Amber Ales are the most center-field beer style in the world of American craft beer. They are the Goldilocks of craft beer-- malty but not heavy, hopped but not abrasively bitter. Their moderate alcohol and flavor make them the most sessionable major style of American ale. The style is extremely flexible, but because Ambers represent one of the most understated styles in the American beer pantheon, they rarely receive attention from the beer elite.
It is my not-so-humble opinion that there is a beer for every occasion and that every style can boast some great beer. While many Ambers (read: almost all brewpub versions) are made simply, thoughtlessly and according to style protocol, the best are subtle and quietly innovative. Reputable Ambers are a thinking man's session beer that pairs well with most brown-colored foods especially those with meaty, spicy, nutty or strong vegetable flavors like hummus or gumbo. Because of their flexibility and understated nature, Ambers stand as one of my three favorite beer styles, along with North German Pilsner and Strong Dark Belgian-Style Ales.
Before I get into the heart of what makes an Amber Ale, I'd like to address Red Ale, which is often treated as synonymous with Amber Ale. Red Ales have more in common with Red IPA's, Double/Imperial Reds and even American Pale Ales because they are all built on the common paradigm of clear, caramelly malt (unmuddied by roasted, biscuity or earthy malt flavors) playing off of fruity yeast esters and a strong hop flavor and bitterness. Red Ales are typically higher in alcohol than Amber Ales and, crazily enough, are copper-red rather than brownish-amber. It is true that there are examples of intermediate beers (as well as mild British-style Red Ales, which are painfully boring), but as style distinctions go, this is not a hard call. Red Ales rarely use herbal or earthy hops and never use roasted or dark crystal malts. It's very simple: Reds thrive on fruitiness and zestiness.
There are some excellent Red Ales available. Lagunitas's Censored runs to the malty end of the style, but still is prominently fruity, boozy and estery in ever-so-delicious ways. More classic examples of good Reds are North Coast's Red Seal Ale and Mad River's Jamaican Red Ale. They both run about 6% ABV, sport a fruity nose and an exquisite balance between hop bitterness and sweet malt backbone. Pyramid's Juggernaut fits perfectly within this style, but Juggernaut is uninteresting swill. Frankly, I consider the striking difference between Red Seal and Juggernaut the clearest testament to the talent and quality brewing required to make good ale.
True Amber Ales, because of their more complex malt profile, can never achieve that razor's edge sensation when it comes to balancing sweetness with hop bitterness. Breweries that have tried to do this have only ever succeeded in spite of rather than because of the attempt to hop an Amber-style malt base up to the brink.
Most Amber Ales use hops with herbal and earthy flavors that add another dimension to a
complex malt profile. These hops typically play a supportive role rather than competing with the malts for the spotlight. Just like Red Ales, Ambers are built on a caramel malt backbone, but good Ambers also have small amounts of darker specialty malts that contribute dark fruit, toffee, nutty, biscuit, chocolate and roasted flavors.
Below are reviews of the most memorable Amber Ales I have tried:
Fat Tire- The flagship of New Belgium, this is one of the most widely available craft beers on the market and most peoples' introduction to Amber Ale. Fat Tire is also one of the best Ambers, but the trouble with Fat Tire is that it is not typical of American Amber Ale. Unlike most American Ambers, who trace their descent from English Amber Ale, Fat Tire is an American take on Belgian Amber Ale. Fat Tire is lighter in body and alcohol, which makes it disturbingly easy to toss back. Rather than making it weak or flavorless, the lightness allows the beer to sit back and let its considerable malt complexity rise to the fore. Toasty, earthy, warm and with a hint of raisin, no other American beer manages to simultaneously be so mesmerizingly malt-driven and light on its feet.
Boont Amber- This is the flagship of Anderson Valley Brewery and at least in Northern California it seems to be the go-to Amber Ale. Boont is a quintessential American Amber, and among the best. It has a richer malt body than Fat Tire. The malt is balanced by modest bitterness. The overall effect refreshes when it's hot and sticks to your ribs when it's cold. Two things separate Boont from the ubiquitous brewpub Amber: a cleaner alignmeent of flavor (essentially, brewing and ingredient quality) and a nutty, almost a buttery flavor in the malt that characterizes Anderson Valley's whole lineup. My friend Myranda gets credit for suggesting it as a breakfast beer at an English pub brunch. I have discovered few better beer pairings than Boont with greasy eggs, potatoes and sausage.
Full Sail Amber- Like Anderson Valley, Full Sail's Amber is characterized significantly by the Brewery's unique trademark style, which in this case means that it's built on a rich, light, ebullient malt base that's set off by a dry, roasted flavor in the malt. The hops set off that roasted flavor, making the overall effect one of balance between hearty-but-light-colored malt and the dark, dry bitterness of the hops and roasted malt. This sits on the heavier end of the Amber spectrum and would be perfect for the Christmas season.
Rogue American Amber- I have an enormous hard-on for Rogue Brewing. Like Boont, theirs is a quintessential Amber Ale that sports its brewery's trademark spin. Rogue American Amber has that air of delicacy associated with their proprietary yeast strain "Pacman". The malts subtly play off one another, the hops and that characteristic yeast nose. This is not their best beer, but it is among the best Amber Ales. Were it priced competitively with Boont and Fat Tire, it would be my Amber of choice.
Stone Levitation- As you might imagine coming from Stone, this is the most bitter Amber Ale I've yet to try. Of course, it's impeccably balanced. It manages to firmly stand as an Amber even with an inverted (hop>malt) paradigm. If you're the kind of beer-drinker who demands the teetering bitter edge, this is the Amber for you. It may even be the only Amber for you, because I know how stubborn you hop heads are.
Ballast Point's Calico Copper Amber Ale- Befitting it's San Diego origins, this is also a relatively bitter Amber. Rather than inverting the paradigm or attempting a "bleeding bitter edge" brew, Calico is simply a combination of strong hopping with a strong and diverse malt base. This sacrifices the natural give-and-take dynamism of Amber Ale for forceful flavor. I have had a few Ambers brewed in such a maximalist style from smaller breweries on the West Coast, but this is the first one to not suck.
Drake's Amber- This is more of a Brown Ale than an Amber because it has a high ABV, substantial hop bitterness, a medium-full creamy body and an abundance of rich malty flavors. Treated as an unusual Amber, it has greatest resemblance to the maximalist school of Amber Ale. This is a solid beer in terms of concept and harmony, but it wasn't especially complex. That's a criticism I could level more broadly at most Brown Ales, even respectable ones.
Red Tail Ale- This Mendocino flag ship is an even lighter Amber than Fat Tire. It is labelled as an "American Ale", but this beer's aesthetic definitely aligns it with the Amber camp and I'm pretty sure "American Ale" is made-up. Like classic Ambers it's laid back and malt-driven. There's some malt complexity, but I don't think the flavors really gel into a compelling greater whole. This is a good session beer that I'm unlikely to ever buy again because it's short of amazing in a world of amazing craft beer. I imagine some people will really like this beer and this brewery, so it's worth trying, but it's not the beer/brewery for me and I'm willing to wager that it's not the beer/brewery for most beer people.
Budweiser American Ale- Again, "American Ale" is code for lightweight Ambers. As you can imagine, coming from Budweiser, this is insipid. It serves as a pointed reminder that (with the solitary exception of Coors' Blue Moon lineup) macros should stay the hell away from craft styles.
I am aware that I have already reviewed some of these beers in previous posts, but these reviews treat them in the context of their style. Plus, my palate has matured. :P
Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label beer. Show all posts
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Logistics of Drinking: Glasses
There are those of you who will know me as an aficionado of jam jars. That element of my ghetto chic has persevered since Brandon and I's days of Seagram's martinis.
My jam jars comfortably hold about six ounces. That makes them ample for stiff drinks like martinis. It may have influenced my arrival on the 2:1 rule of cocktails, which is two parts mixer to one part liquor. Judging from other peoples' tastes, the 2:1 ratio is not arrived at without some guidance.
The size of my jam jars also lends itself to drinking wine. Though the glass is too thick for chilled whites, room temperature reds are perfect in my sturdy little declarations against pretension.
My jam jars are practically indestructible. In all my time in Davis, only one of them has broken (and not for lack of being dropped). They're further practical because they fit the universal mason lid, which I usually acquire by way of Classico pasta sauce. All kinds of things have been stored at some point in those trusty jam jars.
At six ounces, however, they do have some limitations. When it comes to drinking orange juice, milk or water, you need a glass with some capacity. Classico pint jars work great for water, but they're a bit hard to clean for milk and OJ. For that I've used more conventional glasses wide enough to be scrubbed out by hand.
The real journey in the world of drinking glasses has been with beer. In the beginning, I drank out of the can or the bottle, as befitted my no-nonsense "living light" attitude. Later, we occasionally drank out of glasses just for fun. At some point Brandon and I noticed the difference in flavor between pale ale out of the bottle and out of the glass. Aromatic beers need a glass to show their full flavor. I still drink non-aromatic light lager out of cans without qualms (though cans warm beer up quickly).
Quart or pint mason jars are great for drinking beer out of. I've had less luck with thick plastic cups, which tend to quickly decarbonate beers because of their many surface imperfections. I also have had the use of Brandon's legendary beer stein and a variety of typical pint glasses. Surprisingly, neither of those worked well as beer glasses. Because of the thickness of the glass, if they're not prechilled before use they'll quickly warm the beer to swill. I just don't have the kind of patience required to prechill glasses.
Everything changed a year ago when Jill brought back a couple of fluted glasses with short stems, courtesy of her study abroad class field trip to the San Miguel brewery in Burgos, Spain. The glasses were thin enough to keep the beer cool, wide enough to sniff and comfortable in the hand.
Part of these beer glasses' attraction was the sense of class. I still have no complaints about mason jars. They also are lightweight and keep beer cool, but short-stemmed beer glasses are more comfortable in the hand and way too much fun to drink out of. I've bought a few purpose-made stemmed beer glasses since then and I now have enough to host small tastings in style. I'll probably be on a constant hunt for elegantly shaped beer glasses for as long as I'm obsessed with beer.
My jam jars comfortably hold about six ounces. That makes them ample for stiff drinks like martinis. It may have influenced my arrival on the 2:1 rule of cocktails, which is two parts mixer to one part liquor. Judging from other peoples' tastes, the 2:1 ratio is not arrived at without some guidance.
The size of my jam jars also lends itself to drinking wine. Though the glass is too thick for chilled whites, room temperature reds are perfect in my sturdy little declarations against pretension.
My jam jars are practically indestructible. In all my time in Davis, only one of them has broken (and not for lack of being dropped). They're further practical because they fit the universal mason lid, which I usually acquire by way of Classico pasta sauce. All kinds of things have been stored at some point in those trusty jam jars.
At six ounces, however, they do have some limitations. When it comes to drinking orange juice, milk or water, you need a glass with some capacity. Classico pint jars work great for water, but they're a bit hard to clean for milk and OJ. For that I've used more conventional glasses wide enough to be scrubbed out by hand.
The real journey in the world of drinking glasses has been with beer. In the beginning, I drank out of the can or the bottle, as befitted my no-nonsense "living light" attitude. Later, we occasionally drank out of glasses just for fun. At some point Brandon and I noticed the difference in flavor between pale ale out of the bottle and out of the glass. Aromatic beers need a glass to show their full flavor. I still drink non-aromatic light lager out of cans without qualms (though cans warm beer up quickly).
Quart or pint mason jars are great for drinking beer out of. I've had less luck with thick plastic cups, which tend to quickly decarbonate beers because of their many surface imperfections. I also have had the use of Brandon's legendary beer stein and a variety of typical pint glasses. Surprisingly, neither of those worked well as beer glasses. Because of the thickness of the glass, if they're not prechilled before use they'll quickly warm the beer to swill. I just don't have the kind of patience required to prechill glasses.
Everything changed a year ago when Jill brought back a couple of fluted glasses with short stems, courtesy of her study abroad class field trip to the San Miguel brewery in Burgos, Spain. The glasses were thin enough to keep the beer cool, wide enough to sniff and comfortable in the hand.
Part of these beer glasses' attraction was the sense of class. I still have no complaints about mason jars. They also are lightweight and keep beer cool, but short-stemmed beer glasses are more comfortable in the hand and way too much fun to drink out of. I've bought a few purpose-made stemmed beer glasses since then and I now have enough to host small tastings in style. I'll probably be on a constant hunt for elegantly shaped beer glasses for as long as I'm obsessed with beer.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Eighty-Six Bottles of Beer on the Wall
I remember. Oh how I remember.
The last few weeks and indeed the last few months have been a time for reflection upon my time in Davis. It is, as I have already said, the end of an era. When Howard and Brandon and I moved to the Apple House, we started lining up beer bottles on top of our kitchen cabinets. A year later, when my mind was also looking backwards because of my upcoming graduation, I started telling Brandon stories I associated with various bottles. I realized how good a storytelling device they were and resolved to write this post in the future.
Yet another year later, Howard was the last of us original three to leave the Apple House and I got those charmed bottles. They had a crust of grease on their shoulders from their lengthy existence in that kitchen. I lined them up (mostly) chronologically and photographed them to tell you their stories. This is a long post, full of stories both momentous and trivial whose value lies in their significance to those who played roles in them.
Stella Artois was the first beer I ever bought. I got it while in the dorms through Brandon's high school friend Tyler. Tyler ended up introducing us to craft beer while we lived in the dorms because periodically he would visit his girlfriend Erin at UC Davis and we'd all hang out in Brandon's dorm and drink Tyler's beer. I remember it took me months to acquire a taste for any beer, but I left the dorms a fan of Sierra Nevada and Fat Tire.
My first visit to Nugget Market, I bought a battery of craft sodas, my interest a relic from my days in high school. I tasted them with my roommates one by one over the course of a week, setting the pattern I would later revisit with single-bottles of beer after I graduated.
The standout was an old soda I'd wanted to try since those high school days. Moxie has become synonymous with spunk and determination in vernacular and it frankly tastes medicinal. The thing is, it tastes medicinal in a completely awesome way. I'd drink it periodically if Nugget would freaking stock it again (more than can be said of all but a handful of craft sodas), but I haven't seen it on their shelves since.
Later that sophomore year, I got Allison's roommate Emy to buy us alcohol. She recommended New Belgium's 1554 from the Coop, which was excellent.
We became fans of Gordon Biersch Marzen among other things. We started saving bottles so that we might insinuate ourselves into brewing beer of our own some day. I remember Brandon thought Stone IPA was too bitter, but I tried to approach it with an open mind. He liked Red Hook, though, and three years later we had a pitcher of it with his family in Dana Point while they were visiting for a cousin's wedding.
I also remember when Allison's mom visited (but I forgot why) with a bottle of Skyy vodka and we made lemon drops at my house.
Our junior year Adam was old enough to give us the hookup. We liked Gordon Biersch's Marzen enough that we tried out Sudwerk's. I though it was relatively boring, but Brandon liked it.
Seagram's Gin should be in the lineup somewhere, because it was that year that Brandon and I started making martinis regularly, sipping them while we watched Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Howard's girlfriend Tammy turned twenty-one late in the year and I remember sipping Pyramid Apricot Ale with she and Howard at her apartment.
Soon after we'd graduated, the household turned twenty-one all at once. We stocked a bar and purchased some liquors I'd read about, including Rye Whiskey and Brazilian Cachaca. We had a cocktail party for Howard and I's birthday with our newly stocked bar. John Lazur, Adam, Greg Webb, Russell Manning and Jill were all there. Russell and Jill were dating that summer and I became friends with both of them through my involvement with DCD (the Davis College Democrats).
Brandon bought a Japanese White Ale called Hitachino's nest on some DCD escapade and I remember it tasted great.
Caius came to visit me that summer, twice. He made me a blackberry pie the first time and I documented a bike trip he and Brandon and I took up the American River. We also tried some beer and cider from the coop. Caius loved hard apple cider.
I took my new grill for it's first spin, grilling $4/lb New York Strip on the patio at Kingston Apartments. Brandon and I bought Pilsner Urquell on a whim. The steak turned out great. Though the beer was awesome, it didn't pair well at all. This inaugurated both my love of Pilsner and my long and unsuccessful search for the beer that would pair with American steak.
I also remember the love-at-first-taste I had with New Belgium's Skinny Dip.
When I visited home that summer, I bought Virgil's Cola at Farm-to-Market with my sister. The cola wasn't half as good as their root beer, but I had a great time hanging out with Bri.
Howard brought some Kirkland beer that he'd discovered at his hometown Costco.
I vividly remember shoving a wedge of key lime into a Corona on my way out the door to ride with Brian Ang and Matt Takaichi to see My Bloody Valentine in San Francisco. I remember sharing my jam jar of rye, the incredible volume of the show and the absolute hordes of kids dressed in their scene best.
Brandon and I ended up becoming big fans of Cachaca and the cocktail made from it called a Caipirinha. Before long we had to replace the old bottle we'd bought on my birthday.
At some point, John Lazur and I's boss, Richard, brought a few bottles of beer back from a visit to Jack Russell brewery. He told us that we could drink them together after closing up the chemical dispensary (John acted as manager for the closing shift). The two of us had a wonderful time discussing the beers. After that, we made a semi-regular thing out of it. John also introduced me to Dogfish Head brewery by giving me their fall seasonal.
Inspired by John, I hosted a "six-pack party", where guests where instructed to bring a six-pack of a beer they had never tried before. The hit of the night was Laura Nevins' Prohibition Lager, which I thought tasted like strawberries.
Before that fall, we made the big move from our run down apartment to a duplex that we called the Apple House. The last day of the move, Brandon went to pick up some McDonald's (having not unpacked the kitchen yet) and as such things go that time of year, a few friends dropped by and we had a housewarming party. Among those friends was Jill. We cracked open a sixer of Leffe, which Brandon claimed tasted exactly like creamed corn when he drank it in Europe with Tyler. Jill and I got to chat when the others made a trip to the store and the two of us hit it off. She'd broken up with Russell earlier that summer and I remember thinking to myself that I should go after her.
There were two impromptu get-togethers around our kitchen that September and Jill was at both. On one Jill formed her first opinion of Leffe and on the other I invented my Christmas Punch in the process of playing bartender to Jill, trying to mimic a cranberry vodka with limited ingredients.
Later in the fall I remember discovering Hefeweizen playing a drinking game with Sudwerk's at Don Gibson's house. I soon got bored with the style, though.
At the beginning of the fall my sister and Aaron Robinson visited for ORMF with Bri's friend Lauren and Aaron's then-girlfriend Jill Hardy. I cracked open one of my dad's more prized red wines (I'd taken a case to Davis with me).
The next day we went to the show and the brief romance I'd had with Lauren came back to life, Lauren's affection growing more pronounced when the the only one of the many Davis friends I invited to show up turned out to be Jill Miller.
A few weeks later, Brandon and I planned to visit our respective siblings in Santa Cruz. We hadn't found anyone interested in gas-sharing with us by that Friday, when by chance I ran into Jill between classes. I invited her and she said she'd come along. The three of us chatted enthusiastically the way there, bickering about whether Jill had good movie taste and agreeing to host a movie marathon. Lauren happened to have dropped by to visit Bri for the weekend, so the dynamic resumed. This time, though, while I put my arms around Lauren, Brandon put his arms around Jill. That night was when Jill decided she didn't actually like Leffe. The following night we picked up some "Oktoberfest" from Trader Joe's that Brandon and I agreed tasted a little like raw meat.
It wasn't until later, when Bri asked me if I liked Jill that I realized how obvious our chemistry was. Lauren certainly noticed. The similarities between the two outings are astonishing. In both cases, Jill was the only person of many invitees to show and Lauren happened to have dropped in on Bri. In both cases I was more ignorant of the dynamic than Lauren or Jill.
After we'd dropped Jill off at her house (and Jill and I had agreed to have a movie marathon the next weekend), I asked Brandon if he was interested in Jill. Brandon said definitely not and I said good, because though he had first dibs, I really wanted to go after her.
My new roommate Greg Webb had run a bruising independent campaign for ASUCD Senator. He announced that regardless of the outcome, he'd be hosting a "Moral Victory Party" and that he would drink a shot of tequila for every twenty votes he received. He got three hundred votes and was just eight votes short of winning.
We measured off the small amount of extra tequila from a fifth and Greg started to drink. Everybody drank (Brandon and I as always playing the role of bartenders extraordinaire), but Greg made it halfway through the bottle within an hour. We decided to move our small party to check out a handful of large parties we'd heard about. Greg was shouting a continuous stream of slurs and insults about the candidates that had beaten him, insisting that we go to the victory party for LEAD (the winning party) so that he could cuss them out in person. We steered Greg to my friend Kern's party. I had an involved albeit tipsy discussion with Jill about "las otras", trying desperately to convince her that she was my first pick. We danced together at Kern's party. By the time we left that party, our numbers had thinned considerably. By the time we arrived at Greg's friend's "wig party", it was just the three of us.
Drunken Greg looked like ET in a hot pink bob. We mixed and chatted, but mostly Jill and I's conversation continued. By the time we left, I was easily the most sober of our trio, Greg still weaving precariously as he continued hurling a stream of insults into the empty streets. Jill and I felt a sense of teamwork as we shepherded him home. For about half the walk I pushed Greg in a grocery cart. In the last leg of the trip Jill and I held hands. It was at that moment that I knew for sure that we had mutual interest, though later she would say it hadn't meant anything.
Jill and I had the long promised movie marathon and though it went otherwise swimmingly, Jill rebuffed my attempt to put my arm around her. We agreed to do it again the next weekend. The second time Jill's friend Lazzuly joined us and Jill snuggled up to me until I put my arm around her. We watched a couple of movies like that. Lazzuly left to get ready for a DCD party that night and I fed Jill a potato with cheese. We walked to the party holding hands.
At the party we danced only with each other. A DCDer named Shane mistook me for Colin Doyle, who'd been hitting on his girlfriend. He tipsily apologized for the mistake later, forcing not one but two bottles of Mirror Pond on me. I didn't care. By that time dancing had turned into making out and I was practically floating.
A few weeks later the Apple House hosted its Christmakah party. This was the third we'd hosted and by this time my roommates were pulling more weight in the preparation than I was (I who'd gallantly started the first one). That Jill and I were dating was made apparent to DCD that night. I busted out some of my dad's wine, making the mistake of letting a stranger open one of the bottles. The only way to salvage the resulting split cork was to push it into the bottle. I was pissed at the time, but I'm amused to see that cork half still sitting glumly in the bottle (the Chardonnay, btw). The next morning I asked Jill, (with a note of exasperation) "What are we?". She seemed surprised that I wanted to date exclusively. I was surprised that she'd allowed it to go this far without demanding some kind of commitment. I'd wanted a long term relationship all along (since that first hang-out at the Apple House) and wanted to lock her down before winter break.
That winter quarter, I took "Introduction to Beer and Brewing" with funny British professor Charles Bamforth. I was immediately excited by the sound of the bocks, starting off with the ubiquitous Shiner Bock.
That Valentine's day was my first worth celebrating and I pulled out the stops to make it special, more for me than for Jill. We went to Seasons for dinner and watched a playing of A Winter's Tale. The next day we decided to go to Napa, though it was raining. We bought a couple bottles of wine and some nice cheese, including the Chardonnay pictured.
I also remember having Adam over for a more modest incarnation of the "six-pack party". He brought Henry Weinhard and I got some Red Seal. Talk was good and the Red Seal was great.
That winter, my sister came to visit. I'd promised to bake her cookies if she visited me (and actually stayed with me, instead of spending all her time with Allison), a promise which she was quick to remind me of. I fondly remember sipping Red Tail while baking cookies (another terrible pairing) while it softly rained outside. I think probably the other time she came and stayed with Allison we drank the Kriek Boon, kriek being another beer style I'd been introduced to through my class.
At some point I hosted a beer tasting of various bocks. Allison, Jack, Brandon, Howard and Jill were all in attendance. I do love getting all my favorite people in one place. Add that to a wealth of delicious new beer and I'd have to call my state one of bliss.
After I graduated, Jill went to study abroad in Spain. I knew her being gone would be hard on me. She actually left the morning of my birthday. That afternoon I called John Lazur to come over and hang out. I made him try my newly invented Black Bayou with my purpose-purchased bottle of Maker's Mark, which isn't in the lineup because I still have some left in it.
We were having a great time chatting. One thing led to another and we cracked open a forty of Old English while Howard and Greg prepared a feast of different dishes all made with zucchini (you know how it is with zucchini). John left at eight or so and I passed out on my bed around ten. I woke up at four AM feeling like I'd been hit by a cement truck. Since I couldn't get to sleep I screwed around online and feverishly read the pulp fiction Jill had left me to read. In the next couple days I burned through her sizable stack of books, sleeping erratically and feeling like shit the whole time.
While Jill was gone I drove with my mom and sister to Wisconsin. Driving in shifts, we did it in thirty-two hours. It was the first time I'd been to Wisconsin since I'd turned twenty-one. I drank a local beer by New Glarus with my cousin Eddie, which felt like some kind of rite of passage.
I'd heard that Coca-Cola's formulation varied from country to country. I'd told Jill to bring back a coke from every country she passed through. She brought back a Spanish coke and a French one. I added in a bottle of Mexican coke and a can of Americana and we had an old-fashioned Apple House taste test. We couldn't really tell the difference between the Spanish and French cokes. For that matter, except the obvious difference of sucrose vs high fructose corn syrup, I couldn't detect a difference in the formula between the European cokes and our American one. The Mexican coke was definitely different. It drew the most polarized response, but we all agreed that it was "weird". It tasted warmer, like a fiesta (more cinnamon?). Whatever it was, I think Mexican coke was my favorite of the tasting.
Jill also returned from Spain with a taste for Spanish Tempranillo. We were always trying to drink it with pork. I'm not sure if we ever actually did.
On the edge of the picture is a bottle of Stone Pale Ale. Caius and I picked up a six pack of the stuff on our way to a backyard folk show. This must have been the summer before, because the occasion provided the inspiration for I BUI.
That summer, Jill's mom kind of turned on me without my realizing it. Jill wanted me to make my delicious grilled steak for her mom, so I made steaks for Jill, her mom and her friend Myranda Hunter (who happens to be my kind of people). I picked one of my dad's Bordeaux's for the steak (Jill's mom likes Merlot). Out of the gates I was criticized for burning the steaks. The night went downhill from there as Jill's mom became more drunk, more belligerent and more appalled by my nonchalance (any chance at diplomacy on my part being similarly buried in wine).
The night ended with Jill's mom telling Jill to break up with me and insisting that she was ok to drive home. Jill would hardly look at me until she got a text the next afternoon saying, "I was only kidding. Don't break up with the boy."
A few weeks later Matt Gribble visited me along his way from Stanford to grad school in Baltimore. I took him to a KDVS house show. He was pretty critical of the music, but he loved the lambic he'd bought (I did too, enough to ask to keep the bottle for my wall) and had a great time unsuccessfully chasing this scene kid who "wasn't out of the closet yet".
Matt Wingert finally visited me as he'd been promising for years. We chilled out with Brandon's brother Spencer and watched the first two seasons of the Venture Brothers. The last night we picked up a variety of mostly German lagers from the coop and he, Brandon, Jill and I had a tasting. The equation is simple: good beer plus good friends equals awesome. Works every time.
After a summer's growing anxiety about my continuing unemployment, I ran smack into the most unlikely of jobs. DCD had decided to encourage it's members to work for a housing measure on the ballot called Measure P. The project was sustainable and the campaign very well funded. I think somebody in DCD's leadership mistakenly hoped the club might get some portion of the $15/hour that the campaign was paying its workers.
Working the campaign was great. It got me out of the house and also off Jill's nerves (it was a hot summer). Flyering was a beautiful excuse to walk around Davis's idyllic neighborhoods. "Walking" and phone banking got me chatting with the town's residents. In addition to paying us well, the campaign was generous about taking us out to lunch. I acquired great respect for two of the three eateries we had accounts with: Steve's Pizza and Zia's Deli (the latter superb). Somehow, they even let us order beer for lunch, so I got a taste for Boont Amber Ale along the way.
I liked the hours, the people and the job itself. Because I was one of the few nonstudent campaigners, I eventually took a greater level of responsibility within the campaign. I organized walks, discussed strategy and even wrote campaign literature. I remember getting home completely windswept after acting as a bike messenger (eat your hearts out, fixie kids!) and immediately loving Sam Adams' Octoberfest, which fit the season and moment so perfectly. Did I mention October is my favorite month?
Towards the end of the campaign, the more regular among us went out to Little Prague for beers after a long day. On David Urhausen's suggestion, we got all three of the Chimay brews they offered. It was all very bittersweet, so I took home the most expensive bottle to memorialize the parting. Because Little Prague had recently decided to stop stocking Chimay, the bartender let us have a Chimay glass each for a couple dollars.
I gained an appreciation for the vast beauty of Davis those two months. I also gained an appreciation for the intelligent and ornery citizens of Davis, who voted our Measure down by a landslide. Things had to come to an end sooner or later. The campaign managers had slowly let on how unlikely it was that we'd win, but even they were unprepared for the decisiveness of the rebuke. It didn't sting as bad as the fact that the campaign ended. David hosted an end of campaign party with a keg of Sudwerk Pilsner, which was about the most jaw-droppingly awesome party provision I'd ever heard of.
Soon after I joined Jill and DCD for their Tahoe retreat, where young democrats from across the state rubbed shoulders. I don't think we brought it along, but I remember buying that bottle of Grolsch with Brandon around the same time. The beer itself was terribly skunked. The story of note from the retreat was my increasingly hostile disposition towards Andrew Peake. I'll just say that I guardedly liked him for a long time and that changed dramatically.
In December I finally retook the GRE (after bombing because I'd gone in cold). A weekend's prep and I increased my math score by 130 points. All told it was a raging victory for me. I cracked open Anchor's Christmas Ale with Brandon and Jill. It was quite good.
I decided to scale down last year's lavish Valentine's day celebration and work on a budget. Jill and I went to dinner with a coupon to one of our favorite Indian restaurants. The Indian lager tasted divine alongside the curry and the lamb special we ordered was quite delectable.
I remember buying and drinking the Red Bull Cola while still living at the Apple House, but I'm pretty sure I was already making arrangements to move out. The cola was really good. Pity it was too expensive to buy again.
Probably around the same time I remember drinking another Dogfish Head brew at Jill's house, this one inspired by ancient Mesopotamian beers. I'd started buying single bottles since Jill moved so close to the Coop and I discovered the cheap single bottles at Save-Mart. That trend would increase considerably once I'd moved away from my beer buddy Brandon.
My replacement at the Apple House was named Alberto. He took Brandon's living room and Brandon took my room, which Brandon was stoked about. Alberto brought with him a single bottle of Amaretto. I always coveted a taste, but never asked in my subsequent visits to the Apple House. Eventually it was added to the wall in my absence, and I find that somehow fitting.
The last few weeks and indeed the last few months have been a time for reflection upon my time in Davis. It is, as I have already said, the end of an era. When Howard and Brandon and I moved to the Apple House, we started lining up beer bottles on top of our kitchen cabinets. A year later, when my mind was also looking backwards because of my upcoming graduation, I started telling Brandon stories I associated with various bottles. I realized how good a storytelling device they were and resolved to write this post in the future.
Yet another year later, Howard was the last of us original three to leave the Apple House and I got those charmed bottles. They had a crust of grease on their shoulders from their lengthy existence in that kitchen. I lined them up (mostly) chronologically and photographed them to tell you their stories. This is a long post, full of stories both momentous and trivial whose value lies in their significance to those who played roles in them.
Stella Artois was the first beer I ever bought. I got it while in the dorms through Brandon's high school friend Tyler. Tyler ended up introducing us to craft beer while we lived in the dorms because periodically he would visit his girlfriend Erin at UC Davis and we'd all hang out in Brandon's dorm and drink Tyler's beer. I remember it took me months to acquire a taste for any beer, but I left the dorms a fan of Sierra Nevada and Fat Tire.
My first visit to Nugget Market, I bought a battery of craft sodas, my interest a relic from my days in high school. I tasted them with my roommates one by one over the course of a week, setting the pattern I would later revisit with single-bottles of beer after I graduated.
The standout was an old soda I'd wanted to try since those high school days. Moxie has become synonymous with spunk and determination in vernacular and it frankly tastes medicinal. The thing is, it tastes medicinal in a completely awesome way. I'd drink it periodically if Nugget would freaking stock it again (more than can be said of all but a handful of craft sodas), but I haven't seen it on their shelves since.
Later that sophomore year, I got Allison's roommate Emy to buy us alcohol. She recommended New Belgium's 1554 from the Coop, which was excellent.
We became fans of Gordon Biersch Marzen among other things. We started saving bottles so that we might insinuate ourselves into brewing beer of our own some day. I remember Brandon thought Stone IPA was too bitter, but I tried to approach it with an open mind. He liked Red Hook, though, and three years later we had a pitcher of it with his family in Dana Point while they were visiting for a cousin's wedding.
I also remember when Allison's mom visited (but I forgot why) with a bottle of Skyy vodka and we made lemon drops at my house.
Our junior year Adam was old enough to give us the hookup. We liked Gordon Biersch's Marzen enough that we tried out Sudwerk's. I though it was relatively boring, but Brandon liked it.
Seagram's Gin should be in the lineup somewhere, because it was that year that Brandon and I started making martinis regularly, sipping them while we watched Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond.
Howard's girlfriend Tammy turned twenty-one late in the year and I remember sipping Pyramid Apricot Ale with she and Howard at her apartment.
Soon after we'd graduated, the household turned twenty-one all at once. We stocked a bar and purchased some liquors I'd read about, including Rye Whiskey and Brazilian Cachaca. We had a cocktail party for Howard and I's birthday with our newly stocked bar. John Lazur, Adam, Greg Webb, Russell Manning and Jill were all there. Russell and Jill were dating that summer and I became friends with both of them through my involvement with DCD (the Davis College Democrats).
Brandon bought a Japanese White Ale called Hitachino's nest on some DCD escapade and I remember it tasted great.
Caius came to visit me that summer, twice. He made me a blackberry pie the first time and I documented a bike trip he and Brandon and I took up the American River. We also tried some beer and cider from the coop. Caius loved hard apple cider.
I took my new grill for it's first spin, grilling $4/lb New York Strip on the patio at Kingston Apartments. Brandon and I bought Pilsner Urquell on a whim. The steak turned out great. Though the beer was awesome, it didn't pair well at all. This inaugurated both my love of Pilsner and my long and unsuccessful search for the beer that would pair with American steak.
I also remember the love-at-first-taste I had with New Belgium's Skinny Dip.
When I visited home that summer, I bought Virgil's Cola at Farm-to-Market with my sister. The cola wasn't half as good as their root beer, but I had a great time hanging out with Bri.
Howard brought some Kirkland beer that he'd discovered at his hometown Costco.
I vividly remember shoving a wedge of key lime into a Corona on my way out the door to ride with Brian Ang and Matt Takaichi to see My Bloody Valentine in San Francisco. I remember sharing my jam jar of rye, the incredible volume of the show and the absolute hordes of kids dressed in their scene best.
Brandon and I ended up becoming big fans of Cachaca and the cocktail made from it called a Caipirinha. Before long we had to replace the old bottle we'd bought on my birthday.
At some point, John Lazur and I's boss, Richard, brought a few bottles of beer back from a visit to Jack Russell brewery. He told us that we could drink them together after closing up the chemical dispensary (John acted as manager for the closing shift). The two of us had a wonderful time discussing the beers. After that, we made a semi-regular thing out of it. John also introduced me to Dogfish Head brewery by giving me their fall seasonal.
Inspired by John, I hosted a "six-pack party", where guests where instructed to bring a six-pack of a beer they had never tried before. The hit of the night was Laura Nevins' Prohibition Lager, which I thought tasted like strawberries.
Before that fall, we made the big move from our run down apartment to a duplex that we called the Apple House. The last day of the move, Brandon went to pick up some McDonald's (having not unpacked the kitchen yet) and as such things go that time of year, a few friends dropped by and we had a housewarming party. Among those friends was Jill. We cracked open a sixer of Leffe, which Brandon claimed tasted exactly like creamed corn when he drank it in Europe with Tyler. Jill and I got to chat when the others made a trip to the store and the two of us hit it off. She'd broken up with Russell earlier that summer and I remember thinking to myself that I should go after her.
There were two impromptu get-togethers around our kitchen that September and Jill was at both. On one Jill formed her first opinion of Leffe and on the other I invented my Christmas Punch in the process of playing bartender to Jill, trying to mimic a cranberry vodka with limited ingredients.
Later in the fall I remember discovering Hefeweizen playing a drinking game with Sudwerk's at Don Gibson's house. I soon got bored with the style, though.
At the beginning of the fall my sister and Aaron Robinson visited for ORMF with Bri's friend Lauren and Aaron's then-girlfriend Jill Hardy. I cracked open one of my dad's more prized red wines (I'd taken a case to Davis with me).
The next day we went to the show and the brief romance I'd had with Lauren came back to life, Lauren's affection growing more pronounced when the the only one of the many Davis friends I invited to show up turned out to be Jill Miller.
A few weeks later, Brandon and I planned to visit our respective siblings in Santa Cruz. We hadn't found anyone interested in gas-sharing with us by that Friday, when by chance I ran into Jill between classes. I invited her and she said she'd come along. The three of us chatted enthusiastically the way there, bickering about whether Jill had good movie taste and agreeing to host a movie marathon. Lauren happened to have dropped by to visit Bri for the weekend, so the dynamic resumed. This time, though, while I put my arms around Lauren, Brandon put his arms around Jill. That night was when Jill decided she didn't actually like Leffe. The following night we picked up some "Oktoberfest" from Trader Joe's that Brandon and I agreed tasted a little like raw meat.
It wasn't until later, when Bri asked me if I liked Jill that I realized how obvious our chemistry was. Lauren certainly noticed. The similarities between the two outings are astonishing. In both cases, Jill was the only person of many invitees to show and Lauren happened to have dropped in on Bri. In both cases I was more ignorant of the dynamic than Lauren or Jill.
After we'd dropped Jill off at her house (and Jill and I had agreed to have a movie marathon the next weekend), I asked Brandon if he was interested in Jill. Brandon said definitely not and I said good, because though he had first dibs, I really wanted to go after her.
My new roommate Greg Webb had run a bruising independent campaign for ASUCD Senator. He announced that regardless of the outcome, he'd be hosting a "Moral Victory Party" and that he would drink a shot of tequila for every twenty votes he received. He got three hundred votes and was just eight votes short of winning.
We measured off the small amount of extra tequila from a fifth and Greg started to drink. Everybody drank (Brandon and I as always playing the role of bartenders extraordinaire), but Greg made it halfway through the bottle within an hour. We decided to move our small party to check out a handful of large parties we'd heard about. Greg was shouting a continuous stream of slurs and insults about the candidates that had beaten him, insisting that we go to the victory party for LEAD (the winning party) so that he could cuss them out in person. We steered Greg to my friend Kern's party. I had an involved albeit tipsy discussion with Jill about "las otras", trying desperately to convince her that she was my first pick. We danced together at Kern's party. By the time we left that party, our numbers had thinned considerably. By the time we arrived at Greg's friend's "wig party", it was just the three of us.
Drunken Greg looked like ET in a hot pink bob. We mixed and chatted, but mostly Jill and I's conversation continued. By the time we left, I was easily the most sober of our trio, Greg still weaving precariously as he continued hurling a stream of insults into the empty streets. Jill and I felt a sense of teamwork as we shepherded him home. For about half the walk I pushed Greg in a grocery cart. In the last leg of the trip Jill and I held hands. It was at that moment that I knew for sure that we had mutual interest, though later she would say it hadn't meant anything.
Jill and I had the long promised movie marathon and though it went otherwise swimmingly, Jill rebuffed my attempt to put my arm around her. We agreed to do it again the next weekend. The second time Jill's friend Lazzuly joined us and Jill snuggled up to me until I put my arm around her. We watched a couple of movies like that. Lazzuly left to get ready for a DCD party that night and I fed Jill a potato with cheese. We walked to the party holding hands.
At the party we danced only with each other. A DCDer named Shane mistook me for Colin Doyle, who'd been hitting on his girlfriend. He tipsily apologized for the mistake later, forcing not one but two bottles of Mirror Pond on me. I didn't care. By that time dancing had turned into making out and I was practically floating.
A few weeks later the Apple House hosted its Christmakah party. This was the third we'd hosted and by this time my roommates were pulling more weight in the preparation than I was (I who'd gallantly started the first one). That Jill and I were dating was made apparent to DCD that night. I busted out some of my dad's wine, making the mistake of letting a stranger open one of the bottles. The only way to salvage the resulting split cork was to push it into the bottle. I was pissed at the time, but I'm amused to see that cork half still sitting glumly in the bottle (the Chardonnay, btw). The next morning I asked Jill, (with a note of exasperation) "What are we?". She seemed surprised that I wanted to date exclusively. I was surprised that she'd allowed it to go this far without demanding some kind of commitment. I'd wanted a long term relationship all along (since that first hang-out at the Apple House) and wanted to lock her down before winter break.
That winter quarter, I took "Introduction to Beer and Brewing" with funny British professor Charles Bamforth. I was immediately excited by the sound of the bocks, starting off with the ubiquitous Shiner Bock.
That Valentine's day was my first worth celebrating and I pulled out the stops to make it special, more for me than for Jill. We went to Seasons for dinner and watched a playing of A Winter's Tale. The next day we decided to go to Napa, though it was raining. We bought a couple bottles of wine and some nice cheese, including the Chardonnay pictured.
I also remember having Adam over for a more modest incarnation of the "six-pack party". He brought Henry Weinhard and I got some Red Seal. Talk was good and the Red Seal was great.
That winter, my sister came to visit. I'd promised to bake her cookies if she visited me (and actually stayed with me, instead of spending all her time with Allison), a promise which she was quick to remind me of. I fondly remember sipping Red Tail while baking cookies (another terrible pairing) while it softly rained outside. I think probably the other time she came and stayed with Allison we drank the Kriek Boon, kriek being another beer style I'd been introduced to through my class.
At some point I hosted a beer tasting of various bocks. Allison, Jack, Brandon, Howard and Jill were all in attendance. I do love getting all my favorite people in one place. Add that to a wealth of delicious new beer and I'd have to call my state one of bliss.
After I graduated, Jill went to study abroad in Spain. I knew her being gone would be hard on me. She actually left the morning of my birthday. That afternoon I called John Lazur to come over and hang out. I made him try my newly invented Black Bayou with my purpose-purchased bottle of Maker's Mark, which isn't in the lineup because I still have some left in it.
We were having a great time chatting. One thing led to another and we cracked open a forty of Old English while Howard and Greg prepared a feast of different dishes all made with zucchini (you know how it is with zucchini). John left at eight or so and I passed out on my bed around ten. I woke up at four AM feeling like I'd been hit by a cement truck. Since I couldn't get to sleep I screwed around online and feverishly read the pulp fiction Jill had left me to read. In the next couple days I burned through her sizable stack of books, sleeping erratically and feeling like shit the whole time.
While Jill was gone I drove with my mom and sister to Wisconsin. Driving in shifts, we did it in thirty-two hours. It was the first time I'd been to Wisconsin since I'd turned twenty-one. I drank a local beer by New Glarus with my cousin Eddie, which felt like some kind of rite of passage.
I'd heard that Coca-Cola's formulation varied from country to country. I'd told Jill to bring back a coke from every country she passed through. She brought back a Spanish coke and a French one. I added in a bottle of Mexican coke and a can of Americana and we had an old-fashioned Apple House taste test. We couldn't really tell the difference between the Spanish and French cokes. For that matter, except the obvious difference of sucrose vs high fructose corn syrup, I couldn't detect a difference in the formula between the European cokes and our American one. The Mexican coke was definitely different. It drew the most polarized response, but we all agreed that it was "weird". It tasted warmer, like a fiesta (more cinnamon?). Whatever it was, I think Mexican coke was my favorite of the tasting.
Jill also returned from Spain with a taste for Spanish Tempranillo. We were always trying to drink it with pork. I'm not sure if we ever actually did.
On the edge of the picture is a bottle of Stone Pale Ale. Caius and I picked up a six pack of the stuff on our way to a backyard folk show. This must have been the summer before, because the occasion provided the inspiration for I BUI.
That summer, Jill's mom kind of turned on me without my realizing it. Jill wanted me to make my delicious grilled steak for her mom, so I made steaks for Jill, her mom and her friend Myranda Hunter (who happens to be my kind of people). I picked one of my dad's Bordeaux's for the steak (Jill's mom likes Merlot). Out of the gates I was criticized for burning the steaks. The night went downhill from there as Jill's mom became more drunk, more belligerent and more appalled by my nonchalance (any chance at diplomacy on my part being similarly buried in wine).
The night ended with Jill's mom telling Jill to break up with me and insisting that she was ok to drive home. Jill would hardly look at me until she got a text the next afternoon saying, "I was only kidding. Don't break up with the boy."
A few weeks later Matt Gribble visited me along his way from Stanford to grad school in Baltimore. I took him to a KDVS house show. He was pretty critical of the music, but he loved the lambic he'd bought (I did too, enough to ask to keep the bottle for my wall) and had a great time unsuccessfully chasing this scene kid who "wasn't out of the closet yet".
Matt Wingert finally visited me as he'd been promising for years. We chilled out with Brandon's brother Spencer and watched the first two seasons of the Venture Brothers. The last night we picked up a variety of mostly German lagers from the coop and he, Brandon, Jill and I had a tasting. The equation is simple: good beer plus good friends equals awesome. Works every time.
After a summer's growing anxiety about my continuing unemployment, I ran smack into the most unlikely of jobs. DCD had decided to encourage it's members to work for a housing measure on the ballot called Measure P. The project was sustainable and the campaign very well funded. I think somebody in DCD's leadership mistakenly hoped the club might get some portion of the $15/hour that the campaign was paying its workers.
Working the campaign was great. It got me out of the house and also off Jill's nerves (it was a hot summer). Flyering was a beautiful excuse to walk around Davis's idyllic neighborhoods. "Walking" and phone banking got me chatting with the town's residents. In addition to paying us well, the campaign was generous about taking us out to lunch. I acquired great respect for two of the three eateries we had accounts with: Steve's Pizza and Zia's Deli (the latter superb). Somehow, they even let us order beer for lunch, so I got a taste for Boont Amber Ale along the way.
I liked the hours, the people and the job itself. Because I was one of the few nonstudent campaigners, I eventually took a greater level of responsibility within the campaign. I organized walks, discussed strategy and even wrote campaign literature. I remember getting home completely windswept after acting as a bike messenger (eat your hearts out, fixie kids!) and immediately loving Sam Adams' Octoberfest, which fit the season and moment so perfectly. Did I mention October is my favorite month?
Towards the end of the campaign, the more regular among us went out to Little Prague for beers after a long day. On David Urhausen's suggestion, we got all three of the Chimay brews they offered. It was all very bittersweet, so I took home the most expensive bottle to memorialize the parting. Because Little Prague had recently decided to stop stocking Chimay, the bartender let us have a Chimay glass each for a couple dollars.
I gained an appreciation for the vast beauty of Davis those two months. I also gained an appreciation for the intelligent and ornery citizens of Davis, who voted our Measure down by a landslide. Things had to come to an end sooner or later. The campaign managers had slowly let on how unlikely it was that we'd win, but even they were unprepared for the decisiveness of the rebuke. It didn't sting as bad as the fact that the campaign ended. David hosted an end of campaign party with a keg of Sudwerk Pilsner, which was about the most jaw-droppingly awesome party provision I'd ever heard of.
Soon after I joined Jill and DCD for their Tahoe retreat, where young democrats from across the state rubbed shoulders. I don't think we brought it along, but I remember buying that bottle of Grolsch with Brandon around the same time. The beer itself was terribly skunked. The story of note from the retreat was my increasingly hostile disposition towards Andrew Peake. I'll just say that I guardedly liked him for a long time and that changed dramatically.
In December I finally retook the GRE (after bombing because I'd gone in cold). A weekend's prep and I increased my math score by 130 points. All told it was a raging victory for me. I cracked open Anchor's Christmas Ale with Brandon and Jill. It was quite good.
I decided to scale down last year's lavish Valentine's day celebration and work on a budget. Jill and I went to dinner with a coupon to one of our favorite Indian restaurants. The Indian lager tasted divine alongside the curry and the lamb special we ordered was quite delectable.
I remember buying and drinking the Red Bull Cola while still living at the Apple House, but I'm pretty sure I was already making arrangements to move out. The cola was really good. Pity it was too expensive to buy again.
Probably around the same time I remember drinking another Dogfish Head brew at Jill's house, this one inspired by ancient Mesopotamian beers. I'd started buying single bottles since Jill moved so close to the Coop and I discovered the cheap single bottles at Save-Mart. That trend would increase considerably once I'd moved away from my beer buddy Brandon.
My replacement at the Apple House was named Alberto. He took Brandon's living room and Brandon took my room, which Brandon was stoked about. Alberto brought with him a single bottle of Amaretto. I always coveted a taste, but never asked in my subsequent visits to the Apple House. Eventually it was added to the wall in my absence, and I find that somehow fitting.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Logistics of Drinking: Container Size and Material
I've counted drinks carefully since I started drinking in college and it has served me well since then, provided I didn't overwhelm my reasoning by drinking too quickly. However, while vodka may not go bad after it's been opened, most nondistilled spirits do, and this places constraints on the control you have over your own consumption, because even after four years of college there are still sober kids in Africa.
I can tell you from experience that it took a lot of organization and a little pain to empty my two brewing vessels, which I bought from the store filled with four liters of wine apiece. While there's no perishable alcohol in as big a container as jug wine, almost all wine and some beers pose similar logistical challenges.
As romantic as a picnic basket for two with a bottle of wine poking out the top may be, I've never really enjoyed drinking half a bottle of wine on such occasions for reasons both obvious and subtle. A bottle makes much more sense for a European-minded family, a double date or an intimate dinner with friends. Wine is still dictated by tradition and I have no expectation for unit sizes to change. On the plus side, I have high hopes for the emergence of screw caps as the industry standard. Synthetic corks are cool and all but once we've admitted that real cork is outdated, I think the leap to screw caps is a short one.
Beer, once again, is that exemplary form dominated by reasonableness. The classic unit-sizes of beer are either single-serving, keg or the forty, the former being perfect for friends or a rager of one. Much of beer is packaged in the most economical and innocuous of containers-- stainless metal. All of this is worth applauding. Aluminum cans reduce the impact on both the environment and the consumer. Single servings allow us to drink like the gentlemen we are.
Craft brewers are still worthy of critique, however. I understand the calculus that goes into choosing glass bottles-- they are still a symbol of quality and respect ingrained deeply in every American consumer's psyche. That's a hurdle worthy of sympathy. It's also a hurdle worth hurdling. Nobody is better positioned to break that psychological association in beverage packaging than the American craft brewer. A few brave breweries have gone to cans, primarily motivated by facilitating beer consumption in the great outdoors. I recommend looking for a 12-pack of cans the next time you're thirsty for New Belgium's Fat Tire. Anderson Valley is another notable brewery that's dabbling with the crinkly stuff.
I've also been fascinated by the role of the bottle size that's alternatively called a bomber, a growler or simply a double-- the 22 oz bottle. For the purposes of discussion I'm going to lump in 750mL bottles too. It turns out to be the bottle of choice for specialty productions by craft brewers. Rogue and Stone practically subsist off the format.
The association with small batches is partly for historical reasons. Bigger bottles mean fewer crown caps, less cleaning and less chance of contamination, which is great for the home or small-scale brewer. Furthermore, the size comes with the liberty of nonstandard pricing. Because the beer contained in doubles is often more expensive to make and distribute, the price ranges from $3-15. That's a far cry from the relative uniformity of $7-10 per six-pack. Releasing 22-only beers is also a perfect way for a brewer to force cheapskates like me who'd buy a single 12 oz into paying the full price of admission (and distribution), a business model which I grudgingly respect. My roommates can thank enterprising business models for their intermittent supply of free beer.
Finally, the bottle style comes with the cache and genuine charm of being similar in size to a wine bottle. While it's not uncommon for these specialty runs' abv to run into wine territory, there are plenty of 5-7% abv bottles that make a perfect treat for two. That fact endears them to me above all else. The format practically forces social drinking. Though I'd prefer the stronger specialty beers be packaged in more modest pint bottles, I think the format is generally awesome.
I can tell you from experience that it took a lot of organization and a little pain to empty my two brewing vessels, which I bought from the store filled with four liters of wine apiece. While there's no perishable alcohol in as big a container as jug wine, almost all wine and some beers pose similar logistical challenges.
As romantic as a picnic basket for two with a bottle of wine poking out the top may be, I've never really enjoyed drinking half a bottle of wine on such occasions for reasons both obvious and subtle. A bottle makes much more sense for a European-minded family, a double date or an intimate dinner with friends. Wine is still dictated by tradition and I have no expectation for unit sizes to change. On the plus side, I have high hopes for the emergence of screw caps as the industry standard. Synthetic corks are cool and all but once we've admitted that real cork is outdated, I think the leap to screw caps is a short one.
Beer, once again, is that exemplary form dominated by reasonableness. The classic unit-sizes of beer are either single-serving, keg or the forty, the former being perfect for friends or a rager of one. Much of beer is packaged in the most economical and innocuous of containers-- stainless metal. All of this is worth applauding. Aluminum cans reduce the impact on both the environment and the consumer. Single servings allow us to drink like the gentlemen we are.
Craft brewers are still worthy of critique, however. I understand the calculus that goes into choosing glass bottles-- they are still a symbol of quality and respect ingrained deeply in every American consumer's psyche. That's a hurdle worthy of sympathy. It's also a hurdle worth hurdling. Nobody is better positioned to break that psychological association in beverage packaging than the American craft brewer. A few brave breweries have gone to cans, primarily motivated by facilitating beer consumption in the great outdoors. I recommend looking for a 12-pack of cans the next time you're thirsty for New Belgium's Fat Tire. Anderson Valley is another notable brewery that's dabbling with the crinkly stuff.
I've also been fascinated by the role of the bottle size that's alternatively called a bomber, a growler or simply a double-- the 22 oz bottle. For the purposes of discussion I'm going to lump in 750mL bottles too. It turns out to be the bottle of choice for specialty productions by craft brewers. Rogue and Stone practically subsist off the format.
The association with small batches is partly for historical reasons. Bigger bottles mean fewer crown caps, less cleaning and less chance of contamination, which is great for the home or small-scale brewer. Furthermore, the size comes with the liberty of nonstandard pricing. Because the beer contained in doubles is often more expensive to make and distribute, the price ranges from $3-15. That's a far cry from the relative uniformity of $7-10 per six-pack. Releasing 22-only beers is also a perfect way for a brewer to force cheapskates like me who'd buy a single 12 oz into paying the full price of admission (and distribution), a business model which I grudgingly respect. My roommates can thank enterprising business models for their intermittent supply of free beer.
Finally, the bottle style comes with the cache and genuine charm of being similar in size to a wine bottle. While it's not uncommon for these specialty runs' abv to run into wine territory, there are plenty of 5-7% abv bottles that make a perfect treat for two. That fact endears them to me above all else. The format practically forces social drinking. Though I'd prefer the stronger specialty beers be packaged in more modest pint bottles, I think the format is generally awesome.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Logistics of Drinking: Buzzes and Hangovers
People are quick to associate different kinds of alcoholic drinks with different kinds of nights. Much of this comes from how people approach drinking each beverage. A night of shots will classically leave you passed out on the floor because, according to culture, shots are consumed in quick succession, which is the best way to bypass any sort of consumption limits you may place on yourself. Wine gives many people a headache because they drink it so damned delicately that they get the effects of a hangover without their blood alcohol ever passing threshold.
That said, a lot of these effects are also tied into the beverages' water content. Shots, with hardly any water of their own, will hit you fast and leave you completely dehydrated if you forget to drink water. Hence the association of tequila shots with wild nights and regretful mornings. While sulfites are the foremost reason to associate wine with headaches, their high alcohol/water ratio is also to blame. Ever since watering wine went the way of the Romans, wine has been far too alcoholic to be drunk on its own.
Beer, on the other hand, is traditionally much lower in alcohol. There's enough water in beer to mollify hydration problems. Also, the carbonation ensures the alcohol still hits your system quickly so you can get your buzz on. Basically, beer is the best way to consume alcohol for its positive effects, or at least the most foolproof against hangovers. Frankly, the fact that keystone light is the lubricant of choice at frat parties is incredibly logical. It's cheap and has a relatively low alcohol content.
That said, there are some important rules that are worth observing with all alcoholic drinks. First of all, don't nurse your drink. No matter how precious that scotch may be or how important it is to be able to drive home, below a certain rate of sipping, most of us can get a mild headache from alcohol without even feeling buzzed. If you're a designated driver, just have your drink early and at a normal pace. You'll probably engage your smooth ER at capacity either way. Secondly, it's always a good idea to drink water at the end of the night. There's nothing like waking up with a two-drink hangover. The good news is that mild-offense hangovers will disappear soon after drinking water. Lastly, I know there's a time and a place for drinking to lose. Just make sure it's actually the time and place. I've only regretted about half of my worst hangovers...
That said, a lot of these effects are also tied into the beverages' water content. Shots, with hardly any water of their own, will hit you fast and leave you completely dehydrated if you forget to drink water. Hence the association of tequila shots with wild nights and regretful mornings. While sulfites are the foremost reason to associate wine with headaches, their high alcohol/water ratio is also to blame. Ever since watering wine went the way of the Romans, wine has been far too alcoholic to be drunk on its own.
Beer, on the other hand, is traditionally much lower in alcohol. There's enough water in beer to mollify hydration problems. Also, the carbonation ensures the alcohol still hits your system quickly so you can get your buzz on. Basically, beer is the best way to consume alcohol for its positive effects, or at least the most foolproof against hangovers. Frankly, the fact that keystone light is the lubricant of choice at frat parties is incredibly logical. It's cheap and has a relatively low alcohol content.
That said, there are some important rules that are worth observing with all alcoholic drinks. First of all, don't nurse your drink. No matter how precious that scotch may be or how important it is to be able to drive home, below a certain rate of sipping, most of us can get a mild headache from alcohol without even feeling buzzed. If you're a designated driver, just have your drink early and at a normal pace. You'll probably engage your smooth ER at capacity either way. Secondly, it's always a good idea to drink water at the end of the night. There's nothing like waking up with a two-drink hangover. The good news is that mild-offense hangovers will disappear soon after drinking water. Lastly, I know there's a time and a place for drinking to lose. Just make sure it's actually the time and place. I've only regretted about half of my worst hangovers...
Friday, August 20, 2010
Brewing: California Sunshine Ale #1 and #2
The results are in. Howard and I's first outing with brewing was a modest success. We cracked open our first beers with Matt Smith and Cory Logan, whose considerable brewing expertise informed a lot of my beer-making decisions.
California Sunshine Ale recipe #2 was the Amarillo-only version of the recipe. The fermentation had stalled according to the gravity when we were preparing to bottle it. Since we'd already added the priming sugar, we added boiled water to keep the gravity from blowing up the bottles (though a few blew up anyways). The final product didn't end up tasting as watered-down as I'd worried it would, but there was a slight odor of foot instead that I suspect came from brettanomyces contamination. Matt and Cory kind of liked the foot thing. The Amarillo hops imparted a open, bittersweet flavor that I have come to identify as the taste of the color blue. While they didn't taste exactly like grapefruit as they are reputed to, there was enough resemblance to make it the obvious descriptor.
California Sunshine Ale recipe #1 was the basic scale down of the posted recipe. We accidentally doubled the priming sugar for this one, but otherwise things went without a hitch. The Cascade-Amarillo blend came out fruity. Fruity enough to compete with the sober end of the hefeweizen scale. Matt and Cory, who are obsessed with the impact of yeast strain on beer flavor, thought a lot of the fruitiness had to do with the less-than-clean yeast we used, Dan Star's Windsor Brewing Yeast. The beer also came around the darkness of a brown ale, which was a little darker than we were shooting for. The body was a tad too light, but I'd expected body to be tricky. The recipe is supposed to push the edge of acceptable body for a pale ale.
All told, I think recipe #3 of California Sunshine Ale should have half the chocolate malt and an additional part biscuit malt equal to the crystal malt. I'll definitely keep the Cascade-Amarillo pairing, but I think I'll scale back the finishing and bittering hops overall and push the Perle hops forward in the mix and later in the hop schedule. I think we'll also add a secondary fermentation to clarify the beer before bottling.
California Sunshine Ale recipe #2 was the Amarillo-only version of the recipe. The fermentation had stalled according to the gravity when we were preparing to bottle it. Since we'd already added the priming sugar, we added boiled water to keep the gravity from blowing up the bottles (though a few blew up anyways). The final product didn't end up tasting as watered-down as I'd worried it would, but there was a slight odor of foot instead that I suspect came from brettanomyces contamination. Matt and Cory kind of liked the foot thing. The Amarillo hops imparted a open, bittersweet flavor that I have come to identify as the taste of the color blue. While they didn't taste exactly like grapefruit as they are reputed to, there was enough resemblance to make it the obvious descriptor.
California Sunshine Ale recipe #1 was the basic scale down of the posted recipe. We accidentally doubled the priming sugar for this one, but otherwise things went without a hitch. The Cascade-Amarillo blend came out fruity. Fruity enough to compete with the sober end of the hefeweizen scale. Matt and Cory, who are obsessed with the impact of yeast strain on beer flavor, thought a lot of the fruitiness had to do with the less-than-clean yeast we used, Dan Star's Windsor Brewing Yeast. The beer also came around the darkness of a brown ale, which was a little darker than we were shooting for. The body was a tad too light, but I'd expected body to be tricky. The recipe is supposed to push the edge of acceptable body for a pale ale.
All told, I think recipe #3 of California Sunshine Ale should have half the chocolate malt and an additional part biscuit malt equal to the crystal malt. I'll definitely keep the Cascade-Amarillo pairing, but I think I'll scale back the finishing and bittering hops overall and push the Perle hops forward in the mix and later in the hop schedule. I think we'll also add a secondary fermentation to clarify the beer before bottling.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Brewing and Retroactive Idea Theft
Howard and I finally did it. We finally brewed some beer. We bottled it yesterday, so we've just got a few weeks until it's carbonated and ready to drink.
We made two one-gallon batches of my California Sunshine Ale. The first was a simple scale-down of the recipe I posted earlier. The second was a variant that completely dropped Cascade hops for Amarillo.
It's pretty uncommon to brew in one-gallon batches. Practically every recipe online is written for five gallons. Brewing at all is a lot of work, so people try and make it worth their while. Larger batches are also more stable and, according to the owner of our local brew store, a difference of scale changes extraction rates and thereby the recipe requirements.
I decided to brew in small batches knowing full well the reasons it was uncommon. I didn't get into homebrewing to save money. The ingredients for making beer cost roughly half the retail price for buying craft beer from the store. That may sound pretty good, but when I take into account the work and risk involved in the process and the superior quality and variety of beer available at the store, it's barely breaking even. Five gallons makes fifty beers and that is a heck of a lot of any single kind of beer for a person who's accustomed to buying single bottles. The fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing my beer was made with my own hands only gets me so far. I decided to start homebrewing to learn more about beer and to kick around my own recipe ideas. We may have had to borrow Howard's lab scale to measure hops in hundreths of an ounce, but I'm a scientist, after all.
So after one and a half hours of driving and one and a half days' work, Howard and I have twenty-three bottles of beer to show for it and that's fine by me.
Above: Our cooling system to keep the beer around 70 degrees in the middle of the Davis summer (my idea)
Below: Our chicken wire drying rack (Howard's idea)
On a separate note, it has come to my attention that American brewers have been time traveling from years past into our present future and viciously stealing my beer ideas from this blog. It turns out that Cascadian Dark Ale aka Black IPA is an established northwestern variant on the IPA style that uses dark malts to conjure an intimidating color. While it sounds like a lot of breweries are using debittered black malt to give the maximum color without affecting flavor that much, some have actually embraced the pairing of hop bitterness and roasted maltiness.
Also, on the day before we bottled our California Sunshine Ale, I happened across the spitting image of my concept for the beer. Deschutes Brewery's Twilight Summer Ale is an APA that lightens up on the crystal malt, adds something toasty to pair with grilled food and relies on a combination of four hops with emphasis on Amarillo.
To counterbalance said losses from my creative stable, I'd like to present a new beer concept. I was idly reading the ingredient list on Barq's Root Beer and noticed that the last ingredient was acacia. For those of you who don't know, acacia is planted as a shrub all over orange county hillsides for erosion control. It has oval grey leaves and little fuzzy yellow flowers that get pollen all over the place. It has a very distinctive smell, like a dirty, grainy version of some platonic true herb. As soon as I'd read it I started to either imagine or taste it in the Barq's (to my satisfaction).
Acacia would be great in a light summer porter. You heard it from me first, somebody should brew a summer porter with acacia leaves.
We made two one-gallon batches of my California Sunshine Ale. The first was a simple scale-down of the recipe I posted earlier. The second was a variant that completely dropped Cascade hops for Amarillo.
It's pretty uncommon to brew in one-gallon batches. Practically every recipe online is written for five gallons. Brewing at all is a lot of work, so people try and make it worth their while. Larger batches are also more stable and, according to the owner of our local brew store, a difference of scale changes extraction rates and thereby the recipe requirements.I decided to brew in small batches knowing full well the reasons it was uncommon. I didn't get into homebrewing to save money. The ingredients for making beer cost roughly half the retail price for buying craft beer from the store. That may sound pretty good, but when I take into account the work and risk involved in the process and the superior quality and variety of beer available at the store, it's barely breaking even. Five gallons makes fifty beers and that is a heck of a lot of any single kind of beer for a person who's accustomed to buying single bottles. The fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing my beer was made with my own hands only gets me so far. I decided to start homebrewing to learn more about beer and to kick around my own recipe ideas. We may have had to borrow Howard's lab scale to measure hops in hundreths of an ounce, but I'm a scientist, after all.
So after one and a half hours of driving and one and a half days' work, Howard and I have twenty-three bottles of beer to show for it and that's fine by me.
Above: Our cooling system to keep the beer around 70 degrees in the middle of the Davis summer (my idea)Below: Our chicken wire drying rack (Howard's idea)
On a separate note, it has come to my attention that American brewers have been time traveling from years past into our present future and viciously stealing my beer ideas from this blog. It turns out that Cascadian Dark Ale aka Black IPA is an established northwestern variant on the IPA style that uses dark malts to conjure an intimidating color. While it sounds like a lot of breweries are using debittered black malt to give the maximum color without affecting flavor that much, some have actually embraced the pairing of hop bitterness and roasted maltiness.Also, on the day before we bottled our California Sunshine Ale, I happened across the spitting image of my concept for the beer. Deschutes Brewery's Twilight Summer Ale is an APA that lightens up on the crystal malt, adds something toasty to pair with grilled food and relies on a combination of four hops with emphasis on Amarillo.
To counterbalance said losses from my creative stable, I'd like to present a new beer concept. I was idly reading the ingredient list on Barq's Root Beer and noticed that the last ingredient was acacia. For those of you who don't know, acacia is planted as a shrub all over orange county hillsides for erosion control. It has oval grey leaves and little fuzzy yellow flowers that get pollen all over the place. It has a very distinctive smell, like a dirty, grainy version of some platonic true herb. As soon as I'd read it I started to either imagine or taste it in the Barq's (to my satisfaction).
Acacia would be great in a light summer porter. You heard it from me first, somebody should brew a summer porter with acacia leaves.
Monday, July 5, 2010
On Macrobrews
In the vocabulary of beer snobs, "macrobrew" is a dirty word. It's shorthand for beers brewed on a massive industrial scale, made with adjuncts (corn and rice) to reduce costs and lighten flavor. Well, mostly just to lighten flavor, but wouldn't cost-cutting make a better story? The style is an American invention that came about between the post-prohibition era and WWII, and befitting its American origins, practically every country in the world's national bestselling beer is made in the style.
The style I'm referring to is also called American Adjunct Lager or American Light Lager. A lot is made of the style's "refreshing light flavor" or, alternatively, it's complete lack of flavor. I'm in the former camp. Not without reservations, mind you, but there's a lot to be said for macrobrews. They're the most flexible food beer I know (anything from curry to fried chicken), crisp and quenching on a hot day and extremely sessionable, which is to say that you can drink a lot of beers without getting sick of them (or too drunk).
Now before you rush off to buy a thirty pack of the first macrobrew you find, I'll give you a rundown on the available brands:
Keystone Light and Natural Ice - These beers fall into a subclass of the American Light Lager family denoted "subpremium" (aka frat beer). This is the beer you shotgunned or beer-bonged or keg-stood in college. While the nature of the brewing business means that ingredients cost little enough that "premium" macrobrews don't really skimp on quality, subpremium macrobrews cut every corner available, including taste. Thumbs-Down.
The rest of the beers reviewed qualify as either premium or superpremium beers. None of them have noticeable off-flavors, which is not to be discounted when brewing a beer with such slight flavor. In the words of my beer professor, you could hide an elephant in the flavor profile of most Stouts or IPA's.
Budweiser - The best-selling beer in the world, Budweiser is the poster boy for the macrobrewed American Adjunct Lager. Budweiser is the biggest buyer of rice in the US, but you can't really taste rice in the flavor profile. In fact, the most distinct thing about Budweiser is that you can't grab onto any particular flavor at all, except maybe a soft sweetness and high carbonation relative to its peers. I can't say I'm a fan of Bud. I find it overcarbonated, uninteresting and I have no affection for the relative sweetness. Thumbs-Down.
Miller High Life - High Life turned out to be the closest thing I've found to what I was expecting Budweiser beer to be-- a light, rice-driven macro with a perfectly clean taste. By "clean taste" I mean that like Bud, there are no specific flavors to latch onto. Unlike Bud, however, it lacks noticeable sweetness or excessive carbonation. I can't say this is a beer I drink a lot of, but purely on the merit of fully realizing the clean, light and balanced archetype, I give this beer a thumbs-up.
Miller Genuine Draft - Miller's Genuine Draft stands in opposition to High Life. This is a relatively strong-tasting macrobrew with notes of rice and especially corn on top of an overall barley flavor. This is among the most engaging and least clean of the macrobrews and among my most-drunk beers. Thumbs-up.
Coors - While an advertising campaign based on their beer's "coldness" hasn't done anything to curry my favor, Coors is a solid beer with a light, clean corn taste. I'm afraid, however, that it doesn't fill a niche that I have much use for. This gets a thumbs-sideways.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - This is another rice-driven macro, but in contrast to High Life and Bud, there's a pronounced rice flavor to this beer. It's clean-tasting, but has subtleties lurking in the corners. I've said before on this blog that I thought there was a note of apples and potentially metal in this beer. I think it's rather fitting that this became the beer of "the scene". Strangely enough, it was also the beer of choice of our working class neighbors at the Kingston Apartments. I almost always buy it when the 12-packs go on sale. Thumbs-Up.
Michelob Ultra - Very clean and very light. High Life is a little asymmetric and overcarbonated by comparison, which is drawing a pretty fine line because High Life is pretty darn balanced. I'll give this a thumbs-up and let you decide whether or not you're willing to foot the rather high price.
Rolling Rock - Tastes like peanuts. Otherwise pretty boring and overpriced. Thumbs-down in general, but thumbs-sideways if you want a beer that tastes like peanuts (Thai food, anyone?).
Moosehead - Usually skunked. Otherwise boring and overpriced. Thumbs-Down.
Tecate - Tastes remarkably like MGD. It too is full of corniness and grain flavor. My preference for this over MGD could easily be psychosomatic. For all the fuss they make over this being imported, the fact doesn't seem to interfere with the pricing or the taste, which fits in easily with the American cadre of macros. Thumbs-Up.
Heineken and Becks - I haven't drunk a lot of these beers, but what I've had has left me unimpressed. There's nothing about these beers that makes them better than their domestic cousins, nor anything that justifies their inflated cost. In fact, because of the green glass bottles and extended shipping time, these beers are more likely to be skunked. If it weren't for the skunking or extraordinary price, I'd consider these beers more carefully, but as it is, they get a definite thumbs-down.
The style I'm referring to is also called American Adjunct Lager or American Light Lager. A lot is made of the style's "refreshing light flavor" or, alternatively, it's complete lack of flavor. I'm in the former camp. Not without reservations, mind you, but there's a lot to be said for macrobrews. They're the most flexible food beer I know (anything from curry to fried chicken), crisp and quenching on a hot day and extremely sessionable, which is to say that you can drink a lot of beers without getting sick of them (or too drunk).
Now before you rush off to buy a thirty pack of the first macrobrew you find, I'll give you a rundown on the available brands:
Keystone Light and Natural Ice - These beers fall into a subclass of the American Light Lager family denoted "subpremium" (aka frat beer). This is the beer you shotgunned or beer-bonged or keg-stood in college. While the nature of the brewing business means that ingredients cost little enough that "premium" macrobrews don't really skimp on quality, subpremium macrobrews cut every corner available, including taste. Thumbs-Down.
The rest of the beers reviewed qualify as either premium or superpremium beers. None of them have noticeable off-flavors, which is not to be discounted when brewing a beer with such slight flavor. In the words of my beer professor, you could hide an elephant in the flavor profile of most Stouts or IPA's.
Budweiser - The best-selling beer in the world, Budweiser is the poster boy for the macrobrewed American Adjunct Lager. Budweiser is the biggest buyer of rice in the US, but you can't really taste rice in the flavor profile. In fact, the most distinct thing about Budweiser is that you can't grab onto any particular flavor at all, except maybe a soft sweetness and high carbonation relative to its peers. I can't say I'm a fan of Bud. I find it overcarbonated, uninteresting and I have no affection for the relative sweetness. Thumbs-Down.
Miller High Life - High Life turned out to be the closest thing I've found to what I was expecting Budweiser beer to be-- a light, rice-driven macro with a perfectly clean taste. By "clean taste" I mean that like Bud, there are no specific flavors to latch onto. Unlike Bud, however, it lacks noticeable sweetness or excessive carbonation. I can't say this is a beer I drink a lot of, but purely on the merit of fully realizing the clean, light and balanced archetype, I give this beer a thumbs-up.
Miller Genuine Draft - Miller's Genuine Draft stands in opposition to High Life. This is a relatively strong-tasting macrobrew with notes of rice and especially corn on top of an overall barley flavor. This is among the most engaging and least clean of the macrobrews and among my most-drunk beers. Thumbs-up.
Coors - While an advertising campaign based on their beer's "coldness" hasn't done anything to curry my favor, Coors is a solid beer with a light, clean corn taste. I'm afraid, however, that it doesn't fill a niche that I have much use for. This gets a thumbs-sideways.
Pabst Blue Ribbon - This is another rice-driven macro, but in contrast to High Life and Bud, there's a pronounced rice flavor to this beer. It's clean-tasting, but has subtleties lurking in the corners. I've said before on this blog that I thought there was a note of apples and potentially metal in this beer. I think it's rather fitting that this became the beer of "the scene". Strangely enough, it was also the beer of choice of our working class neighbors at the Kingston Apartments. I almost always buy it when the 12-packs go on sale. Thumbs-Up.
Michelob Ultra - Very clean and very light. High Life is a little asymmetric and overcarbonated by comparison, which is drawing a pretty fine line because High Life is pretty darn balanced. I'll give this a thumbs-up and let you decide whether or not you're willing to foot the rather high price.
Rolling Rock - Tastes like peanuts. Otherwise pretty boring and overpriced. Thumbs-down in general, but thumbs-sideways if you want a beer that tastes like peanuts (Thai food, anyone?).
Moosehead - Usually skunked. Otherwise boring and overpriced. Thumbs-Down.
Tecate - Tastes remarkably like MGD. It too is full of corniness and grain flavor. My preference for this over MGD could easily be psychosomatic. For all the fuss they make over this being imported, the fact doesn't seem to interfere with the pricing or the taste, which fits in easily with the American cadre of macros. Thumbs-Up.
Heineken and Becks - I haven't drunk a lot of these beers, but what I've had has left me unimpressed. There's nothing about these beers that makes them better than their domestic cousins, nor anything that justifies their inflated cost. In fact, because of the green glass bottles and extended shipping time, these beers are more likely to be skunked. If it weren't for the skunking or extraordinary price, I'd consider these beers more carefully, but as it is, they get a definite thumbs-down.
The following two beers don't quite fit the Adjunct Lager category, but this is probably the best place to talk about them.
Corona - This is a clean, astringent beer with a slight zestiness (from the hops?). Frankly, I don't think it's worth drinking without lime, particularly in light of its decidedly "imported" price range. It makes a great canvas for a study of lime flavor, though. The astringency, which is a borderline off-taste on its own, melds beautifully with the citrus. Naturally, key limes are even better in it. Thumbs-up as long as there's a lime wedge involved.
Pacifico - Has a similar clean-astringent profile to Corona, but with a more filled-out malt background. This is a beer that's great on its own and very flexible. It would also be great with lime, but its even better with food. This is my favorite Mexican beer. Thumbs-Up.
EDITS: Check out this interesting article on the same subject. I agree with the descriptions pretty well, but stick to my ratings in cases where we differ.
Trader Joe's brands both get my vehement thumbs-down. They have some great other beers, but Name Tag and Simpler Times are impressively bad.
Olympia is flavorful, a little fruity, and I think it totally works. Thumbs-up.
EDITS: Check out this interesting article on the same subject. I agree with the descriptions pretty well, but stick to my ratings in cases where we differ.
Trader Joe's brands both get my vehement thumbs-down. They have some great other beers, but Name Tag and Simpler Times are impressively bad.
Olympia is flavorful, a little fruity, and I think it totally works. Thumbs-up.
Monday, May 31, 2010
If I Were to Start a Microbrewery
This is one of my dilettantish whims that faces incredible odds of ever seeing fruition. I'm realistic, though, so I decided that if I were to ever seriously talk about starting a microbrewery I'd have to have perfected a couple of homebrew recipes and won a few awards for them. We'll see how far I get, but until then it's way too fun to daydream.
If I were to start a microbrewery I'd call it Beach Cities Brewing. I'd need to find a bar or restaurant to ally myself with and I'd want to round out a selection of thoughtful, innovative beer offerings. To kick around beer ideas and as the natural next step to being as obsessed with beer as I am, I've started researching recipes for typical beers.
Pale Ale (California Sunshine Ale)
I've noticed the classic American Pale Ale is a little too heavy to drink on a hot summer day, but the briskness of the hops always makes me think that it should be more refreshing. I think there's a gaping niche in the American craft beer market for a lighter-bodied pale.
Mad River Brewing makes an Extra Pale Ale, but frankly it's too light, too bready and too innocuous for my taste. What I want in a summer beer is one that's light enough to be quaffable like a macrobrew lager but that pairs well with (especially grilled) food the way amber ales do.
I think the best way to do it would be to combine the significant Cascade dry hopping of pales with small quantities of the darker malts that give that toasted flavor to New Belgium's Fat Tire or Flying Dog's Pale Ale. The loser in the equation would be the crystal (or caramel) malt that gives both amber and pale ale styles their foundational sweetness.
Prototype Pale Ale
Ingredients:
5 lbs Light Malt Extract
2 lbs Sugar (standing in for flaked rice)
1/4 lb Crystal Malt 50L
1/4 lb Carapils
1/4 lb Chocolate Malt
0.25 oz Magnum Hops (60 min)
0.5 oz Perle Hops (30 min)
0.5 oz Cascade Hops (10 min)
0.5 oz Amarillo Hops (10 min)
0.5 oz Cascade Hops (0 min)
1.0 oz Amarillo Hops (0 min)
Optional dry hop of another 1.0 oz Amarillo
Wyeast American Ale Yeast 1056
3/4 cup priming suger
Directions
Put the crushed malt in grain bag and steep for 30 minutes in 1.5 to 2 gallons of water. Heat to approximately 170F (not exceeding 180F), remove grain bag, bring water to boil, add extract and boil one hour adding hops at appropriate times.
Ferment in primary one to two weeks. Watch your ferment temperatures, try to keep them in the 63F to 68F range. (Optional) Dry hop in secondary for one to two weeks. Add priming sugar and bottle
Servings
5 Gallons
Expected stats based on online calculators:
5.3% ABV
36 IBU
This is definitely the first recipe I'm going to try out when I get my hands on some brewing equipment. Firstly because it's the concept I've thought the farthest through and secondly, because ales are usually easier to make and harder to drink large quantities of. It makes sense to brew an especially drinkable ale if you're making 5 gallons at a time.
This prototype represents about three simultaneous experiments: Can a pale ale be essentially watered down and remain compelling? Will chocolate malt mesh with the hard-edged hops that constitute the basis of the classic American pale ale? Do Amarillo hops really taste like grapefruit and do I like them?
Amber Ale
I'd also want to have an Amber in the lineup because it's an awesome food beer and the style I've been most interested in lately. It's also got a lot of flexibility. I've had Ambers that range from toasted and refreshing (New Belgium, Rogue) to borderline creamy (Alaska, Anderson Valley, Full Sail) and I've loved them all. In short, I need something to fill the mid-body, mid-color position in the line-up, but I have no idea how I'll craft something as original and refined as many beers in the style..
Bock (North Swell Bock)
*Pictured: Full-suit clad surfer heading up and over a thick, steely-gray wave*
I'd want to shoot for the gravity of a regular bock, which is considerably heavier than Shiner Bock. Some combination of honey malt, wheat and especially ginger would give it the warmth required to celebrate winter surf.
American India Dark Ale
Once my adoring fanbase develops, there will be an understandable demand for a Beach Cities IPA. I will both sate and confound the hopheads by instead releasing this. Instead of pushing hop complexity, I'd push malt complexity while retaining the generally nuclear malt/hop balance of an IPA. It would mess with IPA doctrine the way Dogfish Head's 90-Minute IPA did, but instead of crisp malt sweetness, I'd go for a rich toasted malt flavor.
If I were to start a microbrewery I'd call it Beach Cities Brewing. I'd need to find a bar or restaurant to ally myself with and I'd want to round out a selection of thoughtful, innovative beer offerings. To kick around beer ideas and as the natural next step to being as obsessed with beer as I am, I've started researching recipes for typical beers.
Pale Ale (California Sunshine Ale)
I've noticed the classic American Pale Ale is a little too heavy to drink on a hot summer day, but the briskness of the hops always makes me think that it should be more refreshing. I think there's a gaping niche in the American craft beer market for a lighter-bodied pale.
Mad River Brewing makes an Extra Pale Ale, but frankly it's too light, too bready and too innocuous for my taste. What I want in a summer beer is one that's light enough to be quaffable like a macrobrew lager but that pairs well with (especially grilled) food the way amber ales do.
I think the best way to do it would be to combine the significant Cascade dry hopping of pales with small quantities of the darker malts that give that toasted flavor to New Belgium's Fat Tire or Flying Dog's Pale Ale. The loser in the equation would be the crystal (or caramel) malt that gives both amber and pale ale styles their foundational sweetness.
Prototype Pale Ale
Ingredients:
5 lbs Light Malt Extract
2 lbs Sugar (standing in for flaked rice)
1/4 lb Crystal Malt 50L
1/4 lb Carapils
1/4 lb Chocolate Malt
0.25 oz Magnum Hops (60 min)
0.5 oz Perle Hops (30 min)
0.5 oz Cascade Hops (10 min)
0.5 oz Amarillo Hops (10 min)
0.5 oz Cascade Hops (0 min)
1.0 oz Amarillo Hops (0 min)
Optional dry hop of another 1.0 oz Amarillo
Wyeast American Ale Yeast 1056
3/4 cup priming suger
Directions
Put the crushed malt in grain bag and steep for 30 minutes in 1.5 to 2 gallons of water. Heat to approximately 170F (not exceeding 180F), remove grain bag, bring water to boil, add extract and boil one hour adding hops at appropriate times.
Ferment in primary one to two weeks. Watch your ferment temperatures, try to keep them in the 63F to 68F range. (Optional) Dry hop in secondary for one to two weeks. Add priming sugar and bottle
Servings
5 Gallons
Expected stats based on online calculators:
5.3% ABV
36 IBU
This is definitely the first recipe I'm going to try out when I get my hands on some brewing equipment. Firstly because it's the concept I've thought the farthest through and secondly, because ales are usually easier to make and harder to drink large quantities of. It makes sense to brew an especially drinkable ale if you're making 5 gallons at a time.
This prototype represents about three simultaneous experiments: Can a pale ale be essentially watered down and remain compelling? Will chocolate malt mesh with the hard-edged hops that constitute the basis of the classic American pale ale? Do Amarillo hops really taste like grapefruit and do I like them?
Amber Ale
I'd also want to have an Amber in the lineup because it's an awesome food beer and the style I've been most interested in lately. It's also got a lot of flexibility. I've had Ambers that range from toasted and refreshing (New Belgium, Rogue) to borderline creamy (Alaska, Anderson Valley, Full Sail) and I've loved them all. In short, I need something to fill the mid-body, mid-color position in the line-up, but I have no idea how I'll craft something as original and refined as many beers in the style..
Bock (North Swell Bock)
*Pictured: Full-suit clad surfer heading up and over a thick, steely-gray wave*
I'd want to shoot for the gravity of a regular bock, which is considerably heavier than Shiner Bock. Some combination of honey malt, wheat and especially ginger would give it the warmth required to celebrate winter surf.
American India Dark Ale
Once my adoring fanbase develops, there will be an understandable demand for a Beach Cities IPA. I will both sate and confound the hopheads by instead releasing this. Instead of pushing hop complexity, I'd push malt complexity while retaining the generally nuclear malt/hop balance of an IPA. It would mess with IPA doctrine the way Dogfish Head's 90-Minute IPA did, but instead of crisp malt sweetness, I'd go for a rich toasted malt flavor.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Berkeley and The Lost Coast
I visited Caius for his graduation ceremony and to go on a backpacking trip in the Lost Coast.
I finally got to meet his friend Claire, who's about as cool as I could have imagined. Caius's parents took us out to a delicious dinner and then we went home to Caius's coop and watched Carl Sagan, which was a campy trip. Saturday I had more interesting, thoughtful conversations in one day than I typically have in a month. I could probably write a handful of posts from what I discussed that day alone.
Caius's commencement that morning would have been pretty boring if not for his friend David, who I sat with. We chatted with his family afterwards at the reception. His graduation was extra special for the fact that Caius had dropped out of school for a year with no plans to return. Evidently his dad had promised to quit smoking if Caius ever graduated. Here's wishing him good luck.
That afternoon Caius and I took a nap and did yoga on his coop's roof. We checked out the "free pile" in the basement. We played dress-up for awhile, Caius picked out a shirt and I found a messenger bag in new condition. We also ate greek yogurt with honey in a broken, tilted couch hung outdoors on a rope that was reminiscent of a Dali painting. Caius and Claire and I had indian food for dinner accompanied by an intense discussion about the philosophical contrast between Pilsner and IPA. That night I chatted with Claire for a while and was *gasp* impressed by Stone IPA, which I guess has been due for another chance (John Lazur has called it his favorite beer). I got to meet another longtime friend of Caius's while we packed for our trip.
We left the next morning for the Lost Coast. We stopped along the way at a secret hot spring that's only accessible at low tide. About 500 feet down an incredibly steep bluff later we arrived to find about 35 mostly naked people crammed into the area of two VW bugs. I teetered a little, but I couldn't really imagine letting the opportunity slide, so I squeezed myself in. The spring had been dug out by hand and every day after high tide someone would siphon the cold seawater out. The temperature was perfect and everyone was friendly (you have to be when you're packed bare cheek to bare cheek). To top it off, an old guy passed out chocolate and strawberries to everyone.
The Lost Coast is breathtakingly beautiful. Most of the pictures I've found online were taken when it's sunny, but when we arrived at Shelter Cove, the mountains were wreathed in marine layer. The black sand in the cliffs and on the beach contrasted sharply with the deep green of the mountains. The pictures are courtesy of Caius's friend Kaija and you can find the rest of her photos from our trip here.
The vegetation ranged from fennel and cow parsley in the canyon openings to pine trees, ceanothus and manzanita up into the mountains. I've also never seen so much poison oak in one place. Poison oak was the one common denominator between all of the plant communities we passed through, from ridge-line chaparral to sand dunes. I got pretty good at dancing between branches with my frame-pack.
We were thirteen people, mostly from Caius's coop, Loth. All the food would be vegetarian, and the trip organizers had brought such luxuries as soy milk, broccoli and kale. I should note that every meal we had was incredibly delicious, partly because of the nature of backpacking, but partly because the food was excellent. No matter how crazy it was to bring something like kale or to forgo nutritious meat, our diet ended up being a lot closer to my at-home diet than my dad's summer sausage, nuts and dehydrated mashed potatoes. Also, despite my fears about all of the water and non-calories we were taking up, my pack weight was never enough to bother me much. I had much more trouble with the rocks and sand on the beach.
We camped the first night in Shelter Cove, not too far from our cars. We woke up to the sound of raindrops on our tents. That kind of set the tone for the day. We packed up and started walking down the beach. We found washed-up dead sea animals of enormous size, including an almost-fresh sting ray, two octupus, two chitons, a bunch of starfish and what looked like the remains of a grouper. The ten miles of beach that we planned on crossing that day were impassable at high tides, so we shivered for a couple of hours at a canyon opening for lunch while the wind did it's best to blow rain under our tarp and the tarp into the sky.
Lesson learned #1: It rains a lot in the Lost Coast.
Lesson learned #2: Waterproofed nylon isn't waterproof.
By the time we rolled into camp that night, everything I owned had been soaked through with rain. Actually, one thing was dry. A pair of socks I'd stuffed into my upside down camp cup was the only dry fabric I owned. Words cannot express my joy at finding those socks, which possibly illustrates how thoroughly demoralized we were by the end of that day. We huddled under our tarp, cooked and changed our clothes for any marginally drier ones we might have. Soon we shivered off to our tents and into our damp sleeping bags.
The next morning was cloudy and dewy, but the rain had finally stopped. We hung our clothes on trees that morning in hopes that they might dry, to little effect. Once we got walking, the dew on the grass quickly soaked my already wet sneakers to the point of squelching. We hiked up the canyon and forded the stream a couple of times. Thanks to my coop companions' liberal attitude towards nudity I managed to cross both fords without getting my clothes any wetter than they already were.
The next three miles were about the steepest switchbacks I've ever seen. You had to go slowly so your feet wouldn't slide back. I passed the time with a conversation about agribusiness and human rights (my answer was no, neither food nor technologically advanced seeds are or should be basic human rights).
That night the sky was clear and we crowded around the fire to dry our clothes by. It was pretty cool watching sleeping bags, shoes, socks and shirts all steaming away. A few of us decided to sleep on the ridgeline under the stars (who's perfect glory was only marred by my lack of glasses).
When I woke up, the sky had turned the faintest gray. I wondered if oncoming dawn had already obscured the stars or if those were clouds I was looking up at. A raindrop on the face answered my question. I yelled, "Wake up, guys, it's raining!". We hurried to pack our sleeping bags and scurried down the hill as the drops quickened and thickened. Soon we were in tents and fast asleep again.
By the time we woke up, things had progressed into a steady downpour. The hollow we'd camped in was slowly turning into a pond. We divided up our food for two groups: the one that would continue across the mountains to where we'd parked our cars (including Caius) and the group that had to turn back to get home for things (including myself and three others). Two long Caius-hugs later and the four of us were marching down the ridgeline against driving rain and gales that threatened to throw us off the ridge. Once again I felt the familiar sensation of my rain-jacket hemorrhaging water into my clothes beneath. The four of us tore down that hill at a near-run (quite a feat considering the precipitous angle).
We arrived at our first camp in the early afternoon. By that time, the rain had stopped and our clothes were just starting to dry, though both I and another had slipped in the increased river flow at the fords. Our goal was to camp in a canyon about four miles from where our cars were parked, but we were making such good time we'd started daring to hope we might make it to our beds by late that night. The tide forced us to break for dinner, but the sun came out while we were cooking, for the first time since our trip had started. It was amazing how quickly clothes dried under actual sunlight. The latitude pushed nightfall back almost an hour, but we still had nine miles of cobblestone and sand to cross.
The canyon opening we'd planned on camping in looked like something from a fantasy book in the twilight of sunset. We sat there awhile while the other Eagle Scout on the trip filtered fresh water. The trees arched over the stream to create a tunnel into the increasing darkness of the canyon, while the mist from the waves gave everything a hazy sort of aura about it.
As I think you might already suspect, we ultimately agreed to make our bid for home that night. I was pretty eager considering that my right ankle had settled into constant pain from all the abuse I'd heaped on it through the trip. I passed the time and pain of the final stretch again in discussion with postmodern socialists. By the time it was properly dark we'd finished with cobblestones and the moon had come out, so we never needed flashlights. The last couple of streams were too dark and too wide to completely jump, but we didn't really care because we knew we'd be able to take off our shoes soon enough.
A whirlwind of a car ride later and I was in Davis just before dawn broke. I took a long shower and curled into the warm bed I'd dreamed about all week.
I finally got to meet his friend Claire, who's about as cool as I could have imagined. Caius's parents took us out to a delicious dinner and then we went home to Caius's coop and watched Carl Sagan, which was a campy trip. Saturday I had more interesting, thoughtful conversations in one day than I typically have in a month. I could probably write a handful of posts from what I discussed that day alone.
Caius's commencement that morning would have been pretty boring if not for his friend David, who I sat with. We chatted with his family afterwards at the reception. His graduation was extra special for the fact that Caius had dropped out of school for a year with no plans to return. Evidently his dad had promised to quit smoking if Caius ever graduated. Here's wishing him good luck.
That afternoon Caius and I took a nap and did yoga on his coop's roof. We checked out the "free pile" in the basement. We played dress-up for awhile, Caius picked out a shirt and I found a messenger bag in new condition. We also ate greek yogurt with honey in a broken, tilted couch hung outdoors on a rope that was reminiscent of a Dali painting. Caius and Claire and I had indian food for dinner accompanied by an intense discussion about the philosophical contrast between Pilsner and IPA. That night I chatted with Claire for a while and was *gasp* impressed by Stone IPA, which I guess has been due for another chance (John Lazur has called it his favorite beer). I got to meet another longtime friend of Caius's while we packed for our trip.
We left the next morning for the Lost Coast. We stopped along the way at a secret hot spring that's only accessible at low tide. About 500 feet down an incredibly steep bluff later we arrived to find about 35 mostly naked people crammed into the area of two VW bugs. I teetered a little, but I couldn't really imagine letting the opportunity slide, so I squeezed myself in. The spring had been dug out by hand and every day after high tide someone would siphon the cold seawater out. The temperature was perfect and everyone was friendly (you have to be when you're packed bare cheek to bare cheek). To top it off, an old guy passed out chocolate and strawberries to everyone.
The Lost Coast is breathtakingly beautiful. Most of the pictures I've found online were taken when it's sunny, but when we arrived at Shelter Cove, the mountains were wreathed in marine layer. The black sand in the cliffs and on the beach contrasted sharply with the deep green of the mountains. The pictures are courtesy of Caius's friend Kaija and you can find the rest of her photos from our trip here.
The vegetation ranged from fennel and cow parsley in the canyon openings to pine trees, ceanothus and manzanita up into the mountains. I've also never seen so much poison oak in one place. Poison oak was the one common denominator between all of the plant communities we passed through, from ridge-line chaparral to sand dunes. I got pretty good at dancing between branches with my frame-pack.
We were thirteen people, mostly from Caius's coop, Loth. All the food would be vegetarian, and the trip organizers had brought such luxuries as soy milk, broccoli and kale. I should note that every meal we had was incredibly delicious, partly because of the nature of backpacking, but partly because the food was excellent. No matter how crazy it was to bring something like kale or to forgo nutritious meat, our diet ended up being a lot closer to my at-home diet than my dad's summer sausage, nuts and dehydrated mashed potatoes. Also, despite my fears about all of the water and non-calories we were taking up, my pack weight was never enough to bother me much. I had much more trouble with the rocks and sand on the beach.
We camped the first night in Shelter Cove, not too far from our cars. We woke up to the sound of raindrops on our tents. That kind of set the tone for the day. We packed up and started walking down the beach. We found washed-up dead sea animals of enormous size, including an almost-fresh sting ray, two octupus, two chitons, a bunch of starfish and what looked like the remains of a grouper. The ten miles of beach that we planned on crossing that day were impassable at high tides, so we shivered for a couple of hours at a canyon opening for lunch while the wind did it's best to blow rain under our tarp and the tarp into the sky.
Lesson learned #1: It rains a lot in the Lost Coast.
Lesson learned #2: Waterproofed nylon isn't waterproof.
By the time we rolled into camp that night, everything I owned had been soaked through with rain. Actually, one thing was dry. A pair of socks I'd stuffed into my upside down camp cup was the only dry fabric I owned. Words cannot express my joy at finding those socks, which possibly illustrates how thoroughly demoralized we were by the end of that day. We huddled under our tarp, cooked and changed our clothes for any marginally drier ones we might have. Soon we shivered off to our tents and into our damp sleeping bags.
The next morning was cloudy and dewy, but the rain had finally stopped. We hung our clothes on trees that morning in hopes that they might dry, to little effect. Once we got walking, the dew on the grass quickly soaked my already wet sneakers to the point of squelching. We hiked up the canyon and forded the stream a couple of times. Thanks to my coop companions' liberal attitude towards nudity I managed to cross both fords without getting my clothes any wetter than they already were.
The next three miles were about the steepest switchbacks I've ever seen. You had to go slowly so your feet wouldn't slide back. I passed the time with a conversation about agribusiness and human rights (my answer was no, neither food nor technologically advanced seeds are or should be basic human rights).
That night the sky was clear and we crowded around the fire to dry our clothes by. It was pretty cool watching sleeping bags, shoes, socks and shirts all steaming away. A few of us decided to sleep on the ridgeline under the stars (who's perfect glory was only marred by my lack of glasses).
When I woke up, the sky had turned the faintest gray. I wondered if oncoming dawn had already obscured the stars or if those were clouds I was looking up at. A raindrop on the face answered my question. I yelled, "Wake up, guys, it's raining!". We hurried to pack our sleeping bags and scurried down the hill as the drops quickened and thickened. Soon we were in tents and fast asleep again.
By the time we woke up, things had progressed into a steady downpour. The hollow we'd camped in was slowly turning into a pond. We divided up our food for two groups: the one that would continue across the mountains to where we'd parked our cars (including Caius) and the group that had to turn back to get home for things (including myself and three others). Two long Caius-hugs later and the four of us were marching down the ridgeline against driving rain and gales that threatened to throw us off the ridge. Once again I felt the familiar sensation of my rain-jacket hemorrhaging water into my clothes beneath. The four of us tore down that hill at a near-run (quite a feat considering the precipitous angle).
We arrived at our first camp in the early afternoon. By that time, the rain had stopped and our clothes were just starting to dry, though both I and another had slipped in the increased river flow at the fords. Our goal was to camp in a canyon about four miles from where our cars were parked, but we were making such good time we'd started daring to hope we might make it to our beds by late that night. The tide forced us to break for dinner, but the sun came out while we were cooking, for the first time since our trip had started. It was amazing how quickly clothes dried under actual sunlight. The latitude pushed nightfall back almost an hour, but we still had nine miles of cobblestone and sand to cross.
The canyon opening we'd planned on camping in looked like something from a fantasy book in the twilight of sunset. We sat there awhile while the other Eagle Scout on the trip filtered fresh water. The trees arched over the stream to create a tunnel into the increasing darkness of the canyon, while the mist from the waves gave everything a hazy sort of aura about it.
As I think you might already suspect, we ultimately agreed to make our bid for home that night. I was pretty eager considering that my right ankle had settled into constant pain from all the abuse I'd heaped on it through the trip. I passed the time and pain of the final stretch again in discussion with postmodern socialists. By the time it was properly dark we'd finished with cobblestones and the moon had come out, so we never needed flashlights. The last couple of streams were too dark and too wide to completely jump, but we didn't really care because we knew we'd be able to take off our shoes soon enough.
A whirlwind of a car ride later and I was in Davis just before dawn broke. I took a long shower and curled into the warm bed I'd dreamed about all week.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
What's Wrong With IPA's?
As a fledgling beer snob with a vendetta against the most popular style of microbrew, I get the question a lot: What's wrong with IPA's? The short answer is that they're pretentious and undrinkable. Now, if you're an IPA fan, you've heard that before. A non-beer drinker could say that.
IPA's are the product of a "logical extreme" paradigm that is uniquely American. You've heard Texans boast that "everything's big in Texas". Well, Texans are just Americans with less class than the rest of the country. The conceit is shared by us all. We want everything to be more intense, more "real".
Have you ever compared British candy to American candy? British candy is weak. It hardly even fries your taste buds. Eating British candy could put me to sleep. Who ever heard of milk chocolate that actually tastes like milk? The British, that's who. Try skipping soda and candy for a month and then having a Coke. It's like you've never tasted anything properly your whole life. It's like a nuclear explosion in your mouth. Without conditioning your taste buds will burn from the intensity of Coca-Cola. And that's just Coke. That's the saleable aspect of American culture.
The story of American food is a story of one-upmanship. You think fried chicken is unhealthy? Try fried cornbread (aka hushpuppies). And if you think soaking something porous in grease and then cooking it in batter just isn't enough, try fried twinkies.
We've applied this "bigger, better, more extreme" philosophy to everything. Not the least of these is our alcoholic beverages. Because when we're pretentious, we like to be really pretentious. And the fact that we only half know how to be pretentious won't stop us (though I'd propose it's secretly one of our strengths).
When Sierra Nevada came out with its pale ale, it was one of the bitterest beers on the market. It has an IBU of 37. It was revelatory that a brewery could successfully market an overtly bitter beer. It was a slap in the face to mass scale breweries that kept hopping low to make their beers as innocuous and "drinkable" as possible. Bitterness, gravity and high alcohol became the standards borne by the American microbrew movement. Samuel Adams keeps breaking its own record for the world's most alcoholic beer (their Utopia has 27 ABV).
But any boorish lout can appreciate a beverage that will fuck him up. Ultimately, it was bitterness that became the ideological rallying cry of craft brewing. Just read any diatribe on the back of a Stone Brewery bottle. Bow down and worship at the feet of almighty Bitterness! It's true that hops have complex flavors that sparkle in interesting ways at high concentrations. Bitterness is both daunting and artistically redeeming. The drinker must be willing to suspend expectations of instant likeability and instead struggle with a flavor that confronts and baffles, ultimately to reward.
Of course, the equation Pain=Artistic Merit is so tired and postmodern as to make me sick, but it's not like there aren't legitimate precedents. John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band is a rubbed-raw bender of an album. I myself prefer Nirvana's dark and twisted In Utero to their more pleasant Nevermind and the Velvet Underground's raucous anti-beauty White Light/White Heat to the radio-ready Loaded. Burn-out albums are a wonderful thing. However, they have a very defined and limited place in art. They aren't the sort of albums you'd listen to every day.
But the sense of self-righteous warfare against complacency, aspiring pretension and the mindless pursuit of logical extremes has elevated a beer as boneheaded and specialized as India Pale Ale to the top of craft brewing. Typical American IPA's (India Pale Ales) frequently have IBU's of 60 to 100 (100 is roughly the human taste threshold) and an ABV between 7 and 10. They are crushingly bitter and dangerously alcoholic. Make no mistake, this is a critics' beer. But this is about the most boneheaded critics' beer imaginable. Lots of flavor, lots of alcohol (but not enough to mess up the foam) and lots of malt. IPA's are absolutely interesting, but they ruin the palate and are almost impossible to drink.
This brings us to a cardinal rule of cuisine. Good food and drink ought to be appetizing and complementary. Expensive wine is imminently drinkable, because it tastes delicious and delicate. It is flexible enough to go well with many foods and while it doesn't shy from asserting its beauty, it can also play a beautiful supporting role. This is not the case with IPA's.
Anyone knowledgeable about beer pairings will tell you that IPA's go well with Indian food. That's because Indian cuisine is one of the few foods strong enough to not be overwhelmed by an IPA. However, the best beer to drink with Indian food is not an India Pale Ale (the word India actually has nothing to do with IPA being made for Indian food, btw), because IPA's march to their own tune and don't bother to try and complement anything. That Indian food had damn well better play along.
The best beers to drink with Indian food, I've discovered, are Indian lagers like Taj Mahal. This was my first and most powerful practical lesson to drink a country's beer with its cuisine. Indian lagers are dark, sweet, and vaguely floral. Rather than competing with curry to be the strongest taste, they play a support role, adding another, interacting layer of nuances and subtleties to an already complex curry.
So IPA's aren't food beers (because they're willful) and they aren't session beers (because they're difficult to drink). They are tasting beers, and nothing more. They fill a minor niche well and with panache, but their eminence in the world of American beer-snobbery is as unjustified as it is predictable.
As a sidenote, the two occasions I drank primarily IPA turned out very badly. Some people might think it's a good idea to order a keg of Racer 5 or consecutive pitchers of Arrogant Bastard. It's not. It's really, really not.
IPA's are the product of a "logical extreme" paradigm that is uniquely American. You've heard Texans boast that "everything's big in Texas". Well, Texans are just Americans with less class than the rest of the country. The conceit is shared by us all. We want everything to be more intense, more "real".
Have you ever compared British candy to American candy? British candy is weak. It hardly even fries your taste buds. Eating British candy could put me to sleep. Who ever heard of milk chocolate that actually tastes like milk? The British, that's who. Try skipping soda and candy for a month and then having a Coke. It's like you've never tasted anything properly your whole life. It's like a nuclear explosion in your mouth. Without conditioning your taste buds will burn from the intensity of Coca-Cola. And that's just Coke. That's the saleable aspect of American culture.
The story of American food is a story of one-upmanship. You think fried chicken is unhealthy? Try fried cornbread (aka hushpuppies). And if you think soaking something porous in grease and then cooking it in batter just isn't enough, try fried twinkies.
We've applied this "bigger, better, more extreme" philosophy to everything. Not the least of these is our alcoholic beverages. Because when we're pretentious, we like to be really pretentious. And the fact that we only half know how to be pretentious won't stop us (though I'd propose it's secretly one of our strengths).
When Sierra Nevada came out with its pale ale, it was one of the bitterest beers on the market. It has an IBU of 37. It was revelatory that a brewery could successfully market an overtly bitter beer. It was a slap in the face to mass scale breweries that kept hopping low to make their beers as innocuous and "drinkable" as possible. Bitterness, gravity and high alcohol became the standards borne by the American microbrew movement. Samuel Adams keeps breaking its own record for the world's most alcoholic beer (their Utopia has 27 ABV).
But any boorish lout can appreciate a beverage that will fuck him up. Ultimately, it was bitterness that became the ideological rallying cry of craft brewing. Just read any diatribe on the back of a Stone Brewery bottle. Bow down and worship at the feet of almighty Bitterness! It's true that hops have complex flavors that sparkle in interesting ways at high concentrations. Bitterness is both daunting and artistically redeeming. The drinker must be willing to suspend expectations of instant likeability and instead struggle with a flavor that confronts and baffles, ultimately to reward.
Of course, the equation Pain=Artistic Merit is so tired and postmodern as to make me sick, but it's not like there aren't legitimate precedents. John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band is a rubbed-raw bender of an album. I myself prefer Nirvana's dark and twisted In Utero to their more pleasant Nevermind and the Velvet Underground's raucous anti-beauty White Light/White Heat to the radio-ready Loaded. Burn-out albums are a wonderful thing. However, they have a very defined and limited place in art. They aren't the sort of albums you'd listen to every day.
But the sense of self-righteous warfare against complacency, aspiring pretension and the mindless pursuit of logical extremes has elevated a beer as boneheaded and specialized as India Pale Ale to the top of craft brewing. Typical American IPA's (India Pale Ales) frequently have IBU's of 60 to 100 (100 is roughly the human taste threshold) and an ABV between 7 and 10. They are crushingly bitter and dangerously alcoholic. Make no mistake, this is a critics' beer. But this is about the most boneheaded critics' beer imaginable. Lots of flavor, lots of alcohol (but not enough to mess up the foam) and lots of malt. IPA's are absolutely interesting, but they ruin the palate and are almost impossible to drink.
This brings us to a cardinal rule of cuisine. Good food and drink ought to be appetizing and complementary. Expensive wine is imminently drinkable, because it tastes delicious and delicate. It is flexible enough to go well with many foods and while it doesn't shy from asserting its beauty, it can also play a beautiful supporting role. This is not the case with IPA's.
Anyone knowledgeable about beer pairings will tell you that IPA's go well with Indian food. That's because Indian cuisine is one of the few foods strong enough to not be overwhelmed by an IPA. However, the best beer to drink with Indian food is not an India Pale Ale (the word India actually has nothing to do with IPA being made for Indian food, btw), because IPA's march to their own tune and don't bother to try and complement anything. That Indian food had damn well better play along.
The best beers to drink with Indian food, I've discovered, are Indian lagers like Taj Mahal. This was my first and most powerful practical lesson to drink a country's beer with its cuisine. Indian lagers are dark, sweet, and vaguely floral. Rather than competing with curry to be the strongest taste, they play a support role, adding another, interacting layer of nuances and subtleties to an already complex curry.
So IPA's aren't food beers (because they're willful) and they aren't session beers (because they're difficult to drink). They are tasting beers, and nothing more. They fill a minor niche well and with panache, but their eminence in the world of American beer-snobbery is as unjustified as it is predictable.
As a sidenote, the two occasions I drank primarily IPA turned out very badly. Some people might think it's a good idea to order a keg of Racer 5 or consecutive pitchers of Arrogant Bastard. It's not. It's really, really not.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Craft Breweries: Style and Iconoclasm
Inevitably, as I continue my exploration of craft beers, patterns begin to emerge in the flavor profiles of American craft beers. I've got a feel for some of the most popular styles. However, with the possible exception of IPA's, American's innovation and resistance to convention has kept the craft brew world in a constant state of flux. In fact, the strongest patterns in craft beer that I've found are breweries' identity. Many breweries, particularly the ones who got their start with a winning formula, have a distinctive style that is distinguishable throughout their beer lineup.
The first brewery that deserves mention of this is Sierra Nevada. They earned their name on the strength and influence of their Pale Ale. Its sharp bitterness set it apart from Pale Ale's British forbears and inaugurated an industry-wide trend towards heavy hopping. That the floral hops were belied by an unsung malty sweetness, I think, was the key towards its enduring status as one of the most respected craft beers in the business.
I got my hands on a few other styles by Sierra Nevada in recent months. Unfortunately, they're shamelessly derivative of their flagship Pale Ale. Their Stout is pretty good, it just tastes like a Stout version of their Pale Ale. Less can be said of their Anniversary and Celebration Ales, which taste is as if the Pale Ale was just amped up into an IPA. More gravity, more hops, until the original balance that made the Pale Ale so beautiful is flagrantly destroyed.
Samuel Adams, on the other hand, manages the tricky feat of finding new ways to present a winning formula. This may have to do with the fact that their trademark style is malt-driven rather than hop-driven. By varying malt composition and gravity, the two seasonals I've tried have been even more impressive than their famed Boston Lager. Their Octoberfest has a higher gravity, greater charred character and a more substantial hop backbone than their classic brew. Their Winter Lager calls itself "a Dark Wheat Lager". It has a thick buttery richness that warms the soul.
New Belgium seems to revel in a charred undertone that characterizes their beer. The most prominent example of this is their near-black 1554, but see if you don't find the same dark note in sunnier beers like Fat Tire and summer seasonal Skinny Dip. I'm all for it though, because it's that subtle char that really sets their amber ales off. All three of these beers come highly recommended, particularly if you're serving them with food that's got some of its own char.
Anchor is a San Francisco brewery that I've found I just don't like very much. Something about the creamy-toasted quality that underpins their generally light-tasting beer rubs me wrong. The creaminess isn't justified by the light hops and malt, and the toasted quality just seems out of place. I found that of their flagship Anchor Steam and I had the exact same criticism when I tasted their Bock. It was the striking similarity in Anchor's treatment of these two ostensibly different styles that inspired this investigation into the internal stylistic conformity of so many craft breweries.
For some breweries, their trademark style works well and imparts a continuity to their broad range of beer styles. For others, this identifying stamp acts as a straightjacket that prevents their other offerings from ever escaping the shadow of the breweries' flagship beer.
I'd also like to talk about some new leads I've found in the craft beer world. I have only cursory knowledge of the following breweries, but one of their beers came out and spoke to me. These are American originals that I look forward to following up on.
Dogfish Head is a name synonymous with American beer's iconoclasm. Dogfish Head stands in proud opposition to the stylistic uniformity evident in the aforementioned breweries. Talk about bizarre, yet exquisitely crafted beer. This endorsement was mostly inspired by their 90-Minute IPA. I am sick of American IPA's, but this didn't taste like any IPA I'd ever had. Sure it was hoppy and alcoholic, but the standout quality of the 90-Minute IPA was that it was creamy, estery and sweet. I'm not sure I want more, but they obviously had an off-the-wall idea in mind and they hit the nail on the head. Incidentally, I've never felt wealthy enough to purchase any Dogfish Head with my own money; their experiments are expensive.
North Coast's Red Seal Ale follows in the footsteps of Sierra Nevada by pairing striking bitterness with understated fruity sweetness. Red Seal is in fact even more aggressively bitter than that iconic Pale Ale. I'm a sucker for a good red and these guys really struck the perfect, bleeding-edge balance.
Anderson Valley's Boont Amber Ale has a buttery-sweet quality to it similar to Samuel Adam's Winter Lager that is practically chewy like a cookie. This quality underlies the Amber Ale rather than forming the foundation of its flavor the way it does the Winter Lager. It was the distinctive, appetizing flavor and the light touch that made the beer stand out to me. I've sworn to get my hands on some more beer from Anderson Valley ever since.
Sudwerk is a Davis brewery with pretty decent distribution in the Central Valley. Excepting the Czech Pilsener Urquell, they make my hands-down favorite Pilsener. The brewmaster came to speak to my Beer and Brewing class (as well as Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada, Dan Gordon of Gordon Biersch and the brewmaster of the Fairfield Anheuser-Busch brewery). He said that he was really into the flavor of the grains in beer, and it shows. The Sudwerk Pilsener tastes of grain in all its exalted glory; the bitter-sweetness, the earth, the dry grass. Yet, in Pilsener fashion, this is also an imminently drinkable beer whose subtlety and originality can be just as easily overlooked.
Unlike most American Amber Ales, Alaska's Alt Style Amber has the sweet, smooth, malty quality of a German beer. I have an affinity for American takes on Central European styles, because Central European aesthetics are so understated and American craft brews so boldly creative. For this, Samuel Adams, Sudwerk's Pilsener and Alaska's Amber earn extra accolades.
Buckbean's Schwarzbier also falls into this category. Few American breweries attempt the black lager style. I encountered it in the middle of an Apple House beer tasting of Bocks and Dark Lagers, and this Nevadan beer certainly stood out from the German Schwarzbier offering. The German one was a smooth and mellow meditation on dark malt, whereas the American was characterized by the distinctive, nutty flavor of mesquite, with the darkness only a backdrop.
You can find an earlier post about craft beer here.
The first brewery that deserves mention of this is Sierra Nevada. They earned their name on the strength and influence of their Pale Ale. Its sharp bitterness set it apart from Pale Ale's British forbears and inaugurated an industry-wide trend towards heavy hopping. That the floral hops were belied by an unsung malty sweetness, I think, was the key towards its enduring status as one of the most respected craft beers in the business.
I got my hands on a few other styles by Sierra Nevada in recent months. Unfortunately, they're shamelessly derivative of their flagship Pale Ale. Their Stout is pretty good, it just tastes like a Stout version of their Pale Ale. Less can be said of their Anniversary and Celebration Ales, which taste is as if the Pale Ale was just amped up into an IPA. More gravity, more hops, until the original balance that made the Pale Ale so beautiful is flagrantly destroyed.
Samuel Adams, on the other hand, manages the tricky feat of finding new ways to present a winning formula. This may have to do with the fact that their trademark style is malt-driven rather than hop-driven. By varying malt composition and gravity, the two seasonals I've tried have been even more impressive than their famed Boston Lager. Their Octoberfest has a higher gravity, greater charred character and a more substantial hop backbone than their classic brew. Their Winter Lager calls itself "a Dark Wheat Lager". It has a thick buttery richness that warms the soul.
New Belgium seems to revel in a charred undertone that characterizes their beer. The most prominent example of this is their near-black 1554, but see if you don't find the same dark note in sunnier beers like Fat Tire and summer seasonal Skinny Dip. I'm all for it though, because it's that subtle char that really sets their amber ales off. All three of these beers come highly recommended, particularly if you're serving them with food that's got some of its own char.
Anchor is a San Francisco brewery that I've found I just don't like very much. Something about the creamy-toasted quality that underpins their generally light-tasting beer rubs me wrong. The creaminess isn't justified by the light hops and malt, and the toasted quality just seems out of place. I found that of their flagship Anchor Steam and I had the exact same criticism when I tasted their Bock. It was the striking similarity in Anchor's treatment of these two ostensibly different styles that inspired this investigation into the internal stylistic conformity of so many craft breweries.
For some breweries, their trademark style works well and imparts a continuity to their broad range of beer styles. For others, this identifying stamp acts as a straightjacket that prevents their other offerings from ever escaping the shadow of the breweries' flagship beer.
I'd also like to talk about some new leads I've found in the craft beer world. I have only cursory knowledge of the following breweries, but one of their beers came out and spoke to me. These are American originals that I look forward to following up on.
Dogfish Head is a name synonymous with American beer's iconoclasm. Dogfish Head stands in proud opposition to the stylistic uniformity evident in the aforementioned breweries. Talk about bizarre, yet exquisitely crafted beer. This endorsement was mostly inspired by their 90-Minute IPA. I am sick of American IPA's, but this didn't taste like any IPA I'd ever had. Sure it was hoppy and alcoholic, but the standout quality of the 90-Minute IPA was that it was creamy, estery and sweet. I'm not sure I want more, but they obviously had an off-the-wall idea in mind and they hit the nail on the head. Incidentally, I've never felt wealthy enough to purchase any Dogfish Head with my own money; their experiments are expensive.
North Coast's Red Seal Ale follows in the footsteps of Sierra Nevada by pairing striking bitterness with understated fruity sweetness. Red Seal is in fact even more aggressively bitter than that iconic Pale Ale. I'm a sucker for a good red and these guys really struck the perfect, bleeding-edge balance.
Anderson Valley's Boont Amber Ale has a buttery-sweet quality to it similar to Samuel Adam's Winter Lager that is practically chewy like a cookie. This quality underlies the Amber Ale rather than forming the foundation of its flavor the way it does the Winter Lager. It was the distinctive, appetizing flavor and the light touch that made the beer stand out to me. I've sworn to get my hands on some more beer from Anderson Valley ever since.
Sudwerk is a Davis brewery with pretty decent distribution in the Central Valley. Excepting the Czech Pilsener Urquell, they make my hands-down favorite Pilsener. The brewmaster came to speak to my Beer and Brewing class (as well as Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada, Dan Gordon of Gordon Biersch and the brewmaster of the Fairfield Anheuser-Busch brewery). He said that he was really into the flavor of the grains in beer, and it shows. The Sudwerk Pilsener tastes of grain in all its exalted glory; the bitter-sweetness, the earth, the dry grass. Yet, in Pilsener fashion, this is also an imminently drinkable beer whose subtlety and originality can be just as easily overlooked.
Unlike most American Amber Ales, Alaska's Alt Style Amber has the sweet, smooth, malty quality of a German beer. I have an affinity for American takes on Central European styles, because Central European aesthetics are so understated and American craft brews so boldly creative. For this, Samuel Adams, Sudwerk's Pilsener and Alaska's Amber earn extra accolades.
Buckbean's Schwarzbier also falls into this category. Few American breweries attempt the black lager style. I encountered it in the middle of an Apple House beer tasting of Bocks and Dark Lagers, and this Nevadan beer certainly stood out from the German Schwarzbier offering. The German one was a smooth and mellow meditation on dark malt, whereas the American was characterized by the distinctive, nutty flavor of mesquite, with the darkness only a backdrop.
You can find an earlier post about craft beer here.
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