The Beer of My Dreams

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Llalan

High Ball Stepper

Obsessions are only unhealthy when they keep you from your daily tasks. Truly I had the best of intentions to write a treatise parallel to Jason’s last post about local foods, exploring beer’s place on the spectrum of America’s beverages. I meant to discuss craft beer’s struggle against elitism versus regular ol’ beer’s place as the working man’s brew. The snob who one-ups me versus the the guy in line with a tall boy who scoffs at my nine-dollar four-pack. But I got hung up on the Jack White part. Lately Jack has been a constant companion of mine, specifically the Jack on the cover of his new album, Lazaretto.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend and her teenaged daughter about how men could be sexy without being particularly good looking. We used Jack as our prime example. The teenager wrinkled her nose. My friend winked at me and I went to that special place in my head where Jack and I have a beer together and he is so inspired that he writes a song about me right there.

Wait, this isn’t about beer at all! But what beer could I have possibly drunk with this modern master, you ask? What beer am I obsessed with enough that it would appear in my fantasies? As I’ve previously mentioned, the most appropriate beer to sip with Mr. White is a black IPA. Not out of irony, but necessity. I imagine his calloused fingers around a bottle of Uinta’s Dubhe, long, guitar-plucking nails clicking on the bright label, a small smile on his bowtie lips. What better beer to share than one named after a star?

What other sexy beers are out there to obsess about? On this steamy summer day, this list will have you racing for a cold one. Continue reading →

Good Beer, Bad Hair: A Visual Journey for Father’s Day

Posted on June 12, 2014 by Llalan

There’s actually beer in that milkshake we’re holding at this father-daughter dance.

A helpful PSA from Just Add Beer: this Sunday is Father’s Day! It’s one of my favorite made-up holidays because 1) I’m very fond of my father, and 2) the holiday-creating entities of our capitalist oligarchy have decided beer should be a big part of Father’s Day. The beverage is featured in store displays of cards, ties, and books alongside the same items geared toward cars, sports, or meat. Because that’s what American dudes do. Never mind that NONE of the men in my life define themselves using any of these stereotypes. Except beer.

He may not know it, but my father, Boyd, gave me my first real drink of alcohol, a glass of wine when I was visiting from college for a holiday. I went to Ohio University, and by all rights I should have been a heavy drinker by then, but I wasn’t. That night SNL had never been funnier and I helped myself to another slosh before bed.

This was a Bad Hair Year for us both

It’s only fitting then, that I helped him enter the world of craft beer. When I was growing up, Dad was a Busch man. I tried a can in college (having quickly embraced the drinking culture the next quarter) and wondered at my father’s fortitude. How had this man drank several of these a night for years and still maintained decent gastrointestinal health? Good God! When I was very young he referred to it as his “skunk juice,” which I took literally at first and later adopted as our code for beer in public, much to my mother’s chagrin.

Continue reading →

Be a Sour Puss: the Argument for Puckering Up

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Llalan

Yup. It’s sour. What about it?!

Pucker up, my friends! Today we look at sour beers, simply because I was recently involved in a conversation that, itself, turned sour. I was engaged in a bitter pissing contest with a total stranger who thought he knew more about beer than I do. We started off on the wrong foot when he suggested to me hangover remedies. (Bitch, please.) Matters escalated as we one-upped each other nastily until he asked with a challenge in his voice, “Well, have you ever had a sour beer?” I answered that I had and I quite liked them and I just tried several at the Jolly Pumpkin in Ann Arbor thank you very much. Then I stopped listening.

Sour beers do live up to their name, and some consider them an acquired taste. I hasten to mention that one needn’t be a sour puss to enjoy this style, in fact it helps if you maintain inner reserves of sweetness; but if you don’t at least try one, I will call you a sour pussy.

Sour beer is an old tradition, begun in Europe back before brewers and consumers were so nitpicky about having unknown variables floating in their brews. The sour flavor comes from the wild yeasts used to ferment the batches as well as live bacteria. Wild yeasts being the unpredictable beasts they are, brewing sour beer can be a challenge, but when it’s done right it’s a delightful mix of untamed tastes and solid chemistry. So good I wouldn’t even waste it by tossing it in that little pucker’s face. Continue reading →

Smitten with the Mitten: the Beers of Ann Arbor, Michigan

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Llalan

I Mitten You!

As many of you already know, some sectors of the Ohio population love to hate Michigan. And it’s not just OSU alums against Wolverines; it’s everything. They hate all Michigan sports teams, Michiganders in general, American-made cars, Motown, and the way Michigan is shaped like a cute little mitten. I think what we all can agree on, though, is that they make a damn fine beer.

Who has the energy for this?!

Last weekend I went with my husband and my parents to Ann Arbor (home of dreaded U of M) to celebrate my father’s birthday. Needless to say this involved visiting EVERY brewery in the town we could get to. Because Ann Arbor is a college town and an especially cool one, at that, this involved a lot of drinking. For those of you not fortunate enough to go out drinking with my father on a semi-regular basis, during these outings he is remarkably both funnier and more embarrassing at the same time.

Ann Arbor is a beer town, and not just because there are nearly 44-thousand newly-legal drinkers there; rather, they have a population that is hip and well-off enough to support at least five microbreweries or brewpubs in the radius of a few blocks. Each of them has their own thing going: premium lagers, unique styles, hooting sorority girls, and more. The first one my father wheeled into specialized in farmhouse ales.

A damn fine beer

The Jolly Pumpkin was an encouragingly crowded, multi-leveled bar and restaurant with fancy-pants local and sustainable American food and spectacular farmhouse ales. Farmhouse is the style from which the Belgian saison originated. Saisons were traditionally brewed in the winter for summer consumption, but I’m here to tell you that farmhouse ales are year-round beers. Every good farmhouse I’ve had has been extremely complex: earthy, tart (sometimes quite a bit), and dry with just a little bitterness. Maybe there’s a reason we get along so well. I tried their flagship beer, the Bam Biere, which was delightfully sour and refreshing. Continue reading →

The Phoenix Rises: Proud and a Little Tipsy

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Llalan

Liquid Mansfield

Something wonderful has happened! Something amazing for my little Ohio town, in fact. Something that will bring people to the area and that will change people’s attitude toward our city. Something for all of us to be proud of. And yes, of course beer is involved: a brewery has opened in Mansfield!

Last Wednesday was a bright and giddy spring day. My skin was buzzing with the forgotten touch of sunshine and the promise of a good beer after work. At 5pm Ben and I took our tickets for the brewery’s soft opening and crossed the small brick parking lot that separates my bookstore from the dangerously close by brewery.

The Phoenix Brewing Company is located in a brick building built in 1914 that was originally a mortuary. Rather than ignore what could be taken as a morbid history, they have embraced it. When my sampler of their five beers arrived, it came on a coffin-shaped, wooden flight. The names of their beers, too, riff on the theme: Redemption IPA, Ferryman’s Stout, etc. (When they were first brainstorming names, “Embalming Fluid IPA” was bandied about. Apparently clearer heads and weaker stomachs prevailed.) Continue reading →

April is Beer Kicks Ass Month!

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Llalan

The Heart of it All!

As I’m sure you all know, April is National Pecan Month. Tuesday was April Fool’s Day, tomorrow is Tell a Lie Day–I’m sure there’s a story there–and most importantly, the first week in April is National Read a Road Map Week. This is all according to a highly reputable website built in, like, 1998 that also advertises garden equipment.

But this whole map thing got me to thinking…about beer, mostly. I recently found a map that identifies all 101 currently operating breweries in Ohio. Despite the fact that I have spent 24 of my 32 years somewhere in Ohio, I am pretty miserable with Ohio geography. In my dotterage I’ve begun to study the map to stop confusing Mt. Gilead with Mt. Vernon. It makes me happy in that same old person way in which I enjoy the way a glass of red wine looks sitting next to a crusty boule of bread. Imagining the possibilities. So when I saw 101 dots on my little heart-shaped state, I started imagining.

Vandalia, Middle Bass, Hide-A-Way Hills. Kelleys Island, Buckeye Lake, Catawba Island. Where are these places and why haven’t I been there yet? (Perhaps because the first 18 years of being an Ohioan were spent plotting an escape. I’ve since gotten a tattoo that says “If found, please return to Ohio.) I recently discovered that Catawba Island, a place at which many inlanders vacation, is not an island at all! Oh the mysteries you hold from me, my sweet Heart of It All! Continue reading →

Extreme Beer and the Cute Dudes Who Make It

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Llalan

Mr. Calagione and a sign made from toast. As usual, thinking outside the breadbox.

Sam Calagione is the president and founder of Dogfish Head, a brewery based in Delaware that is known for its “off-centered” ales, as they lovingly describe them. He is also good-looking (and knows it), charismatic, and a little bit nuts. Somehow the man is able to harvest all these traits and inject them directly into the wort of Dogfish Head brews, producing some of America’s most unique, imaginative, extreme, crazy-ass beers. All this is relevant because the Dogfish Head Brewery is sponsoring Beer Advocate’s 11th annual Extreme Beer Fest in a matter of days.

I have been to exactly one Extreme Beer Fest. (In my memory I was the only woman there, but that can’t be right…) It was there that I met and grazed the fingertips of the legendary Sam Calagione. As strange as some of his beers may be, I have always admired him because of just that, and also because he’s good-looking, as aforementioned. Also, he has an English degree like yours truly, and makes his living in beer, which is totally rad.

Now, when Mr. Calagione tenderly poured me a sample, filled it up to the lip and smiled as he expertly handed it off, I had a question for him. But despite my press pass and the hour or so of courage I’d been sampling, I couldn’t just ask it. Instead I fumbled the pass-off, stepped on the toes of a man behind me, and veered, beer-soaked, back into the fray of increasingly jovial beer extremists.

My question for Mr. C, then: Why? Continue reading →

Pink-Booted Brewsters and Other Reasons to Leave Brewing to the Gals

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Llalan

Thumbs up for Women In Beer!

Happy Women’s History Month, dudes and dudettes! Lift your beer to all the chicks in the world, ‘cause you know, you wouldn’t have a beer to lift it weren’t for us bitches!

Quick history lesson on why ladies are as awesome as beer: we started brewing the stuff back in ancient Egypt and Sumeria and continued to be the brewers up through colonial America, fermenting the grain while men cultivated and hunted and fought about one thing or another. (Dudes never have their priorities straight.)

But when the Industrial Revolution brought brewing into big business, men stuck their…fingers in the mix and look what happened: just a few brewers producing the majority of what’s drunk in America — and producing the majority of it poorly, I might add. Insult upon injury: women were then relegated to the ads, drinking piss-colored swill while in bikinis, playing beach volleyball, possibly the stupidest and most transparent excuse for men to cross their fingers and hope for a little glimpse of lady business that I’ve ever seen outside anime. Continue reading →

The Winter Thaw, or Cocktail Class with Encyclopedia Brown

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Shannon

Benjamin Zorn, preaching the good word at the BPL

Benjamin Zorn is a bartender at Tooker Alley in Prospect Heights and a cocktail-smith of the highest order. He also looks a little like Encyclopedia Brown, but that was appropriate to the context in which I first encountered him. Last week, Jason and I took one of the “culinary cocktails” series of classes at the Brooklyn Public Library for which Zorn was the master of ceremonies. Why the library decided to let a bunch of people come drink in their fancy new lab area, I’m not entirely sure, but it probably has to do with the library being awesome.

Similar to many enthusiasts of offbeat and intricate crafts, Zorn was almost visibly vibrating with fervor and brimming over with an abundance of helpful hints. These ranged from the obscure (explaining the dangers of ice chips in egg-white cocktails to a crowd of people who did not look as though they previously knew egg-white cocktails existed) to the obvious (“You can tell a bartender’s sense of humor from the way he names his drinks”*), from the practical (the difference between an $8 bottle of vodka and a $15 bottle of vodka is mostly sensed in the hangover) to the near-mystical (“Always pour with confidence!” my final note of the evening reads, which I must have written right before I chucked my notebook aside and started drinking the free samples.)

But perhaps the most useful concept (and the main theme of February’s class) was this: you can get a lot of mileage out of sticking to the elegant proportions of classic drinks but jazzing them up with infused liquors and syrups. Usually, I’m not wild about Old Fashioneds but when Zorn made one with star-anise simple syrup, Brooklyn-made bitters and an orange peel…hot diggedy!

Anyway, I didn’t want to rip off Zorn’s recipes, so I decided to use what he taught us and come up with my own take on a Tom Collins. I call it the Winter Thaw, and I’ll post the recipe below so you can rev yourself up before attending Zorn’s next library class in March.

The Winter Thaw Continue reading →

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