One Thing about One Guy

Oh, it's late again. It's been a long day just as I thought it would be (my dad's home and fine, by the way, for those who expressed concern), and I just got done with a very necessary re-write on a sloppy piece I sent in to an editor who deserves much better. I'm heading for bed, and I'll just have to tell you about One Guy tomorrow. But I did want to leave you with this comparison.

The first picture was taken in the summer of 2006, and I posted it on my website as a mystery brewpub. I cut the pipes you see in the back off the wall about two months after this was taken.

The second picture was taken today. As I said to Guy, jeez, what a difference a drop ceiling makes. I had some delicious beers, and got a great interview (that, unfortunately for the blog, is already sold, so I won't be putting it up here). Best of all, I felt like I was back at the dawn of microbrewing again: simple, plain, personal, enthusiastic...and all about the beer.

Happy Blogday to me

Cheers!

So after all the excitement of making the post-a-day average, and all the reflection, what do you actually get on my Blog Anniversary? Me, back to work. I'm headed up to Berwick, finally, to check out One Guy Brewing, I'm going to stop in to visit my dad on the way (he's been in the hospital, better now, no worries), and then get to work on rewrites when I get home. Just another day, really. Hey, it's a working blog, okay? I'll show you some One Guy pix later.

Beaumont Makes Predictions

Seems like I'm seeing a lot of Stephen Beaumont this year. We were in Miami at the Cheers Conference together, we're going to be touring Germany and Belgium in about a month, and he's coming to town for Philly Beer Week. I'm looking forward to it; Steve's a good friend and he's got an uncanny knack for finding good places to drink.

So you should see more of him, too. Specifically, check out his blog over at That's the Spirit.com, where he's just posted the last of five predictions about beer in 2008. The predictions are:

1. Wood-aging increases
2. More malty beers in response to the hops shortage
3. "Chicks Dig Beer" (nice note of my Portfolio column on that, thanks)
4. Premiumization: the trend to trade-ups will continue
5. Higher prices from a variety of pressures

As always, these are nicely reasoned and thoughtful, and make sense. Take a look.

Two More Philly Beer Week Events...and My Dance Card is About Full

Before anything else, let me repeat: The Main Line Beer Tour, Great Beer Stops Along the Main Line, whatever, is not happening. Next year, we hope, and it's gonna be great, we hope, but not this year. Talk about the rumor that would not die...

That said, I do have two new Philly Beer Week events to tell you about.

Monday, March 10th, I'll be hosting an event we're calling "That's Not Belgian!" at the delightful Chick's Cafe. As alert readers know, I only discovered Chick's recently, and loved it. I was there doing recon for this event idea. Chick's has built a beer list different from any in this beer-happy city, and a central feature of it is a core of French, Italian, and Spanish beers, from breweries that are quite Belgianesque in their disregard for traditional brewing...but are not exactly Belgian, either. We're going to pair an array of these non-Belgian beers with food from their respective homelands for a beer dinner that should be like few Philly or anywhere else has ever seen. 6:30 PM, Price TBD.

Wednesday, March 12th will see me headed west, putting the "it's not just Philly" aspect of Philly Beer Week into action: "Philly Area Beer: Yeah, We've Got That. Join nationally-known beer writer Lew Bryson and local beer scene guru, BrewLounge.com's Bryan Kolesar, at one of the hottest new beer bars in the area, TJ's Everyday in Paoli, for a wild waltz through the breadth of beer produced by local brewers. Want Belgian? Got it. German? Jawohl! British? Certainly, dear boy. American craft innovation? Yo,we're all over that. Bryson and Kolesar will lead you through the local harvest with details, suggestions, and brewery stories, while TJ's kitchen supports it all with a grand presentation of their famed cuisine a la biere. 6:30 PM, pay as you go beer and a $25 six-course tasting menu."

(That's what's going up on the PBW website: TJ's Jeff Miller released the beerlist: General Lafayette Red Velvet, General Lafayette Churchill's Mild, Victory Hop Wallop, Victory Prima Pils, Riverhorse Double Wit, Troegs Mad Elf, Stoudt’s Smooth Hoperator, Stoudt's Brewer's Reserve (TBA), Yard’s Love Stout, Flying Fish Love Fish, Legacy Fantasy Ale, Sly Fox Gang Aft Agley Scotch Ale, Sly Fox IPA Project (TBA), Weyerbacher Merry Monks, Dogfish Head Raison D’Etre, Monk’s Café Flemish Sour, Lancaster Brewing (TBA), Erie Misery Bay IPA. Not bad...)

And Uncle Jack has confirmed what Triumph brewer Jay Misson hinted at in a comment here: that the Philly Beer Week Real Ale Fest is taking place, but due to site problems, Yards and Triumph will be hosting it together at Triumph Old city, on Sunday March 16th, from 1 to 4 PM. Just in time for you to stroll over there from my PA Beer Brunch at Fork, about a block and a half away.

Incidentally, that Beer Yard calendar UJ's put together is pretty slick; slicker than the PBW site's. Check it out.

For those of you keeping score at home...yes, this is Post Number 365, which means I have achieved my goal of averaging a post a day over my first year of blogging. Wahoo!

Okay, back to work...

Tribute to Joe Sixpack

There is a very nice piece about Don Russell, the Philadelphia Daily News's Joe Sixpack columnist since 1996, up on the American Journalism Review website. It highlights what was probably Russell's defining moment as the city's beer columnist and champion -- his April 1998 expose of the short-measure beer scandal (no sarcasm: it was a damned scandal) at Veterans Stadium -- but gives him the full props he deserves as a champion of Philly's beer scene (maybe a tiny bit too full in a couple spots, but what the hell, Don's a good guy).

But reporter Mark Lisheron puts his finger right on Don with this observation:

Calling Joe Sixpack a beer column is a little like calling Mike Royko's a tavern column or A.J. Liebling a boxing writer. Like all the best columns, Joe Sixpack is about people and place. "He tends to tell Philadelphia stories that just happen to be about beer," former Daily News Editor Zack Stalberg says.

I'll admit: when Russell got his gig at the Daily News, I was jealous. 'Another damned staffer who thinks he can write a beer column because he's had a couple Belgian beers,' I probably said, or something like that. But I read the column every time it came out, and after a while, I realized the same thing Lisheron did: Russell is a story teller, and a good one. He's got a nose for beer news, and he's got a great way of writing about it.

I was critical at first, but that's been a long time ago now. Don Russell and Joe Sixpack are a credit to Philly, and to beer.

Cheers, Joe!

Wood you like another price increase?

Everything...causes cancer.

There's no cure...there's no answer.

I'm thinking of that stunningly depressing Joe Jackson song this morning as I read that in addition to the increases and shortages of malt, hops, and glass, barrels are in short supply. The Scotch whisky industry is booming, and that means the price of used bourbon barrels has gone up steeply -- and the price of used sherry casks is just nuts. Coopers are running flat-out, although high prices don't always mean high profits. Barrel-aged beers could get even more expensive.

Like I keep telling people about the hops shortage: don't expect it to get better real soon.

Jameson 18 Year Old

A few years ago, John Hansell selected Jameson 18 Year Old for one of the Malt Advocate awards. To let me know why, he sent me a 50 ml sample bottle. I was mightily pleased; it was awesome. I saved a bit in the bottle, and I'll be honest with you: occasionally, I just open the bottle and smell the stuff.

Last week an acquaintance sent me a bottle (thanks again, acquaintance). And partly to balance all the time I've been giving Bushmills lately, and partly because whiskey ought to get its due in the mad rush to 365 posts that I'm doing, but mostly because I just can't wait any longer to open it, I thought I'd give you a note on it.

Jameson Master Selection Irish Whiskey 18 Years Old: A Blend. It's a beautiful bottle, really, slender and curvy without being silly. I love the first gluh-gluh-gluh-glugggguhh out of a new bottle of whiskey, the way it catches on the shoulder of the bottle. The 18 is a lustrous gold dram, sparkling in my nosing glass. The aroma is all about malt, and vanilla, and little teasing notes of flowers, full summer flowers. It's sweet, but not perfumey.

Oh, God, that is wonderful, and just as I remember it. This is such juicy stuff, and there's a definite one-two character to it. There's the first pure rush of malt fire, followed by a splash of sweet nectar, like butter candy melted thin and cool, or maybe the lightest, most delicate caramel top on a creme brulee that you can imagine. Jameson is so distinctive, it is one whiskey I do feel confident I'd pick out in a totally blind tasting.

This 18 Year Old in particular is especially delicious: sweet, soft, lyrical, but engagingly multi-layered and rewarding. It is, as I believe John said, almost flawless. I'm going to hide this one away, for when the very best of friends comes over.

John thinks this might be a big year for Irish whiskey. (Looks like this bottling may be undergoing a name change, too.) In the course of writing a piece for Massachusetts Beverage Business, I learned that Irish whiskey's been growing faster than craft beer over the past few years, and that's saying something. I've really discovered Irish whiskey in the past four years, and it's been fantastic. If you don't know Irish, time to get acquainted.

Speaking of madly posting...

Pete Brown's been on a tear recently. After months at sea -- literally -- he's back posting, and suddenly making up for lost time. I've been enjoying hell out of the last week at his blog, called... Pete Brown's Blog. (At this point, if you don't know who I'm talking about, it would be best if you hit that link and read his entire blog, then headed over to Amazon, bought his books (Man Walks Into a Pub and Three Sheets to the Wind, two of the most original books on beer I've read recently, and certainly far and away the funniest), read those, and then come back. I'll wait. If you do know who Pete is, just...go get a beer.)

Done? Well, in the past week or so, Pete's blogged on how binge drinking is down in the UK (and surprise! that decline is getting no press coverage), how boneheads at InBev have driven Stella Artois into the ground (see, Pete, like me, enjoys drinking the occasional Stella and doesn't mind saying so), a great post on taking beer and ourselves too seriously (titled "For Christ's sake, cheer up!"), the upbeat news that Scottish & Newcastle has been bought to be broken up ("It does mean that the likes of Greene King, Fuller's, Wells & Youngs and Marston's are now the largest British brewers. I quite like that."), and the latest, a warning that bloggers are being solicited to write advertorial (thoughtfully tagged with the label "Corporate whoredom").

All in a week. No tasting notes. No ga-ga hand-waving over some new beer from an over-hyped brewery. No bar visits. No pictures of his dog. No re-hashing of other people's postings.

If you're not reading Pete Brown's blog, what the hell's the matter with you?

Ten Fidy Imperial Stout

That is just serious stupid. Y'know? I mean, look at that. It's not just black, it's solid, it's carvable. This is a beer you could take a chisel to. I wonder if I could take a chef's torch to that ruddy head and caramelize it...

Marty Jones, who's been pitching Colorado beer in general and the Oskar Blues Canned Beer Apocalypse in particular for quite a few years, asked me if I would take a look at some of the Beer Drinker of the Year resumes, pick my top three choices to pass along to the semi-finals. Sure, I said, and why don't you see if you can fit a can of Ten Fidy Imperial Stout in there with them? Done, he said, and I sat back and rubbed my hands. And waited. And waited. And figured...oh well, I'll just wait for it to show up next month. Then when I got back from Miami, there was a small box at my maildrop, and in it were ten resumes (some of you guys take this beer shit way too serious... congratulations!) and a can of Ten Fidy and a can of Gordon. Jackpot!

So I put it aside, checked the resumes, did work, dealt with The Tooth, and now, tonight, I'm enjoying it. The aroma has burnt malt, sweet malt, some hints of citrusy hop, and a touch of olive brine that I find in imperial stouts sometimes. There's also some graham cracker and a floaty bit of melon, with just a faint hint of the alcohol power in there. Take a hit: a bit sweet for my tastes in an impie, but it's joyous with it, the burnt bitterness is halved by the malt, and the solid bitterness wicks up all the excess at the end.

One thing I really truly love about this beer is that you know it's an ale. Too many big beers are subjected to clean-as-a-whistle fermentation regimes, as if the brewers were afraid of the identity of their yeast. Embrace it!

However, one thing I really truly do not enjoy about this beer is that sweetness. It's me, I guess, but I do not like the flabby sweetness of too many American imperial stouts. It's popular, and it sells beer, but hell, you could say that about light beer, too. I like a dry, burnt, almost tarry imperial, like Weyerbacher used to make.

Most people don't, though, and if you like something you can really sink your teeth into, an impie that's big and bold and bitter, Ten Fidy will do you right.

Thunder Power

One of the things that first drew me to Baltic porters was their ability to stand up to damned near anything I threw at them. Massive Cuban robusto? (don't ask where I got them; they were actually legal, on a technicality) Okocim Porter took it and smoothed and accentuated it. Fra Diavolo shrimp? My boy Dojlidy could smother that heat while still picking up and cradling the sweetness of the shwimps.

I know you're probably sick to death of hearing about Baltic Thunder, but hey, it's loose in the real world now: this isn't hype, it's after-action reports. Yesterday we were at a good friend's house to partake of a venison bounty his brother-in-law had brought home. He'd made a pork and venison stew, and a ground pork and venison meatloaf (he's Polish, I think he's got bigosh on the brain, but good on him, it was delicious).

And it just got better when I popped open the Thunder and sent it in after the game. Big flavor of venison, sweet flavor of pork, and multi-talented Baltic porter met and mingled, and I had a big happy mouth full of eats and drinks. Baltic porter, when it's the right one, is right up there with Belgian dubbel and Oktoberfest when it comes to making friends with food.