Category: Brown

July 2022’s Very Own First Beery News Notes

What to do on summer holiday? Now that it is July, I really have to figure out what the second half of August could promise. Not just chores, right? Chores ought to be done by then, done well before the snow shovels and garden hose swap places again. Martyn’s eternal holiday got me thinking about this… again… this week with his post about the pub in Greve de Lecq, Jersey that is apparently separated from all public transportation access other than by foot. It’s like a pub in some unpublished work on Winnie the Pooh – if and when they all grow up, get jobs (and trousers, if we were into finger pointery) and drink a lot of beer. Look at that path to the village pub! While there are many attractions of the pub ticking life that do not do that much for me, this has me thinking about getting some of that woven into my upcoming weeks off. Toddling down earthy paths to bechy pubs. Too much to ask?

What else is going on out there? Are we at the dog days yet?* Certainly not – at least at one archeological dig to which news of which Merryn happily guided me, excavations in a place called Chalkpit Field where maltings from the Dark Ages are being uncovered:

Much of the work undertaken involved cleaning the main malting house features identified from previous years but with special attention paid to the most recently revealed features at the northern and southern ends of the trench. A the northernmost end of the trench, two kiln-like features appear to represent further malting houses, with a considerable quantity of collapsed daub still in situ.

Nosing around the internets as one does I learned that this dig is part of a project investigating “the entire range of human settlement and land use in the north-west Norfolk parish of Sedgeford” and that the maltings date to the triple digit centuries. Fabulous.

Still with the British stuff, there was a good, summarizing (if ultimately despairing) article in The Guardian about the state of pressures on the British pub:

The total number of pubs dropped below 40,000 during the first half of 2022, a fall of more than 7,000 compared with a decade ago… The hospitality sector has faced immense challenges in recent years as it recovered from the pandemic, which resulted in national lockdowns that caused closures and reduced demand. However, the researchers suggest that while pubs managed to battle through Covid-19, they are facing a fresh challenge because of record-high inflation and an energy crisis.

Also in TG, Singapore Slung? Beer made from purified sewage.

Pellicle ran a tribute to an old friend, an old neglected pal… and old pal perhaps we all take for granted… a pal that may not even be there anymore –  Newkie Broon:

“It doesn’t make it the same, and it’s a shame,” Mark tells me. “But that’s how things move on.” The beer has now become a joke back home, a travesty. A victim of its own success that has been transformed beyond recognition—proving that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. But despite the bitter taste left by losing a legend in the North East, with bottles gathering dust on the shelves of Newcastle offies, the hardy heritage of my hometown lives on through determined, independent breweries sparking a resurgence in brown ale.

I like this near 40 year old clip and the message about what are reasonable sources of influence.

Moving west across the Atlantic, I encountered what was essentially a demand from Stan: “If it were Monday & I was recapping the previous week via beer links this one would be at the top“! Heavens. Good thing it is an interesting read. One Roger Baylor on the question of chatting over beer in America as a person who is outside US alignment, politically speaking, and how it offers hope in these pretty hard times:

I’m free to remain a leftist as it pertains to larger issues, and to vote accordingly, while also judging local grassroots political affairs by criteria unique to the immediate acreage lying just outside my front door. Stated another way, it’s possible for me to have a beer with David Duggins, a Democrat and New Albany’s public housing director, and talk about pressing issues of church-state separation and Supreme Court overreach. I did so last Saturday. It’s also possible for me to have a beer with Indiana’s U.S. Senator Todd Young, a Republican, and talk about federal regulatory issues affecting small businesses, American foreign policy, and other topics that have always been of interest to me.

And so much further west it is east again, I have heard of this sensible use of excess local crops like the neighbours of MacKinnon and their strawberry wheat of a few years back so it is good to see the trend-worthy idea elsewhere, this time in Japan:

Last summer, Ayumi Kato, a 32-year-old member of the town’s community revitalization team, planned the project to support farmers and others amid the pandemic by utilizing nonstandard agricultural produce that would have been discarded. After discussions with other women who are local farmers, Kato decided to create two types of beer: one using Amao strawberries and one using local corn. About ¥850,000 was raised for the project from all over Japan through a crowdfunding campaign. After being offered from the Kirin factory the malt produced in the town, the project members asked a craft beer brewery in Anan, Tokushima Prefecture, to produce the beers for Tachiarai.

Beth Demmon has published yet another in her series on interesting people in the good drinks world, this time Colette Goulding who makes cider in London with Hawkes. This is an excellent observation that came out of their conversations:

The future of cider, both in the U.K. and across the world, lies in the hands of people like Colette. But speaking up in a room full of mostly older men (who often come from more rural areas and espouse old-school ideas) isn’t always easy, especially as a relatively younger nonbinary person who has been in the industry for two years. Discussing diversity as an integral part of cider itself can be a challenge, they say, but one they’re up for.

It has yet to get stinking hot enough here to make the tomato leap in their cages but if it does some day soon, there is only one thing for it – hefeweisen. Nothing breaks the back of a mid-morning scorcher filled with when seven minutes of weeding and thinking about maybe weeding than a few litres of Teutonic clovey wheaty stuff followed by a good nap. And apparently, as Boak and Bailey found out, it is a good year for it – even if not everyone knows it:

BBF’s version, available in 440ml cans, actually pours stubbornly clear, or at least only faintly hazy. It has vanilla in the aroma and, of course, a bunch of banana. At 5%, it’s not as strong as the Schneider original – or, indeed, as most standard German wheat beers. We liked it so much we bought a box of 12 to drink at home. Perhaps others don’t share our enthusiasm, though, because it was discounted to £25.60 – about £2 per tin. At present, they don’t have any in stock.

More about wheat here which, characteristically for US beer writing, misses the entire two centuries of its own wheat beer brewing history.

Tweet of the week:

Finally, a helpful bit of health advice in you are finding too much is causing too much.

There. You have been informed. A bit. For more, check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday but not from Stan every Monday as he is on his summer holiday. Check out the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday (Ed.: Robin got a job!!!) and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from DaftAboutCraft‘s podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s (Ed.: now very) irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given… still not on the radio dial…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water. There has also been the Beer O’clock Show but that’s now winding up after ten years.

*Could be as there is plenty of writing not about beer under the umbrella of beer writing. Keep keeping it dull, semi-pros!  As a policy point during the times of good beer’s gentle decline, it’s important to remember that beer has reasonably obvious boundaries. 

Your Thursday Beery News Notes For Spring 2022

Let’s see how this goes this week. Still on the meds but all went well, thanks for asking. Don’t be losing track of those wisdom teeth. Just sayin’. From Ukraine, NPR’s Tim Mak reports that due to martial law access to legal alcohol is limited but recently in Vinnytsia there was no ban. The welcoming bartender above is Oleg, who Mak reports had Jäegermeister, a local lager or a kind of berry cider on offer. No doubt they were most welcome from the other photos posted from the bar. Give directly and without delay. If you have a need to filter that through beer, consider supporting Ontario brewer John Graham who has gone to Germany and Poland with others to transport people and supplies involved with Ukraine’s disaster.

First up, there was an excellent tight piece of writing this week by Holly Regan on one of the downsides of the pub, a glimpse of despair. It’s the sort of observation that you don’t see in beer writing much as it is a fairly false positively filtered genre:

…I order a half of Bitter and get sucked into conversation with the bloke behind me: a train driver who wishes he had worked in pictures, all narrative arcs and glassy-eyed ambition. He sees me reading “Ulysses,” so we talk about Joyce, films, and the human condition. It starts off like a Linklater movie until it turns all Aronofsky, as the inevitable end of prolonging the experience begins to reveal itself. He says he’s been parked in that seat for two straight days, and it chills me, triggering memories of times where I couldn’t stand to be in my body, either.

Alistair has been digging through the Austrian National Library’s archives and found a few things that have made their way into a few posts. He found records related to I discovered the Witt & Williams English Brewery of Hamburg, established in 1869 and wound up in 1871 – and he did the maths so we don’t have to:

The ad goes on to inform us that samples are available from the brewery, just write to them with postal instructions and the relevant cash for a case of either 24 full sized bottles or 24 half bottles. 4 thaler 15 silbergroschen, approximately 4 Shillings 1.5 pence in old British money, or if I have done the various sums correctly £24.20 in modern British money ($31.96/€29.05) would purloin for you a case of either “Double Brown Stout” or “The golden Ale”, while 3 thaler 15 silbergroschen (do your own maths, my head hurts) would get your the XX Porter or IPA.*

Ron has added to the question of diastatic brown malt with his post drawing on research he set aside for a decade or so:

The method of making brown malt was changing, for a variety of reasons, one of which was the high risk of a fire.

“it was formerly the custom to dry brown malt also on ordinary kilns, with wire floors, but the labour on these was of a most disagreeable and exhausting character, and brown malt is now generally dried in wire cylinders.” 

The presence of diastase in older forms of brown malt is explained by the way it was produced. Diastase is much more sensitive to heat when moist. By first removing all the moisture from the malt at a low temperature, the diastase was not damaged as much by the finishing high heat.

Careful readers will recall how in 2017 Ed sent me a brown ale with a diastatic brown malt he had created. He explained his malting process in great detail here. And in 2014 I went so far as forming The League of Diastatic Brown Kilnfolk to explore the idea – based in large part on a reference in one of Ron’s books to the quick flame kilning of the malt to achieve a darkening of the outside while retaining the diastatic properties inside. The clubhouse has been a busy spot ever since.

Jordan has provided the third in his series of posts on the 1904 brewery workers’ strike in Toronto, widely relying on extensive citation from contemporary newspapers like this report in May 25th edition of The Globe:

The lockout of union brewery workers, which has been expected ever since the trouble at the Reinhardt and O’Keefe breweries opened, has occurred. Yesterday, the unskilled union men employed by the Dominion, Cosgrave, Copland, and Toronto Brewing and Malting Companies were locked out by the brewers. This action was decided upon at a meeting of the Master Brewers’ Association, and resulted in the calling out to-day of every union brewery man in the city with the exception of those at Davies’ Don Brewery, which is paying the union scale. 

Solidarity, buvver Davies! In other legal news, the testimony in the Keystone / Stone court case is getting weirder and weirder. Plenty of thanks to Bianca Bruno of Courthouse News for sharing some of the juicier bits. Much has been made by the apparent disclosure that Keystone Light is just Coors Light that was not up to specification – as if breweries would not have strategies for dealing with waste, that great concern of E.P. Taylor. But the real story is the nonsense at the heart of Stone’s claims:

Wagner said the company may not survive the business losses it claims to have suffered because of consumer confusion caused by Keystone Light’s “stone”-heavy rebranding. “I know Keystone spent tens of millions of dollars to advertise. I think it would take at least as much to try to rebuild our brand,” Wagner said during questioning by his attorney Douglas Curran. Curran asked Wagner a follow-up question. “If Stone isn’t made whole, what do you think will happen?” Wagner responded: “I think we’re going to lose our company.”

I am not sure Wagner, Stone’s founding brewmaster, actually knows what he himself said.  It would require not just consumer confusion at the first moment of encountering the Keystone advertising in question but the continuing purchasing of Keystone by a large group of people believing it to be a craft beer made by Stone. No one has alleged such a silly suggestion. The two beers are entirely different, not just in terms of price and point of sale but in terms of flavour. Where is the this mass of misguided craft nerds? Nowhere. Because they don’t exist. Which means they pose no risk to Stone. Like some of the witness stand statements by co-founder Koch, this makes little sense and should be looked upon with a wary eye by judge and jury.

Kate Bernot triggered an interesting flood of confession and accusation about the bomber bottle of micros of yore as avaricious scam. I never minded all that much as it gave you enough if you liked whatever was in there but not too much if it sucked.

Spring 1953 looks so pleasant that I can’t believe anyone ever did the sort of thing illustrated in this US Brewers Foundation ad “First Fine Day of Spring” which came with the slogan “In this Friendly, Freedom-loving Land of Ours – Beer Belongs… Enjoy It!” Who are these people and how old were they? I like the idea of getting as snazzed up as anyone but did people really do this?

Collaborations are so common (in a couple of ways) these days – but I kinda liked this marketing plan rolled out by English craft brewery Wild Beer Co. – as reviewed by The Beer Nut:

English brewery Wild Beer Co. came up with this wheeze for the just-finished 2022 Six Nations rugby tournament: six collaborative beers produced with brewers from the competing countries. Of course I bought all six, and at a fiver a can they weren’t cheap. I had every right to expect something special from each.

The price point seems to be his main complaint but, if I might, the whole point of “collabs” is a bit of a soaking for the poor purchaser so the buyer should beware as soon as the word is floated. In this case, however, at least the soak did not just go to a sadder purpose like some starving beer writer on the bleg who came up with the brilliant idea of getting their name on the label in return for suggesting chocolate or beer juice or, you know, dirt be added to an otherwise perfectly fine beer.

Finally, in the “when licensees go a bit nuts” category, this tale of a breakup between the Fullers Brewery people and one of their tenants, a Mr. O’Neil, which took an unusual turn:

The erection of the fence, made up of wooden boarding, came as a shock to local residents who told MyLondon they did not know anything about it. A spokeswoman for Richmond Council confirmed Mr O’Neil does not own the land adjacent to the pub. She said: “Mr O’Neill has been in dispute with Fullers Brewery, which is the freehold owner of The Plough. The freehold does not own the triangle of land immediately adjacent to the public house – there is no registered owner and this area of land is considered part of the public highway.

Nutso. Like to see it. There. Not a bad week’s worth of words. For more check out the updates from Boak and Bailey mostly every Saturday and from Stan every Monday, plus more with the weekly Beer Ladies Podcast, and at the weekly OCBG Podcast on Tuesday and sometimes on a Friday posts at The Fizz as well. There is a monthly sort of round up at The Glass. (Ed.: that seems to be dead now.) There is more from the DaftAboutCraft podcast, too. And the Beervana podcast. And sign up for Katie’s irregular newsletter, The Gulp, too. And check out the Atlantic Canada Beer Blog‘s weekly roundup. Plus follow the venerable Full Pint podcast. And Fermentation Radio with Emma Inch. The AfroBeerChick podcast as well! And also look at Brewsround and Cabin Fever. And Ben has his own podcast, Beer and Badword (Ed.: …notice of revival of which has been given…)  And remember BeerEdge, too, and The Moon Under Water.

*No, God as my witness, I have no clue either. Not one clue…

Eephus, Bricks And Mortar – Left Field, Toronto

imageIs it just me or are samples you don’t ask for different? A wee giftie. A few brewers still send me stuff like these two beers from Toronto’s Left Field Brewery. I don’t hunt them out anymore and get so few these days it hardly matters. That’s what I tell myself. I still pure, right? Let’s be honest. Years ago, though recent enough to have been in this house, two separate UPS vans met face to face on the street where we live. They laughed over how they were sick of dropping of stuff at my place. Each driver had a box packed with various beers sent by gracious and keen distributors anxious for approval, when once this blog was the sort of place read, I am told, by the staff of the New York Times Food and Drink section. Now? Let’s stick with that word – different.

I still get samples I don’t write about. Some free beer is still just that Heineken Light sent in a cheap beach cooler with a 57 cent AM/FM radio built into the side. Or it’s an oddly foul crap craft that should never have been made. In an embossed bottle made so badly that the extra trim cuts you, leaving you will bloody palm. That was a great one. Beer from Left Field are nothing like that. With Game 4 between the Cubs and the Tribe on, they certainly fit the evening’s entertainment given the brewery’s baseball themed branding. The neck label is shaped like home plate. The names are usually linked to the game.

Not so with Bricks and Morter, a special release coffee porter. The back of the expensively presented painted bottle describes it as a tribute to the history of their neighbourhood’s brick trade. The coffee is from a nearby roaster, added during the final stage of extraction. I am told. The beer pours a deep cola with a thick, mocha coloured head.  One the nose, sweet dark coffee. In the mouth, a thick ale – bitter dark coffee made more so with a dose of twiggy hop. A small nod to licorice and eucalyptus. There is husky, rough texture to the beer that works, accentuating the espresso. The result is a 6% dark ale full of flavour that comes across as a light version of an imperial stout.

Eephus is an old friend. When I drink it I feel like I am cheating on The Whale, CBW’s flagship brown ale. I like brown ales.  Two years and a season ago in June 2014, I was out with Ron and Jordan on a rare trip to Toronto. The evening struggling to understand what good beer meant in that place at that time was well capped with Grizzly Beer, a solid comforting thoughtful brown ale at Bellwoods. Eephus was Left Field’s first beer and one that signaled good things. This bottle, like its sibling above, displays a fresh powdery texture that conveys goodness, thickness. A touch lighter at 5.5% there is no adjunct between you and the ale, unless you consider oats a novel ingredient. It’s flaked oats and not oat malt, by the way. Only a partial fermentable, a body builder that gives a silky touch. I will say that the hop profile is a bit more flowery, a bit more bitter than I recall from earlier happy sessions but it sits well in this incarnation.

An Eephus, in case you are wondering, is a slow looping trick pitch rarely trotted out, meant to throw off a batter. “Spaceman” Bill Lee would use when he was an Expo or a Red Sox.

Ontario: Byward Brown, Big Rig Brewing, Ottawa

A mad half week on the road. Two business meetings, a ball game plus a 97th birthday party in the family saw me driving from Eganville to Ottawa to Toronto to Owen Sound and back. Good thing I picked up a growler of this nut brown ale as I was passing from highway 417 to the 416. Big Rig sits in a small mall in Ottawa’s east end next to the big Ikea and serves both local passing car traffic as well as nearby residential community. The on-site restaurant was packed when I stopped in with folk catching the NHL playoff game happening in another part of town that evening.

After a morning of gardening and, err, home organization this hits the spot. The beer pours an attractive reddish mahogany with a fine creamy off white head. Nuts and dried fruit on the nose. In the mouth, there is a good bracing jag of twiggy hopping paired with a minority vote from something adding some citrus rind. As the beer warms, the malts open up with flavours of cola, dark sugars, dates and other brown things. The level of hopping might have attracted an earlier craft era designation as a Texas brown ale but that’s a label that seems to have faded away, a style that wasn’t then might have been but now may not be anymore. A black tea dry finish highlights the hazelnut notes and grainy texture.

A reasonably drinkable 5.2%, not enough BAer reviews to warrant an average. I like.

Ontario: Eephus Oatmeal Brown, Left Field Br’y, Tra’na

I think I only dislike one thing about the prospect of drinking this new beer. I have a strong suspicion that Jays fans made it. Have I mentioned I really dislike the Toronto Blue Jays? Years ago when I bounced in a bar in London, Ontario there was another bar down the road all done up with Detroit Tigers memorabilia except for signs that said “Jays Suck” which I loved. See, as an Expos fan since ’67 when I was a toddler with a cap and ’73 when I saw the Yanks lose at Fenway, I have had a dual allegiance. One sadly past. One present. Yet… I love baseball. The season starts this weekend. Spring, summer and fall all lay before me again filled with baseball. See, I have done this. I have hit doubles in America in recent years as a rather fat man off a better player than me. I have hand lathed bats. So, the baseball theme chosen for Toronto’s new Left Field Brewery has me.

But how about the beer itself. Start with the bottle. Note the Mississippi mud hue of the label’s background tone. I have a ball in that hue from the day I watched the Sox smoke the Jays. A one pitch knuckle ball with the Wakefield fingertip inprints and the Vernon Well’s pop up all marked. Far defter branding than Coopertown‘s even if I do have the yellow t-shirt. The aroma is date and brown bread. Lots of molasses but something herby spicy, too. Verging on Abt 12 with half the alcohol. Mohagany ale with mocha cream lacing foam and rim. Lots going on in the swally. There is that smoothness one associates with oat but also enough placement points of hop over the arc of the quaff that you are aware this is not someone’s take on Peculiar. Yet, that dripping brown malt. The blackstrap. The nut. The bread crust, dry cocoa and black tea. It is also a rejection of all those trendy needy nanos. It’s, bear with me, reminding me of the intention behind the Whale. Beer for people who like the taste of beer. And a bigger beer than its strength. I had an oatmeal stout from Quebec’s Le Castor earlier and was only disappointed with its heft. None of that here. Heft to lend.

I am given to understand from one young pup to my west that this bottle is not actually for sale but zooped up for samplin’ and reviewin’. It can be bought around town on tap in the Big Smoke. I don’t go there much. Next time I am there, I am finding me some of this.

New York: Frankenwhale, Community Beer Works, Buffalo

OK, it is Frank and The Whale, actually, the two brews from Buffalo’s Community Beer Works. The recent Euro 2012 Beer Bloggers Conference has sent the up a red flag about the ethics of samples. Really? I suppose some have ethical debates within about the free bit of gak they might foist upon you at a grocery if you don’t plan your cart route cleverly. I think Tandy is on the right track. Missed PR opportunity. That’s all.

These samples sparkle ethically. A work friend was coming to this end of Lake Ontario from the other end and rather than stay in Canada popped south. He asked if there was anything he might pick up and I directed him to CBW who hand filled these two bottles for same delivery back across the border. They are only on tap so far so the bottling is a bit of an experiment. The “F” and “W” black markered on the cap is not actual branding. So, not available in my town or country and not available in this format. If I like them, I know the pain and torment of alienation from the beloved. If I don’t, well, what was the treat that I was somehow leveraging against my inner compass? No ethical mine field when the prize is crap. Result? My soul is as pure as the lamb’s.

Let’s see. Gimme a second to get a glass…

Frank poured a clouded light gold, under whipped egg white head. The aroma jumped at me as soon as I popped the cap. Bright apricot and lime citrus on the most modest snort. On the swish, it is a lighter bodies mouthful of grapefruit and arugula. Very much the lawnmower in the the weedy ditch sort of hopping. At 4.6% God knows I could not possibly suggest this is sessionable but one sure could consume a significant quality at a moderate pace over a long period of time. The slightly drying finish reminds me a lot of Nickle Creek’s APA of a couple of weeks ago. But this is a bit more of a fruity take of a pale ale. Like it lots. BAers who have had it have the love.

The Whale is beefier at 5.9%. Rahther than rocky meringue, from above this looks like a very large espresso with its fine mocha cream head. Plenty to smell: date, cocoa, coffee. In the mouth a wonderful wash of soft water cream and coffee with nut and dark dry fruit flavours wafting about. Really quite rich and lovely. Hopping is there, a bit minty but only a bit, to cut any cloy and also to frame the flavours in the malt. I get licorice and a bit of white pepper, too. Maybe even a little cigar. Quite the thing. Rich but not flabby. Still bread crusty. More BAer love.

So. Feeling ethically pure still? Sure am. A fine brace of beers as ever I had and certainly so given that they are from a brewery that has only been open for month and could fit in my shed.

Belgium: Thinking About Four Sorts Of Brown

belrod2

Continuing in the style of Four Belgian Blondes and Four Wittes, I am going to try to work through the Belgians I have squirrelled away over the last few months style by style. I also want to avoid one problem that arises doing a side-by-side, especially when you are looking at triples and strong ales. Four of those at 8 to 11%, especially when one or two only come in a quart, can frankly blow the top off yer heed. So, to ensure some benefit of the colour and head comparison, while at the same time avoiding a public display of the ever famous liquid lobotomy, I have decided upon a handy-dandy chart format for these posts. As I open each brew within the set, I will add it to the table with a photo of its label and one of the pour along with some notes. Click on the photos for a bigger view.

The trouble with this first set, however, is that they are not a style all. They are just a grab bag of styles all of which fall under the word “brown” more or less. The Petrus is a tangy Oud Bruin, while the Leffe Brown is something more familiar, a rich brown. The Kasteel is more of a barleywine while Rodenbach Grand Cru is a sour beer gone mad – the best malt vinegar you will ever find. All, however, are forms of browns from Belgium.

 

Belgian Browns Bottle and Pour Notes
belpet1

Petrus Oud BruinFlemish Brown


translucent mahogany		 petrus1

Lambic-like, sour cherry aroma, refreshing but also, at its core woodsy. Tart orange and spicy but in a good Christmas cake way. The body is not heavy. Slight carbonation – very light for a Belgian. 5.5% in a 250 ml bottle. BAs speak.
belkas1

Kasteel IngelmunsterQuadruple or Barleywine

 

Demarrara		 belkas2

This is a dandy big beer – brown sugar plumy or red grape malty goodness at 11%. Without a trace of orange peel or spice so no hint of a dubble. No sour at all so nothing oud about it. This is surprisingly fresh for its bulk…like me. Rummy. Very subdued hops, only enough to keep the sweetness from being cloying. Here is the brewery’s take on it. A juicy swallow ending in a hot port finish. 330 ml bottle. Advocates comment.
belrod1

Rodenbach
Grand CruFlemish Red



cherry wood patina

I said that this was the best malt vinegar you will ever taste and I am not kidding. This is pure soured, oak aged Belgian brew. Michael Jackson is kinder speaking of a vanilla-like oakiness, passion-fruit flavours, a clean sharp acidity like sour cream. That is all there but you have to appreciate that the acidity is that of a sub-puckeringly sharp wine. Vineous does not cover how sharp. Tart but only in the sense of King Tart of the Tartonians. Within the tart the is some reflection of spice and certainly a gooseberry-rhubarb custard trifle would go well with this. That acid lingers the palate with the yeast with some deference to richness. It is nice. Try it but prepare to wish for a nice light double IPA as a cleansing light chaser. 6% in a 330 ml bottle.Beertonians blown away.
 

bellef1

Leffe Brown Belgian Dark Ale

 

  

 

 

 

Chestnut

 bellef2

Hard label this one. It has some rich round brown like the Kesteel and also some tang like the Flemish Browns. Another calls it an almost double and another a dark ale. But labels have a limit. A lively head which leaves a rich foam ring. Medium to strong body. Cream and chocolate with a strong hop edge cutting the sweet. 6.5% in a 330 ml. Great on tap.Beersters consider.

 

New York: Variety 12- Pack, Cooperstown Brewing, Milford

Another big buy from my trip a few weeks ago to the Party Source in Syracuse, NY. The case of this happy vista upon cracking the cardboard. Cooperstown Brewing is not actually in Cooperstown but is a proud cornerstone of the Milford, New York business community.

Like the Smuttynose case review posted ten days ago, I will work through the varieties included in this combo pack and give my impression of what the brewery is up to. One preliminary point, however. In this pack there are twelve bottles of six types as opposed to the four types. For me this takes out the “what do you think opportunity” – I don’t mind sharing a third but I think two bottles separated by a couple of days helps me think about whether I like a brew or not. Also, without having had one, drop the “golden ale”. Maybe once I have popped them, I will feel differently but to me that sounds like a pale ale that can’t work itself up to call itself even that. Plus, having sneaked one each of the stout and porter already, I know you could drop the stout. The porter is a real winner but the stout is not. You are trying to win me over with these mixed cases, so my advice is play your best cards.

I will review all six ales – and they are all ales which is a plus from the get go – as I pop ’em.

Golden Ale: I am not sure whether I have to retract what I wrote above, now a few days ago, but I am also not minding this light ale. That is what it really is at 4.3%. The brewery says:”Nine Man” is a golden ale, brewed from English pale and crystal malts, and with torrified wheat. It is bittered with Cascade and Cluster hops and finished with Cascade hops. “Nine Man Ale” was first brewed as a summer seasonal beer in 1996. It was kegged the first season but not bottled until the opening of the baseball season in April 1997.

– Original Gravity 1.045 / Final Gravity 1.012 /4.3% abv.

There is more body in this than a supposedly full-bodied Canadian macro-ale like Labatt 50. The hop selection and timing provides a good edge to the brew without florals or fruity flavour – maybe a wee lemon rind thing. The crystal malt gives it a slight nutty tone as well. Nothing remarkable except that at that moderate alcohol level, it does not come across as any kind of compromise. The beer advocatonians are a little restless with a 19% thumbs down rating. Here is one unhappy soul’s tale:Found this to be a decent, quaffable light ale. It has a pleasant medium gold appearance with a slight head. The aroma has hints of mown grass with some hints of Saaz hops. Tart, slightly fruity flavor. At the end, find it to be a bit clingy and starchy on the aftertaste.That reviewer rated it 2.9 out of 5. What do you want from a light ale?!?! But that is it! It is not called a light ale or even a lite one but a golden one. By not admitting what it is, has Cooperstown lost a market? Perhaps. For now, I say leave three of these in the box…maybe as a summer seasonal.

Pride of Milford: Strong Ale. The brewery says 7.7% which is about 2.2% higher than I would have guessed from the mouthfeel. It is rich but not Belgian fruity, more restrained like a low-end barley wine. The excellent Lew Bryson in his excellent, nay, seminal New York Breweries (1st ed. 2003 Stackpole Books) calls it at page 166:…a big beer that showcases the beautiful character of the Yorkshire [Ringwood] yeast. It’s malty, cookie-sweet and touched by fruity esters and Ringwood nuttiness that I love…I would agree with everything but the “cookie-sweet” unless we are talking ginger snap or milk lunch. I think this is actually moderately rich and dry – think amontillado or oloroso rather than fino if we were taking sherry which we are not but I thought I would say it anyway. The brewery says:

“Pride of Milford” is a very special ale with a tapestry of complex flavors and aromas. It is brewed with five malts and fermented with the Ringwood yeast at a higher temperature which gives this beer a uniqueness all its own. “Pride” has a distinctive reddish copper color. It is strong and rich beer. When “Pride” was first brewed in December 1999, many thought the flavor and aromas of this beer had fruit overtones. No fruit or adjunct flavoring is added to this beer. The unique flavor comes from our special brewing process.

It is not particularly pungent and has a soft mouthfeel, which would make it quite sneaky if one faced an afternoon at a cottage in winter with a fridgefull. Which raises the question of why this would be included in a case in July. I say include three of these in the case in winter replaced by the Golden Ale in the summer. I think beerish advocates would agree.

Strike Out Stout: The head fizzed like a Coke as it was poured and dissolved away within ten seconds. A nice flavour with chocolate and dry darker malts but subdued, a lighter bodied stout. An oxymoron. Fades in the mouth leaving a cocoa-chalky feel then just a little sour tang. The brewery is kinder to itself:

“Strike Out” is brewed with 6 malts including a balanced portion of chocolate and crystal malts. It is also brewed with 5% flaked oats for a velvet-like mouth feel. English pale, Munich and black malt, plus roasted barley round out the malt bill. Considerably lower in alcohol than both Benchwarmer Porter and Old Slugger Pale Ale, “Strike Out” is a well-rounded stout, opaque black in color with a roasted palate.

        People looking for a stout will be disappointed, especially with the 4.6% but also the crystal malt, quite off style, even for an oatmeal stout. Consider these

two great oatmeal stouts

         easily accessible to someone in the east end of Lake Ontario region. Both have richness. Strike Out does not. It should be reformulated with some body added or it should be called a dark ale, a lesser style. The yeast is a bit sour, too. Not really on for the style. I think I have made a stout like this and not been that proud of it.

One unhappy beer advocate

       captures my thoughts:

Almost black. Big Huge fizzy brown head. Good retention. Head forms craters as it dissintegrates. This beer appears to be very charged up by its appearance. Coffee bean, soap and leather are present on the nose. There’s something wrong with this beer. (Actually, many things.) Mouthfeel is way too carbonated. I get so damn much gas in every gulp that a burp is always the aftermath. The taste is astringent. Husky. Tannin like. Soapy. Stale. No stout qualities to speak of. I haven’t dumped a beer in months, but I just don’t feel like burping 20 times by the time I finish this one.

      So ditch this beer, Cooperstown. I think I am going to like the porter better from the recollection of the first. Leave this one out of the variety case to make some room of the seasonal.

Old Slugger Pale Ale: If there are two words that are bad in beer they are “Mt.” and “Hood”. Some call them spicy. Others, like me, rough and dirty, like a little bit of bark in every sip. I didn’t know what was so odd about this brew until I saw those two words – then I knew. Al Korzonas in his text Homebrewing – Vol. 1 (Sheaf & Vine, 1997) writes:

Another recently released American-grown cousin of Hallertauer Mittlefrüh. It is spicy (cinnamon), resiny and slightly sweet. It is recommended for any German or American lager. It is quite close to the Hallettaur Mittlefrüh in character, perhaps a little spicier. I recommend against using this hop for beers in which you want dominant bitterness – in a recent experiment I found its bitterness to be slightly abrasive when used in a recipe where the bitterness strongly dominated the malt.

      Not good news for a pale ale – that fairly malty, fairly bitter style.

Don’t get me wrong. This is an ambitious brew – ringwood yeast and its sour, woodsy thing; three very different hops, Mt. Hood as well as twiggy Fuggles and citrusy Cascade; as well as four barley malts including two types of crystal. For all that work there is an absence of finesse, the balance that makes all that flavour pull together. What would help? There is butterscotch but it is sitting there in a gap that needs to be filled up with biscuit. Again with the body…Cooperstown is just making them too light for the amount of flavour they want you to take in. Like the stout, it leaves you with an impression that it is thinner than it ought to be. Also like the stout, the head disappeared fast. The beer advocates give at a fairly low average for a micro.

Back Yard India Pale Ale: The head sustains longer than the stout or the pale ale. This is a good sign. The first taste is of vegetative rather than herbal hops. Clover sweet. There is a rough malt grain edge but is works in this one. This beer would go well with rich earthy flavours like ox-tail soup, parsley potato soup or roast squash. You know what I saying. I know you do. Maybe it is just that the ringwood challenge has been met with this one. A full three ales in the variety pack year round.

Interestingly, the unhappy beer advocates are talking about gushing bottles, cloudy ale and high burposity. These comments all go to problems at the brewery. My bottle was nothing like this, fairly still and balanced. So be prepared for bottle variation. The brewery says something very interesting:

English pale barley malt is predominant in this beer with just a small amount of crystal malt. It is well bittered with Cluster and Cascade hops and finished with a mix of local hop and larger amounts of Fuggle hop.The southeast zone of the leather-stocking region in New York (west of the Syracuse-Binghampton corridor south-west of Albany) was a hop growing area before the west was truly won and a local hop is a good hop if it is a heritage variety as this claim might be taken to imply. All in all, I am very happy with this beer. No Flower Power IPA from Ithaca but a worthy if less brassy neighbour. Redemption in the case.

Benchwarmer Porter: Comfort beer and, again like the IPA, a worthy placement in the case. The head is rocky and tan. The mouthfeel is full and full of mocha and fresh picked unsweetened black current. A beer fit for the Ringwood, but porter usually is. I used to make Ringwood pumpkin porter in my homebrewing days…but less about me, more about the brew. The brewery says:More than 4% chocolate malt, which is the most similar to the brown malts of the early 1700’s, gives “Benchwarmer” its dry coffee-like finish. It is fermented with the Ringwood yeast which is an excellent yeast for the brewing of porters.I am buying it but are the beer advocates? 43 reviews all all positive. One says:

Big foamy head and very dark color, but not opaque. Lots of hops for a porter, and they work well in drying out a slightly chewy mouthfeel, as well as imparting nice hints of herbs and dry leaves. Very tasty underlying flavors of espresso, dry molasses and earth. The finish is dry, with the coffee/espresso flavors lingering with a touch of alcohol. Really complex on tap.

Many reviewers taste some smoke which I did not get at all. Oh, well. Such is life. Very decent porter.

So all in all this is an ok variety pack but I now know what I will buy in a six and what I will not. Some concern for production quality but when they do well they do well. Nothing life changing but they are thinking and they are achieving – two things I have to remember to get around to from time to time Work on the stout and the pale ale, mix up the case to go with four styles not six and you are going to be ok.