Genesee Schwarzbier, 2019 return!

I don't know what I love more about this can illustration. Is it the closed eyes, signaling relaxed enjoyment? The full face beard and red flannel of the mountain man? The jaunty pipe -- a PIPE, on a beer label, oh my God! -- with the little design on the bowl?

No, it's gotta be the BIG GLASS OF BEER! The dude is loving that beer. Happy to be here, folks, having a big old schwarzbier.

And so am I, now, and I'm a happy fella. I've been waiting for months for the reappearance of Genesee's Schwarzbier. Yeah, really, a canned seasonal from a lumpy old regional brewery in upstate New York, and it is a happy day that it has returned. My wife brought some home from a visit to her mother outside of Rochester, and I can only hope that it trickles down to Pennsylvania soon.

Schwarzbier has always been a favorite of mine. Dark, flavorful, mild, and utterly drinkable in large quantities. I recall the first time I brought a case of Kostritzer's classic home. I opened one, and started making dinner...and 40 minutes later Cathy came through the door, and somehow 5 bottles were empty.

But it's fairly temperate, so it's all good. Take a big lager-brewed swallow: smooth, creamy mouthfeel, a roasty and chewy flavor, a just slightly tangy finish of black malt, and hurra! We're ready for another!

I'm taking a sixer along to dinner -- Figs, a BYO Mediterranean place in Philly -- and it's going to be welcome. I still recall being at a busy German-tapped bar one night, when a woman came up and asked for "your lightest beer." Give her a Kostritzer, I called, and they did. She looked at me as if to say, 'you're blind,' and I urged her to try it. It WAS the lightest beer they had: the black beer.

Thanks for the winter gift, Genesee!

I Can't Wait: Maker's Mark RC6

I have a table full of whiskey samples waiting to be tasted. I'm working through them. But every now and then...something shows up that I find exciting, and I just have to try it ASAP. That's what happened when I brought home a box that turned out to contain the new Maker's Mark RC6.

RC6 is the 'code-name' of the type of stave used for extra-aging the whisky. Maker's Mark has been working with Independent Stave Co. on a series of staves that can be hung (on special structures of food-grade plastic and stainless steel) in barrels of aged whisky. The staves have been heat-treated in a number of different ways: toasted, charred, infra-red, slow broils. RC6 is a selection by Maker's wood master, Jane Bowie: ten virgin toasted American oak staves.

But what interested me (in the context of having just written Whiskey Master Class) was a note from my Maker's Mark contact that "Jane Bowie spent years perfecting the finishing proof, and it's really special." Proofing, the act of deciding what proof the whiskey should be cut to before entering the bottle and then executing that decision. Here's what I said in the upcoming book:

Adding water changes the alcohol level, which changes the aromas that come forward. More alcohol will carry oak tones; lower the alcohol and the oak backs down, allowing the richer vanilla notes to come out. Distillers will proof whiskeys to different levels to find the optimum aroma profile or to find the level that brings out the particular flavor they’re looking for.
Adding water doesn’t change what flavor components are in a whiskey, nor does it take them away or add them. Adding water changes how whiskey presents itself to your senses, shifts what you sense first or more intensely.
It’s like a person changing her wardrobe. The person is the same, but your perception of them is different.

Jane decided that this whisky, finished with 9 weeks of cold-conditioned RC6 character, was best-dressed at 108.2° proof. Let's find out.

The heat's there, packed full of Juicy-Fruit gum, nutmeg, light clove, and dry cocoa. I drew in a big snoot-full, and got stung by the fire; beware. Light and frisky on the tongue: more spice, sweet pastry dough, and brighter fruits. The alcohol fire is there too, and I wonder...let's add some water. Call me a philistine, but that's lush with the water, more spready on the tongue. To me, it is...yummy, to use Bill Samuels's target phrase.

These limited offerings will be coming out once a year. Should be an interesting class in oak innovation.

Stories, Legends, and Lessons: The Duke, a smoky German, and Wild Turkey's Master's Keep Rye

I can't keep up the level of the Little Book extravaganza every post. I do have more fun ones coming, but there are a LOT more of these straight-up reviews; mostly whiskey, but some beer as well, and maybe a tequila or cognac as they come over the transom.

Without further ado, then.

Duke Kentucky Straight bourbon - Duke Spirits. Since "Duke" is John Wayne, you know there's going to be a story here. Stripped to its essentials, Wayne liked bourbon, and his son Ethan recently found a collection of all his old scripts and old bourbon bottles. He took the bottles to someone who knows whiskey, and apparently asked them if they could figure out what Duke liked, and blend up a bourbon like that. This is the result: a 5 year old Kentucky straight bourbon at 44%.

Well, you know. Interesting story, and even an interesting idea to recreate what bourbon John Wayne liked by blending up something from the evidence of his drinking. But to then call that an "original recipe" dating from 1962 is more than a stretch. It's a story, little better than the "grampa's family recipe" stories that the marketplace is littered with in these times.

In this case, the whiskey should have been where they put the emphasis, because it's not bad at all. There's a nose full of spicy old-timey hard candies and hard oak. It lands well with a good firm mouthfeel, and a mouthful of blueberry cobbler, cough drops and brown sugar. A bit thin on the finish, but I almost feel like I'm searching for a problem. That's pretty good for a 5 year old bourbon. Lean on that.

Palatinatus Single Malt - Destillerie Thomas Sippel, Pfalz, Germany. Aged in American oak, peated malt, distilled in 2014
This time the story is mine. I got an email from an old high school friend, Don Hershey. He'd been to Germany on vacation, and they decided to take in a distillery tour. While doing the tour, he saw a copy of Tasting Whiskey, and mentioned to the tour guide that he knew the author. One thing led to another, and they asked him to please take me this bottle to taste.

Don agreed, and met me for a (perfectly conditioned) glass of bitter at Bulls Head pub in Lititz, PA. He told me the story and gave me the bottle, we got caught up, and I went home to try this German malt whiskey. 

45%. It pours a pale gold. The nose is a fruity smoke, with hints of menthol and leaf smoke. Light and youthful, but not green. Sweet and light on the palate, with bacony smoke up front that backs off to allow a clean maltiness to come through and again, the fruitiness. This is light and pleasant at 5 years, and I'm curious where aging will take it. It could use more integration, and that's exactly what time should bring. The Germans are doing a lot of whiskey-making, and they certainly know their malt. Keep your eyes on them.



Wild Turkey Master's Keep Cornerstone Rye
 -- Wild Turkey Master's Keep collection. If this is the one you opened the blog post for, well, I'll be honest: me too. I've been a Turkey fan for years (though I've called them out when they take a wrong turn), and this just sounded like a killer. "...a backbone of 9 year old barrels married with a selection of very rare 11 year old barrels."

This is Eddie Russell's selection, his whiskey, and proof that he's learned what I believe is his father's best lesson: old whiskey is just old whiskey. Some folks seem to think rye is just getting started at 9 and 11 years old. Hogwash, and this stuff gives them the lie. Don't buy into that narrative. Taste and see for yourself.

54.5%. Hello, nose. Baked goods (vanilla, honey, nuts, baklava?), fruit pie crust, bit of anise. Open up: I'm tasting spicy hard candy, more honey, hot but not breathless heat, some of that pastry - well-baked and browned - and dry peppermint pastilles. Oak is present but doesn't intrude. Finishes long, with dried fruit, oak, and spices. At 52% rye, this almost drinks more like a high-rye bourbon, but the dryness of the rye makes it different, and delicious.

A great addition to this Master's Keep collection.

Just to keep you interested. While I was tasting whiskeys, Pippin was tasting rawhide. He found this 4 month old American beef hide quite tasty.

The Angel's Share -- whisky movie opens in Philly today

Talk "whisky movie" and people turn blank. Maybe Thunder Road, or if they're Scottish, Whisky Galore, or if you're a real film fanatic, the Uruguayan Whisky (which is not actually about whisky...) but whisky has not been a popular topic for films.

Which is why The Angel's Share is such a delight for a whisky drinker. Usually it takes a few failures for filmmakers to get the feel of a genre right (look at how many dopey tries they took at Batman before Heath Ledger licked his lips to perfection), but this? Bang, first pour, right out of the bottle. There's a real distillery (three of them, actually: Balblair, Deanston, and Glengoyne), real whiskies (Robbie, the main character, guesses Glenfarclas on a blind tasting; it's a Cragganmore), real tasting (nosing, Glencairn glasses, picking apart aroma/flavor notes), and a real whisky expert, Charlie MacLean, who does a great job in a supporting role as "Rory McAlister", essentially playing his own affable, greatly knowledgeable self. But the whisky star of the movie is a cask of Malt Mill, a real unicorn of whisky, from an Islay distillery that closed in 1962 and was never bottled as a single malt. If there's anything that would open the eyes of a whisky fancier...that's it.

Charlie MacLean (left) leads a tasting that includes Harry and Robbie (far right).

So, that's the whisky part, which is well-done. The film part that kept my family watching through our preview is a gritty tale of redemption through whisky...and crime. Robbie (Paul Brannigan) is a Glasgow scrapper, a vicious street thug, to be honest, but he's charmed Leonie (Siobhan Reilly), a gentler girl who manages to hold him through her pregnancy and presents him with a son. But even in the hospital, he's jumped by old enemies who seem determined to drag him back into the pit with them. He runs, and evades them, and returns to his 300 hours of public service to pay off his crimes.

That's where he's met Harry (John Henshaw), the work trainer who sees the best in his charges. Harry's patience and love for Scotch whisky eventually leads to a weekend trip for Paul and three of his public service mates (Rhino, Albert, and the light-fingered Mo) to visit Deanston distillery for a tour. Robbie discovers he has a nose, and a growing love for the the best of whisky. Harry takes him on, and they go to a tasting hosted by Rory, where the plot suddenly develops: the cask of Malt Mill is to be auctioned off, and Robbie hatches a plot to steal enough to give he and his friends enough to get out of the pit.

Mo, Albert, Robbie, and Rhino: ready for the Highlands

The ensuing caper is grueling (imagine walking miles in a kilt when you're not...pre-chafed), funny (the French tourist letting the young Scotsman know his kilt's on backwards), disgusting (whisky decanted into Irn Bru bottles), and expanding (as the urban Scots encounter the Highlands). But it is Robbie's path to adult responsibility, and his growth into a serious, sober father is charming.

The scenery in the film is great, the whisky chat is spot-on. The rage and violence in the beginning is shocking (there's a lot of f-bombing, but it wears off quickly), but Robbie's grief when confronted by the results of what he's done is genuine; he's been shocked too. He wants to change, to be a father to his son, a man for his new family...and whisky gives him the opportunity. Worth a look.

The Angel's Share won the 2012 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize. It was directed by Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley). And it opens in Philadelphia today, at the Ritz Five.

Book review: America Walks Into A Bar

I'm interested in Prohibition: how it happened, how it was/was not enforced, and particularly how it has shaped America's drinking culture, laws, and preferences, right down to the current day. So I like reading books about the era, and there have, happily, been some good ones out lately after a long period with nothing (and the Ken Burns documentary, too).

Christine Sismondo's America Walks Into A Bar goes a step further; quite a few steps, actually. Sismondo starts in colonial America -- early colonial America -- and reveals something I'm pretty sure I never heard before: it's quite likely that the Salem Witch Trials had, at their base, competition between two families of tavern owners. It started with a "tax" revolt (a refusal to supply firewood to a hired preacher), and the bad feelings grew as the competing taverns tried to get more of the traveler trade. Sismondo uses this to show how the tavern -- the bar, the public house, the inn -- has been at the center of so many American movements.

Another one? The gay rights movement. Bars -- often raided by homophobic police and politicians, and just as often re-opened -- were natural gathering places for homosexuals; rules were already lax in bars, and the door was traditionally subject to control. Sismondo tells tales of bars run by characters like Big Nellie in New Orleans (and her regulars: "Lady Richard, Lady Beulah Toto, Lady Fresh and Chicago Belle"), Fat Tony Lauria, the New York mobster who opened the Stonewall Inn -- where gay rights would become direct action -- Paul Ruquy (who ran The Tool Box in San Francisco), and the legally nimble Sal Stoumen, who ran the Black Cat Cafe in San Francisco -- site of much of the madness in Kerouac's On The Road, and a favorite of Allen Ginsberg, William Saroyan, and John Steinbeck. Jose Sarria, a Black Cat waiter turned drag performer, ran for city supervisor in 1961, 12 years before Harvey Milk ran for office; and he almost won, according to Sismondo.

She covers Prohibition as well, of course, and Shays Rebellion, and the Whiskey Rebellion, those last explosions of revolutionary thinking that would be tamped down by the strengthening federal government. She talks about the labor movement's association with bars, ethnic groups that felt at home in bars, how women came to feel at home in bars (in unregulated speakeasies, and they'd never leave, happily!). That's her theme throughout the book: bars and taverns were places where people met, discussed grievances, and often decided to take action. Or action against the bars: she covers the growing temperance movements of the 1800s, and the political corruption associated with the bar business (and the brewing and distilling industries) that gave temperance the solid footing to succeed politically in a modernizing climate.

Sismondo brings new stories to light -- and believe me, I've heard a lot of them, but I was happy to see new ones in plenty here -- but never falls into dry scholarship. Even given the material, this could easily have been a tediously overwritten book, but -- as is almost promised by the dustcover photo, posed with cocktail glass in hand -- Sismondo is a better host than that. The footnotes -- thank you! -- show the scholarship and research, but the writing is great race-along stuff; interesting, amusing, and beguiling.

I've talked about the loss of the neighborhood bar myself, and perhaps prematurely mourned it. Sismondo's final chapter reassured me; action does still take place in bar, though it may seem to be a bit anticlimactic compared to the titanic struggles over liberty and individual freedom that America's bars have hosted in the past. She discusses how live music became allowed in bars (it wasn't before? Who knew!), how smoking is more often not being allowed, and finally, the kiddie revolt: overbearing parents bringing kids to bars, blocking the floor with huge strollers, and allowing the little ones to run around unchecked...hey, I took my kids to bars, and they behaved, dammit!

Sismondo has a book here about what bars have meant in America. We've loved them, hated them, banned them, embraced them, argued in them, sung and danced in them. You'll feel positively warm about them after reading this fascinating book.

New gig at All About Beer

I'll be taking over John Hansell's seat in All About Beer's long-running Beer Talk beer review section, effective immediately. John's handing over the next four beers to be reviewed to me tomorrow. I'm honored to be part of this small, select group, and doubly-honored that John nominated me directly to the magazine staff as his replacement. Should be fun, swapping review opinions with Steve Beaumont.

The Bartender's Gin Compendium

One of the people in Louisville with John and I this past weekend was Gary Regan. Gary's a good friend, and a wonderful story-teller, a nice guy and a great champion of cocktails and the folks who make them. We had a very good time with him Saturday night at the bar at Proof, as he bantered with the bartenders there (and ogled, openly, one of the very nice ladies behind the bar; it's an odd part of his charm).

Gary gave John and I each a copy of his new book, The bartender's GIN compendium (that's a link to buy the book, only available on-line...I think), which, you'll note in the picture to the left, is attributed to "gaz regan." "Gaz," he explained, is the nickname of practically everyone in the UK named "Gary," and his friends there all call him Gaz. We, he said, could call him that, or continue to call him Gary, whichever we were comfortable with. Gary, then.

Anyway, I don't know nearly enough about gin, so I started reading the book when I woke up way too early on Sunday morning, continued to read it in the airport and on the flight home, and just finished it. It took me back 30 years to when I was just starting to drink and wanted to learn everything about booze...which eventually left me with some odd bits of knowledge about pisco and advocaat, a desire for cocktails no one then seemed to know how to make -- I certainly couldn't, and still can't, to my shame -- and the decision that what I really liked to drink was beer, so I'd just learn about that. (And thanks to Michael Jackson and a lot of other good people, I did, and then John Hansell came along and I learned about whiskey, too.)

GIN brought back that fascination, that sense that there was so much out there that was possible to enjoy. I learned a lot about gin, and what a great time to do it. Gin is resurgent, much like my beloved whiskeys. Much was made of the ascendency of "white spirits" like vodka, white rum, and gin over the past 40 years, but gin was the weak sister of the bunch, overshadowed by the others. If my wife hadn't been such a summer devotee of gin and tonics, I'd never have seen gin at all. My mother claims to be allergic to the stuff, getting a pounding headache after only a drink or two of it, so I assumed I'd be the same, and never gave it a chance.

Now gin's exploding -- in a small way -- in a new profusion of brands that tweak the definition. There are distilleries small and large making new gins, older gins -- Plymouth, Old Tom, and genever -- are getting more attention and new iterations, and of course, bartenders -- cocktailians, as Gary says -- are making lots more of both classic gin cocktails and new inventions. The time seemed right for a book.

What about the book? It runs the history of gin, borrowing from other sources -- at times you get the feeling that David Wondrich just didn't have time to write a gin book, so Gary did it for him; though with those two as thick as thieves, it's hard to separate the ideas at times -- then into descriptions of the major botanicals, and then into the meat of the book: descriptions of dry gins, Plymouth gin, Old Toms, and genevers, followed by a thick sheaf of excellent cocktail recipes and mixing suggestions.

The descriptions may be problematic for some. Gary relied on the distillers to write most of this. At first I wasn't that comfortable with this, particularly since the distillers sponsored the book, to the tune of payments for the inclusion of logos and bottle-shots. But...I mean, we know this because Gary tells us so, right up front, including what distillers paid for and supplied, and what they didn't. He did, after all, self-publish the book, and so he's kind of in the position of being the editor and publisher: are magazines that accept advertising independent or not? I decided that being forewarned -- and Gary certainly forewarns you! -- was forearmed, and took all of that with a grain of salt.

That said, I like having the distillers talk about their gins, particularly when Gary invites them to "Tell us why you think your gin stands apart from all the others" and asks if there are "Any other idiosyncrasies that you'd like to tell us about?" Some marketonic stuff, but also some very interesting details and perspectives, too.

About the self-publishing: there were times when my editor's eye twitched: typos, duplicate phrases, grammar (really, not just Englishisms). There were times the layout betrayed the flow. And the black&white snapshots look like black&white snapshots. Grainy ones.

Bitch, bitch, bitch. It was never enough to keep me from enjoying this book a lot, partly thanks to something I haven't even gotten to mentioning yet: Gary's voice. He's young and old, self-deprecating and full of great stories about great times, making clever asides that he doesn't even bother to parenthesize. The 'recipe' for Gin and Tonic, for example: "I seem to have lost the recipe for this one, so I'm hoping you'll be able to figure it out for yourself. If memory serves it works well with a wedge of lime as a garnish." Yes, indeed.

Add a lot of great gin quotes from literature -- which helps to hammer home just what a place gin has in English-speaking literature -- and some razzle-dazzle, and the regulations for what gin is, and an appreciated cocked snook at vodka... you'll understand why I advise you to buy this book and start drinking gin.

Turkish fish and such

Forgot to put this up last Friday. We were going to go down to the Grey Lodge for Christmas in July, and I figured when Cathy got home, we'd head down into Philly for a quick dinner, just the two of us, and then get beers at the G-Lodge. (Not that I don't like the food there, it's great, but I wanted a chance for Cathy and I to spend some time alone.) I started free-associating a little on Yelp and Chowhound and Google, checking reviews on the local food blogs, and came up with Kilyos Fish & Grill, in Bustleton, a Turkish seafood place. I was intrigued.

I was also wicked pleased. The place itself was nothing to look at: a storefront in a small strip-plaza on Bustleton Ave. But Riza Canca, the owner, greeted us at the door, a very soft-spoken and gently friendly man (he greeted everyone at the door; we were just diners, not reviewers (or drinkers: Kilyos is BYOB, and we didn't BYO, figuring we'd save room for the Christmas treats at the Lodge)), and showed us to a table in the simple, quiet dining room. He explained that the restaurant specialized in simple grilled fish, very fresh, but also had meat and salads.

It smelled wonderful, and we quickly ordered: zucchini pancakes with garlic yogurt sauce (the remnants of which you see above; creamy-rich, with a cool but punchy sauce), eggplant with tomato sauce (if only we knew how to get such a concentration of flavor in eggplant, and what a smooth, melting texture; it could have been less cold, though), and for our meals, St. Peter's Fish (tilapia, filleted and grilled, simple and excellent, without the plastic flakiness I've found in so much tilapia) and grilled lamb patties (juicy, tender, and knock-out aromatic; real lamb what weren't afraid to taste like lamb). We wanted the baklava, but we were both gorged, and promised to come back another time.

God bless the Internet. A storefront in Bustleton, called "Fish & Grill"? (The 'Kilyos' part was hard to find on the sign.) We'd never have found it. So...keep posting reviews on sites like Yelp. It helps. Thanks to everyone who did so for Fish & Grill. It made our Friday.

(Wait, a small rant. Keep posting reviews, but don't be one of those people who bitches about "this waitress" or "the mean bartender." That's not really helpful. If you go back, and service persistently sucks? Okay, mention it, but separate it from the food. I'm willing to put up with crap service if the food's good. Besides...maybe it's you.)

Oh, Christmas in July? Excellent. The Mad Elf alone was worth it, though I went off-topic and got a New Holland Golden Cap Saison, and that was pretty damned good, too.

Don Russell's Christmas Beer book

I meant to get to this a LOT earlier...but things got busy. In a nutshell: if you need to get a GREAT Christmas present for a beerdrinker on your list -- beer drinker, beer fan, beer lover, beer geek, whatever -- buy them Don Russell's Wishing You a Merry Christmas Beer.

I read Don's book over Thanksgiving, when I was so sick I could barely breathe, thought I had pneumonia. Don almost killed me with some of the funny shit in this book; I got to laughing so hard I almost horcked up a lobe at one point. It's got fun writing (of course), it's got solid content (not just beer reviews, real holiday beer research), and the book is a gorgeous piece of production: beautiful semi-gloss cover, solid hard-bound book, sumptious color beer pix inside.

In short, this is a book I truly wish I'd written. If I were someone else I won't name -- older, maybe, and kind of...curmudgeonly -- I'd say that's why it took me so long to get to reviewing it. Truth is, I've been busy and very much involved in some other issues, and I regret the lateness of the hour. But look, there are signings tonight and tomorrow (Wednesday, Dec. 17 - 5 PM at Home Sweet Homebrew (2008 Sansom St., Center City); and 7 PM at Devil’s Den (1148 S 11th St., South Philly, and if you haven't been here yet, you oughta). Thursday, Dec. 18 - The Irish Pol (45 S. 3rd St., Old City). 7 p.m.), you can still buy the book through Amazon in time for Christmas, or buy it directly from Don (which I'm sure makes him more money!)

If the book's not enough... Don's put together a Christmas beer festival on Saturday, Dec. 27 at the Penn Museum (33rd & Spruce streets, University City) from 1-3 PM. Now THAT'S a great idea! You can, of course, get the book (and get it signed) there, too!

Review of New Jersey Breweries

Someone finally noticed that Mark and I put out a book... There's a nice review of New Jersey Breweries up at myCentralJersey.com. Sweet, and just in time for the holidays.

As for her calling me on a "misstep" on putting attractions/lodging in Clinton down for Cricket Hill, well... she's right. Looks like that stuff for Cricket Hill should have been in the Long Valley entry. Not sure what happened there; editorial brainfart on my part, definitely, because I wrote that section. Sorry.