Blind Taste Test – Pittsburgh IPAs

As mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to do a blind taste test of Pittsburgh IPAs and my friend Sandy was happy to help. Here is the link to the podcast we recorded while we were tasting. Right click on the link and Save target as… for best sound quality. There’s no video, I just have one still picture of what our breakfast table looked like, so feel free to start the recording and then read along with the notes below.

Here are the links to all the beers we had in this test:

• Full Pint – Chinookie
• East End – Big Hop
• Church – Thunderhop
• Fat Head’s – Head Hunter

As you listen, here is the order that Tiffany was tasting them in:

• East End – Big Hop
• Full Pint – Chinookie
• Fat Head’s – Head Hunter
• Church – Thunderhop

And here is the order of the beers Sandy was tasting:

• East End – Big Hop
• Church – Thunderhop
• Full Pint – Chinookie
• Fat Head’s – Head Hunter

At one point in the recording, I’m referencing what I call a hop chart. Here is the picture that I’m referring to:

The night before this recording, I took some not-so-blind tasting notes of three of the beers:

Thunderhop – floral hop flavor – 121 IBUs – they dry hop with Glaciers which are listed as earthy/grassy on my hop varieties chart – darkest in color with caramel undertones – following the Head hunter, this one falls a bit flat – the hops are a really subtle flavor even though the IBUs are higher. Floral comes through even more as it warms up. Some pepper notes come through too. Need to try this side by side with Ithaca Flower Power. I would pair this with food. Even though I like floral IPAs, I have to say this is my least fav of THESE three. That is not to say that I don’t love this beer.

Big Hop – a very malty beer –maybe it’s just the ‘low’ IBUs – 70 – Centennial and Cascade hops – listed as citrus – I don’t pick up on those notes but do get some sour – may not be considered an IPA by anyone accustomed to the west coast style. This would be the one I would start with if I was having multiple IPAs in one night and let’s face it, that totally happens. Fans of double IPAs will appreciate the balance in this one.

Head Hunter – this seems the ‘hoppiest’ in flavor meaning the most bitter but it’s in between the other two at 87 – Columbus (Herbal), Simcoe (Evergreen), Centennial (Citrus) hops – lightest in color – this one ‘smells’ the most like gym socks and what I would put up as ‘typical’ for an IPA – punch you in the mouth bitter with an after taste that stays on your tongue. Considered a west coast style IPA. This is my favorite and that was before I saw that it had a 98 BA score. This is an exceptional IPA.

Other beers mentioned in the recording:

• St. Arnold – Elissa
• Ithaca – Flower Power

We discussed IBUs and at the time neither one of us knew what IBUs were measuring or what a higher number of IBUs actually meant. I did some research and it is in fact measuring the acid (specifically the alpha acids) in a beer. It is not measuring perceived bitterness but rather the concentration of chemical compounds from the hops. No tasting is involved when measuring IBUs. So my reference to being surprised at how smooth Thunderhop is at 120 IBUs is irrelevant since the measurement has nothing to do with how the beer tastes.

Finally, I couldn’t find any recommendation anywhere that eggs worked to cleanse the palette, so you heard it here first.

East End Brewing Company – Pittsburgh, PA

When I visited East End in December 2012, the tasting room had just moved to a new location. Parking was tough. It’s is in a warehouse off of a narrow street and I learned on a trip to the East End later that narrow streets are the norm in this part of town. All I can say is trust the GPS as it doesn’t look like much from the outside and there weren’t very many markers at the time telling me I was in the right place. I parked halfway on the sidewalk which would have gotten me a parking ticket in Houston but seemed to be the only polite way to get a car down the street when sharing it with parked cars in the East End. I went to the tasting room on a Tuesday night and basically had the place all to myself with plenty of time to talk to one of the volunteers about these beers.

Customers came in to fill up growlers throughout the night while I was there and I couldn’t help but notice the PVC tubes on every tap. At East End, they only sell growlers (PA law for their type of license). That means they don’t have a tasting menu that you can purchase and you can’t buy a full pint of beer, but they do allow customers to sample a beer or two while their growler is filling up, so I purchased a growler off the shelf to take back with me on the plane and I loaded up on souvenir merchandise in an attempt to compensate him for allowing me to try all the beers over the course of a couple hours. Here’s my review of their sampler.

Cider – “not for kids” it says on the handwritten sign above the tap – not bad. Not too sweet which I like plus some sour with the apple. They start with unpasteurized cider from Trax Farms which is a farmer’s market South of town. It’s not on their regular beer menu on their website but it looks like a Winter seasonal they do each year called Along Came a Cider that’s usually tapped out sometime in February.

Nunkin – This is their take on a spiced ale with no pumpkin in it (name makes sense now that I know that). It tastes kind of like potpourri smells. Surprising. Vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon – pumpkin pie spice but without the pumpkin. It’s surprising at how spiced it is. It’s like drinking what your grandma’s house smells like at Christmas. I like their explanation of it on their website from 2011. All the spice with none of the mess of actually using pumpkins whose flavor is too subtle to come through in a beer anyway. “Embrace the lie.”

Monkey Boy – This is a year-round Hefeweizen with strong banana flavors. I continue to be pleased with their naming conventions. My local friend, Sandy, told me this was her favorite before I came out to the tasting room so I was excited to try it. This is very good and very easy to drink. One of my favorite things about beers in Pittsburgh has been how well they do beers at or under 5%. This concept of having low alcohol session beers works well for folks like me who really are into craft beer for the flavor and not the hangover. For Monkey Boy, they use Czech Saaz hops, Pilsen Malts, and a German hefe yeast. No bananas or banana flavors are added. So just like with the Nunkin, these brewers are keeping the brew house clean when they brew. I can really respect the science behind this beer.

Fat Gary – this is their year round session beer and like I said above, there is a lot of flavor in this 3.7%. The Southern English Brown Ale (17 IBUs) was a great follow up after the Monkey Boy. I was introduced to this one at Bar Symon in the Pittsburgh airport. They’ve always got it on tap there.

Slartibartfast – because the abv is 4.2. Ha! Get it? If you don’t, then I’ll follow up by telling you that this is the name of a character in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He’s the one who takes Arthur on the tour of Earth Mark II. If I have to say more than that, then I hate you and nothing you say will ever make me like you. This is also #42 in their Session Ale series. The style of this beer is English mild (the laughs just keep on coming for me). Light color for something this toasty. Bartender says it’s authentic to what you get in the UK. Kent Golding hops.

My favorite hotel bar of all time is Bigelow Grille in the Doubletree Downtown Pittsburgh. They have six of the best rotating taps in town and I ran into this beer again a few weeks ago when I was in town. Order it if for no other reason than the name is just fun to make the bartender try to say!

Snow melt – winter warmer – higher abv at 6.8. Can taste the alcohol notes. No spice. Very good. Favorite so far. I can’t find anything on the website to give you more details than that, but at this point in the tasting, I’m realizing how weird it is that there’s a coffee shop in the same space as the tasting room and I can’t smell any roasted coffee. The name of the coffee joint is The Commonplace (it’s a local chain, so this is the location on Julius) and the owners know each other which may have had something to do with the relocation of the tasting room but that’s just speculation on my part.

Want more info? Beer Advocate to the rescue! It says it’s a mahogany-red ale and a piney hop flavor which would explain why I loved it. This is a flavor term I’ve recently been introduced to in reference to hops. The fact that they picked a seasonal flavor but kept the pumpkin pie spice out of it is appreciated by this beer lover. Winter can be tough on the local, seasonal beer drinker. If you don’t like most winter warmers, try this one. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Black Strap Stout – they use brown sugar and molasses during the process. And now that I know that, I wonder how many times I’ve confused the taste of molasses in the brew with coffee. I’m highly critical of stouts that pander to the coffee and chocolate flavors and now I know to ask if there’s molasses in the mix before I accuse them of going with a coffee-flavored profile. This is certainly not the stout for everyone but it’s what I personally wish more stouts would be. This is a really great beer. I like seeing a brewery with such a complete set of offerings – low ABV’s and great dark ales all in the same place. Why aren’t you here right now filling up a growler or two or three?!

Blabber and Smoke – light color lager, very smoky with what I’d describe as a plastic and numbing aftertaste (like Robitussin throat spray). It’s okay. Let’s face it, I can’t like them all. I don’t go in for smoke beers anyway but I can appreciate that this one isn’t adding roasted flavors in addition to the smoke. This is not to be confused with their Smokestack Heritage Porter which I haven’t tried and that has a BA Score of 90 on Beer Advocate (as does Black Strap!).

Big Hop – As a casual observer, this seems to be their flagship beer as you can find it in most draft bars around town and it is just awesome. I love this beer and it was the reason I wanted to visit this brewery. Again, I’ve got to go with pine as the dominant flavor profile which probably means that I need to be hanging out with more IPAs that use Centennial and Cascade hops. Bitterness is at 70 IBUs so it’s not the hoppiest you’ll have in this category but certainly well balanced for what I’ve come to expect from American IPA’s.

As a local comparison, my favorite Pittsburgh IPA before I tried Big Hop was Thunderhop from Church Brew Works (my review linked here) and my favorite since I’ve tried Big Hop is Fat Head’s Head Hunter. Now I need to figure out how to get all three of those side by side for a blind tasting to see if that holds up. Maybe my friend Sandy will help me out.

Miss Spelt – They didn’t have this on tap and I liked the label, so I took a growler of this back to the hotel with me to try. You all know how disappointed I typically am in saisons and this one is no exception. Because there’s no pepper and no sour, it’s not the saison for me. The aroma is great though and if I’m going to be ‘wrong’ about what I want out of a saison, then this is how I’d want to be wrong about it. What makes this one interesting from a trivia perspective is that spelt is an ancestor of wheat. Spelt is referenced in the Bible (Exodus 9:32 if you want to look it up). But the bartender said that it was gluten free and upon further research (Wikipedia), it seems that is indeed not the case so hopefully people with coeliac disease aren’t being encouraged to drink this at the brewery and instead are sticking to the ‘not for kids’ cider.

East End’s year round beers are Big Hop, Monkey Boy, Fat Gary, and Black Strap. They do a seasonal Wit in Spring, Petal Pale Ale in Summer, Big Hop Harvest in the Fall (wet hopped), and Snow Melt in the Winter. But wait, there’s more! They also have two sodas and a couple of customers were coming in just to get their growlers filled with these sweet treats. The Ginger Ale is awesome and lies somewhere between the harshness of ginger beer and the sweet of commercial ginger ale. It’s a clear color and would be a great mixer. If they’re not already offering this on the gun to local bars, I think they’re missing a marketing opportunity. Real lime, real ginger, real sugar. Real awesome. The Root Beer was also nice. They use real sugar, buy the syrup, and then add some stuff. The bartender was right – don’t miss out on these when you visit the Tasting Room.

After all that, I ended up at D’s SixPax & Dogz afterwards which is literally suggested to me by every single person I meet in Pittsburgh once they find out I love craft beer. I opted for a mac and cheese hot dog and bought a 6-pack sampler of local IPAs to bring home to Houston with me.

Potato-Leek Soup with Clams

Or call it Clam Chowder with Leeks. Either way, combining these two classic soup recipes dulls the strong flavor of the clams found in most chowders and adds something to chew on for people wanting to make soup into a meal instead of an appetizer.

Ingredients:
1 lb. Red potatoes, peeled and quartered
5-6 Pieces Bacon
1 TB Bacon grease
1 TB Salted butter
1-2 large Leeks, white and light green parts only, thinly sliced
1 medium Onion, white, diced
3-4 cloves Garlic, minced
1 bottle Clam juice
10-12 oz. Clams, whole with liquid
¼ cup Chicken broth, as needed to bring liquid to 2 cups
¼ tsp. Salt and pepper, each to taste
1 TB Cornstarch, dissolved in a little cold water or chicken broth
½ cup Half-and-half

Directions:
Boil potatoes until fork tender. Meanwhile, cook bacon until crispy and set aside. Add butter to bacon grease and stir in leeks, onion, and garlic until coated. Cover and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add clam juice and chicken broth (measure 2 cups) and stir in soft potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cover and bring to a boil, add cornstarch, then lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes.

Pour mixture into a blender and pulse 3-4 times to desired consistency (or use an immersion blender). Return soup to the pan, add half-and-half and stir in clams. Heat to serving temperature. Dice or crumble bacon and either add to the soup or use as a garnish. Serves 4. Estimate 360 calories per serving.

Beer Pairing:
When the weather is cold, our thoughts turn to hearty soups. Pair this soup with a Belgian Ale (Wit, Pale, Saison, or Biere de Garde) or a Winter Warmer brewed in the English style (no pumpkin pie spice flavors). What you’re going for here is the warming quality of the esters and the alcohol notes which will enhance the feeling you were going for when you started craving soup.

On the road: Church Brew Works – Pittsburgh, PA

This brewery and restaurant is in an old Catholic church and everything from the booths made from pew benches to the pipe organ and the red-carpeted stairs feels familiar. I’m sure I would have never left if my childhood church had served great food and beer like they do at Church Brew Works. Something just feels really right when you walk in the front door and see brewing tanks on the altar. The atmosphere alone healed years of bitterness towards the church for this blogger. Here is my review of their 40-oz sampler.

Celestial Gold – I’m used to being disappointed in the lightest beer on the menu but this is awesome. It’s got obvious hops but they are barely there. It’s like an illusion. I love this tasty surprise. The hops are truly an aroma and the taste is all balanced malty goodness. I think this is a great session beer or gateway to get people into an American pale ale.

Pipe Organ Pale Ale – this is the perfect pale ale to follow the gold. Some caramel in this dry-hopped miracle. Not too potent which leaves the palate open for the 6 other beers to come. I paired this with the duck breast they had featured off the menu. It was amazing and tender. I love seeing that good food and beer so often go together now because I think beer in part got a bad wrap until the turn of this century when it was finally paired with something other than heavy German faire. This was a great place to go to balance my experience at Penn Brewery and going to both these places back-to-back expressed a welcome diversity in brewing. It’s nice to see two very different places following their individual principles inside a community big enough to support both businesses.

Pious Monk Dunkel – I know that for me at least, I associate the word Dunkel with wheat. That is not the correct thing for me to do and this very much not a wheat beer. This is one of their award-winning beers. It’s a good German style that I can appreciate but nothing that I’d call special. If you like a traditional beer than this one will not disappoint but if you’re adventurous and looking for one to skip – this is the one to pass on.

Red Nebyllek – this was the one I opted to try next. the autumn saison. Not bad but this seems more red to me than saison but not enough sour for either style in my opinion. Plus, no pepper. It’s got a lot of apple in it so there is some sour – just not the kind of sour I expect from a saison. It might be good to mix with something else like you would a cider but it’s not as sweet or syrupy as a lambic. Basically, this beer seems to be lacking something but I wonder if I would be saying that if they hadn’t called it a saison. Trouble is, I don’t know what other style accurately describes it, so saison it is. Saison light. So much apple. Almost cider. Not sure I caught the rose hips they talked about either. It’s worth a try just to help me come up with better words to describe it.

Midlands Mild – English ale – now we’re moving up the chain towards the Xmas and stout. Very toasty. They say it’s comparable to an ESB and I’d say that’s spot on. This is a winner in my book. Traditional but a style that not many do so points for that. Almost reminiscent of a brown with the nuttiness. I paired this with the pumpkin bread pudding. They use their malts as a base for the syrups used in their ice cream and other desserts.

Zwarte Piet’s Xmas – this is another one of their illusion tricks. It smells like more ginger than there probably is. This is everything you want in a Christmas beer from a flavor perspective including the thin mouthfeel. It’s almost watery though and not my favorite Cmas ale ever but points for the ginger and shout out to the Krampus myth in the naming of the brew.

Blast Furnace Stout – They call this an oatmeal stout and I disagree on their naming convention once again. Smoke is the predominant flavor. If they would have called it a smoked porter, I’d let them have it. I’m learning a lot about how brewers name things based on the fact they used a stout yeast for example but my criticism of this beer is merely from the fact that I think it’s mislabeled. If I ordered an oatmeal stout and got this, I’d send it back. But it’s a great smoked porter.

Thunderhop – saved for the last. I love this ipa. It is so floral as to be called girlie. This is the beer that brought me here. I wouldn’t have called it pine until they said that word in their description of it and now that I’m looking for it, I have to agree. Which makes this the perfect Christmas beer for me.

On the Road: Penn Brewery – Pittsburgh, PA

I’m spending a lot of time in Pittsburgh for a project and I have a local friend who is being generous with her time and taking me to all the local breweries. She started me out at Penn Brewery which is considered the oldest brew pub in Pennsylvania. It’s a traditional German restaurant and their craft beers will delight anyone who prefers the malty styles of our beer-drinking ancestors as opposed to the hopped up varieties we typically see with most American craft brewers. The more time I spend in Pittsburgh, the more I’m led to believe that malt is the preference for consumers in the tri-state area, so while it seemed an anomaly to me, it seems typical for this region to focus on recipes brought to the US by our nation’s ancestors. Any beer is good beer, so I take what I can get. Here’s my review of the sampler at Penn Brewery.

Penn Gold – not too thin in the mouth. Smooth. Balanced. A typical lager in the Munich style. I paired this with the most amazing beer cheese I’ve ever tasted. I licked the plastic cup clean and highly suggest that you do the same when you visit this place.

Penn Pilsner – a Vienna Style lager. I really like this one. Great balance. Lots of depth and still only 5%. Good flavor and represents the style to perfection. I was impressed enough with this one that I took a bottle of it home with me. In Pittsburgh, they have a lot of restaurants that allow you to make your own 6-pack. I wasn’t able to do that at the brewery but found a great place on The Strip called The Beerhive.

Kaiser Pils – lager yeast. Crisp with a bit of sour which I expect and love. I haven’t had German style beer in so long that it’s nice to see a craft brewer recreating them so accurately. I love my hops but this Vienna should not be missed. I paired this with their potato pancakes and Schweinbraten (pork roast). The pork roast was a huge portion and a bit dry for me but that allowed me to focus on the potato pancakes served with both applesauce and sour cream.

Penn Dark – like the Penn Gold but dark. Very non-descript. Not a bad beer and certainly a good gateway beer to convince someone that dark color doesn’t have to mean bitter.

Allegheny Pale Ale – Named after one of the rivers that run through town, this is their West-coast offering. I came back to this one after the nut brown and boch. This is a solid pale ale using Columbus & Chinook hops. Paired with their pumpkin pierogies dessert. Delicious.

Nut Brown Ale – one of their seasonals – a bit thin. The nut is an aftertaste at best. If you’re trying to decide which of their seven beers to have tonight, don’t feel bad about skipping this one. I’m guessing the nut used was hazelnut. Too subtle in my opinion. I tried this on its own a couple weeks later and was able to pick up the spice that must account for the seasonal nature of the brew. At the time of this tasting, my palate may have been confused by the pumpkin pie spice from the dessert. It’s still not a favorite of mine but I am willing to admit that it’s a decent Christmas seasonal.

Boch – done right. Do not skip this one. Toasted malts come through as the predominant flavor. This is so perfect it’s hard to explain why. Great beer. This boch is why I don’t understand why people swear by Shiner (from Texas). It could be because it’s on tap but Shiner is too carbonated for me. On tap, this beer was ‘flat’ enough to let the flavors shine through.

Penn Brewery does malts right. With so many people trying to out hop one another, it’s refreshing to see this level of commitment to German-style beers. Never forget where you come from and all that.

GABF 2012: Bigger is sadness

I was one of the general public online that fateful day when tickets to GABF sold out in 45 minutes. I had researched the event and heard that Thursday night was the best session to go to, but I bought Saturday night first because I had two friends who wanted to go with us and Saturday was when we could all go together. I never got a chance to purchase another session as all the tickets were already in the process of being bought by the time I’d completed my transaction for Saturday night. I reacted to this ticket frenzy by immediately becoming a member of AHA (American Homebrewers Association) because I predict that all tickets will be sold in pre-sale next year. Plus, there are a couple of members-only events that I suspect would have been more about the experience I was looking for as a lover of American craft beer. That’s the kind of person I am – I will plan a year in advance to ensure that I have time to re-plan everything so that nothing unexpected will happen to me. And for the most part, I have to say that my GABF experience was predictable. Still, I was surprised at how disappointing the whole thing was for me.

The Line

The doors opened at 5:30 p.m. so I lined up at 4:00 p.m. as instructed by veterans of the event (AHA members had their own entrance). One of my friends showed up in the line a little after 5:00 p.m. and texted us to let us know he was finally inside after we’d already bought our t-shirts, started sampling beers, and found a table to sit at. The line was a sight to behold as it snaked around the Colorado Convention Center. Still, the efficiency of how the 2,500 volunteers handled that line is awesome considering that it only took them an hour to get everyone into the building. It was a four-part process where they checked your ID at the door, then scanned your ticket at the next door, gave you a wristband before walking into the exhibit hall where you showed your ticket again and received your tasting glass.

The Booths

Once inside, I was awestruck. I mean, you know it’s the biggest beer festival in the world and you’ve thumbed through the program and scanned the mobile app while standing in line but there is just no way to describe the scale of this event with breweries standing shoulder to shoulder across 188,000 square feet. I immediately wanted to know how these brewers – many who don’t distribute in Colorado – get the licensing and approval and money to ship all that beer here. Every once in a while I see someone in a yellow t-shirt (volunteer colors) rolling a pony keg through the crowd and I’m thinking, that’s it? One booth just ran out of one tiny keg of beer? But then you start doing the math in your head (okay, maybe just me and let’s face it I looked it up on the internet) and you realize that at 1 oz. pours, a 7.75 gallon keg is 992 servings of beer. To give every single person one sample would only take about 20 full-size US kegs. I did see some booths pouring from bottles – they would have to ship about 140 cases.

It took me a while to get past the magnitude of the event and actually sample my first beer. I was somewhere in Section C when a man behind his counter of beer waved me over to him. I don’t remember what I asked for or what brewery he was representing. And that is why (upon reflection) I am disappointed in GABF as a craft beer event. There is so little marketing going on to make an impression on me as a consumer and almost no conversation beyond the volunteers flirting with pretty girls. I want to stress again that I admit that Saturday is famous for being the worst night to go but still, that’s no excuse in my mind for the lack of style at this event. It’s as if the effort to get their beer and people to GABF is all a brewery can muster up. You couldn’t make a sign with your name and logo on it? You forgot the laminated cards describing your beer? You couldn’t make more stickers?

I go to a lot of professional conventions. I’m used to carpeted floors, booth babes, and towering signs with subtle lighting all designed to draw me in to talk to a sales person. I love everything about the psychology of marketing at a convention and I expected these breweries to want to make an impression on me in the same way. I didn’t expect butcher paper on tables with beer styles hand-written in permanent marker in front of a pitcher of beer. I was horrified that many of the breweries just used the sign provided by the convention to label their booth and list their beers. Many of them didn’t even provide their volunteers with a branded t-shirt to wear while representing the brewery behind the table. I knew ahead of time that most of the brewery reps do not hang around for Saturday or would be out on the floor finally enjoying the event themselves but I was still largely disappointed that these beers were unrepresented by the folks who are passionate about them. That no one engaged me in a conversation about beer or encouraged me to sample more than one of their brews – to move off to the side and talk for a bit about what makes them special – was the worst part. It’s left me wondering what the whole point of GABF really is for brewers. How are they benefiting at all from their participation at this event if they don’t win an award? What’s the point of the whole thing? Is it really just one big party and if so, how does that make us any different from frat boys drinking Bud Light?

I stood in line outside the convention center next to a guy chugging a Bud Light before coming in. His motives were pretty clear. I don’t want to be in the same room with people like that, but on Saturday night at GABF, that’s who you get. People getting drunk 1 oz. at a time. Remember what I was saying about carpeted floors at other conventions? The floor at GABF is kept bare so you can hear someone drop their plastic tasting glass on the cement and mock them. That got old quick because every 10 seconds someone dropped their plastic glass on the cement. For the record, that did not happen to me and that seems to be the first question every veteran asks. Seriously? You don’t ask me what my favorite beer or brewery was but you ask me whether or not I had the dexterity to keep my hand wrapped around my tasting glass for three hours?

Last call

I got the wisdom of cement as I passed through an area being guarded by volunteers where someone had yacked what looked like a pulled pork sandwich. At that point of the night, all yack would have resembled a pulled pork sandwich. When people start puking on the floor, I figure it’s already past my bedtime so I look at my watch – 8:00 p.m. Whoever puked couldn’t have been inside for more than two and half hours. That’s when it finally hit me what this event is about for everyone except me. Why invest your marketing dollars (beyond the cost of shipping your beer and brewers) on signage and shirts and stickers when most people here are never going to promote your product?

But you know what? Regardless of the scale of the event, there was hardly ever a line to get beer at the kinds of breweries I came here to see – the breweries I can’t see anywhere else. There was time to make an impression. It was possible to get me to your table as opposed to your neighbor’s table with just a little bit of effort. And once you got me there, it wouldn’t have been hard to reinforce the name of the beer to me and give me a factoid about it and hand me a business card with a sample tweet. This is the only craft beer event I’ve been to where it never occurred to me to take tasting notes or tweet while at the event. No one made me want to brag that I was there. Nothing special was really happening.

Yes, it was clever that they had a mobile DJ doing karaoke and the lines to the silent disco, cheese trays, and photo booth were all insane. There was a vendor trimming facial hair and some great booths selling t-shirts for various charities. I would have gone to the sessions in the middle of the venue but there was no real indication on the floor of when those things were happening nor was there a whole lot of promotion about what was happening inside. I didn’t know who the brewers were at the front of the stage that were getting ready to speak and there was no announcement made or flashing light in the arena indicating that a session was about to begin. It’s as if they didn’t want me to attend the sessions at all. So, why have them?

All I remember is row after row of yellow t-shirts pouring beer under black and white block-lettered signs. After 12 samples of various double IPA’s, my pallet was shot. All the free water and pretzels in the world couldn’t make my tongue remember anything. I needed someone to engage my brain in the process. For someone to qualify me as a beer drinker and decide if I was in their target market. No one asked me where I was from and no one thanked me for coming by their booth to sample their beer. We did more marketing just walking around with shirts representing our local breweries but do you know that none of our local breweries asked us to do that for them? Why not?! Why not encourage your local fans to promote you at GABF? It just really hit home very hard why Budweiser is so popular in America. They know how to market and promote their beer.

Maybe I’m going through some sort of GABF drop, but I’m just really, really sad about the whole thing. I’m sad that I don’t have any desire to return to that event. I’m sad that it will just continue to spiral down until everyone yacks craft beer on the floor of the Colorado Convention Center. The efficiency of getting people through the door (and the attendants in the restrooms kept those lines moving as well) was completely wasted on me. I barely lasted three hours before I wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there.

What I’d rather do

Yes, the event was disappointing but the trip was not. I was inspired to come to GABF after being in Denver last year while all the locals were getting excited about it. The week before GABF, Denver hosts Denver Beer Fest which showcases restaurants and brew pubs and breweries all over the city in smaller events designed to get you excited about the new beers you are tasting. Even with some of the larger breweries that distribute throughout the US, when you come to their headquarters, you are introduced to smaller batches that they don’t ship. THIS is what craft beer culture is about for me.

Let’s be honest, I’m from Texas and I appreciate what Shiner has done for craft beer and how long they’ve been in business, but they took home gold medals for beers that in my opinion are not representative of our beer culture. It’s clear to me that the GABF judges are not my craft brew peers. They’re still judging styles of beer like the AKC at a dog show. When I’m exploring craft beer, I’m not looking for a pure-brewed. Where is the national event for the mutts? The extreme Olympics of beer? That’s the event I want to go to. Ya’ll can have GABF. I won’t be online fighting for tickets next year.

Quality over Quantity

Craft brewers toe the line in between the extremes of Bud-like consistency and a home brewer who never brews the same beer twice. Craft breweries establish themselves with a few consistent, flagship beers and make those available year round to their customers. They spend the rest of their time experimenting on new brews and seasonal offerings. For a craft beer lover, there is something new being produced by their local brewery three or four times a year and it’s fun to follow the local events and charitable efforts of a small business.

In 2009, Anheuser-Busch donated $2 million to the United Way. I doubt that was their only charitable contribution that year but that kind of money is beyond the scope of the average consumer. It seems that size does matter when we become fans of a brand and there is something that makes craft beer lovers feel good about themselves when they support local businesses and the further away you live from cities like St. Louis and Denver, the harder it is to see the financial impact that a big brewery has on your local economy. Charity bike rides sponsored by New Belgium (makers of Fat Tire) and $100K donations to Operation Homefront by breweries like St. Arnold in Houston operate on a scale that the average environmentalist can consume. And sustainable operations are also a big draw to craft brewing. New Belgium as an example is entirely wind powered.

In the mid-90s, big breweries went under the radar and created several subsidiaries designed to cater to the craft beer consumer. This sparked some controversy within the craft beer community over labeling practices that didn’t make it clear that a brand like Blue Moon was a division of Coors. This issue has since been resolved but for a local-minded beer drinker going into a bar, they still wouldn’t know based on the label that Killian’s Irish Red is a division of Coors. And who cares? Isn’t taste all that matters? Yes, but the criticism is that beers produced in large batches in short timespans and shipped all over the globe undermine the quality and care that a craft brewer takes when constructing their brew. The argument is that competition is fine but that the craft brew playing field isn’t equal when small breweries are forced to compete against companies with near unlimited financial resources.

Much like there is a lot of attention on retail brands like Wal-Mart and Barnes & Noble, Anheuser-Busch is often considered the enemy of craft beer. They are well known for litigating craft brewers into bankruptcy over words they have trademarked with the sole purpose of keeping competing beers off the market (see the documentary beerwarsmovie.com for more information on that). It’s hard for people who love the experience and science of beer making to support a company that trademarks area and airport codes in an effort to keep craft breweries from using local indicators to label their beer – (512) out of Austin and 312 in Chicago are recent examples. At a certain point, a lot of us just feel that the 28.5% market share that Bud Light alone holds is enough.

When home brewers started getting together to judge the beers of fellow craft brewers to see how their unique beers ranked against one another, it wasn’t long before Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors wanted their brands to be represented at these events as well. Offers from the biggest breweries to sponsor smaller and local events in addition to entering their widely distributed beers into competitions created some backlash against organizers and the breweries themselves. Like skaters and punk rockers, craft brewers didn’t want to appear as though they’d sold out.

And more of us are starting to make political choices based on beer. Organizations like Open the Taps are dedicated to change legislation that opens up the distribution channels that Anheuser-Busch and Miller control to get more craft beer to market (again, reference Beer Wars for more information on how shelf space is allotted in grocery stores).   

Why Drink Locally?

In 2007, total beer production for all US breweries was 183 million barrels. Realizing that Anheuser-Busch is responsible for more than 125 million of those is a sobering fact for most people. At some fundamental level, Americans don’t tend to side with any company that gets too big or too powerful. An economist and quality control expert can applaud the consistency of the Budweiser brew over 150 years and a shareholder can celebrate the fact that 1 in every 3 beers sold in America is a Bud Light. Read that statistic again if it didn’t sink in that one single product – not just a company but a single beer – dominates the US market. The fact that Anheuser-Busch and Budweiser are words my word processor knows how to spell is another indication of how ingrained their light lagers are in our culture.

If you have an Anheuser-Busch plant in your city, then the message is the same – support your local brewers. The website beerservesamerica.org showcases the economic impact and community involvement of brewers by state. Each time we drink a beer, we pay a tax and in turn the people responsible for getting that beer to us pay taxes as well. From a tax perspective, it only matters where you buy the beer and not where the beer is from though, right? Correct. So, what is so important about drinking local beer? Control.

Simply put, by limiting the sale and distribution of a beer to a regional market, brewers are better able to control the things that can destroy any perishable product – time and temperature. Local brewers can work with one distributor to ensure that kegs are shipped and stored cold from the time of packaging to delivery and storage at the bar. In addition to a decrease in the time it takes to get a beer to market, craft brewers are small and limited in how much beer they can produce at once which increases the likelihood that the beer you are drinking was not only properly handled but is also fresh.

Think of it like buying meat in the grocery store. Would you rather buy from a market that buys whole meat products (granted there is transit involved in this process too) and butchers on site or one that ships ground beef from a source hundreds or thousands of miles away? Does it make sense that the time between slaughter and sale effects the taste of the meat? Think of a fish market that kills and processes the fish on-site and right before your eyes. Sushi chefs rely on the freshest fish to create their dishes, and as a consumer, doesn’t it feel fresher (and safer) to know that the meat didn’t have far to travel from the process and packaging to the point of distribution? In Houston, our local brewers advertise beer being picked up by the distributor and delivered the same day to local bars and liquor stores.

We can’t freeze beer the way we can freeze other perishable foods, so refrigeration is key when distributing beer. Why? Because most US keg beers are not pasteurized. That means that you are buying food with no preservatives. How long would you want something free of preservatives sitting in the brewery waiting to be picked up by the distributor who then stores inventory in their warehouse before a customer purchases it and then stores it in their stockroom until there is room to put it on tap and then finally sits in the keg until you buy a glass? Would you buy ground beef if you knew the cow had been slaughtered months ago? Buying something in the refrigerated section of our grocery store carries with it an assumption that the freshness date is correct and that the temperature of those items has been properly controlled. Should we expect nothing less when we buy beer?

The further away you get from the source and the more people required to get that beer to market, the greater the risk that the beer has been improperly handled or was stored in the heat at some point during its journey. That’s why Budweiser has so many bottling plants and they also control their distribution channel which means it is safe to assume that your Bud Light is fresh. Kegs shipped from overseas must be pasteurized to ensure safe passage and some would argue that’s why an imported beer tastes different in the US than it does when we experience the same beer drawn from a keg in an overseas pub.

At best, maybe I’ve discouraged your consumption of imported keg beers but with modern transportation, you may still not be able to convince a devout Bud Light fan to order a craft brew. At a certain point, you end up a craft beer lover because you like the taste better. That may not have as much to do with freshness as it does the variety of beers available to you as a craft beer lover. Trying new beers and looking forward to seasonal brews is what unites us as a craft beer culture. We are fans who visit the breweries, know the names of the founders and the brewmasters, follow them to events they sponsor around town, and say hi to them when we travel around the country to attend beer festivals. As a member of our communities, many of us simply feel like supporting our local beer culture is the right thing to do. Why do people go to Farmer’s Markets or stop at roadside stands to buy local honey or vegetables and fruits?

Whatever your reasons, a call to drink locally is a call to expand your beer horizons and craft breweries are tools you can use to do that. The scale of influence that Bud Light has on the American pallet inspired home brewers in America to revolt. That spirit of independence and freedom of expression birthed and continues to fuel the craft beer movement in America.

On the road: Barley and Hops – Frederick, MD

I was in Baltimore for a project this week and I had an opportunity to meet a friend halfway for dinner. He’s a new friend who had no idea how much I love craft beer and he picked this place! I must be living right to have a plan come together so brilliantly. My tasting notes are a bit short simply because we were talking while I was tasting. All and all I loved this place – great beer and good food (I had the crab cakes and the red snapper fish and chips). Read to the end for my impression of their Saison. You know how much I love that style of beer and this was one of the best I’ve had.

Dirty Little Blonde Lager – a lot of grain. As the lightest beer on the menu, this is usually the one that renders images of macro beers in our heads. While this brew would appeal to any light beer drinker, the taste of grain (i.e., bread) really stood out and it was a nice change from the thin, watery beer we typically get in a brewpub lager.

Highway to Helles – sweet, flowers, strong wheat – to the point of floral. Thick, good mouthfeel, unfiltered. Grassy. Quite good. Almost Belgian. Very traditional. The website calls it a Maibock.

I have never used the term grassy before but my friend had a card that he carries around in his wallet with keywords to use when describing beer. Check it out.

Beer tasting cheat sheet

So, the grassy flavor must be coming from the Noble Hops. Cool!

Annapolis Rocks Pale Ale – I’m assuming this is their flagship beer. It has just enough hops which of course is the distinguishing characteristic of an American Pale Ale (over a British pale ale like Bass).  There’s nothing unique here but that isn’t to say that it isn’t well done. I think the hardest thing to do in microbrewing these days is to simply stick to the traditional recipe. I’d put this Pale Ale up as a great representation of the standard down to the temperature it was served at. I hate it when beer is served too cold. To get all the flavors out of this one, I appreciated the fact that it was served at the proper temp.

Tuscarora Red Ale – malty, not hoppy, good balance. Could drink this one all night. I typically drink the sampler in the order it was given to me and this was where I made a mistake. I didn’t realize the ESB was going to be hoppy (a pleasant surprise). So, if you’re following along at the bar, I would put the Red before the Pale Ale.

Served by color

Shown here with the ESB following the Pale Ale. Agreed. Though I would do the Red before the Pale Ale just because I don’t like to switch back and forth between malty and hoppy.

Hoptopsy ESB – hoppy. Really hoppy. They say in the notes, ‘ESB with an American twist.’ 40 ibu’s – highest on the menu. Also highest abv at 6.6%. What I like most about this is they took the British/American difference with the hops in a Pale Ale and extended it into the classic English Extra Special Bitter. I’m glad I didn’t read the name of the beer prior to trying it or I might have been turned off by the concept. I loved it though. ESB’s are coming into their own across the US and I have to say that as a hop head, I hope to see more American craft brewers upping the ibu’s (a measure of hop bitterness) in their ESB recipes.

Schifferstadt Stout – alcohol notes. There’s something different about it and all I can point to is the esters (called astringency in their notes). Lots of coffee. Delicious. The color was good and it didn’t border on a porter. I would love to see them get creative with this recipe but that’s just because I’m tired of coffee/chocolate stouts. It rounded out the sampler nicely and that’s why even though there is no hop bitterness in a stout, I always end with it. Stouts for me are the quintessential dessert beer.

Sugarloaf Saison – sour and pepper. Perfection. So many don’t put the sour into this style which is heresy but here they are not scared of the sour and that is what this style requires. The best American version I’ve had to date.

This was not on the tasting menu as it had just been replaced by the Helles. It’s interesting that they called this their Spring seasonal as I thought Saisons were traditionally a late summer beer – a farmhouse ale served to the workers after they harvested the fields. Admittedly, I think Oktoberfests have stolen the show that time of year, so I’m on board with introducing people to this style in the Spring where it can take center stage and as it turns out, a “prinetemps” (how they describe it on their website) is indeed a Spring Saison. A bit more research and I discovered that barley can be sown in the UK in either the Autumn or the Spring and it is the Spring varieties that are used for malting! Learning is delicious.

The sampler was only $3 and to try the Saison was another $0.50. That is the cheapest sampler I think I’ve ever encountered and I had a lot of fun with this one. While I wouldn’t call sour a negative flavor at all, here’s the other side of that card my friend carries.

Beer tasting cheat sheet

Bristol Brewing Company

What does a beer lover do when the Great American Beer Festival is sold out? I decided to go to Denver the weekend before and participate in the Denver Beer Fest which focuses on just Colorado beers. It’s the third year for the week-long event proceeding GABF and one event in particular, Great Contenders, allowed us to sample about 50 different brews from more than 20 Colorado breweries (full review in another post).

One of the stars from that event was Bristol Brewing Company. We met David Boone who was pouring a beer called Laughing Lab. It is a Scottish Ale and their flagship beer. It is so popular in the Colorado Springs and Denver areas that Boone was surprised we’d never heard of it. My husband explained that we were visiting from Texas and asked if we could come down and tour the facility. A few emails and a one-hour drive South from Denver and we arrived at the Bristol Brewing tasting room where Laura Long (pictured) told us more about the beers on tap and showed us around the facility.

Laura pours our beers in the tasting room at Bristol Brewery

We tried the three beers Boone brought to the Great Contenders event – Laughing Lab, the best in show brew that brought us here, Cheyenne Cañon Piñon Nut Ale and Red Rocket Pale Ale. Laura set us up with a full tasting at the brewery. When she said that she likes to present the beers from malts to hops, I knew we were going to get along just fine. As you know, many brewpubs sort their beers by the color wheel. I wonder if that isn’t to train the wait staff on which beer is which when they set them down on the laminated menu. Since I’m used to a bartender setting glasses down and walking away, it was a real treat to sip the beers with someone who knew the flavors and was able to answer questions.

Beehive Honey Wheat – is an unfiltered American-style wheat that uses an ale yeast and Black Forest honey. It has a thin mouth feel and is easy to drink year round. Looking at the merchandise available for sale, this is a popular brew with the ladies. I almost always start out with a wheat beer but this is one that you could stick with all day and into the night. No fruit served on the side which always makes me happy. The citrus stands alone and the creamy head stuck to the side of the glass all the way down. Fresh from the brewer’s teat is the only way to drink a wheat beer.

Laughing Lab – is a Scottish Ale that uses 6 different malts. Half of what they produce at the brewery is Laughing Lab and it is their flagship offering. Laura told us that when they first started brewing, Mike Bristol predicted that they’d do 70% of their business with the Red Rocket Pale Ale and 30% serving Laughing Lab. Who would have thought that a Scottish Ale with a little bit of a peppery aftertaste would overtake a Pale Ale in a city with so many craft brews to choose from? I know that when we go into a store, as dog lovers we have often been persuaded to try a new beer simply because there was a dog on the label. Marketing or no, the success of this beer is well deserved. We flew home with one six pack in our luggage to share with our friends in Texas and it was this beer. Read more about Camden, the dog on the label here and here. Bristol Brewing is also featured on page 8 of The Brew Dogs of Colorado book.

Mass Transit Ale – is an amber ale and when I asked the locals, this was one of the top three they named as their favorite from Bristol. Nothing distinct stood out to me about this beer besides the color (lighter than most – almost golden copper) but even in that, I was impressed with many Colorado brewers for putting up beers that represented the style of the beer as opposed to the tweaks they could make to distinguish the beer from others in the same category. Tasting beer in Colorado is like trying to pick one pure-bred from another in the same class at the Westminster Dog Show. This amber is one of the best you’ll taste in its class and could be the poster child for an American Amber. How do I know? Because Laura turned me on to the BJCP Styles app for my iPod touch.

Hoppy Joy Mascot, Herbert, reads the tasting menu at Bristol Brewing

Yellow Kite Summer Pilsner – is available from April to October. This uses a German pilsen barley, Saaz hops, and a lager yeast. It has a touch of sourness that I like and expect in a German pilsner (i.e., Pilsner Urquell).

50th Anniversary ESBee – Bristol brewed a beer to commemorate the 50th anniversary of The Golden Bee pub at The BROADMOOR resort. This was one of two ESB’s they had on tap. What struck me about this beer was that it wasn’t flat like I associate with European versions of this style. The head was creamy and the taste was a bit fruity.

Local 5 Ale – was the second ESB they had on tap in the tasting room. This is one of their community beers. Four times a year, Bristol brews a batch of beer where 100 percent of the proceeds go to local charities. This one is for the firefighter’s union. Laura told me that they only have about 250 firefighters serving approximately 600,000 people in the Colorado Springs area. The proceeds from this beer help the union transport and host families of fallen firefighters who come in for the national Fallen Fire Fighters memorial services held in Colorado Springs each year. Enjoy the malty goodness of this beer and donate to a good cause.

Red Rocket Pale Ale – was one of the brews I reviewed for the Great Contenders event. It’s a citrusy hop with a good bite and a clean finish. We happened upon this brew at The 1Up bar on Blake Street in Downtown Denver. I remember thinking this was pretty intense for my first beer of the day but after putting something else on my palate at the event and again in the tasting room, it is a very different and smooth brew. My notes after tasting this beer at Great Contenders said, “Very happy with this brewery.” If I were to put a beer flight together to represent this brewery, I would do the Beehive, the Lab, Red Rocket and the next one on our list, Compass IPA.

Compass IPA – is served with nitro. Apparently it is also on tap with CO2 but they were out of that when we toured the facility. Laura suggests doing a side-by-side of the two to see how the nitro helps to balance the hops. I told Laura that I like to do beer tastings that bring people’s palates up to a beer they wouldn’t normally enjoy. My husband loves malts and I’m the admitted hophead, so for him to finish this sampler instead of passing the IPA over to me speaks to how effective it is to go from malt to hops in a beer tasting similar to how it’s normal to go dry to sweet during a wine tasting.

Cheyenne Cañon Piñon Nut Ale  – was not one that we tasted at the brewery but we did get to try it at the Great Contenders event. This is another one of their community beers. It was served too cold at the event (hard to manage temperature in an ice bucket) but I let it warm up and it paid off. There were some good alcohol notes and I loved the effervescence.

Black Fox Cracked – is the saison from this wholly separate entity. John Schneider, a Bristol Brewer uses Bristol’s equipment and distribution channels with Mike’s full support. For two years, Black Fox has focused on Belgian-style ales. This Saison is only served in growlers which they brought to the Great Contenders event. It wasn’t peppery or sour and I would call it closer to a wit but it was a good offering and I love their logo and merchandise.

Venetucci Pumpkin Ale – was what was brewing when we came onsite. Another community beer, this one helps a family farm keep giving away free pumpkins to local school children and it is one of their most popular beers. The Bristol staff went out to the farm and hand-picked and roasted pumpkins to use in the brew. This isn’t an extract but real pumpkins. I saw them pulled out of the vat myself and it smelled divine. The farm reuses the spent grain from the brewery for feed and soil conditioning. The beer is released in late October and is gone by the first of the year. It is so popular that they limit how much any one person can purchase. If you are in the area during this time of year, I suggest stopping by the brewery for a taste.

The Tour

With a Compass IPA in my hand, Laura took my husband and I on a quick tour of the facility. We saw the grist mill and she had us try a couple of the grains. She talked about the percentage of 2-row used versus the darker roasted barleys – a little goes a long way! Their brewing system is made to brew about 6500 barrels a year and she said they will push it to make about 9,000 this year. Colorado is the fifth largest barley producer but almost none of it is used for beer making. Colorado brewers are working on this.

She took us through the process from the mill to the boil, through the cooling system and into the glycol-lined tanks (pre-loaded with yeast) and finally to the bottling machine that runs twice a week. They redesigned their bottling system to reuse water and cut down on their total water consumption. Everywhere you turn, this company is doing the right thing for their community and the environment. We talked and twirled hops in our hands while Boone stood on the platform mixing the mash. A few minutes later, we walked through the refrigerator and back to the tasting room.

This is a brewery set for a major expansion and new equipment and it seems that it can’t happen soon enough. They had two custom fermenting tanks delivered early that were intended for the new, larger facility. With no place to put them, they had no choice but to cut the roof off of their existing facility to house the tanks. They’re working to get them under cover before the weather turns bad. Adding the capacity of two 100-barell tanks will effectively double if not triple what they can produce and distribute.

Laura educated me a bit about Colorado laws. As a microbrewery, they are allowed to sell beer at their facility. This isn’t something we can do in Texas. In Colorado, beer sold in grocery stores has to be 3.2 percent ABV or lower. This allows local liquor stores to give more space to craft beers and creates a great market for mom and pop shops to bring in customers. There was a bill this year that was turned down by Colorado state legislators (HB1284 ) that would have jeopardized that working relationship between liquor stores and the 124+ craft brewers in the state.

Board on display in the tasting room gives visitors the vital stats on all the beers on tap.

Bristol Brewing Company was our greatest find on our trip to Colorado. We skipped the self-guided walking tour at Coors (if you’re in Boulder though, don’t forget to stop by Avery) and we opted out of the trip to Idaho Springs where we planned to eat at Tommyknockers. After this tour, we even decided not to make the drive north to New Belgium because we were just so impressed with this little brewery and that was what we were hoping to find this week as we focused on Colorado craft brews. I told everyone to look out for Southern Star which is one of our local breweries in Conroe, Texas and it’s about a third of the size (in production) of Bristol Brewing. I can’t wait to visit their new facility in the coming years and watch this brewery grow, but I hope they never get big enough to do a self-guided tour. Thanks for the special treatment and attention, Boone and Laura!