The Grey Lodge: Sweet & Sour 16th

One of my earliest Grey Lodge pix, circa 1996.

A significant note from Scoats just showed up in my email. Now...I was at Victory before it opened. I was at Stoudt's way back in the late 1980s. I was at Memphis Taproom the day it opened. But...me and Scoats and the Grey Lodge, we have a special relationship. Although I live in another county, 16 miles away...I usually tell people that my local pub is The Grey Lodge.

Maybe it's because it's out in the Northeast, maybe it's because of the beer selection, maybe it's the constant change. But a lot of it is that when Scoats took over the place, he never dumped the regulars, never made anyone feel unwelcome. Which is why you'll still see guys sitting at the bar on Friday the Firkinteenth...drinking a bottle of Miller Lite. And that makes some people's heads explode -- it caught me off guard at first -- but I've realized that I love it. These are people, this is a bar that gets the idea that it's about the bar and the people first and always, and a great selection of beer (and whiskey!) can only help that, not be more important.

Groundhog Day, note the t-shirt date...

So I'm happy to put up this note about the Grey Lodge's 16th Anniversary Sweet and Sour 16 Party, this Saturday. I may or may not make it -- I have to sing early Sunday morning up in Lancaster -- but I will be there on Saturday at some time. It's family. Happy Anniversary, Scoats!

Ah, the good old days...

Hello Lew,

The Grey Lodge will celebrate its 16th Anniversary this Saturday, the 11th, from 5pm to 10pm. We don't celebrate our anniversary too often, but when we do, we try to do it epicly. This time around, it's just one day but the beer list is truly epic. Since we don't seem to anything normal-like, our Sweet 16 will be a Sweet and Sour 16, with all sour beers on tap. We'll have a greatest hits of canned beer too.
- 10 sour beers on tap, ranging from very accessible to truly extreme. Several of these beers we have been holding onto for years.
- big prize for the oldest Grey Lodge T-shirt
- prizes for any vintage Grey Lodge shirt
- free cake!

Full details at http://greylodge.com/sweet16.html

Thanks!

P.S. Thanks for your support and encouragement over the years. It has meant a lot.

To me, too, Scoats. Me too!

Groundhog Day 2012

And Another Brewer Leaves Philadelphia

My Lord, was the end of Philly Beer Week the starting gun for the brewer exodus in Philadelphia? Hot on the heels of the announcement below about Michael Fava, I get the news that Colin Farrell and Jack McCracken are leaving/have left Tired Hands...and not ten minutes later I learn from Terry Hawbaker that he's leaving Farmer's Cabinet.

I'm going to work for Al at Pizza Boy (Al's of Hampden, outside Harrisburg) in August so I should have beer ready for September. I'm very excited to hit the ground running at Al's... we've already received a new 10 bbl. fermenter just for a souring tank, so look for more Berliners and Gose soon. As you know I enjoy my crazy, weird and wild brews but I'm really digging the thought of brewing a wide range of beer again! 

So there you have it. Who the hell is next?

Sam Adams Barrel Room Collection Stony Brook Red

I got some more samples: the Samuel Adams Barrel Room Collection. I'm trying the Stony Brook Red, a barrel-aged 'red,' a Flanders red kind of beer, I guess, only the damned thing's 9%. Burgundian imperial? Anyway, it carries that 9% very well, and doesn't taste particularly boozy.

It's tart, not sour, and the nose is tart cherry, a bit of almond, some fizzy sweetness, and some wood. The taste is all that, dialed back a bit. In fact, it's gulpable. There's the tart, there's a bit of astringency -- not unpleasant -- and a thickness that doesn't get to be too much. This is a Flanders red smoothed and sanded to an easily grasped glass. Well. Relatively easily grasped. It's enjoyable, but for someone who's been drinking this kind of thing, good and bad, for years, it's kind of easily grasped.

I'm trying to think of a metaphor and none's coming. I mean, for the price -- $9 for a 750 ml bottle (and an odd-looking bottle, looks like a butter churn) -- it's pretty decent value. But what the hell is a 9% Flanders Red, and how much are you paying for the 9% part? I'm not clear on this one. I'll have to try the other two.

"FSA 2/09"? Update: mystery solved!

Someone -- I'm not sure who -- gave me two unlabeled bottles of beer a while back. The plain bottlecaps bear the only clue to what's in them: black marker, spelling out "FSA 2/09". I wasn't even sure what "FSA" was, until I opened one last night: Flemish Sour Ale! And a good one, too. Pale gold, lots of white foam, and a clean tart flavor, not touched by heavy acetone or solvent aromas or overdone with body. In short, a very nice beer...if only I could remember who gave it to me. I'm thinking it might have been one of the Iron Hill brewers, but I'm not sure. Anyone know?

(6/26: mystery solved. Greg Ouellette, the brewer at Martha's Exchange, gave them to me back in May when we met for drinks in Philly. Here's what he said on Facebook:

Lew. That's mine. Gave it to you at Triumph when I saw you in early May. Glad to see you enjoyed it. Not homebrew. but brewpub brew. 2 years in the making. Blended with a golden ale cuz the straight sour was waaay too sour. Cheers.)

Very low blogging rate this week, I know. I've been working on a story for Mass Beverage Biz, doing Malt Advocate editing, and setting up Thomas's first college visit trip. Busy week. I'll try to squeeze a few more in before the end of the month.

I'm a sucker

You know... I keep buying Gale's Prize Old Ale, kind of a constant rebirth of hope. I've had a couple that were just excellent, and I keep hoping that the next one will be as well, and I keep getting screwed.

Today was no different. I have a long tradition of drinking heavy stuff on the afternoon of Easter Sunday (and then singing Easter Vigil), so after a big stashed bottle of Lagunitas Eye of the Hairball wheatwine, I pulled out the Gale's, a 1998. Pulled the cork, poured the beer -- pleh! Sour. Real sour. Undrinkable sour. Dammit. I find myself hoping that Fuller's will do it better.

The 2003 Heavyweight Old Salty I opened instead...now that was a treat. Warming, too. Thanks, Tom, Bill. Good job.

But now it's time to make dinner: Rieker's Specials (four different burgers on a skewer, with German barbecue sauce), spätzle, and some salad. Then it's time to sing and welcome the Resurrection.

Two German Pilsners

I'm slowly -- sorry -- working my way through a bunch of German samples sent to me by a new import company...so new that I've lost the press release and can't find it anywhere online. I'm pretty sure they're either associated with or piggybacking on Schwelmer Beer Imports in Brooklyn, so if you're interested, I'd start there.

In fact, one of the two beers I sampled tonight was Schwelmer Pils. It comes in a cute little 330 ml swingtop bottle with a decorative label, at 4.7% ABV. I remember having Schwelmer beers at a party a few years ago, and this bottle brought that back: quite solid, good malt underpinnings, hops sufficient unto the day, and quite good with tonight's pizza.

The second beer was Lammsbräu Organic Pilsner, at 4.8% ABV. They've been all-organic since 1986, according to their website, which is fairly early even for Europe. They have evidently been at it long enough to get good at it: this was quite nice. Drinkable, not overly crisp, good hop bitterness, and not cloying. Kind of sorry there was only one in the sample box: this is a three-glasser.

(I also had some Puckerfish at Flying Fish tonight, where Mark and I had our most successful signing for New Jersey Breweries so far. The Puckerfish was solidly sour, with the body to back it up, a beer with some depth. Casey Hughes shocked me by telling me it was around 8.2%; it drank like a much lighter beer. If you see this -- and there's not much of it -- grab some. I think you'll be surprised it's Flying Fish.)