The people have spoken, and with around 80% of the vote, Aleheads will officially be calling all 16-ounce cans of beer “tallboys”. Thanks to all of our voters for helping to put an end to our long, national nightmare.
Well now we’ve got an even MORE important question for Alehead Nation. We’ve all purchased our share of beautiful, shapely, 750ml bottles of craft ale. But, as far as we can tell, there simply isn’t a great nickname for these massive vessels. 22-ounce bottles have been dubbed “bombers” since time immemorial, but what about the even larger 750? I’ve listed a few suggestions (*cough cough* MAGNUS), but please feel free to add your own suggestion in the comments section below!
The Aleheads airwaves have been abuzz with the revelation that Oskar Blues will soon be adding 16-ounce cans to their product line. I, for one, can’t WAIT to shotgun a four-pack of Ten FIDY and then lie down on the ground and take a long, drool-filled nap. Alas, the Aleheads always find someone to argue about even the most exciting beer news. In this case, our disagreement relates to terminology. Kid Carboy assures us that 16-ounce cans should only be referred to as “pounders”. Slouch Sixpack believes that “tallboy” is the correct nomenclature. The interwebs, which generally determines such debates in a matter of milliseconds seems strangely ambiguous as to the proper term. So I’m relying on Alehead Nation to solve this conundrum for us.
What say you, drinkers of larger-than-average craft cans? What do you call your 16-ouncer?
Every brewery needs a big round guy with a mustache and a bowler hat, I always say.
I admire Jake Hafner and Mike Bianco, the founder and assistant brewer, respectively, of St. Louis’ brand new The Civil Life Brewing Company. They’re two guys who, along with head brewer Dylan Mosley, simply know what it is they want from their new venture, and that’s a place to take a load off, relax, and drink a beer.
Scratch that. What I meant to say was a place to take a load off, relax, and drink many beers.
Last month, I paid Civil Life a visit as part of my St. Louis craft beer road trip, and took some time to sit down with Hafner and Bianco, who made time amid a whirl of activity preparing for the place’s soft opening later in the evening. By complete chance, I managed to arrive on the exact day of two new brewery soft openings, which was really an incredible coincidence. We sat and chatted, drinking English-inspired session brews straight from the fermenter.* It don’t get no fresher. What follows is that conversation on the opening of Civil Life, its brews and its plans for the future.
*An ESB and a ryle pale ale. Tasting notes in the roadtrip post.
Kid Carboy Jr.:Is the session quality of your brews really the key point that you see as differentiating yourself from some of the other new breweries like 4-Hands or Perennial? Are you going to be “the session brewery?”
Jake Hafner: Most of the things we’re concentrating on in our first go at it are in that 4-6 percent alcohol range. We’re not really looking to go above that right now. It wasn’t something we really tried to make into a philosophy though; these are just the beers that we like to drink. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this year, I told you about a financial analyst’s pipe dream involving the sale of immovable object, SABMiller, to irresistible force, AB InBev. Well, it now appears as if SABMiller isn’t quite is immovable as we might have thought. The speculation of a few Credit Suisse analysts has gone from a “theoretical” whisper to a “might-actually-happen” full-throated roar.
The $80 billion deal would be the biggest cash deal…well…ever. It would involve the largest corporation in a highly profitable industry purchasing the second largest corporation in said industry and gaining entry into new markets while controlling the lion’s share of production of an immensely popular commodity. It would create an absolute behemoth…an impossibly wealthy, impossibly influential, impossibly massive beer empire that could essentially do whatever it wants. So am I worried? Read the rest of this entry »
Man am I addicted to these collaboration brews. Whether they’re a mix of styles, mix of cultures, or just a friendly meeting of brewers to create something special, anytime I see a collaboration beer on the shelves it’s going right into my basket. I recently reviewed a beer from De Proef and Port Brewing that took all the great flavors of a West Coast IPA and mixed them in with a distinctly Belgian flare. Beerford and Slouch recently reviewed a White IPA collaboration from domestic brewers Deschutes and Boulevard that more or less created a style out of thin air, combining the contrasting flavors of a Witbier and an IPA. Sometimes odd, sometimes complementary, collaborations are a fantastic exercise in brewing that isn’t going away anytime soon. So, now that I’ve bored even myself with that introduction it’s time to check out another collaboration brew, this time around from Sierra Nevada and Dogfish Head. Yes, I realize the only collaboration I’ve seen recently from Dogfish is mixing disappointment with regret, but I figure the good folks at Sierra can smack some sense into them. Time to dig into the Life and Limb Read the rest of this entry »
Many beers ago in college, when the Internet was young and nubile, I frequented the movie review site Aint It Cool News. At that point AICN was to film what Aleheads is to craft beer now- an independent fan site run by a motley crew of non-experts and outsiders, fueled by an insatiable enthusiasm for debating their favorite topic and led by the vision of an uber-geek. I enjoyed reading the reviews by the site’s founder, Harry Knowles, not because I always agreed with his recommendations (the kudos due for compelling me to see The Big Lebowski opening weekend when everybody thought it was just a movie about bowling are more than tempered by his culpability in my sitting through What Dreams May Come in an empty New Hampshire cinema) but for the sense of personality he imbued into his posts. Read the rest of this entry »
I run into some craft brewers who say, ‘We don’t get respect from the local press.’ And, well, could that be because you’re dressed like a small child? And you’ve been trying to disabuse people of the idea that you’re little kids playing with fun toys?
-Garrett Oliver, Brooklyn Brewery
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The Aleheads have been discussing Garrett Oliver a bit since his recent publicity tour in support of the Oxford Companion to Beer. First of all, kudos to Oliver for completing this comprehensive tome that will likely serve as THE de facto reference guide for those interested in the fermented arts. For those that don’t know the man, besides being the brewmaster at the widely-respected Brooklyn Brewery, he has also become one of the faces of the craft beer revolution in the US. The nattily dressed, eloquent, and outspoken Oliver is a wonderful spokesman for beer and has often been called (by himself and others) one of the “world’s foremost beer experts”. Read the rest of this entry »
Aleheads.com is barely 20 months old. If it were a child, it would be about a year away from potty-training and still unable to form a truly coherent sentence.*
*Basically, it would be the Commander.
And yet, during its short, absurd tenure, Aleheads.com has had quite a profound effect on yours truly. It’s allowed me to share my thoughts on beer with the literally zeroes of people that want to read them. It’s given me an outlet to hone my writing chops to the point that if my college professors read my prose today they might say “Wow! You’re slightly less illiterate than I thought!” And it has given me the opportunity to forge relationships with some of the worst monsters in human history like the Czar and Kid Carboy. But the most profound personal change that has occurred thanks to my participation in this endeavor has been a sweeping change in my relationship to beer. Read the rest of this entry »
This is the face I make when they're out of a beer I want
We all have our little idiosyncrasies that some might find annoying and others find charming. Okay, I guess everyone finds them annoying. Point is, there’s a million things that each and every one of us does on a regular basis that probably drive those around us completely nuts. Apparently being an Alehead makes you one of the most annoying people that any of your non-Alehead friends will encounter during the course of a day. Did you know that no one cares that you scored a sweet trade and got to try the #3 rated Russian Imperial Stout? I was shocked too, but seriously, no one cares. Although we’re an incredibly annoying bunch, our most annoying trait probably lies in the fact that we find those around us even more annoying than we are. Look no further than when you order a beer and everything doesn’t go exactly as you planned. Have you ever been questioned on your choice? Served the wrong glassware? Maybe you asked a simple question about the hopiness of a Pale Ale and were told “It’s not real hoppy like Heineken, yuck”. As a discerning Alehead, you know your beer and expect those serving you to have at least a working knowledge of what their stubby little fingers are setting in front of you. We know this isn’t always the case. Read the rest of this entry »
In the first day of my two-day St. Louis beer sojourn I focused mostly on the brand new breweries having soft openings or ones that are still in the planning stages, places like The Civil Life Brewing, 4 Hands Brewing and Perennial Brewing. On the second day of the trip, I hit a few more newcomers, and also the craft brewery that made things possible for St. Louis to be entering the golden age that it is today.
And it is a “golden age”–as a craft beer fan and especially as a roadtripper, there’s no better time to be visiting or living in St. Louis than right now. It’s home to what will soon seem to be a very well balanced craft beer scene, with some places making excellent interpretations of traditional beers and session brews, and others pushing the envelope with more extreme offerings. So let’s pick up where I left off.
Brew Trip, Day II
Urban Chestnut Brewing Company
There’s no better place to start when explaining St. Louis as a craft beer city embracing both tradition and experimentation. In fact, if you’re going to St. Louis, there may be no better place, period, to start than at Urban Chestnut, who I’m not afraid to crown as “the city’s best brewery”…for now, anyway. Read the rest of this entry »
A few weeks ago I reviewed the White IPA, an interesting collaboration beer that was an attempt to meld Deschutes Brewery’s hop mastery with Boulevard Brewing’s wheat beer prowess to create a whole new beer style. I also recently noted in our coverage of the BrewDog Ghost Deer release that it seems the increasingly bitter-centric American palate is luring traditional European brewers to tweak classic offerings with experimental hop additions, as in the case of the Duvel Triple Hop. Those two stories came together today as the international distribution company Total Beverage Solution announced the upcoming release of White Hoplosion, a heavily-hopped wheat beer that is a collaboration project between the Faculty of Brewing at the Technical University of Munich and Weihenstephan, the world’s oldest existing brewery and makers of a Hefeweisse that is widely considered to be the finest wheat beer in the world. The last time these guys got together also involved Samuel Adams Brewing with the creation of Infinium, a critically-panned Champagne-like beer. Little is known of this new offering except it will feature fruity flavors balanced by 32 IBU’s of noble Bavarian hop notes, clocking in at 5.3% ABV.
On the face of it, this is a very exciting announcement. Anytime one of the world’s greatest breweries release a new creation, beer geeks and Aleheads around the world will get excited- and don’t get me wrong, the only thing I like more than explosions are hops. But this seems like a very strange move on the part of Weihenstephan as a brand… their logo is one of the most classic and instantly-recognizable symbols of excellence in the world of beer, but the integration of an aggressive over-the-top American craft beer moniker like “White Hoplosion” just doesn’t work. The German graphic designers in charge of this one must have needed a few beers to even work up the nerve to start desecrating that famous crest. They did a nice enough job on the label, but there isn’t much “explosive” about it. The whole thing reeks not of desperation, but maybe an ill-considered attempt to get in on an uber-hopped craft beer revolution, aspects of which whoever green-lighted this operation doesn’t completely understand?
Far be it from me to tell Weihenstephan and a bunch of German brewing scientists anything about making and selling beer, but the hop flavors becoming so popular are the floral, citric, piney notes found in the ubiquitous varieties of west coast IPAs, rather than the more subtle characteristics imparted by European noble hop varietals with lower concentrations of alpha acids. Duvel used Saaz and Styrian Golding for the Triple Hop, but also Amarillo (and also managed to impart what the beer was in the name without besmirching their classic brand). Either way, I can’t wait to track the progress of this interesting release, but if the Weihenstephan Hopslosion hits US markets with a different moniker, then you heard it (suggested) here first.
Are you excited by this announcement? What do you think of the name?
For the third year in a row (if you count their 2009 tie with Portland), Asheville, NC was named the Examiner’s Beer City USA. For a small city of just over 80,000 people, this is an impressive feat to say the least. I decided it was high time I paid another visit to the beautiful mountain town to see why the Examiner’s readers consider it such a mecca for Aleheads. Fortunately, I only live about five hours from Western North Carolina, so the McHops clan decided to make Asheville our destination for a much-needed family vacation.
Let me add a caveat before you continue reading. If you’re expecting one of Kid Carboy’s beer travelogs involving seedy motel rooms, extensive interviews with brewers, and carefully planned days of bar-hopping and beer sampling, you’ll be disappointed by this post. Unlike the Kid, my beer trips are no longer solo endeavors. On my jaunt to Asheville, a pregnant Wifey and two-year-old Baby McHops joined me. While the long-suffering Wifey gave me leave to sample much of Asheville’s sudsy goodness, there’s only so much beer “research” you can do as a family man on vacation. More importantly, I’m an old man and beer makes me sleepy. A few beers at lunch and you can count me in for an afternoon nap right alongside Baby McHops. Read the rest of this entry »
Craft beer brothers! I’ve returned from Mordor, and with good news! Hopes springs eternal in the seat of ultimate darkness. By which I mean—St. Louis, home of the Evil Empire, has become a really great town for craft beer.
I took a two-day trip to St. Louie last week, planning what was essentially a miniaturized version of my previous beer trips, like my four-day quest into Michigan this spring. This time, I put my already fearsome degree of planning into serious overdrive mode, seeking out a number of audiences with brewery owners and brewers ahead of time. Using the advice and contacts of St. Louis Post Dispatch beer writer Evan Benn, author of the awesome St. Louis beer blog Hip Hops, I got in contact with the owners of three brand new breweries and arranged to meet them on the first day. Here is the itinerary of my two-day trip, complete with tasting notes and photos. That’s what you get at Aleheads–the full service.
As American as Belgian Waffles and Brazilian Jiujitsu
Nice as it was to have a full dose of Sunday football yesterday after a summer of uncertainty, the inevitable specter of the 10th anniversary of 9-11 hung over the proceedings. The NFL conducted their remembrance ceremonies with a deft touch indicative of their standing as one of the greatest entertainment companies the world has ever seen: coordinated video introductions broadcast at every stadium across the country, stirring renditions of Taps from Shanksville PA, Arlington National Cemetary, and Hoboken NJ across the Hudson from Ground Zero, and field-sized flags born aloft by the players and coaches of our cherished teams. Considering the tricky waters in which they were treading, there was very little done by the NFL’s promotional team that could be considered insensitive or exploitative of the fact that the start of their season (after coming within inches of a lockout this summer) coincided with the anniversary of one of the greatest tragedies in American history. After all, the NFL is now our true national pastime, a singularly American institution, and as such will be irrevocably culturally linked with signature events of our time such as September 11th.
NFL advertisers were likewise placed in the difficult position of creating pieces of marketing propaganda that enhanced their brand without offending anyone whose lives were forever changed on that day. State Farm chose to go against the expectantly somber grain with a troupe of school children serenading NYFD Engine 205 with an upbeat rendition of Jay-Z’s New York State of Mind. But it wouldn’t be football without beer commercials, specifically those produced for the Budweiser brand by its parent corporation AB-InBev. Despite the Alehead-pleasing headlines coming late last week that Bud is one of “8 Beers Americans No Longer Drink” AB still sold 18 MILLION BARRELS of the stuff in 2010, and are looking for anything they can do to revert the the 30 percent decrease in sales the brand has suffered since 2006. Thus, airing multiple ads during NFL weekends is just par for the course. But how to frame this sales pitch? Certainly the standard bikini bimbo hi-jinks and talking animals were inappropriate for such a historic day. What A-B properties could they feature that were beyond reproach?
After a great deal of experimentation (in fact, and odd and obsessive amount of experimentation), Bangor Daily News columnist Kathryn Olmstead has scientifically proven that slugs prefer Budweiser to any other form of beer (other than all the ones she didn’t test). Her results are based on a number of blind taste tests in various plots in her home garden. Read the rest of this entry »
With a deep sense of frustration and disappointment I read Brewdog’s announcement this week of the release of Ghost Deer, their new Blonde Ale. Clocking in at a robust 28% ABV, Ghost Deer is the world’s strongest fermented beer. While not giving away their tricks, founders James Watts and Martin Dickie hint at a procedure involving “a variety of yeast strains [used] during the elephantine process and drip fed the fermented masterpiece exotic sugars to ensure the yeast lived long enough to continue the fermentation.” Brewdog have long been pioneers in the extreme beer space with such offerings as Tactical Nuclear Penguin, Sink the Bismarck, and The End of History (the last famously packaged in the carcasses of small dead animals). I suppose this is a good time to mention that Ghost Deer will only be served from a solitary tap that will rotate between Brewdog’s brewpubs and dispenses the potent brew from the mouth of a stuffed deer head.
In trademark Brewdog-style the promotional video for the release takes cheap potshots at Brewdog foes Schorschbräu and Jim Koch, founder of Sam Adams who held the previous “naturally fermented” title with their line of Utopia beers. The video is brash, disrespectful, and totally antithetical to the sense of camaraderie, brotherhood, and collaboration found in today’s craft beer movement; I, for one, am sick of it.
Here in America, the evolution of craft beer is moving at breakneck speed. With over 1700 breweries and 600 more in planning, there’s never been a time when differentiation between these new operations was so vital. Yet we continue to see new breweries roll out new IPAs, Brown Ales, and the like. Where is our sense of adventure? Where is our beacon of brewing absurdity?
We are the country of Alehead extremophiles that has Marty Cornel whipped into such a lather. Our hops addiction is leading an international shift in beer taste, causing traditional brewers like Duvel to modify classics catering to our lupuline longings. Each day new experimental beers are introduced to the US market that blur and challenge traditional concepts of beer styles; yet when it comes to crowning the “World’s Most Radical Brewery” there is really only one contender- it’s Brewdog. If brewing extreme beers was a sport, Brewdog would be Michael Jordan in his prime, playing in the WNBA. Read the rest of this entry »
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With [hops] the vines that round the thatch-eves run – John Keats
BEERFORD MCBREWIN’
With the summer coming to a close (the start of college football season = the end of summer in Beerford’s world), it’s time to get the ol’ conundrum up off the couch, get him showered off, and put him back to work. And what better way to celebrate the end of summer (other than watching college football) than to review our favorite summer seasonals? There isn’t any particular specific category encompassing summer seasonals, but in my experience they tend to generally be light (not ‘lite’) ales with an acidic or drying finish and often a slightly citrusy hop presence. Of course at least half the summer beers out there are nowhere near my description, which is part of what makes this conundrum fun. And so, to welcome you all back to Beerford’s Conundra, I’m asking the Aleheads to tell us what was your favorite summer seasonal from 2011?
Extra credit can be earned by also telling us about your least favorite (or just weirdest) summer seasonal. Read the rest of this entry »
This beer is a good example of the weird sort of stuff that I end up picking up when I go on one of my patented beer trips.* When I was spending four days drinking my way through Michigan in the spring, I stopped as I typically do at a beer store or two to pick up some random brews that I’ve never seen before. The thing to understand here is that there’s no time to look up brewery reputations or read reviews. These are singles racks, so I simply grab whatever looks interesting. It isn’t until right at this moment that I’m learning that this brew that I picked up in Grand Rapids is actually apparently from Akron, Ohio.
*I’m going on another, miniature beer trip to St. Louis on Thursday and Friday of this week. You WILL be jealous of the exploits I have planned. Trust me on this. Tune in frequently in the future for the full skinny.
Who knew? But this is Thirsty Dog Hoppus Maximus. It’s marketed as a hoppy American amber ale, and judging from previous tastings I’ve had of their Old Leghumper porter and Siberian Night imperial stout, I’m in fairly safe hands. Read the rest of this entry »
The people have spoken, and with around 80% of the vote, Aleheads will officially be calling all 16-ounce cans of beer “tallboys”. Thanks to all of our voters for helping to put an end to our long, national nightmare.
Posted by Barley McHops 
