Beer Friday #5

Getting ready to leave for the weekend, and this was always one of my favorite road songs.



So let's have some beers, woowoo!


Victory Anniversary 20 Experimental IPA, 5.5%
A 5.5% "refreshing session ale"? No, guys, it damned well isn't. I really thought Victory of all people got this; they have sub-4.5% beers on tap at the brewery all the time. This is the kind of bullshit I expect from breweries that don't give a shit about anything but sales, not a brewery that has always cared more about the beer, and about truth. I'm concerned about this, and yeah, it's pissing me off. We can do better. If "session" doesn't really mean anything to you, stop using it. If "session" just means "we hope you drink a lot of this here beer," stop using it. If it means "great-tasting beer with significantly lower ABV than average," by all means, use it. I have no trademark, no enforcement authority, just my small bully pulpit. I intend to use it.

REFRESHING SESSION ALE...5.5% ABV -- What kind of bullshit is that?

But I'm a professional, so let's give it a fair taste. Nose is pretty shy; all I'm getting is some faint sweet lemon, despite a very vigorous pour and plenty of fluffy white head. It's a gorgeous beer, but the aroma's a bit like a Wet-nap from a barbecue joint. Well, damn. The taste isn't much more electrifying. There's good bitterness at the end with some of that lemon lift, and a decent malt float, but otherwise, this is pretty tame stuff. What the hell?

I really expected a lot more for a 20th anniversary beer from Victory, after the awesome 10th Anniversary Alt, and even the recent Vital IPA, which I found damned tasty. This one just isn't doing much for me, and that's the beer talking, not the label with its "Session/5.5%" crap. Middle of the road, and the least exciting Victory beer I've had in quite a while. I'm hoping for more from the (official?) XX Anniversary Imperial Pilsner.

Verdict: Okay


Coronado Imperial Blue Bridge Coffee Stout, 8.0%
Expectations are high here: I like Coronado beers, and I love coffee beers, so I couldn't wait to get this in the glass. This is a bumped up version of Coronado's Blue Bridge Coffee Stout, celebrating the landmark San Diego/Coronado "Blue Bridge," which I have to admit has figured prominently in a series of nightmares I've had in which I'm driving across it...and it suddenly ends, leaving me flying through the air like Henry Gibson the Illinois Nazi. I'll try to muscle past that.

Pours very dark indeed, no surprise. Huge, no-nonsense coffee nose: mocha, bright acidity, some cocoa and unripe apricot. Very promising indeed. Whoa. I was going to start typing in flavors, had even started, when the totality hit me. That's one beautiful beer in toto, as the entirety, as a well-sculpted integral sensation: seamless. I appreciate that kind of thing a lot more since learning about whiskey. Nothing sticks out, but it's not because it's not big; it's a whopper. But everything is in place, the balloon expands evenly. I could drink this entire 22 oz. beer way WAY too quickly and easily. The Cafe Moto coffee and malts meld beautifully. The only nitpicky little flaw I find, and I hesitate to even call it a flaw, is that there's a touch of stickiness at the end. But to point it out is to quibble. That's a damned good beer.

Verdict: Good






Now...I promised to try to get a draft in, but I'm going to ask you to wait for it. I'm going to a brewpub (Elk Creek Cafe in Millheim, PA) tonight, with my wife, and I'll take notes, and post it up here as an update tomorrow.

Elton's ESB, 7.0%

Nitro pour at Elk Creek Café and Ale Works. 20 oz. pour, $5: good value! Great buffed leather color, moussed foam, and a nose full of juicy Brit malt and earthy, herbal British hops. So smooth and full, slippery and supple with malt, and fully hopped with those tricksy Brit cones: so unfamiliar to American drinkers in these days of super-citrus and power-pine that many think a beer like this is underhopped. Not so, and this is firmly bitter, but balanced. Drank several of these Friday night, had some more last night, and it's a good brunch beer today.

Verdict: Good

Hello Again

Now this...was a long time ago. Back in my blogging days.

Remember me?

A bit over two years ago, I stopped writing this blog. It wasn't because blogs are dead -- I refuse to believe that -- and it wasn't because I got bored, and it certainly wasn't because I was running out of things to say. Blogs, good blogs, relevant blogs still are vital, and they don't have to be on Tumblr, or run through a microplane grater and splattered onto Twitter, or covered in kitties and posted on Facebook. Blogs are the place to do long-form writing, and I like to think I was able to balance somewhere between a tweet and tl;dr.

No, I stopped writing the blog because I took on a full-time job as managing editor of Whisky Advocate magazine, a job I'd been doing part-time since 1996. The magazine had grown tremendously since then, and they decided that they wanted to have some permanence in the position. As for myself, I had two kids in college, and permanence sounded good. And for two years, we did really, really good work. The magazine, in my opinion, looks great, has published some excellent articles, and is, without question, the world's foremost whiskey publication. Period. I'm proud to have made my contribution to that.

But you know how it is. Sometimes when you get too much of something, you find out you don't really want it as much as you thought you did. For me it was editing...and whiskey. The editing, well, it was good work, but being responsible for 12 other people's deadlines wore a bit thin after a while. I was working with the best whiskey writers in the world, bar none, and I believe I helped make their work better (high point was definitely when David Wondrich submitted his cocktail column in the form of an 850 word epic poem and we made it work). But it was editing, and I wanted to write. I got to write, but pretty much only about whiskey. I had agreed to write exclusively for the company's magazines (I did a couple pieces for Wine Spectator), and there just weren't many opportunities to write about beer.

A bit more grizzled, but still grinning.

Beer eventually led me to realize that editing was not what I wanted to spend -- let's be frank -- the remaining years of my career doing. I want to write more, and I want to write about beer, and whiskey, and food, and travel, and even some fiction ideas I have. To do that, I had to cut the cord again...and here I am again. Blogging. Freelance. Writing.

It's good to be back. I'm very grateful for my time with Whisky Advocate as managing editor. It opened many, many doors! Even better, I'm still writing for the magazine, which pleases me tremendously. I look forward to focusing on that part of it, but I also look forward to inflicting my thoughts about beer on the world again. Look for magazine articles, web pieces, and yes, more books. And the blogs, of course, because it looks like we still need to Abolish the PLCB, and session beer, having been born again, needs raising properly. Damned if I'll abandon it to the heavy-hopping hands of American brewers.

I'm back. And I'll try not to use as much boldface this time. I hear it pisses some people off. Come back tomorrow -- if you're interested -- and I'll have a schedule for the week. Busy, busy, busy.

Session Beer Project posts this week

I know there's some reader overlap here with my other blog, The Session Beer Project, but in case you don't usually keep an eye on it, I've got two new posts up there that might interest you.

First, there's one about how brewers are jumping on the "session beer train" by using the word sessionable. Well, as of yesterday, I'm not using that word anymore, and I give my reasons why.

Second, and maybe more relevant here, I did an interview with Notch Brewing Company founder/brewer/everything Chris Lohring on the occasion of this all-session beer contract brewer's second anniversary. It's a good thoughtful interview, and I think you'll find it revealing about just how viable sub-4.5% craft beer is.

Okay...one wild Philly Beer Week thing

I told myself I wasn't going to get into pimping PBW events -- cuz you know, with over 900 listed events (suck that, "other" so-called "beer weaks") it's not fair to pick and choose -- other than my own, of course. But one event is setting another world beer record here in Philly, for a while at least, and I wanted to talk a bit about the venue, too, so...

City Tap House will be pouring 31 different draft Bell's beers on Monday night, June 7. This is more different Bell's beers than have ever poured anywhere else, including Bell's Eccentric Cafe in Kalamazoo, even in Larry Bell's house. That's all draft beers, pouring on City Tap House's very nice tap system. Some of these are Philly Beer Week exclusives, and you may see them around town next week, but you'll only see all of them here. What? You want a list?

Okay:

Porter, Le Pianiste Ale, Two Hearted, Le Contrebassiste Ale,
Third Coast Old Ale, Le Batteur Ale, Kalamazoo Stout, Smoked Lager (vienna), Oberon, Golden Funk Ale, Double Cream Stout, Kal-Haven Rye Ale, Oarsman, The Wild One, Expo, Pastel Raspberry Ale, Lager, Consecrator, Wheat Love, Wheat 2, Cherry Stout, Wedding Ale, Black Note, BB Hell Hath, Harry Magill's, Q Falls, Debs' Red, The Oracle,
Sparkling, Batch 9000, Batch X000 (undecided as yet; "something from the archives"). 

How's that? Pretty damned sweet, no? Well, let me tell you about City Tap House a little, you want to talk about sweet. Cathy and I went to the opening a couple weeks ago, and I was impressed. First, it's a huge space; two immense rooms (bar and dining room) plus a very large outdoor...what, more than a deck of a balcony, something the size of a helipad, with big open gas firepits. The food: they were bringing around samples of stuff like lamb lollichops (with a delicious dipping sauce), bruschetta, and a variety of pizzas including one with truffle-oiled mushrooms and what looked like a fried free-range egg in the center (really good, but kind of hard to split up).

Enough about that, let's talk beer. Their taplist was simply sick, okay? They were not wasting taps on so-so stuff, at least, not the craft taps, of which there were about 50. Flying Fish Exit 4, Dark Horse, Duvel Green, plenty of locals, Founders, the usual suspects and others. Which is great, but what about my concerns that these taps would sit ignored as "them collitch kids" drank up the Yuengling and Stella? I popped that question to bar manager Andy Farrell, right after I came out of the impressively tech'd-up keg cooler (please to ignore the clearly goofy Mr. Kolesar, overwhelmed by the steel-encased wonderfulness he was surrounded by).

He had interesting news, to wit: the craft taps had been handily outselling the mainstream taps for the ten days that they'd been open. In fact, he said, they were shipping kegs of mainstream to their other operations (Field House and Public House) because they were sitting unused at the Tap House. Now, it's still very early, but it looks like Penn kids like to get their drink on with craft beer. God knows, they have the money to afford it.

Maybe we really will have a big-assed multitap that succeeds in Philly. Good thing, bad thing? I'll need to see it in action for a while longer. In the meantime...I might just mosey on down there for this Bell's thing... (Parking wasn't horrible, either.)