Beer Shopping – Page 9 – A Good Beer Blog

Sad News With The Passing Of Bernie Rivers

Beer fans in central New York are mourning the passing of Bernie Rivers who ran Galeville Grocery in Liverpool near Syracuse. The shop hails it self as “your complete historical neighborhood grocery store since 1888.” I met Bernie this past January on a beer run into Syracuse and enjoyed a few minutes with this cornerstone of the community as well as the CNY beer scene. I’ve been shopping at Galeville for almost six years so far and have always been struck how dependent we beer fans are on the passion and risk taking of the shop keepers like Bernie who stock the shelves, hoping the locals will support the decisions and selections they make. I’ve rarely been anything less but excited with my finds there.

Tributes can be found at the Facebook pages for his store.

CNY Roadtrip To Stock The Stash

Back. I made it back. I hit four beer stores over around 500 km and nine and a half hours. Now, whereas Pretty Things was just a one time bottle that I passed in the night, now I have seven bottles representing three of their brews and any number of batches. Those canny little cap labels are mighty handy. Plenty of other good stuff, too.

I hit a Wegmans in Cicero, Party Source on Erie Blvd., Galeville Grocery in Liverpool and then headed north via C’s Farm Market in Owsego. What did I learn? I had a good old chat with the guy who runs Party Source and finally met Bernie, the owner of Galeville Grocery. As is usually the case, talk is about other stuff as much as beer when they find out that I am from north of the border – health care and lucky Canada they say, taxes and unlucky Canada they say. The shops were all giving each other a run for the money with Party Source showing off its new siding less neon blue and green siding (as so poorly illustrated) as well as growler pours including a Rooster Fish. The other three were as packed with new and interesting beer as I have ever seen them.

Prices? I noticed that The LCBO sells Orval for about 60% of what it costs in Syracuse and that Rogue Yellow Snow is about a buck more there than here. Great deals… if you can find those beers on shelves in Ontario. Funny thing about a monopoly. But the real difference is selection. Over 90% of the beers are unavailable up here and are at prices that make a Canadian beer lover weep. Wegans grocery store wanted just $15.99 for a Great Lakes variety 12 pack and $9.49 for Brooklyn 1. Wegmans even had 750 ml bottles of Saison Dupont for 9.19 and St. Bernie Abt. for $10. 95. At the grocery. Made me think of Mel in Braveheartshouting “Freedom!”. Then it didn’t. Then I paid my duties and taxes at the border. Then I went home.

England: Coffee Porter, Meantime, London

I must have picked this up at Finger Lake Beverage last February. Lovely new web site. $3.50 USD with as cheery a small bottle as ever there was. Well, to be fair, the 375 ml cork top from Girardin is pretty damn fine but this is swell as well.

Gorgeous. Dark mahogany beer under a tan cream thick lacing head. Subdued nose with an oddly enhanced twigged hop statement over roast but a weird inversion occurs on the first sip. Excellent coffee meets a hint of double cream with dark chocolate wave followed by a nicely balanced mild astringency cutting it all ending in a very pleasant herbal stuff. All this in one wee bottle. Lovely.

BAers have the hots. And, best of all, Roland + Russell have announced that they are bringing the brewer’s stock to me, here in Ontario. It is all working out, this thing called life…

Indiana: City-Wide Liquors, Jefferson St., South Bend

Just a bit of praise where praise is definitely due to the good folks at City-Wide Liquors at Jefferson Street in South Bend. I was able to stop in twice and found the place one of the beer best shopping experiences in my life, you know, with good beer. Why? Here’s why:

a. There is an Indiana law that folks 21 and younger can’t even open the door at a drinks store. So the folk good at City-wide provided a clerk to wait at the door with the lad. Irritating law. Well handled.

b. The place is in the downtown a block from the courts, a block from the College Football Hall of Fame, surrounded by professional office space and looks like it fits right in. Neat and tidy, clever and kind.

c. Note the awning. It says “micro-brews” and not “beer” or whatever. These folk promote the good beer along with fine wines and spirits without a tie to food or a fest or a flavour of the month. If someone is looking how craft beer should be placed in the market to send the message that it is a stand alone quality product, check out City-Wide.

d. Great selection and great prices. I was happy to open the wallet to pick up beers by Indiana’s Three Floyds, Back Road and Barley Island along with St. Louis’s Schlafly of St. Louis and a New Belgium Mothership Wit for 3.49 a bomber. None of these are available in Ontario or from what I have seen in New York – and maybe not even in neighbouring Michigan.

e. Did I mention it is open from 9:00 am on into the evening? Sounds too early but when you are heading out of town at the beginning of a 15 hour haul east, well, 9:00 am makes a lot of sense.

The only quibble is their website isn’t telling the story well enough. It looks like it is focusing on the class of product other than those getting the focus at this downtown – and I would assume flagship – location. As with this evening’s experience of buying Arbor IPA, Founders IPA and Bell’s pale ale at a grocery store in Michigan, shopping at City-Wide in South Bend will only drill home all winter how poorly served Ontarians and folk in many other locations are.

Gas Station Saison, Utica Club And Fireworks

Apparently wherever I go I pack an extra 5 kilopascals or whatever atmospheric pressure is measured in. The weather has cracked from a month of wet to sunny and dry. Ran into a pal on a CNY backroad gas station three hours from either of our homes and was inspired to grab a 7 puck twelve pack of Utica Club, the local value brew. Then I got a few from Ommegang including their wonderful Hennepin at the corner store near Friday’s hotel. Another local brew. A huge downpour pushed us off the I-95 right at Well, as if Thor demanded I stop in at Tully‘s to see how things were with Dawn’s shop. Bursting at the seams with downeast ales and lagers. The week ahead? I’ll be hunting out Allagash and other Maine brews on tap at the neighbourhood pubs of Portland. It is a tough old life and, as with the scale of the fireworks at the harbour last night, a reminder of what a bigger freer land America can seem sometimes for those from the Great White North.

Grill, Shed, Steak, Rain, Bieres de Garde And Saisons

The trouble with charcoal grilling is that when the rain comes you can’t turn it off. Propane, on the other hand, has a nice dial that has a “0” setting. But there is the garden shed and, when it rains and you have visitors, it can turn out to be a delightful place to while away a late afternoon hour reading last week’s newspapers in the recycling bin, listening to AM radio and comparing a few examples of bieres de garde and saisons.

We opened the Ch’ti Blonde from Brasserie Castelain à Bénifontaine first, a gold ale called a saison (though French not Belgian) by the BAers but a biere de garde by Phil Markowski in his book Farmhouse Ales under a white mouse head that resolved to a froth and rim. It was the favorite of the set with cream malted milk, pear juice and nutty grain. Very soft water. I actually wrote “limpid cream of what graininess” but I am a little embarrassed by that pencil scribble. It gets a fairly poor rating from the BAers but maybe that is because they were not in a shed when they tried it. Castelain’s Blond (no “e”) Biere de Garde was drier but still creamy fruity, not far off the greatest example of a Canadian export ale. Light sultana rather than pear. Also dry in the sense of bread crusty rather than astringency. Lighter gold than the Ch’ti but, again, the rich firm egg white mousse head and far more BAers approve. By this time the shed dwellers had decided that steak could in fact be finger food and also that these ales were an excellent pairing with chunks of rib and New York strip. The Jenlain Ambree by Brasserie Duyck was another level of richness altogether, the colour of a chunk of deep smoked Baltic amber, the richest lacing I have ever seen left on a glass. Hazelnut and raisin, brown sugar and black current with a hint of tobacco. Lately I have been thinking that amber ales are the one style that could quietly slip away and never be missed. Placing this in the glass in the hand in the shed as the rain thumped on the roof and steak was eaten was an instructive treat as to what ambers can be, though 6% of BAers hesitate to be so enthusiastic.

I think this is the worst photo I have ever posted so I will keep it tiny unless you choose to click on it for the full effect. Apparently there is a limit to the beery photographic arts and I have made it my own. The 3 Monts to the left was picked up at Marche Jovi in nearby Quebec for a stunningly low price of under six bucks. Plenty of malteser and pale malt graininess with yellow plum and apple fruitiness, straw gold with more of the thick rich head, cream in the yeast. The water was not as soft was either beer from Castelain but all BAers love it. By Brasserie De Saint-Sylvestre who also made this biere nouvelle. To the right, the Fantome Winter was one of the stranger beers I have ever had and, frankly, a disappointment. All I could taste was radish, sharp and vegetative, over and all around the insufficient malt. In my ignorance, I didn’t realize that was likely quite an aged beer as the happy BAers explain. Neither the cork or even label, with its unmarked best before portion, give a hint as to the year but that is all right as I suspect I will consider this just a lesson learned even though I generally love Fantome.

By this time there were stars and a breeze as the cold front finished moving through.

CAMNA: The Campaign For Nipped Ales

So far I have created, with a certain underwhelming success, The Pub Game Project to note the things people like to do when they get together for beer, The Society for Ales of Antiquity to celebrate those brewers who are brewing beers like those brewers who used to brew the beers as well as CAMWA or The Campaign For Watery Ale, to encourage movers and shakers to consider the thing that makes 87% to 96% of what is in the bottle.

The response has been, well, insignificant if I want to brag it up out of all proportions. But we cannot stop there. Now we need CAMNA, the Campaign for Nipped Ales, to demand that the higher the strength the smaller the beer. Look at that bottle of Anchor Old Foghorn. Look at the dime. That is a small bottle. Seven small ounces. A nip. And it is only an 8.8% brew. I am getting really tired of opening 22 ounce or even 750 ml bottles of 8% to 13% beer. It is too much. It costs too much, it is too much booze and it is an invitation to excess. You will say they are to be shared or saved for special occasions but I want the option to sip a little one alone on a Tuesday. Why can’t I except with a handful of beers from a few forward thinking brewers? How much would it really cost most moderately sized micros to put out a line of nips of their stronger offerings? Would it not make them more accessible, allow more people to have a try?

These are the questions asked by CAMNA – the only international organization of its stature which dares take on this cause and those lined up against it. Some may think the utter irrelevance of CAMNA to the discourse is a challenge but I say it is an opportunity – an opportunity to be the mouse that roared… in the forest where trees fall when no one in around… in a land far far away.

Craft Or Kraphtt: Porter, Michelob Brewing, St Louis, Mo.

I was going to write “wow” or something but that wouldn’t quite capture my surprise at how good this beer is. Poured at a chilly cellar temperature, there is an immediate mass of dry cocoa that sits in such balance with that bit of hop, a little java and that little nod to dark plum that immediately lets you know this is no ordinary budget beer. Chalky soft water makes it particularly moreish. In fact, if I had not bought this as part of a $10.99 12 pack at the A-Bay Mart the other day I could have been quite happy to pay $4.99 or more for a 22 oz bomber of this stuff.

Definitely craft. Nothing near kraphtt. Perhaps the most surprising value in beer that I have come across so far. BAers rate widely.

Beer Hunting in Michigan and Quebec

I have a couple of big trips coming up in October. Circumstances place me to the west in London, Ontario relieved of duties before noon on a Friday which means I have an hour to head further west still to the border at Sarnia and the afternoon to shop in Michigan. Having been there before, I have a sense of what I am looking for: something wet hopped, a case of Two Hearted Ale…as well as a little Bud American Ale…just to see. I don’t think I’ll make it as far as Jolly Pumpkin but Ron has given me the name of some of his most north-easterly clients so with any luck I will land some anyway.

The next weekend, however, sends me far east through largely uncharted territory as I head to a small IT/brainiac conference called Zap Your Pram in PEI. I will try to stop in a few government stores out east but on the way back on Sunday, I hope to hit a beer store or two in Quebec City like Le Monde des Bieres or Dépanneur de la Rive. I want to get my hands on some Dieu du Ciel for sure but, as John Rubin mentions in today’s Toronto Star, there are plenty of Quebec-made brews we never hear about in English-speaking Canada. The same is true of any regional brews due to our wacko inter-provincial trade restrictions but Quebecers, arguably, have a taste for a broader range of flavours than the rest of we Canucks and it shows in their brews. So maybe I’ll grab something from Microbrasserie Charlevoix or Hopfenstark, both unknowns to me but well regarded by the BAers.

Any hints before I undertake the 4,000 km two-part tour?

Following My Bliss In Oswego, New York

Have I mentioned I really dislike the idea of following your passion? It’s so much based on the immediate and the result. “Follow your passion” is what people are told to entice them into entry position IT jobs that never pan out or pull out the credit card to act on the next spontaneous urge. And it smacks of no respect for idleness. No, bliss is the thing. That cooler draw on the heart. The stuff of naps and toes playing in the tidal zone. The part of you that puts mild ahead of extreme double imperial IPA every time. It was a big day. Out the door at eight with one kid to collect another after their first stay-over. The promise of treats for all was a key leverage tactic. I felt like Ron dragging the kids around – but instead of Brussels, I got to go to Oswego, NY, home of C’s Farm Market and King Arthur’s brewpub.

When we got to C’s a little past eleven, I finally got to meet the blissed out (and maybe, OK, even passionate about beer) Dave and Maria who I have been emailing but missing the face to face on for a few years now. A while ago, they have taken the family fruit market and added a beer selection – then they discovered craft and have kept discovering. What I saw yesterday was easily a doubling of shelf space to fine beer with more focus compared to 2006 on US craft than imports. Peaches were placed in the hands of kids as we talked about the trade and their market. They were happy to report that they have seen a matching increase in sales and even mentioned that there was a happy gang from the Ottawa area that seemed to make the trip two or three times a year to full up the trunk. I left with 54 bottles of various sizes and strengths to replenish the stash including the new-to-me brews like Collaboration not Litigation as well as Old Ploughshare Stout and Red Sky At Night saison from Baltimore’s Clipper City. Future plans include tasting sessions starting in the fall. Sadly, under NY state law you need a special license for growler pours and they don’t issue them any more so that dream may have to wait for a while.

Also maybe a little sadly, things looked like they were not as busy over at King Arthur’s, one of my favorite brewpubs in terms of comfortable design, river mouth location and in-house micro-brew selection. Their dream location near the banks of the river in this historic downtown seem to have been undermined lately by a complete rebuild of the Bridge Street bridge. They are now disconnected from the hotel guests a few hundred feet away on the other bank. This may be compounding the pressures on all small brewers as there were only five beers on offer, three of which were flavoured wheats and none of which offered any level of hoppy bite. With my BBQ burger, I tried their 5% Summer Brown which promised a touch of coriander. I thought this was a great twist on a malty mahogany ale with a bit of licorice and treacle coming through the rich nutty graininess. If I say this had shades of HP sauce you need to understand that in the most positive of terms. Very nice beer.