I have said before on this blog that when you develop a brew and sell it to people for their hard earned money that you set yourself up for criticism. It is like any one else that puts things into the market place, they are constantly dealing with critics. Metallica comes to mind here. I have never heard a band so torn apart by their own fans. This album isn’t as good as Kill em All, …And Justice for All was their best work, Load and Reload suck, and on and on it goes. Having just seen Metallica in concert I must defend them as musicians and artists. Their work, whether you like it or not, is inspired and their act is legendary. Still their fans judge, and many judge harshly. So when you make a brew called Judgement Day, you are practically begging for people to take pot shots at your product! Well get the fish in the barrel…Daddy wants to do some shootin’…
Kevin (Dark Lord of the Stout) has once again come through in a big way . A few weeks ago, he gave me a nip of 2009 Sam Adams Utopias, and I gushed about it. This time it was Brew Dog’s Tactical Nuclear Penguin, another ultra rare hyper-ABV beer. Unfortunately, it was a totally different experience than Mr. Koch’s amazing brew. read more…
Why I’m talking about Beer and Food for the big game of course! What better to do on Super Bowl Sunday but to have a few friends over, make a bunch of snacky food and have some great beers to top it all off. If the game is good that is a bonus, and if the game isn’t very interesting, well then you always have the commercials. Also let us not forget about this year’s version of the halftime geriatric rocker band The Who! I actually remember an interview I read about 25 years ago with Pete Townsend The Who’s lead guitarist complaining about how his back ached after he would smash a guitar on stage. I can only imagine what they have planned for their finale on Sunday. Maybe he just gives his guitar a good talking to now.
So beer wise, I’ll be drinking a bunch of Belgian style ales on Sunday. I have a Monk’s Blood from 21 Amendment that I picked up and a Lost Abbey Judgement Day. I also have a Three Philosophers from Ommegang that might hit the bottom of the glass. We’ll see.
As far a food goes, we are mixing it up this year with the menu. Not the same old sandwiches and wings. I bought a huge loaf of Basque Bread that I will be toasting in the oven to have with Sausage Bites and artichoke dip. We will also be preparing some meatballs in a Jamaican Jerk Sauce, and a few wings thrown in. My sister in law will make her famous taco plate dip for nacho chips, and I’m sure a deli tray will sneak its way onto the table as well.
The Super Bowl was made for Food and Beer so what are you doing? Are you having a party? Inviting people over? Going to a friends? What will you be preparing? and what beers or whiskeys will you pair it with? So many questions about the big weekend! Let us know here at Beer and Whiskey Brothers! Have a great weekend!
-Don and Jim
Few of us are able to taste anything without the world around us creeping in. Your mood, where you are, who you’re with, what you crave at the time and other such factors all play a role in the way you process tastes and how you categorize them in your brain. I’m sure there’s scientific research to back this up, but this is a blog and I’m lazy, so just roll with me here.
In the world of high-ABV craft beer, I think it’s a 65/35 split, with the actual taste accounting for 65% of your perception of the beer and your emotional state accounting for the other 35%. I think emotion plays an even larger role with session beers and macro swill, with the actual beer accounting for about 50% of the perceived taste and emotion accounting for 50% of the drinking experience. So basically the bolder the beer, the less of a role emotion plays, the less flavorful a beer, the larger role emotion has in determining just how well you enjoy it. I have some personal examples… read more…
Our pal Peter over at Simply Beer was kind enough to invite me to participate in his latest beer Brawl podcast. This time it was all about the session beers, just in time for The Big Game (I’m afraid of NFL lawyers so I didn’t use the other term for it).
I’m not going to spoil all the surprises, but I will say that I discovered a couple of really great new session beers and that one of my picks turned out to be the consensus favorite of the night (and that Don’s pick was the least favorite – just sayin’). Sometimes luck is better than skill…
Please check out the Beer Brawl Podcast page on Peter’s site to see what we had, what we thought, and to download the podcast.
There are certain things in life that make my overactive mind settle down. Johnny Cash can do this, as can the plainly written books of John Steinbeck. For some reason cooking on the grill falls into this category as well. All of these things have a meditative effect on me that blocks out the chaos of the everyday and slows down the wheels long enough for me to reflect on the things that matter.
Well, I have another item to add to this eclectic list; New Holland Brewing’s oak-aged ale, Dragon’s Milk. read more…
So these are a couple of the cans I picked up this week. The 21st Amendment Brewery has made the investment in a canning line, and beer–good beer–in a can is becoming more mainstream all the time as can technology and canning techniques have improved dramatically, and more breweries are making the investment, I’m sure we will continue to see more and more craft brews in cans. Actually I can guarantee it. See it is less expensive to can beer than it is to bottle it, so I’m certain that we will see a shift. Only the corked beers will continue to be sold in bottles…this is my prediction.
Ok, so I picked these up as well as a couple of Monks Blood Belgian Ales also in cans. I’ve been hearing so much about the 21st Amendment brewery and their beers, when my local beer store (Brewforia in Boise, for my Boise readers) got theirs in I just had to run down and pick some up. I also picked up the Three Philosophers and some sort of axle grease stout that I will be drinking tonight with my buddy in Twin Falls. Headed there shortly for a day of hard labor.
I also picked up a bottle of Van Winkles Family Reserve Rye that I am bring for tonight as well. I picked that up because I have so far had a pretty bad rye experience with the Old Overholt that I reviewed a couple months back, and I figured if I spent $60 on a bottle of rye it ought to be pretty damn good. I wasn’t disappointed either. You can look for my review of that in the next couple of weeks. So what did you pick up this week? Or perhaps you are planning to get something after payday, what are you planning on? Let us know, we’re interested to hear about what will be coming up in your world as well. Have a great rest of your week everybody you’re just about over the hump!
-Don and Jim
Knowing I’m a little over-focused on (some may say obsessed with) beer, my sister Wendi sent me a link for a ginger cake made with stout. Being the baker I am, I immediately passed the recipe on to my wife and begged her to make it. Because she loves stout beer and because we were due to have company, she actually said yes and set about making the delicious loaf you see above. read more…
In her book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” author Jane Jacobs looks at what goes into the making of a great city. There are many factors that need to combine to make a place truly special, and if certain of these factors are neglected or overlooked the city suffers. For example in the 70’s there was a great exodus out of the urban core due in large part to neglecting what made the city a great place to begin with. Urban “renewal” projects were taking down beautiful old architectural masterpieces and replacing them with sleek glass buildings to create the “modern” city, neglecting a place’s heritage and what made it great. These blunders were repeated to exhaustion throughout the country and the “burbs” were created. A safe and quiet haven for people to escape to after a tough day in the concrete jungle.
Well Ms. Jacobs was quick to point out that we were creating places that were awful and uninviting…shells of their former selves. But they can come back, and many of them are doing so. All it takes is good planning and attention to the details that make a place special. I think that some brewers out there are forgetting some of the fundamental principles when they brew their beers. I had a pretty good beer this weekend that made me wonder what goes into the making of a “Great” porter…
Well, I’ve had a breakthrough of sorts when it comes to sours. I was hanging out with some fellow beer nerds Friday night recording a Beer Brawl podcast for Simply Beer. After we wrapped up, a few beers were popped open that weren’t part of the podcast. Consider it an after party of sorts, without all the annoying celebrity glamour and beautiful women (they’re so distracting!).
One of the beers was a Cantillon Rose de Gamrinus, a honest-to-goodness sour lambic. It poured a beautiful rosy red with a tinge of orange. The nose was tart raspberries with a hint of a yeasty funk smell as well. The first sip was exactly what I thought a sour should be – it was really sour, but fruity as well, that gave way to an earthiness, and then a little citrus in the finish, like a bit of lemon peel. It was all there – fruitiness, pucker-factor and a bit of the funk. This is what I’ve been looking for!
So I think I have a future with sours after all. Of the two I’ve tried before this, one was too sweet (Duchesse De Burgogne) and the other MUST have been infected, because it tasted like a band aid. Trying this Rose de Gambrinus has restored my faith that I can definitely enjoy sour beers. After all, they are intense and flavorful, which is exactly what I like best.
Where to go from here…hmmmm…
Well its Friday yet again, and it is the weekend of the big experiment in the NFL. As I’m sure many of you know the Pro Bowl used to be played in Hawaii a week or two (I can’t remember) after the Superbowl. It was a get away for the players, a chance for them to cut loose and have a little fun and celebrate their accomplishments over the season, culminating in a friendly little game of football between the leagues best players.
This year however they moved it in time and space. This year it is played the weekend between the league championship games and the Superbowl. It has also moved from Hawaii to the city that is hosting this year’s Superbowl, Miami. So this means that those players that were elected to the Pro Bowl from both the Colts and Saints will not be there, and there are more alternates playing this year because of that and the fact that many players that were involved in the playoffs won’t be healed up enough to play. So lots of changes. We’ll see. I for one can remember watching exactly one Pro Bowl, about 30 years ago. I’m pretty sure that won’t change this year either.
However, I always have drinking ideas for my weekend. I want to try a new bottle of Van Winkles Family Reserve Rye that I picked up last week. It is aged 13 years in oak and if I know the Van Winkles it will be superior rye. I also have a few porters I want to make my way through and some other interesting stuff I’ve picked up recently, so it might be a little of a mixed bag for me. What about you? Will you watch the game? Will you stop off for a beer on the way home tonight? Perhaps some cask conditioned ale, or a special offering from your local pub? Let us know. We’re interested, so share with us. Have a great one.
-Jim and Don
I’ve had rotten luck with sour beers. First it was the Duchesse De Borgogne, which tasted like raspberry jam to me. Too sweet – into the sink it went after I realized I just was never going to finish it. More recently, it was a Nogne O Tyttebaer Wild Ale that tasted so antiseptic-like that I poured it into the sink with malice. Seriously, it was like drinking bacitracin.
I tried again with the Duchesse during Christmas, serving it with prime rib. I figured the sweetness would go well with the meal, which it did, but I still had trouble finishing the bottle. On the Tyttebaer front, many readers have suggested that the beer had gone bad, and that was the reason it tasted like a bandaid. This is a possibility I will be exploring further.
In the meantime, this is driving me nuts! All the beer nerds who I respect just LOOOOVE sour beers and rave about them. This style is very interesting to me, but I haven’t found one that I really enjoy. Hell, I haven’t found one I can finish!
So I ask you, gentle reader, to guide me. Please help me find a way in to the world of sours, a starting-off point for a journey into this style of beer.
If it helps your recommendation, I like all kinds of beer, especially imperials with a lot of character and complexity. I have no preconceived notions about what beer should be, and I’m open to anything. Well, anything except the two sours I’ve had so far – those are off the list!
Any help you can provide is deeply appreciated. I know together we can overcome my palate’s limitations and help bring one more person into the light.
Yeah, when you search Google for images of the Devastator, this is what you get. Lots of robots and kids toys! Why do we name toys for children Devastator? Carnage and destruction is what this guy wreaks and for $24.99 your child can dominate the world and his friends with a plastic piece of garbage. You know this had to be made in China, and I always wondered what people over there thought about our society while they were making these frivolous toys, and going back to their huts to have stone soup and stale bread. OK, I know things aren’t that bad over there any more, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t too far off back in the 70s when I first became “aware” of the larger world and our place in it.
Well, I for one, am glad I live in a country where by God if I want to spend $25 bucks on a piece of plastic trash for my kid I can go to any toys-r-us and have my pick of hundreds of pieces of garbage for which they will gladly take my money. We kick ass on plastic junk, and another place we kick ass over China is in beer. Ever had a Tsingtao? Gross! Well I had a good brew from the land of Zion last night…I know, I know…Zion?…
So far, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve had from Nogne O, the Norwegian brewery that’s part of the Mikkeller family. I’m sorry to say that streak has come to an abrupt end. What you see above is one of their beers being poured into my sink. It was unceremoniously returned to the sea, never to be purchased again… read more…
Man do I love Blueberries! They are perhaps my favorite fruit. Every time we go to the Oregon coast we make sure we are there in time for blueberry season. We go to the U-Pick farms and everyone gets a coffee can that has a rope threaded through it to suspend it from their neck and we all go into the fields to pick the scrumptious purple berries, and eat a bunch too. Because my wife is the fastest picker we pick until her can is full then we all go and cash out our blueberries. It is usually about two flats of fresh berries and we freeze them for baking, pancakes, muffins, jellies and a host of other uses. It is one of our favorite activities every time we go to the coast.
Blueberries haven’t escaped the attention of brewers over the years either. I had my first and until very recently my last blueberry beer in Pocatello, Idaho in the early nineties. This brew was sickeningly sweet and lager based! YUCK! That turned me completely off of fruity beers for a very long time. Slowly I have tried some others, and I may have had the best blueberry beer on the planet…
Jim
Don
