Recently in Miscellaneous Category

The Session #60: Growlers Galore

| 2 Comments

session_logo.jpgOn the first Friday of every month, there's a beer blog roundup called The Session. Someone picks a topic, and everyone blogs about it. This month, Kendall from the Washington Beer Blog wants to talk about growlers:

Tell us about your growler collection. Tell us why you love growlers or why you hate them. What is the most ridiculous growler you've ever seen? Tell us about your local growler filling station. Ever suffer a messy growler mishap? Anything related to growlers is acceptable.
I have to admit that I'm not a big growler guy. They have their uses and I've certainly availed myself of the growler's services, but it's an elusive creature - not something I frequently use. I don't really have any crazy objections to it, nor do I have a strong opinion about tap versus bottle (I like some beers better on tap, and others from the bottle). To me, they're just another tool in the beer nerd's arsenal.

But I can still point you towards something interesting and growler related for this Session. So I'd like to introduce you to the growler-filler at Victory Brewing Company:

I mentioned this thing before in a previous post about a growler of Victory's Ranch S IPA, but damn, isn't that thing badass? When I go to Victory, I love watching it in action. Their fancy growlers themselves are pretty cool looking too, and the way they pressurize with CO2 seems to keep it fresh longer (at least, until you pour your first!)

Alas, I don't find myself taking advantage of it all that often. Oh well, there are worse things in the world. Like, perhaps, the fact that I have way too much great beer sitting, undrunk, in my cellar. Now, if you'll excuse me, I should probably go drink some of that stuff...

The Beer Cellar

| 2 Comments

As I mentioned yesterday, sometimes my eyes are bigger than my liver. I tend to buy more beer than I drink, so my cellar has been growing of late, and I've even started intentionally buying beers to age. In yesterday's post, I covered what kinds of beers are good for aging. Today, I'm going to list out the beers I'm currently excited to crack open... in a few years. Also some beers I wasn't intentionally aging, but which will probably have an extra year or so on the bottle before I actually get to it.

Not to mention 3-4 cases of homebrew and a bunch of other beer that's probably not suitable for aging. I didn't think I had this much beer sitting around. Yes, I need to get drinking. Hopefully a lot of the above won't be aged too long, if you know what I mean... I'd say only a handful of the above will really make it long term.

Aging Beer

| No Comments

At some point, it became clear to me that I was buying more beer than I was drinking. When I find myself in a liquor store with a great selection, I can't really help myself, and so I end up with a collection of beer that is growing faster than I can drink. And those 5 gallon batches of homebrew didn't help either!

Thus began my beer aging experiment! I don't have a ridiculous program here, but my beer cellar has been growing. Sometimes by default - I bought too much beer, so it has to sit in my basement (or my fridge) until I can get to it. I know, that's a good problem to have, and I'm not complaining. But I've even started doing some intentional aging, and my initial experiments came to fruition this past holiday season.

But this is a long process, so my experience isn't exactly comprehensive. Being a huge nerd, I've read a lot about the subject and I figured it'd be worth exploring my strategy on what beers to age and when to crack them open.

  • Alcohol Content: The higher the ABV, the better the beer is suited for aging (and the longer you can age it). In my experience, super high ABV beers (i.e. beers above 12%) taste very "hot" when they're young. As they age, they mellow out a bit. Lots of people will say that those uber-strong beers are undrinkable until they reach a certain age, though that's not usually something I've found to be true. That being said, my experience with the 14% ABV Samichlaus is that the extra time in the bottle really does make the beer more palatable. My tiny sample of a 2003 Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA had clearly matured and become more complex than the fresh stuff. I've also tried some lower-ABV stuff (notably Anchor Christmas), which seemed to go ok, though it didn't taste that much different to me (of course, I had no comparison in that case, so it's difficult to tell). That being said, the general rule seems to be that beers less than 5% aren't really suitable for long-term aging. What you want are big beers like imperial stouts, barleywines, and big Belgian beers... stuff that'll get you truly sloshed on a single bottle, basically.
  • Bottle Conditioned Beer: Beer that has been bottled with live yeast is much more likely to change over time. The yeast is still alive and processing the beer, so the beer will continue to evolve. A lot of Belgian beers are bottle conditioned, and some American brewers have experimented with this sort of thing. Dogfish Head's Squall was a bottle conditioned version of their 90 Minute IPA, and it was quite good! This is also why a lot of homebrewed beer gets better over time, as the yeast is still evening out the beer in the bottle. Anxious newbs like myself often post on homebrewing forums about how bad their beer turned out, but a lot of advice basically amounts to giving the beer some time (which personal experience shows is probably a good idea). I also see a lot of people noting that their best bottles of homebrew were the last few in the batch.
  • Dark Colored Beer: Everything I've read indicates that darker colored beers age better than pale beer. I've looked around for a scientific explanation for why this is so, but I haven't really found much (other than hops, which will get its own bullet below). My guess is that dark beer contains much more flavor elements, whether that be from various forms of toasted or roasted malt, or specialty adjuncts like caramelized sugars, etc... Anyways, dark colored beer like stouts, barleywines and Belgian strong dark, quads, etc... seem to be ideal.
  • Malt, not Hops: Beers that rely mainly on malt for their flavors age much better than hoppy beers. Hop flavors and aromas break down quickly over time (and since so many pale ales rely so strongly on hops for flavor, perhaps that's why pale beers don't age so well). Again, Belgian beers seem to do well here, as they're very malt-focused. As are most stouts and Scotch ales, and lots of other styles. IPAs... not so much. Anecdotal and accidentally discovered evidence seems to indicate that this is true. I had a bunch of Founders' Centennial IPA a while back, but I let one of them sit a bit too long in the fridge. It was fine and I had no problem drinking it, but it was definitely much better when it was fresh.
  • Barrel Aged Beers: These beers take on big extra flavors when aging in the barrel, and beers aged in a barrel tend to become a bit stronger (as some water evaporates or soaks into the wood - the "angel's share" if you will), which also helps out. With time, all that flavor starts to blend together and become more tempered with time. I haven't experimented with this very much, but I've definitely had some barrel aged beers that could have used some extra time to mellow out. Then again, some beers are almost perfect right out of the barrel. I've got a few of those aging in my basement though, so it's something I will certainly be experimenting with...
  • Smoke and Spice: I don't have a ton of experience with aging these, but I'm really curious to try some of these out after a while. I know I've read that smoke can act as a preservative in beer, and in my experience, that smoke character is usually overpowering in a young beer. My hope would be that putting some age on a smoked beer would let that smoke mellow out, while harmonizing it with the other flavors in the beer. Spiced beers are another question mark for me. I presume the spicy aromas and flavors will fade with time, but in some cases that could be a good thing (I'm thinking that overspiced pumpkin and holiday beers might benefit from that age). I've got a few spiced beers squirreled away for next year, so I guess we'll find out!
  • Wild Ales, Sours, and Lambics: These beers tend to be bottle conditioned and/or barrel aged, so it stands to reason that aging would work well with them. Apparently some of Cantillon's lambics will age well for over 20 years (despite being only 5-6% ABV). Beers with Brettanomyces (a wild yeast) and other bacterial bugs (like lactobacillus and pediococcus) will continue to evolve as those critters do their work in the bottle. SOur beers have never been my favorite, but there are certainly a few beers I'd like to try aging...
  • Storage Conditions: Basically, a dark, cool place. Light is the enemy of good beer (light breaks down the compounds contributed by hops, resulting in lightstruck or "skunked" beer), and high temperatures tend to speed degradation. In terms of temperature, 50 degrees F seems to be ideal, though everyone stresses the need for a constant temperature over anything else. Also worth noting is that storing beers upright is important, especially for bottle conditioned beers (as the yeast should be settled on the bottom of the bottle).
  • Maturation Waves: Martyn Cornell sez: "Experiments suggest that the maturation takes place in "waves", so that a beer which is in fine condition at, eg 30 months may have deteriorated at 36 months, be back on form at 42 months, deteriorated again at 48 months and so on." I have no real experience with this, but I will say that some of my homebrews seem to go like this. I'll have one and it's great. A few months later, I'm not so impressed. A few months after that, I'm amazed at how good it is. This one is a bit troubling, as it sorta means that I'm ruining some beers, but I guess I'm willing to take that risk...
  • Wildcard: And finally, I'll probably age some random beers just because I want to see what happens with them over time. Or because I forgot it was sitting in the back of my fridge. Or because it's hidden somewhere in my basement. Who knows, maybe aging a questionable beer will pay off.
  • How Long to Wait: The big question! It obviously depends on the beer, but my goal for purposefully aged beers is to buy multiples of the same beer and try them on a regular interval (once a year seems like a good idea, though the "waves" of maturation gives me pause for some beers). In other cases, it will be a bit more haphazard.
Aging beer is not a new practice, but it is something that seems to be gaining popularity these days, and lots of people are experimenting and learning. I'd hope for some more scholarly efforts in this area, but I'm having fun trying this stuff out myself. Tomorrow, I'll post the current contents of my cellar, along with some comments on why I want to age them and when I'm planning on cracking them open...

SOPA Blues

| No Comments

I was going to write a beer review tonight, but since the web has apparently gone on strike, I figured I'd spend a little time talking about that instead. Many sites, including the likes of Wikipedia and Reddit, have instituted a complete blackout as part of a protest against two ill-conceived pieces of censorship legislation currently being considered by the U.S. Congress (these laws are called the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act, henceforth to be referred to as SOPA and PIPA). I can't even begin to pretend that blacking out my humble little site would accomplish anything, but since a lot of my personal and professional livelihood depends on the internet, I suppose I can't ignore this either.

For the uninitiated, if the bills known as SOPA and PIPA become law, many websites could be taken offline involuntarily, without warning, and without due process of law, based on little more than an alleged copyright owner's unproven and uncontested allegations of infringement1. The reason Wikipedia is blacked out today is that they depend solely on user-contributed content, which means they would be a ripe target for overzealous copyright holders. Sites like Google haven't blacked themselves out, but have staged a bit of a protest as well, because under the provisions of the bill, even just linking to a site that infringes upon copyright is grounds for action (and thus search engines have a vested interest in defeating these bills).

I won't belabor the point much further, but I will link to Kaedrin's official stance on Intellectual Property, Copyright and DRM, a post I wrote a few years ago on my generalist blog that I think is still relevant. An expanded version of this post you're reading right now is also up at my generalist blog, along with some other links and thoughts on the matter. Feel free to stop on by.

And if you're so inclined, perhaps your form of protest could be represented by a different kind of blackout. Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

1 - Thanks to James for the concise description. There are lots of much longer longer and better sourced descriptions of the shortcomings of this bill and the issues surrounding it, so I won't belabor the point here.

2011 Year End Musings

| 2 Comments

As 2011 comes to a close, everyone and their mother is putting out top 10 lists and recaps for all manner of subjects, including beer. Here at Kaedrin, we're usually pretty lazy about it. Over on my generalist blog, I always put together a top 10 movies of the year list, but it usually doesn't come out until February. In that case, it's because I'm trying to catch up with movies on DVD/BD/Streaming/Torrents/etc..., but beer is a different matter entirely. For one thing, beer isn't released the way movies are, and while I've certainly had my fair share of one-off 2011-only brews, most of what I drank this year has been around for a while. So I've been lazily compiling a couple of lists, all based only on what I drank this year.

As such, this post will be an intensely personal affair, entirely dependent on my 2011 consumption. Almost everything in this post will be represented in my archives somewhere, because as a true nerd, I've done a pretty good job about documenting the beers I drank this year. Before I get to my top beers of the year, I thought I'd spend some time musing on the trends of the year. Not necessarily trends of the whole craft beer world, just my own personal tastes.

  • Stouts - When I began beer blogging a little over a year ago, I wasn't much of a fan of stouts or porters. But I forced myself to try some, and the more I tried, the more I enjoyed, especially when it comes to imperial stouts. There are still some varieties that I don't love, particularly stouts that emphasize coffee flavors (I'm looking at you, Founders Breakfast Stout), but I've really come to enjoy strong, dark beers over the last year.
  • Barrel Aged Beer - In particular, bourbon or scotch barrel aged beers have become a bit of an obsession (wine barrel aged beers with wild yeasts/bacteria are a different story, see below). One sure-fire way to trick me into buying your beer is to make a bourbon barrel aged version. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to cattle calls or paying through the nose, but I'm willing to jump through some hoops for beer this good. I know some folks think bourbon barrel aging has gone too far, and there's something to be said for harnessing a balance of flavors (which some barrel aged beers emphatically do not accomplish), but I think my tolerance for bourbon/scotch flavors is higher than most. I kinda love these beers. This is something that I imagine will continue to explore through 2012...
  • Aging/Cellaring Beer - As evidenced by a few recent posts, I've been toying with the concept of aging beer in my basement. Conditions are apparently not entirely ideal down there, but I tend to buy more than I can drink, so sometimes this happens by accident. I intend to cover the subject in more detail in a separate post (including a list of beers I'm currently saving), as it's an interesting practice.
  • Homebrewing - I brewed 5 batches of beer in 2011. This roughly translates to once every 2-3 months and even that has left me with 3-4 cases of beer in my basement. I think my next step is to try making smaller batches more frequently. Speaking of which, I should really get cracking on my next batch!
  • The Discovery of Barleywines - I never quite knew what to make of this style, and owing to the extremely high ABV, these aren't exactly every day beers, but some of my biggest discoveries and surprises this year were barleywines. I don't expect to go crazy with the style in 2012 - again, very high ABV beers require certain circumstances - but I'll most definitely be exploring the style a little more in 2012 (and hey, the style often gets the bourbon barrel treatment, so there's that too!)
  • Sour Experimentation - I've really only gotten my feet wet with my exploration of sour beers. I've enjoyed a lot of what I've had, but only one has really knocked my socks off (the Sierra Nevada ExPortation). Expect more exploration in 2012, though I can't say as though these beers have really captured my imagination the way other styles have.
  • Finding my White Whales - When I started this blog, I was a little frustrated by reading about beers I could never find anywhere. Well, somewhere along the way, I started to get a sense for how to find me some white whale beers. My list of beer purveyors has increased significantly over the year, and the ridiculous PLCB rules notwithstanding, Philly is a pretty bitchin beer town.

Well, there you have it. It's been a great year, filled with a ton of great beers. So great, in fact, that I couldn't quite bring myself to put together a top 10. I mean, seriously? I wrote somewhere on the order of 170 posts this year, and some of those contained multiple beers (including some with 10+ beers), meaning that I have somwhere on the order of 200-250 beers to choose from. Narrowing the list down to 30 was hard enough. All of the below beers have been reviewed, and I'm linking to each one. They're all at least an A- on my grading scale, and they're being listed from best to "worst", though I'd like to emphasize that the order is relatively fluid in my mind. Some of the beers on the bottom of the list could easily float up towards the middle or even top of the list, depending on my mood... Indeed, I could probably add another dozen beers to the list with no real problem. So take it with a grain of salt and if you want to see more, check out the A- archive.

Bottom line, though, is that these are all exceptional beers in one way or another.

  1. Trappistes Rochefort 8 (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
  2. Harviestoun Ola Dubh Special Reserve 40 (Old Ale)
  3. Avec Les Bons Voeux de la Brasserie Dupont (Saison)
  4. BrewDog and Mikkeller Collaboration: Devine Rebel (Barleywine)
  5. Victory V-Twelve (Belgian Specialty Ale)
  6. La Trappe Quadrupel (Quadrupel)
  7. Ommegang Rare Vos (Belgian Pale Ale)
  8. The Bruery Autumn Maple (Belgian Fruit/Vegetable Beer)
  9. Ommegang Three Philosophers (Quadrupel)
  10. Trappistes Rochefort 6 (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
  11. Iron Hill Kryptonite (Double India Pale Ale)
  12. Trappistes Rochefort 10 (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
  13. Victory Dark Intrigue (Imperial Stout)
  14. Chimay Grand Reserve (Blue) (Belgian Strong Dark Ale)
  15. Sierra Nevada ExPortation (American Wild Ale)
  16. Allagash Big Little Beer (Belgian Pale Ale)
  17. The Bruery Mischief (Belgian Strong Pale Ale)
  18. Cape Ann Fisherman's Imperial Pumpkin Stout (Pumpkin Ale/Imperial Stout)
  19. St. Bernardus Watau Tripel (Tripel)
  20. Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout (Imperial Stout)
  21. St. Bernardus Prior 8 (Dubbel)
  22. Pretty Things Baby Tree (Quadrupel)
  23. Russian River Pliny the Elder (Double India Pale Ale)
  24. Uinta Cockeyed Cooper (Barleywine)
  25. Lost Abbey The Angel's Share (American Strong Ale)
  26. Lagunitas Hop Stoopid (Double India Pale Ale)
  27. Mikkeller I Beat yoU (Double India Pale Ale)
  28. La Chouffe (Belgian Strong Pale Ale)
  29. Dogfish Head Burton Baton (Double India Pale Ale)
  30. Victory Hop Wallop (Double India Pale Ale)

It's no Beer Samizdat 100, but it's a start! Hopefully, it will be up to 50-60 beers by next year... In any case, this concludes my 2011 beer wrapup. Still a few more beers to be drunk, and I need to figure out a beer that fits New Years, but I'll include those in next year's recap (like I did above with Dupont's Bon Voux). Here's to a great 2012.

Astrobeer?

| No Comments

I've been reading Mary Roach's book Packing For Mars, and I found this bit about beer in space interesting:

From time to time, there was talk among the astronauts that it might be nice to have a drink with dinner. Beer is a no-fly, because without gravity, carbonation bubbles don't rise to the surface. "You just get a foamy froth," says Bourland. He says Coke spent $450,000 developing a zero-gravity dispenser, only to be undone by biology. Since bubbles also don't rise to the top of the stomach, the astronauts had trouble burping. "Often a burp is accompanied by a liquid spray," Bourland adds.

They ended up looking into wine and sherry, even going so far as to develop special plastic pouches inside cans to package the stuff, but it got nixed when teetotaling taxpayers started complaining. Also, the smell was apparently pretty powerful (a bad thing in the tight quarters of spacecraft), even nauseating (a bad thing no matter where you are).

So no beer in space. At least, not until we are able to outfit the spacecraft (or station) with a rotating room, a la 2001: A Space Odyssey. Of course, that is a fantastically expensive and problematic enterprise in itself, but the benefits would expand beyond being able to drink beer in space. We might have to build something like that anyway, if we're going to get to Mars without killing our astronauts.

Anniversary

| 2 Comments

Today marks the one year anniversary of Kaedrin Beer Blog. To celebrate, I'm drinking a homebrewed saison (I should review it sometime, but that time is not now) and taking a look at some statistics:


  • 152 total posts (not quite 3 a week on average)
  • 27 posts about IPAs, making that the most talked-about style on the blog. The runner up is Stout, with a whopping 21 posts. In both cases, the numbers are inflated since I don't break out double or imperial varieties and so on, so it's perhaps unsurprising that those two styles are posted about the most often. After them comes Saison (14), Belgian Strong Dark (13), Tripel (11) and Wheat (11, though I also don't make a distinction between Belgian Wit, Hefeweizen and other various styles)
  • 13 posts about Victory Brewing, which is unsurprising as they're my favorite local brewery. Local brewer Yards comes in second with 9, and another local, Weyerbacher, has 8. Also at 8 is Ommegang, while Russian River and Dogfish Head are both at 7.
  • 96 posts about beer from US breweries, significantly outpacing the runner up, which is Belgium at 29 entries. Things trail significantly after that, with the UK coming next at 11, but 6 of those are also categorized under Scotland (meaning that I post more about Scottish beers than English beers!)
  • 51 posts featured a beer rated B+, which was by far the most common rating. B and A- both have 34, while B- has 25 and the big A has 24. Fortunately for me, the least common rating is F, with just one lone entry. I suppose you could take this to mean that I'm overrating a lot of beers, and perhaps that's true, but it's not like I'm trying to find bad beer, after all. And I've only rated 3 beers A+, so there is that too.

Damn, I drank a lot of beer last year. It's probably something that I should tone down a bit. While I think it's clear that I love beer, it's also not particularly good for me from a health perspective. Don't get me wrong, I'll still be drinking a lot, but if all goes to plan, the next year won't see quite as much drinking.

In my first post a year ago, I mentioned that the primary purpose of the blog was really to help me keep track of what I drank and how well I liked it. I also noted that I was pretty unsophisticated about my beer consumption and that my palate wasn't particularly sharp. I'd like to think that I've come a long way since then, but I think I still have much to learn. In a more general sense, my purpose for blogging is to learn, and I feel like I'm making progress on that front.

I can say that I've written many more beer reviews than I was initially expecting. I try to spice them up with general notes about the style or screenplays or whatever, but ultimately, most posts fall into the familiar beer review format. Perhaps if I drink less this next year, I'll spend more time writing or posting about beer in a more general sense. I've got a few ideas for interesting posts, but they will take some time to write (more than most entries at least), so I still expect the majority of posting to be reviews. This may not be the most interesting thing in the world for everyone, but it does get me towards my goal of blogging, as writing about beer forces me to think about it in a more thorough fashion.

All in all, it's been a good year. I don't see my posting slowing up any, and I already have lots of beers in my "cellar" (i.e. my fridge) that I'm sure will be interesting. I'm going to wait until the end of the year to do a top beers post, or to post about my best posts, but for now, look for some additional seasonal beer reviews coming up...

Gone Fishin'

| 2 Comments

Or rather, gone movie watchin'. I'll be heading to Austin, TX for Fantastic Fest, so expect posting to be light for the next week or so. Fantastic Fest is a genre film festival (lots of horror, SF, action, and just plain weird stuff) and it's held at an Alamo Drafthouse. I've never been to one, but damn, a movie theater with good beer available? Near as I can tell, they've got lots of local Texas beers available - stuff from Live Oak, Independence (including a series of beers called the Brewluminati), (512), Jester King, Thirsty Planet, and presumably lots of others. And that's just at the theater. So there will be some beer bloggery resulting from this, maybe even while I'm there.

fantastic fest

If anyone's got any Texas beer recommendations, leave a comment. I'll try and find some (and maybe even smuggle some home). See you soon.

Update: Had some trouble with the commenting system, but everything should be working now!

Again Update: Just FYI, I've been keeping track of my beer dorkery on untappd. Will try to get a recap up on the blog towards the end of the week! So far, so good!

Categories

Monthly Archives

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID

About

Hi, my name is Mark, and I like beer.

You might also want to check out my generalist blog, where I blather on about lots of things, but mostly movies, books, and technology.

Email me at mciocco at gmail dot com.

Follow me on Twitter

Like me on Facebook

Toast me on Untappd

About this Archive

This page is an archive of recent entries in the Miscellaneous category.

Interviews is the previous category.

Other Spirits is the next category.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.