Category Archives: Potent potables

Beer, I Salute You!

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UkraineStein

Here’s to Ukraine!

There are days when writing about beer seems insanely frivolous. Days I feel idiotic for reporting on the subject of an intoxicating beverage, a means of escape and relaxation. Waxing rhapsodic about something as juvenile as a good buzz.

Today, Ukraine is dividing and a former heavyweight boxing champion now shoulders the responsibility of a movement to change the course of his country’s history. And in the US thousands still remain jobless. And within this house, we struggle to pay our heating bill.

I am fully aware that terrible things are happening every day in the world, and I’m not sure why I chose today to be bothered. It is February and dark and the weight of the world hangs heavy like the snow clouds above us.

So why give a rat’s ass about beer? Continue reading →

Challenges & Comforts: Preparing Your Fridge for a Snow Day

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A rare beer angel

A rare beer angel. I highly recommend making one yourself using your own favorite brews!

This morning there is about five new inches of snow on the ground and a Level 2 Snow Emergency in effect, which means (and I’m paraphrasing): don’t go out on the snowy roads and get so badly stuck the city has to tow you out, you bung hole! So here I am at home today. I checked our supplies, starting with what’s in the fridge. Turns out I have twelve different kinds of beer in there. This pleases me to no end. (I tell Ben and we do a fist bump.) Here’s some of what’s in my fridge and why they’re the perfect beers to be in my snow day collection:

The Brand New

Careful! That branch could fall into the river at any moment!

Careful, lady! That branch could break at any moment!

The Ophelia Hoppy Wheat Ale is Breckenridge Brewery’s newest seasonal beer. It is supposed to be hoppy and wheat-y, although the brewery’s copy also describes it as “The quintessential good girl gone mad,” which I don’t really get. Maybe in the end it was a hops allergy that turned poor Ophelia loony. Or maybe she drank herself silly waiting for that whiny Hamlet. “Get thee to a nunnery” my ass, buddy. Anyway, snow days are an excellent time to try beers you haven’t experienced yet, especially those named after a crazy Dane who knew what a truly rough winter was.

Their slogan is "Normal Is Weird," which I appreciate

Their slogan is “Normal Is Weird,” which I appreciate.

Also new-to-me is Flying Monkey’s Smashbomb Atomic IPA from Ontario, Canada. This brewery has only recently started distributing in Ohio, whose citizens suck down over 30 gallons of beer a year, according to the Beer Institute (whatever that is — Fox News used it as “research,” too, and it appeared in an article next to one about the unhealthiest hot Starbucks drinks, because if it’s not running on a ticker beneath O’Reilly’s getting-longer nose we won’t know how bad hot chocolate is). I’m sure my household assures Ohio’s average is over the 30-gallon mark, especially with all this affordable pinko Canadian terrorist beer. Continue reading →

Warm Beer & Other British Customs I’m Adopting

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CAMRA_Logo_with_wordsAfter paying a heating bill that cleaned out my bank account, I was certifiably in need of a beer. However, the heating bill was high because it’s a booger-freezing 6-degrees outside and the thought of wrapping my hands around a chill pint of pale ale gave me the shivers. And then, because my memory is sorted alphabetically by beer, I remembered going to a convention of “real ale” brewers near Boston in early spring one year. NERAX (New England Real Ale eXhibition) promotes the drinking of “real ale,” an attribute of which is its warmer-than-average-US-beer temperature. And I can assure you, I was a warmer-than-average-Boston-spring-evening temperature on my walk home that night.

NERAX is sort of like the New England version of the perhaps more infamous group, CAMRA. CAMRA, or Campaign for Real Ale, is a British organization (or organisation, if you will) founded in 1971 to “campaign for real ale, pubs, and drinkers’ rights.” They formed as a reaction to the big beer companies mass-producing weak, bland beer. They advocate real ale and community-based pubs and they use language like “traditional,” “social cohesion,” and “under threat,” in their literature, making them sound wee bit like an alcoholic IRA. (Let’s keep that joke inside your head.) Continue reading →

Top 10 Beers of 2013

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I can’t remember a damned thing if I don’t put it on a list: where to be, what to do, and what to drink while do it. Even then I forget where I’ve set my drink halfway though. As such, I am a fan of the proliferation of end-of-the-year lists around New Year’s, and offer you one of my own: Llalan’s Top 10 Beers of 2013.

10. Celebration Ale. I do the Dance of Joy every November when this beer is released. It was on last year’s list as well, and this beer will likely be on every end-of-the-year list as long as Sierra Nevada continues to produce it. It is one of the few nutmeg- and cinnamon-less winter seasonals out there. You can bet there is always some in my fridge during the holidays. Don’t bet on me sharing it, though.

9. Burton Baton. Because Dogfish Head’s 60-minute IPA is another perennial (and inspirational) favorite in my home, I want to feature one of their other, lesser-known brews. The delicious concoction (also mentioned this Thanksgiving) is actually a combination of an imperial IPA and an English-style old ale, aged together in an oak tank. Like nothing I’ve ever had and like everything I’ve always wanted.

8. Lucky 13. Lagunitas first brewed this beer in 2008 to celebrate 13 years of brewing and brought it back last year to celebrate 20 years of putting out fantastic beers. It’s a big red that has that delicious something peculiar to Lagunitas. In the end, we’re the lucky ones.

7. Righteous Ale. I am a huge fan of rye beer; insert bitter joke here: ______. The Sixpoint take on rye beer is definitely one of my favorites, in part because it does not coat your mouth with that potent and unpleasant aftertaste most ryes have. It is unique in its adaptability to the weather, in that it will warm you in the winter and quench you in the summer. Continue reading →

Dead Man Gnawing: Mexican Cold Ones

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I believe that we need more salt-rimmed beverages in our lives.  Or, at least, in my life.  As the salt cures me, it will preserve my liver as well.  This is all about science.

We all know about salt-rimmed margaritas and licking the salt before taking a shot of tequila.  A few years ago, however, I was turned on to micheladas, Mexican beers mixed with various lime-tomato-chili combinations and served on ice in a salt-rimmed glass. My favorite has long been the one served at the incomparable Chevela’s in Prospect Heights.  Their tomato mixture is some kind of spicy bloody mary mix and the salt on the rim is mixed with something tangy.  Shannon speculates dried tamarind.  (Shannon, who loathes tomato juice, loves micheladas; so what does that tell you?) Last night, though, we ate at El Centro in Hell’s Kitchen after watching Alvin Ailey’s dancers kill it, and the micheladas there are simply Modelo Especial mixed with fresh lime and mottled costeño chile, a moderately hot chili used in sauces.  They were fresh and refreshing.  Presented with straws, we sucked them down in minutes.

They got me wondering, though, about the origins of the michelada.  And the wondrous internet provides a handful of different possibilities. Continue reading →

‘Twas the Beer Before Christmas

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Where's my #$%@ beer?!

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the pub
Not a creature was drunk, all dry as dead shrubs.
The empties were stacked in the corner with care
In hopes the taxicabs soon would be there,
For regulars were nestled all snug in their booths,
Shouting out blasphemes and such things uncouth,
And my man with no lager and I with no ale
Had just started in on a sorrowful wail,
When out in the lot there arose such a clatter,
I stumbled from my stool to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I tripped like a drunk,
And fell on my face in a puddle of funk.
The moon on the hoods of our salt-coated cars
Gave the fuzzy impression of far-away stars,
When, what to my watery eyes should appear
But a Great Lakes semi truck and ten cases of beer!
With a red-faced old driver with an eye-winking tic,
I knew in a moment this was Santa’s schtick.
Quicker than UPS guys his deliverers ran
And he whistled and hooted and called to his men,
“Now Guinness, now Orval, now Sixpoint and Avery!
On Harpoon, on Yuengling, on Left Hand and Dundee!
To the top of the ramp to the back of the bar,
Then dash away, dash away, and bring my cigar!”
I drew back from the window, gaping in awe
When Santa appeared, spitting “Pshaw!”
He was dressed in a coverall, his head to his feet,
Though right ‘round his belly the zipper didn’t meet.
He had a broad face and two sticky-out ears
That turned red when he’d had a few too many beers.
He dismissed my wonder and went straight to work
Hooking up kegs and pulling pints with a smirk.
And laying a finger along side his beer
And giving a nod, out the front door he veered.
He sprang to his truck cab, to his men gave a whistle,
Who jumped in the truck with agility and hustle
I heard him exclaim, before I could think,
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a tall drink!”

From Anheuser to Zymurgy, the Beer-Lover’s Christmas List

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Selfish? Give the gift of something you love!

Christmas is approaching, and if you don’t have a beer-lover to buy for, I have a list of beery gifts here good enough to turn any wine-lover to the light.

First of all, the books. As many of you know, I run a bookstore so, as many of you have now guessed, everyone in my family gets a book for Christmas. Here are a few of the beerlicious titles I’ll be handing out:

For the novices I’m looking at The Complete Beer Course: Boot Camp for Beer Geeks: From Novice to Expert in Twelve Tasting Classes by Joshua Bernstein. The self-described beer expert “demystifies the sudsy stuff, breaking down the elements that give each type its distinctively delicious flavor.”

For someone close whose level of cleanliness you trust

Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing is an essential for any new brewers. This is the third edition, but the fourth isn’t coming out until after Christmas. Another new guide to brewing is called simply, How to Brew Beer by Bob Bridle. It’s a DK publication, which means it’ll be a pretty book, too. The Naked Brewer was recently put out by the ladies who wrote The Naked Pint, this a simple brewing guide companion to the Pint‘s tasting guide.

For the more experienced brewers: from the folks at CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) have out Brew Your Own British Real Ale by Graham Wheeler; and from the nut at Dogfish Head, Sam Calagione, Extreme Brewing: An Enthusiast’s Guide to Brewing Craft Beer at Home. Continue reading →

Thanksgiving Traditions: Please Pass the Beer

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Watchin' football with the other turkeys

In my Thanksgiving post last year I hinted at the fact that this is not exactly my favorite holiday. I may have also insinuated that it takes alcohol to get me through an entire day with my family, which isn’t really fair: I also have to be bribed there with the promise of my Aunt’s pumpkin pie. I only have a week left to prepare, so here is my game plan for now.

We’re always asked to arrive at one-o-clock for a two-o-clock dinner; dinner is never actually on the table before light leaves the sky, so we will arrive at two or three. Since I know I still have quite a wait before real food is served I’ll grab a session beer. A bitter would just be too easy, so I go with my favorite session at the moment, Founder’s All Day IPA — full of flavor, not alcohol. For the one and only time this year, I will find football fascinating. I’ll join my male relatives, who’ve also discovered a spontaneous love of the game, in the dog fur-coated den.

The November light grows thinner and the smell of cooking meat grows stronger. As a vegetarian, I begin to rehearse my yearly explanation for loading up my plate with green bean casserole and mashed potatoes with no gravy. I will need a thinking beer, something bright and effervescent and strong. I’ll go with one I just recently tried, Dogfish Head’s Burton Baton, which is aged in oak barrels. That takes the alcohol edge off the taste enough that I’ll feel the effects of the 10% abv before I taste it. Continue reading →

Don’t Be a Bunghole: Know Your Beercabulary!

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The Vocabuwheel of Beer Tasting

Allow me to apologize before we begin: as much as I like a properly aged beer, I myself am not particularly mature.That said, beer brewing is an activity rife with words and phrases easily manipulated into dirty puns. That then, is why when brewing, I am subject to fits of snorts and snickers that make even my husband roll his eyes. Below is a list of beer vocab words that make me titter (ha, ha!). See if you can correctly match them to their decidedly pedestrian definitions.

  1. Balling Degrees
  2. Bung hole
  3. Endosperm
  4. Head Retention
  5. Mouthfeel
  6. Sparge
  7. Turbidity
  8. Wet Hopping
  9. Wort

a)  The addition of the freshly harvested cones that have not yet been dried to different stages of the brewing process.
b)  The scale indicating density of sugars in wort.
c)  The starch-containing sac of the barley grain.
d)  Having sediment in the suspension; hazy, murky.
e)  The opening in the side of a cask or older-style keg through which the vessel is filled with beer and then sealed.
f)  The sensation derived from the consistency or viscosity of a beer.
g)  To spray ground grains with hot water in order to remove soluble sugars.
h)  The bittersweet sugar solution obtained by mashing the malt and boiling in the hops, which becomes beer through fermentation.
i)  The foam stability of a beer as measured, in seconds, by time required for a one-inch foam collar to collapse.

Continue on to see the answers!  Continue reading →

Freedom & Unity: All for Beer and Beer for All!

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This is how Vermont starts a beer tour

The first Vermonter I met on our week-long stay in the Green Mountains was a red-faced middle-aged man in pajama pants, Birkenstocks with socks, and a lilac LL Bean fleece vest. “All right! Here we go! How you doin’? Great! Let’s go!” he shouted as he clapped his hands and bounded into the convenience store. A toxic cloud of alcohol breathed along behind him. I ducked down in the refrigerated aisle, debating which of the dozen or so Vermont-made beers there to try first.

Vermont does small up big. Next to my home state of Ohio, it’s really a puny place, but they lead the country in breweries per capita. Many of the breweries and brew pubs are small and don’t distribute widely. Big is not always better, and this is something that Vermonters completely understand. Sustainable, local, green, independent business practices are the standard here. These seem to be in the citizenry’s very attitude toward living in the state, which fosters the perfect atmosphere for small breweries.

A Burlington sunset over Lake Champlain

One might argue that this local pride and self confidence stems from the Revolutionary War. Ben and I are staying in the Green Mountains in the northern end of the state, right around where Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys terrorized British authorities and scared surveyors from the land. The sentiment being, as far as I can judge, “The hell you’re going to take my land.” After seeing these hills in an autumn sunset, I can see why you would fight so viciously for them. Continue reading →