St. Patrick’s Day: A Pukey Holiday
Today is St. Patrick’s day – otherwise known as a fairly conflicting holiday for most beer drinkers. For every good thought of celebrating Irish culture and exceptional Irish beer, there are several billion thoughts about wearing a hat so big everyone can’t help but know how wasted you are. For every pint of Guinness sold, there’s got to be a dozen thirty packs of Bud Light in green packaging sold (can’t stress to you how much I respect the marketing people in St. Louis who are tasked with also making beer).
My two favorite St. Patrick’s day stories involve the same thing: puke.
The first was when I was in 2nd grade and went to school having drank 18 Budweisers. Ok, that’s not true. I went to school and was overly excited to be wearing green and having red hair (the things we get excited about when we’re kids!). This was my day and I was going to soak it up. However, the other thing that is known to “suck things up” is sawdust when it is applied to vomit. I know this because, for no reason that I can remember, I threw up in the carpeted hallway at school. After the janitor applied a fairly lazy amount of sawdust, I was forced to face the embarrassment and ridicule of everyone in my school as they walked by a pile of sawdusty puke and laughed at my misfortune. To this day I’m convinced sawdust does nothing but act as a way to embarrass kids who throw up at school so they learn to hold their breakfastes down.
The second story about St. Patrick’s day puke happened many years later. I had just moved to New York and, in walking home, walked by a normal bar. As I walked by, a group of flubby characters who looked like they were on hour 21 of a 15 hour binge came stumbling out. One of the more awkward looking ones saw me and screamed, “Hey! Look! That guy’s a Leprechauauauahhnnn!” He might have held the word Leprechaun forever, if it hadn’t been for the extreme amount of vomit that came shooting out of his mouth and nose. I’d never been closer than 20 feet from this guy and I still had to jump out of the way of his puke.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
He expelled the snakes out of Ireland, but they had to go somewhere. Be safe, be calm and don’t don’t do anything a Leprechaun tells you to.
Brew Dog’s Sink The Bismark: A STRONG Rivalry
I love me some rivalries.
In the beer world, the rivalry has been far too familiar for far too long. It’s been the behemoth conglomerate breweries like AB InBev, SAB Miller and Molson Coors vs. well, everyone else. The craft brewery world has joined together in a fantastic state of harmony, each pushing their fellow craft brewers for the greater good of the movement. You’re more likely to hear a brewer tell you they let their dog play in their mash ton than hear them say something even slightly pejorative about another craft brewer.
For the greater good.
This all came to a head in the ultimate back-patting I Am A Craft Brewer video.
For the greater good.
Thankfully, craft brewers overseas don’t strive for such harmony.
To bring everyone up to speed, here’s an abbreviated and inaccurate recap:
Brew Dog, the Scottish brewery with a penchant for punk behavior, created the world’s strongest beer at 32%. How did they do it? They froze the water off their imperial stout and drained off the water – I bet somewhere Jim Koch from Sam Adams is looking up the word ’cheating’ in the dictionary. The called the beer Tactical Nuclear Penguin and created a pretty enjoyable video to explain the process.
Then, the brewery Schorschbräu in Germany raised the proverbial middle finger to Brew Dog and pushed out a beer that was 40% alcohol. In the words of this writer, “That be some strong beer!”. Said one reviewer (who actually tried the beer and is immeasurably more articulate than I), “Starts extremely hot and alcoholic, very, very strong, brings you almost to tears… burning and intense finish, warming aftertaste, I feel it going down through my body.”
Yum?
End of story, right? Fortunately for people who like silly videos where German people are referred to as “Sausage Munchers”, there’s more. Brew Dog came back with a 41% beer named Sink The Bismark and a video that could possibly start a third World War.
Your move, Germany!
Aecht Schlenkerla Fasten Beer
Had an interesting beer last night called Aech Schlenkerla Fasten Beer. Here’s the description from BeerMenus.com:
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Brewed by Brauerei Heller-Trum
The Original Schlenkerla Lentbeer is an unfiltered smokebeer, brewed according to the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516. Bottom-fermenting yeast gives the reddish brown lentbeer a natural cloudiness. Its smokey aroma is already noticeable in the smell, combined with a fine hoppy note. In the drink the fullbodied, highly drinkable lentbeer shows its strong malty flavour, rounded up with the smokey taste and a light bitterness. Due to the nourishing yeast, the Original Schlenkerla Lentbeer has the “Brotzeit already included” (German word for afternoon snack). Served / Sold: – Only during lent from Ash Wednesday to Easter – Only from the wooden keg at the Schlenkerla Data: Original Gravity: 14.5% Alcohol: 5.5% EBU: 32
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I’m never a huge fan of smoked beers and I think the smokier people go, the worse (smoke flavor dominates over all flavors around it), but this one was mild enough to be enjoyable.
As to why it is served only during Lent…I think it’s because it’s the only beer in Germany not made with meat. Ok, that’s a stupid little joke. I’d like to think that by having a beer that is only available during Let, it can serve as a respite during an otherwise religious time focused on sacrifice and deprivement. Beer has always had the habit of making dark and punishing situations better.
Also, on a side note – This beer has yeast in it, but it’s made me interested to try beer brewed by the original Bavarian Purity Law of 1516 – where beer could only be made with three ingredients: water, barley, hops. Notice anything missing (pssst… it’s yeast). If you’ve got any non-yeast or medieval beer suggestions, pass em on.
EXTREME BEER!!! EXTREME!!
Sometimes, I think Extreme Beer has gotten too extreme. I can’t help but be excited when I hear about people making beer out of compost or bad children (Come on, Magic Hat! I know you’ve got it in you), but eventually it’s just going to be way over the top. Alas, I’ll be heading to the Extreme Beer Event at Draft Barn in Brooklyn. Got inspired when I watched this video.
How can you not get excited about Medieval Beer, Oyster Beer, Bacon Beer, Donut BEER!? Ok, I need to lay down for a minute.
Best Beers 2010
Just like that, 2010 is over. RateBeer.com has already proclaimed the best beers of 2010.
Ok, while this may not be a static list, it’s an interesting one to look at. Primarily because the top is so Stout heavy – not a surprise, since, you know, winter and such.
I also noticed that a few breweries seemed to dominate the list. Specifically:
- Founders
- Cigar City
- Three Floyds
and a notable tip of the cap to Russian River (a really exceptional brewery that us New Yorkers may not be very familiar with since it’s not available so much).
Check out the list. It’s good to always look at a list of respected beers and know how little beer you’ve actually drank.
How Cold Should Beer Be?
Saw this interesting article / post / tidbit on how cold beer should be served. While it’s spot on in many ways and very detailed, I thought it wasn’t as compelling or descriptive as it could be. I mean, we all are commonly inserting thermometers into our beers to make sure they’re coming to us at specific temperatures, but what about those times when you’ve left your temp measuring instruments at home? Here’s how I would lay it out:
Lagers:
As cold as possible. Imagine those hot summer days when the sunlight bounces off the pavement or even the grass. It hurts to breath deeply. You’ve got a fence to paint (yes, you’re Huck Finn) and at the end of painting, there’s a case of beer waiting for you. Do you want it “fridge cold”? No, you want it in a cooler, packed with ice and no matter how fast you put them down, there’s always another one getting even colder.
There is no limit to how cold you want your lagers. Ok, that’s absolutely not true. One time, during the summer before my senior year of college, for no particular reason, I decided to get a keg of the cheapest beer I could (it was college, damnit!) and host a “it’s too damn hot too care” party. My friend, who worked in the physics lab mentioned in passing that he could get us some dry ice to make the keg extra cold. Needless to say, we packed that keg with more dry ice than a college kid should be able to get his hands on and ended up freezing that keg. I’m still too embarrassed to reveal the things we did trying to unfreeze that keg while a party full of sweaty college kids banged their red dixie cups on the walls. So any level slightly about dry ice would be the right amount of cold for lagers.
Ales:
In the summer, I love iced coffee. I’m one of those people who will finish one and immediately start planning the next one, “Why don’t we walk over to Grumpy’s and then head over to Root Hill? That’s a Saturday, right?” One of my pet peeves is when you order an iced coffee and they pour hot coffee into a cup and then shove in a few ice cubes to pathetically melt away before you can even get your money out. Instead of having a strong, cold coffee that could pull a polar bear back out to the melting pavement, you’ve got a slightly cold and watery coffee that couldn’t tow a tricycle. However, that’s the level of cold Ales should be. Half a foot in the world of a cold refrigerator and the other in the world of room temperature. Another way to judge this is to let a less intense beer drinker try your beer. If they say, “this isn’t cold AT ALL!” then it’s probably about right.
Strong, Dark Beers:
Growing up in Vermont, we often used the outside as our freezer during the winter. At any given time you could find turkey’s remaining in their frozen state, dough waiting to be thawed and frozen pizzas just hanging out on our porch. This was a perfect system (all be it, trashy) until the time my mother decided to let some brownies cool out on the porch’s picnic table. After she put them out, my dog started scratching at the back door, wanting us to let her out into her fenced off back area. We let her out and within about 30 seconds she had chewed through the fence, broken free and was racing around to the front of the house to consume the brownies. At least, that’s how we solved the “who chewed through the fence, ate an entire tray of brownies and then diarrheaed all over my father’s computer wires” mystery. Why tell this story? Because I like turning diarrhea into a verb. Also because strong, dark beers should be slightly below room temperature (cellar temperature) or the equivalent of leaving those beers somewhere cold long enough for my dog to eat an entire tray of brownies (roughly 1 – 2 minutes, probably less). The taste shouldn’t be gummy or give you the sensation of hot (what an actual room temperature beer will taste like). It should feel like it was pulled from somewhere dark, dank and potentially not somewhere you’d want to spend the night (cellars, caves, etc.)
These are guidelines, not rules (for proof, see Guinness’s giant arctic chilling machines to serve their beers EXTRA COLD!!!). Feel free to experiment with different beers in similar styles and varying temperatures to find the right combination for you.
New Otter Creek Logo: Who Is Today’s Beer Drinker?
Otter Creek relaunched their brand imaging at Blind Tiger last week. After hiring Dog Fish Head’s Mike Gerhart to take the wheel as their brewmaster, they started a new series of big beers and they got…well…designy. Away are the days when Otter Creek evoked images of ski trails, rippling rivers and a “you got enough gorp to get us to the top of the mountain” attitude. Now, it’s sleek lines, white space and a boarder line erotic otter. Granted, the fact that otters crack clams on their stomachs is adorable, but I don’t know if I want him holding his beer right about where his penis might be.
Was this the right move for a brand within a market saturated with outdoorsy and rugged brand images? Does this have anything to do with Otter Creek’s recent trend of going big, big, big on their beers (check out their recent Imperial series here)? Is Long Trail for ski trips while Otter Creek is now for sophisticated soirees? If anything, it begs the question: Who is today’s beer drinker?
I think Otter Creek is smart enough to look to the north and see a brewery whose image evokes imagination (Magic Hat) a brewery to the south that sits nicely with the beer as laid back woodsperson image (Long Trail) and a brewery even further south and east that, well, doesn’t have a particularly strong identity (Harpoon). Why not pull back and have a stylish, sophisticated identity to go along with its Vermont roots (it’s not like they changed the name to Des Petits Animaux Dans L’eaue – the small animal in the water).
One thing to point out…the relaunch occured at several bars in NYC and isn’t widely publicized on their site. NYC is a beacon of culture, but I find it interesting that they’d want to introduce their new series with their new logo in a place so far away from what they used to be associated with.
Rat Slayer: IPA Styled Porter
Wow! There are a lot of choices, huh? I think I’m going to go with…the…umm…let’s go with the Rat Slayer. Sounds interesting. I’ve never tried an IPA styled porter before. I’m always interested in trying new styles and things you can’t get at every corner bodega. You could even call me a beer adventurist.
Holy cow! That’s quite the head on that thing. Is it supposed to continue to overflow for this long? It is? Ok, just checking. That’s the first time I’ve seen something like that happen where dry ice wasn’t involved. Oh, it is?
Sniiiiiiffffffff. Is that smell coming from the beer? Should we at least check the bottom of our shoes to make sure? Snnnnnniiiifffffff. I’m checking my shoes. There’s no way that’s coming from the beer.
I’m not saying it’s a bad aroma, I’m just saying it smells very similar to other things I’ve described as smelling bad before. Oh well, I’m just gonna dive in here.
Hmmmm….it certainly has an interesting flavor. Tastes more like a bike tire soaked in rotten beef stew than a porter. Is there salt in this? 4 cups? Isn’t that a lot of salt? Not just for a beer, but for anything?
It really is good at overflowing, huh? Might be easier if I used a straw and drank this in a bathtub. If only I had my bathing suit, right?
You know, this beer kinda reminds me of this one time when I was younger. I begged my dad for this stealth bomber sled. He kept telling me that it would be too fast, but I wouldn’t listen. When he finally broke down and bought it for me I took it up to the top of the hill. On the first trip down I was going so fast that I went straight through a barbed wire fence and into the road. I got a mouth full of blood, gravel, salt, motor oil and frozen dog poo.
Maybe you should think of describing this beer by using that story. Might be a bit more accurate. I didn’t detect any “notes of citrus and caramel.” I did get plenty of notes of “sweat and disappointment,” however.
I think I need to try something else. Hmm…what else you got for a beer adventurists like me? Hmmm….how is the Shit On A Stick Ale?
Budweiser at Burger King: King & King Together At Last
Can’t say I think this is a big winfor beer drinkers in America, but at least those Europeans have one less reason to brag. That’s right, Burger King is going to start selling beer (Bud/Miller) at a few, select, spots. What’s next? Well, let’s hope that it’s a Big Mac flavored beer from Coors.
Sam Adams 25th Anniversary: New Label Coming
Happy 25th Anniversary, Sam Adams. It’s important to celebrate this brewery as much as possible because, while it might be the “biggest of the little guys,” a lot of little guys owe a lot to the Boston Beer Company.
Of course, while I just finished talking about how we should support Mr. Adams…what the buttball are they doing revamping the label for the anniversary? It’s good to keep fresh and not choose tradition over being hip…oh wait, yes, it is good to choose tradition over being hip when it comes to beer if you ask me.
It looks like the two big changes (besides the “let’s make it shiny” change) are that they’ve made Sam Adams older and he’s no longer holding his beer up in the air (it literally looks like he’s holding it where he because he’s too tired to hold the mug up any longer).
Ok, enough stupid quibbling. Here’s to another 25 great years!
