WhiskyFest Chicago: Getting Ready for the Fest

Friday the 13th was Fest Day in Chicago. Cathy and I did a walk in the morning (teased by a tantalizing smell of chocolate being made that I never did track down), then had a healthy oatmeal at a Corner Bakery (a chain, yes, but of Chicago origin, so...) and went back to the Hyatt to get set for the evening. We set up over 2,200 tasting/nosing glasses, the programs and free copies of Malt Advocate, checked the seminar room set-up, prepped the ballroom as much as possible, and then went out to lunch.

We went to the downtown Rock Bottom brewpub at the corner of State and Grand Sts. (had some pix, but they got garbled, sorry), and stepped up to the bar, back by the pool tables. Cathy started with a glass of dry stout (pretty unremarkable stuff, unfortunately), I got the hefeweizen (a Bavarian-type classic, tilted towards the banana side and deliciously fresh and zesty). Our bartender, Autumn, also got us two barrel-aged samples: an impie stout (good, bourbony, but could have been more robust for an impie) and a winter warmer (excellent: big and malty, with rich bourbon-infused depth).

We ordered lunch and sipped and chatted. The place looked a lot like the Denver RB: dark honey-colored wood, broken up into a series of medium-sized rooms (we were actually in a kind of alcove, an ell of the bar), an older look rather than the more modern look of RB King of Prussia. I finished my wheat and ordered a Brown Bear Brown Ale (good -- a chocolate edge, drinkable, with a nice touch of mineral dryness).

Lunch came: I had a smoked chicken enchilada with rice & beans and some kind of potato corn hot salad...thing, all quite good; Cathy had a portabella melt on a small focaccia-type roll (juicy without being wet, nice) and barbecue beans (great flavor, but the onion straws on top quickly got soggy and yucky). We split on two sides: brown ale-braised mushrooms (delicious, done just right, and enriched by the ale) and roasted asparagus (not so: underdone -- I like it crisp but not crunchy -- and not so flavorful). I'd love to see more restaurants do this steakhouse-style vegetable side thing.

We walked back to the Hyatt, Cathy read and took a nap while I drank coffee and wrote the entry on Thursday. We showered and got dressed, and went downstairs about 3:00. Time to get to work.

WhiskyFest Chicago: Playing around

Cathy and I flew out to Chicago on Thursday to work WhiskyFest Chicago, part of being on the Malt Advocate team. We got a quick run into downtown from O'Hare, checked in, and saw a load of whiskey folks while we are the front desk: Kris Comstock of Buffalo Trace (I asked him if Sazerac prez Mark Brown had been embarrassed by the cover article I wrote on him and the distillery in the current issue; yes, he was! Mark's a real team guy, staying in the background, but his story was so darned compelling that he wound up being the anchor of the piece), Julian and Preston Van Winkle, Elmer T. Lee (Buffalo Trace distiller emeritus and just a real nice fella), and Richard Paterson, master blender at The Dalmore. Good people, and we'd be seeing more of them shortly, but right now we wanted to get a drink!

So we ran up to our rooms, dumped our stuff, freshened up a bit, and grabbed two cabs. It was me, Cathy, John Hansell, and the husbands of our current and former office managers: Jim McGinley and Jamie Fox. We were headed for the Clark Street Ale House, our favorite, never-miss stop in Chicago. Except we're here once a year or so, and we're not completely clear on where it is ("It's easy," I told Cathy, "you go over to Clark Street, turn right, and walk till you get there."), so we wound up giving the cab drivers directions to Fado.

What? Hey, we're dopes, but we're adaptable dopes. "Guys," I said, "This is not a problem. I just happen to have here a $25 gift card for Fado that I got for Christmas. Let me stand you a round of Guinness!" And that's just what we did. Good jar, too.

Then we went to Clark Street. They were just opening, and Erin, the bartender, wiped things down, set out fresh pretzel rods, and took our orders. John and I, as we almost always do, got pints off the handpump, which was an exceptionally delicious barrel of 3 Floyds Pride & Joy Mild. I'll tell you, it was superb. If anything, it was only flawed by being maybe too exuberantly hoppy...but we were of a mind to forgive it that tiny flaw. Damned nice beer. Cathy got a Great Lakes Ed Fitz Porter, always a good choice. Second round: I got the Two Brothers French Country Ale, a solidly malty ale with a nice dry edge to it. A favorite when we're here.

Then we headed to Binny's for their pre-WhiskyFest tasting. Wow. I had two great tastes of Laphroaig, the Quarter Cask (breathtakingly peaty, but bright and lively, fresh air whisky) and the 30 Year Old (classy, smooth, still peaty but mellow with it). I got a quick hit of Canadian Club Classic 12 Year Old (sweet, but not mawkish with it, a nice whisky), some Stranahan's (still not doing it for me), two Caol Ila's (a 12 year old that was quite lively, and a 25 that was just delicious), a Ledaig (had to try it cuz I just learned how to pronounce it: "Leh check"), and a Bruichladdich (wurf, peat, malt, some fruit, nice whole). I was busy.

We were in need of some refreshment, and the Duke of Perth was right down the street, so...off we went. I got a Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted IPA (fruity, bitter, fresh, real drinkable) and Cathy got a Summit Maibock.

We would have stayed, but we had dinner reservations for Maza, a Lebanese restaurant across from Delilah's. Wow, was it ever good. We let the owner, Joe, talk us into "a feast!" and he was so right. Maza, he told us, means something like 'tapas,' and he just kept bringing more little plates out: baskets of fresh pita (still warm), hummus, tabbouleh, kibbeh, roasted eggplant, chicken with couscous, shrimp with couscous, lamb/beef sausages (grilled all up and delish), and kebabs. Plenty of Lebanese red wine (a very nice cab/syrah blend) and Almaza Lebanese beer. Dessert was cashew baklavah and orange rice pudding, with coffee spiced with cardamom. We were stuffed and happy, what a fantastic meal.

So a couple of us went across the street to Delilah's to thank owner Mike Miller for making the recommendation to go to Maza. That's where we were joined by regular Malt Advocate writer and Chicago native Terry Sullivan. We had one beer, then Sullivan packed me into his little Scion boxmobile (see below; surprisingly comfortable, even on Sullivan's 6'4" frame, and as he said, "If I ever run out of work, I can always deliver bread") and we whipped off to the Old Town Ale House, one of his favorite bars, and had one more beer before I begged for mercy and went back to the hotel. And that was Thursday. More later about the Fest.

Tax Time

If you're wondering where I am...I'm up to my neck in receipts and mileage diaries, doing taxes. I had hoped to be doing posts on whiskey this week, leading up to WhiskyFest Chicago, but as usual, poor planning has put me at the Windy Corner of Taxes.

But it's not all bad. The one thing I like about tax time is that it calls for going back through all my notebooks, where I keep mileages, expenses (you'd be amazed how many bars just aren't set up for receipts, and tips only get recorded if you do them on credit card, which I don't like to do: I was a bartender, and cash is better), and dates.

And so tax time means re-living my year in beer and booze. The trip my dad and I took to western PA last summer, in the frothy ferment of new breweries out there, was all there in little scratches on the paper. The hops trip to A-B's Idaho ranch, with page after page of deep hop research by Dr. Val Peacock (and pint after pint of roaring IPAs at the bar in Couer d'Alene). The fascinating and peaceful visit to Laird's, a little corner of Kentucky quiet in New Jersey. And Monk's dinners, many-splendored and studded with memories of stand-out food, ethereal beers, and laughter with solid friends.

Like I said; it's not all bad. But it does mean that I'm not blogging...so that's where I am. I'll get back to it in Chicago.

Repeal: a Lesson Learned, Never to be Forgotten

Cheers!

Today is the 74th anniversary (apologies for getting my math wrong earlier!) of the first fruits of Repeal, when FDR and the new Congress jiggered the Volstead Act to allow sales of 3.2% ABW beer (heh, and light wines, but no one ever remembers that!) after thirteen years of Prohibition, and 20 states (and the District, of course) took them up on it. The 21st Amendment wouldn't be ratified for another eight months, but Americans had their beer back, and we celebrated.

According to Will Anderson's From Beer to Eternity, triumphant throngs surrounded breweries and "cheered themselves hoarse." I woulda been there, better believe it. Anderson quotes that beer was "flowing freely and in great volume" in Philadelphia; the country consumed over 1,000,000 barrels of beer in just that one day.

Victory Brewing, who has used "Resist Prohibition" as a slogan for years (God bless them), brews a beer for occasions just such as this: Throwback Lager, a "pre-Prohibition pilsner," brewed using yeast from the old-school Philadelphia Christian Schmidt brewery and "a small portion of brewer's corn." Throwback to the old days, and 'throwback' because that's what you'll do, throw back another one. Great quaffing beer, and just under my SBP parameters at 5.4% ABV, which is what you need to celebrate a day like this.

On a day like this...remember that beer is a drink of moderation, that most of it is drunk in good health, and that most beer drinkers are solid citizens, not drunken reprobates. Don't let people talk you into being embarrassed to drink beer, don't let people talk you into raising taxes on beer, don't let people talk you into restricting beer. Because we already fought that fight. And today we celebrate the Victory.

How I Broke My Fast

After I'd had my second Rochefort, and sung Good Friday services (singing bass in an a capella octet), it was time to have the main meal of the day. I stopped at the fish counter at the Newtown Farmer's Market, and got two nice chunks of tuna and two soft shell crabs, then stopped at the supermarket on the way home and got a pound of large shrimp.

Cathy made a pot of fettucine while I melted a couple tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. That's how I did the crabs, just butter, salt, and pepper. I did the shrimp in another skillet, with olive oil, plenty of garlic, and lemon juice. I would have liked to add some white wine, but we were out (We're fixing that tomorrow), and some capers, but Nora doesn't care for them.

When the shrimps were done, we tossed them with more olive oil and the fettucine. I gave the skillet a quick wipe, added peanut oil and sesame oil, heated it up, and tossed the tuna in with a good shake of coarse sea salt. We put big bowls of salad (Romaine, red leaf, and some nice spring mix) out, and whole wheat bread and chevre.

What to drink, though? After some reflection, I had a bottle of New Belgium Springboard Ale, a spring seasonal that's a kind of wit-like thing, but 6.2% ABV, with an addition of oats, and spiced with Wormwood, Goji berries, and Schisandra...whatever the hell that is. Springboard was a perfect choice for the meal: the edge of the flavors cut the garlic and the richness of the tuna, the carbonation lifted the cheese and the olive oil, and it just tuned beautifully with the chevre. Best of all, it didn't overwhelm the crabs, which were excellent, delicious, juicy. I do love living near the Chesapeake this time of year.

The Session: Dubbel, a Holy Beer

It's Good Friday. And it's The Session (a first-Friday joint blog by a bunch of beer-loving-bloggers). Time to blog about dubbels.

I'm a cantor at my church, St. Andrew's in Newtown, PA. As a cantor, this is Holy Week, but it's also hell week: I sang Palm Sunday, had long rehearsals Tuesday and Wednesday nights, sang Holy Thursday services last night (I'd like to do the 11:00 PM prayer next year), and in about three hours, I'll be in my choir robe, singing the poignantly piercing music of Good Friday, one of the heaviest services of the year. Follow that with the intense two hours of Easter Vigil mass (in which I'm carrying the big candle into the church again: big guys get the duty), and then back up for a massively musical Easter morning mass, and by 1:00 Easter afternoon, I'll be truly ready to break my Lenten fast...and maybe take a nap after a couple beers.

But today... Good Friday is a fast day, on top of being meatless in Lent. I got into the spirit of sacrifice early, and drove down to the Red Cross donor center in northeast Philly to do apheresis, 90 minutes hooked up to a machine that strips a pint of platelets out of my blood while I listen to my MP3 player (my "MePod") and read Red, White, and Drunk All Over, Natalie MacLean's extremely well-written wine book that I am enjoying immensely.

Back home, grab the laptop, pet the dog, say hi to Cathy and the kids, and I'm back out the door, running on two cups of coffee and a piece of bread with peanut butter at 7:00 AM. Fast day.

So with all the Catholic freight of the day, with all the meaning this day has for me -- it's not just singing: I'm a faithful Catholic, and Good Friday rings me like a gong -- I decided that for my dubbel drinking for The Session, it had to be aTrappist dubbel. I went to Isaac Newton's, here in town, and got a Rochefort 8.

The pour was a bit turbid, unfortunately, but the yeasty, spicy, fruity aromas make me feel better about it. There's a solid cap of mousse on the top, with a little rip of brown where some yeast clouded through. It's a mix of tiny, tiny bubbles and bigger ones that are still not the chunky spheres you'd see in a coarser beer.

"Coarser beer?" Judgmental? You bet. Because when I take a sip of the stuff, and get that bountiful flavor, so much that it takes me a while to sort it out (which isn't helped by the pungent cigarette smoke in the bar): light fruity notes, like a just-ripe pear or a white nectarine, a lift of surprising dryness in the back of the mouth, and a wonderful, eerily refreshing character for a 9% beer...when I take a sip of Rochefort 8, a whole lot of other beers pale in comparison, and I ain't talking Lovibond. And I realize that the fasting is perfect. My tastebuds and palate are hungry and quivering, the beer tastes alive on them.

This beer (and the food...always the food) is one of the main reasons I have to go to Belgium (that's right, folks: Lew's never been to Belgium. Never been to the UK, either). Because I want to emulate a mentor, John Hansell, and sit in a cafe all afternoon and drink my fill of it (John did that with Westvleteren, but the emotion's the same). I could do that here, but the cost is prohibitive.

Ha! So instead, I'm going to buy an airline ticket, stay in a hotel, rent a car...eh, the madness great beer can inspire, and the cheerfulness with which we accept it. Another dubbel will wreck me, with nothing in my belly but the memory of wheat bread and chunky-style...but I want one. Oh, dear. Because it does drink so nice.

Is beer holy? Is Trappist beer holy? Is anything holy? My patron, my chosen saintly guide, is St. Augustine, who I chose because what attracted me to the Church originally was the rigor and depth of its theology, of the time and brilliance brought to bear on understanding the mysteries of Christ. But I can claim no such theological weight for myself. I know more than most about Church history because of college studies, but holiness? It's beyond me.

Goodness and rectitude are more my speed. I can attest to the goodness of the Rochefort. Its depth continues to intrigue me, and it is a wonder how this beer can be 9%, rich and chocolatey and complex in flavor, and yet drink like a session pale ale.

I'll go with tradition: these beers are fast-evaders, monks' cheats for holy days. I'll order another. But I'm just going to enjoy it by myself. A private prayer, if you will. And then I'll go home, get a hot shower to open up my throat, and robe up to praise the sacrifice that makes me, even me, a holy child of God. Which is why today, Good Friday...it's dubbel or nothing.

Alabama beer ABV cap debate

I'm not a big YouTube fan: there's so much crap out there. But...I picked up this link off BeerAdvocate: YouTube - Debate on BIR for HB195

It's audio of a recent committee debate in the Alabama legislature on whether to change the law to remove an alcohol cap of 6% on beer. It's both priceless and pathetic.

TWO new PA brewpubs opening very soon

[Actually, make that two PA brewpubs open now, as of April 6, and congratulations to all involved. Both places are now officially open: go enjoy!]

Triumph Old City, Philly's first new brewpub in seven years, opens on Thursday, April 5 (117 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, 215/625-0855). There are at least two more brewpubs on the way for the city, and maybe a couple more in the wings. Things are looking good.

Union Barrel Works, the long-awaited Reamstown brewpub from Tom Rupp, opens...soon. (6 N. Reamstown Rd., Reamstown (MapQuest calls this Stevens, I don't buy it, but what do I know?), 717/335-7837). I talked to Tom's wife Amy yesterday, and there are still a few inspections to go. If you've been following this, you know that inspections have been a trial for UBW (and Tom), so she didn't want to set an opening date (which some folks predicted as early as last November...). Amy promised to let me know when they have a firm date.

Samuel Adams to be brewed in Latrobe

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (and other papers) are reporting that Boston Beer and City Brewing have agreed to brew an undisclosed amount of Samuel Adams beers at the Latrobe brewery, formerly the home of Rolling Rock. It's a beaut of a modern brewery, and this will be good news for Latrobe and for City Brewing...and for Pennsylvania.

Latrobe plant to brew beer for Boston Beer Co. - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Bacardi Sniffing at Bourbon?

Miller Brewing's BrewBlog tipped me off to this brief squib in an LA Times story about the new directions Bacardi is taking under new CEO Andreas Gembler. What caught their interest was that Bacardi was angling to buy Absolut, currently owned by the Swedish government; the Swedes are making noises about selling it off. But what caught my interest was this line:

"Gembler says Bacardi could expand into other kinds of spirits and that it would like to own a cognac and an American whiskey — to cash in on the increasing popularity of the category."

Follow the money: American whiskey is heating up. Heaven Hill is expanding production and bottling capability. Maker's Mark doubled their distilling capability a few years ago. Good news for American whiskey makers, and eventually, for American whiskey drinkers.