History – Page 41 – A Good Beer Blog

Meta-Beer-Blogging…Or Watching Troy Watch Phin And Paul

BeerBistro! after all the people go to bed.I had a great time Friday night. It was fun to meet the Southern Tier guys as well as the very dapper Liliana and Vlado, those great folk behind hosts Roland + Russell (who, by the way, I am starting to think were either two dusty Victorian-era sherry broker gents were secretly offed by L/V on their way up the drinks trade…or are the names of their dogs) but the real fun was being unexpectedly surprised. Greg Clow was kind enough to tell me that by times I am too cranky and – you know what – he’s right. I claim to have an excuse, however, as by times I feel like one of those 19th century astronomers trying to figure out the layout of the canals on Mars. I sort of live in a bubble placed some distance from our beery subject matter. I don’t get to these beer dinners, I don’t have access to a swath of great pubs, can’t just pop out to anywhere for a Rochefort of any degree, my nearest craft brewers are two hours drive away and until Friday I had only met one other person into beer writing face to face. I organize family trips around beer hunting and get sleepy around ten pm, too, so closing down BeerBistro was not what I had expected.

As a result, I build up some presumptions. One was that the beer dinner idea was going to be a bit stiff. You have to understand that I am a BBQ in the back yard in frayed hiking shorts kind of guy. When I walked into the Academy of Spherical Arts in jeans and a ball cap – albeit a lovely Adirondack Brewpub one – and saw folk in Toronto casual (aka eastern Ontario dress-up) I was worried. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The table guests from Southern Tier, The Toronto Star, the LCBO beer and marketing groups and R+R made for great company. And the food and beer matching thing was not as lame uninteresting as I feared. I don’t think I will get too much into obsessing over pairings – as I prefer beer as ingredient than a match – but it was really interesting to see how the chocolate dessert reacted with a raspberry wheat altered the beer drastically, removing the grassiness, highlighting the fruit and making for a palate cleanser. The third course, a variation of what I know as Cambodian “Western Style” yam and chicken curry (my education gleaned from Kingston’s excellent Cambodian joints) was also just dandy with the heat of the ST IPA.

The wall o’whisky and whisky’s friends at The Academy

In the end, the food and beer was just a side show to the gathering over beer. It was really about meeting Troy finally and speaking a bit about his plans for his beer writing whether at his blog or TAPS, the recently revived Canadian beer magazine – that’s him taking a photo of Phin DeMink and Paul Cain; putting a face to the name of Cass, the founder of Bar Towel as well as contributors like Harry; speaking with Sheryl Kirby, partner of Greg over at Taste T.O; talking to Josh in the end for hours about the economic tensions that are affecting where craft brewing is going; reusing my old jokes like the time the grade one teacher asked what Daddy did and was told “my Daddy takes pictures of beer!”

The next day I stopped by Church-Key again, making the 50 km detour to Campbellford to pick up some fine local ales. The day was sunny and warm and, because it was Saturday, there were more cars in the parking lot than I had seen before. People were sitting on the porch drinking samples just enjoying John’s beer. The shop was busy. I grabbed a six each of Northumberland Ale and West Coast IPA and drove on home.

My Night As A Guest Roadie For Beau’s All Natural Beer

The call came at 7:45 pm. For weeks I had been exchanging emails with Steve about Beau’s All Natural Brewing’s move into the Kingston market and the prospect of another great Ontario made craft beer showing up in my favorite pubs as well as the LCBO. Being the man of mortgage as well as offspring, I have certain restrictions around my beer blogging so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to get to say hello and maybe get a short story. Well, that isn’t how it turned out.

I arranged to meet Steve at the nearest LCBO to get some pictures of the delivery process. 8:00 comes and goes. 8:10. 8:20. Nuttin’. I’d seen this white van go by a few times until it roared into he parking lot at 8:25 pm. After a quick how do you do, I asked whether he was delivering to all the LCBOs and realized he had three stops in 35 minutes and a couple of miles of traveling to do. As a good beer fan, I had a job to do and that was guiding Steve though my city. We jip here and there, zigged and zagged in traffic and before you know it 18 cases of their new swing top bottles of kolsche were delivered just as the last shop was locking its doors. I got to watch Steve hunched over paperwork quite a bit. And chatting up those who were going to sell his brew.

After delivering to the new Iron Duke on Wellington – which carries growlers – humping them down some very challenging stairs followed another chat about beer with the manager, we retired to the Kingston Brew Pub where their beer is on tap for a pint and a good old chin wag. I asked a lot of questions about how they started up, their plans and how they deal with materials. Steve described some of the fluctuations which they have to deal with – I had no idea that spring water is richer in minerals in winter – but mainly we talked about liking beer. One thing I always wonder about is how folks who are expert and committed to brewing put up with the cranks. “Cranks” is a good word for beer nerds as its one of the words that was used in the 1800s for baseball fans before “fanatics” got shortened. Steve was far kinder than me – as all brewers are when the question is asked – pointing out that their job as craft brewers in eastern Ontario was best described by John Graham as missionary work. Interestingly, we moved from a discussion on the pleasures of beer in which I wondered how it is that some could voice so much unhappiness with a chosen hobby when the subject matter itself is a pleasure and on into other things: the provincial trade association, thoughts about Beau’s philosophy of being a great regional brewer in touch with its customers, future plans.

Anyway, my night as a roadie was over before I knew it and Steve and the van were off into the night headed for his next destination. Energy and sleep deprivation and the zest that success brings seemed to be in the tank. I loaded up my growler of Beau’s new seasonal, Bog Water, that I’ll try for tomorrows next episode of The Session hosted over at Beer Activistwhere the theme is organic beer.

Big Hop Bombs: India Pale Ale, Meantime, London, England

I picked up a couple of big format bottles of Meantime beers at some point in my travels last year. I needed a Stonch-like moment to try this micro from the centre of the known universe like the one from last March when he tried this beer on an English spring afternoon. Apparently, this first Wednesday evening in February with a blizzard coming was it.

The brewery has given me some confidence that this beer is fit for the Big Hop Bomb category, if we go by this description on their website:

Jam packed with English Fuggles and Goldings, the beer is brewed with as many hops as we can physically get into the copper. We then fill the lauter tun with hops for a further infusion and then we dry hop with the beer with even more hops using our own unique circulation process to ensure maximum contact between the hops and the body of the beer. All this gives us a final hopping rate of well over 2lbs of hops per barrel.

What a gorgeous beer. Orange straw ale under a rich cream mousse head. French bread and herbed lemon curd nose. Very rich and one has visions of slow roasting chickens that have soaked whole in a bucket of this. Plenty of hop floaties like I last saw in a Founder’s Harvest ale. A succession of quickly changing hop effects spark. None burn like in a big US IPA but there are garden bitter greens, tangerine zest and something like licorice. The body is lighter than a full throttle DIIPA, say, but there is plenty of mildy apple and sultana raisin pale malt balancing this 7.5% brew. A bit of arugula to dry the lightly sweet malt finish. Big BA support.

Stouts: John By Imperial Stout, Scotch Irish Brewing, Ontario

This is a great new stout from the Scotch Irish Brewing branch of Heritage, the eastern Ontario makers of a very good IPA and a solid, if only seasonal, porter. There is much talk about this one over at the Bar Towel, the province’s beer fan forum, with a little discussion of whether a 6.7% beer can be called an Imperial stout.

Does it matter? Not really. The labels and gradations of beer are as fluid as what is in the glass and what is in this glass is a full bore stout with plenty of the hallmarks of the style. The brew is deep and dark with a narrow brown edge showing when held up against the light. The tan head fades to a thin rim. In the mouth there is a mass of Dutch salty licorice over dark chocolate with some toast and prune treacle, if such a thing exists, underneath. It is all infused with the minty hop that opens up in the finish.

I think this is an excellent example how big need not mean skull-splittingly strong and that Imperial stout can mean grand and not just alcohol ridden. Seven BAers give firm support.

When Is It Right Not To Blog About Your Beer?

I took no notes. I had the camera but I took no pictures. The photo is from two years ago.

Even though you can blog about pretty much anything if you have a deft eye for the moment, I felt only a little guilty but blogging can get in the way of enjoying and I had such a day of craft beer and Americana yesterday I just had to exclude you for the most part. I didn’t mean to exclude Travis, though. I feel quite badly that I did such a poor job of planning that I didn’t realize the Syracuse football game started at 4 pm instead of the expected noon. As a result, the demands of others and the Sox game rammed into the end of the football squeezing out the chance anticipated visit with Travis to Clark’s Ale House. I am a bad beer blogger but he wins a prize…which I now need to figure out what it could be…

But, as I said, there was much good ale nonetheless. To my mind, Syracuse and its outlying neighbouring counties are one of the hot spots of craft beer in the USA. We ate at the picnic tables outside the Dinosaur BBQ, above, on a warm October afternoon after a good shopping spree at the ever wonderful Galeville Grocery where I snabbed a few new beers to me from Sly Fox, Wagner Valley, Wachusett, Southern Tier (Oats!), Bear Republic (Rye!!) and Rogue (Juniper?!?) as well as the 2007 vintage of Big A IPA from Smuttynose, a past winner of beer of the year around here. As much smoky pork was being eaten, we had fresh well-cellared draft from Middle Ages, Southern Tier, Ithaca, Sacket’s Harbor plus the Dino’s own house beer, Ape Hanger. Best of the day, however, were the samples had at our stop at the refurbished (and very cheery) tasting counter at Middle Ages where we visited last year with Gary’s shoe cam. I tried their new 9% Imperial Porter and was so happy came away with a growler. Their new batch of Winter Wizard was also very nice on tap – a Burton perhaps?

By the way, Southern Tier’s raspberry porter is a cheesecake in a bottle…but in a good way. Notes may follow as part of Porter Season if anyone in this house lets me near another bottle.

A Brewery, A Literary Tour And Another World All In One

Her: I sure hope no one mentions this ever again.
Him: Me, too. How unlike us. Best to bottle it up. Pass me another.

An interesting combination of two of my interests may well come together in Nymburk, some 30 kilometers east of Prague, where a brewery, Postřižinský Pivovar, helps continue its story as a local brewery, how the brewery altered the life of an author – and how the brewery itself became a character in the life of the community through the author:

The brewery, operated by brewing firm Pivovar Nymburk, has strong historical and literary connections with Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, who was raised in the brewery grounds and wrote “Postřižiny” (Cutting It Short) about his childhood encounters with the brewery workers. The book was made into a hugely successful film in 1981 by director Jiří Menzel, who recently adapted another Hrabal work, “Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále” (I Served the King of England). The brewery now uses the literary connection with Hrabal as a marketing tool, and the writer’s amused face stares out from the labels of most of the bottles of Postřižinské Pivo sold in the Czech Republic.

That speaks volumes for me…but sadly more over what is not than anything. We in the English speaking world are so concerned about avoiding making connections about beer and locality and community that we forget that our behavior must seem fairly bizarre to other cultures. Just from my own experience I can think of a bar owning pal who was barred by the local regulator from selling a drink he had come up with that referenced Anne of Green Gables. Recently we’ve seen some US states call out the lawyers and tribunals to keep Santa off beer bottles. Heck, in the chapter of the upcoming book Beer and Philosophy that I penned I noted that the law of New Brunswick barred representations of beer in family situations in advertising. We can’t make fun of fictional characters or even describe what actually is – because to do so we point out there is beer in our lives. Because that would be, I guess, dangerous.

And yet we do all this despite knowing we all have tales of our own how beer characterized the community. I can only speak to my Maritime Canadian youth but we all heard how Moosehead’s Dartmouth brewery had the free tap for those working on the floor and wondered why we didn’t all drop out of undergrad and apply for a job. We knew teetotaling farmers with the case in the barn. We knew the ties between Halifax’s Keith brewery and the VE Day riots when the youth of the town invaded the place and drank the brewery dry, likely some knowing relatives – maybe those above – who had some stories. We even watched ads just a few years ago for Alpine beer and how it was not worth making a career for yourself away from home because you might not be able to get your brew…and probably knew people who likely took the advice.

In many ways, beer frames (or at least colours one corner of) what you are and what you could be expected to be….but you really shouldn’t talk about it. Beer is such an interesting touchstone for our collective denial of what we are. Far better to focus on what we think we should be. Somehow it exemplifies all the danger in life we were warned of – even though we happily live it with anyway. Weird stuff.

Porter Season: Black Irish Plain Porter, Scotch Irish, Ontario

Greg beat me to this review but only because he is in the heart of LCBO-land, Toronto, and it takes some beers weeks to make the two hour trip east. The nuttiness of that is compounded by the fact that beer is brewed by Scotch Irish Brewing (now aka Heritage Brewing) of Carleton Place to the east of me – but centralized authority must have it’s way, you know.

This beer is dandy. The kind of beer that I do not expect to be made by Canadians – an accusation which makes depresses when I make it. But this is confident, a good example of a style, honest in that it is what it says it is and tasty. Sister to the excellent if recently slightly subdued Sgt. Major IPA, this beer pours a deep blackened brown with a light mocha rim and foam. On the sniff, there is cream, dry cocoa and espresso. In the mouth there is more dry cocoa, coffee, plum, date and plenty of drying but not astringent hopping on a reasonable soft water background. At 4.5%, it is moreish and sessionable. Two bucks a stubbie at the government store. Good doggie.

Beer Shop: Beers of the World, Rochester, New York

One of the beery treats of the trip was my first stop at Beers of the World on the south side of Rochester. It is actually in the community of Henrietta the question of whose separate legal existence as a separate jurisdiction is beyond the scope of this blog’s mandate. Either way, the shop is handy to the highway, easy to find from there in an sort of small to medium firm industrial park and big box shop zone and also located in a mini-mall area with lots of parking.

Once in the shop I was surprised by its scale. This store is about volume as the photos show with full cases of beers in the lower shelves and plenty of bottles of each in the upper ones. It is well illuminated, well signed and well staffed. There is also a huge cooler that I really did not investigate. All in all a very easy shopping experience.

Looking at my sales slip, I was able to get somethings I had not seen before at prices I am quite satisfied with. I found the sorts of beer that I was looking for. For example, for 4.65 USD I picked up a 11.2 oz bottle of Vichtenaar, the second Flanders red ale made by Brouwerij Verhaeghe, the brewers of Duchesse De Bourgogne. I also picked up 26 oz bottles of Meantime‘s IPA and porter for 9.59 each. One neat find was a 1993 Thomas Hardy’s ale for 19.95 on sale. A bit of a roll of the dice but as I am collecting these for a partial vertical tasting one day, not bad. All good things that I was happy to find and I dropped 200 bucks honestly and easily.

Still, the stock was not everything I could have imagined in one regard – too few mid-West beers were on the shelves. Now, to be fair remember that this place is called Beers of the World and there were pale lagers from every nation imaginable in addition to a great selection of Belgians, Brits and US micros from both coasts. But being that close to the Ohio border – the beginning of that next region – I was surprised that breweries like Great Lakes, Bell’s and the others with ads in The Great Lakes Brewing News were not represented. To be very fair, based on one visit, I did find a New Holland and a couple of Jolly Pumpkins I wanted but I would have thought that there could be more. If I am wrong and the clerk and I both missed the aisle, I would be happy to be corrected.

But be clear: I will return and this was a happy shopping experience. One thing that I would look into in greater detail next time is the home brewing supplies and beeraphenalia like the aisle of glassware, stacks of bar coasters, the displays of Toby jugs and also the rows of tap handles.

A very complete shop.

Rohrbach Brewing Company, Rochester, New York

One of the other great things about a trip south, other than loading up the stash with brews that are forbidden to Canadians otherwise, is finding a great new brewpub. A few miles to the west of Rochester, on highway 33, we found one more at Rohrbach Brewing.

We sat outside and were treated to great service as well as great food and beer. The Rochester area seems pretty German if the number of cabbage fields we passed is anything to go by. Actually, it is fair to say that each corner town in the area we passed on our trip had a different history and immigrant population – Poles, Swedes, Germans. But Rohrbach is definitely a German spot given the brat’s and ‘wecks we had for lunch. Menu: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

With my ‘weck, I had their South Wedge Hefeweizen, a beer with a fine white foam over yellow straw clouded ale. A dry take on the style, it had cream of wheat and grassy hops with tropical fruit like kiwi and papaya. A fine counterpoint to the food which was among the best pub meals I have ever had. The bread was incredibly fresh and the German potato salad hot tangy and hammy – like church supper scallop potatoes with a big shot of vinegar.

On the way out, I mentioned the blog and owner John Urlaub popped out to say hello. We chatted about beer blogging and the history of his bar and the upcoming Flour City Brewers Fest that Rohrbach sponsors which is coming up on its twelfth edition. Also on the way out, I picked up a copy of The Great Lakes Brewing News and read in Steve Hodos column that Rohrbach is having a great year with plans to meet the greater demand for their great brews by consolidating all brewing operations at the highway 33 location.* I think I caught one of the planners in a planning session in the photo I took through from the bar out to the brew house.

Just as we were heading out, John handed me some stuff including one comp pass to the Four City Brewer’s Fest. I can’t go and, even if this means contest over lap, if anyone within shooting distance of Rochester wants it give me something about your favorite western NY beer experience and I will get the ticket out to you. Or just tell me you want it. Best response in the next 24 hours gets it. And first one I get may just be the best.

*See comments.

The Ontarios Against The Excelsiors Circa 1873

It was a fantastic time except I had to assist a crank (fan) after a keener and later mortified muffin (person of little experience and skill) let a bat fly into the stands. All is well and you can rest assured that the ER at the Samaritan Medical Center is dandy and the Sacketsonians are extremely kind…but, other than a wicked warm-up of many solid contacts, I missed playing our game but still caught a bit of the senior game between the Sackets Harbor Ontarios and the Rochester Excelsiors. High neato quotient nonetheless and greater plans are in the works.