Category Archives: Beer

Boston Beers: Home Away from Home

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Step 4

Step 4

Before I left for my trip to Boston last week, I put some serious time and energy into developing a
To Do List:
1) Hang with old friends
2) Drink good beer
3) Combine steps 1 and 2
4) Repeat steps 1-3
I don’t suppose I need to brag about how successful I was accomplishing this.

I had five days and about four times as many places I wanted to see (trans: beers I wanted to drink). Say what you will about Boston, but they do their beer up damn fine. What’s most impressive is the diversity of brews made there.

That little barley grain is just the cutest

That little barley grain is just the cutest

We started off the trip with a visit to Redbones, which is a rib place for most people, but a beer bar for me. (Also, hush puppies that’ll give you a glimpse of the deep fryer that is heaven.) My first pick had to be a Jack D’Or from Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project. Pretty Things isn’t your typical brewery, in that they don’t have a brewery. They’re gypsies. They get up at 3am and brew in other brewers’ breweries before the generous owners need to open up and use their own equipment.

More importantly, they make beers no one else is brewing. Jack D’Or, their flagship beer, is what they call a Saison Americain…which is not really a thing, but it is now. Pretty Things abhors “styles” the way cats abhor vacuums. They like to let the beer speak for itself, and Jack D’Or says, “Mais oui! Je suis delicieuse!” So, what is it then? I’d say a sort of hoppy saison with spicy notes and a bitter backbone coated in gold. Continue reading →

Beer Mythrepresented: Turn Down the Frosty Glass

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My teeth hurt just looking at this.

My teeth hurt just looking at this.

As a Beer Snob, I am contractually obligated to violently dispel any myths about beer that I hear or see being propagated by the ignorant. (They’ll take away my BS membership card if I don’t.) This is why I am the one in your party of bar-goers who loudly asks the bartender for a pint glass that isn’t frosted, thank you, I like to be able to taste my beer. [Pushes up glasses.] I don’t know why that always makes you blush.

Beyond the idea that beer must be ice cold, there are an astonishing number of misconceptions about my favorite beverage in regards to taste. The belief that a beer’s color directly relates to its taste is a big one. First of all, lagers are not all light-colored, and ales are not all dark. Then there’s the feeling that very dark beers are thick, strong, and heavy. I still am unclear as to what “heavy” means in this context. I’ve asked before, only to be met with unhelpful glares. Dark beers are so often light or sweet that I hate for them to get a bad rap. They are typically very serious and insightful beers, though, so perhaps that’s where the rumor started. Continue reading →

Why I Won’t Drink AB InBev or SABMiller “Craft” Beer

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WSJambevsabmillerchart

The Wall Street Journal, staying relevant with snazzy infographics!

I read in the news this morning that Anheuser-Busch InBev is making moves to buy SABMiller. I don’t know much about mergers or acquisitions or really anything relating to money, but I do remember something in Coach Kaple’s 11th grade economics class about monopolies and trusts and how they’re bad. I also recognize that the joining of these two enormous beer-making entities does not technically form either of these, but it does severely limit the diversity of the field. If I understand it right, that diversity is kind of what makes capitalism capitalism. That said, here are the reasons I personally will not drink an AB InBev or SABMiller beer.

Big Beer and craft beer have drastically different motivations behind brewing. AB InBev, like any business whose profit last year broke 11 billion, is motivated by one thing: greed. I read as much of a Bloomberg Business News article on the possible acquisition as I could without spitting my beer on the screen and drop-kicking my laptop. The article also notes that the dudes in charge of the money handling for Big Beer claim that by purchasing up smaller craft breweries, they are able to get craft beer out to more people. Oh now I see, it’s really a charitable thing. And probably tax deductible.

Craft beer brewers, on the other hand, are in it for, well — craft. This word implies care, quality, and men with long beards and tall boots. It also implies innovation, experimentation, and a passion for the art. The men and women of craft beer are not in it for the money. It’s the art at the heart of it all. The essence of Dogfish Head could never survive if purchased by any of the big guys. Can you imagine any brewery associated with Miller concocting a brew that involved the brewers’ own saliva? No, no they would not, though I’d love to see the board meeting in which this idea is introduced. The spirit is what makes it craft — and is why craft beer drinkers stay with the small breweries. Continue reading →

Ontario, CA Beers: Pretty Bland, Eh?

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An Eight-pack?! Well, they got something right...

An eight-pack?! Oh…the metric system!

Canada: snow, hockey, lumberjacks, beer. That about sums it up, right? But yesterday, I said to my husband, “Hon, would you like some wine? I’m not really in the mood for beer tonight.” This is something rarely said in my home. However, the only beers we had in the fridge were in an eight-pack mixer from our vacation in Canada. I simply could not muster enough enthusiasm for my Canadian beers to pop open another 473ml can of meh.

My family and I have visited the balmy northern shores of Lake Erie every summer since before I can remember. The visit has always consisted mainly of reading on the beach, eating fresh fish and fruits, and (once I reached the Ontario, CA drinking age of 19) drinking copious amounts of beer.

I always took an inordinate amount of pride in knowing to order a Blue in Canadian bars, rather than a Labatt. Problem is, of course, that Blue isn’t all that good. It’s one of my favorite cheap beers, but I’m just not a cheap beer kinda gal. Drink it for a whole week?! You might as well make me go camping. Full disclosure: we brought up craft beer from the states. Continue reading →

On Getting Old: Archiving Your Membeeries

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Little Old, Pink Notebook o' Beer

Little Old, Pink Notebook

I can hear my parents bickering through my window as they approach my door. I tell them this when I let them in and my dad yells, “We’re old and can’t hear a damn thing anymore!” My mother bustles through laden with bulging tote bags and tupperware. Dad says, “get the beer,” and gestures with full arms at the two six-packs on the ground. When I lock the door my mom turns around on the stairs, “We’re old and can’t hear anything anymore!”

My mother just returned from Pittsburgh where she visited a beer store whose name is now forgotten. Because she doesn’t know much about beer, she purchased a mixed sixer of IPAs whose labels she didn’t recognize and a six pack of an IPA from Pennsylvania. I only recognized one of the singles, so she did good.

While Mom gets dinner dished out, my dad says, “I say we start with one of these,” he rips off a can from the six-pack for me, “and then these,” gesturing at the mixer. I picture us both on our backs, passed out, and my mother leaning over us, irate. This is how we do tastings in my family.

Recently I’ve been looking at the technological side of beer tasting. There’s a surprising number of beer-related apps, for example. Everything from a virtual encyclopedia of beer abvs to rating “communities” to next drink recommendations. I checked out my little old, pink beer notebook that I kept pretty religiously for a few years. Most beer entries went like: Name / percentage & state of origin / bar or circumstance. Then mixed in among these are phone numbers with no name, band name ideas, email addresses for people I don’t remember. The handwriting gets more expansive as it moves down through the night. Does BeerAdvocate have a data field for bartender name and level of attractiveness? Continue reading →

The Beer Cocktail: Friend or Foe?

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Beer Cocktails! (Sorry...)

Beer Cocktails! (Sorry…)

As many of you already know, cooking is not my “thing.” That’s why I write about beer and not the epicurial challenges of the kohlrabi, whatever that is. Left to my own devices, I’d be eating salads or sandwiches for every meal — the sandwich being basically the salad between slices of bread. I am really quite righteously impatient, though, so sometimes I just get a fistful of raisins and a fistful of peanuts and take bites from alternating hands.

Beer appeals to me for a number of reasons: it’s cold, it’s tasty, it can get you a little fucked up. We mustn’t forget, though, that it is also extremely easy to prepare.

  1. Open fridge.
  2. Pull out beer.
  3. Open beer.
  4. Drink beer.

My sense of economy is therefore threatened when approached by the idea of beer cocktails. I realize this has been a thing for a while now (as has calling something “a thing”), but I’ve never explored beer cocktails due to the above elegance of simplicity. I am understandably wary about a beer drink that involves more than these four steps. But then I had a Joan Harris at the Market Garden Brewery in Cleveland, OH. Continue reading →

Session Beers: The Freedom to Drink Outside, All Day

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Drinking outside at the Phoenix Brewing Co. The light!

Beauty pageant winners in my book. At the Phoenix Brewing Company in Mansfield, Ohio

Independence Day is an important holiday for both its historical and cultural significance. We celebrate our independence from Britain, we wave mini flags at beauty pageant winners grinning stiffly from convertibles, we use copious amounts of lighter fluid in our meals.

Most importantly, we openly exercise our freedom to drink. Outside and all day. This year I enjoyed a beer on my stoop while the local Fourth of July parade went by. The insurance agents and scout leaders who handed out swag eyed my beer avidly and threatened to return. They didn’t though; and does anyone want a State Farm water bottle?

Drinking outside is really one of my all time favorite summer things to do, if you can call it “doing” (which you can, and that’s part of why I love it). It’s perhaps second only to my love of backyard badminton, at which I am a crack shot. It’s hard to pinpoint precisely what it is that I find so appealing about indulging outside: the glow of a pint in the midday sun, the crisp bite of hops on a muggy day, or how much more charming I become over the afternoon. Continue reading →

Drink Local Ohio: Yellow Springs

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My father, who fits in remarkably well in Yellow Springs

My father, whose long white hair is a kind of camouflage in Yellow Springs, Ohio

Spring has finally arrived in Ohio. I’m sitting in my bookstore with the door and windows open wide. Aretha plays on the stereo. Tiny white petals float in on the breeze and polka-dot the welcome mat. I can hear the voices of under-dressed Ohioans who walk down the street and fan themselves in the 60-degree heatwave. All this scene needs is a cold Ohio beer in my hand!

Recently I’ve decided to apply my big talk about buying local to my beer drinking and to take this hobby of mine more seriously. Time to really explore craft beers in my area. My little heart-shaped state is tiny, but Ohio has at least 109 craft breweries, which ought to keep me busy for a while.

On a recent brilliant blue day I drove down to Yellow Springs, Ohio, which is where Antioch College is, which is code for Warning: high hippy concentration (any way you read it). This blue dot in Ohio’s sea of red is packed with little shops — clothing, jewelry, and every form of currently trending anachronistic media (which is, of course, where I spent most of my time). All the stores had cats.

In the air is the smell of locally grown everything wafting from the cozy restaurants, freshly bloomed spring flowers, and patchouli. Creative, empowering graffiti covers any surface not painted in murals or pasted over with creative, empowering bumper stickers. Continue reading →

It’s Just Beer(!)

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#whatimdrinkingnow #whatdoyoumeanyoudontcare

#whatimdrinkingnow #whatdoyoumeanyoudontcare

I’ve always had a difficult time mustering up a sufficient amount of care for my own hobbies, which is what I call my beer drinking, because hobbyist sounds better than drinker. I don’t spend time posting in beer chat forums, I don’t post #whatimdrinkingnow pics anymore (I bored myself), I rarely drink out of proper glassware, and I don’t spend a lot of money on it. Because after all, it’s just beer.

But I’m a total beer snob. This is the paradox in which we beer appreciators are stuck.

Beer is a beverage celebrated and sold for its relaxing properties. It’s the drink you have when you get home from the office or from the factory; it’s the drink with which you celebrate both special occasions and your slow days off from work. It’s the everyman drink; the drink to chill out with. When some of us turn up our noses at certain beers, pay $18 for a bomber, or go so far as to call beer our hobby, we risk running contrary to the beer drinking ethos.

For me, this is beer, exclamation point

This is beer(!)

Once you admit that, yes, beer is a hobby — you know a lot about it, you spend time and money on it, you really, really look forward to that seasonal releasing today — you are effectively rendering null the it’s just beer sentiment. Obviously beer is more than just alcohol to you. It’s beer, exclamation point! When you take it a step further and start caring about hop aroma and mouthfeel and shit — well, then you’re the kind of snob that drinking beer is supposed to keep you from becoming. Continue reading →

Craft Beer Defined (No, Your Other Six-Pack)

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brewerymap-last-updatebig

US states by their biggest “craft” brewery

The elusive definition of craft beer is not exactly the meaning of life, but you’d think it was given all the attention it gets in craft beer forums (definition: an online symposium of slightly to highly intoxicated enthusiasts of commodified tastes). Guys with chat names like DuffMan23 and BeerPirateRockstar argue about yearly barrel output and shareholder standings.

Your basic Wikipedia definition of craft beer is that it’s created in small batches, which finally solves the mystery of what microbrew means. There is no USDA of craft brewing, and hence the definition remains in the hands of the defined. Realistically, anyone could slap craft on their label without legal repercussions, although the legions of drunk, self-righteous craft beer drinkers might give one pause before doing so. The Brewers Association (BA), a brewers’ trade organization, has a more in-depth definition, stating that craft breweries must be small, independent, and traditional.

Dogfish-Head-logoBy small, they mean producing six million barrels or less per year which, at 252 pints per barrel, comes to 1.512 billion servings. This is, like, a river of beer that makes my weekly consumption seem way more reasonable. It may be nothing to the big guys, but that’s a lot of beer! Sam Adams, who is frequently under fire for being “too big” to be craft, makes just 2.5 million barrels a year. Dogfish Head makes 175,000 barrels a year, which to me seems a more accurate limit, if we’re drawing arbitrary lines. Continue reading →