ALEHEADS

A FRESH BEER INFRACTION

April 25, 2013

Last night I walked into the local bottleshop on my way home from work to check out a Pittsburgh Beer Week promotion– discounted pints of a certain IPA that comes out at every year at Christmas. Not sure I agree with hanging on to a keg of this particular beer until this late in the year, but I sort of understand it. Some (misguided) people often like age this beer for up to a year, and it seems to hold up reasonably well compared to most other beers in the style.

It tasted pretty good, and I perused the shelves looking for anything new. Lo and behold, they had tallboys of Oskar Blues G’Knight– a beer that holds a special place in my heart. It was a true gateway beer for me, back when it was called Gordon, that helped me understand what a hoppy beer could be. For me, a fresh, piney, danktastic can of G’Knight is about as good as American craft beer gets. But I almost never drink it. I can’t find it fresh.

Oskar Blues has a large presence in Pennsylvania. Most bottleshops have conspicuous (usually unrefrigerated) OB displays packed with sweet looking cans of Dale’s Pale Ale, Old Chub, and the like. The flagship Dale’s does a brisk business and you can generally find new cans of it fairly easily. But G’Knight, whether it’s the elevated ABV, the new name, or some other factor, just doesn’t sell as well. So it tends to sit on the shelves.

The reason I know this is because OB launched G’Knight in 16 oz cans during GABF week. Since then, I’ve kept an eye out for the new format, because new format = fresh beer. I drank some G’Knight tallboys in New York last December for a memorial gathering for Magnus Skullsplitter, and it tasted great. But this is the first time I’ve seen it displayed at my local bottleshop.

So I ask they guy working behind the counter about them– are they new? I’ve had my eye out for them. He replied: “We’ve had them in the back for awhile now. We had some of the regular cans to get rid of, and if we put the new ones out it would highlight the difference. So once the old ones were gone, we brought them out. They’re not that new.”

Ugh. Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments | Ale Factories | Tagged: Fresh Beer, IPA, Oskar Blues | Permalink
Posted by Slouch Sixpack

RELEASE THE FIRKINS – REAL ALE FESTIVAL RECAP

April 23, 2013

I’m usually not a big “Beer Fest” guy. While the chance to taste rare beers and rub elbows with brewery personnel always sound enticing, in practice the typical Beer Fest experience often doesn’t live up to the hype, for reasons we’ve laid out before. Given the choice, I’ll take a bottle-sharing session and conversation with good friends, or a trip to my favorite pub, over the bustle and stress of the typical festival. However, there was nowhere in the beer-consuming universe I would rather have been on Saturday than Release the Firkins, Pittsburgh’s first cask ale festival that kicked off the city’s second annual beer week.

THE BEER

The beer was uniformly excellent. One strength of the cask festival concept is that even familiar beers become new experiences when served from a firkin in the proper manner. I’ve had Bell’s Two Hearted Ale hundreds of times, perhaps thousands; on Saturday I got to taste as it does essentially straight from the fermenter. Another advantage compared to kegs is that breweries can use the vessels as randalls, dry-hopping or adding other ingredients right in the cask, making each firkin a potential one-off. Sure, you’ve had Founder’s Centennial, but the classic IPA served fresh off a double-dry hop is a different animal altogether. You’ve had Weyerbacher Merry Monks Trippel, but what about “Mojito-style” served on lime and mint? Some of the experimentation worked better than others, but it was all interesting and made every tap worth trying.

For me, unsurprisingly, the hoppy beers were the star of the show. I’ve stated my love for Fat Head’s Head Hunter at length, but as the brewery continues an expansion process, it can be difficult to find at the height of freshness around town. The Simcoe double-dry-hopped version at RtF was a perfect distillation of the complexity of this fruity, piney hop- with just a touch of that distinctive cat pee zest people love or hate. I love it, and along with many others returned multiple times to the busy Fat Head’s tap.

If hops aren’t your thing, there were options to suit every taste. The first cask upon entering the festival hall was New Holland’s Dragon’s Milk, which was extremely popular. I heard multiple festival-goers state they’d “never tried anything like it”. I love to witness craft beer conversions, and the New Holland table was a force for evangelism on Saturday. Other highlights from the darker side of the malty spectrum included Flying Dog’s Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout dry-hopped with CTZ and East End’s Chocolate Covered Cherry Stout. Smoked beer lovers had Fat Head’s Up in Smoke, and Pittsburgh’s own Arsenal brought a Centennial Hopped Cider that was absolutely delicious, and their Picket Bone Dry Cider that served as a nice palate-cleanser to the barrage of flavorful cask ales.
Read the rest of this entry »

5 Comments | Beer Culture, Beer Festivals, Beer Industry | Tagged: Cask ale, Firkin, Highmark Stadium, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week, Release the Firkins | Permalink
Posted by Slouch Sixpack

A-B OFFERS UP NEW BOWTIE CAN DESIGN TO CRAFT BREWERS

April 19, 2013

ST. LOUIS, April 19, 2013 /BSNewswire/ – This spring Budweiser will introduce a striking and original new beer can — a bowtie-shaped aluminum can that mirrors Budweiser’s iconic bowtie logo; and following the lead from a recent announcement by Sam Adams, Anheuser Busch will allow the can to be used by other breweries.

Beer lovers can see for themselves the new bowtie-shaped can when it becomes available in a special 8-pack on store shelves nationwide beginning May 6.

“This can is incomparable, like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” said Pat McGauley, vice president of innovation for Anheuser-Busch. “The world’s most iconic beer brand deserves the world’s most unique and innovative can. I think we have it here.”

An excited McGauley added: “I mean, if you want to be technical it’s a lot like other cans you’ve seen before, in that it is an aluminum package for beer. But this one is shaped like a bowtie, which focus groups indicate you haven’t seen, or perhaps even thought about.”

The proprietary can, in development since 2010, reportedly cost the brewing giant more than the operating revenue for the nation’s top ten craft breweries combined. It will be available only in the United States in an 8-pack and will not replace the traditional Budweiser can.

To make the new can possible, Anheuser-Busch engineers needed to solve a number of technical challenges, and major equipment investments were required at Budweiser’s can-making facility in Newburgh, N.Y. Significant capital investments also were required to upgrade packaging lines at the Budweiser breweries in Los Angeles and Williamsburg, Va., the first breweries with capability to package this unique can innovation. Equipment used to manufacture the Stealth Bomber was also transported from an Air Force base in Nevada to enable the production of this very special can.

Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City and 90 miles south of Albany, is where proprietary equipment is located that shapes the can. Creating the can requires a careful 98-step process — 53 steps to form the bottom half of the can, with an additional 45 steps to form the top portion.

The Anheuser-Busch Global Innovation Group has been investigating potential can innovations for several years, often ordering lunch to be delivered to the office, and many afternoons working past 4 PM.

“We explored various shapes that would be distinguishable in the marketplace, but also viable from an engineering standpoint. Boomerangs, obelisks, several versions of rhombi… we even made a prototype shaped like Spuds MacKenzie.” McGauley said. “Aluminum can be stretched only about 10 percent without fracturing, which requires that the angles of the bowtie be very precise.” Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | WTF | Tagged: Anheuser-Busch, Bowtie Can | Permalink
Posted by Slouch Sixpack

THE (LATEST) TROUBLE WITH BEER FESTIVALS

April 11, 2013

In short, it’s a matter of beer segregation, or more accurately, division of the festival attendees into multiple groups: “the masses” and “the VIPs.”

This is something I am noticing more and more often as I visit the websites of beer festivals, especially new festival events. And with the exploding national consciousness of craft beer drinkers, it makes sense that a tiered system would begin to emerge. On one hand, you’ve got the “OGs” of the craft beer world, who have played their part in supporting small, local breweries and turning them into today’s regional players. And on the other hand, you’ve got brand new converts to the fold. There’s going to be some separation–what’s important is how that separation is achieved, particularly from a monetary standpoint.

As such, my beef is not with beer festivals having a separate and more expensive “VIP” ticket that attendees can buy. That’s not it at all. My concern is the question of what kind of content differentiates the VIP tickets from general admission. And my argument is this: None of the beers at a festival should be off-limits to buyers of the basic tickets. It is entirely possible to build a “VIP experience” into your festival that doesn’t involve access to brews that no one else will get a chance to sample. Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments | Beer Festivals | Tagged: beer festivals | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.

RELEASE THE FIRKINS!

April 10, 2013

“We’re doing this the right way.”

Hart Johnson, official Piper’s Pub bartender, Piper’s unofficial beer coordinator, and Secretary for Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week 2013, lays out his plans for the city’s first Real Ale Festival: “We’re not rolling the firkins down the hill that day and hoping for the best. Everything will be properly vented and served the way it’s supposed to be.”

The American craft beer scene often resembles The Blob- enveloping and co-opting brewing ingredients, styles, and techniques from all over the world. If it works and tastes good, someone will use it, from New Zealand hops to yeast gathered from a bottle of Rochefort 10. But cask ale served in the British tradition has been relatively slow to catch on at festivals and beer bars in the states. Why? To paraphrase Johnson, it’s a pain in the ass.

Compared to kegs, serving cask ales is a messy and time-consuming proposition. During conditioning, they must be kept be kept at 50-60 degrees and ideally served below 55. They must be handled with care and allowed to sit undisturbed for at least a day to allow the yeast to drop and form a layer of sediment. As any homebrewer knows, carbonating and conditioning in the bottle is an inexact science, and it is the same with cask ales. The level of carbonation in each firkin will vary, and brewers opt to add sufficient amounts of priming sugar to make sure the cask is carbonated enough- after all, over carbonation can be fixed by slowly venting the gas, but there is no cure for a firkin without enough fizz.

Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Beer Culture, Beer Festivals | Tagged: Beer, Cask ale, Highmark Stadium, Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week, Real Ale | Permalink
Posted by Slouch Sixpack

LADY JAY FINDS BEER IN ANOTHER WAREHOUSE

April 9, 2013

Halfway into my recent trip to London, I was feeling somewhat disconcerted by my failure to ferret out a variety of beer experiences. Sure, I’d wandered down to the pub for a pint and a pie, and althought there was plenty of local color (the man sitting next to me was singing “Got to Pick a Pocket or Two” and no, I am not making that up), the pint in question was a pretty forgettable. I’d also had a plate of fish and chips and a London Pride in a cowboy-themed restaurant. Sure. Why not? Still, I had yet to find a really transformative experience.

I wandered the neighborhood, beer radar pinging away. At last, I saw it–a small chalkboard advertising London-brewed craft beer. I inquired within the establishment, and was rewarded with a porter from The Kernel. And it was probably the best porter I have ever had–rich, smooth, and wonderfully warming against the damp, chilly London spring. After further research, I discovered that The Kernel brewery was open for tastings every Saturday, which happened to be the next day. It was ON. Read the rest of this entry »

6 Comments | Ale Factories, Travelogues | Tagged: London, Railroads, The Kernel | Permalink
Posted by Lady Jay

ALEHEADS

A FRESH BEER INFRACTION

RELEASE THE FIRKINS – REAL ALE FESTIVAL RECAP

THE BEER

A-B OFFERS UP NEW BOWTIE CAN DESIGN TO CRAFT BREWERS

THE (LATEST) TROUBLE WITH BEER FESTIVALS

RELEASE THE FIRKINS!

LADY JAY FINDS BEER IN ANOTHER WAREHOUSE

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