Author Archives: Llalan

How to Become a Beer Snob

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And proud of it!

When I was little, my dad drank Busch. He called it his “skunk juice,” which made six-year-old me giggle, because it did, indeed, smell awful. This is also the man who once told me he got drunk on orange juice, a claim I shared with my third grade teacher — her expression was concerned in a way I didn’t understand till many years later. By the time I had my first (and only) can of Busch, I accepted it with a smile I hoped was gracious and sipped on it as convincingly as I could. How did this happen to me? And more importantly, how can you, too, become a beer snob?

One) Make your early experiences with skunky beer as unpleasant as possible. Drink as many green bottles of Rolling Rock or Heineken as you can in a tiny, stinky dorm room with a bunch of other nerds who haven’t yet learned how to drink. You’ll never drink beer in green bottles again.

Two) Set your own low standards slightly higher than others’. When you go out to bars order Killian’s or Labatt, and scoff quietly at your compatriots buying pitchers of Bud and shots with names like “buttery nipple.” Continue reading →

Rauchbier: the Vegetarian’s Bacon

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Ben, doubling up on the smokiness

“Are you one of those vegetarians that likes bacon?” I get this question a lot, and no, I am not, and I remind you that those “vegetarians” are not real. However, I do go a bit wobbly in the knees when a slice of smoked gouda is waved beneath my nose. (This does not happen nearly as often as I wish it did.) Smoke is delicious. Fires in the hearth, late summer bonfires, my fiancé’s breath… So it is no surprise that I find rauchbier, or smoke beer, delectable.

Rauchbier is a German style of beer created by drying green malts over an open fire of beech wood, imbuing them with a thick smokiness similar to what you find in smoked meats and cheeses. Beer Advocate reminds us not to confuse this with smoke beer, which uses peat smoked malt. The taste of rauchbier is bold and not for the faint of heart. It’s big and assertive, like you always wished you were. This is an acquired taste that demands commitment to each glass. It tastes like a beer hall with massive, hand-hewn benches. It tastes like the dark chairs and old books of your English professor’s den. And okay, maybe it tastes a little like bacon. Continue reading →

A Matter of Taste: Pairing Writers and Beer

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“What beer should I drink when reading this author?” It’s a question I ask myself on a regular basis. I was inspired to commit some of my favorites to paper when I read an Esquire Magazine post that paired beers to football teams. A little cute. Essentially they just attached a good local brew to each team. There is a science to matching beer with anything, though: food, parties, type and severity of bad day, and yes, authors. I realize that many writers vary in style and tone from book to book, but as with a brewery’s particular strain of yeast, every one of their books tastes a little like the others.

How do I choose? Every pick has to do with the personality of the writing and of the writer herself. Subject matter, setting, sentence structure, attitude, nationality, political bent, story arcs, hairstyle, and ability to hold liquor. Lets pull a few recent reads off my bookshelf.

  •  Billy Collins: Are you allowed to drink beer while reading poetry? Well, no one’s stopped me yet. Man up and try something powerful and brooding like Maudite, a strong Belgian dark from Unibroue that can (and will!) fly you across the River Styx in a canoe, as promised on the label.
  •  Jonathan Franzen: Known for his family epics, his fascination with birds, and his floppy, writerly hair, Franzen is best read with something a little green and a little crunchy, like Peak Organic’s Pale Ale – down to earth and still pretty waspy.
  •  E L James: You really have to drink to read her. I know; I tried. But there’s no question here: Lagunitas’ A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’.  Continue reading →

Tighten Your Dirndl and Snap Those Lederhosen, It’s Oktoberfest Time!

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Oktoberfest: it's German for Festival of Beer and Boobs!

Bierleichen: it’s the German word for people who pass out from drinking too much. Literally, beer corpses. You’ve got to love a culture that has a word for just that, right? That’s why today we’re celebrating Oktoberfest beers.

Much in the same way department stores drag out the wreathes, red ribbons, and oversized jingle bells while you’re still dealing with a Halloween candy hangover, the liquor stores are stocking their refrigerated shelves with Oktoberfest right now, even before post-season baseball begins. So we’re going to take a moment out of this glorious August day to talk about these fall beers.

This year the official Oktoberfest in Munich begins September 22nd and runs through October 7th. So, it’s not all in October, either. Way back when, the dude in charge of Germany’s social schedule pushed his glasses up his nose and signed a document to begin the celebrations in September for the better weather. But when the party started, back in 1810, it began in mid-October to celebrate the October 12th wedding of Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese. The events wrapped up with a horse race, which was apparently such a good time that they decided to do it again the next year. And that, folks, is how traditions begin. With lots of beer. Continue reading →

A Schooling on Summer Beers

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Every day I wake up and think to myself, "you never have to go to school ever again," and then I can get up.

The other day I saw a school bus drive by and my stomach dropped. I felt the same wave of dread that came over me at the end of every summer, ages six to seventeen. I’ve found there’s nothing better to rid oneself of this anxiety than indulging in something that reminds me of adulthood – like a good beer. The only question we have to answer then today is: “what exactly is a summer beer?” The answer: I don’t know and ohmigod we’re running out of summer!

There are dozens of brews out there that call themselves “summer beer,” such as the Sierra Nevada Summerfest sweating on my desk at this very moment. The language on all their labels promises crisp, light, thirst-quenching drinks. For the most part, they all have a fairly low alcohol content, too, lending themselves to long, hot afternoons. With those characteristics in mind, let’s take a look at some of my favorite styles that will cool you down on these remaining Indian summer days.

Wheat beers cut the heat pretty efficiently, and I find hefeweizens to be some of the most effective. Yeasty and fruity, they come in pretty tall, thin glasses with a curl of lemon or orange on the lip. (A highly contested piece of fruit, as some so-called aficionados claim it ruins the taste and head. Come on, let’s have a little fun here.) The best hefe I ever had was a Weihenstephaner (they’re also fun to say!) on a blistering day in Boston. Continue reading →

Beers to That! The Drink to Clink

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One happy day my fridge looked like this!

Sitting on the deck, my knuckles scraped, shins bruised, and hair everywhere, the bottle of beer in my hands could have been a flute of Dom Perignon. But it wasn’t; it was better. It was, in fact, an IPA Maximus from Lagunitas, because that is what you drink after a day of moving everything you own and everything your Significant Other owns across town in 90-degree weather. You don’t drink champagne after that.

You don’t drink champagne after your kickball team won its first game ever and you don’t drink it when you’ve lost every one. You don’t drink bubbly after working out in your garden all afternoon. You don’t fall onto the couch after an exhausting day at work and take a long draw from a bottle of champagne. That’s ridiculous, right? But champagne remains known as the beverage of celebrations. I’d like to challenge that assumption.

Beer has a reputation for being the proud drink of the common man, and I feel there’s nothing wrong with that characterization. But I’d like to suggest that beer is also, more than any other beverage, the drink America celebrates with. From the “Champagne of Beers” all the way up to your finest Belgian Double, beer is the drink to clink for every accomplishment, small or large. Because some days, just getting through the last hour of work and making it home to sit in pajamas and eat mac and cheese out of the pan is as much an achievement as getting married or winning the lottery. Beer is everybody’s drink for everyday victories.

When Ben got up off the deck and offered to bring me another IPA, I accepted eagerly, knowing we still had a lot of moving and organizing to do, being relieved to have the big part of the move complete, and feeling so happy to be right there, right then, with that beer.

I’ve Always Depended On the Ryeness of Strangers

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ryeness of strangers“This – this is the Blanche DuBois of beer! Do you know who that is?” My aunt looks at me, disbelieving, and then wheels around to look at my father, “These ‘young people’ don’t get the reference!” She has just finished her sample of beer number three and sits on the floor in mock indignation. I’m embarrassed that I don’t immediately recognize the name and smile back idiotically. My aunt has spent the entire day visiting with her older sister and her elderly mother and has a well-deserved jump on the rest of us in terms of beer sampling. She lays on her back. “There’s one more, right?” I answer that there’s two. “Oh, Jesus.”

Today we’re tasting rye beers. Why rye, you ask? Because they’re hip, dammit, and like most hip things I know of, they’ve been hip for a while but I just noticed them. Rye beers are simply beers that have some rye brewed in the mash along with the traditional barley.  They’re dry, bitter, sour, and stick with you; there’s a Woody Allen joke waiting to be made here and I’ll let you do it. I have found them a welcome addition to the brutally hot afternoons of Ohio in the summer – perfect for those of us tired of hefeweizens and sangria.

The tasting starts off with a bang as we all say cheers and take a swallow of Founders Red Rye PA (6.6% abv). Right off the bat we get to play with the word “mouthfeel,” as this is positively sparkly. Continue reading →