Time to start catching up

Sometimes, I find myself doing a fair amount of tasting, and not nearly enough posting.

Time to get back to sharing.

This oughta be good

I am headed to Wolff's Bier Garten, which just opened this week in Albany, NY. It will be a short visit, because I have a girls' state basketball tournament game to cover, then I have to pick up my wife at the airport.

Albany's a little over an hour away.

This place has done a soft opening this week and has engendered a lot of buzz. This will be a scouting visit, but I know I will get back there.

"I'll have the lager?"

If you read the blog or know me, you know that my tastes tend to be at either end of the beer spectrum -- high-end, hoppy IPAs or Porters and Stouts. That's not to say I don't enjoy the tastes in between, but those are where I look first.

So imagine my disappointment when I went into Davidson Brothers, my home bar in Glens Falls, NY and saw that the Brewer's Choice was a lager, of all things.

But . . . I had to try it anyway, and it poured a fairly dark brown. It's a Danish Lager, and, honestly, it tastes like a slightly thin Brown Ale. I like it a lot more than I expected.

Beer for breakfast?

I know this is a fairly local-focused blog today, but I also want to recommend the Brewmasters Series from Long Trail Ale. It's an Imperial Coffee Stout, and the Little Miss Short Pours The Younger says it's made of "shiny and win." It's really full and has the right coffee taste. No bitterness.

On the national level

I will admit it. I first picked up Flying Dog for the Ralph Steadman drawings on the labels. It's now one of my favorite breweries.

For tasting high-end beers, I recommend the Canis Major packs. They have a four pack of 12-ounce bottles and a case of seven-ounce bottles -- an Imperial Porter, a Barleywine, a Double Pale Ale and a Tripel -- all with spiffy names and great label art.

The beers inside are excellent examples of their style, and I will review each one in the coming week.

Today's meal . . . .

A Stout, Cheese and Beef Soup

This one’s from my friend George, who is a professional cook, and therefore finds a recipe that requires a hunk of cooked roast beef to be an ordinary thing.

Ingredients

3 to 4 pounds of roasted beef (i.e. leftovers!), cut into chunks

2 to 4 whole cloves garlic

1.5 pounds. cheddar cheese cubes

Three pressurized cans Guinness or other stout (Murphy's, Beamish, etc), room temperature but unopened. (You get to drink the fourth).

Two small yellow onions, diced (optional)

Salt and pepper

Steps

1. Put cooked beef chunks and garlic into pot, adding just enough water to almost cove. .

2. Bring to boil, and simmer for about 20 minutes. Add more water a little at a time to keep from running dry.

3. Remove meat from water and let cool, then pull apart if possible or cut into very small pieces. Discard any visible fat.

4. Return meat to broth in pot and slowly add stout, foam and all. If adding onions, do so with this step.

5. Bring to a boil, then set on lowest heat or place in crock pot on medium high setting.

6. Add cheese cubes and stir to mix in.

7. If simmering on stovetop, simmer for about one hour, stirring frequently.

8. If using crock pot, after the initial stir, let alone for one or two hours then stir before serving.

9. Add salt and pepper to taste before serving.

NOTE: Even if you skim the broth ahead of time, the cheese will cause a layer of fat to form on top. Skim or not, your choice. This will get VERY hot, so eat carefully.

Nothing like beer with 22 of your closest friends

Had a couple of good pub experiences while visiting relatives last week. (Yes, I check for brew pubs, breweries, etc. when I take a trip).

On a Saturday afternoon, about 23 of us went to the Nodding Head Brew Pub in Philadelphia. Mrs. Short Pours and I were there two years ago and remembered it as being a good place, especially for mussels. I had put the word out on the Internet, and I had called to reserve the table.

Excellent beer, service and food. They had us in a separate room with a great waiter. I love getting my friends together over beer. Some of them are beer geeks, others are trying the good stuff for the first time, and some drink soda, but want to be there for the shenanigans. We invariably have a great time, and this was easily one of the best.

Terrific food included the burgers, from what I could see, along with “nut crusted baked brie topped with mango chutney and served with freshly baked pita bread” and the Jerk Mussels, which were “steamed with thyme, scotch bonnet peppers, allspice, ginger and beer.” The waiter recommended those over the hot ones we'd had last time.

The beer was fresh and well-made, although they didn't have anything from the “big beer” department. I especially liked the IPA, which had a nice snap. The BPA was different, malty, and very good. Here's the tap list. (There was no Sledwrecker.

We did a planned reprise two days later at Kildare's, the King of Prussia location. Again, terrific food and a solid waitress. The tap line wasn't quite what I would have preferred. There was a good selection of British and English beers, including Victory Hop Devil, but not enough craft stuff for me. Then, I am picky. A great time was had by all.

"We're getting the blog back together"

It's a New Year, and there are two resolutions here at Short Pours.

One is the usual: “Drink better beer.” That gets harder over the years.

The second is: “Post more!” That's always easy at first.

Today is in some ways a relaunch, because I am committing to regular updating and to adding more links and content.

Please, if you are new, take a few minutes to read the other posts. It will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect in this blog. I always appreciate comments and links.

The corollary to my first resolution is: “Always drink good beer.”

I went to bed early last night, after a sipping evening, and so far, the only beer this year is a Joshua Chamberlain Pale Ale from Shipyard Brewing in Portland, Maine.

Two interesting things about this beer:

It's one I got as a gift because of its name. I am a History teacher, and Joshua Chamberlain was the commander of the 20th Maine at Gettysburg. My friend thought I would like it. Oddly, even though it was bought for the name, I like it a lot. That doesn't always happen.

The second surprising thing is that I like it, and it's from Shipyard. Don't get me wrong, Great brewery. One of the best tours I ever got – from a very knowledgeable young man. But I tend to not like their stuff, because they use British hops. I grew up on the American craft beer movement, so I am all about American hops.

Unless, of course, it's Belgian Night.

OK, question: What is the one beer you think folks oughta try this year?

Pumpkin beers: Redux

Still on the Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout

This is last year's pumpkin beer article.

Pumpkin beers are full and malty beers, very different from the mass-produced beers from Budweiser, Miller and Coors. But they are not so different that they will turn off someone who has never explored these ales before. The pumpkins offer a taste of the season and a chance to add some non-mainstream flavors to your football Saturdays and Sundays or your family meals.

The other similarity you will find is that almost all of them include the same rich spices you will find later this year in the holiday ales. Almost all of the brewers list their spices on the bottle. The differences come in how the pumpkin and spices work together, what color the beer comes out, how easy it is to drink and just what the pumpkin tastes like.

Saranac Pumpkin Ale, brewed in Utica, NY, is one of the best of the bunch, using cinnamon, allspice, cloves and vanilla. This pumpkin ale pours very dark, and you can taste it for a good 10 seconds after you finish. It’s malty and tasty, but the pumpkin hides under the surface.

Anheuser Busch, (yes, the one in St. Louis, Mo.) continues to try its hand at microbrew-style beers and comes through with a solid one in Jack’s Pumpkin SpiceAle. As you would expect from a big company, it’s a bit thinner than the others. It is more of a medium color and has a good spicy nose, mainly cinnamon. The spice mix here is “including nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon and clove,” according to the bottle. It has a very comfortable taste which is not too metallic and is very easy to drink. Again, you taste mostly spice, especially the cinnamon, and not too much pumpkin. Here’s the choice for a group of people who usually drink Budweiser and Miller.

Oddly enough, one of the old hands of the pumpkin genre is Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale, a Coors product imported from its Canadian subsidiary, Blue Moon Brewing Company. This one lists clove, nutmeg and allspice and, again, is thinner than the micros. It’s darker and the spice dominates the smell. It’s more mainstream, not as malty as many of the others and has some citrus notes to it. The spices tend to clump together.

The folks at Shipyard Brewing Co., in Portland, Maine, have a steady competitor in Pumpkinhead Ale, but they play coy, not listing the spices. The pumpkin is there, though subtle most of the time. This is one of the lightest colored of the whole group and is easy to drink. There seems to be cinnamon and allspice high in the test. This Pumpkinhead – in fact all the Shipyard beers – have a non-traditional taste because Shipyard uses entirely British malts in its beers. The beer is easy to drink and a good introduction for those who are not used to microbrews.

Just over the Maine state border, in Portsmouth, N.H., Smuttynose Brewing – which is named after a harbor seal – puts out a golden-brown “Pumpkin Ale,” which is “ale brewed with pumpkin puree and spices.” The taste is not overwhelming and a little metallic, but not as much as some others. It’s not overly malty and, like the Harvest Moon, is a touch citrusy.

The nice folks at Brooklyn Brewery who make Post Road Pumpkin Ale are also coy with us, saying only that it is “ale brewed with pumpkin and spices.” This is a medium-dark ale that really does not have a strong taste of either pumpkin or spices. This is contract-brewed for Brooklyn in Utica and is not as well-made as most Brooklyn products. In some respects, it tastes more like an Oktoberfest than a pumpkin ale.

There are some microbreweries that specialize in more experimental beers, often higher alcohol and made a little differently than most brews. These are often available only in four-packs or the 22-ounce bottles called “bombers.” For reference, most mass-market beers are between 4 and 5 percent alcohol by volume (ABV).

The Dogfish Head Punkin Ale comes in at 7 percent and is, according to the label, “A full-bodied brown ale with real pumpkin, brown sugar, cinnamon & nutmeg.” It is well-made, as all Dogfish Head beers are, but the pumpkin taste is not very clear at the outset and only comes after the beer has been allowed to warm and you’ve had more than a few sips. Cinnamon is a toughie for brewers, and it does not quite work here. It also has a slightly metallic mouth feel. It’s a good beer, but more expensive per bottle than anything so far.

Weyerbacher Brewing Co. of Easton, Pa., presented its Imperial Pumpkin Ale, which the label says as an ale “brewed with Pumpkin and Spices (Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Cardamom, Cloves).” Imperial, by the way, is microbrewery short-hand for higher alcohol. This one checks in at 8 percent, which is pretty hefty. It’s also a pretty good beer. It has a very full taste with a slight metallic tinge but the pumpkin hides a bit. You can taste the alcohol clearly at the top of your mouth, and the cinnamon comes through strong at the end. The malt and the nutmeg are fairly clear, as well, and in all, it really tastes like pumpkin pie spice.

Perhaps the most fascinating of all was Imperial Pumking, “ale brewed with pumpkins,” from Southern Tier Brewing Company in Lakewood, NY. This is the real thing; as Mrs. Short Pours said. “It tastes like pumpkin, and it tastes like beer.” That’s it in this one, all pumpkin, no spices, and it’s the better for it. A caramel brown, this beer fills your mouth, without much of a metallic taste at all, and for a beer that is 9 percent alcohol, it doesn’t taste nearly as strong as the Weyerbacher. It is an excellent beer for a frosty autumn night.

In some areas, it’s easy to get fresh-brewed pumpkin beers on tap. In Salem, Mass., for instance, the Beer Works brew pub always has its own Pumpkinhead Ale up, and it’s easily one of the best of the breed. During the fall, it’s up at the BBWs near the Boston Garden and Fenway Park. The Littlest Short Pour lives at nearby Simmons College, and I believe we need to send her on a mission.

In my area of New York State, Brown’s Brewing in Troy has a very drinkable pumpkin ale that pours a golden brown. It has a good dose of malt, is less spiced than the others and is not very bitter. It is available only on tap or in 64-ounce growlers at the brewpub.

Kicking off another pumpkin season

Today’s second “Beer to Drink While Posting” is:
Great Divide (Colo.) Brewing Co.
Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout

I spied the leaves beginning to turn as I drove home in western Vermont yesterday. That means it’s time to bring out the pumpkin beer review.

Last Fall, I drank as many pumpkins as I could find for a newspaper article. I will post it shortly

I have already started up again this year, having the Southampton pumpkin on tap at The Local in Saratoga Springs and bringing home a four-pack of the Dogfish Head version. The Southampton was a touch light, and the Dogfish was consistently good. I also picked up something new during the Vermont trip, Wolaver’s Certified Organic Will Stevens’ Pumpkin Ale, which is named after the guy who grows the pumpkins.

The Wolaver’s is brewed by Otter Creek in Middlebury, Vt., and I have not tried as many of the beers as I should have. This one I liked because it was more of a real “pumpkin” beer, rather than a spiced beer with pumpkins. The Dogfish Punkin Ale takes a chance and uses cinnamon, which sometimes does not translate well in the brewing process, and this is one of those cases.

Big, Extreme, Imperial and even Leviathan-like

Today’s “Beer to Drink While Posting” Is:
Rock Art (Vt.) Brewery’s IPA (II) Double IPA

One of the things you never really notice until you start drinking craft-brewed beer is the alcoholic content of your beer. It’s beer, right? Drink more than one an hour and you start to get drunk. What’s more to know?

Take Budweiser and Michelob, for instance. Smooth, easy-to-drink (unless you don’t like the taste any more) and 5 percent alcohol. Miller Genuine Draft? It’s at 4.66, and the dreaded “Natty Ice” is 5.9 percent. Guinness (the tall can) is 4.2.

OK, so those are some numbers, and to be honest, many craft beers are right down there with them. But there are a number of movements afoot in the craft-brewing industry, and for several years there has been a move to push for “Imperial” beers, which basically means “high alcohol” beers. They are referred to as “Big Beers.

In fact, a number of craft breweries have separate series for their higher-alcohol beers. Smuttynose Brewing Co, in Portsmouth, NH simply calls its series the Big Beer Series,” and it includes a barleywine, a wheat wine and an IPA that range from 9 to 11 percent. (The measure is also called ABV or alcohol by volume.). There are other beers in the series, including an excellent Farmhouse Ale, which are down in the 7 percent range.

By the way, despite the name, barleywines and wheat wines are beers.

Stone Brewing from California is also at the forefront, pushing strong beers past 10 percent. These include Old Guardian Barleywine, Double Bastard Ale, Imperial Russian Stout, and Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (a recent and very happy experience). Some of the Stone beers, including Old Guardian, are released on a yearly basis, which each release being different from the others.

While the Big Beer and Stone beers – along with others -- have been around a good bit, Harpoon Brewery in New England is debuting its “Leviathan” series with a kicked-up version of the Triticus Wheat Wine that was one of the stars of its 100 Barrel series. This beer was designed by Jason and Todd Alstrom, the co-founders of my favorite beer site, www.beeradvocate.com, and the publishers of Beer Advocate magazine. The original Triticus – a personal favorite – was 11.4 ABV, but for the Leviathan series, it’s been pushed to 14 percent. Unfortunately, it is only available on draft and is released in a limited area that includes Boston and Windsor, Vt. The rest of the series will come out in 22-ounce bombers, the standard for many of the big beers.

Southern Tier from Lakewood, N.Y., is one of the great underappreciated breweries. They have done an Imperial series for a long time. Beers in that series., which has a range to 8 to 10 ABV, include my all-time favorite pumpkin beer – Pumking – as well as the obligatory Barleywine, a Wheat Ale, a Red Ale, a cherry saison and a Helles. These are all limited releases.

Southern Tier also has a Blackwater Stout series that is excellent and includes four beers at this point – an Oatmeal Stout, a Coffee Stout, a Chocolate Stout and a really intriguing Crème Brulee Milk Stout (think vanilla) that was part of the genesis for this post. These range from 10 to 12 ABV.

Rock Art Brewing, which has limited distribution in the Northeast, also has an “Extreme” beer series and also features a 10-percent ABV barleywine called “The Vermonster.” Yes, today’s posting beer is from the Extreme series. It’s a good, solid Double IPA at 8 percent. Not painfully hoppy, nor is there a strong taste of alcohol. It’s tasty and does not have the soapy aftertaste you sometimes get with this style.

There are many others to look at, but the last one I will mention is the Pompier, from Pennichuck Brewing Co. in Milford, NH. It is an English Style barleywine aged in oak whisky barrels. It’s an excellent beer and comes in a swing-top one liter bottle and checks in at 12.1 percent. A “pompier,” as the label tells us, is a person who works at the fire brigade.

These beers are very different and are a challenge for even experienced craft beer drinkers. You also have to consider that a bomber of an 11-percent beer has more alcohol than four cans of Budweiser. Be careful with these. I generally drink them at home or have no more than one or two in a bar. Many establishments serve this in half-servings because of the alcohol.

The Omnivore's 100 and good, strong beer

If you use any of the Internet networking sites, you are familiar with “memes,” those insidious “Hey, look at this” lists or quizzes in which your friends tell you their results and encourage you to share yours.

One of the better ones going around right now is The Omnivore's 100, which comes out of a British food blog – a pretty good one, by the way – and is one person’s list of 100 foods and drinks everyone should try in their lifetime.

It is a well thought-out list and includes items such as carp, calamari, raw Scotch Bonnet pepper, curried goat, a Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut, poutine and haggis.

Among the drinks were four that I think establish a good theme – Lapsang Souchong tea, Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee, Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more, and beer above 8 percent ABV.

Being a connoisseur of all of those things, I was tickled, especially by the beer.

My immediate thought was, well if my friends wanted to do that, what beer would I serve to them.

First of all, if they were your basic Bud drinkers, I would ease into it, maybe giving them a heavier beer, but one that was still in the 5 to 6 percent range. Maybe an easy Porter or Scotch Ale. I would explain to them that when we tried the stronger beer, they might actually taste the alcohol. I would work from a 22-ounce bomber and would assume I might have to drink a good deal of it myself. (Oh, well). Yes, this could be done at a good brew pub, too. Another thought: Arrogant Bastard is 7.2 ABV, and people get a kick out of the name. It’s a good lead-in.

For barleywines, I would go with Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, Great Divide Old Ruffian, Flying Dog Horn Dog or Stone Old Guardian.

I would be interested in what you think.

The Man of Kent Tavern -- Hoosick Falls, NY

Sometimes a restaurant just happens to be in the right place at the right time. When that restaurant is consistently good and inexpensive, so much the better,

We travel fairly regularly on Route 7 between or home in Salem, NY, and Albany, the gateway to the NYS Turnpike the rest of civilization. This route takes us past The Man of Kent Tavern in Hoosick Falls, and all in all that’s a really good thing.

A month or so ago, we were in the middle of a five-hour drive home, and we wanted to eat before we got home, so I suggested The Man of Kent to my wife, who had not been there, but lived in London for two years and would enjoy the feel of the place.

We’re talking a small place, festooned with sports decorations from European football scarves, rugby and European soccer jerseys, golf tea flags and a corner shrine to horse racing at nearby Saratoga. Yes, there are even a few American football items thrown in. All this and a view of the woods with a stream below, plus an outdoor patio.

Did I mention one of the best tap lines near the Northway, with a huge variety of British beer? Plus an excellent bottle selection? Those are things that really appeal to me, especially the fact that they still have Brown’s Brewing’s Whiskey Stout up, and I do not think I saw it at the restaurant the last time I was there. They do it right, using the right glasses for the specific beers. One nitpick: My wife would have liked to have seen a cider on draft.

Still, for all that terrific atmosphere -- and the beer – for this restaurant to be as good as it is, it needs the outstanding type of food that the kitchen produces. What’s important to remember along with the quality of the food is that the cost is quite low. The Man of Kent has some of the lowest-priced pub burgers I have seen, and they are excellent.

We pulled in, extremely hungry and tired, an hour from home, and it turned out to be one of those perfect stops. I had a reuben sandwich, and my wife had a roast beef sandwich that she said had clearly come from a recently roasted beef. Both came with chips. The waitress was attentive and knowledgeable about both the food and the beer. She was having a good time, as were the other folks there. I had a couple of beers – including the aforementioned Whiskey Porter – and my wife opted for ginger ale. We decided to share a chocolate dessert, and she had tea – real English tea – and I had coffee. The bill before tip? $30. Well worth it.

For those who may have visited before, the tavern was sold in July 2007, by John Stoate, an Englishman who had established the pub in the 1980s. In talking to folks and reading reviews, there does not appear to have been any major changes. The friendly atmosphere and the care of the staff are still outstanding.

Green Flash's Imperial IPA a real bright spot . . .

It’s not often at all that I pour a beer and say, “Wow, that’s a good looking beer.”This one was was the color of amber, clear and clean and sported a quarter-inch head of white-turning-to-ran foam. It was a good omen.

That just heightened my hopes, because this was from a San Diego-based brewery that had been getting a lot of word-of-mouth on the East Coast. We’re talking about Green Flash Brewery and its Imperial India Pale Ale. I had heard good things about the brewery, and I am always looking for a good Imperial IPA. It came in a 22-ounce bomber for $5.99.

I may always be looking for a good example of the high-alcohol style, but I rarely find it. Even more than regular IPAs, the high-end variants tend to taste very soapy at times. Oh, the hops flavor is there, but so is a soapy – or tinny aftertaste.

But not this time!

I took a good healthy sip – the label amusingly refers to it as “highly quaffable." The hops were high in the nose when I sniffed it, but now overpowering. They were quite evident in the taste, too – high across the bridge of the mouth. The alcohol was evident, too, at 9 percent, but the soapy taste never came. Instead, I could almost feel my mouth pucker, as if I had sucked on a lemon. Trust me, this is a good thing. The bottle says it rates 101 on the International Bitterness Unit scale, but my friends who know such things tell me that’s not overly scientific when you get over 70 or so.

What matters is that it tasted terrific all the way through the bottle. It gave me a nice, warm tingle, and since I will be back near that package store this weekend, I know it’s not going to be the last bottle I try.