Russell's Reserve Small Batch Single Barrel Bourbon

Okay, I had more than one...

We first got a taste of this last year at WhiskyFest San Francisco. A very excited Robin Coupar strode up with a sample bottle, and told me that this was a first: a single barrel from Wild Turkey, selected by Jimmy and Eddie Russell. It was Wild Turkey all the way through: full and rich, with full-throated oaky sweetness, but sparked by youthful mint and cinnamon, and a wonderful spread through the mouth; reminiscent of Rare Breed, but a fuller drink. He promised he'd get me more.

And so he did, and I got too busy to do a proper tasting of it. My apologies, to Robin and to you, because this does deserve your attention. First, it's worth noting that although it's 110° proof/55% ABV, it is easy to drink without water. I'm having it as my first whiskey of the day; I usually need to warm up my mouth a bit to take on a 55% without water. Nicely done.

A few more things: there's no age statement, no "X Years Old," and no real suggestion on that. It's non-chill filtered (whiskeys are often chilled, which causes some proteins to precipitate in a haze, and then filtered; this keeps the whiskey from getting (unappealingly) hazy if it gets cold in shipment or storage, but some of us like the whole thing, protein and all), which is appealing to the whiskey geek in me, and unusual in an American whiskey. Suggested retail is about $50. And it is in the Russell's Reserve line, and we're assured that Jimmy and Eddie are both doing the selection...so you've got continuity. I do not know why it's both "small batch" and "single barrel;" I would think that single barrel would imply small batch! Belts, suspenders, whatever; Jimmy's got a sense of humor!

It is tasty, in a way that is rare in such a big-hammer proofing. The mint is hot, but the sweetness and the the citrus/orange notes smooth it right out. Right nice indeed; well-done!

Truman Cox: gone too soon

Truman (on right) and Valley Malt's Christian Stanley

I received tragic news today. My very good friend, Truman Cox, the young, gifted, and extremely personable master distiller at A. Smith Bowman in Fredericksburg, Va., died suddenly last night. I am devastated at this news, and my heart and prayers go out to his wife and daughter.
Truman had just reached his life goal; becoming a master distiller. He was enjoying his new job -- and bottling some excellent whiskey! -- having great fun as husband and father, and happy as a pig in shit. He was technically gifted, and had an absolutely honest pleasure in working, in explaining the distillery to visitors, and in spreading the good word about whiskey.

Truman Cox was one of my best friends, in or out of the industry, and I am missing him terribly already. Too young, too fast...oh, too bad, too bad!

Philly Loves Lagers: hello, Philly Bierfest!

Gearing up for the second annual Philly Bierfest on February 23rd (1-5), and I'm starting to get a lager Stiffe. The German Society of Philadelphia is hosting the event, along with Brauhaus Schmitz and the Philly Roller Girls (that's right: women-owned and operated roller derby!).

You know I love me some smooth, cold-matured lager loveliness, and there's no place like Pennsylvania to get great fresh examples; er, outside of Germany, that is! For your $45 ticket (or $60 VIP), you'll get lagers and weizens from fantastic Pennsylvania breweries like this: 

Appalachian Brewing Co.          Berwick Brewing Co.
Lancaster Brewing Co.             The Lion Brewery
Pennsylvania Brewing Co.         Philadelphia Brewing Co.
Manayunk Brewing Co.            Neshaminy Creek Brewing Co.
Nodding Head Brewery             Round Guys Brewing Co.
Sly Fox Brewing Co.                Stoudts Brewing Co.
Straub Brewery                       Susquehanna Brewing Co.
Victory Brewing Co.                Yuengling and Sons Brewery

Meanwhile, down in the Ratskellar, the beer-loving folks from The Foodery will be pouring beers from German breweries like Ayinger, Jever, Trauenstein, and a number of smaller, less-familiar (and delish) brewers, including one possible surprise they're still working on; keep your fingers crossed that this famous doublebock makes it in!

Why am I plugging this? What, a guy can't like lagers? Okay, okay: I'm plugging it because I'm in it, a member of the Brewer’s Discussion Panel on ‘Lager-Love and the Resurgence of Session Styles’ (I swear, I had nothing to do with the title!) at 4 pm in the Society's historic Horner Memorial Library.

Other members of the panel? Artie Tafoya, of Appalachian Brewing (and a past-master of hefe-brewing), Bill Covaleski of Victory Brewing (where they've been known to brew a lager or ten), and German beer importer Lars Dahlhaus. It's moderated by Marnie Old, Philly's best-known sommelier...who is also a fierce proponent of beers, especially lagers. We'll have a few good things to talk about.

I hope you can remember to come hear us, after three hours of lager, weissbier, great German eats from Brauhaus Schmitz (snacks for freesies, more substantial -- and the Germans do know "substantial" -- eats for additional bucks), and the bluegrass picking of the Keystone Mountain Boys. 

What do you get for that extra $15 for the VIP ticket? You get a bigger cup...and if that's not enough, you also get in at noon for a tutored tasting on German beer styles by Marnie. Trust me, there are more German beer styles than most people know. It's more than just light lager/dark lager/strong lager/wheat!

Oh, and the Roller Girls. Don't you worry about them, you'll understand that soon enough. So...check it out here, and I'll see you there!

The German Society -- 611 Spring Garden St.  Philadelphia, PA  19123

Joe Sixpack puts me in the Wayback Machine

From Don "Joe Sixpack" Russell's Weekly Update email newsletter today, a note that took me way, way back:

Orkney Skull Splitter is making a big deal about sending Philly it's "first" U.S. draft ever. Its supposed debut is next Thursday (1/24) at P.O.P.E. (South Philly). I coulda sworn I'd had it on draft before, so I checked my notes and found that Jim Anderson, the former Philly beer entrepreneur, served a cask of it at his appropriately named Split Thy Skull barleywine fest 12 years ago... Just for kicks, check out what else was on tap at Sugar Mom's (Old City) on April 14, 2001:

• Hair of the Dog Fred
• Heavyweight Old Salty
• New Road Ichor
• Nodding Head Old Willie's Ghost
• Rogue Imperial Stout
• Schloss Eggenberger Samichlaus
• Stoudt's Scotch Style
• Valley Forge Imperial Stout
• Victory Blacker and Tanner
• Weyerbacher Quad
• Yards Old Bart 

I borrowed this from the Tattooed Mom's website.

Look at that list. Heavyweight, New Road, Valley Forge: all closed (though Heavyweight's Tom Baker owns/brews at Earth, Bread + Brewery, and New Road brewer Brian O'Reilly is the famed head brewer at Sly Fox). Nodding Head: new brewer. Stoudt's: substantially different brewery and beer line-up. Victory: much bigger and building a very large production brewery. Weyerbacher: moving into a large expansion this week. Yards: split up, and booming.

Things change...but they remain the same, too. Great beers in this town. Great beer people. And yes...Split Thy Skull XVII is on for March 30 (as always, the day before Easter, from which stems my long-running habit of having a few very strong beers before singing the Easter Vigil mass) at Tattooed Mom's. Haven't been in a while; maybe it's time to take up that cross again. Thanks for the wake-up call, Don!

Yuengs for your Wings

Can't believe this took so long: Yuengling has launched a line of Barbecue and Wing sauces incorporating their beers: Lager, Light Lager, Porter, and Black and Tan. Check it out here. This should be a runaway success.

Winding up the year, starting the next one

Early Thursday morning

Well...I had a really horrible 9 hour drive through Wednesday's snowstorm (a drive that usually takes about 5 hours) to my in-laws in upstate New York. But at the end of it, we got stuck into some seriously good beers: DC Brau's On The Wings of Armageddon (a jaw-slapping double IPA) and a jug of Selin's Grove's SNAFU IPA from Friday the 21st (when Nora and I dropped in at the brewpub for their 16th anniversary), and then some Smuttynose Big Beers: Zinneke (a Belgian-type stout that was good but wasn't fantastic), Scottish (delicious malt pillow), and Gravitation (a marvelous quad-type that really kept the malt train rolling along, rich and tongue-heavy).

Thursday...we recovered, and then Friday the bros-in-law and I went out to Sticky Lips BBQ in Henrietta, NY. The catfish was good (the fried pickles were just okay), the ribs were good, and the pulled pork was great. I had an Ed Fitz Porter (an always favorite) and a Three Heads The Kind IPA (excellently hoppy and brisk, even more so at $4 a 16 oz. glass). I had some GoldenCold when we got home. Saturday? Another long drive through snow, and some beers at the end...and a few more tonight.

But look, tomorrow is New Year's Day! As we've done for a few years now, we'll be going to Memphis Taproom for a late lunch (they have their full brunch menu from 11 AM to 3 PM NYE and NYD; late lunch, late breakfast, whatever, right?), then picking up some bratwurst at Rieker's for our midnight grillfest. I've got a magnum of Dupont Avec les Bons Vouex for the celebration.

Now, New Year's Day is a conflicting set of traditions for me. I've been watching the Mummer's Parade since I was a little kid -- on television, never been able to get down there... -- but Cathy has never understood, appreciated, or wanted to get anywhere near the Mummers. At all. Which may have something to do with why I've never been able to get to the parade, come to think of it. The other tradition is spending the day with my brother-in-law Carl and his family...but they couldn't make it this year; neither could we, actually. So we're on our own, and it turns out that there are some really good things to do on New Year's Day.

Like we may start at Monk's Cafe,where Tom and Fergie have started their own odd little tradition of serving all stouts (and one excellent sour, TBA) on NYD. Here's the list so far:
1. Allagash Bourbon Black
2. Alvinne Catherine The Great3. Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout
4. Dogfish Head Bitches Brew
5. Dogfish Head Chicory Stout
6. Dupont Monks Stout7. Dogfish Head World Wide Stout
8. Emelisse Russian Imperial Stout
9. Founder's Breakfast Stout10. Great Divide oak aged Yeti
11. Lost Abbey Deliverance (cellared for a year)
12. Sierra Nevada Narwhal Imperial Stout
13. Stoudt's Fat Dog Stout
14. New Holland Poet Oatmeal Stout
15. Bells Java Stout
16. Laughing Dog Dogfather Imperial Stout
17. Smuttynose Zinneke Belgian-style Stout

Pretty sure we can find something (fancy a Narwhal?).

Then we've got a private drop-in party to hit, followed by the annual whoopee at Local 44, where they celebrate their opening anniversary on January 1st (I'm hoping to snag some of the Lees Moonraker). Then it's back home, where I guess we'll have to have some amount of pork and sauerkraut, just because I'm a Dutchman.

Christmas gift ideas

Got a couple Christmas gift ideas for you.

First, Massachusetts Breweries, by John Holl and April Darcy. It's one of the series of Stackpole Books brewery guides that my editor and I founded (and perfected, if I do say so myself), and it's a great job. John and April have captured the spirit of my intent with these books -- tell the story of the brewery, and make the place and the people come alive for the reader -- with writing that's accurate as well as lively and entertaining. It reads well, and it reads right. If you're headed to Mass, and you have a thirst, or just an itch to do some beer traveling, you'll want this book. And you still have plenty of time to get a copy from Amazon.

The other idea is the Liberty, Prosperity & Craftbeer Calendar, a New Jersey brewery 2013 calendar produced by Gretchen Schmidhausler, the long-time brewmaster at Basil T's in Red Bank. Now, I know what you're thinking: I don't live in Jersey, what the hell do I want with a NJ beer calendar? (You guys from Jersey, you already ordered one, I hope.) Let me tell you: the pictures of brewing scenes are beautiful. No matter where you live or drink, you'll be thinking of beer when you look up at this great piece of brewery enthusiasm. Get one today, because you get free shipping if you order by December 20; click here to get one. 

Merry Christmas!

A Pilsner Urquell story

The first was in September. I was at the brewery in Pilsen, in the Czech Republic. We saw the huge, modern brewery with the big copper brewing kettles (heated by direct fire) and the massive stainless fermentation and maturation tanks . . . all aboveground. Then we were led below ground, into nine kilometers of tunnels cut through the native sandstone.


Down here, in the dim, wet halls where all Pilsner Urquell used to be lagered in great wooden barrels, they still make a small amount of it in the old, traditional way: fermented in open vats, aged in the big barrels that are still made by an onsite cooperage, and cooled by the natural temperature of the earth. They do that to make sure the beer made the modern way tastes the same as the old school stuff.

Vaclav handing Thomas his first beer

And there I was, in the very birthplace of pilsner, drinking fresh-as-life beer tapped directly from those barrels, with none other than the Pilsner Urquell brewmaster, a huge blond bear of a man named Vaclav Berka. It was cool, deliciously zingy with Saaz hop aroma and bitterness, and fantastically fresh.

The second moment was in mid-October. It was my son’s 21st birthday, and I managed to get him to hold off having a drink until 4:30 in the afternoon. That was when we went to a Pilsner Urquell event (at City Tap House), and my son’s first legal beer was a Pilsner Urquell, tapped and handed to him by a huge blond bear of a man . . . named Vaclav Berka. I got the next one, and it was cool, deliciously zingy with Saaz hop aroma and bitterness, and fantastically fresh....


And you can read the rest of that story here. It's a trade journal piece, but a good piece. And I have a follow-up, too. Yesterday I picked up a liter of unpasteurized Pilsner Urquell in the beautiful bottle you see to the left. I got it from the people at Muller Beverage, who told me it was one of only 60 in the country (edit: Ahhh...no. It was actually one of 60 that Muller got, which is quite a bit different! I was moving fast, and it was a simple misunderstanding. My apologies to all). They also told me I should drink it right away, because it had been held up in shipping because of Hurricane Sandy (that bastard).

So I did. I picked up some lobsters at a local supermarket (I'd say where and give them a plug, but they sold me a piece of bad bluefish at the same time, so screw 'em), got some barbecue mushrooms at the farmer's market, and went home to Cathy and Thomas. I popped open the liter, poured it into two beautiful Pilsner glasses I got at the Grey Lodge some years back and cherish, and Thomas's mug (which you see in Vaclav's big hand above), and we drank that sweet thing... And we all said, hey, that's pretty good! And it was. I hope the whole Express Shipped Cold thing works out, because then we'll see more of this kind of thing, and it won't just be lucky journalists and bar owners who get this delicious stuff.

Thanksgiving: almost here

I've got a couple notes for Thanksgiving. First, I wrote this back in 2008, and it holds up well as my advice on beers for the holiday. As some of you know, I also do some writing for Origlio Beverage, a large wholesaler here in Philly that was the Craft Beer Wholesaler of the Year in 2009; here's what I did for them last year (PDF link; my story's on page 12).

There's also this from Local 44, where they note that -- in keeping with their name -- this is that time of year when everyone goes "home", leaving the neighborhood bars to the locals (and their friends and relations who have come "home," which is why Thanksgiving Eve is the busiest bar night of the year). They always make a big deal of Thanksgiving (though they're closed on the actual day, which suits me fine), and here are two things going on there that I thought you would like to know about.

Starting TODAY thru Wednesday, Nov 21 we've got special "Impress Your Friends and In-Laws" prices on all LARGE FORMAT bottles (aka those really big suckers we keep tucked behind the bar). We've been stocking up on some exciting new large format bottles -- don't go to dinner empty handed!

We are also super stocked up for all the Gluten-Free beer lovers at your Thanksgiving dinner table. Stop by to talk to any of our Bottle Shop staffers about some of the special Gluten-Free options we've got in stock. (Don't Forget! Gluten-Free Holiday Beer Baskets go on sale in the Bottle Shop on Monday, November 26. The Gluten-Free Baskets are also available by special order! Email bottles@local44beerbar.com for more information or to pre-order yours!)

I just did a piece on gluten-free beer for Massachusetts Beverage Business, should be out in the next issue: the upshot is that gluten free beers are much better than they used to be, and so is cider, another beer-strength gluten-free option. And you wouldn't want to exclude your celiac friends from the holiday fun, would you?

Is That Another Growler I See?

I spotted what I'm pretty sure is an old-style growler back in August here. It's in a John Sloan painting in the Philly Museum of Art.

Regular reader Steven Herberger spotted another, and I got permission to link to the picture: it's at Print Magazine's website. Take a look.

Note: STAG does not encourage Prohibition-era stereotyping

Check the large pail the slack-bellied fellow with the spade is holding. I don't believe he's bailing out a ditch he's dug; I'm pretty sure he's supposed to represent 'immigrant labor.' Let's leave the stereotyping out, though (the point being made is that while the scary Papa Doc-type black man, and the slob of a ditch digger, and the scary Italian extortionist, and even the dopey white guy get to vote, the beautiful, virginal woman does not), and focus on the growler.

Note that it's shiny! It's a steel growler, not a dull tin item. And it's a big one, too. You've got to agree: no one holds their lunchbucket that way; Ditch-digging Danny-boy (or Duncan, or Dietrich, or Dmitri) is definitely getting a noseful of suds, 1913-style. (UPDATED: I had '1919' here, Steve Herberger corrected me. Don't know how I got that wrong; thanks!)

Growlers. The history is out there. Keep your eyes open. (Thanks, Steven, and thanks to Steven Heller of Print for permission to make the link.)