Beer Friday #2

Don't expect music every week, just because I had Aretha in that first one. That said, I'm gonna hit you with some more this week; an old favorite rockabilly tune I just rediscovered on the InterWebs, which made me so happy, I wanted to share it.

Jack Scott (according to Wikipedia) has been called "undeniably the greatest Canadian rock and roll singer of all time", for what that's worth; he was from Windsor, across the river from Detroit. This song was only his second on a national label, and hit #11 on the U.S. charts...and it was a B-side. I had a box of my Aunt Carol's old 45s from when she was a high schooler in the 1950s: this came out a year before I was born. Good stuff, great sax. Have fun.


Yards Golden Hop IPA, 6.0%
I got this case from brewer Tim Roberts, part of a complicated trade of whiskey and beer we did just before Christmas. Golden Hop was brand-new at the time, and I had a draft while I was waiting. One thing I noticed right away was the aroma, a sweet blend of fruits: grapefruit, sweeter citrus (mandarine? clementine?). The hops are Amarillo, Mosaic, and Cascade; they're working well here.

I wanted the taste to be as good, but it's not, quite. I like it, and it's slowly disappearing from the garage (now that the cold weather's finally arrived), but... The mouthfeel is light, and the fruit character from the hops comes off as almost tart rather the flavorful intrigue the nose set me up for. There's a slightly medicinal pull to everything, strongest at the beginning. I do like that it doesn't blow me away with bitterness, but I'd almost like some more of it. It's just...not quite, and definitely not living up to the promise of the nose.

Verdict: Okay

Einstök Icelandic Toasted Porter, 6.0%

Time was, you wanted Icelandic beer, you went to Iceland. You know, it was a bragging rights kind of thing. Especially with the price of beers in Iceland; whoa, Nelly! But it was worth it, because not only did you get the beers (and the Untappd badge to prove it), you got to go to Iceland! Now it seems you can get Icelandic beers pretty easily, which is kind of cool, considering beer's only been legal in Iceland since 1989. My first trip to Iceland was because of beer: Ölvisholt Lava smoked imperial stout, to be specific, which was definitely worth the trip, but again...you know, Iceland!

Iceland! Iceland!

So that's a roundabout way of saying I got this beer from a friend who knew I'd been to Iceland and wanted to share it. It's a "toasted porter" made with Icelandic-roasted coffee. Surprisingly, it appears to be bottle-conditioned (sediment stayed in place; the beer's pretty bright, if quite dark in color). I've been smelling it for the past 15 minutes while I opened it, wrote this, found the two pix (from the brewery and my last trip to Iceland, respectively), and got ready to taste...and it smells great. Dark chocolate, coffee, pastries, more coffee, flowing out of the glass, doing a Bugs Bunny grab-me-by-the-nose-and-drag-me-in thing. I give up; gotta have a sip.

Well, that's pretty good. Good mouthfeel, plenty of coffee and chocolate, and a nicely fresh character that's appealing in an imported beer. I like porter, too, and this is the kind I like: not a dark IPA masquerading as a porter. The hops are properly restrained. Finish is a bit sweet, but also has a hint of ashes, which is kind of cool coming from the land of volcanoes. The problem is that the whole thing's pretty sweet, and I'm having a hard time getting around that. I think this would be good with food (beef stew, chicken molé; desserts especially), but just at a bar, drinking? I want it dried out a bit more. I don't think this is a flaw, but I do think it makes it less than it could be.

Verdict: Okay


Spring House Session Pale Ale. 4.2%
I did mean to get this out earlier in the day, and to that end, I stopped at the Spring House Taproom in Lancaster on Monday, on my way home from the Farm Show, to get a beer. I do want to include a draft in each week if I can. But...then I forgot that I HAD taken these notes until I went out late this afternoon to get a draft beer to review and saw the notes...so you get a double.

A big Session Beer Project Thank You! to Spring House for calling this "session pale ale," the "session IPA" handle gives me the gripe. This is a bright, light pale ale, and I liked it. It's pale yellow, with a zippity nose of brisk lemon pith/zest and tropical fruit. A well-attenuated light body, but a nice grip; a bitter glove on the tongue that coats and holds the whole mouth...but the next sip opens it up again, fresh and tasty. Finish is clean, even a little fruit on it. That's an all-nighter. ($6 for a 20 oz. glass at the Taproom)

Verdict: Good


Cigar City Puppy's Breath Robust Porter Nitro

Cigar City is one of the most hyped American breweries going right now, and my experience with it has been a mixture of extremes: beers that are just boring, and beers that are just fantastic. When I saw this at one of my favorite local bars, the Hulmeville Inn, I had to try it.

It looks like you'd expect: dark, dark brown with a creamy tan nitro head. Smells like you'd expect: a bit of coffee, some baker's chocolate. But it's not what I expected in the mouth at all, given "robust" porter! This is sweet, smooth, and even a bit rich, like a whoopie pie in a glass. See the Einstök above; there, the sweet's not right, not full-on. This embraces the sweet, it knows it and goes with it. It's like the difference between a slightly sweet peanut butter and Nutella. Or those gross King Hawaiian rolls and a sticky bun. This is like eating a donut; if I feel like it, I'll have another and grin.

Verdict Good.

Encountering Iceland

I accepted a junket to visit Iceland's Ölvisholt brewery from Belgian beer importer Vanberg and DeWulf, partly because I've known them for so long -- Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield have been great influences on my beer thinking, and on life in general -- and partly because I've never been to Iceland, and have always wanted to see it. Saturday afternoon, May 5th, Cathy dropped me off at Hamilton station in New Jersey, and after a pretty painless set of rides on NJ Transit, Long Island RR, and the JFK AirTrain, I was at JFK, waiting my 8:40 flight on IcelandAir among an amusingly high percentage of tall, slender blonde folks of varying ages; homeward bound, I assumed.

That all went off without a hitch, on-time takeoff, and 6 hours later -- no sleep, my curse -- the sun was rising as we approached Iceland. I was looking out the rightside window as the plane was descending, eager for my first look at the island, seeing only waves and a couple of fishing boats. Then I looked to the left, and through the window across the aisle, I saw the snowy cone of Snaefellsjökull; my first sight of Iceland, appropriately, a volcano. Excited, I continued to look at details: the flat seaside plains that now appeared to my right, the sparse buildings, the snowy line of hills and more volcanoes to our left far across Faxa Bay. We landed at 6:05 AM local, blew through customs and baggage claim in ten minutes (really, it was wonderful), and after getting some krona out of the ATM and buying a bottle of water, I was on the FlyBus to the hotel. 

The trip from the airport wasn't as bleak as people had told me. The volcanic rock along the road is actually well-covered with lichens, moss, and some grasses, and a few hardy types have built homes closer to town; isolated, and of the spare style I'm growing to appreciate as I acclimate. They use simple, cheap materials -- corrugated metal, cinderblock and stucco -- but they achieve a balanced simplicity that is appealing in its honesty. They could easily build blockhouses...but they don't. They build solidly constructed, simple homes.

Changed the white balance on my camera accidentally...

Anyway...the bus arrived at the Natura Hotel, and Wendy was right there, coming out the door to go on a morning walk (it was about 7:15 by now). That was lucky, because I needed to get to sleep! She welcomed me, got me checked in, and I was shortly snoozing. About three hours later, I was much refreshed -- I thought, I'd need another nap later before I was set -- and we walked into town, Don, Wendy, and I. 

Don and Wendy are very much about the place of the beer, and not just the terroir, but the cultural origins, the place the beer has made for itself. So this was about meeting Iceland, which means meeting Reykjavik; over half the population of the entire country lives here. We walked up the hill to Hallgrímskirkja (above), the huge church on the hill overlooking the main "downtown" and the harbor. Services were just letting out as we got there -- children running around eating ice cream! -- and we bought tickets for the elevator to the sightseeing platform on the 8th floor of the steeple. You look out past the faces of the clock to views like that below.

Looking down into Reykjavik, concert hall in mid-distance center.

Views taken in, we walked downhill into town, past The Hand-Knitting Association of Iceland (really, and they actually figure in the story later...), and we stopped in a place called Vegamot (which turned out not to be a vegetarian place: vegamot means something like 'crossroads,' or 'where paths cross') for a beer.

This was a chance to try the big beer in the country, from the big Egils brewery, Gull, or "Gold" (pronounced something like "gool (th)", with just a bit of 'l' and a quick flutter on the end; interesting language with an obsession with "th" sounds). "Gold" is a good name for it; it's a decent international pils-type; nothing exciting, but not bad either. Happy to finish it. They also have a "craft" line, called Borg, and we sampled the Blonde (No.4) here -- again, good, not crazy -- and had the IPA at another point -- kinda blunted, but to be honest: there was a lot of old bottled beer in Iceland.

We walked on, and wound up at a nice little place for lunch: Lækjarbrekka, where I had what they called a traditional Icelandic fish stew. (I'd been told about all the Icelandic goodies I should try: whale, puffin, and the fermented shark meat...nowhere we went offered any of them.) It was fairly bland, but good, and did the trick. From here we walked to the Harpa, the large, modern concert hall right on the harborside. It was gorgeous, it was impressive, it was comfortable...it was naptime again. After a nice chat in the comfy chairs at Harpa, I was starting to drift off. We went back to the hotel, I had another snooze, we had dinner at the hotel (an interesting buffet with two different kinds of herring, cod, and chicken, and more vegetables than I've ever seen at a German hotel spread, I'll tell you that)...and after I'd marveled at how bright the light still was at 10:30 PM local...I called it a day.

The next day we would visit Ölvisholt and meet brewer/owner Jon Gunnlauggson...and see volcanoes, ponies, glaciers, fish jerky, moss, steam, and angelica. Back soon.