Category Archives: Beer

Dead Man Gnawing: Mexican Cold Ones

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I believe that we need more salt-rimmed beverages in our lives.  Or, at least, in my life.  As the salt cures me, it will preserve my liver as well.  This is all about science.

We all know about salt-rimmed margaritas and licking the salt before taking a shot of tequila.  A few years ago, however, I was turned on to micheladas, Mexican beers mixed with various lime-tomato-chili combinations and served on ice in a salt-rimmed glass. My favorite has long been the one served at the incomparable Chevela’s in Prospect Heights.  Their tomato mixture is some kind of spicy bloody mary mix and the salt on the rim is mixed with something tangy.  Shannon speculates dried tamarind.  (Shannon, who loathes tomato juice, loves micheladas; so what does that tell you?) Last night, though, we ate at El Centro in Hell’s Kitchen after watching Alvin Ailey’s dancers kill it, and the micheladas there are simply Modelo Especial mixed with fresh lime and mottled costeño chile, a moderately hot chili used in sauces.  They were fresh and refreshing.  Presented with straws, we sucked them down in minutes.

They got me wondering, though, about the origins of the michelada.  And the wondrous internet provides a handful of different possibilities. Continue reading →

‘Twas the Beer Before Christmas

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Where's my #$%@ beer?!

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the pub
Not a creature was drunk, all dry as dead shrubs.
The empties were stacked in the corner with care
In hopes the taxicabs soon would be there,
For regulars were nestled all snug in their booths,
Shouting out blasphemes and such things uncouth,
And my man with no lager and I with no ale
Had just started in on a sorrowful wail,
When out in the lot there arose such a clatter,
I stumbled from my stool to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I tripped like a drunk,
And fell on my face in a puddle of funk.
The moon on the hoods of our salt-coated cars
Gave the fuzzy impression of far-away stars,
When, what to my watery eyes should appear
But a Great Lakes semi truck and ten cases of beer!
With a red-faced old driver with an eye-winking tic,
I knew in a moment this was Santa’s schtick.
Quicker than UPS guys his deliverers ran
And he whistled and hooted and called to his men,
“Now Guinness, now Orval, now Sixpoint and Avery!
On Harpoon, on Yuengling, on Left Hand and Dundee!
To the top of the ramp to the back of the bar,
Then dash away, dash away, and bring my cigar!”
I drew back from the window, gaping in awe
When Santa appeared, spitting “Pshaw!”
He was dressed in a coverall, his head to his feet,
Though right ‘round his belly the zipper didn’t meet.
He had a broad face and two sticky-out ears
That turned red when he’d had a few too many beers.
He dismissed my wonder and went straight to work
Hooking up kegs and pulling pints with a smirk.
And laying a finger along side his beer
And giving a nod, out the front door he veered.
He sprang to his truck cab, to his men gave a whistle,
Who jumped in the truck with agility and hustle
I heard him exclaim, before I could think,
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a tall drink!”

From Anheuser to Zymurgy, the Beer-Lover’s Christmas List

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Selfish? Give the gift of something you love!

Christmas is approaching, and if you don’t have a beer-lover to buy for, I have a list of beery gifts here good enough to turn any wine-lover to the light.

First of all, the books. As many of you know, I run a bookstore so, as many of you have now guessed, everyone in my family gets a book for Christmas. Here are a few of the beerlicious titles I’ll be handing out:

For the novices I’m looking at The Complete Beer Course: Boot Camp for Beer Geeks: From Novice to Expert in Twelve Tasting Classes by Joshua Bernstein. The self-described beer expert “demystifies the sudsy stuff, breaking down the elements that give each type its distinctively delicious flavor.”

For someone close whose level of cleanliness you trust

Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is an essential for any new brewers. This is the third edition, but the fourth isn’t coming out until after Christmas. Another new guide to brewing is called simply, How to Brew Beer by Bob Bridle. It’s a DK publication, which means it’ll be a pretty book, too. The Naked Brewer was recently put out by the ladies who wrote The Naked Pint, this a simple brewing guide companion to the Pint‘s tasting guide.

For the more experienced brewers: from the folks at CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) have out Brew Your Own British Real Ale by Graham Wheeler; and from the nut at Dogfish Head, Sam Calagione, Extreme Brewing: An Enthusiast’s Guide to Brewing Craft Beer at Home. Continue reading →

Thanksgiving Traditions: Please Pass the Beer

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Watchin' football with the other turkeys

In my Thanksgiving post last year I hinted at the fact that this is not exactly my favorite holiday. I may have also insinuated that it takes alcohol to get me through an entire day with my family, which isn’t really fair: I also have to be bribed there with the promise of my Aunt’s pumpkin pie. I only have a week left to prepare, so here is my game plan for now.

We’re always asked to arrive at one-o-clock for a two-o-clock dinner; dinner is never actually on the table before light leaves the sky, so we will arrive at two or three. Since I know I still have quite a wait before real food is served I’ll grab a session beer. A bitter would just be too easy, so I go with my favorite session at the moment, Founder’s All Day IPA — full of flavor, not alcohol. For the one and only time this year, I will find football fascinating. I’ll join my male relatives, who’ve also discovered a spontaneous love of the game, in the dog fur-coated den.

The November light grows thinner and the smell of cooking meat grows stronger. As a vegetarian, I begin to rehearse my yearly explanation for loading up my plate with green bean casserole and mashed potatoes with no gravy. I will need a thinking beer, something bright and effervescent and strong. I’ll go with one I just recently tried, Dogfish Head’s Burton Baton, which is aged in oak barrels. That takes the alcohol edge off the taste enough that I’ll feel the effects of the 10% abv before I taste it. Continue reading →

Don’t Be a Bunghole: Know Your Beercabulary!

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The Vocabuwheel of Beer Tasting

Allow me to apologize before we begin: as much as I like a properly aged beer, I myself am not particularly mature.That said, beer brewing is an activity rife with words and phrases easily manipulated into dirty puns. That then, is why when brewing, I am subject to fits of snorts and snickers that make even my husband roll his eyes. Below is a list of beer vocab words that make me titter (ha, ha!). See if you can correctly match them to their decidedly pedestrian definitions.

  1. Balling Degrees
  2. Bung hole
  3. Endosperm
  4. Head Retention
  5. Mouthfeel
  6. Sparge
  7. Turbidity
  8. Wet Hopping
  9. Wort

a)  The addition of the freshly harvested cones that have not yet been dried to different stages of the brewing process.
b)  The scale indicating density of sugars in wort.
c)  The starch-containing sac of the barley grain.
d)  Having sediment in the suspension; hazy, murky.
e)  The opening in the side of a cask or older-style keg through which the vessel is filled with beer and then sealed.
f)  The sensation derived from the consistency or viscosity of a beer.
g)  To spray ground grains with hot water in order to remove soluble sugars.
h)  The bittersweet sugar solution obtained by mashing the malt and boiling in the hops, which becomes beer through fermentation.
i)  The foam stability of a beer as measured, in seconds, by time required for a one-inch foam collar to collapse.

Continue on to see the answers!  Continue reading →

Freedom & Unity: All for Beer and Beer for All!

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This is how Vermont starts a beer tour

The first Vermonter I met on our week-long stay in the Green Mountains was a red-faced middle-aged man in pajama pants, Birkenstocks with socks, and a lilac LL Bean fleece vest. “All right! Here we go! How you doin’? Great! Let’s go!” he shouted as he clapped his hands and bounded into the convenience store. A toxic cloud of alcohol breathed along behind him. I ducked down in the refrigerated aisle, debating which of the dozen or so Vermont-made beers there to try first.

Vermont does small up big. Next to my home state of Ohio, it’s really a puny place, but they lead the country in breweries per capita. Many of the breweries and brew pubs are small and don’t distribute widely. Big is not always better, and this is something that Vermonters completely understand. Sustainable, local, green, independent business practices are the standard here. These seem to be in the citizenry’s very attitude toward living in the state, which fosters the perfect atmosphere for small breweries.

A Burlington sunset over Lake Champlain

One might argue that this local pride and self confidence stems from the Revolutionary War. Ben and I are staying in the Green Mountains in the northern end of the state, right around where Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys terrorized British authorities and scared surveyors from the land. The sentiment being, as far as I can judge, “The hell you’re going to take my land.” After seeing these hills in an autumn sunset, I can see why you would fight so viciously for them. Continue reading →

Sacre Bleu! Beer Lingo Part Deux

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The Science of Skunking

In our last Beer Lingo post we covered some basic confusing terms that describe a beer’s style and how it’s made. In today’s educational edition of Just Add Beer, we’ll look at terms that specifically describe a beer’s taste.

Before the beer even hits your tongue, you get an idea of the taste through the smell. In beer lingo it’s the nose. I learned this from a bartender who kept referencing the banana nose of hefeweizens, which of course, made me giggle. The smell reinforced the beer’s fruity taste and now I can’t drink a hefe without imagining the a yellow hook of that fruit sticking out of one those tall, thin glasses. Is that a banana nose I smell or are you just happy to see me?

A word that’s tossed around a lot lately is hoppy. It is used a lot because IPAs are hoppy and also sooper dooper popular. It’s used so often, in fact, I’m afraid it will go the way of ironic, as in, “Isn’t it ironic that hoppy is used to mean bitter?” No, no it isn’t. Hoppy actually refers to the flowery, aromatic taste and smell released from the hop flower; it has nothing to do with the bitter flavor you can feel on the back of your tongue — that’s just bitterness. That twang of bitter is what is measured in International Bitterness Units, as in, “That beer has the same IBU as my high school algebra teacher.” Continue reading →

Fall Seasonals for the Sceptic

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And you wonder why I shy away from pumpkin ales...

Fall and winter bring with them a plethora of seasonal beers: Oktoberfest, pumpkin ale, Christmas ale, and all the hybrids in between. Most of them I view sourly as marketing stunts to take up more shelf space to sell more of the brand. Rather than bitter prematurely, though, I tasted a sample of fall beers to try to prove myself wrong.

Oktoberfest, as a style, is synonymous with the Märzen style. Märzen is German for March, which is around when this style is typically brewed. Back in the days before refrigeration it was too difficult to brew in the summer, so this beer was brewed in early spring, stored in a cool spot over summer, and brought out in time to celebrate Oktoberfest. How better can one celebrate the approach of winter than by getting blitzed?

Oktoberfests are known for their full-bodied, roasty toasty-ness. I often find the American take on them too malty or sweet, but lucked out with two excellent examples recently. Fat Head’s Oktoberfest and Victory Brewing’s Fest Beer are both lagers and both a gorgeous shade of carmely brown. Both also have a quality the popular lagers in America fail to achieve, in that they both taste really good.

I don’t know how far afield Fat Head’s distributes, but if you ever have a chance to pick one up, do so. Their Oktoberfest had a serious hop finish that was in no way bitter, but rather cleansing. (Ben noted that the beer was quite nutty, opening wide the opportunity for me to explain that that’s how I like ‘em.) The nuttiness was balanced though, leaving a rich, almost marzipan-like fullness in the middle. The complex malt base was well-balanced by the hops, revealing a full, smooth character one doesn’t find in run-of-the-mill lagers. Continue reading →

Pardon Moi? Beer Lingo Defined, Part Un

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Ha, ha -- See, magic!

Whenever I go to a French restaurant (which, let’s be honest, is not all that often) I feel immediately intimidated by the real cloth napkins and, more importantly, the menu. I always end up ordering something with mushrooms in it, because champignons is my favorite French word. And parapluie, but they rarely offer umbrellas at those places.

I know for some a beer menu can seem to be in a foreign language, too, so I thought I’d start a series in which I translate a few of the trickier bits of beer lingo.

Let’s start with the ABV, which stands for Alcohol by Volume. This is often found as a percentage on the menu listing and describes how alcoholic or strong the drink is. This number means very little to me in a science-y sort of way, but I know what the percentages mean in a how-fast-you’ll-feel-drunk sort of way. Boring old Buds and Millers, etc are generally in the 3.5% to 4.5% range. They are not very alcoholic. I can only imagine this is why people buy it by the truckload. Five to six percent is fairly average with anything above seven being ones to be careful with, that is to drink slowly or forever hold your tongue. Continue reading →

It’s Can-demonium! The Wild Proliferation of Craft Beer in Cans

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Bottles and cans, just clap your hands, just clap your hay-ands.

I imagine when I first saw a can of Oskar Blues beer, my expression was akin to the one my mother made the first and last time I made her listen to Beck. Like, really–you thought I’d like this?

I first came across this can-only Colorado brewery at the 2006 Great American Beer Fest in Boston. Until then, my only contact with canned beer was that one Busch Light I sipped on unhappily for hours at a college party, the stress of being polite rendering me dead sober. Imagine my surprise when I tasted a sample of Ten Fidy, an imperial stout in Oskar Blues’ trademark can, and found it not just equal to the beer samples I’d had poured from bottles, but even better than many.

Now, eleven years after Oskar Blues launched the “Canned Beer Apocalypse,” the rest of the craft beer world is picking up the trend. Cans are IN. Why, you ask? There are numerous checks in the pro-can column; here are a few:

  • Cans are cheaper to make and ship. Aluminum is less expensive than glass and considerably lighter, resulting in lower shipping costs. Also, the cost of creating a label and a bottle separately can be costlier than using pre-printed aluminum. Lastly, glass can break in transit; aluminum doesn’t.
  • Cans keep beer better than glass. They don’t let light in, light being the prime culprit in skunky beer. (Beer in green bottles = bleh.) Also, these aren’t my father’s cans: nowadays aluminum cans are lined so the beer never actually touches it, which eliminates that metallic zing on your tongue. Continue reading →