For reasons discussed in previous posts, I haven’t been quite as prolific with my Tasting Note writing as I once was. Still, when a special beer dances its way across my palate, I’m not about to let the experience go unreported. Last night, I was finally able to sample the nigh-mythical Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout. It was very good. Not life-changing. Not awe-inspiring. But certainly worthy of a Tasting Note… Read the rest of this entry »
FOUNDERS CBS
October 27, 2011
5 Comments | 
Tasting Notes | Tagged: 3.5 Hops, Canadian Breakfast Stout, CBS, Founders, Imperial Stout, J. Clyde | 
Permalink
Posted by Barley McHops
11.5% ABV MEXICAN CHOCOLATE STOUT = PERENNIAL ARTISAN ALES
October 25, 2011
Yeah, you read that right. Over eleven percent. Mexican chocolate. Imperial stout. That’s what St. Louis’ new Perennial Artisan Ales is making, or to be more precise, that’s one thing they’re making. In reality, Perennial shows every sign of being a thriving new craft brewer that will push the boundaries of the nascent St. Louis craft beer scene. Along with their contemporaries, 4-Hands Brewing, Perennial looks to encapsulate the “extreme” side of the craft beer game in a city that until recently, had very little beer that was truly “out there.”
I was able to visit Perennial on my St. Louis Brewery roadtrip a while back, and I even had the extreme good fortune to arrive on the day of the brewery’s soft opening. I had a chance to take in the place as it opened to local beer geeks and writers for the first time, as well as interview its co-founder and brewmaster, the uber-friendly and engaging Phil Wymore. In all honesty, it was probably the best place I stopped during my two days in St. Louis–needless to say, I was very impressed. Read the rest of this entry »
5 Comments | Ale Factories, Interviews, Travelogues | Tagged: abraxas mexican chocolate stout, hommel bier, perennial artisan ales, phil wymore, st. louis beer, st. louis breweries | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
IN DEFENSE OF BLACK KÖLSCH
October 24, 2011
Houston’s St. Arnold Brewing Company received some criticism last week with the release of Santo, their newest year-round beer described by St. Arnold founder and brewmaster Brock Wagner as a “Black Kölsch”. Looking to capitalize on a dearth of craft offerings to pair with the region’s Tex-Mex cuisine, Santo was in development for five years and underwent numerous recipe tweaks and even a dumping of the 11,000 gallon initial batch. The final product features pale 2-row, pils, Munich, and black malt with Hallertauer Hersbrucker hops, fermented with a Kölsch yeast. Despite the long road getting product to market, Wagner is proud of his newest beer, noting: “While we were a little embarrassed about announcing that we decided to dump our first batch, we are happy with the decision, especially given the beer that we are ready to release now. Our brewing team has been thoroughly enjoying this new version. We haven’t waited for the release date to tap some for ourselves.” Read the rest of this entry »
10 Comments | Ale Factories, Beer Culture, Brews in the News | Tagged: Black IPA, Black Kölsch, Kölsch, St Arnold Brewing Co, Stephen Beaumont, Venky Al | Permalink
Posted by Slouch Sixpack
THE BEST BEER LABELS
October 19, 2011
How an Alehead sees a map of America...
The craft brewing proliferation over the past few decades has increased the number of beers on package store shelves exponentially. With greater variety comes a greater need to differentiate your product. You can certainly do that by making better beer than your competition. Or by pushing the envelope with extreme beers. Or by developing new, unique styles. But one of the easiest ways to truly set your product apart from others is through the tried and true method of good marketing. Slap a pretty label on your bottles and all eyes will be on your beer. Granted, you need a good brew to keep the masses returning to your suds, but a great label is still one of the best ways to get your product sold in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
32 Comments | Beer Marketing, Best/Worst | Tagged: Beer Labels, Best, Bottles, Cans | Permalink
Posted by Barley McHops
FRESH HOP EXPLOSION: FOUNDER’S HARVEST ALE
October 18, 2011
As weird as I’m sure this sounds to the other Aleheads, the first time I can remember having Founders Harvest Ale, I wasn’t particularly impressed with it. Maybe it was a little old, and the freshness was past its prime, but for whatever reason I recall the the draft I had came off as muted and kind of confusingly generic.
This is Founders, though–makers of some of the most regularly awesome beers in the world. They’re one of the very few ale factories where if I have a brew from them that is somehow not up to snuff, I make a natural assumption that it’s a bad bottle or a bad day for my taste buds, and not a bad recipe. They’ve earned that level of good faith by making kick-ass beers, year round. And so when I popped the top on this bottle of Harvest Ale, I still had high hopes, despite not thinking it was great before.
I was right to be optimistic.
Founders Harvest Ale, 2011:
NOTES: 12 oz bottle, poured into a tulip glass, from a bottle shop in Champaign.
APPEARANCE: Very light, brilliantly clear, straw gold in color. One of the lighter-colored IPAs around (I think they call it an APA, but it’s 6.5% and 70 IBUs. That’s totally IPA country). About half a finger of white, persistent foam.
NOSE: In a word, “heady.” So much going on here. Very complex, green, grassy aromas. A bit of lemon in there? It smells quite literally like “fresh hops,” which is appropriate. It reminds me of the odor of a baggie of amarillo or cascade hop pellets when I’ve just cut them open before pouring them into the homebrew kettle. Read the rest of this entry »
8 Comments | Tasting Notes | Tagged: founder's harvest ale, Founders, Founders Brewing, Fresh hop | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
DOUBLE-DIGIT DRINKABILITY
October 17, 2011
They Really Are All Session Beers
This conundrum is another from the depths of the depraved mind of our very own Slouch Sixpack. My recent post about the dangerous drinkability of The Stoic, a tasty quadrupel from Deschutes, spawned a behind-the-scenes chat* about high-ABV beers that are nonetheless highly drinkable. It’s a rare imperial stout that I want more than one, or at best two of in a given evening (ignoring Barley’s recent obsession with seeing how many Ten FIDYs he can fit into a beer bong). But there are certainly a few of them out there, along with the odd DIPA, barleywine, or various other beastly beer styles. So in today’s conundrum we will explore the realm of bad decisions and questionable expenditures: Fellas, what is the most drinkable high-ABV beer you’ve come across? Read the rest of this entry »
13 Comments | Beerford's Conundra | Tagged: Bell's HopSlam, Chelsea Brewing 1000 Gyle Imperial Mild, Deschutes The Abyss, Deschutes The Stoic, He'Brew Lenny's Bittersweet RIPA, High ABV Beers, Kulmbacher EKU 28, Lavery Imperial French-Style Ale, Pounder, Session Beers, The Commander | Permalink
Posted by Beerford McBrewin'
CAMBRIDGE BREWING COMPANY GREAT PUMPKIN ALE
October 12, 2011
Pumpkin Ales. You either love em’ or you hate em’. Several weeks ago we Aleheads attempted to concoct a Top 10 list of Pumpkin beers but after a few tired email exchanges we came to the conclusion that no one was overly excited about posting the results. For every hoozah! for the Shipyard Smashed Pumpkin or Southern Tier Pumking there was a collective “Meh” for everything else that was presented. There’s only so much fun you can have in ranking mediocrity so the whole idea was scrapped. So here we are, almost midway through October, with nary a post solely related to the king of Fall seasonal brews. I feel it’s my duty as a born and bred New Englander to end this vicious cycle. With that, I give you Cambridge Brewing Company’s Great Pumpkin Ale! Read the rest of this entry »
15 Comments | Ale Factories, Alehouses, Tasting Notes | Tagged: Brewpub, Cambridge, Cambridge Brewing Company, Great Pumpkin Ale, Pumpkin Ale | Permalink
Posted by Ripped Van Drinkale
CLOSING THE BOOK ON TERRAPIN
October 11, 2011
I’m sure most of you are as sick of reading about the Terrapin/MillerCoors situation as I am of writing about it. However, it’s important enough in the grand scheme of the craft beer movement that I thought it necessary to jot down a few final thoughts on the subject. I’ll try to be brief, but, as most of you know, that’s not exactly my strong suit…
I’ve read a number of counter-arguments and rebuttals to my original piece that essentially boil down to, “You just don’t understand how the business world works.” That’s fair. I never painted myself as an industry insider or a business expert. And no, I’ve never had to deal with a situation involving greedy investors trying to sell my company out from under me. I honestly feel for Spike and John in this scenario. They, presumably, put together local funding from sources they trusted, only to have those sources try to undermine the company. They needed the financial leverage to buy their company back from those investors and that’s where Tenth and Blake came into the story. Read the rest of this entry »
8 Comments | Ale Factories, Beer Industry | Tagged: MillerCoors, Tenth and Blake, Terrapin | Permalink
Posted by Barley McHops
FRESH HOP FANTASIES
October 10, 2011
As you have all likely figured out by now I live in the land of milk and honey. No wait, that’s not right. The land of breweries and strip clubs. You probably thought I was going to make that a humorous trio and say that that one’s not true either, but it actually is. Portland, OR has more breweries and more strip clubs per-capita than any other city in the United States. I’ll leave discussion of the strip clubs to another sort of blog and instead share with you another delightful fact: Portland sits on the Columbia river, the dividing line between the largest hop-producing state in the nation (Washington) and the second largest hop-producing state in the nation (Oregon). What with our abundance of creative and passionate brewing operations and our surplus of locally grown hops (OK, there’s no such thing as a hop surplus), it stands to reason that many of those brewers would take advantage and create some unique fresh-hopped* beers during hop harvest season for all us lucky locals to enjoy. And damn do they!
*I use the terms ‘fresh hopped’ and ‘wet hopped’ interchangeably. I think I’m right about that. I think.
7 Comments | Beerxperiences, WTF | Tagged: Fresh hop, Hood River Hops Fest, hop harvest, Hopworks Give Me Liberty, Laurelwood Cavalry, Migration 69 Pound Perle, Silver Moon Hoppopotamus, wet hop | Permalink
Posted by Beerford McBrewin'
TERRAPIN RESPONDS
October 9, 2011
After yesterday’s somewhat incendiary post regarding Tenth and Blake’s acquisition of a minority stake in the Terrapin Beer Company, many folks commented on the story both on our site and throughout the beer blogosphere. Some agreed with my take and said they would eschew Terrapin’s products in the future. Others felt we were being naive and that as long as the product remained great, we should get over our anti-Big Beer sentiment.
Today, John Cochran, one of the co-founders of Terrapin (along with Spike Buckowski) graciously left a comment on our site. He certainly didn’t need to take the time to respond to our middling, little blog. He also didn’t need to respond in such a measured, thoughtful manner. We always appreciate when brewers and industry experts take a moment to add their voices to our posts and it’s particularly welcoming when the post in question was written in frustration over Terrapin’s recent business decisions. For those who didn’t see John’s comment, I’ll post it in full for you: Read the rest of this entry »
7 Comments | Ale Factories, Beer Industry | Tagged: John Cochran, MillerCoors, Tenth and Blake, Terrapin | Permalink
Posted by Barley McHops
ET TU, TERRAPIN?
October 7, 2011
I just finished off a bottle of the tremendously tasty Big Hoppy Monster from the Terrapin Beer Company.
It is the last Terrapin beer I will ever drink.
On Wednesday, the brewery’s founders sent an e-mail to their employees explaining that they were converting debt from Tenth and Blake, a subsidiary of MillerCoors, into a minority stake in the company. In a nutshell, that means that MillerCoors now owns a part of Terrapin. If this strikes you as eerily similar to the Goose Island situation, well…I agree with you. Read the rest of this entry »
19 Comments | Ale Factories, Beer Industry | Tagged: MillerCoors, Tenth and Blake, Terrapin | Permalink
Posted by Barley McHops
SHOULD THE DEFINITION OF SESSION BEERS BE CHANGED?
October 7, 2011
A session at the Sixpack house
When we started this blog a year-and-a-half ago, one of the first priorities was to come up with a catchy slogan. Failing that, we settled on “The Session Drinkers Blog” which worked well enough until we realized that roughly 98% of the beers we drank and wrote about were above the 5% marker that defines session beers. The slogan gradually became the more fitting “They’re ALL Session Beers”, alluding to our tendency to order multiple rounds of our favorite brews, regardless of style or alcohol-by-volume. The issue of session beers was recently raised again by Edinburghian Honorary Alehead BeerCast Rich, who asked our own Brother Barley for his take on recent UK legislation that will incur a “Strong Beer Tax” on any beers over 7.5% ABV.
All this got me thinking- has the definition of a session beer in America become obsolete amidst the current craft beer revolution? Beer Advocate noted in its explanation of session beers back in 2005 that the average ABV of the 30,000 beers in their database was 5.9%, and I would venture to guess that this figure has gone up substantially in the past six years. Also of note is the method of serving in the USA, as most beer bars serve 16 oz pints instead of the 20 oz “Imperial” British pints found commonly across the pond- not to mention the fact that many drinkers prefer to have sessions in a home setting with friends around a barbecue or big screen TV, generally pouring and imbibing from 12 oz bottles.
If the Brits want to keep their 5% session beer, that’s fine with me (after all, I’m nothing if not a cultural relativist). But I propose the creation of a new classification that reflects a more realistic picture of session beer drinking in this country- I’m thinking “American-Style Session Beer” although I’m open for suggestions.
So, is this a good idea? And if so, what is the maximum ABV that you still consider a beer sessionable? I’d like to nominate 7.5%, as I frequently will consume a sixer of 7.2% Founders Centennial IPA over an afternoon of football and grilled cow, and I’m tired of asswipes making comments when I describe the beer as sessionable, which it is for me, otherwise I wouldn’t drink six of them.
Please cast your vote for the new ABV of the American-Style Session Beer, and leave suggestions for the name in the comments.
27 Comments | Beer Culture, Polls | Tagged: Alcohol by volume, Beer, Session Beers, Strong Beer Tax, United States | Permalink
Posted by Slouch Sixpack
USA VS. UK: THE GRAVITY GAP
October 5, 2011
Rich over at The BeerCast sent an SOS to the Aleheads this week in regards to the October 1st tax increase on all “strong beer” in the UK. Rich, and other British Aleheads, are up in arms that their nanny state government is attempting to curb problem drinking by making beer over 7.5% ABV more expensive (while actually lowering taxes on beer below 2.8%…aka: milk). Rich notes that the scourge of strong beer constitutes less than one-half of one-percent of UK alcohol sales. Nice work, Parliament! Alcoholism in the Kingdom should be cured in a matter of weeks! Read the rest of this entry »
15 Comments | Beer Culture, Beer Legislation | Tagged: America, British, England, high gravity, Pubs, Strong Beer Tax, UK | Permalink
Posted by Barley McHops
EXTREME ST. LOUIS: AN INTERVIEW WITH 4 HANDS BREWING
October 4, 2011
Pretty much all the art associated with this place immediately jumps out at you.
I’ll draw you a picture–it’s the first day of my recent St. Louis brewery vacation, and I’ve just come from interviewing the good folks at Civil Life Brewing. I’m stopping in on the next brewery of my tour, the soon-to-open 4 Hands Brewing near St. Louis’ Soulard neighborhood and right on the edge of St. Louis Cardinals parking, to check out the cavernous new warehouse-turned brewery…and owner/founder Kevin Lemp is nowhere to be found.
As it turns out, the hard-working Lemp (whose name is of no relation to the famous St. Louis brewing family) was called away briefly on business, leaving me pretty much to my own devices in wandering the brewspace and checking out the operation. Thankfully for him, however, head brewer Will Johnston was there to stop me from indulging my natural compulsions, like falling into a mashtun or being vaporized by a gout of superheated steam. Johnston is a pretty well-known brewer, having worked quite a while at Goose Island before the Inbev-AB takeover, being one of the people who helped first develop Goose’s line of Belgian specialty brews.
In our conversation, I was able to learn quite a bit about the brewery’s plans and future beers from Johnston and then the returning Lemp. As we stood and chatted beside the brewery’s tiny pilot brewhouse/homebrew setup, Johnston revealed their plans to push the boundaries of St. Louis brewing. Read the rest of this entry »
6 Comments | Ale Factories, Interviews | Tagged: 4 hands brewing, kevin lemp, st. louis beer, st. louis breweries, will johnston | Permalink
Posted by Kid Carboy Jr.
SKUNKED
October 3, 2011
Coming soon to a brew near you
Have you ever taken that first sip of a beer and had to put the bottle down because it was skunked? You liar. You drank it anyway, didn’t you. In between some of the poop jokes on the very exclusive Aleheads email list someone mentioned skunked beer, and it got me thinking as it’s something we’ve all experienced. Since I’m a science nerd, I thought it might be interesting to write a little bit more about the chemistry of beer and why beer gets skunked in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
22 Comments | Aleheads Take On, Beer 101, Homebrewing | Permalink
Posted by Professor pH Lager
DESCHUTES THE STOIC
October 2, 2011
The Stoic is Deschutes Brewing’s newest beer in their Reserve Series lineup (which includes such impressive brews as The Abyss and Black Butte XXIII). To quote directly from the website’s description: A prized, potent, Belgian-style Quad of stirring depth and complexity. Four nuanced fermentations. Aged, sequestered, in select rye whiskey & wine casks. Ergo a stoically brewed quad, with the spellbinding complexity of its medieval ancestors. Interestingly, they don’t mention that it’s brewed with pomegranate on the website (though they do on the beer’s label). I’ve been lucky enough to sample this both on tap (at Magoo’s in Salem, OR in a pint glass [oddly]) and from a bottle (at home in a Chimay chalice). My review will reflect the latter, though the experience was not materially different. Read the rest of this entry »
8 Comments | Tasting Notes | Tagged: 3.5 Hops, Deschutes Brewery, Quad, quadrupel, The Stoic | Permalink
Posted by Beerford McBrewin'
