The Session: A Celebration

For those of you who are new to the Dram, what I do here is blog on beer and cocktails, in roughly equal portions. This month I am also blogging on wine. However, in general, you can find reviews of beer, usually three per month, plus beer cocktails, and other cocktails as well. Anyway, onto the Session:

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a six pack of Tuckerman's, which I usually drink when I get down from the eponymous backcountry ski area, one of the deadliest in New England. Otherwise, I tend to drink a sparkling wine for celebrations. However, this ale made this selection hard. In addition, since this is wine month here at the Dram, I had to find a barleywine, which is a style I don't tend to drink. Then, serendipity struck.

This weekend was my roommate's twenty-first birthday. This seems like the sort of the special occasion asked for by our good host. One of our guests even brought a little Sierra Nevada barleywine bottled under the name "Celebration Ale." Honestly, could the synergy be any better?

It is an interesting beer. It's a miserable winter seasonal, because it is not much of a winter warmer. However, it made an excellent summer cooler. It is my honor to present:

Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.: 2007 Celebration Ale

Tasting Conditions: I enjoyed this winter warmer after work one day. I drank it from the bottle from, which had been sitting in the fridge for a few days. I drank it from a British pint glass of one imperial pint with room for some head proud of the pint mark.

Eye: This is a wonderfully honey amber ale. It had a lot of surge on the pour, but it subsided fairly quickly. The bottle is a fairly standard Sierra Nevada bottle, though it was in a winter theme.

Nose: There was a lot of good spicyness here, as well as some good hops, and some pleasant herbal notes.

Mouth: In the mouth this was a sweet ale with a pleasing bitterness. It was surprisingly refreshing for a winter beer, and had some Belgian tripel notes. There was also some sour, though more along the lines of cranberry than citrus.

Conclusion: I enjoyed this ale as a summer libation. However, I am not sure how it would taste in the dead of winter. In addition, I find winter ales to be the best seasonals. While this was good, other winter warmers do a better job in this regard.

Be sure to check out the wrap-up over at the Barley Blog.

May we have many more special occaisions,
The Scribe

Right Place, Right Time

There are some beers which are tied to a very specific place. For me, this is one such beer. already reviewed another offering from this distinguished brewery, their Pemi Pale Ale. The Pemi is by far my favorite Woodstock offering, but there is a place in my heart that loves their darker ale. Whenever we go up to the Loj, a log cabin in the White Mountains that Tufts owns, it is inevitable that we go over to the brewery and get some fresh brewed growlers of their Pig's Ear Brown. Two weeks ago we even got a fresh brewed keg of the Pig, as we affectionately call it. Without further ado, I give you:

Woodstock Inn Brewing Co.: Pig’s Ear Brown Ale

Tasting conditions: It sat in the fridge for about a month before being drunk, well chilled. Traditional 16oz pint glass. I enjoyed it just before dinner after a hard day.

Eye: A dark amber brown with no visible bubbles. The head remained for a little bit which suggests a decent quantity of protein in the beer, though the initial poor did not reveal significant initial head. The bottle was brown glass with just a traditional wood-look Woodstock Inn logo, and a cartoon pig.

Nose: The beer had a nice nutty odor that was noticeable with a sniff, but not neatly as in-your-face as the Smuttnose Pumpkin.

Mouth: The taste was quite nice. There was a nice hoppy front-end followed by a pleasant sweetness on the back end with a nutty aftertaste. On a second taste, the front had a slight spice-taste (that is a taste of spices, not a hot taste). The end had a nice slightly bitter hint that really gave a nice contrast to the rest of the beer.

Conclusion: Pig’s Ear reminds me of nights at the Loj, the log cabin owned by my school, often before leaving for a trip up some mountain or another. Tasted alone, the beer is good, quite good, actually, but not nearly as good as it was at the Loj. That’s not to say it’s bad, but I realize that a certain amount of my affection for the Pig is sentimental. I would still highly recommend this fine ale. It is an incredible beer.

A note on the photo. I am 99% sure that this photo is the right beer. However, the Pig was one of the earliest reviews I did, and it was before I put the bottle in the review, so I can't be one hundred percent sure.

Fair travels,
The Scribe

Have I Got a Tale For You

As anyone who reads more than one cocktail blog knows, this weekend in Tales of the Cocktail, a mongo convention of bartenders, distillers, cocktail bloggers, mixologists, and other people involved in the industry. If I am really the only blog you read, well, I'm honoured. Anywho, I'm not there. I know, bummer. However, I have been keeping up on the fifty or so bloggers who are there, and there's lots of great stuff happening.

This Monday, which happens to be MxMo, I'll be whipping up a really yummy cocktail. It may or may not contain elements of molecular mixology, or whatever you want to call it. It will definitely include some culinary non-traditional ingredients. Regardless, I'm pretty stoked about this cocktail. You'll see it in two days.

Today, however, I would like to give you a cocktail I culled from the other bloggers around the internet. Since the only people who are probably reading this right now are beer bloggers, I'm going with a beer cocktail:

Maggie's Midnight

• 2 oz - Port Wine (LBV)
• 1/2 oz - Bourbon (Buffalo Trace)
• 7 oz - Stout Beer (Rogue Shakespeare)

Shake stir port and bourbon to cool, pour into a beer goblet, and top with chilled beer. Stir gently to combine.

Enjoy!
The Scribe

You Are Feeling Sleepy

If you aren't, then the next review might make you. The most noticeable thing about the beer I am about to review is its spirally label. In fact, some of my friends called it "That spirally beer" for a long time, and some continue to do so. Regardless, the Magic Hat brewery produces a large number of wonderful ales. I am about to review their flagship "#9" while their somewhat imaginative wheat beer (which I believe is available) is considered their "unfiltered offering" or "UFO" for short. It's a quirky brewery that generally produces quite good beer. Thus, I give you:

Magic Hat Brewing Co.: #9 ("Not Quite Pale Ale")

Tasting conditions: It sat in the fridge for about two months before being drunk, well chilled. Traditional 16oz pint glass. I enjoyed it just after dinner after a day of school. A touch of a cold did impair me a little.

Eye: A nice honey brown beer ("not quite pale," indeed!). A minimal head appeared on pour, but quickly dissipated. The bottle is traditional brown glass with a somewhat spiral-y “9” logo.

Nose: An ale-y honey meets the nose. Again it wasn’t super obvious, but it was there. A bit of a cold might have impaired my schnoz slightly.
Mouth: My first sip was unpleasant. The first thing I noticed was a bitter front. My second was quite nice. The front end sweetened up. The finish had an almost chocolate flavor, with a honey-caramel in the middle with just a bit of nutmeg.

Conclusion: The first sip was quite a turn off, and despite remembering enjoying the old #9 before, I was prepared to retire to the couch and end the review right there. However, a little perseverance paid of big. While I’m not sure I would keep this beer on hand, if a bar had it, I would certainly order it.

A Hop-ining Place

Two nights ago we went to the Hopleaf bar in Chicago. The Hopleaf is Chicago's best beer bar. It features a whopping 45 beers on tap, which rotate regularly, and a bottled beer list of eighteen pages. Now, you might assume that with such a huge number of beers, people probably only come for the beer, and don't worry about the food. Not so! Our onion rings were exquisite, as were our oysters, which are the house specialty. My father enjoyed his Montreal smoked meat. Moreover, the prices are reasonable, with sandwiches around $12-$13 and appetizers a few bucks less.

But the beer! Oh the beer is wonderful. It's a lot of fun to pick random beers to try. I had a Crooked Tree IPA from the Dark Horse brewery, a Tripel Karmeliet and a Special Block 6 from Brouwerij de Block. The IPA was a nice IPA, quite bitter, and a little sweet. The Karmeliet was probably my favourite of the evening. It had interesting citrus and mint notes and was vaguely reminiscent of the Woodstock Inn Pemi Pale Ale I reviewed last month. As for the #6...well...I remember it was fairly subtle and a little sweet, but not much more than that.

My mother had the De Koninck and the Kwack. Both are Belgian beers (as were the Karmeliet and the 6). At this point I should point out that one really cool thing about the Hopleaf is that they serve beer in its proper serving vessel. The Kwack and the De Koninck were fairly similar with fairly subtle flavours, though the Kwack was a bit sweeter and brighter. They had pleasant citrus notes. I would say I preferred the Kwack. The Kwack also came in a yard glass which made it ever so much cooler.

This brings us to the beers enjoyed by my father. He had North Coast's Old 28 Stout, a Duppel 8 from Maredsous, and a Gulden Draak from Van Steenberge. While I don't recall the latter two too well, since I only had a sip of each, I really enjoyed the stout. It had nice berry-raisin and chocolate notes.

True Hoppines?

So, I think I'm starting a short string, or at least two, posts inspired by that most divine of flowers, the flower that gives beer its wonderful flavour: Hops. Today, I review Wyerbacher's Hops Infusion IPA. I acquired this bottle quite by accident, since I usually don't enjoy ales that are too hoppy. Here are my tasting notes:

Weyerbacher Brewing Co.: Hops Infusion IPA

Tasting conditions: It sat in the fridge for about two months before being drunk, well chilled. Traditional 16oz pint glass. I enjoyed it just after dinner at the beginning of a Saturday night.

Eye: A cloudy falernum brown beer (think orange-honey for those not familiar with this Caribbean aperitif). On the pour it had a large head of about an inch and a half which subsided relatively rapidly to a more modest half inch head. The bottle is a dark brown glass with pictures of hops on the label. The words on the label are all in a sort of neon-light font which I find intriguing but slightly tacky.

Nose: Quite hoppy in the nose, as the name suggests, with a bit of honey behind it.

Mouth: Quite interesting in the mouth. It was a cool soapy-hoppy, almost sweet-lager-y front with an almost horseradish bitter finish. The second sip helped confirm my initial impressions with a very sweet middle reminiscent of honey, and a bitter finish, though the bitterness of the end was less than on the first sip. On my third sip, the sweetness really came through, though there is not much of an ending to this beer. Ultimately the best way I can describe the taste is similar to that of grapefruit pith.

Conclusion: While the first two sips hinted at some complexity, the remainder of the beer was simply sweet in the front and tasted more like a classic light lager on the finish with just a hint of horseradish. The flavor profile was very one dimensional. I could not find a price point for this beer, and did not buy the bottle I enjoyed. However, if it is in or above the price range of the Woodstock Inn, Long Trail or Harpoon ales, I will give this a pass. On the other hand, the sweetness might be welcomed by those who are less familiar with beer

So, as you can see, it wasn't quite a hit. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera handy when I wrote this review, so no pictures.

Happy sipping!
The Scribe

An Ode to an Earlier Season

I came across this seasonal offering about a month ago. Now I really like fall and winter beers. They are nice, and spicy and full of yummy deliciousness. Yet the spices we associate with the festive season between Thanksgiving and New Year's (at least in America) are really spices that I associate with the islands: Nutmeg, Pimento, and Cinnamon. Toss a Scotch bonnet in and you have a gorgeous jerk marinade. So in addition to being the flavours or winter, to me, at least, they are also the flavours of summer. With that in mind, I present this quite tasty seasonal offering:

Smuttynose Bewing Co.: Pumpkin Ale

Tasting Conditions: It sat in the fridge for about a month before being drunk, well chilled. Traditional 16oz pint glass. I enjoyed it as a celebratory drink after finishing finals.

Eye: A nice amber with a little Champaign-like fizz. Very little head, and dissipated quickly. Nice bottle with a big ripe pumpkin on the front.

Nose: The nose of this beer was very impressive. It hit me like a kick in the butt. There was lots of cinnamon, and just a touch of the namesake pumpkin. The smell was strong enough it was obvious even from the bottle. It smelled almost like mulled cider but without the apple, which suggests cloves, a dash of orange, and a hint of nutmeg. A little harshness on the nose was evident as well.

Mouth: The first thing to hit me was a pleasant sweetness and warmth. A definite taste of pumpkin. The ale had a certain lightness to it, with a very nice effervescence. In a lot of ways, it reminds me of an IPA, though it’s definitely darker. There was a hit of the spices that I smelled, and a very definite cinnamon-like heat, though the other cinnamon flavors were much less noticeable. On the downside, there was a certain soapyness, though I don’t mind that flavour.

Conclusion: A wonderful winter seasonal. I definitely enjoyed it. Perhaps one of the few Smuttynose offerings I can say that about. As a seasonal, I have a hard time keeping it stocked but I'll probably keep an eye out for it when the seasons roll around again.

The Session: The London Beer & Cider Festival, 2008

Hello all, and welcome to my blog. For those of you who are beer drinkers, and new to my blog, welcome. For those of you who are spirits and cocktail bloggers, and don't know what The Session is, it's basically the beer blogging world's version of MxMo.

This week the topic of The Session is beer festivals. Being freshly legal at home, I haven't really been to any beer festivals in the States. However, while I was in London, I did go the annual London Beer and Cider Festival. Let me just say what a blast it was. The festival was hosted by CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale. So-called "real ale" for those who don't know, is ale that is unpasteurized and served out of the same container in which the secondary fermentation happens. The way this festival worked was there was an entry fee (£2.50 for non-CAMRA members), and you could either borrow a glass, or buy the festival glass for £3. The glass was really quite gorgeous, and it was large enough that there was room for head proud of the imperial pint line. Then there was a cost per beer.

Frankly, I would have much preferred a higher entry fee, like perhaps £10 or £20, and unlimited beer. I felt that charging by the half-pint meant that I was less willing to simply try beers, which I feel should be a large part of the festival, but only tried the beers that had flavor notes I liked and were types of beer I liked. While I tried a ton of different beers, I had a good recollection of two:

Enville Brewery: Old Porter – This was quite a nice mild porter. It had some slight sweet notes, with just a touch of bitter and lots of fruity complexity. I would love to get my hands on this fine porter.

Fox Brewery: Cerberus Norfolk Stout – This seemed like more of a porter to me than a stout, at least in comparison to Irish stouts like Guinness, Murphy’s, and so on. Nevertheless I enjoyed this beer immensely. It had nice chocolate and raison notes with just the barest hint of bitterness. It was also pleasantly light bodied for a stout, which is a nice change from the more traditional meal in a glass

Thanks for coming to my Session. Next week, I should be mostly moved in, and will be back to live posting.
Cheers!
The Scribe

The End of London and the Grenadier

On returning from Dublin, we saw even more sights: The Victoria and Albert Museum, Harrods (where we had an amazing vodka and blood orange juice), the Changing of the Guard, the Cabinet War Rooms and the Winston Churchill Museum (which I really enjoyed), and we also saw Chicago at the Cambridge Theatre.

We also had the opportunity to go to the Grenadier. The Grenadier is a pub by Hyde Park. It's on an alley, off an alley, off an alley behind the French embassy. We stopped there for lunch on my father's recommendation. Back when he used to work at Lloyd's of London, the Grenadier was his favorite lunch spot. In his memory, I ordered the fish and chips. After a bad experience in Dublin, my companions weren't willing to make the same choice. I also ordered a beer (and yes, there will be a mini-review at the end of this article). I discovered something I really should have learned earlier in the trip: To eat the food of the British Isles, you really need beer. With that said, the Grenadier was a great pub with friendly service.

While at the Grenadier, I enjoyed Fuller's London Pride Ale. This bitter ale is the flagship beer in Fuller’s lineup. While it is sold in the States as a pasteurized bottled beer, on the other side of the pond it is served as a cask conditioned ale. It makes a gorgeous accompaniment to most standard pub food. To me at least, you need a nice bitter to cut through the oiliness of even the best fish and chips, and London’s Pride did that perfectly. It had a pleasant bitter tartness with just a little sweetness in the middle. While it is advertized as “mahogany” colored, I found my glass much lighter, perhaps a dark pine. Further, while I found this to be an outstanding accompaniment to my fish and chips, I think it is a bit more bitter than what I would ideally like to sip on its own.

An Irish Day in an Irish City

Three quick scenes for you all:

I went to the St. James Gate Brewery and the Guinness Storehouse. Now, personally, I think the tour was a little on the pricey side. You got to see how they make Guinness Draught Stout. The one really cool thing is that during the tour you get to taste Guinness that has not been through the secondary fermentation ("unconditioned"). You can taste the amount of flavor that the conditioning adds to the so-called "mild" beer. Afterwards, we were treated to the Guinness Storehouse annual St. Patrick's Day festival. This involved all the Guinness you can drink, learning to pour the perfect pint of Guinness yourself (which may be available all the time, I'm not sure), and tasting random dishes like Guinness-bread with salmon, some dish based on Guinness sour cream, and so on. Not too much needs to be said on the brew itself. If you don’t know what Guinness tastes like, you should. It’s quite a heavy beer that reminds me of coffee with a bare hint of sweetness and a fair bit of bitter. An Irishman informed me that the whole “perfect pour” thing promoted by Guinness is a load of tosh (surprise! surprise!), but that there is one surefire way of knowing a good pint: Hold your glass up to the light, and if any regions appear brown or red, or anything other than flat black, you should order something else for your next round.

I also went to the Old Jameson Distillery. The distillery tour was even pricier than the Guinness tour, and shorter. However, I think from a functional point of view, it was a much more informative tour. They show you the process of fermenting the mash, distilling it in pot stills, and aging it. The aging was the most interesting as they displayed barrels that were aging Jameson at one, three, five, ten, and eighteen years. You can see the angel’s share (almost 50% for the eldest cask), and how the color changes, and also how the color is leached from the wood. Then we got to taste. Some members of our tour were given the opportunity to do a tutored comparative tasting of several products of Irish Distillers. The traditional drink of Irishmen (nope, it’s not Guinness) is whiskey. Unlike their neighbors to the east, they spell it with an “e.” This is a surprisingly good whiskey, given its price point. Sipping it neat, on the rocks, or with a little water was a completely inoffensive experience, despite the fact that this dram is a lot younger than anything any single malt Scotch whisky drinker would ever consent to putting in his or her body. As to how it tastes, well, let’s just say it was a nice, complex whiskey, and I may have had a few too many drams for anything more sophisticated than that.

Lastly, we went to the St. Patrick's Day festivities in the city center. There was a fun parade, though I saw far too many American marching bands for my preference (including the Fighting Illini!). Afterwards we went to the Irish Folk Music and Dance festival where we learned Irish dancing. We stopped in a number of bars, including the Palace, the Temple Bar, and Dublin's oldest pub, the Brazen Head. However, the highlight was a little pub on Thomas Street known as Nash's. If you have the opportunity, I would definitely stop in there for a bit of honest "craic." Unlike the other pubs we visited in Dublin, where the only Irishman in the place was the publican, at Nash's, the only ones in the pub who weren't locals was us. There was a lot of singing. They'd sing us their songs, and then make us sing them ours. Unfortunately, coming from all over the wold, we didn't have too many of our own songs to sing them, but it was still good fun.

And on that note, I take my leave. Next up: A review of some cider.
The Scribe

A Superb Beer

I spend a lot of time in Woodstock, New Hampshire. (For those who are interested, the music festival was outside of Woodstock, New York.) In addition to being a great gateway to the White Mountains, where I love to go backpacking, mountaineering, skiing, and touring, the town is also home to the Woodstock Inn. The Woodstock Inn Station and Brewery is a microbrew with four main ales, an equal number of so-called "specialty" brews (including an amazing root beer), and five seasonal offerings. I tried one of the "specialty" ales, their Pemi Pale Ale, which is named for the Pemigwasset River Valley where the Inn is located, over my birthday. As you can see from the following review, I liked it a lot. You will probably see the remainder of the Woodstock line reviewed here as I get the time, and the beer.

Woodstock Inn Brewery: Pemi Pale Ale

Tasting conditions: It was stored for a while at room temperature in dark conditions for a while before I had the chance to drink it. Traditional 16oz pint glass. I enjoyed it as the second drink of the morning on my twenty-first birthday.

Eye: The first thing that caught my eye about this one was the label. While it’s a fairly traditional Woodstock Inn bottle and label, the logo on this one is a large spotted fish (a trout, perhaps?) drinking a pint. The other noticeable thing was the amount of head. As you can see from the picture, this one was pretty frothy. While I usually poor straight in to see how much head there is, I had to pout this one in three pours into a glass a third again bigger than the beer to allow the surge to settle. I will say that after the initial pour, the head settled fairly quickly, and in the time it took to write this, the head has almost completely collapsed. As to the color, this is on the dark side for a pale ale, closer to the red ale region. It’s a middling brownish honey.

Nose: A touch of hops added to a bready aroma gives you the nose of this beer, which is quite subtle.

Mouth: My first impression was that this is an incredibly bitter beer. I almost tossed the beer after the first sip it was so bitter. It definitely should have been drunk a bit colder than I drank it. However, behind the bitterness, it almost tastes like a stout with a nice chocolaty-fruitiness that is quite pleasant. The second sip allowed the bitterness to retreat. My theory was that the head held most of the bitterness. A taste of just the head confirmed my theory. Unfortunately, a lot of the complexity retreated with the loss of the head. It was still there, but much more subtle. In its place, a good, honest beery-ness with a nice hopiness came to the fore. A pause to write allowed some nice sweetness to come in on the tail. There’s a lot going on here, far more than I can describe.

Conclusion: This is one of the better beers I’ve had, and throughout my travels, I’ve had many. The subtlety of this beer is exquisite, and the flavors amazing. This bottling will definitely be a staple of my pantry for a long time to come. I simply can’t say enough about this beer. Next time I’m in New Hampshire, I will have to pick up a growler and make some syrup. The complexity suggests, to me at least, that this could make wonderful beer syrup as well as a great cocktail focus. While it might not carry as much punch as a spirit, the complexity exceeds many whisk(e)ys, and if you could bring out the goodness of that first sip without the overwhelming bitterness, you would have a wonderfully complex drink.