A rare case of "BeerFail." Well, two.

I drink a fair amount of beer, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised when I find beers I just don’t like.

For the most part, I am pretty easy. If it’s well-made and tastes decent, I drink it, make a brief comment and move on.

Then there’s “BeerFail.”

I have had two beers, from a couple of my favorite breweries that I just don’t want to taste again. (I will, to make sure it was not a single-bottle issue, but I do not want to).

The first was a couple of weeks ago, the Cherry Saison from Southern Tier. I guess I expected it to be a little less sour and taste a little more like a saison. Hey, I love a lot of their other stuff, so I figure this is going to happen on occasion.

Today’s was more perplexing.

It was laundry day, and in the Liamverse, that means beer shopping. (Yes, there’s a lot of beer shopping in the Liamverse, and there would be more if I had a better income).

There’s a Vermont liquor store next to one of my favorite laundromats (beer store, bookstore, Shaw’s grocery, a good farmers’ market on the way, and I can buy the Boston Globe over there.

Anyway, this place sells singles, so I plunked down the $3 for an Oak-Aged Arrogant Bastard, from Stone Brewing in California. My friend Jason swears by the stuff, and Stone is, well, one of the best breweries in America.

My idea was: This stuff is $17.99 a six-pack and my readers oughta know if there’s a six-pack worth close to a $20 bill with tax and deposit.

Not this one. Not today.

Not nearly as good as the regular Arrogant Bastard. No oak that I could taste. No alcohol I could taste. Just bitter. I am gonna give it one more shot sometime.

Now to cleanse my palate with a Fuel Café coffee flavored stout from Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee.

Live review: Brown's Brewing Co. Whiskey Barrel Aged Porter . . .

Beer-tasting in progress: Sometimes I will review beers by tasting them and jotting down notes, then writing the results up later.

Sometimes, like now, it’s a live-blogging exercise.

I was checking out at Oliver’s Beverage in Albany, N.Y., this afternoon. It’s the best beer store – bar none – in the Capital Region of New York, say from Kingston, NY up toward the Canadian border and west to Utica.

I was chatting with the cashier-guy about Wolff’s Bier Garten, and he asked me if I knew that Brown’s Brewing (from Troy) had its Whiskey Barrel Aged Porter out. (It’s part of their “Seasonal Sessional” line.

I said I’d had it on draft (in fact, I had discovered it on draft at the Man of Kent Tavern in Hoosick, N.Y., after the brew pub had run out.)

No, he said, they have bottled it and sent someone to get a 22-ounce bomber ($7.95, I think). It nicely filled my box. It checks in at 5.75 percent alcohol (yay for hundredths).

It pours a very deep brown with very little head. You can smell the whiskey in the nose.

The whiskey is very strong at the top of the palate and into the sinuses. It’s got a very long finish and actually makes you salivate under the tongue at the end. The taste settles in very quickly. It’s not nearly as strong after the first several sips. It also gets a touch bitter as it warms up, but not to a great degree.

It’s a fairly medium-range porter – heavier than most but lighter than some. It tastes better when it’s colder.

Definitely a bomber to share with a couple of other people. It’s a tough one to drink by yourself.

A note for the local -- Upstate New York -- folks . . .

For folks in the Capital Region of New York: (And probably other parts of the East Coast) It was strange to see in the middle of July, but I walked into Oliver's Beverage in Albany, NY, today and saw multiple cases of the Southern Tier Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale just sitting there.

I nearly dropped the $89 on a case, but settled for four bottles at $7.99 each, a dollar cheaper than last year.

For my money, this is the best commercially available pumpkin beer on the East Coast.

Also today came the discovery that Brown's Brewing of Troy, NY, has produced its Whiskey Porter in bombers.

An IPA and a barleywine . . .

Two quickie reviews


Dogfish Head Squall IPA: It’s an unfiltered and bottle-condition 90-Minute IPA that includes six varieties of hops.

It’s hazy and the color of a light maple syrup, and the smell of hops makes your drool. Well, me at least. It’s got a slight head and is very carbonated going down. It’s got a full taste that lasts a long time on the tongue, and you get the alcohol rather thoroughly.

Flying Dog Horn Dog Barleywine: From the “Over The Top Is A Good Thing Department,” this is a good, smooth barleywine from a brewer that tends to push the edges and sometimes crash through them.

It hits high on the palate and strongly alcoholic, but, hey, this is a beer that checks in at 10.2 percent alcohol.

It is sweet and smooth. A solid barleywine.

Beer trades: What do *I* want?

I wrote earlier about the camping event where friends and I trade beer from other parts of the country, and I listed what they usually ask for and what else I like to bring.

In the immortal words of Mr. Morden from Babylon 5, people ask me, “So what do you want?”

The first beer I request is from Three Floyd’s in Muncie, Ind., and it’s called “Gumball Head.” It’s an IPA and, yes, it tastes like gumballs. My second request is always Edmund Fitzgerald Porter from Great Lakes Brewing in Cleveland, Ohio.

My friend Henry is bringing the Gumball Head.

I’ve commented before on beers that have cool names and turn out to be excellent beers, too. This is a great porter.

The third request is from Michigan, for Founders Breakfast Stout, especially the oak-aged version. Another is the Fat Tire Ale from New Belgium brewing in Colorado.

We do get a lot of beer from across the country on the East Coast, so I don’t need to ask for Stone, Alaska Brewing or many of the other West Coast beers. We get Flying Dog from Colorado, too.

Beer trades: What people want . . .

I’ve mentioned before that one of my other hobbies is Medieval re-creation, and every summer we go to western Pennsylvania for a week for two to camp with 10,000 other people as crazy as we are.

Since people are traveling from all over the country to get there (we also gets Brits and Aussies and the odd Israeli), it’s a great chance for beer-trading.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been in touch with folks, mainly from the Midwest, trying to figure out what I’d like them to bring and what I can bring for them.

The answer to the latter question is Saranac. For folks outside of the region, it’s a highly sought after beer, especially the mixed packs, because there are so many different beers in them. Also, I think Saranac’s one of those breweries that people feel is consistently good across different styles. One of the most asked-for varieties is the Black and Tan.

Another commonly requested brewery is Long Trail, and again I think it’s for overall consistency and for specific varieties, such as Blackbeary Wheat and Double Bag.

Magic Hat also draws a number of requests, especially for the No. 9.

One specific beer that folks ask for is the Ubu Ale from Lake Placid.

This year’s list from my friend Henry in the Midwest asked for Victory Wild Devil
And three from Troegs -- Flying Mouflan, Nugget Nectar or Dead Reckoning


If people say, “Pick what you think is best,” I will start with the 12-packs of Cooperstown Brewing (they are actually packing a 13th beer as a promotion. There’s a lighter-brewed pack with ales and the pilsner and the darker pack, which includes the stout, porter and my favorite from them – Pride of Milford, a strong ale.

I will also often pick up some Trout River, especially if they like the Oatmeal Stout. Wanting to promote very local beer, I sometimes bring Dacker from Davidson Brothers Brewing in Glens Falls or Brown Brewing from Troy.

In the next post: So what do I ask for?

Friends make tasting more fun

We all have our hobbies.

Sometimes you want to be able to combine your hobbies.

Besides drinking beer and writing about it, I am also involved in Medieval re-creation in the Society For Creative Anachronism. One of the things I do there is to raise money so the king and queen can travel to visit different groups.

I generally run auctions, and one of the “prizes” I have been using is a beer-tasting that I’ll run at a person’s camp at an event.

Over Fourth of July weekend, I did two of them, with my 22-year-old daughter, a veteran beer geek, as my assistant and with my wife as an observer.

It was really cool. I learned a lot about beer and about people.

Pete was the winner for the first night, and George won the second night. They are both good friends of mine. George had said he didn’t like Belgians, so I brought the two I had to Pete’s. Each person got to have three others taste with them, but in actuality, more people took part.

In both cases, the audiences were really interested in what we were doing. On Friday, I introduced Pete and his friend to a pair of Belgians -- a Saison du Pont and a quad called Gravitation from Smuttynose. We also had the Long Trail IPA and the Arrogant Bastard Strong Ale, from Stone Brewing.

Pete had never had Belgians, other than the Belgian Whites, which are citrusy and citrus isn’t so good for him. He really liked them. So did his friends.

The Gravitation, part of Smutty’s Big Beer series, was very sweet and was a big hit.

The Saison, much lighter, also appealed to folks. Two of the people who were tasting were fairly knowledgeable, but the others seemed really impressed by the different tastes.

At George’s on Saturday, after a wonderful meal, that he had cooked. We had Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat, Gritty McDuff’s Black Fly Stout and two strong ales – the Bastard and the Long Trail Double Bag.

I think the Bastard was probably the most popular on that night.

I used my spiffy new six-ounce beer-tasting glasses from Stone Brewing, but I found you cannot put them back in the box with the packing peanuts if they are the least bit wet.

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?