping grains.

Animal Food

The most common use of spent grains in the commercial world is as livestock feed. According to a paper by Merryn Dineley, spent grains are suitable for cattle, pigs and goats, and in Neolithic Britain they may have been one of the only consistent grains available year-round.

Its use as cattle feed continues today. In fact, Odell Brewing has been sending its spent grain down the road with a local farmer - Lugene Sas - for nearly twenty years, where it is mixed with alfalfa and consumed by dozens of dairy cows. It’s so much a part of the process that they named their new chocolate milk chocolate stout after him.

Got chickens in the backyard? That spent grain is perfect. But, it doesn’t need to be farm-based, either. There are tons of sites that provide recipes for making dog biscuits out of spent grains, including this one from Brew Your Own.

Human Food

Then again, why should the animals have all of the fun? Spent grains are automatically instilled with that malty wort goodness that comes with 20-minutes of hot steeping, and the smell is enough to make even the most restrained baker go crazy with the possibilities.

You can use it for bread. You can use it for cookies. Nearly everything that can be baked with flour can be baked with spent grains - even down to spent grain oven-fried chicken. Don’t believe me? Pick up the newest issue of Brew Your Own, which includes recipes for spent grain baked eggs and granola.

You’re welcome.

Brooklyn Brew Shop has a great blog called Spent Grain Chef that lists a whole pile of awesome ideas. It doesn’t end with food, though. Stone Brewing has started making spent grain soap, while several breweries have started using their spent grain as energy. Their beer is literally making beer.

Bacteria Food

Finally, yes, if you’re too lazy to own chickens or bake your own bread, your spent grains might be best put to work helping your garden grow via the warm and dynamic process of composting.

Spent grain - and the nitrogen within - is a natural fit with that bacteria-charged pile of leaves and vegetable matter in your backyard. All you need to do is dump it in and wait. It breaks down quickly into fluffy compost, and your garden will love you forever and ever.

Two words of warning. Everyone seems to think that spent grains start to STINK VERY QUICKLY AND HORRIBLY, and (no surprise here) animals love it, so keep that compost bin locked and shut tight. And plug your nose when you open it. You’ve been warned.

Regardless of the use, homebrewers have hundreds of options for their spent grains, making the entire brewing process a nearly zero-sum game.

Except for all that leftover beer, though I doubt you’ll have any trouble figuring out a way to get rid of that.

New Glarus, a Wisconsin-only beer, is worth seeking out

foodfalls — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 07:00:52 -0400

Because craft brewing is (aside from a few heavy-hitters) a small operation, craft beer tends to be a regional affair. One state’s local favorite is another state’s rarely-seen import. Legends are built upon the voices of a brewery’s most fevered fans, and word of certain beers carries farther than their distribution numbers can handle.

These regional beers are treasures to a craft beer fan; unless you’re lucky enough to live within their small footprint, they require a combination of travel, adventure and luck. Being in the right state isn’t enough - sometimes, you need to find the right bar, or the right liquor store, and sometimes you need to travel a little bit out of the way, or push your way into experiences you might not otherwise encounter.

The classic example of this is Russian River, a California-based brewery that reaches its fingers only a few states east of the Pacific (and, for some reason, Philadelphia). Its Pliny the Elder - a beer that constantly reaches best-in-the-world status - is a sought-after prize for any beer fan visiting California, and offshoot Pliny the Younger is a legend that few have ever seen in real life. Here in South Dakota we may be spoiled by our slow trickle of Minnesota’s Surly Brewing, but that shouldn’t take away its adventurous status - Surly is the beer that other brewmaster’s seek out, trading their big bottles amongst themselves in a rush to grab a few imported cans of Abrasive Ale or Darkness.

And then there’s New Glarus Brewing.

New Glarus - the brewery made a little more famous by owner Deb Carey’s visit with President Obama - is a Wisconsin-only brewery, selling classic beer styles wrapped in unassuming labels. Rather than fight for the top of the charts with bigger and bolder beers, New Glarus does their own thing - Wisconsin proud - and in doing so has created a lineup of solid, revered beers.

If you’re lucky, you live in Wisconsin and you can have it any time. If you’re like me, you pine after it until, finally, a 12-pack sampler finds its way to your house.

While New Glarus’ standard lineup has been enhanced with a selection of sours, fruit beers and adventurus IPAs, their bread and butter seems to be somewhere between a history book and solidly German influence. The standard New Glarus sampler is akin to your typical Schell’s sampler - a few staples and a seasonal. It doesn’t represent the high-end limits of the brewery’s ability, but instead serves as a comfortable introduction to a hard-working brewery. These aren’t the sours and black IPAs they’re lauded for - instead, these are the cream ales and pilsners you could probably find on tap in any beer bar in Madison or Milwaukee.

If it sounds like I’m selling them short, I assure you I’m not. My utter devotion to breweries like Schell’s and Great Lakes has taught me that not every beer in a brewery’s lineup needs to be a quadruple IPA or imperial cherry bock rocket. There’s a place for a well-made pilsner or amber, for a light-bodied craft beer like Spotted Cow, and for something that might otherwise be overlooked among the rows of Belgians and stouts.

Spotted Cow - the flagship cream ale that attempts to replicate the entire Wisconsin agricultural ecosystem in one bottle - is light and smooth, good enough to knock back after a battle with an unruly lawn but not so weak that it’s resigned to chili and brat-fodder. Two Sisters is a pilsner that’s malty and decidedly German. And Moon Man is an IPA in the west-coast style, sessionable, malty and good enough that I almost forgot that it’s name instantly brings to mind the MTV Music Awards.

And then there’s Cabin Fever, a beer that looks like a maibock - paler and lighter in body than the traditional bock - but still maintains the caramel flavors that I’ve grown to adore. There’s a balance that extends bock’s seasonality beyond winter. Cabin Fever lives up to its name - a nod to those pre-Spring months where we balance the existing snow and cold with the promise of lighter times.

Breweries expand. They change. They shift from one state to the next, and with this movement they are exposed to more people - and more palates. Yet, some hold back, keeping a tight grasp on their own regional pride and relative exclusivity. The beers are good. The hometown ties make them great.

Destination: Beer

foodfalls — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:41:17 -0400

I don’t want to brag, but I spent several days last year holed up in a beautiful South African winery - The Spier, just a few miles outside of Cape Town and several thousand miles away from anything I had ever experienced before.

In addition to a bunch of adorable hotel rooms and a sprawling grounds, The Spier provided cheap wine, delicious meat buffets and all the South African sun you could handle. It was a dream: delicious booze, good friends, and a pillow to drool on once you finally made it back to your room.

There’s just one problem.

It was a winery.

Now, I’m not going to start the beer vs. wine battle in this column, because the two are different enough that they don’t warrant comparison. Still, I’m no wine person. I’m a beer person. And my need for a destination booze vacation is just as important as the folks who spend tens of thousands each year touring Sonoma County and Napa Valley and wherever else they mentioned in that movie about wine.

(Sideways. I had to look it up. All I remember is Sandra Oh smashing a helmet into the face of that guy from Wings.)

Destination breweries seem like some kind of fever dream - a hazy vision that’s always just out of reach. They’re straight out of the future like Rosie the Robot or self-tying shoes or even Marty McFly’s poofy vest.

But the future will be here faster than we might think, thanks to two of the nation’s most revered - and destination-worthy - breweries.

It began in California, where the braintrust at Stone Brewing - lamenting the lack of worthwhile accommodations in the San Diego suburb of Escondido - began cooking up plans for a Stone Brewing Hotel. It will feature 40-50 guest rooms, two acres of outdoor space, a barrel aging room and - according to rumors from our Stone tour guide - a beer tap in every room. A BEER TAP IN EVERY ROOM, YOU GUYS.

Then, the dream moved to the midwest, where Surly’s fight against out-dated beer laws both led to a sudden sprouting of tap rooms and great small breweries and paved the way for Surly’s ultimate goal: the creation of what I’m hoping they’ll call SurlyWorld, a destination brewery filled with super-hopped beers and top shelf attitude.

Stone’s destination brewery has been in the works for a few years, while Surly has just laid claim to a prime plot of industrial wasteland of their own. Both represent the new movement in craft beer: an acknowledgement that beer can be just as complex and travel-worthy as its vine-ripened counterparts, and that vacations can be planned around blossoming regions of craft excellence - the new Napa Valley is sure to be San Diego, while the next Sonoma might be the cold banks of Minnesota/St. Paul.

As someone who takes a weekend each year to tour a brewery and attend Minneapolis’ Autumn Brew Review, I get it. A multi-day trip beginning in New Ulm and spreading through Minneapolis breweries young and old is a beer-cation that any red-blooded American can enjoy. And when things get too cold, it’s not hard to find reasons to visit the Pacific Ocean, though the best reason might be to “sleep at Stone Brewing, where there’s a tap in each room.”

We have a year or so to wait, so let’s not get TOO excited. But if there’s anything that signifies the new weight that craft beer swings around, these hotels - and the idea that anyone might stay in these hotels to begin with - might be all the clout the industry needs.

The Rye Bite: Beer's Hidden Grain

foodfalls — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 19:29:59 -0400

Here’s a little secret: my palate is a disaster. I know what I like. I know what I don’t like. I can compare and contrast beers that are similar in style, but typically only if they’re presented side-by-side. But there are very few things I could put my finger on and describe. This is a huge part of the reason I don’t go neck deep into Craft Beer’s Little Descriptors - I simply don’t think of beer in that way.

Flavors are flavors, and I can’t dissect them. So I talk about the experiences around the beer itself.

That’s changing, though - little by little. I may have beer’s newest cool grain to thank.

A little over a year ago, I had my first rye beer - a Ruthless Rye IPA from Sierra Nevada - and I remember thinking that it was certainly different and certainly very good. There was a bite to it that I liked - a bite that unsurprisingly reminded me of pumpernickel bread, creating a beer that might go well with a Reuben and a plate of fries.

Awesome. Different. And then I forgot about it.

Until later that summer, when Schell’s released their newest year-round offering, Emerald Rye. Suddenly, there it was again. That bite. That rye. That pumpernickel kick that just so happens to go perfectly with strong hops and high alcohol.

Then, rye was everywhere I looked, and it became an obsession. Good timing, because every brewery seems to be throwing the shackles of traditional grains and diving head first into the rye bandwagon. Then, the obsession became a love affair at last year’s Autumn Brew Review, where I tried the fantastic Rye of the Tiger and fell head over heels.

This is a real love, though - not a “three hours into a beer festival” love, but a “picky first-hour attendee” love - Rye of the Tiger, brewed out of Cleveland by Great Lakes Brewing Company (home of Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and Elliot Ness Amber, two of my favorites of their respective styles) balances the rye bite with a brash hop flavor that reminds me of the opening notes of a Crass cover band. It’s a beautiful glass of beer that fits any occasion - like any great beer should.

Rye beers are, unfortunately, not universally available. You can’t get Great Lakes here in Sioux Falls - I lucked into a six-pack through serendipity, probably. Additionally, with the exception of Emerald Rye from Schell’s, most of them are seasonal or corked. Thankfully, there’s always SOMEONE who’s brewing new rye beers, and while it’s not totally easy to get your hands on Rye of the Tiger, you can always expect some warm rye bite in Sierra Nevada’s Ruthless Rye, which is still in season and available nearly everywhere.

Or, you could go big: Boulevard has produced a 12% ABV rye beer aged in Templeton Rye barrels called - fittingly - Rye on Rye.

Or, you could hope that there are still six-packs of Summit’s pretty decent Old 152 from their Unchained series.

Or, you could just wait until this fall and go weird: One of my favorite beers from Surly is SurlyFest, a bastardized version of an Oktoberfest that’s more often classified as a rye beer.

Or, as you might expect, you can just try whatever you can find. It’s rare to fall in love with a grain as quickly as I did, but that’s the point - you won’t fall in love unless you try. You’ll never know what flavors might knock you out.

Celebrate the easy-drinking, wits-about-you Session Beer Day this Saturday

foodfalls — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 08:02:00 -0400

Brewers and breweries have a habit of trending toward the big and the bold. More hops, more booze, more of everything. This is where craft brewing’s infatuation with imperial style IPAs and stouts comes from - the need for bigger and better and bolder, and the challenge of doing so while making something that actually tastes good.

Yet, there’s another side of the spectrum. Beer isn’t necessarily about alcohol. And craft brewing - where year-round offerings can still run $10 a six pack - isn’t necessarily about getting drunk and running around the yard with your pants off.

Craft brewing is and always has been about making something delicious while staying true to the process. The “craft” in craft brewing isn’t an accident. This is a labor of love for most, and getting a good beer buzz happens to be a welcome side effect.

Enter the session beer.

Because craft brewers will take any opportunity to celebrate the craft of brewing, a group called the Session Beer Project has designated April 7th - this Saturday! - as Session Beer Day. There’s no parade, and most liquor stores or bottle shops probably don’t even KNOW about Session Beer Day, but it’s a thing, and it’s purpose is to celebrate those low alcohol, easily drinkable beers.

Session beers are, essentially, beers you can drink a lot of without stumbling home at night. Beer Advocate claims that…

a “session” referred to one of the two allowable drinking periods in England that were imposed on shell production workers during World War I. Typically the licensed sessions were 11am-3pm and 7pm-11pm, and apparently continued up until the Liquor Licensing Act 1988 was introduced. Workers would find a beer that they could adequately quaff within these restrictive 4-hour “sessions” that were laid down by the government without getting legless and return to work or not get arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

There’s a portion of the beer community that still sees session beers with this mindset - English milds and bitters, cask conditioned and easily drinkable - but definitions vary. Three things are for sure: there’s a low ABV, there’s high drinkability, and there’s no American light mass produced beers allowed.

In this way, “session” has become a code word for “miniature.” Case in point: Dangerous Man Brewing in Minneapolis brews an amazing Belgian Golden Strong Ale - one of my favorite beers of the past year, hands down - but they also brew a lighter version: the Belgian Table Beer. It’s not as full, but it’s just as delicious, and at 4.7% ABV you can enjoy classic Belgian flavors without forgetting where you live.

Nearly every strong style has a session counterpart. Brau Brothers has its session IPA: Hopsession Super Pale Ale, and if you’re in Minnesota or Iowa you can grab Founders’ All Day IPA. While you’re in Minnesota, grab a couple of great session bitters: Surly Bitter Brewer and 21st Amendment Bitter American. There are even breweries that make nothing but session beers, like Notch Brewing from Massachusetts. (Sorry. You can’t get them in the immediate area, yet.)

Regardless of the style or the availability, there’s bound to be something a little lighter that you’ll love. Session beers aren’t about drinking for drinking’s sake, but for enjoying and conversing over, accenting conversation and friends with the art and craft of brewing.

You’re okay to have a few extra. Just drag out that session a little longer.

Just Another Beer Tournament

foodfalls — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:19 -0400

If there’s one thing that clogs March’s arteries like a double andouille sausage chili and a six-pack of Budweiser, it’s the constant barrage of NCAA March Madness inspired tournaments and brackets. In like a lion, out like a bracket busted by a 13-seed, I guess.

Don’t get me wrong - I spend a lot of time over late March and early April pouring over brackets and tournaments and pairings of all kinds. Cory Myers put together a fun one recently, though he forgot Pickle Barrel so it might as well be a scratch all the way through. I even toyed with grabbing local beer celebrities and creating a 32-beer field that would be pared down to the utter best, except that it would take a lot of work and - not sure if you noticed - I already had a VERY GRUELLING SAN DIEGO VACATION PLANNED.

That trip wasn’t easy. You try writing two beer columns and attending a web conference with those distractions within earshot. I DARE YOU.

Though I didn’t end up doing my beer tournament, I’m here to let you know you’re not at a loss. Every brewery and beer publication in the world is currently putting the finishing touches on their beer tournament, from localized to national, themed to completely random. A few worth noting:

The Washington Post created a Beer Madness tournament in their Food section - one of the best Food sections in the country, in fact - focusing on local beers. This is the way to do it, and though I haven’t tried ANY of the beers in the tournament, this format appealed to me the most.
The Liquor Store & Wine Loft of Jackson Hole does a good job of creating an IPA-only bracket that features both national beers distributed in Jackson and local beers. So far, the local beers are even with nationals, though I’ll say now that if Grand Teton Brewing’s Lost Continent doesn’t win, then the Jackson Hole area doesn’t deserve to have its own breweries anymore.
Today - the Matt Lauer-led morning show that no one likes anymore - created their own Malt Madness, which pitted the top 16 seeds in the NCAA tournament against each other based on the nearest craft brewery and highest-rated brewery beer. I don’t fully understand how this bracket was set up, but one of my favorite small breweries - Dark Horse (creators of the pretty great Crooked Tree IPA, representing Michigan State) - made it to the finals, only to lose to a brewery called Funky Buddha. So. There you go.
SB Nation also created a tournament that paired breweries with real NCAA Tournament teams. Yet, like any Cool Internet Beer Critics, they call New Belgium overrated, discount anything from Minnesota and somehow claim Bell’s for both Michigan AND Michigan State without even MENTIONING Crow Peak for SDSU. I cannot complain with the final winner (Michigan State, despite the dual claim for Michigan) but I can dispute the fact that California won over San Diego State for Russian River alone, despite San Diego being beer crazy. And, hey, did I mention that I was just in San Diego? IT’S VERY WARM THERE.

All that being said, I’d like to present my personal eight-seed Beer Tournament. Since no one is a bigger fan boy than I am, the rules are simple: we’ll watch the eight most popular Schell’s and Schell’s-bottled beers battle in a fight to the death to crown the Schell’s Fanboy Beer of the Year. (Seeds based on number of reviews on BeerAdvocate, which is probably more scientific than most of the brackets you’ll find.)

Your brackets:

ROUND ONE

1. Schell’s Firebrick vs. 8. Schell’s Hopfenmalz I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Firebrick - as a Vienna Lager fan, I should like it, but something has always been off for me. In other news, Hopfenmalz is hoppy and wonderful, so this is a pretty easy battle. Winner: Hopfenmalz.

4. Schell’s Oktoberfest vs. 5. Grain Belt Nordeast In what seems like an easy matchup - craft vs. adjunct! - we’ll grab our second upset of the tournament, as Nordeast pushes ahead against Schell’s Oktoberfest, a beer that’s often too sweet for its own good. Winner: Nordeast.

2. Grain Belt Premium vs. 7. Schell’s Schmaltz Alt I love Schmaltz Alt. But I can’t let the perfect lawnmowing beer - and my favorite adjunct in the history of adjuncts - come away with a loss. Winner: Grain Belt.

3. Schell’s Pils vs. 6. Schell’s Dark Not sure I’ve ever had more than one Pils, and I certainly can’t remember what it tastes like. On the other hand, Schell’s does all it can to force Dark down our throats as one of the additions to the Schell’s Sampler six-pack. Familiarity wins, I guess. Winner: Schell’s Dark.

ROUND TWO

5. Grain Belt Nordeast vs. 8. Schell’s Hopfenmalz Unlike the next semi-final, which pits two so-so beers against each other, this pairing features two of my favorite beers - a dark cheap beer that defines summer versus the 150th anniversary beer that helped me realize my love affair with Schell’s. In the end, nostalgia beats accessibility, and Nordeast goes down at the hands of a beer few have ever heard of. Winner: Schell’s Hopfenmalz.

2. Grain Belt Premium vs. 6. Schell’s Dark Seriously. Schell’s Dark only won the last battle by nature of it’s constant presence in the six-pack samplers. Now, it’s fighting a battle it never had a chance of winning. Grain Belt is college, to me, and that essence wins over random six-pack inclusion. Winner: Grain Belt.

FINALS

2. Grain Belt Premium vs. 8. Schell’s Hopfenmalz The only thing that pushed Schell’s Hopfenmalz this far is that Schell’s Bock is only the 11th most reviewed beer on BeerAdvocate. Also: there’s no way Grain Belt could win this battle. Was there any doubt from the beginning who would win?

Your Schell’s Champion: Schell’s Hopfenmalz!

Touring San Diego: Craft Brew Capital of the US

foodfalls — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 08:02:16 -0400

The old man - white hair, white beard, XXL brewery t-shirt - stood surveying his three sample glasses, each filled with a different level of darkness. It took just an offhanded comment from my wife, Kerrie, and he was deep in conversation, telling us the full story of his craft brew life - his favorite breweries, his wife’s aversion to beer, his likes and dislikes. He was a mix of our own fathers, clearly - portly and jolly, kind and interested - and we saw it as a sign: this was the first brewery we would visit today, and we already felt at home.

Welcome to the world of San Diego’s craft beer scene.

San Diego, by nature of its weather (both beautiful and envious), its culture (laid back; the anti-Los Angeles) and its accessibility to people who love to be something outside of the norm, has quickly become the craft beer capital of the United States, featuring no fewer than 50 breweries within the limits of San Diego county. Our goal: visit six of the most renowned over a two day period. Our final tally: over 32 different beers tasted, four glasses purchased, two tasting glasses given to us for free, one taster glass stolen, and one growler - er, GRUMBLER - filled.

Day One

Brewing laws in San Diego allow breweries to open a small tasting room with limited offers to sell samples, pints or growlers of their own beer. This is notable because, for the most part, many smaller breweries depend on tasting rooms and local restaurant distribution for the bulk of their sales.

The laws aren’t without their peculiarities, however. Chairs are a no-no (they suggest more than a tasting, apparently) and a special permit must be attained to bring them in. Private parties are also not allowed, as a brewery license still requires the speakeasy-busting practice of outlawing any non-public consumption of alcohol. At one brewery we visited, the tasting room jockey mentioned that even their private employee Christmas party was, under the word of the law, illegal.

With this, it’s no surprise that some breweries - Lost Abbey/Port Brewing in San Marcos, for example - operated their tasting rooms as extensions of their brewery garage, opening up the big door and turning on a large fan to help escape what little humidity might filter in.

Lost Abbey, who you might recognize as a collaborator on New Belgium’s Heavenly Feijoa, specializes in Belgian-style deliciousness, while their sister company Port Brewing focuses on west coast American standards. The two tasting menus split the styles down the middle: to the left, you’ve got Lost Abbey’s quads, Belgian strong ales and dubbels; to the right, Port Brewing gives you IPAs and lagers. I loved nearly everything Lost Abbey gave me (especially the Lost and Found Abbey Ale and 10 Commandments Belgian Strong) and was less enthusiastic with the Port Brewing side of things.

It’s rare to find a brewery in the San Diego area that’s not located in an industrial park or commercial office strip mall, so it was fun to go up the road to Escondido’s Stone Brewing, the eighth largest craft brewer in the United States and the largest in San Diego. Stone has taken the “brewery as destination” concept to its furthest, with a full restaurant, gift shop, tasting room and constant brewery tour within its decidedly non-industrial building. They’re not done, either - plans are in the works for a Stone Brewery hotel with a tap handle in each room.

Stone is an institution in southern California, and their brewery tour (focused on newbies who still need help determining the difference between malts and hops) and their well-oiled machine of a gift shop and restaurant hint at a certain corporate-ness underneath their gargoyle-inspired design and attitude. Stone focuses on big beers with a lot of hops, and few of their beers are light enough to enjoy more than once, though the Cali-Belgique (a wonderful belgian-style IPA) was not just my favorite at the brewery but one of my favorites all week long.

An unexpected point down the road by our Stone bartender told us about Offbeat Brewing, a very small establishment in Escondido opened by two former Stone employees. We arrived on a Friday night, party in full swing. They had chairs. (Chairs!) They had just three beers on tap. (My favorite was the Caticorn IPA, though the Bear Arms Brown Ale cask with cherries was pretty great, too.) They had amazing spicy sushi from The Sushi Bus. They were fun - a real family affair - and they accepted two dorks from South Dakota with open arms, despite their insistance that we were hikers who had wandered in by mistake.

We left full and happy, ready for day two.

Day Two

The weirdness of the industrial park brewery can’t be overstated. Imagine you’re looking for a brewery - AleSmith Brewing, for example - and you keep turning down roads called “Innovation Lane” or “Commercial Avenue” and you assume you’re getting more and more lost with each business sign. There’s a carpet warehouse. There’s a screen door company. There’s a … brewery?

At AleSmith, we encountered our first beer tour bus. Because of the large number of breweries in a small area, several companies have taken on the unenviable task of carting large numbers of binge drinkers around to each of the breweries, only (I imagine) to deposit them back at their cars to dry off for a bit. These tours are loud and obnoxious to anyone who’s not on the tour, but I’m sure they’re pretty fun if you’re into loud noises and dudes with ball caps slamming beers before nearly missing their bus.

AleSmith - one of the oldest of San Diego’s breweries - showed what could be done with a tasting room. In stark contrast to the loose California feel of Lost Abbey, AleSmith’s tasting room was sleek and refined. Even their tap board was clean and precise.

Their beers matched this level of detail, as well, serving some of the best beers we had all week. I’m typically uninpressed by ESBs, but AleSmith’s Anvil ESB Ale was delicious - delicious enough that we decided to fill our commemorative grumbler (a 32 oz. growler that Kerrie found adorable) despite the chance that it would warm before we could drink it.

Down the road, we wandered into Societe Brewing (another suggestion from yesterday’s Stone bartender). Societe (Chalice glasses above), highly regarded as one of the best new breweries in the area, was opened just 18 months ago by two former Russian River brewers. Our bartender jokingly referred to employees within San Diego’s brewing industry as a bunch of hoppers, with everyone moving between breweries to create a very tight, very friendly and very competent batch of breweries.

(He also didn’t say “hoppers.” He used much stronger language. We got the point.)

We missed the tour, but could see the entire brewery from our seat at the bar. In one room, barrels upon barrels of an upcoming sour beer taunted us, unaccessible and unfinished, this batch of beer signified the risk a small brewery takes when opening: a lot of work and money went into those barrels, and we still don’t know if it’s going to be any good. We can’t complain about missing out - the brewers themselves haven’t been able to taste the finished product yet. We “settled” instead for their wonderful Belgian strong ale, The Madam.

One last brewery (and one last industrial park) before we headed into San Diego proper brought us to Ballast Point, one of the region’s most popular craft beers and one of the most adventurous. By this point, we had burned out our tongues on barleywines and imperial stouts and double IPAs and, seriously, we were ready to call it a day.

Still, Ballast Point delivered with some of the beers we tasted: their Sextant oatmeal stout was smooth and rich and delicious, and Indra Kunindra - a foreign stout brewed with cumin, curry and other Indian spices - was amazing. Not my favorite beer, but one of them, and certainly something I’d remember for a long time.

The tasting room, which looks more like a bar (despite having no chairs) was filled with early St. Patrick’s Day revelers, creating a frat party atmosphere that we couldn’t handle. Given their selections - beers with hot chiles, beers called “B00b Check,” the only green beers we saw all week - they gladly appeal to that audience, to the point that we had a hard time holding on to our enthusiasm.

It was with this we realized our place in southern California - somewhere in between the Lost Abbey crew and the refinement of AleSmith, where beers can be nearly perfect and the people can be completely wonderful. We visited a lot of breweries, restaurants, bars and hotels over our week in San Diego, and each stop showed a new facet to the San Diego beer scene.

You can be a loud frat kid in San Diego. You can go for bold and loud in San Diego. You can lay back and be cool in San Diego. Or, like our friends at Offbeat Brewing, you can just do what you love and invite all of your friends along for the ride in San Diego. With an ecosystem as complex as this, it’s no wonder there’s so much beer to go around.

New Belgium Imperial entry good, disappointing

foodfalls — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 08:02:00 -0400

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

foodfalls — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 11:32:44 -0500

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

foodfalls — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:13:22 -0500

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

foodfalls — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:02:01 -0500

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

foodfalls — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 08:02:05 -0500

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

foodfalls — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 07:00:58 -0500

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

foodfalls — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 08:01:15 -0500

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

foodfalls — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 06:01:31 -0500

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

foodfalls — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 06:01:28 -0500

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

foodfalls — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 06:01:22 -0500

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.)