Miscellaneous

The Beer Cellar

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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

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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’

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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!

Why do breweries use green bottles?

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One of the things I don’t really understand about the beer world is why so many beers use green bottles. When beer is exposed to ultraviolet light for a certain period of time, certain molecules (basically the stuff contributed by hops) start to break down and cause bad flavors. This is what’s called “light-struck” beer, but it’s more commonly known as “skunked” beer. Brown bottles provide a large degree of protection, but apparently don’t make the beer invulnerable (unless you’ve got your brown bottle baking in the sun for a long time, you should be ok). However, green and clear bottles provide nearly no protection from UV rays, and thus those beers can get skunked rather easily. Incidentally, cans? They actually provide the best protection, which is one of the reasons you see so much talk of craft beer in cans these days.

This begs the question: If light is so bad for beer and if green and clear bottles don’t provide any protection, why do breweries use green or clear bottles? Sure, some of the crappy imports do, but even really good beers use green bottles. A while ago, I got drunk and sent out a series of pedantic (but polite!) emails to a bunch of my favorite breweries that nevertheless use green bottles. I asked why they used the green bottles and if it had anything to do with cost, tradition, or marketing. I didn’t get a response from Dupont, but Yuengling was very responsive and provided a very forthright and honest explanation:

Thanks for your recent inquiry regarding our usage of green glass.

We make 7 year round beer brands and 1 seasonal Bock Beer. Currently, 2 are offered in green glass…..Lager and Lord Chesterfield Ale. The others are in a standard brown.

Your questions are great…let me address a few as I go. First, green is definitely not less expensive. It’s actually harder to source in the quantities we need.

Originally, when Dick Yuengling reintroduced Lager in 1987, he placed it in brown glass and had a very different label designed than what we know today. In the early 1990s he decided to redesign the packaging entirely…..he knew he had a great beer that was different than other full calorie beers on the market at the time. But the brown glass and original label just didn’t make it look “special”. It looked like every other beer on the market. There was no point of difference.

When the label was redesigned to what we know today, Dick also considered a change to green glass. First, no other domestic brand was in green. Miller High Life was in clear. So was MGD back then. But the “special” beers of that time were mainly imports. Becks, St Pauli, Lowenbrau, etc. All green glass.

So the shift to green was a marketing shift…..a point of difference for this special beer.

You are accurate….green is less protective of the product than brown. We have been working closely with our glass supplier who has developed a UV coating to apply to the outside of the bottle. This is in early stages of development. We are also considering a “high wall” six pack carrier to protect the bottles on the shelf. But there are also other packaging considerations to sort through. But the bottom line is that it’s always a concern to protect the integrity of our products. Luckily, our Lager turns very quickly on the shelf so we rarely get complaints about this product. We do sometimes get off taste feedback on chesterfield ale, which we make good to our customers on a case by case basis.

With all that said, cans are actually the best vessel for packaged beer. Very many craft breweries are figuring that out now. Luckily nearly all of our brands are available in cans.

Thanks again for the email and for your support of our brewery!

Ah Marketing! The Alehead’s worst enemy. It is funny because I’ve always noticed that I enjoy Lager the most out of the can or on tap, but until I started getting all beer nerdy, I never really put two and two together. Also, it’s rather heartening to see that they’re researching UV coatings for their beer, though I’m guessing it will be a while before that happens (and honestly, at this point, switching to brown bottles would probably be fine).

I’m still a little baffled when I see beers from Dupont or Fantôme in big green bottles though (even more confusing – Dupont sells smaller bottles of Saison Dupont that come in capped brown bottles!) During Philly Beer Week a while back, I asked an importer why so many good beers use green glass. He said he didn’t know, but he always assumed it was tradition. I would bet marketing probably has more to do with it (especially given Yuengling’s response), but I’ll still be forever confused as to why a brewery with the reputation of Mikkeller would use green bottles for something (seriously, I just bought a bottle of Mikkeller barleywine, and it came in a green bottle).

The Session: Breweriana

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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, Brian Stechschulte is hosting, and he wants to know about everyone’s beer collectibles and breweriana:

I’ve decided not to focus on the substance of beer, but the material that plays a supporting role. Bottles, coasters, cans, labels, ads, tap handles, church keys, hats, t-shirts, tip trays, glassware and signs have been collected by fanatics ever since beer has been sold. These objects constitute the world of breweriana, a term that surfaced in 1972 to define any item displaying a brewery or brand name. The majority of highly prized objects are from the pre-prohibition era, but ephemera from every period in brewing history, including craft beer, finds a home with each beer drinking generation.

So what old or new beer related items do you collect and why? It’s that simple.

It is indeed simple, but I’m at a bit of a loss here. I have a nice Ommegang Hennepin glass that was a memento of a trip to Cooperstown a few years ago, but that’s kinda boring and it’s not like I have a big collection of other breweries’ glassware (though that’s not a bad idea…)

I suppose the only thing that I have a pretty wide variety of is beer bottle corks. I didn’t really consciously think to myself: Self, I should collect beer bottle corks! but I do tend to have some packrat tendencies and have recently found a couple of caches of corks (click for larger version).

Corks

Indeed, I am often intrigued by what appears on the cork. Some have nice artwork or patterns, some use it as a way to date the beer, some show the preferred glassware, some just have the brewery name printed on there, and some are just plain and unadorned. They’re not as varied or interesting as, say, Bottle Caps (come to think of it, I probably have a lot of those lying around as well), but I like them. Obviously I don’t keep every cork, especially since each brewery seems to use the same corks for most bottles, but I will keep ones I like or find interesting.

So, yeah, not a very exciting collection, but then, I prefer to direct my energy to finding and drinking beer. Speaking of which, it’s Philly Beer Week! I should be drinking (Maybe I’ll save a cork or two).

Where I Buy Beer

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I’ve made some beer runs lately and thought this might be a good idea for a post. Pennsylvania is a really strange place to be a beer fan. Living in the Philly area (West Chester, PA, to be exact), there are certainly lots of great beer bars around (center city is a bit of a hike for me, but there are even some decent bars out here in the ‘burbs) and a pretty amazing amount of actual local breweries (to name a few: Philadelphia Brewing Co, Yards, Victory, Weyerbacher, SlyFox, Iron Hill, among several others), but on the other hand, we have some really weird liquor laws. Liquor and wine are only sold at state stores and beer is mostly sold at separate distributors (and neither are generally sold at convenient locations like supermarkets, though there is an exception we’ll get to). Up until recently, no alcohol at all was sold on Sundays. Furthermore, beer is generally only sold by the case, with one major exception: If you operate an eatery, you can sell loose bottles, six packs, etc…

As such, there are a few places that have been popping up in PA in recent years that have pretty great selections of loose bottles and make-your-own-sixpack deals, though I also often find myself in Delaware or even Maryland, trying to find that hard-to-get beer. Here’s a quick list of where I frequently find myself buying beer:

  • Pinoccio’s Beer Garden (Media, PA) – Probably the best combination of selection and convenience for me is this pizza joint. The food is pretty standard pizza place fare, but they’ve got a large selection both on tap and in coolers in back. It’s a fantastic place, and probably my favorite PA bottle store (though there are a couple others that I need to check out).
  • Hockessin Liquors (Hockessin, DE) – Believe it or not, this is one of the first places I found that had a really great selection of 750 ml bottles and 22 oz bombers, and it’s about half a mile from a family member’s house, so whenever I go there, I make sure to stop by this store and marvel at the amazing beer selection and pick up as many bottles as I can.
  • State Line Liquors (Elkton, MD) – My most recent discovery, this place looks like a total dump from the outside, but it has the most amazing beer selection I’ve ever seen in one place (in particular, their selection of foreign beer is impressive). The majority of the beer from the below picture came from this place. I’ve only been here once, and it’s a bit far, but it’s not a horrible drive and I will most definitely be returning.
  • Total Wine (Claymont, DE) – This place is bigger than my usual supermarket. Unfortunately, most of that is dedicated to wine, but there’s a nice, sizeable beer selection as well. It’s probably not as extensive as some of the other places on this list, but it’s a worthy location, and about 10 minutes from my parents’ house, so it’s still somewhat convenient.
  • Wegmans (Downingtown, PA) – Not too long ago, Wegmans started exploiting the whole eatery loophole for sale of single bottles. Their eatery is attached to their grocery store, so this place is doubly convenient (it’s also right near a movie theater I frequent, which is nice). The selection varies, and you have to be a bit quick on the draw to get good seasonal stuff, but they’ve got a pretty good variety here, though not quite the religious experience some of the above places are…
  • Goshen Beverage (West Chester, PA) – This is the place closest to me, but it’s also a beer distributer, so no loose bottles here. Still, if I want to get a case of something, this is where I go first, and they really do have a great selection.
  • The Beeryard (Wayne, PA) – This is also a beer distributer, but if I’m looking for a case of something and I can’t find it at Goshen Beverage, this place will probably have it. Alas, I don’t end up here very often.
  • Capone’s Restaurant (Norristown, PA) – I’ve only been here once, but I get a very Pinocchio’s vibe from this place. It’s definitely a cool place, and I’d like to check it out again someday, but it’s also a bit far. A friend in beer club often gets her beer here, so I certainly benefit from this place. I should probably give it more of a fair shake.
  • The Foodery (Philadelphia, PA) – It would be negligent to not mention this place, which is indeed quite awesome, but at the same time, both locations are in center city Philly, which is a bit of a hike (and when you add in traffic, parking, etc… , it can be a bit of a hassle and costly too). Still, if I lived in the city, I’d probably go here often.

Here’s a quick picture of some recent purchases, mostly from State Line Liquors and Pinocchio’s:

Recent Purchases

(Click for a larger version)

I’m pretty excited to try, well, all of these. And yes, per my friend Padraic’s suggestion, I picked up two bottles of Ola Dubh, the 40 and 16 (which should be quite interesting). Not pictured are three of Mikkeller’s single hop IPAs, which should be an interesting experience as well.

That about covers where I buy bottles (bars, brewpubs, and or breweries will have to be a separate post someday). Obviously I’m always on the lookout for new places, so I’ll try to keep this post updated if I find anything new and interesting. Also, if you have any suggestions that would be convenient for this West Chester, PA native, feel free to leave a comment below!