Local brewery (temporarily) expands

Optimistic bottles: Not half empty, but half filled...

I am seldom late for work, even by the obligatory rive minutes; I live far to close to the office to ever establish a genuinely feasible excuse. But, then again, I also seldom find my (albeit unlawful) bike route through town obstructed by a fully operational industrial beer bottling operation, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, noisily huffing through cases of bombers, which is exactly what I encountered yesterday. And but oh, what a brilliant scheme it is. For those of you who have ever wondered, how exactly does a modestly sized brewpub manage to dispatch bottles of four of their releases to accounts far and wide without painstakingly doing it by hand well past the 25th hour of the day, or by utilizing a contract brewer, here's your answer: a door-to-door bottling line:

No bikes or skateboards, fancy mobile bottling machines a-ok

That's right: The whole kit and caboodle rolls right off the back of a truck, plugs in to the tank line, and away it goes. Place labels on roll, empty bottles on the one end, caps on the crimper, and some waiting arms and empty cases on the other end, and you're off. Plenty of folks have seen what a bottling line looks like, but encountering a system like this running at full tilt in the middle of the street is nothing short of a spectacle.

Lining them up while the Altman crew looks on

Of the many good things Christian Kazakoff has brought to Iron Springs, it would seem his dedication to a bottling program has had the greatest apparent impact. Hard at work well before most folks were even up, he, Phil and Mike were already well on their way to filling the 200 cases of empty bottles that had arrived that morning, and by the time I rode past on my way home, there was nary a trace anything fishy had taken place, all the gear packed back up onto the truck, cases put away, but for a stray bottle here and there.

Bottle labels boasting a beer's water source have a long tradition

It's a beautifully reasonable solution, too, one that allows a brewery to flexibly make decisions about expansion without levying the enormous risk inherent in moving beyond "being a brewpub" and "getting on shelves". If it turns out to be a successful venture, you can always stage an encore performance with higher case numbers, and if it ends up applying too much pressure to your bottom line, you can simply write it off as an experiment to revisit later on. There's no equipment to learn, maintain, and pay for, no space to rent, and no fear of outgrowing the scale of your operations. At the end of the day, it's back to business as usual.

One down, 199 cases to go...

Fog's a-brewin'

I've mentioned here recently that we've got a budding shutterbug in the house these days, a pint-size paparazza of sorts who's made her dad's Elph somewhat of a treasured playtime gadget. Here we have one of more recent works, entitled "Yeast". I resisted correcting her, in that it was actually a 2000mL "yeast starter", suspended in a simple wort of dry malt extract and nutrients, as she's likely approaching her subject from an artistic vantage point and not a purely scientific one.

For those of you who don't completely geek out on homebrewing, a 2000mL slurry of yeast starter is more than ample if you're only planning on brewing five gallons of beer. Most folks are content tossing the contents of a pitchable vial of liquid yeast (if not just a packet of the dry stuff) into their beer-in-waiting and letting nature take its delicious course. Why would I bother to waste some valuable wall-staring time with yet another routine of cooking, sanitizing, and nail-biting?

Why? Well, these are the silly types of things you do in preparation for brewing a 14% 12% alcohol by volume* batch of beer.

That beer is the topic of today's experiment: Tokyo Fog

...comes on little cat feet

It's oddly addictive, this reverse engineering technique of formulating recipes, attempting to deconstruct the hidden successes encoded in the interplay between ingredients in culinary masterpieces, reimagining them as distilled, ghostly incarnations within this wholly other medium of brewing. One such masterpiece, legendary in its time, without comparison, is the mighty Tokyo Fog. This Atomic Age bachelor pad tour de force, as inimitably described in loving detail by a man who was there to witness its resurrection on a windless July afternoon, is nothing shy of a symphony in three movements, those movements being: Coffee, Ice Cream, and Bourbon.

And what a name! Fog, particularly the coastal fog that's often referenced symbolically around here, develops over the course of the summer months, when the cool, wet air pushed eastward over the Pacific collides with warm, dry air from the inland valleys, accumulating in such bulk over specific spots in the Bay Area that they suffer through far colder summers than the other three months. It boxes and isolates, like acoustic baffling, creating a theatricality in each little space it carves out, making soundstages out of corner cafes, beach boardwalks, sage-ridden headlands, and steep, lamplit streets. Cars pass by as if entering and exiting a frame, existance beyond which nothing more than a muffled world of guesses, creating at once a heightened state of focus - conversations seem close, clear, undisputed for attention - while at the same time lending to a disorientation and sense of waywardness, what without a sun, sky, or horizon to guide you, along with that unsettling enigmatic curiosity about what lies beyond your crippled scope of sight and sound.  What better metaphor for the experience of enjoying this unholy assemblage of post-war American pantry staples? And Tokyo? I have no idea. It just adds to the mystique.

But let's return, as we always should, to beer. With a mindset similar to some of our other recent experiments, it seemed high time to attempt to isolate and translate the essence of this iconic, nostalgic treat into beer form. High time, that is, considering that a beverage of this strength and potential complexity could need up to a year to fully complete. No point in waiting any longer that we have to, right? That said, let's cut to the nitty gritty, what makes this kid tick. It's actually rather simple:

See, it's sweating because it knows what's in store for it.

Coffee: There's a nearly inescapable DIY trajectory leading homebrewers to become home coffee roasters. And as an unrepentant shill for the folks at Sweet Maria's, I'd be remiss if I didn't pimp the full city roast Guatemala El Injerto Estate 100% Bourbon beans that made their way into this batch. Taking a cue from  - where else? - Randy Mosher's oft-cited manifesto on breaking traditional brewing boundaries - we ground up some fresh-roasted beans, poured some cold water over them in a French press, and let them sit in the fridge for a few days leading up to brew day. The resulting coffee was hugely aromatic, but almost completely devoid of roast bitterness. It found its way into the kettle just about five minutes from the end of the boil. Alongside some appropriately dark specialty grains, it ought to allow for a notable but unpunishing impression of coffee.

Vanilla ice cream: This one poses a bit more of a conundrum, as I'm loathe to add any vanilla directly into a beer. To date, my tasting experiences regarding vanilla flavor as it manifests itself in beer are akin to those with chocolate, in that my personal preference leans towards the impression of those ingredients through brewing slight-of-hand (special grains, fancy fermentation methods, and the like) rather than via stubborn attempts to cram some hunks of semisweet or a few pods of Madagascar bean into the fermenters for effect. For creaminess, though, we thought the judicious use of oats and chocolate wheat malt would help offer that impression through body and mouthfeel, and knowing full well that the preposterously huge amount of malt would lead to an inevitable hit of residual sweetness, we shied away from the too-obvious addition that gives modern-day "cream" stouts their name, that unfermentable loser named lactose. As far as vanilla was concerned, though, we hoped that we could pull some of that off in concurrence with the closing, keystone element of the trinity...

Prepping the potpourri in a lake of liquid love

Bourbon: The key player in Tokyo Fog is the fine oak-aged corn whiskey, "America's Native Spirit", as it were. I've waxed poetic on the joys of bourbon and the myriad joys of marrying it with beer in the past, and to be totally honest, its use in mainstream craft brewing over the past few years has ballooned to a nearly obnoxious scale. Nevertheless, in capturing the spirit of its namesake, that icy treat made permanently slushy by said bourbon, getting some of that liquid fire in there was absolutely essential. As before, we went the Brewcraft route, this time watching nearly a fifth disappear into the oak within just a few days. Seeing as how vanillin is a well-known compound that finds its way into wines thanks to oak barrel conditioning, our plan is to not only take advantage of the "bourbon extract" we'll be generating, but also allow the beer to rest on the physical oak for a while (considering we're looking at aging this for nine months, we've got plenty of time) in hopes that it pulls through and completes the picture we're trying to draw.

Go ahead and click on the carboy geyser for the recipe, if you dare:

If there's a more satisfying image in all of homebrewing than one of a fermentation gone comically, explosively awry, I haven't seen it, and frankly, I've come to acknowledge these perilously violent emissions as harbingers of good luck, as there's seemingly been a consistent messiness-to-deliciousness ratio at work in our kitchen. The results of such havoc? You'll just have to stick around. (For about 6 months or so, unless I weaken and sneak an early sip. Or two.)

* Meet L'il Tokyo:

See, math is not my strong suit. Despite my best intentions, I miscalculated the rate of evaporation over the course of the 90-minute boil, not sure if it was the low level of propane in the tank or the brisk Alaskan wind that kept striking out in whiplash bursts from the north, or that simply, I didn't do the 6th grade level multiplication correctly, which meant that we ended up at the end of the evening with a bit more beer (yay!) than we'd expected, but inversely, at a lower gravity, and hence a lower potential final alcohol level (boo!) than we'd anticipated for. And while Li'l Tokyo might feel left out, as the 1600mL of overflow from the kettle forcibly segregated from the bulk in its little flask, we're already devising plans for how to make the little guy feel special. (In the background is a glass with which we toasted the end of a successful evening of brewing, maybe one of the closest things I've had yet to a beer-incarnate Tokyo Fog, North Coast's Old Rasputin XI. They certainly look related, don't they?) Updates on all to come...

All part of a balanced breakfast ale

Mia prides herself on being a quality helper in the kitchen, especially in regards to the arena of baking. Any opportunity to don her mini-toque and mix, punch, dollop and squash her way through an afternoon of food prep is one she'll gleefully take up, upon realizing that's what's on the agenda quickly running to unseen corners of the house to noisily retrieve her stepping stool and perhaps even her mini-apron, keeping an eye open for a free whisk or spoon, prepared to warn anyone within earshot when the oven is hot. Astoundingly, she'll see a job through to the end, with hardly any little person attention deficit to speak of. What began as a rainy day rescue plan has now become as routine as reading or playing music or piecing together puzzles. For a kid who isn't particularly driven by food, and has even less of a sweet tooth, it's still the first thing she'll want to fill me in on when I step through the front door in the evening. If there's a totemic symbol of all that wholesome home-centric adorable fuzzy awesomeness, an icon that fits conveniently in the palm of your hand that represents the process and the product in the hendiatris of head, heart and hands, it would have to be the oatmeal raisin cookie. And if there is an act more nourishing to the development of the toddler psyche - from it's fine motor skills to its lessons on procedure and cause and effect and collaboration to its establishment of work and reward - than baking oatmeal raisin cookies, I haven't found it yet (with the possible exception of the wholesome family singalong).

Think I'm getting soft in my old age? A whole post about baking cookies with a little kid? Give me a break. Your reward is forthcoming, for having made your way this far. It's still all about the beer. Nourishing, centering, fulfilling, "breakfast for dessert of vice versa" beer.

Beer, in today's case, born with the heart and soul of an oatmeal raisin cookie. Let's make some, shall we?

Because face it: homebrewing is a lot like baking, in many ways moreso that cooking. Ability to follow directions with an underlying understanding about the purpose of each step, the use of time and chemistry as the major catalysts, and the focus on a core set of a few simple ingredients are all hallmarks of baking and brewing. In the interest of putting together a recipe that capitalizes on the highlights of fresh, chewy, pungent, homebaked delightfulness, entrapping all those facets of a child's culinary masterpiece within a prism of their dad's favorite beverage, it makes sense to single out some slightly unorthodox brewing ingredients that could potentially make the difference:

Toasted oats: Well, duh, you say. Oats, in oatmeal cookies? Genius. Sure, but while oats have a celebrated history in brewing, the typical flaked oats that find their way into a brewer's mash tun have a far more neutral character than those that have spent some time sweating it out in a hot oven. Following a tip from Randy Mosher's most excellent Radical Brewing, we took a half pound of hand-picked Grade A local hippie co-op approved bulk oats and spread them out on a baking tray in a 300° F oven until the house was unmistakeably haunted by the ghost of deliciousness. Allowed to rest for a few days in the interest of casting off any harsh residual chemicals conjured up by the toasting action, they were then added in with the remainder of the grist.

Raisin puree: If it weren't enough for us to be "radical", the least we could do would be to include something "extreme". Thanks to Sam Calagione's treatise on that very subject, we experimented with a new approach to freeing up all the trapped fermentable sugars trapped in a half pound of raisins. Simply enough, put the raisins in a blender with a cup of hot wort from the kettle, frappe them beyond recognition, dump the resultant goo into your kettle about ten minutes shy of the end of your boil, and relax.

Candi, candi, candi, I can't let you go.

All my life, you're haunting me. I loved you so!

Homemade candi sugar: The image of oatmeal cookies as the health-conscious option on the bakery shelf is a bit strained, as everyone knows the most important ingredient is still sugar. Sweet sweet sugar. So what better opportunity, then, for us to attempt to knock out some amberescent candi sugar by following these simple instructions? The beauty of doing this yourself, like the toasted oats, is that you're completely in control of yet another deeply flavorful brewing component where you can dial in to whatever nuance you'd like to convey. As the sugar cooks, it gradually darkens in color, slowly developing more deeply toned aromas, going from a spun-sugar cotton candy scent into something more richly toffee-ish, caramel-like. Next time we'll have no choice but to go even darker to see where that takes us...

Chances are, despite the duplication of some key ingredients and the resultant intensely comforting waves of olfactory bliss that permeated the home with window-steaming warmth, the finished product in the glass will likely be as akin to an oatmeal raisin cookie as our Old Fashioned Ale was to its namesake cocktail (as in, "not very"). But was it delicious? Indeed it was. Perhaps we ought to chalk this up to my budding theory on the built-in success of backwards engineered brewing recipes. We shall see.

The recipe is here. (It's no small coincidence that the ingredient menu has an "odds and sods" look to it, smidges of all sorts of character grains and an odd stylistic ambivalence, because that's exactly what it is: a leftovers batch. But what of the beer that warranted all these castoff ingredients? What possible Frankenstein of an experiment could have yielded these scraps? To be revealed in our next episode: Tokyo Fog.)

Localize it, pt. 4 - Some closing thoughts

The completion of the premiere SF Beer Week seems an opportune time to close the door on our recent ruminations on "local beer" in its many iterations. In many ways, actually, a local theme did emerge throughout the ten days of competitions, dinners, and other festivities, what with a San Francisco brewery taking a medal at Toronado's storied barleywine fest, some of the country's finest chefs a la cuisine a la biere showing off on their home turf, North and East Bay breweries receiving honors at the Bistro Double IPA festival, Anchor revealing their very first barrel aged beer, and local bloggers hosting events to easily rival the pros, all amidst the reemergence of the "official" beer of the week, a historically recreated batch of pale ale hearkening back to the area's distinction as ground zero for the new craft brewing movement. And despite the appearance of some of the industry's highest profile figures, the most exciting "meet the brewer" event featured none other than one of our own.

And arguably, that could be the best lesson learned from our first ever rally for Bay Area beer, that the bash was at its best when it was celebrating hometown successes, be they brewers or bars or chefs or restaurants. In retrospect, some of the activities that would have been unmissable under any other circumstances - visits from brewers from abroad, for example - looked like nothing more than filler. Hopefully next year, the local businesses who strangely opted to sit out this year's beer week will recognize the goldmine of opportunity that they missed out on, and will enter into the fray when February rolls around again, making it an event where one really does "come for the bay, stay for the beer." We'll just have to see, won't we?

And on a side note, I'm still haunted by those growlers, too, the ones we saw getting filled up at Russian River on the day Pliny the Younger was tapped, how wrecked they must have been when they finally made their way into hands over 3,000 miles and who knows how many warm, oxidized, flat UPS-rattled days away. Retelling that horror story to another aficionado, he replied, "that beer doesn't even taste the same once it's been in the glass for five minutes." At Toronado, the bartenders were uncorking the 20th Anniversary ale in front of the buyers to make sure they didn't try to sneak out with them to post on Ebay or worse, which made me wonder how Vinnie and Natalie must feel about having their hard work represented so falsely and sloppily. Brewers care about how their work is perceived, simply. Something that tastes so good because it's fresh, because it's local, it's hard to imagine what those long distance traders look to really get out of the deal other than a fresh tick on their "to have" list.

And lastly, in closing the book on this first experiment in formally saluting the Bay Area's beer scene, it's only fitting to donate a moment of remembrance to William Brand, whose tragic death wove a somber undercurrent beneath the proceedings. Critically injured just two days into the celebration, finally succumbing to his injuries eleven days later, he was such an anticipated presence at so many of the events that his absence was a somewhat strange and chilling entity, despite the nightly toasts held in his honor in dozens of taprooms, restaurants, dining rooms, and brewhouses throughout the region. There's little I can add to the chorus of sympathies being sounded out around both journalistic and beer circles, but he will be sorely missed.

(Image above from SF Beer Week's culminating liverbasher, the Toronado Barleywine Festival: Firestone Walker Abacus Blend, Elysian Old Cyclops, He'Brew Human Blockhead, and Ballast Point Three Sheets.)

Gold fashioned

And it's gone. Sitting here with a minute glass of the keg's last sputtering gasp, it's a fair reminder why even the strangest of experimental batches often deserve to be doubled in volume, just in case. The subject in this case is our Old Fashioned ale, five gallons of which has passed on, with another phantom five gallons presumably lurking in a darkened dusty corner of the garage, just waiting for me, ready to appear when I'm at my weakest and say, it wasn't just a dream. Really? You don't remember deciding to make a double batch at the very last minute?

Make no mistake: While excellent, it wasn't by any means a perfect recipe. Of course, an optimist (and as it's an attitude I'm not entirely familiar with, I had to go online to find one to vouch for me) would argue that the success of the first batch only lends to the opportunity for it to be improved upon, a chance to pat oneself on the back with one hand while stirring up a fresh mash in the kettle with the other. Having shared (a tiny amount) with the conspirator who helped me chart out the taxonomy of the classic Old Fashioned cocktail for use as a jig for the composite beer recipe, I was able to wrangle (a tiny amount of) tasting notes from his inital impression: "just slightly sweet, not cloying, with hints of orange in the finish, mingling with spice and a little oakiness".

But did it taste like an Old Fashioned? "Not really."

Oh well. "Inspired by" doesn't necessarily need translate to "unmistakable from", which means we won't be stealing the crown from Southern Tier as the Jones of tastealike brewing expertise. Despite the high level of alcohol, there wasn't nearly the heat one gets from true liquor. Regardless of our bourbon oak aging, there wasn't much by way of toasted char effect as there was the merest hint of vanilla and black pepper. And the cherry came through only in the keg's last few days, as the merest whisper, warning me not to toy too much in the future for fear of creating a potentially horrifying Nyquil-like undertone.

As a cocktail, it was a failure. As a beer, on the other hand, it was a success.

One arena in which that was distinctly true was as a singly-hopped beer, in which just one variety of hops was employed for all the bittering, flavor and aroma, with the organic Belgian Admiral hops we used laying down a distinctive but mellow bitterness on the front end and allowing for some serious marmalade overtones in both the aroma and finish. And as a double IPA (which at its core it really was) it was our most successful attempt yet, sticky and rich with an interplay between bitter and sweet that made it exceptionally drinkable despite what the stats would lead you to believe. Chewy and deep, yet clean on the finish and with a rousing bitterness, the question in my mind now is: What would it have tasted like if we'd skipped out on all the flaming orange and mystery tincture mumbo jumbo? Were those the secret hidden elements that held it all together, or would it have been even brighter, crisper, more satisfying without?

I guess we'll just have to find out, soon. The keg is empty now, remember. So much for the year of the session, eh?

(This post is in part a response to Drew, a commenter who didn't leave any contact info but who cared enough to ask how this recipe came out. For the rest of you, just pretend I wrote it for you because I knew you were so, so curious.)

Localize it, pt. 3 - The Younger the better

Admittedly, I am not, nor have I ever been, a starry-eyed fanatic of Pliny the Elder. Despite passionate dalliances with the coterie of Russian River's offerings, including an ashamedly fanboy exuberance over any of their Belgian modeled brews, this flagship IPA has always struck a curious chord on my palate. Every year, though, along with the demise of the football season and the emergence of a certain gigantic rodent from the frozen landscape, comes another iteration, one that warrants a quick foray up through the construction equipment rental yards, cow pastures, and dreadfully vacant car dealerships that pave the way through southern Sonoma county: Pliny the Younger. And while I was boggled by the level of delusional clamor I saw - people literally purchasing hundreds of dollars of growlers (as it's on tap, and at the Santa Rosa pub only) with the intent on shipping them to folks outside of driving range - it would be untruthful of me not to admit a newfound fresh, starry-eyed fanaticism that it managed to inspire.

The curious chord at the heart of the Elder, for me, has always been its coldly sharp bitterness, an effect I'm tempted to liken to the experience of a morning gone frost-bitten on a subalpine camping trip, one of those places where despite the promise of a warm afternoon, the summer's heat can't compete with the barren cold that follows a cloudless night, forcing one to wake squiting into the sunrise, in shock. There's a quick, prickly forest bite like pushing past pine and fir, cutting needles unyielding in their harsh, scraping way, a somewhat masochistic thrill of taking a deep, bracing breath, calling it invigorating. It's enjoyable, without question, but for me it's enjoyable in the same doses and frequency as camping is. When my palate needs readjusting (to wit, the lupulin threshold shift), when something brisk and just a tad punishing will settle things, the Elder is as honest, fresh, and distinctively local as beer can get. But the Younger, perhaps thanks to the loads of collateral impact that come along for the ride when you try to amp an all-malt beer up to over 10% alcohol, all those peskily unfermentables, that richly complex malt residue, is a completely different beast, with a glowing core of mandarin orange and a strange insistancy, a strange permanence in the glass that just demanded extra attention and a bit more reflection.

Perhaps it was the way that despite its proximity to the most depressing day of the year, the sun limped along in the sky, hesitatingly keeping things warmer far longer that it should have, lingering stubbornly in a rusty sky instead of plummeting behind Inverness Ridge like it was supposed to. This stranger, stronger sibling seems to be wrought of a deeper, warmer wellspring, an effluent life of depth that's only hinted at beneath the frost of its paler brethren. Like an impossibly warm summer's morning, the prickly edges of those evergreen branches have been softened, revealing a greener, more floral side, dense waves of pollen alongside eager blossoms perfuming the air. It is by no means a "hot" beer, the alcohol level is dangerously well hidden, but has a warmth of balance and a restorative sense to it, a soulfulness. This is Pliny the relaxed, Pliny the assured. Any semblance of shrieking , potentially sharp, spiky edges have been muted and mellowed, peaceably calmed, allowing for a richness of essence that lends itself to the kind of deliriously overwrought elucidation that can only come with long, slow, ruminative tasting.

But there's something Italian here, too, I could swear. A connection to the bold digestifs of the culture that brought us elixirs like Campari and Sanbitter, the bitterness that lingers in the back of the throat made me think of Orangina, of a time before sucrose, a strange sort of parallel of being a child newly introduced to taste in five dimensions, and of being the overstuffed omnivore that I am now, settling back into the rhythms of the evening, full, fat and happy with a glass of something comforting and easing to accompany the darkening of the sky.

And soon it will be gone, fleeting, not worth trying to save and store and cellar (and pity those poor folks in far off lands with flat, lifeless growlers of the stuff trying to figure it all out while pretending to ignore the dent it's made in their credit card bill), but exists truly just an act of local beer done perfectly, in a way that no other I can think of at the moment sums it all up, the life out here, so justly, so well, all of it. A great reminder of how lucky we are, and for what's possible.

Localize it, pt. 2 - SF Beer Week buddies

Something happened yesterday, something unplanned, unexpected, and for lack of a better description, something completely unintended. This dainty little blog turned four years old. And of the manifold benefits we reaped this past year, persisting to document some sort of beer tasting thought diary experiment, was the explosive array of new acquaintances we made. While we managed a marked return to our homebrewing experimentation (a discussion I'll save for this Friday), and likewise managed to get our hands on some pretty thought-provoking, sought-after bottles as well, but what was truly unique about this past year was the motley collection of wiseacres we came into regular communication with, transforming this formerly insular little notepad into a place where commentary, insight, and interplay came into the game.

That said, SF Beer Week is nearly upon us, and along with it, as luck would have it, a number of folks I've had the distinct pleasure of getting to know be just happen to be involved in hosting events under auspices of the golden Beer Week banner. Whereas the focus of these events might deviate from "the local", what with Belgian and German beers and whatnot, the sheer number of hardworking individuals - mostly bloggers, no less - organized here in the cause of raising an appreciation of fine beer in the Bay Area speaks volumes about the groundswell influence of local individuals. Where there have been obvious comparisons between SF Beer Week and it's relative Philly Beer Week, one could argue that our East Coast competitor is by the breweries and for the beer, whereas ours is for the people and by the people. In chronological order:

- Mario from Brewed for Thought has organized an Introduction to Belgian Ales at Alpha Sigma Phi on the UC Berkeley campus on Friday, February 5, along with a "meet the brewer" event with Tim Goeppinger of Sonoma Springs Brewing Company on Tuesday, February 10. A fellow member of BABB, Mario's a chatty, knowledgeable guy who fosters a pretention-free appreciation of craft beer, and who would be the perfect guide for someone who'd otherwise be turned off by a snobby introduction to arguably the world's greatest brewing culture.

- Chris and Meredith from thebeergeek.com have organized a German Beer Tasting at Rosie's Cracker Barrel in Carmel Valley on Saturday, February 7 at 2:00 p.m. Last summer I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with the two of them while they were visiting Iron Springs on their way up to the Santa Rosa Brewing Festival. Good folks with a serious appreciation for German beer (which I've always found a little sadly lacking in the craft beer circles), Chris and Meredith are well-traveled and well-versed, certain to use what they've learned in their time in Germany to provide some excellent insight on some overlooked styles. 

- Peter and Sammy from BetterBeerBlog are hosting a Beer & Dessert Tasting Event at Wine Affairs in San Jose on the evening of Monday, February 9. As many folks have been vocal about the decrepit state of craft beer on the Peninsula, this couple has resolved to be a part of the solution, trying to carve out an oasis of brewing appreciation with their beer dinners and pairing adventures. With keen perception on the nuances of beer tasting, they've been boldly creative in finding ways to bring beer to the table alongside all manner of foods. And dessert is, after all, the best course.

- Jesse from Beer & Nosh is presenting a beer dinner benefiting the San Fransisco Food Bank on Wednesday, February 11, hosted by Scala's Bistro. One of the local beer and food documenters that I just happen to run into more often than not, Jesse's a true gourmand of the local scene, and definitely the guy you want with a camera in hand when you're trying to show off. This dinner, subbed "New American Food and New American Beer", with a menu designed and executed by hotshot chef Jen Biesty, looks to be everything you'd want in a presentation that really showcases the elevated status and versatility of the new craft beer scene in this country.

- Sean Paxton is teaming up with Firestone Walker and Toronado for a beer dinner at the Peacock Lounge on Thursday, February 12.

It will be insane.

This last one is of a little more personal importance to me as I'll be donating the services of my delicate, lily-white hands to the man better known as The Homebrew Chef in his kitchen, a position garnered solely through the illusion I've cast as having some idea of how to find my way around a cutting board. We'll just see if I can pull that off. (If you see a bearded, bloodied man running back and forth across Haight Street that evening, there's a one-in-ten chance it's me.) It's a thrilling opportunity to get my hands dirty (after washing them!) in an arena in which we've always itched to dabble.

There ought to be a Pfiff! sponsored event, I suppose. Maybe next year? Or maybe something wild and impromptu will happen on the 8th, with the assistance of my four year-old nephew. On second thought, maybe the 13th would be better. But don't wait up. If you're attending events at this year's Beer Week, make a point of coming to some of these events, as they seem to define, as a group, what beer means to the current indie-by-way-of-foodie generation of the Bay Area.

Localize it, pt. 1 - Towards a reconnection with beer as a staple

Like bread, milk, eggs... There's no describing the burden of shame and embarrassment that would follow me if I ever bothered to purchase one of those items from a source further afield than I could comfortably drive in a leisurely afternoon outing. But if there's a weakness to be exploited in my professed admiration for all things brewed, it's my relative lack of engagement with the local scene (a weakness I tried valiantly to resolve this past weekend with a glass of Marin Brewing's White Knuckle double IPA, as seen above). Of the breweries represented in the SF Brewers' Guild, I can only genuinely throw my weight behind maybe half of them, for example. But to the extent that my cynical, sarcastic, pessimist attitude allows, I have to concede that some of the core tenets that push the modern foodview (local, sustainable, affordable) are going to be major factors in the beer scene in the coming year. What was beginning to gnaw at me, a flux of super-high cost beers, the elevation of beer to the wine-drinker's table alongside the wine-drinker's price tag, may likely be less of a concern as locals begin to take closer care with their expenses and indulgences. In an area as obsessed with food and dining as San Francisco, though, where neighborhood farmer's markets are the norm, it would seem logical that locally-produced, handcrafted, affordable, fresh beer would edge out the $50 bottles of Brazilian méthode champenoise offerings on the menu. Currently, though, despite how much they may actually sell, and despite their quality, public perception hasn't shifted to acknowledge them as the obvious, socially, politically, environmentally, and health concious choices on the beer menu.

Thankfully, it will soon be SF Beer Week, an opportunity to redeem myself somewhat, and an opportunity for local brewers to perhaps reclaim the crown of percieved quality from their brethren from further afield. Amidst the plethora of happenings, too, there are some that hosted by folks I like to consider friends, some smaller events that will arguably pack in more passion about beer, food and the social, communal, convivial attitiude that belongs alongside them than some of the larger events. And all with a local bent, a local point of view. Expect a post about those gatherings in the next day or so.

Here's to reconnecting. Go out and grab something local to enjoy this weekend. And if you can't find anything local that you can enjoy, ask yourself why not? Why hasn't anyone bothered to fill that void, the simple pleasure of a simple beverage brewed well, freshly, for locals? With all the talk of "carbon footprints", fears over tainted food, the push of the organic movement, the current economic crisis, and the emboldened palate of the modern consumer, why wouldn't everyone have access to reasonable, quality, local beer?

Out with the old...

Not sure what 2009 will bring. Stay tuned?

Happy New Year, folks!

Who's the Healthiest of them all?

There hasn't been much pimping of local beer biz around these parts lately, partially since there hasn't been much pimping of anything, and partly because other local writers have been doing such a proper job of reporting on all beer-related newsiness. One recent development, however, seems to have avoided the warranted blogosphere press: the transformation of Healthy Spirits from a neighborhood shop into an undisputed beer destination, currently boasting the largest bottled beer selection in the Bay Area within a space that can't be more than 600 square feet.

Most fascinating to me is how this has all come about, all within your typical urban corner store, similar to dozens within a mile's radius and amongst hundreds within city limits. Unlike a business that's made it their outright original goal, as part of a model to establish themselves as outright beacons for beer geeks, this little shop that stands within a quick stroll of my childhood home is a sort of accidental mecca for beer hunters. The big question for me, though, is: Do they have the largest selection in the Bay Area? Last I checked, Dave, their beer manager, informed me that they were up to 570 choices with more on the way, with two new shelves being put in since the photo I took last week to corral them (which you can now see here). It says a lot about the management to allow their mom & pop store undergo such a focused transformation, one riding on the somewhat feverish and fantastical vision of a single, beer-obsessed soul.

See this as a shameless plug for an institution I admire or just as a reflection on the curious development in my old stomping grounds, whichever you prefer. Just make sure you stop by if you can, and marvel in its unexpected glory (and pick me up something while you're there).

Brew like a mook

 
And it smelled like roses

Finally, thanks to the Italians, "beer" can mean whatever you want. There's been a whirlwind of attention lately being given to the Italian brewing scene, and while it's a whirlwind that albeit reeks of "next big thing" trendism and seems eerily connected to an influx of imported Italian beers flooding the market at decidedly prohibitive price points, there appears quite a bit to be excited about. With the culinary ethics of one of the world's deepest, most soulful cuisines, the Italians look to have said "Chi se ne frega?" to staid style and guidelines, and are brewing with their gut. And here, in a country where there remains a certain puritanical view on alcohol enjoyed on its own merits but a near universal acceptance of alcohol as a complement to fine dining, these beers have an excellent chance of taking root.

Our first introduction to this new spectrum of offerings, in fact, was through one such fine dining experience. One of the honestly creative and stunningly flavorful creations made by Le Baladin's Teo Musso, Nora tastes like the eccentric offspring of Dany Prignon and Sam Calagione: a sweet, ephemeral, nectar-like brew that hosts such ingredients as unmalted kamut, ginger, myrrh and orange peel. But what exactly is it? When you look around, you see that folks attempt to use Belgian beer verbiage to walk you through an understanding of what to expect, what with Nora and it's "classic strength of a saison." Maybe it's the cork-finished bottles, or maybe just the simple mystique of continental ales with innovative artisanal flair has been for so long seen as an earmark of Belgianosity that we Americans can't appreciate it through any other filter.

Take the Barley BB Dexi, for example. ("Barley", awesomely enough, is the name of the brewery.) An ale brewed with "sapa of Cannonau grapes" and orange peel, it's a 10% birra artigianale that the brewers from the Associazione Unionbirrai suggest you enjoy at 60° in a Chablis glass. In a beer drinkers game of Balderdash, one could have loads of fun trying to pin this one inside an understood stylistic camp. Is it a barleywine? Certainly doesn't taste like it: Sort of like a wild hybrid of beer, wine and a Negroni, rather. The exception seems to be the norm, when you take into account that this is a tiny niche market that's also home to beers like Birrificio di Como's Malthus Baluba, a dark ale brewed with pineapple, apricot, ginger and rue, and Birra Troll's Palanfrina, a Castagna ale brewed with chestnut flowers, dried chestnuts, chestnut honey and chestnut jam.

When these beers first started making an appearance here, the diverse and esoteric nature of their ingredient lists, Dali-esque bottle shapes, and completely cryptic labeling schemes could have lead one to think that we were at the whim of some mad importer's fever dream. Certainly they were only the weirdest of the bunch, picked purely for their novelty, right? But when Stan Hieronymus notes that there are "at least 40 chestnut beers" being brewed in Italy, one gets the impression that what's different is what's normal. And as Stan also points out, in a sentiment that includes at least one interchangeable word, "To understand Italian beer means at least beginning to understand Italian culture."

In the same way that "Va fangul" means a completely, quite importantly different thing to Italians than it does to Italian-Americans, one has to wonder what Italian brewing can mean to us here. Brew with an Italian soul rather than a Belgian one, is my instinctive reaction. When I once poured a glass of our annual holiday ale for a friend, one who happens to be quite knowledgeable and enthusiastic about beer, he asked me what it was. I responded that, for lack of a better term, it was in the vein of a Belgian-style Christmas beer, to which he told me he thought it was a little too dark. I had no ready reply, since I didn't know there had been a standard set for what color my beer was supposed to be. It was the color I'd wanted it to be, I knew that much. It's that huge leap in thinking that will make the transition of Italian beers to our concepts of evaluation so abrasive and intriguing. Too dark for what?

As a homebrewer who capitalizes the third letter of his last name, it's been with a certain vested interest that I've been following the whole unfolding saga. How do we brew, from where do we draw our inspiration, and to what standards do we hold ourselves accountable? It's obvious from the stories that are emerging post-Slow Food Salone del Gusto that food is the primary motivator. Not only in the way that the beer pairs with food, either, but brewing the beer itself with a cook's mindset, curiosity for ingredients and eagerness of experimentation. This seems to run parallel to the mindset of many American homebrewers, a bunch that paradoxically gets mocked routinely for it's love of making up rules to follow but at the same time floods the "fruit", "herb/spice/vegetable" and "specialty" beer categories at competition time with all manner of wild, fanciful concepts. Against a backdrop of rule makers and rule breakers, there's a third, quieter subset of rule ignorants, passionately approaching their craft with no other aim than to cast their artistic vision within the vessel of nourishment, capturing something genuine and pure and turning it into an elevated experience. Always with an eye on the food, and on simplicity, and on surroundings. Perhaps it's not a purely Italian endeavor, but it's certainly distinct from the way we've been taught to appreciate the Belgian beer experience from abroad.

And on that note, a quote from Marcella Hazan:

"On an afternoon slowed down by the southern sun, it was one of the best ways to while away the time, watching life dawdle by as you let the granita's crystals melt on the tongue, spoonful by spoonful, until the roof of your mouth felt like an ice cavern pervaded by the aroma of strong coffee."

(Apologies to Stan for mangling his quality book title for my punny abuse.)

Dissidents and dissonance, notes from the underground

If you've noticed a dearth of additions here of late, you're likely alone. That's part of the charm of the way this new media is digested, isn't it? We all subscribe to a gamut of spottily updated resources from around the web, and after a while it becomes a blur of content devoid of the linear narrative you can slip into when you're only following the exploits of a handful of writers.

It's not for lack of liquid material, mind you. But a quiet rule in publishing content here has been to limit myself to commentary that at least carries the veneer of insight. As the past couple weeks have been riddled with sicknesses, stresses, and a shaky return to the full-time grind, my capacity for insight has been duly diminished and the desire to share nonexistent. But rather that let this page languish too long, a little roundup of recent goings-on might be due, a quick gasp of breath before going back underwater.

- What prompted this brief return to soliloquy is the beer pictured above: A very fine, reserve offering from Deschutes in the Flanders brown style, the Dissident inspires a bit of thought on the state of the American craft brewer and their special releases. A deep, ruddy cherry ale that crackles with the sour tang of wild fermentation and the slightest musk of the barrel, it's wholly reminiscent of something you might expect to find in a cafe in Ghent. (Although it could potentially use another year in the cellar, what with a residual sweetness that left it tasting just a tad young, the same impression we recently had while tasting the new Ten Commandments release from Lost Abbey. Are breweries rushing their special releases out onto the market early? The press release said The Dissident had already spent 18 months maturing. But I digress...)

While brewed with cherries from the Northwest, there's nothing "Northwest" of note in the beer, which came as a little bit of a surprise considering how much of an impact Deschutes has had as a flag-bearer for the area's idiosyncratic brewing scene. While Mirror Pond and Black Butte both represent for many folks the ethos of the FNWONWCB (first new wave of Northwest craft brewing, not to be confused with NWOBHM), the only thing that struck me as being particularly American about The Dissident is its alcohol level (9% according to the bottle, versus the 11% it lists on the press release, but still up from the 5-6% you'd find in an oud bruin or Flanders red). Does Rodenbach do this? Do they celebrate their continued success by rewarding their fans with an anniversary California pale ale? It's a testament, perhaps, to what is happening behind the scenes in small brewhouses around the country, where brewers' worldly palates are being greenlit by the company number crunchers and marketing flacks alike, seeing the voracious appetite of the online beer enthusiast community as being recession-proof enough that there's minimal risk (and potentially excellent mark-up potential) in letting the brewers experiment in foreign styles in the cause of expanding their repertoire. It's arguable that the market for Rodenbach would not be so kind to their experimentation, and were the monks of the abbey of St. Sixtus to present the world with a Westvleteren Mandarin Orange Hefeweizen for those hot monastic summer nights, there'd likely be riots.

- Meanwhile, over at the Aleuminati, I've been involved in an open source brewing project of sorts, a groupthink recipe tinkering collective with the ambitious goal of creating a beer that even the most initiate of homebrewers could attempt, while being scalable in scope for the more ambitious of us, designed with the intent of being a good gateway beer to more expansive beer tasting for those looking to hook their unknowing friends into this little cult we call "beer snobbery". It's a little like a dubbel but with a bit of American oomph, and it's entitled The Indoctrinator. While the recipe itself is set (in silly putty, or mud maybe), there's still time to brew your own batch and get in the trading circle. Once everyone's confident their batch is sufficiently conditioned, we'll be shipping samples around to do our own personal horizontal tastings.

The morning after brewing up our version, I found it burbling away with a rhythmic regularity that momentarily entranced me like a Louis Hardin ostinato, and I was thrown: Has a day of listening to 5-year olds hack their way into the canon of Western music distorted my musical perception to the degree that I'm hearing regularity and pulse in the randomness of nature? So of course, I filmed it. See if you think I'm crazy.



(Des, meanwhile, has disavowed any knowledge of this video and will not admit to the possibility that anyone in this household is enough of a dork to have generated it.)

- Speaking of brewing, we also got around to throwing together a kettle of that hereto theoretical lavender-infused black saison on Saturday afternoon, bringing the amount of partially-fermented homestuffs in the basement to an unforeseen 25 gallons, a possible new record. Lord knows what we'll do with all of it. Good thing I've got another batch planned for brewing in the next few days. While it's obviously too early to post tasting notes, the phenomenal sensory overload that arose from adding the hydrosol to the pot was intense enough to make us wonder if we'd come across something wonderful, or terrifying. It'll be ready for Halloween, appropriately.

- Lastly, I'll most likely be AFK for the coming weekend as it's one jam-packed with birthday celebrations in a true Oktoberfest by way of autumnal equinox fashion, but I'd be remiss if there wasn't a nod to the Northern California Homebrewers Festival that will be going on concurrently, most specifically the brewer's dinner that Sean Paxton has planned. Hot diggety delicious dog. Maybe next year that'll be Mia's idea of a good time, camping up in the Sierra foothills with a bunch of homebrewers, but this year we'll stick to a pony ride and a day in the park with cupcakes...

(And thanks to fellow beer blogger Bailey for the Lomo photoshopping trick. Like most hipster grups, there's a Holga in our closet, but we hardly ever take it out. Instead, there's something delightfully ironic about using all of today's most advanced technologies in digital imaging to attempt a recreation of an iconic, singular, and strangely loveable classic. Hey, it's kind of like a storied Oregon brewery aping a historic Flemish beer.)

Slow Beer Nation

Rodger Davis mans the bar while Shaun O'Sullivan
taps a virtual cask*

At first, there hadn't been any plan to write anything here about Slow Food Nation, as I knew that the assembled armies of local food and drink writers would not only do it justice in words and images, but also because, despite my particularly deep love of all things foodie, my inner editor hastened to remind me that the bulk of the 50,000 square feet of display and interaction was devoted to things other than the main topic of this particular site, that being beer. Sure, I had taken the liberty of printing up a list of the breweries that were representing (of which there were around 60) and circled, highlighted, and added obligatory exclamation points next to the specific beers that were going to be available (of which there were around 150). But like I said, this certainly wasn't a beer event. It was a food event, one that just happened to have a neat little hop-adorned tent outside where you could grab a beer to enjoy alongside your wood-fired pizza (or your chutneys, or your naan, or your ceviche, or your ice cream, or your chocolate, or your tea, or your salumi).

Granted, the tent was staffed by a continuous rotation of brewers ("Tell me what you think - I made it" was a typical refrain) and brewery insiders, pouring beer from three gorgeous reclaimed bottle-glass bars - for draft, cask, and bottle, respectively - while also making the rounds at a fourth bar which was set up as a "meet the brewer" scenario, with guided tasting flights being offered from their particular brewery. And they made an effort to actually pour the beers into appropriate glassware when possible (like when Des ordered a Salvation and Bruce Paton took away her original glass and replaced it with a flute). So if you wanted it badly enough, squinted just so, and really tried hard to ignore the enormous cavalcade of comestibles looming right over your shoulder, tendrils of otherworldly aromas snaking around you like horror-movie fog, you could have pretended it was a beer event. But then it would have been even less attractive to comment upon, since beer festivals tend to bring out the complainer in me.

I won't complain, for example, that none of the top-shelf beers remained on the boards by the time the doors to the last session of the event opened, since I'm sure that next time the pavilion curator [*Cough* Ahem, you! You there in the Brookston shirt!] will try harder to control the rotation of the truly rare beers to make them available to folks coming to any one of the four events, not just the first. Fact is, even though my number one choice was long gone off the boards (along with numbers two through sixteen), I did get to taste it, thanks to the warm generosity of Stone's Dave Hopwood, who had set aside a special bottle of Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout on the first day to enjoy by himself at the end of the festival, yet offered up a healthy pour to put a quick end to my unmanly blubbering, weeping and begging.

And I certainly won't complain that the pretty price of entry ($58!) included a limited number of tasting samples, because a "taste" from the beer pavilion amounted to a full serving, meaning that while Lost Abbey's Witches Wit isn't the most robust offering of their line-up, I had a delightfully full glass of it to accompany me on the 200-yard stroll back and forth through the food and spirits pavilions, and still enough to wash down some phenomenal albacore niçoise. Which then left room for a Matilda. And a Little Opal. And a Transcontinental. And an Old Guardian.

So much for not writing about Slow Food Nation, eh? I might as well mention now that we jumped on the vermiculture bandwagon this past weekend as a way of sustainably composting the leftovers from our biodynamically resourced organic, hand-crafted, and homegrown foods. Happy now? We're total foodie dorks hiding behind the toughened veneer of beer drinking.

Good thing the worms like spent grains from brewing. Otherwise y'all might think I'm getting a little fluffy around the edges. Beer is, after all, as William Brand suggested, "one of the original slow foods."

* With education as a high point on the Slow Food priority list, the cask trailer was streamed via video to a monitor at the bar so that folks could see what cask ale is all about. Ancient brewing traditions meets Big Brother.

...Baby

In honor of the potential for a wave of change in this country through an inevitably invigorating change in our political leadership, one that we and future generations will quite possibly trace back to tonight, I thought it only appropriate to share this, in respect to those of us for whom the safety, success, and serenity of our children is a consummate priority:

We the Brewers of Avery Brewing Company, in order to form a more perfect ale, require new leadership that can liberate us from our quagmires in foreign lands; embrace environmentally sound energy alternatives to imported oil; heal our ailing health care system; free us from tyrannical debt and resurrect the collapsing dollar. We hereby pledge to provide him with an ample amount of our new Presidential Pale Ale to support in the struggle for the aforementioned goals!

- Ale to the Chief! bottle label

Amen.

[Sorry. Sometimes you just can't summon a decent post title, and then you get this second-hand reference stuck in your head, and it's not even really connected, but you could care less...]

Reminder: The new American mavericks tasting session

Just a quick reminder to all y'all adventurous Bay Area beer enthusiasts that the premiere Pfiff! beer and food tasting is coming up in two weeks - Sunday, August 17 - and there are a few spots at the table still remaining. More about the event can be found here. Whether you're a confirmed Brett-head or haven't the slightest clue what that even means, if you're in or around San Francisco and have a hankering for the wild side of new American brewing, you might want to join us.

The Session #18 - ...but once a year

Almost the definition of advertising cliché, "Christmas in July" is a post-Independence Day marketing assault that's inevitably leaked into the brewing communityin recent years. Chances are, alongside the car sales and outdoor furniture expos and everything! must! go! riding-mower clearances, there's invariably a booze dispensary near you pulling some leftover holiday wares out of their hopefully temperature-controlled back rooms and offering up a chance to indulge in some Bizarro World intoxication while they crank the AC and Bing to seasonally appropriate levels.
But for those of us who like to indulge in the creation of special, strong, spiced ales with that oh so holiday flair, there's no shame involved, since July is the perfect time to get the kettle out and start reminding ourselves what flavors go best with Contessas, as any good strong beer worth its gypsum salt is gonna need the next six months to shape up. For this month's Session, since we're talking about anniversary releases - once a year specialties that you'd otherwise only pop open for occasions of merit - we decided that it coincided quite fortuitously with the annual formulation of our holiday ale recipe, which we brew each year in early August . Along with formulating a recipe, of course, one must also do some tasting. And so we did. With glassware befitting the occasion, naturally.

(It's important to note that we're cheating a little bit here, pretending to ignore one of the subtler instructions for this month's Session: "a limited release anniversary beer from your favorite brewer homebrew stash.")

For a few years now, we've given out corked 750mL bottles of spiced Belgian ale to our worthy friends and family, and each year, thanks to some electronic goof or another, I artfully manage to misplace the recipe for the previous year's batch. So, I pour back over my notes, my shopping history, my dog-eared pages in Brew Like a Monk, and try to locate a old bottle of the stuff to sample in hopes it'll jog my memory. This time, we decided to go back two years, pulling the last of our 2006 bottles (of which I know there are some still floating out there, so if you're reading this, heed the warning below) and our second-to-last 2007 bottle. After dimming the lights, cleansing our palates, and getting Rock Band warmed up in lieu of the fireplace, we got down to work like it was the night before Christmas.

The '06 and '07 batches, while sharing identical ingredients in subtly altered proportions, turned out to be wildly different from each other when placed side-by-side. The '06 literally exploded as soon as the wire had been untied from the cork, yet stayed put in the bottle until it was ready to be poured. The '07, on the other hand, opened with a neatly clean pop, but devilishly tried to climb from the bottle in a steady cascade of foam once I'd set it aside to get the glasses ready. They were both similarly hued, with equally fluffy heads and generously effervescent, creamy mouthfeels, but that's where the similarities ended. I picked up on piles of black liquorice in the '06, whereas Des latched on to its grapey, coffee-ish qualities, ones we hadn't noticed when it was a younger bottle, while likening it to a less alcoholic Samichlaus. The '07, on the other hand, was more dubbel in character, reminding me initially of Ommegang, with strong, yeasty esters, and a brown sugar flavor that wrapped around the figgy maltiness that typically accompanies the style. Interestingly, any hints of the original spice additions would be nearly impossible to single out by name, which, as far as I'm concerned, is exactly the way it should be: The nearly imperceptible hops are replaced by a certain "spiciness" that offsets the malt, but it's an ambiguous enough effect that it lends to some fun guessing.

Just kidding about those boots.

They are, in the end, beers that so strongly reflect the sentiments of the holidays they're like liquid fruitcakes, which makes tasting them while your legs are still sore from waterskiing a bit of a contradictory experience. But, alas, these are the dilemmas we homebrewing beer blogger types must confront. So, without futher ado, here's the plucky little phoenix that arose from the tasting notes we gathered last night: a hastily drawn and perilously unchecked recipe for our 2008 holiday ale. Enjoy.

The Session is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer. This month's party is being hosted by The Barley Blog. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, check out Brookston's handy guide.

What vacation looks like

Let me show you it.

(Lang Creek Brewery's Tri-Motor Ale, courtesy America's most remote brewery.)

I leave you with Hugh

He would write his father notes about what he should do next. On one fateful day, Hugh received a message back from his father that would change his life.

Hugh had, again, written about how he would like to find a meaningful job that would take him places and make the name Hugh Malone known the world over. His father wrote back: “Son, you have done amazing things in your life already. You have helped your mother and me through the famine and the constant threat of war. You have always shown interest in helping Ireland and your countrymen. We could be no prouder of you than we are. You have given us great joy. I have no doubt that you will be able to pick up any trade you choose, especially with those two fine hands you have. And, who knows? Sometimes your future just hops out at you.”

“Tell your mother that one of the sheep, I believe it was Adeline, and two lambs have run off into the woods and that she should not expect me home for supper at sundown.”

At least that is the message that historians expect Donald Malone wrote to his son. No one can be sure. The only scraps of paper left from the message read: pick hops. Queen Maeve, on her way back to Hugh, caught a rabbit and in the hunt decimated the note tied around her leg. While Hugh and his mother watched their dinner get cold, Hugh wondered at his father’s concise message: pick hops.

Back next week, hopefully with wild tales of beer from the northern frontier. Until then...

PS It's a joke, albeit an obscure "only for beer geeks" one. Drop me a note if you're confused and care.

Meta-Pfiffing: Perpetual devotion

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Six months into a reinvestment of devotion to writing on this here site, along with the promise of a brief vacation on the horizon, it seemed a good time to take stock of the Pfiff! situation, having just passed through a veritable whirlwind of activity that hasn't been duly documented. To wit:
I am, by all reasonable accounts, an intensely neurotic human being. It's rare for me to experience anything interpersonal without analyzing the occasion in retrospect through a funhouse mirror of exaggerated embarrassments, shameful asides, missed opportunities and guilts of sin (sloth and gluttony being perennial favorites). When I was younger, these harping memories would have normally revolved around either something stupid involving icky girls or some quality forehead-slapping in recollection of a particularly noodly, pointless guitar solo. Nowadays, though, it either has to do with poor judgment in raising my daughter (hint: if you make a joke by putting something in your mouth, any toddler worth his or her salt will likely mimic the joke) or in the dumbstruck half-witticisms I hear exiting my mouth during the increasingly frequent beer-related activities of late.

That's right: beer activities. I've said it. No shame there. No staring distractedly at my shoelaces while tracing circles in the dust with my toes, incoherently mumbling beneath my breath. Read any good books lately? Visit that new exhibit at MOMA? See any good live music? Any new hikes worth mentioning? I'd look you straight in the eye, shoulders relaxed, knees slightly bent: "Actually, I've been pretty busy with the beer."

Playing part in my neuroses is the fact that while in resurrecting the writing after a sabbatical of sorts (not a sabbatical on the drinking of beer, mind you, just one of forming coherent opinions about it, let alone setting them to writing), my perspective on the craft of brewing has thankfully grown wider in the past six months, only while the depth of the topic itself has seemed to grow at an exponential rate during the same time period. When beer, of all things, is even being advertised as part of this year's Slow Food Nation event at Fort Mason (curated by Magnolia's Dave McLean, nonetheless, and featuring an "outdoor beer pavilion" with "60 different microbrews from bottles, 30 different brews from casks and 60 different brews from kegs" yum yum yum), the stage seems set to usher in a new wave in American beer culture. And while the lens of the Internet Age is undoubtedly convex, giving any subject a perceived depth of discussion and information that's far greater than the reality, it seems likely that the camera obscura image that a snapshot of the Web's beer-related activity isn't an illusion of the amount of attention the topic's been recently garnering. The punk in me feels like a hanger-on, but the cheeseball in me is basking in being a part of it all.

A defining element of neuroses is that they are, above all, not based in reality. And recently, there have been enough (not terribly embarrassing) opportunities for the rational part of my brain to remind the rest of it to just clam up and enjoy the ride. Notably, a tasting-to-end-all-tastings hosted by the eminent Jay Brooks not only produced one of the more charming recent portraits of a beer blogger as a young man, but had a huge impact on my personal feelings on tasting, appreciating, and enjoying beer, while reminding me that there's no use in ever trying to outdo it.

On top of that, I had the splendid opportunity to make the in-person acquaintance of a few of the other members of the nascent Bay Area Beer Bloggers group at a gathering at our home during one of the more perfectly enjoyable Marin summer afternoons we've been exposed to this year. Once trapped within our outer-locking portcullis, we stole the chance to pour copious amounts of homebrew into their unwitting glasses while (kinda) discussing the state of affairs of beer culture and writing in the Bay Area.

And finally, Shawn the Beer Philosopher gambled that it wouldn't harm his reputation as upstanding member of the online beer community if he were to publish a lengthy interview with yours truly in his new Barstool Confessional feature, one that I treated with a true Method approach, not only taking care to enjoy some top shelf ale while composing my responses, but by allowing them to ramble on to a length apropos of the responses you'd be subjected to if you truly were to query me whilst pub-seated.

So while the cheeseball in me is basking in the heat of activity surrounding local beer culture, writing, and its online presence, the complete dork in me is thrilled with the possibilities for the future of the culture, the writing, and the tastings around the bend. Thanks, reader(s), for making this a place you regularly visit. Let's all see what's next. But first, a vacation.

On a related note, my Supplication pontification didn't take the cake, but the winningest entry deserves a hearty cheers as it's a pitch perfect insight to the homebrewer's world.

Introducing the premiere Pfiff! beer and food tasting: The new American mavericks

In what promises to be the first of many, edutainingly inebriate gatherings of the local beer faithful, we're proud to announce "The new American mavericks", an afternoon of tastings and food pairings based around the subject of American wild ale.

"Maverick" is a term I could be accused of prancing out on stage more often than it's welcome, but in the case of these beers, fermented by blends of microflora outside of the realm of traditional beer yeast, oftentimes in vessels that contribute their own degree of mysterious inoculation, in conditions that, while closely monitored, are subject to enough happenstance to warrant the results as wild, it seems a fitting title. Mr. Samuel Maverick was a Texas rancher whose attitude towards his cattle was particularly lax: the unchecked breeding of his livestock left for a notable concern of unbranded cattle set to pasture around the ranch lands south of San Antonio. Luckily for his descendants, though, his last name dodged the colloquial connotation of "a completely lethargic sloth", and instead got the more positive spin of showing the "independence of thought or action" of "a non-conformist or rebel." And these beers demonstrate, above all else, independence of thought and certainly trebelliousness. Although rooted in Belgian techniques, the results are unmistakably American, and, thanks to the often challenging profile of these beers, require a somewhat independent spirit on the taster's part as well.

Distinguished in part by hand-numbered batches, public brewers' logs with details by vintage, dusty, dank barrel rooms inhabited by all manner of wild yeasty beasties, and dense, funky flavor profiles that take years to develop and are not always fit for the faint of heart, the modern American wild ale is not only deserved of some deeper attention by the beer enthusiast public, but by any who enjoy the interplay between fine food and drink. Let's try some together, shall we?

The tentative date, pending guest availability, is Sunday, August 17, 3:00 p.m., and the location will be in the city of San Francisco. The cost for the tasting will almost certainly be $25, unless something completely spectacular happens and I have to jimmy the price up to $30, at which point it will be totally worth it or I'll give you your $5 back.

If you would like to reserve a spot, or have any questions, please email me at . More details to come in the following weeks...

Run, the bird, run!

Having realized that the keg's been getting mighty light and there's yet no photographic proof that it managed to complete its evolution into a finished, drinkable product (not that it stopped me before), here you go. But how does it taste, you ask? Well, if the name weren't already taken, this bird would be a Maltose Falcon. The hops totally disappeared. It's actually very pleasant - delicious-ish, even - but my shortcomings in hoppitude shine right through this one. Ach well.

This post is short. Did I mention I'm going on vacation tomorrow?

Brewmaster profile - Michael Altman

Today marks the inaugural celebration of International Brewers Day, a holiday of sorts inspired by the graphic that greets you as you enter San Francisco's 21st Amendment brewpub, a logo that asks: Have you hugged a brewmaster today? Conceived by local beer writer Jay Brooks to coincide with the feast of the brewer's patron saint, St. Arnold, the idea is to simply take a day to give credit where credit is due: "celebrating the contributions to society of the men and women who brew beer." In honor of the occasion, I thought it would be fun to participate by profiling our friend, fellow Fairfaxian, and local publican, the inimitable Mike Altman.

However, not only have I not indulged in a straight up Q&A interview since 1997 (having then proven quite conclusively that it's not a strong point of mine), we also decided to eschew the typical format as he's been the subject of similar interviews by the local press in recent years. Something besides beer that Mike and I have in common, however, is a love of music. Mike hosts free live music at the pub at least once, if not twice a week, has named his brews after local musical luminaries, and has decorated the pub with various musicalia. For those reasons, it seemed like a strangely appropriate idea to have this profile revolve around music by stealing recontextualizing the format popularized by The A.V. Club in their Random Rules feature. Simply put, we sat down with Mike's iPod, hit shuffle, and chatted about the tunes that came up - while drinking beer, of course. (An Altman's alt, to be exact.)

The Freight Hoppers, "Trouble"



Rob: So, this makes it easy to start talking about bluegrass, eh? Did you pick up on your love for
bluegrass when you were working in Colorado?
Mike Altman: The last year I was in Portland, there was a guy that I was working with who was really into bluegrass, got me into Bill Monroe, and then when I got to Colorado that's when it really exploded, I started playing banjo...
R:And when you went to Colorado, you went to brew for...
MA: Actually, when we'd gone out there, it was for Rockygrass, just going out for the festival. I'd just made the call, gotten all the passes and everything for the festival, put the phone down, and then like fifteen minutes later, I got a call about some guys out in Boulder looking for a brewer, and I thought, that's funny, I'm headed out there next week for a bluesgrass festival. I wasn't planning on going to Boulder, but decided to go out for an interview, the best interview of my life, and got the job at Mountain Sun. There was a really strong tie between Mountain Sun and Planet Bluegrass, their office used to be right next door in downtown Boulder, and it was a connection I really jumped into and took to another level. The last two years I was there we were doing all the backstage catering for them.
R: So what was it about bluegrass that got you so into it?
MA: The fun, the rhythm, the music. It's just good, good dance music.

Paul Simon, "Crazy Love, Vol. II"



MA: That's a good story. I was the private chef for Paul Simon's record producer, Phil Ramone. And Simon and Garfunkel, I was listening to them when I was like four or five years old. Bridge over Troubled Water, he had the 8-track.
R: It's pretty obvious you've taken music from when you were growing up and still play it in the pub, follow the musicians... Was there anything like that for you with beer, anything you've brought with you from growing up?
MA: Actually, no. All my friends who've known me since high school think it's hysterical that I became a brewer. I was always the first one out in quarters games, throwing up, the one who couldn't really handle his beer.
R: So when did it happen, then?
MA: When I moved from New York, I was a private chef, we moved to Portland. I was going to school, I was going to be a teacher. McMenamins was just getting off the ground, just as Edgefield was getting built...
R: You were going to be a teacher? Is that why you do so much here at the pub for YES?
MA: Oh, absolutely. It's a profession that's so crucial, yet they get paid nothing. And teachers get so little recognition.
R: What did you want to teach?
MA: 4th and 5th grade. 6th grade at the latest, before they start hitting puberty. So I was going to school, working as a chef, and I started getting into the brewing world. I had so many credits to go, having gone to cooking school and then needing the undergraduates degree and the teaching degree, I just didn't have the patience.


Ozomatli, "Super Bowl Sundae"

MA: Hey, this is a good mix.
R: I need a refresher on this one. This is an interesting one to show up on here, because for me, Ozomatli always walked the line between being a band that was really trendy and one that was going to fall into the jam band circuit.
MA: They're kinda like the Beastie Boys, mixing a lot of different genres, being very salsa, Latin-based, with rap, and hip hop, and rock to create a fun, eclectic music. Sublime is like that, too. I got to see them up last year at the Mystic, whenever they come around I try to see them.
R: What kind of live music do you like to see the most?
MA: It varies, it depends. We're going up tonight to see David Bromberg. We get to go out so rarely.* I'm sort of done with the jam band thing, there's just not a band out there that really excites me in that genre right now. But I like to go out to see this kind of thing, really upbeat, good dancing music.

The Grateful Dead, "Sugaree"


R: Speaking of jam bands...
MA: But that's a classic. This place is here because of Jerry, I'm here because of Jerry. It's such an obvious connection. He's been such a huge influence on my life. I feel like I missed the boat by just a short time. I can guarantee that if Jerry were still alive, he would have played at this pub at some point or another.
R: Is Jerry one of the reasons you're in Fairfax?
MA: No, that's just random. It goes back to the karma thing. We were meant to be in Fairfax, being in touch with the whole Phil community. It has a lot to do with the Phil circles, very small circles.
R: I keep waiting for the "Phil-named" beer. When you named the beers after Barry and J.C., how did they react to it?
MA: Oh, Barry loved it, they both loved it. Well, it started actually with the Chazz Cats, and everybody then wanted a beer named after them. But when I came out here, one of the first beers I brewed was the Yonder Mountain stout, but it just wasn't fitting, it needed a new name, and Sless was on board.

The Vern Williams Band, "Roll On Buddy"


MA: I think that's a Bill Monroe tune, originally.
R: You like the traditional stuff, don't you? Do you think that's reflected in the way you make your beers? You work within fairly traditional parameters; there's nothing bizarre, experimental, strange stuff coming out of the brewhouse.
MA: That's fairly true. I did lots more experimenting when it was on someone else's nickel and we were going through the beers quicker. We have a bigger system here, producing twenty kegs at a time, that only lends itself to being experimented or taken off the deep end once in a while. And for me, with all my back surgeries, my time hands-on in the brewhouse has been a lot less, where I leave that to the brewer to take charge. That's one of the things about bringing Christian on board, I think he's going to do a lot more experimenting. At the beginning, he just wants to brew the beers we've got here, get ensconced in the system, get comfortable. But one of the reasons we brought him on board is we really want to see him build up the cask program and do some bottle conditioning.
R: So what's your traditional favorite, then? What's your Bill Monroe of the beer world?
MA: Traditional? Well, the Epiphany is probably my all-time favorite drinking beer, but it doesn't really fall within a guideline. It's a beer that I've been making since 1990. It was the Hammerhead at McMenamins and was transferred to Mountain Sun as the Colorado Kind Ale, and here I was, having brewed this beer for 15 years, driving out here, my head's spinning, taking notes while driving, recording notes into a portable recorder about opening up the brewpub because there was so much information, so much information that needed to get absorbed. I had to start my contacts all over again, my purveyors, going into a strange community, essentially. And I was on this tangent, on this beer, somewhere in between Utah and Nevada on this stretch of road, and my head is reeling... I was just like, I'm going to make this beer when we get out there, it's going to be our flagship beer, it's going to need a good name, a really good name. I'm going to need an epiphany to come up with a really good name for our flagship beer. Epiphany? That's a great name... I called Anne right away. "I got a name for our flagship beer. It's called Epiphany." And she says, "I like it."

Happy International Brewers Day!

Mike Altman is the co-proprietor, along with his wife Anne, of the Iron Springs Pub and Brewery in Fairfax, CA, and not to be confused with the son of film producer Robert Altman, lyricist of the M*A*S*H theme song.

* On top of their full-time careers, Mike and Anne are quite busy raising the next generation Altman brewer, their 16-month old son Joey.

The dichotomy of Supplication

Unraveling the twist of wire that cages a mushroomed mass of cork can quickly transport you to a supplicatory state, the capgun pop and curl of steam rising from a heavy bottle evoking a musty cellar, one rich and ripe with oak shavings, stained by acidic splashes of red wine, mysteries hidden behind dusty cobwebs, inviting a taste of toasted bread, tart cherries, slowly becoming engulfed in funky barnyard haze. There’s not denying the snob appeal of such a unique intoxicant. Demanding patience and attention, exclusionary beer with qualifiers of acquired taste ("You get used to it!") can naturally generate distrust.

Yet, this: The swell of a pushing crowd, the same fat cork flying above throngs of glasses amidst an elated cheer. Could it be? Amazing that, on the eve of a landmark announcement (the bottle release of their flagship IPA), this strange, wild, unorthodox brew would be the star attraction. A gamble that paid off, betting on good faith and camaraderie that our palates would come along for the ride, and would love it.

(This post was written in response to Stonch's call for concise reflections "on a beer": limited to 175 words, describing a tasting. I found it strenuous.)

Friday linknibbles - Ignorance, beer, bliss

In which we continue to stubbornly refuse to make mention of a rumored merger between two behemoth brewing companies that I couldn't ever bother to care less about, give even the tiniest winge of interest in any of their actions or their respective brands, except, maybe, for the fact that I proposed to Des after fortifying my resolve with a glass of Leffe Blonde*. Damn! I've said too much!

Instead, we'll make this simple: Of the treasure trove of discourse that's arisen ever since Charlie Papazian started blogging and, unlike some celebrity writers, openly reacting and following up on the threads in his comments section, nothing beats the chatter sparked by the question: What is good beer?

Taste it. Is it the character? Is it the soul? Is it its birthplace? Read the posts, read the comments, and then ask yourself if you felt you were better off before... Back when you could just stretch out under a shady oak on a hot summer's afternoon, and let the cicadas lull you into a swoony haze while a pint of IPA cooled your hand, then your brow, and then your belly, without a thought, a thought in the world.


* That link does not, in fact, have anything to do with that rather *meh* Belgian ale mentioned, but with the place where it all went down. Interestingly, it's next door to what used to be Syvia Beach's original Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, where Joyce's Ulysses was first published. And, for a time, American maverick composer George Antheil lived in an apartment upstairs from the shop. As you can see, he often locked himself out and would resort to scaling the building facade to access his window. Doubtless, as a self-penned "bad boy", he enjoyed the attention. More interestingly, the first date that Des and I went on happened to be a performance of American maverick composers, an evening whose highlight was the San Francisco Symphony reading Amériques by French-born, but decidedly American-bred composer, Edgard Varèse, who also happened to be Frank Zappa's musical idol. Which brings us back to beer (beer! beer!).

The bird is rich

Red bird in morning, homebrewer's warning...

The Session #17 - Embracing oppression

In the realm of wine and food pairing, one of the elements that's taken into consideration when marrying the two is whether or not your aim is to complement characteristics of both - matching a Sauvignon blanc with prosciutto-wrapped melon, for example - or, instead, to provide an exciting contrast between them - like pairing a citrusy Chardonnay with shrimp that had been tossed in olive oil and garlic. Either way, the aim is to produce a third, almost ghostlike taste impression that hovers between the two like one of those Magic Eye pictures, or that finger sausage thing you may have done in grade school: In one case, you've conjured up an übermelon via playing up a highlight quality of both the wine and the food; in the other case, the two work together to create, in a sense, a third, new dish, with the acid from the wine cutting into the oil in the same way that adding a lemon would contribute a bright new dimension.

In beer terms, one could argue that we've all been trained to pair our choices in regards to the contrast they provide, with our environment as the other variable. Think, for example, if instead of being inundated (but oh, there are worse ways to be inundated!) with "winter warmers" during the cold months, you were presented with beers that actually reinforced the chill - say, light, pale lagers served at near-freezing temperatures. Madness, you say. Those of you who stuck around to talk some sense into me would probably then note that the bevy of robust, complex, and yes, warming ales that make themselves at home amidst sunless hours of winter do more than ward off the effects of Jack Frost: they also pair much better with the rich comfort foods of the season. Take, for example, porters with endlessly-cooked stews, Belgian dubbels with slow-roasted root vegetables, and doppelbocks with the seasonal depression-lifting power of chocolate. It could be said, then, that while the beer styles that we traditionally associate with wintertime are in contrast with the weather, they do, however, complement the cuisine (which doesn't get much more literal than the sharing of spices between traditional European Christmas cookies and Christmas beers).

Which brings us to the present, at which we northern hemisphere-dwellers have just passed the opposite solstice, and along with it, summer and its litany of pale, light-bodied, lawnmower-friendly, 6-pack just ain't enough you gotta buy 'em by the halfrack, "you done with that? I'm gonna stick it up this chicken's butt", enough with the wheat already, "I like mine with lime", but undeniably refreshing seasonal offerings. Which I can understand on many levels, even while pretending to ignore the fact that summer in San Francisco is, well, you know... (It makes even more sense now that I live just far enough outside of the grip of the maritime weather phenomenon that we can watch the fringes of the eagermost tendrils of fog creep threateningly into view over the coastal ridge, only to be vanquished by the righteous dry heat of the proper emperor of the season, a complete stranger to those of us who grew up in the City, the sun.) And certainly, the suggestion that one would enjoy a nice, warmed goblet of Quelque Chose after rounding the bases after a few midday innings would invite some to examine my sanity. Don't worry: I get it.

So there's your weather-based contrast, right? Cold out: warming beer. Hot out: cooling beer. If the above equation were to work, then you would assume that the cooling beer would be in line with summertime cuisine by complementing it. But for me, summer means barbecue, and that's where the math breaks down: A kickass barbecued meal almost always deserves a more thoughtfully chosen beer pairing than your run-of-the-mill (by which I mean "premium" or "select", naturally) fizzy yellow stuff. In order to truly complement the sweet, spicy, smoky, greasy and oh-so-carcinogenically-good experience of the grill, I find I have to dig a little deeper into my fridge to make the pairing really sing.

The idea for this Session came to me as the days began getting longer and warmer, the produce at the farmer's market began to shift into high summer mode, and the thought of doing any cooking inside of a house that was breaking 90° was unimaginable. With the primordial call of the beast sounding a low rumble from my outdoor altar, I quickly noticed that even the summer seasonals I most look forward to, alongside all the usual suspects of wits, saisons, and geuezes, weren't really clicking. When I found myself, delirious from the heat, sweating, panting, and paralyzed from trying to not exert any effort while lying prone in front of an enormous shop fan, desperately craving a Gulden Draak, I knew it might be something to investigate here.

And so, a quick set of pairings with some otherwise unethical choices for summertime beer enjoyment which play into the hands of the season, embrace the inevitable, celebrate the circumstance, and fight fire with fire:

Strong, pale, and bitter: Anyone who's desperately searched for a remedy to the scorching spice and piquancy of a skewer of classic grilled Creole shrimp would be wise to reach for a West Coast style IPA like those from Lagunitas, Bear Republic or Stone that can both temper the heat through its citric acidity, crisp effervescence , and capiscum-soluble alcohol, while asserting its own aromatic spice character to elevate the subtler flavors in the shrimp seasoning that might've gotten lost amidst the burn. Of course, it's even more effective if you reach for a double IPA, instead...

Strong, dark, and bitter: Roasted malts? Astringent blackness? Add to that the hints of smoke and coffee you get from an imperial stout like North Coast's Old Rasputin and you've got a nice foil for that hunk of evil, charred beef (or tempeh!) that you're planning on piling up with a blue cheese and chili dressing. And when you turn to your cabernet-sucking tablemates, "How much more black could this be?", they'll be forced to answer: "None. None more black."

Strong, pale, and sweet: Belgian strong golden ales and tripels aren't your only choices here, as some German winter specialties also kinda fit the description (southern hemisphere friends, you're in luck!) such as Weltenburger's Winter-Traum, but few of them match the devilishly innocent-looking Belgians, like Delirium Tremens, in complexity and richness, or their ability to stand up to a fat and pungent bacon burger with Gorgonzola cheese, where the bready yeast aroma complements the bun, the slight sweetness works with the caramel flavors in the meat, and the extreme carbonation and dry finish help clean the fats from the palate.

Strong, dark and sweet: Not that I ever need an excuse to venture into the deep end, it would be easy for me to dedicate a book of sestinas to the food pairings one could achieve with high-alcohol, dark ales such as the aforementioned Gulden Draak and its Belgian kin, barleywines, and old ales. Instead, let's keep this one simple and perfect: pulled pork sandwiches with a wee heavy scotch ale like Orkney's SkullSplitter. The sweet smokiness of the pork gets a leg up by this island concoction's tireless malt backbone for a truly coma-inducing umami richness.

Hopefully, none of the above pairings would appear disastrously ill-conceived. Alongside the rich, sweet, and spicy flavors one typically associates with memorable bbq, there belongs a comparable set of rich, sweet, and spicy beers. Divorced from the food they're meant to adjoin, though, the selections of a double IPA, imperial stout, Belgian strong golden, and scotch ale seem like ludicrous choices for the perfect summertime quaff. Granted, it doesn't entirely explain why while being punished by these inhuman conditions, I'd be craving a perilously wicked black Belgian strong ale that's nearly as alcoholic as Riesling and demands a loaf of bread and a chaser of water just to avoid feeling overwhelmed, but maybe, deep inside, I enjoy embracing the oppression of this relatively new experience of a summertime distinguished by heat, sun, and fire, rather than this.

* The image at top is for decoration only. I do not endorse or condone the drinking of Bamberg's rauchbier without the supervision of an adult who can, after you've had a sip, remind you that you asked for it.

The Session is a blog carnival originated by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer, which just so happens to be hosted this month by yours truly. If you've got a post of your own that you'd like to add, either email me at or comment on this site so I can include it in the roundup tomorrow. For a summary of the Sessions thus far, check out Brookston's handy guide.

Laconic reflections on a pint

In a word: Unctuous

A reader who's spent more than five minutes perusing the content of this site could likely deduce that I have a difficult time with brevity*. And like an ironic torture device out of a splatter flick about beer writers, pub-running beer blogger Stonch has put forth a writing competition that seems designed to punish my propensity for pompous, prolix prose: describe, in no more than 175 words, a beer. Any beer. I'm worried that at that length, I won't make it past the brand of socks I was wearing before hitting that text limit, let alone even mention the beer I enjoyed while wearing them (black athletic crew Gold Toes, old enough that the toes aren't much gold anymore, and the left one's a real quitter). Nevertheless, enjoying a good challenge now and then, I'll likely take the bait and hammer something out, even if my continental residency precludes me from procuring the oh-so-delectable booty.

Back in 2007, incidentally, Stonch hosted another contest (in conjunction with the stateside A Good Beer Blog) which revolved around beer photography, a subject which I have a certain sick fondness for. It's too bad Matt from portlandbeer.org didn't send in any entries, as it would have been a surefire victory for the West Coast team.

So, anyone else game for trying to bring a (admittedly token) victory to Team West Coast (we need a better name, methinks), just in time to celebrate International Brewers Day?

* Number of words in this post: 251

1,016 words

A decadent midweek lunch at Pizzeria Delfina made even more transcendent by an extraordinary off-menu addition.

Fermentation Friday - 99% pit-free

Admittedly, the answer to this month's homebrew carnival question didn't come quickly or easily for me, something that's difficult to admit as being quick to respond with no shortage of verbosity is the way things are expected to work around here. Digging back through the history of my more creative creations unearthed a series of recipes that revealed I wasn't quite as weird with ingredients or techniques as maybe I'd like to appear, the anarchic individualist improvising artiste to which I aspire. After looking at logs that revealed inclusions of sweet gale, an attempt at decoctions, a locally-picked fresh hop pale ale, and the odd bit of cacao nibs, it was pretty clear that whenever I'd tried to inspire a "whazzis!?" moment in my guinea pig tasters, my formidable brain trust was going to do it through more or less traditional means: extreme fermentation temperatures, oddball grain bills, and esoteric packaging matched with laser light shows synced to the music of King Crimson.

Last week, while dining with my sister-in-law, she commented out of left field, "Mom didn't really understand when you put her cherries in your beer." That's when the proverbial lightbulb went up: To this day, it's safe to say that my mother-in-law probably still doesn't comprehend why I wasted a perfectly good jar of her brandied cherries on a batch of homebrew. My contribution to Fermentation Friday (the brainchild of Beer Bits 2, this month kindly hosted by Travis at CNYBrew.com) was written before I even touched the keyboard.

Backing up... Flathead Lake hosts a local cherry appellation that's an understandable point of pride. Sweet, floral, and late in the season, they're also collected annually by the in-laws in the vicinity of their home in northern Montana and transformed, with the aid of an almost trustworthy pitter in the hands of my father-in-law and the cooking and canning guidance of my mother-in-law, into jars of maroon gold: brandied cherries. Understand, as we're talking about a process that's as involved and time-consuming as, say, homebrewing, they're quite the valued commodity, doled out sparingly to family members deemed worthy of appreciating the fine art of capturing the ephemeral essence of peak season cherries in little time capsules to be enjoyed when the shorter days of winter don't provide.

We all see where this is going, right? Here's the point at which we can divide the readers into two camps: those who see adding these cherries to a batch of homebrew as either as act of love and respect or as a reckless, wasteful sacrifice.

When Des and I discovered we'd be welcoming the arrival of a new member of the household back in 2006, it wasn't long before the brewer brain started pondering the best way to commemorate the occasion. I wanted a beer for sipping, something that could be slowly enjoyed while it aged, to be paired with long, quiet evenings in the rocking chair spent trying to figure out this whole parenting thing. But it also needed to have some soul, some deeper connection. Some heredity, as it were. One barleywine base recipe, some lightly charred oak chips, and one coveted jar of Patty's brandied cherries later, a singularly special, if not rather unconventional, beer was created in honor of this next mysterious chapter of our lives.

And it was good.

PS The recipe as I posted it two weeks before Mia was born doesn't even reference anything about the backstory here, which is interesting in retrospect. Was I so superstitious about talking about Mia before she was born that it warranted being entirely circumspect about the recipe's origin? Why all the shy roundabout "shucks golly" explanations about why I really brewed it? Nothing like discovering proof in your own writing that illustrates the levels of denial you go through in the moments leading up to an enormous, inevitable life change, eh?

From Pizza Port to the port of Necromanteion

Arriving in Oakland after a quick weekend visit to San Diego, we were met by a bit of a surprise upon stepping out of the airport. With something in the range of 1,000 wildfires currently burning around Northern California, the midsummer light had taken on a yellowish hue, diffuse to the point that it now has an autumnal character, the air tinted with an aroma redolent of a morning's smoldering campfire. Heading into the secluded, windless nooks of the Ross Valley, the effect was intensified into a throat-scratching, permanent dusk, creating a bit of collective tension between the knowledge that the fires were miles away and the twitchy animal instinct for flight.

Why introduce a summary of our most recent visit to Solana Beach's little slice of craft beer heaven thusly, with such unrelated pissing and moaning? To be blunt, there'd be no greater pleasure than to sit down and extol the glory and virtue that Pizza Port can provide, but a deeply unsettling cranky factor has made it impossible to share with care. Now, four days after we've returned, the smoke not only continues to linger, but is intensifying; the headache it's caused has settled into a dull drone, accompanied charmingly by a nasty case of cotton mouth and the inability to take a good, deep breath, along with necessitating a cabin-fever inducing house arrest. Put together, it's not terribly conducive to good writing. But I can't put this post forever. Ergo, we'll just forgo the usual attempts at insight and humor, and hope that the images can provide enough interesting detail on their own:

I'd be remiss, however, if I didn't at least assert to you, the potential SoCal-bound, touring beer enthusiast, the importance of making a visit to Pizza Port in Solana Beach a high priority. Between the house brews, Lost Abbey labels, and the short but stunning guest draught list (La Folie on tap, anyone?) it's a can't-miss destination. When you're done there, swing by the Whole Foods in La Jolla to stock up on bottles of all the Port and Lost Abbey creations you forgot to get at the brewery (like the bottle of Devotion that I'm saving for the day my taste buds return).

Do I even need to bother mentioning the pizza's pretty good, too? And seriously, Junk in the Trunk Dunkel?

(For a little extra interest, check out the details about the stout mentioned in prolific brewer/blogger Tomme Arthur's recent post about the San Diego county fair.)

The bird, at rest

Nearing the longest day of the year, despite the fringes of fog being carried into the valley by a persistent maritime breeze out of the west, bringing along with it the slightest damp hint of a chill, the light seems to carry on through the evening in a way that not only keeps the air pleasant and warm, but makes time feel frozen perpetually around 4:00 in the afternoon, like an eternal springtime happy hour.

And what better way to celebrate a happy hour at the tail end of a splendid weekend than with a nice, proper pint of ale. Or, lacking that, a mug of the bird. Sure, it's only a week old, it's dead flat, and not exactly "refreshing" at 65°. On the other hand, it's an oddly fitting complement to lounging in the post-yellowjacket, pre-mosquito, friscalating dusklight of a Sunday in Ross Valley, almost British in its green, sticky malt presence, with enough cask character and balance to withstand the less than optimal serving temperature and complete lack of carbonation.

Then again, it's early. Both the summer and the bird are very young, with the hidden side of both having yet to reveal themselves. While the days will technically start getting shorter soon, you wouldn't know it from the way the heat of the sunlit hours won't gracefully fade into a cool evening's respite, instead carrying into the night like an oppressive broken record. And as for the bird, it's an unknown. All that's certain is it won't be getting any sweeter...

The bird, flying in the face of common sense

Well, then. Were you, dear readers, aware of the persistent, vicious rumors that have recently been circulated by nefariously pessimistic ne'er-do-wells regarding a supposed deficit - some going as far as to use the alarmist term "shortage" - of the medicinal, antibacterial, and lusciously sticky-icky fragrant flower we all hold near and dear to our beer-loving souls, better known as hops?

Whatever. Let's brew an II2PA² (that's a double imperial India Pale Ale. Squared.) Introducing:

THE BIRD

As in: Flip it. Flip the bird in the general direction of all the malaise surrounding the condition of our economy, and not only as it pertains to beer. Enough already with the moaning about the rising cost of ingredients, and the lack of purchasing power of our dollar at the pub or the grocery store or the homebrew supply shop. We're separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff here. All the chips are in. My metaphor engine is at full tilt: Put your money where your mouth is, literally. Are you in or are you out? Do you, or do you not, value the quality of the beer you drink, on par with the other litany of comestibles you shove down your piehole on a daily basis? If you've started scouring the liquor store shelves for sale tags, feel free to stop reading. It's time to stimulate that karmic economy with a sip of something oh so very delectably bitter:

THE BIRD

As in: Flying in the face of all that's reasonable and decent in this world, I decided to break an unplanned and seemingly endless streak of brewing nearly hop-free beers. Between some yeast-driven Belgo-American types, tame and grainy wheat beers, a malt-dominant scotch ale, a spice-heavy holiday ale, and autumn's stable of darker, balanced, and hop-shy British impressions, we've probably earned our rations for the big hop payback I claimed last weekend at Brewcraft. (I should quickly digress to comment on the tension that seemed to creep into the normally fun process of recipe formulation once the discussion turned to how I planned on clearing the store's shelves of all available top-tier hops. Naturally, they didn't even have the ones I'd planned on using, so it turned into a strange sort of alpha acid wheeling dealing sort of thing, where I outlined the bittering units needed to complete my mad plan (90!) and then haggled with Eric to make sure they weren't comprised entirely of harsh and grapefruity garbageblossoms.)

You see, among my numerous personality quirks that would make any therapist feel like a kid in a candy store is my compulsion to act on the most illogical of ideas. While other local masters of the brewing art are happily crafting unique new beers that dispatch with any reliance on hops in exchange for more experimental bittering and aromatic ingredients (like Moonlight's Brian Hunt, whose current releases Working for Tips* and Out to Lunch** are creating quite the stir), it was almost a guarantee that I'd develop the odd itch to discover what everyone's whinging on about and brew something ridiculously hop-aggressive, with such a blatant disregard for cost, efficiency and decency that's it's the homebrew equivalence of visiting the melting polar icecaps by a privately chartered jumbo jet. With the air conditioning on full blast.

When the best laid plans of a ProMash report are dashed before you've even left the store with your ingredients, it sets the stage for my favorite type of brewing day, as it's been proven over the years that equal parts improvisation and disaster typically makes for a fantastic finished product. Sparing you the details of all the bits of drama that unfolded as things didn't go exactly as planned, I will, for those of you brave enough to try to replicate this affair in your own home, relate one procedure which will undoubtedly alter the results from the attached chart. Despite my most lucid calculations regarding the evaporation rate of the kettle boil, at the end of 90 minutes there was a gallon more wort than had been anticipated. So, while we pitched just under 5 gallons in the primary, I set aside the remaining gallon and cooked it down on the stove for a couple more hours until it's volume had been reduced to about 1/4, allowing for even more bitterness extraction along with some nice Maillard (mallard? ha!) coloring which has left the blended wort a beautiful, rusty red.

Of course, that was before it started to ferment, cloud up with the wicked weather of an unholy sea of yeast and hops detritus, and proceed to blow the lid off the carboy about a half dozen times until I finally gave up and let it breathe naturally. The video below is a good demonstration for the novice brewer when it's best to allow for better blow-off during high krausen:

So, thing's are going swimmingly. I didn't bother to take a gravity reading, so don't ask for one. Look for an update in the next couple weeks as it graduates to the keg.

(FYI - The soundtrack from the above video is Wah Wah Man by Young-Holt Unlimited.)

And if you thought this post was simply a foil to test run some new audio and video scripts, shame on you. Every time I mention this beer, I hear a red-tailed hawk cry off in the distance...

* Whose acronym bears a striking resemblance to another, quite fitting common acronym.

** Please let this be an Eric Dolphy reference.

The Session #16 - Ach! to beer fests

Before we get started here, a big thanks first and foremost to Geistbear for hosting this month's Session in light of the wildly blossoming writer base that's created a round-up task that's anything but quick (and for a time-lapse history of that bloom, Brookston's been keeping tab). The topic at hand, what with summer's outdoor venues calling from the edge of weather's horizon, is the beer festival, a topic that reflects the evolution of this blogging carnival from its origins as a outlet for collectivized tasting notes, into some more embiggened notions regarding beer's cultural influence, its place in the world. Or at least, this time, its place in the world of jockey-boxes, teensy tasting glasses, overpriced sausages, and blues bands with groan-inducing punny names. So maybe it's only as cerebral as you want it to be.

Considering I haven't got a worldly experience in festing to share, you'd think there wouldn't be much material for me to work from. A few previous drafts of this post, ranging in the ballpark of 1,200 words or so, have been quietly filed away, proving that a true rambleholic like yours truly can spin garbage out of the most meager thread. These were overlong, achingly painful drafts that reminded me what kind of abhorrent writing can spawn from the queasy marriage of a little guilt and a little more bitterness. Perhaps I'll air that dirty laundry on some other slow news day, but today, while the sun is out and I'm wearing my cleanly optimistic underpants, we'll just turn the subject to a quick reflection of the closest event at hand, our quaint, charming, and undeniably local Fairfax Brewfest.

Why so blue?*

Despite what might outwardly appear as an unrestrained obsession with all things beer-related, I'm not hugely hot on the festing thing, and this is actually the sole event in honor of malty comestibles I've managed to attend more than once. And why not? Something tells me that if every small town had an annual festival held in the environs of a historic building with ample patio space, under some of the first sunshine of the early spring, where you could relaxedly catch up with the locals while gawking at the out-of-towners, grilled brat in hand, you might not even need the beer to make it worthwhile. Add a bottomless glass (which regrettably needs to be manually replenished every four ounces or so) to the equation, and it's nearly a sure bet.

Thing is, for all the boy-howdy charm you can rustle up at a festival of this microtude, the stuff that gets poured from all those soda kegs is more often than not identical to a really good local bottle & draught list, but that's not the point (and matters little considering those beers are, for the most part, pretty gosh darned good). Depending on the economic climate, anywhere between 15 and 20 breweries make their appearances with a handful of varieties each, generally within comfortable West Coast standards, mostly local-ish and absent of anything wickedly highbrow. The concept of gourmet grazing was born of foodie thinking, and while there are some snob points to be earned - doing side-by-sides of local IPAs, seeking out that secret hidden gem amidst the field of cloned pale ales - this is not the place to whip out the monocle and moleskin. Events such as the Fairfax Brewfest seem to be from a time before every party needed a theme, some self-validating motif that grants the attendees fair excuse to have a little fun for a change.

Fun, along with good, honest enjoyment of the act of drinking craft beer, seems to be a lesser sibling in the family of beer writing, alongside its more popular, extreme-sports brother, the brainy, Ivy League-bound, tweedy brother, and the exotic international exchange student. Another reason why each small town ought to host a similar event, where by the fourth or so taste of whoozit's pale ale, you notice yourself smiling stupidly despite of yourself, even when your kid's trying to grab your full glass out of your hand?

* Stupid manual exposure settings.

[Help me out here, though. When I dial down the snark-o-matic, is this even worth reading? Would you rather hear some poor schmuck on the soapbox about the pitiful luck a genuine beer enthusiast has at chancing upon anything awe-inspiring in terms of actual, honest to goodness, pure liquid beer at one of these things? No, no. I'm sorry, I digress. Back out into the sun.]

Tasting notes - Brasserie de Blaugies Darbyste

If there's a variation on the archetypal pint of ale that reveals more about the cultural mindset of an individual by the reaction it elicits than the use of fruit in brewing, I'm not sure I've come across it yet. Whether it's as simple as the inclusion of a lemon wedge clinging to the edge of a glass of wheat beer or as complex as the variety of cherry involved in the making of a kriek, there are obviously myriad levels of involvement that fruit can have in its relation to brewing, but the reactions folks will give you when offered a "fruit beer" will tell you more about their own personal experiences than the true breadth of taste you could be referring to. Around these parts, for example, fruit is almost always used to either sweeten a brew, mask imperfections and/or blandness, or as a gimmick to capture what's perceived as a beer-wary female market.

It is in that light, that upon taking her first sip of the beautifully effervescent, ginger-tinged Darbyste, that Des recounted how she thought the local Whole Foods was doing a disservice to its customers by not posting warning labels on beers like Hanssen's lambics. She imagined the reaction - one of severe revulsion, confusion, and likely nausea - that your unsuspecting buyer would likely have upon swallowing something that's packaged in a way resembling a Flemish version of a Bartles & James wine cooler, or worse, Mike's Hard Lemonade, yet tastes far more like a lemon that's been fermenting under a horse saddle. For those who feel some pressure to imbibe an alcoholic beverage, yet can only do so by masking anything that might appeal to mature tastebuds through a generous coating of syrupy, saccharine sweetness, these are not the alco-pops you're looking for. In a comparison that could be likened to the difference between Chlorodyne and children's Tylenol, one might consider Oudbeitje to be the laudanum to Lindeman's Cherry Blast.

To wit, de Blaugies has made one of those warning-label-ready beers. With a deceptively gorgeous bottle depicting a Seba-like botanical print of the figs promised within, De Blaugies' take on the fruit beer via its Darbyste incarnation is a farmhouse funk indulgence. The only hint of fig in the taste, all sugar now being long gone in the fermentation, is hidden amongst a layer of citric sourness and a fog of bretty barnyard haze, a taste redolent of figs caramelized by intense heat, as if baked atop a tart. At its core, Darbyste is a saison with a bière blanche heritage, a spiced, sparkling, demi-sec, and agreeably refreshing summer ale that, like any good piece of farmhouse art, allows for as much analysis of depth as the taster wants to employ, but will equally sate even the most nonchalant quaffer. And, like other classic saisons, its profile seems to change not only as you taste it, as it sits and warms in the glass, but even when the glass is replenished, allowing for the perfect amount of summertime daydreaming laziness as you work your way through the bottle.*

And with the first round of summer's figs ripening on the tree as I write this, in between the omnipresent plums and nascent apples, bag upon bag of impulse buy, nearly-gone peaches and apricots staking out all available kitchen surfaces, it does get a brewer's mind to wandering...

Is there room amidst the local collective taste culture to allow for fruit beers, made locally, that demand a slightly more adventurous palate, one that could embolden craft brewers to take a step towards using stone fruit, berries, or citrus in creative ways that until now have been the sole domain of a small number of farmhouse and wild ale brewers in Northern Europe? Perhaps the growing popularity of bretty beers is an indication that we're ready. Perhaps a smartly-designed warning label would be good for sales, too.

* At one point, I swear, the peppery aromas gave way to what I could only describe as "the interior of a rental car near the end of a vacation in Hawaii when you've been coated in Banana boat for a week." And then it faded back to the barnyard profile.

Homebrew Blogging Day #1 - On the origin of cerevisiae

Not just any cerevisiae, mind you, but cerevisiae of the home-brewed persuasion. That's the little blogging Beagle we're boarding, begat by Beer Bits 2, the launch of a new monthly groupthink that's putting the emphasis on the "home" aspect of brewing, a neat parallel to Stan Hieronymus' exponentially popular Session group. And, christening that voyage is the question that lies at the heart of the matter, the question of how we all got around to mucking about with DIY malt fermentation to begin with.

The funny thing about cozying up to scribble out an essay on a topic of someone else's choosing is that you can find yourself experiencing a bit of déjà vu, considerably so if you're as much of a rambling and redundant writer as I am. But the clarion call of the carnival is just too seductive to resist, so I'll try to follow this month's topic with as little repetition as possible from this earlier post. But first, a recipe:

(Click for larger beer-stained image.) My good friend Alex recently informed me that my induction into formal beergeekhood occurred when I caught the homebrew bug, no sooner, no later. Dark, dark years of suffering followed. There was doomsday doppelbock. There was the mysteriously "sweet 'n' sour" beer. There were unidentified floating chunks lurking in carboys. There was rope. On the other end of the tunnel, or the "green grass" side of history, if you will, it all seems worthwhile, as it's now been years since we've made anything other than (dare I say) delicious-ish, pat-yourself-on-the-back, honest-to-goodness, don't-nitpick-the-flaws beer. Had you sampled the "beverage" that resulted from the virgin brewing attempt based off the above recipe, you wouldn't have bet on it.

We still drank it, though.

If you can smile when the food's that burnt,
the beer must be pretty good.*

It's a small, charming coincidence that this subject has arisen with Father's Day on the horizon, as my father can take full blame for the homebrewer in me - if not only for his effective branding on the olfactory development of my impressionable nervous system à la the McDonald's Happy Meal by introducing me to home-brewed beer in my youth, but also for the fact that he presented a bored, bookish kid with a funky little home library to peruse which happened to contain within it my introductory text on the subject. Besides John Barth (Giles Goat Boy, The Sot-Weed Factor), Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), and Graham Greene (The Quiet American, Brighton Rock), Byron Burch† was in good company with his 1975 edition of Quality Brewing: A Guidebook for the Home Production of Fine Beers‡ nestled neatly betwixt them. Cracking the spine on that delightfully rudimentary and debatable text conjured up distinct (and most likely false) memories of the home-brewed beer I remembered from my earliest youth: the crispness of the carbonation, clarity of bitterness, warm golden hue, and grassy, floral aroma. In retrospect, I'm all but certainly recalling the taste of the first German pilsner I ever tasted as a tiny wee one - not my dad's homebrew - but one can never be sure when it comes to things like that.

My father's inspiration for homebrewing came from his intention to recapture the taste of the German lagers that sustained him for his time stationed in Frankfurt, hence my hybridized recollections. Interestingly, pilsner is one of the only major classic styles we've never attempted, mostly out of reverence to the standard of quality that I'd be embarrassed to approximate (and only slightly due to the chills of terror I still get in remembrance of the sole triple decoction mash fiasco/experiment/failure we endured). Regardless of the differences of between our personal beer preferences, however, there aren't many more ardent supporters of my little hobby than my father, a man who unembarrassedly proclaims each new concoction the new unbeatable best, and who I can also thank for the real reason why I've immersed myself in this subject: for instilling in me a true passion for food, the notion of the kitchen as the soul of the home, and the act of creating and sharing§ food with others as the ultimate act of love. Around here, brewing is part and parcel with cooking, which in turn is inexorably linked to the table, whereby the most primitive, basic, soulful community- and family-buidling exercises take place, through the act of breaking bread. I owe my father for ingraining the importance of the communal table into my psyche, and for reminding me that when you sit at that table, you best be enjoying some damn fine food and drink with your company. So take that as your obligatory (and early) Father's Day toast||.


* And yes, that's a grill loaded up with beer can chicken.

† And as for Byron, he's still doing his thing in Santa Rosa with The Beverage People, taking awards for homebrewed mead and selling cheesemaking molds via catalog.

‡ Inside that book was the yellowed business card of one mister Steve Norris (anyone know whatever happened to him?), with the address of a homebrew shop in the Outer Sunset, who guided me through that initial gear-buying spree, recipe formulation, and failsafe instruction guide. And despite a couple items that might induce a chuckle from the more experienced brewers out there ("full" body!), though, there's truly not much that's changed in what goes into making a West Coast pale ale since 1995.

§ If there's a unifying characteristic of the homebrewers I've had the pleasure of meeting, a sense of sharing has got to be it. That's why never make less than 5 gallons at a time...

|| A toast which will this year be raised with glasses of hefeweizen which might break my streak of "unbeatable bests". Beer-and-tear-stained scanned recipe to follow.

Separated at birth

At the amber core of all devil whisky there lies a heart of pure, sweet beer. Barring the addition of hops (and really, who uses those anymore, anyway?), up until the moment the wash is run up the still to capture the water of life, the stuff you're dealing with is essentially the makings of beer. (And yes, I know you also don't boil the wash before inoculating it, but I can think of at least one un-boiled beer out there.) It shouldn't, then, be much of a surprise to anyone following the current art of the brewing craft that there are efforts underway to reunite the long divorced brethren of beer and spirits, through a variety of means.

Breweries toying with toasted tastes: Fans of "extreme beers" know the drill by now: Brew it big, brew it strong, brew it diabolically rich, and then roll out the bourbon barrels. The vanilla of the oak and char of the staves are incredibly trendy and desirable characteristics in big beefy stouts and porters, where brewers of high abv ales are quickly learning that it's those very same smoothing characteristics of wood-aging that distillers have used for generations to offset the fire of the alcohol.

Examples: Old Dominion Oak Barrel Stout, Schlafly Reserve Imperial Stout, O'Fallon Whiskey Barrel Smoked Porter, Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron

Breweries dabbling in distilling: In a completely natural evolutionary step, restlessly creative brewers (once they get the big OK from the Feds) are taking to distilling their own spirits. And not surprisingly, the results they're getting are drawing rave reviews, no small thanks to the discipline involved in being a successful craft brewer: Take only the best ingredients you can get, and keep a close eye on the process from start to finish. Distribution of these delicacies is a totally different matter, however, but the difficulty of tracking these down is more than made up for by the hand-crafted experience of enjoying them.

Examples: Dogfish Head Brown Honey Rum, Anchor Steam Old Potrero, Anchor Steam Junipero Gin, Rogue Spruce Gin

Distillers playing with beer: Like I mentioned above, the making of most grain alcohols involves a process which, in the abstract at least, is identical to brewing, up to the point at which the wort/wash is fermented (when the brewer goes "whoohoo!" and starts a-drinkin', and the whiskymaker says "very well then" and proceeds to distill it, rack it into barrels, and wait a good 8 years). So it shouldn't be much of a shock that some distillers has gone all the way and taken a finished beer and distilled it down to its pure essence. Who knows? Maybe this could be the spirit that cocktail mixologists latch onto as a platform for exploring beerish flavors in their concoctions.

Examples: Essential Spirits Classick American Bierschnaps, Essential Sprits Sierra Nevada American Bierschnaps

Beer cocktails: Nothing new, obviously, cocktails made with beer as a base rather than a spirit are making the slightest bit of a comeback for a couple reasons. Strict liquor licensing laws (the same ones that prohibit sales of hard alcohol at certain eateries) have put creative restaurateurs in the challenging position of attracting a cocktail-hungry audience with limited tools at their disposal. Sake was the big one for a while, being the base for a whole generation of knockoff drinks where it played the role of vodka, tequila, or gin in establishments where those types aren't welcome. Interestingly, the increasing role of beer cocktails on bar menus has as much to do with the consistently increasing quality of the beers they have opportunity to play with. So while they won't be replacing the Hendrick's in my martini with cucumber beer anytime soon, it does seem like creative types in the bar scene are taking note of the wide variety of flavors beer currently places at their disposal.

Examples: Picon bière, Radler

And what will the next wave of cross-craft hybrid beveraging bring? If the successes of Dogfish Head's experiments-turned-mainstream of adding grapes to beer* in Midas Touch and Chateau Jiahu and Russian River's continued investigation on the use of California wine barrels in the production of their Belgian-inspired ales are any indications, we'll be seeing more handshaking between brewers and winemakers, as the two industries have generated the world's foremost experts in fermentation science, yet have a long, storied history of working independently of each other in a way that's allowed for the perception of antagonism between the two. One might think that a collaboration between them might relieve a bit of the pressure they're both feeling from their respective fields...

Big ups to Mr. Drinkaweek for many of the inspired linkfodder above.

* I'm still looking for a good term for these types of creations. If mead with malt added is braggot, and mead with grapes is pyment, would malt with grapes be... pygot? bryment?

Friday linknibbles - Extra hot edition

As anyone in Northern California would be delighted to inform you, it's hot out. So hot, in fact, that it's not terribly conducive to the act of generating any original thoughts (outside of "boy, it's hot!") worthy of documenting anywhere. With that in mind, I'm shutting down the heat-generating creative part of my brain (leaving only the lizard brain in control, which is pretty neat) in order to conserve energy, and leaving y'all with some items from around the tubes:

* From Des' hometown, a pub tradition that might be the best way to honor its regulars since the Stammtisch.

* Wait, a green beer from Belgium called Dragon and it's not completely and utterly awesome?

* Did I mention it's American Craft Beer week? No? I also didn't mention that it's Vesak, so sue me. Stephen Colbert, on the other hand, had some words about it. (Oh, and it's apparently also San Francisco Cocktail Week, if you swing that way.)

* Did I mention how hot it is out? Perhaps if you're in the Bay Area suffering from the same solar assault as we are, you should consider signing up for JJ's farmhouse ale tasting that's coming up in a couple weeks. Because I also may have mentioned that the whole saison+summer equation = pretty freaking great.

* Say what you want about this whole beer vs. wine thing that's being so desperately marketed by the foodie press: winemakers are a buncha wooses. [note to self - add "woos" to custom dictionary]

* If it's not over 100 degrees where you are, and you still have your wits about you (did I mention it's hot here?), consider joining in the two upcoming beer-related carnivals: The Session on Friday, June 6th, and the inaugural as-yet-unnamed (yet I'm obviously rooting for "The Mash Out") Homebrew Blogging Day on Friday, May 30.

Other than that, business as usual. Don't forget to keep hydated, kids!

Working through the pain

One of the best techniques I've got for dealing with any sort of stress, pain, or responsibility is pretending that I'm too distracted by what's coming afterwards to pay any mind to my current situation. So even though there's a deluge of paperwork blocking all the fire exits from my office and a gauntlet of evening and weekend events that threaten to blot out my concept of the passage of time like a sensory deprivation tank, I'm going to soldier on and start making plans for when I finally blow this popsicle stand.

When I was a kid, my dad passed along his insight on how to properly land a devastating right hook, instructing me that the key was to not aim directly at your opponent, but behind your opponent so that you have a target to swing through to, thus fixing the amateur error of pulling your punch before you've done proper damage. Sadly, it's never quite panned out, as I've since spent all my good fistfights busily trying to get a good look at what's exactly behind my opponent's head, so that I can get a good bead on it. Regardless, it's the same theory at work, here, as I try to confound my brain from the "beginning of the a week that's really gonna suck just as much as the next two weeks after that" into thinking that today is actually Saturday, June 7th - the beginning of summer.

Here's some of what's on tap for the next few months, with all the requisite beer affiliations. Please let me know if there's anything I've carelessly omitted, any places you can recommend, etc., etc.!

* San Diego, late June - Ostensibly to introduce my daughter to Posiedon's henchman Shamu, it's a simple cover-up for my annual pilgrimage to the house of Tomme, Pizza Port in Solana Beach. Then we'll certainly make time to check out that stinky fish. After the stinky fish, I'll be ready to blend in with the (anticipated) crowd at the (anticipated) new Toronado in the picturesque 'hood of North Park.

* Flathead Lake, Montana, late July - I recently happened upon a column in New West where Montanan writer Bill Schneider is cataloging all the Big Sky breweries he can manage to visit. Montana was the first place that introduced me to both Fat Tire and Moose Drool in their pre-ubiquity days, so it holds a special place in my craft beer-lovin' heart. Granted, a visit to Flathead Lake Brewing (sorry we can't fill your growlers because we've run out of beer, again) was a grim reminder that not all craft beer is brewed equal, but Glacier Brewing in Polson had some promise. Now I just need to figure out how to launch an evening sortie across the pond to Tamarack Brewing for a little look-see-drink. Either that or I'm commandeering a plane to land on the strip at Lang Creek.

* The Poperinge Hop Festival, Belgium, mid-September - Admittedly, this is likely just a fantasy addition, one that I pencil into the calendar every three years. Personally, I'd like to think Mia would make an excellent satanic ladybug. If I can renegotiate my contract to get paid in Euros from now on, I think there's no holding us back this year.

Interspersed between those events like temporal palate cleansers will be beer. Lots of beer. There will be homebrewing and tastings and trips to great shops and even better bars and a brewery or two and maybe even some restaurants that serve food with their beer (including finally introducing Mia to the Tourist Club, pictured above). I've also got a summer resolution in place to reevaluate, rediscover, and hopefully re-enjoy some of the breweries that make up the great Western canon of craft beer, ones I've regretfully ignored over the past year or two in pursuit of what JJ has coined "novelty drinking" (better known in this house as "Benjamins for Belgians").

Lastly, there's plans in the works to put together an afternoon beer and food pairing in the City with an "American Wild Ale" theme, most likely in late July, date likely to be determined by our success in rounding up the proper bottle list. Let me know if you'd like to be updated on this inaugural Pfiff!-hosted event!

PS - The responses I've gotten to the last post have been truly cockle-warming. The point wasn't so much to massage my already corpulent, tender ego (that's currently the job of my daughter via her endless encore requests for "ABC" on the ukulele) but to discover what about this site was keeping you all around. Thanks for all the great feedback and kind comments!

Tasting notes - Judgment Day

In 1988, the year that Basquiat died, the year that the last state in the US succumbed to the pressure of the National Minimum Drinking Age Act, near the end of a decade thrust through time via the unforeseen propulsion of forced-air induction, a new chapter in what we can now look back at fondly as the re-birth of America's current craft beer movement had begun. As a development within the West Coast craft brewing movement that could be traced back to a pint of steam beer that Fritz Maytag enjoyed with his lunch back in 1965, the brewpub boom was a huge shift in the culture of craft beer. Sitting down with a list of the iconic breweries of the genre, one quickly finds the vast majority of them had their roots not as bottlers or draught distributors, but as public houses, taverns, and saloons that offered a community gathering place, served food, and brewed their own beer on the premises: think Hopland's Mendocino Brewing Company, Ashland's Rogue Ales pub, and the Buckhorn Saloon of the Anderson Valley Brewing Company. At that time, a simple business plan would show that the profit margins on the beer sold on the premises paid off the cost of the customers' food, even, a profit margin that - while it likely doesn't exist anymore - offered these companies the resources to expand into bottling, kegging, and distributing their wares off premises.

And the flagship wares brewed by these fine folks are an exemplary reflection of what most people today would identify with as the trademark distinctions of American craft beer: ales with a British pedgiree, brewed with a certain frontier, buckaroo styling. Pale ales, stouts, IPAs, porters, amber ales, mostly, ramped up in both the bitterness and alcohol departments, and watermarked with the unique traits of the locally grown, citrusy, piney hops. Wonderful tipples, for the most part, these beers are, especially when admired within the context of their creation, in a pub with some locals, enjoying a burger with a game on the toob, brushing the workday dust off your shoulder.

Fast forward to the present. The Hopland, Ashland, and Anderson Valley brewpubs have all been outgrown by their previous inhabitants, but their presence as "regulars" in retail and restaurants would seem pretty solid. Likewise all over the country, beer makers that had initially been tied to brewpubs as the anchor of their identity have spread their wings, flexed their marketing muscle, and grown beyond anyone's expectations.

Those that weathered the microbrewery boom of the 90's ("micro" being the "turbo" of the nineties) formed the old guard of the current revolution, making solid West Coast ales that pair damned well with hot wings and a Raiders game. But anon, lucky us, we appear to be potential witnesses to the birth of a new chapter, a chapter which is underway right now and could quite possibly be summed up by the bottle you see pictured at the head of this post. For if you were to head south to sunny Solana Beach, you'd come across a pretty great little pizza joint called Pizza Port that happens to serve some darned fine beers on tap (mostly like the ones I've described above, in fact) but look in the cooler case by the front door, and you'll see something wholly different - a set of nice 750 mL bottles with not the Port Brewing logo on them, but Lost Abbey.

Lost Abbey is a page turn in this craft beer story we're all enjoying, in that it's more a name and a logo for a branded, thematic collection of cork-finished, wire-caged bottles - a "vision" of sorts concocted by Tomme Arthur - than it is a "brewery" in the traditional sense. It's only one step ahead of a shift we've all seen in Russian River over the years. More on that later (since I did say this was a tasting notes column, after all).

If you've ever had the pleasure of enjoying a Ritter Sport Rum Raisin & Hazelnut bar, you've pretty much had the solid, non-alcoholic version of Judgment Day (and around here, that's a huge compliment). Pouring a stark, shiny black, looking like perfectly tempered dark chocolate, it delivers a likewise bittersweet note when it first hits the tongue. The raisins make their appearance through the aroma coming off the glass, but the remains in the taste have been converted to a rummy, boozy finish that lingers for ages once you get through the immense nutty, chocolaty body. It's devoid of that cloying, caramel stickiness that's so pervasive in Belgian quads, but with a dense viscosity that makes Gulden Draak seem like a total lightweight.

How does the fortuitous arrival of this wonderous bottle of ale translate to a new chapter in the craft beer Renaissance, though? Certainly, brewpubs have long had specialty ales that veered from their regular spectrum of styles, perhaps to allow the brewer to have a little fun, perhaps as an experiment, perhaps in honor of a special occasion. Certainly, I didn't even blush when Rogue teamed up with Morimoto to start producing specialty beers intended to pair uniquely with foods. Nor did I blink when Anderson Valley decided to plop a cowl on David Keene's noggin and start bottling the most dastardly childproof, molten glue gun sealed (it's supposed to look like wax, see?) Belgian specialty ales under the Brother David subtitle. Simply put, once these brewers had the resources and the green light, they started to branch out, which hardly constitutes a shift worth noting.

When the oddly-shaped "-tion" beers from Russian River started making appearances, however, there was cause to perk up and pay attention. For here we had not just one or two bottled oddities, but an entire range, within a specifically American-Belgo tradition, branded together by images of sadistic looking farming implements, that had seemingly nothing to do with the delightful little taproom/pizza joint where those brett-y barrels were doing their thang in downtown Santa Rosa. Visiting the pub shortly after I'd discovered Temptation and Supplication, I found myself the only one in the place looking for these sour beauties, the tables adorned almost exclusively by the likes of (the incredible, yet pronouncedly "West Coast") Pliny the Elder and Blind Pig. It was as if there were two separate breweries working out of the same space, with the same name, almost...*

The fact is, it's arguable that these specialty beers are, unlike all the beers hereto produced by the same brewers within their brewpub confines, not intended to be enjoyed at their respective establishments, but out in the world, nudging wine bottles off the table when nobody's looking, taking up precious cellar space in restaurants and basements and trying just a little to distance themselves from the pubs from whence they came. The brewpub culture that founded our current enviable position of enjoying quality, locally made, handcrafted beers appears to be shifting gears as the pressures of the brewing-restaurant business only get more intense: the rising cost of restaurant labor, rising costs of food and brewing ingredients, effects of a recession on the frequency on which folks eat out, the increasing distance between homes and pubs with a general lack of quality public transportation combined with increasingly stringent and heavily enforced drinking & driving laws, just to name a few.

Could it be that a generation of experimental brewers, flush with innovation and access to good distribution, are going to tap into America's current war and recession-fueled nesting phase by extroverting their efforts even more? When I go to my local bottled beer heaven, I have access to more brewpub-derived options than ever before, from all over the country - Dogfish Head, most recently - and am curious to see where this is going to take off to next. Will the brewpubs all end up like the one in Hopland, more of a historical remnant kept open by the company for image's sake than anything else, like the wine tasting rooms of the valley that surrounds it?

One thing's certain: As these brewers are allowed to expand their craft beyond what's expected in your local alehouse, the next phase of our brewing Renaissance is bound to be loaded with trophies like Port Brewing/Lost Abbey's singularly phenomenal Judgment Day. And that's just such a pleasant conclusion to come to, I won't even end with a tastelessly punny Biblical aside about how rapturous it all is.

Oh, who am I kidding?


* And when pressed to choose a beer that goes well with a spicy pizza, I'm not likely to grab a bottle of Supplication off the shelf. Nor would I anticipate that next time I visit Santa Rosa, will I be met with a Belgian-style cuisine à la bière restaurant in place of RRBC.

The Session #15 - A gradual descent into the must

As writing assignments go, composing this month's Session piece (as hosted by Boak & Bailey) has been nothing less than a challenge, as I find myself walking against the winds of common sense, along with the clichéd maxim of the craft, "Write what you can reasonably fabricate via Wikipedia searches," for as I'm proud to say I'm modestly insightful on a trivial variety of clever topics, including beer, am I a "beer geek"? A "beer enthusiast"? While there's no chance I'd shy away from a Session theme that may be somewhat alien to me, not now that I've found this fun little monthly exercise, a disclaimer needs to be made up front: I'm just not sure I qualify.

Others may, however, disagree.

Sure, I like me a nice pint of the stuff on occasion. Lots of people do. I'd like to think of myself as sitting cozily in the middle of the spectrum between complete cavemen and brewfest tickers. I don't have BeerAdvocate or Rate Beer accounts, don't have any sort of list of beers I've had the luxury of tasting, and I've so far abstained from naming any pets or family members anything like "Biscuit" or "Lupulus" or "Trubs".

[Disclaimer #1: I should admit, however, that I have an embarrassing number of German bierdeckels. Not to mention we've had to designate an entire cabinet in our distinctly compact kitchen to my beer glassware collection. And yes, the other day, I actually yelled out loud, "Hey, where's my Hoegaarden glass?"]

But doesn't there need to be a tipping point [I just typed "pint" again] if one's going to go about having graduated from the casual beer drinker to the rarified echelon of "enthusiast"? What if I can't point to a moment of conversion, that trucker's gear change moment henceforth a crown of beer evangelism was thrust upon me, rakishly tilted in a slighty snobby, enlightened way? For example, one of the aspects B&B are looking to gather from this carnival is the single, revelatory beverage that made all the lights start blinking and spark up all the fireworks, but there's a disappointment in my story there, too, as this is the sort of reverse tale wherein I didn't even taste Budweiser until late in my high school career, long after having been introduced to fine German lagers, local craft icons, and heck, even homebrew. By the time I was paying any attention to my surroundings, at college in Oregon, it was too late: I couldn't fight through the massive craft beer crowd to get my hands on crap macro-beer, even if I'd tried [Disclaimer #2: I didn't try]. There are moments, though, in the time between then and now, that could arguably be seen as signposts, changes in the weather, what have you, that signified that something more seriously beery was afoot.

A tipping point, maybe, when I forced our entire wedding party to drink homebrew?

But there's just no Gregor Samsa moment in this story. Maybe the point when I realized I was scanning wine merchants' inside distribution lists for the odd rare beer of which they might have a case or two, but who hasn't been curious? Or the point at which I realized I was the proud owner of not one, but two Moose Drool t-shirts [Disclaimer #3and this was before Big Sky was even distributing in Northern California], perhaps? I'm still not sold.

Shall I continue? Choose your own point at which I awoke to find myself transformed into a gigantic bug:

- When my then girlfriend (now wife, obviously) gave me draught equipment for my birthday?

- When cork-finished bottles of homebrew became our holiday gifts, complete with wax seals embossed with the family name and the visage of a mash paddle in the center, like some crazy, shamanistic wand of healing and unification?

- When I realized I was stockpiling a list of "wedding beer" recipes to help simplify our friends' requests?

Some might argue that the attention I warrant to photographing my hop plants would constitute an excessive amount of enthusiasm for beer-related items. But geekdom?

It's arguable, though, that my alleged metamorphosis from regular joe to a regular joe who's really into beer is that it hinges on other people's expectations: Did I ask if I wanted to chip in on that case of Black Ghost? Did I ask for draught equipment for my birthday? Sure, the fact that my young daughter calls anything I've got poured in a glass "beer" (anything I carry in a mug is "coffee", naturally) may be an indication that I might not be able to argue much further.

Like I mentioned before, there are some other fascinations in my life that I can bend an ear about, concepts and ideas and people and passions and arts that I've been known to expound on. But going through the details of the current situation, and the question posed above, there's only one detail that gives me pause:

- When, of all topics that I'm passionate and quasi-literate about, I've choosen beer as the thing that I set time aside to write about.

That's got to be it, right? If you had asked me 4 years ago what I'd write about if I found myself to share regular insights on a topic on a web log, I would not, certainly not, have said beer. And then I did. Like 99% of you reading this (you cute buncha beer bloggers out there, you), I think it could be argued that the moment when we all became "beer enthusiasts" was the moment we stopped being merely on the receiving end of the information pipeline, but decided to chime in and join the discussion ourselves, whether it's merely posting about an exciting new bottle you found on the shelf at the store down the street, or about visiting a brewpub by chance and finding something you wanted to share, or about the inside industry, or about homebrewing - that's the point of graduation. The point when we all became vocal - the point at which, for me, Pfiff! was born - is quite possibly the step at which our admiration and enjoyment of beer becomes enthusiasm and advocacy of beer.

Time of the saison for loving

A few years ago, it seemed poised to become a permanent fixture within the standard brewpub repertoire. And while that hasn't quite happened (although I never thought I'd see the day when one would win a "best beer in the world" competition), it's certainly established itself among the seasonal varieties that even the most cookie-cutter of craft breweries have on the back side of their menus, alongside the summer hefewiezen, the autumn Oktoberfest, and the winter doppelbock. And that's all and good, because you know what? It's spring now. And I'm pretty amenable to the idea of taking these three months to give homage to that salt-of-the-earth, farmhouse funky, rustic piece of folk brewing art: the saison*.

An excellent guide for saison appreciation, Phil Markowski's Farmhouse Ales, distinguishes saison as one of the two major subsets of of north European rustic ales, the other being the French bière de garde, a distinction that oenophiles would appreciate as it's based almost primarily on terroir, being a style that's inherently married to the land. The big downer though, for those of us who have a romantic penchant for seasonal, hand-crafted, mutable and airily shifting farmhouse creations that bend to the will of the harvest and to the experimental nature of the brewer, is that what used to be a truly rustic, wild-as-you-want style has been all but pigeonholed into a very specific set of guidelines. Granted, those guidelines are awfully fun to explore within - the archetype of the modern style, Saison Dupont is quite extraordinary - but isn't it fun to color outside the lines once in a while? What were those pre-WWII saisons of the Wallonian countryside like when the "market" for these recipes were the families, friends and odd visitors to the farms on which they were brewed?

Enter wild nonconformist Dany Prignon and his equally wild and nonconforming Fantôme brewery from Soy, Belgium. With recipes that change like the wind blows and a smirkingly secretive approach to unorthodox brewing ingredients, there aren't too many brewers out there whose work captures the "seasonal-ness" of saison like Fantôme (even were you to exclude the series of beers they actually name after the four seasons). A good way to gauge the inconsistency between batches of his beers, you have only to try to read through the reviews posted on a ratings site like BeerAdvocate or Rate Beer, wherein you'll find out that the particular beer pictured above, La Dalmatienne (labeled a "blonde" on the bottle) is overtly malty and sweet, yet really dry, funky and tart, deep brown and simultaneously light golden, tasting like an orange, or a lemon, or like apples, or maybe even like dirt. And those tasting notes are probably all right on the nose, as over the years, I'm sure it's been all of these things. [This bottle, in case you were wondering, was just right! Seriously, though...] What would be seen as a terminal flaw at any major brewery is here considered a charming personality trait - it's Mr. Prignon's unpredictability and ceaseless creativity that's earned him his enviable reputation.

Within the somewhat more straight-laced vein of saison brewing, though, there are many quite nice and far more available options. But maybe as springtime is a time of change, revelation and splendor, maybe it is the season in which to experience something virtually unanticipatable:

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown,
Who ponders this tremendous scene—
This whole experiment of green,
As if it were his own!

- Emily Dickenson

*Bruce Paton has a nice piece about saison as the beer for summer, so rather than split hairs, why don't we just call it the beer from March to September?

7-10 split brewing

Some homebrewers have, for whatever reason, a lot of time available to devote to their hobby, while others, like myself, have to carve into the 4th dimension in order to extract enough of the highly prized space-time material needed to construct a fully functional (yet still entirely abstract) mechanism known in these parts as a "free afternoon." But oh, the fun we have when February 30th rolls around! One of the amusing experiments I've concocted in the quest for maximizing the efficient use of such a precious resource is a little thing I call 7-10 split brewing, whereby we save some time by trying to brew separate, distinct batches simultaneously out of the same brewpot, a name derived from the perceived impossibility of hitting two discrete targets with a single trajectory. Anyone who's brewed in batches 10 gallons or larger who still ferments in 5-gallon carboys can relate to the allure of tinkering with the wort a little when it's broken into several smaller containers, especially considering that even if you tried your hardest, two identically fermented but separate batches of homebrew are likely going to taste a little different from each other, anyway.

In some ways, it's sort of a sister concept to partigyle brewing, a historically-minded technique where a brewer breaks a large mash into different runnings, each weaker than the next, in order to make strong ales and small beers from the same tun of grains. But the way we do it is a little more Dr. Moreau than Dr. Villa in the unorthodoxy of its approach.

The victims of this month's experiment: a singly mashed wheat beer which will be cruelly divorced into a Bavarian hefeweizen and a Belgian witbier. Here's the plan:

We're gonna stuff our Rubbermaid bucket with 8 lbs of wheat malt, 4 lbs of pale malt, 4 lbs of pilsner malt, 1 lb of Carapils, and some rice hulls, do a dough-in and strike the mash at 148° F. Meanwhile! I'll be conducting a little mini-mash on the side consisting of 1 lb wheat malt, 1 lb pale malt, 1 lb pilsner malt, 1 lb flaked wheat, and 1 lb flaked oats. When we mash out, I'll do some fancypants arithmetic to ensure that the gravity of wort A (mostly the early runnings from the lauter tun) will be similar to the gravity of wort B (later runnings blended with the mini-mash). Then I can do two side-by-side boils with separate hop and spice additions.

Or! I'll give in to my slothful nature because it's in the 80's out and I've had a hard week, and I'll just toss all the grains together, boil the whole stinkin' lot in one batch and let the fates sort it out in the carboys (and try to make amends later with dry hop and spice tincture additions) while I work on my tan and soak my feet in the kiddie pool.

Regardless of how we do it, it'll be fun, right? After the (explosive!) dust has settled, I'll try to post some details in a more recipe-friendly presentation. Enjoy your weekends, all!

Can the circle be unbroken?

It was bound to happen at some point: A photo by a beer blogger of another beer blogger who happens to be taking a photo (of beer!) while sitting next to yet another drink blogger, only to be published on (you guessed it!) another beer blog.

From Bill Brand's What's On Tap site, I give you the following ghostly image:

It's an uncanny apparition in reference to the piece I wrote about that stellar evening, and how it spawned a discussion regarding beer writing in the context of the direction of this particular blog. (Also note Des' sneaky move on the cheese plate while I was distracted by the panoply of beer glasses in front of me.) If there isn't a better portrayal of the little conundrum I find tickling away in the back of my mind about the increasingly crowded field of beer writing, Pfiff!'s role within that community, and the "inside baseball" nature of this chosen hobby, I haven't yet seen it.

Dogfish Head to Toronado

There will doubtless be a dozen-odd posts over the next week about the day Sam Calagione showed up in San Francisco to deliver buckets upon buckets of his truly divine elixirs down the throats of a previously Dogfish Head-less town. And while I failed yet again to catch the attention of either Jay or Bill to ask, "Hey, is there anything about tonight that you're not going to talk about, or any photos from this event that you're not going to post?", the fact that I even had the urge to approach them like that (yes, Jay, that was me tapping you on the back while you were trying to scoot out; yes, Bill, that was me trying to introduce myself while you were taking my picture) speaks to the inner conversation I've been having lately, pretty much ever since I relit all the burners on this blog earlier this year after a bit of a hiatus, a conversation that could be summed up thusly: "What exactly am I writing about, again?"

The online beer writing scene has never felt as crowded as it does now, reminiscent in some ways to the sweaty wall of bodies three-deep at the bar last night*, of and while I recently posited that I'd lost my touch, I'm now prepared to consider that there was never much of a touch to misplace. What scared me was when I noticed that a blog I started under the pretense of having a place to post quick thoughts on beer and brewing and links to fun articles in the interest of reducing the amount of spammy instant messages I was sending to my friends was veering dangerously into the beerblog infested waters of an ocean of news-ish sites, trigger-happy with the ctrl+c ctrl+v , press releases at the ready, daily updates on current events, etc. etc. - stuff you can literally read on a million or so websites at this point - and that's only if you're too lazy to subscribe to the email announcement lists that generate all the content in the first place. It's time to pull this ship starboard and head for less crowded waters, methinks...

But first, a diversion of sorts:

Before anything else, I want to say a quick something about this guy, a man who I've sort of pseudo-idolized, teased, and made the subject of a faux brewer-man-crush over the past couple of years: Dude's for real. Not only would the brewer who's almost single-handedly responsible for the current level of respect this country's culinary critics have levied on craft brewing pose with a crazed, multi-grinned weirdo like myself for a photo (Des nudged me, "Tell him you have a beer blog so he doesn't think you're a complete lunatic," likely noticing I was reeking of eau de crazy stalker guy) - amidst his biggest debutante ball on the West Coast nonetheless - but never even flinched when I kept returning to tap him on the shoulder to ask the *stupidest* questions ("What the hell is in this?") throughout the evening like a preschooler needing to go to the bathroom, each time graciously replying with a smile and complete attention, regardless. So thanks, Sam, for being such a gracious host, even on the tail end of a whirlwind of a week. (David even had him running around the bar serving the cheeses, for chrissakes.)

While I'm at it, releasing myself from the dirty job of responsible beer blogging, I'll let Alex over at Drink A Week handle the mouth-watering poetic details, and simply list the initial reactions to last night's draft list by memory (mostly thanks to Des and her golden sniffer):

2006 Chateau Jiahu - A truly exciting historical recreation that makes you reflect on just how narrow our currently defined expectations of beer really are. Fruity, grape-y, with hints of sweet sake and wheat, it was again surprisingly balanced and easily drinkable, a trait that seems to be high on the list of Sam's philosophical priorities. These are "extreme" beers in a sense that doesn't allude to them being punishing to the senses, but in that they stretch all the boundaries of the brewing lexicon. Truly eye-opening.

2007 Olde School Barleywine - Again, they've pulled off a real high-wire act and a feat in balance - a balance that doesn't just line up equal amounts of malt and hops side-by-side, but a balance that's fully three-dimensional in the marriage of the sweetness and bitterness. I would've guessed this to be a well-aged example purely based off it's mellowness, but alas. Built on elements of bourbon and cognac, cherries, white sugar, and with a slightly boozy aroma, Alex and I compared it to a nice old fashioned.

2007 Immort Ale -This one was a challenge, a complex barleywine-style ale skeleton clothed in the most elusive taste components and with a uniquely resinous mouthfeel. Des pegged it right off the bat: moldy cheese. Gorgonzola. It was as if they put together one of my favorite pairings together in a glass.

Midas Touch Golden Elixir - Just barely effervescent, the archetype of the historical recreation brewing movement was very sweet and fruity, with a beguiling aroma with hints of both jasmine and marzipan. Not nearly as funky as I was expecting (not funky at all, actually), but very wine-y and pleasant.

90 Minute IPA - The fabled "continuously hopped" India pale ale, one for which I'd prepared my palate by warning it ahead of time about its IBU level hovering near the human threshold for bitterness. The real shock to the palate, though, was how stunningly balanced it actually was, with a malt backbone that perfectly meshed with the hops so that the end result was nothing shy of ambrosial, the floral quality of the hops blending with the sweetness of the grain to create the effect of warm, fragrant honeysuckle.

Palo Santo Marron - Their newest release was the least uniquely individual and stand-out of the bunch, surprisingly, this dark brown ale aged on palo santo wood was more one-dimensional than the others - big roasted barley taste, smooth and surprisingly light in character and body. In any other line-up, it would surely shine, I'm sure, but its older siblings here raised the stakes just a *little* too high.

Put those beers together with some nice cheeses, a hugely enthusiastic crowd, and - of course - sausages, and you've pretty much put Rob in heaven. There are details of the event that I imagine will be left out by all the other writers in their haste to pound out the definitive wrap-up piece, but rather than sniff out those crumbs, I'll just end transmission here.

Back on Earth, the nagging beer-blogging question remains. Whither Pfiff!? If you want the local inside scoop with great photo galleries, you've got Brookston's bulletin, if you want stomach-growl-inducing event write-ups, head over to Jessica's Thirsty Hopster site, and if you want the best tap list and store shelf updates, subscribe to Bill's blog over at Inside Bay Area**.

But, perhaps, just maybe, if you're looking for vignettes like this -

"God, we're only halfway down the street and I can already smell the Toronado vomit smell."

"I know! Isn't it great!"

- you might consider adding Pfiff! to your newsfeed. I share because I care. I expect the tone of the site will probably be changing over the next few weeks while searching out that niche to which this little Pfiff! of mine is best suited to attend. Thanks to all the great beer writers out there who continue to raise the bar and make all this readin', writin' and imbibin' so very much fun to do.

* A sweaty wall of bodies three-deep who could also all speak intelligently on the topic of craft beer, which is something out of a mind-bending alternate universe I never thought could exist.

**There are plentiful others (see that blogroll on the right?) that I'm probably going to regret not name-checking in this post.

Gold, platinum and Iron Springs

Here's starting the post-Craft Brewers Conference week with two news niblets regarding our hometown public house, one yippie-yay goodgood happyhappy, and one not so much:

The Gold: A product of Fairfax's lone brewpub (not to mention our only "place to just hang out"*), Iron Springs' Sless' Stimulating Stout took home a gold medal in the Oatmeal Stout category at this past week's World Beer Cup. Named for local hotshot steel player Barry Sless, it's deserved of its win, as a truly well-crafted iteration of the style. To see the 94930 representin' down in San Diego this year for what could very well have been the first time ever is quite the treat, too. Described as a "symphony of grains creating a deep rich stout infused with a tincture of passionate herbs" from a town that's quite well associated with being "passionate" about "herb", it's certainly a beer that reflects the character and philosophy of its brewer, the inimitable Mike Altman. I'm sure he's having quite the happy 4/20 in celebration.

The Platinum: What better precious metal to represent the incredibly dear cost of doing business in our lovely town, in a story that's still dragging out in arbitration, than the king of credit cards? As mentioned in previous posts, Iron Springs is embroiled in a little bit of a rent tussle with their landlords, a tussle that could see us ramping up the homebrew production to cover our beer consumption quotas as early as this August. The story linked above in our local fireplace-friendly Ross Valley Reporter (which I embarrassingly read cover-to-cover on a weekly basis) is typical local journalism in that it mainly quotes a third party in no way involved with the story at hand, in this case a gentleman most recently noted for ramming some kids in his truck. I do love this town...

* Yup, that's an actual quote, from our very own mayor, nonetheless.

[photo courtesy Raw Energy Biofuel Systems, creators of the Iron Springs Ambrewlance]

Bear flag domination at World Beer Cup

Okay, the hyperbole is fun and all, but here's the winner's list, for kicks:

AleSmith Brewing Co., Vintage AleSmith Old Numbskull, Aged Beer (Ale or Lager), Gold
AleSmith Brewing Co., AleSmith Decadence, Old Ale, Gold
Alpine Beer Co., Ichabod, Experimental Beer (Lager or Ale), Gold
Alpine Beer Co., McIlhenney's Irish Red, Irish-Style Red Ale, Silver
Anderson Valley Brewing Co., Brother David's Double, Belgian-Style Dark Strong Ale, Bronze
Black Diamond Brewing Co., Belgian Blonde, Belgian-Style Pale Ale, Silver
Elk Grove Brewery and Restaurant, Bock Lager, Traditional German-Style Bock, Gold
Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Firestone Extra Pale Ale, Other Low Strength Ale or Lager, Gold
Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Nectar IPA, American-Style Strong Pale Ale, Silver
Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Union Jack IPA, American-Style India Pale Ale, Silver
Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Velvet Merkin, Oatmeal Stout, Bronze
Green Flash Brewing Co., Hop Head Red, American-Style Amber/Red Ale, Gold
Iron Springs Pub & Brewery, Sless' Stimulating Stout, Oatmeal Stout, Gold
Marin Brewing Co., San Quentin's Breakout Stout, Foreign (Export)-Style Stout, Silver
Marin Brewing Co., Tiburon Blonde, Belgian- and French-Style Ale, Bronze
Marin Brewing Co., Star Brew, American-Style Wheat Wine Ale, Bronze
Newport Beach Brewing Co., Elmer's Reserve, Wood- and Barrel-aged Strong Beer, Silver
Oggi's Pizza & Brewing Co. - San Clemente, McGarveys Scottish Ale, Scottish-Style Ale, Gold
Pizza Port - Carlsbad, Poor Man's IPA, Imperial or Double India Pale Ale, Silver
Pizza Port - Carlsbad, Sticky Stout, American-Style Stout, Bronze
Pizza Port - Carlsbad, Night Rider Imperial Stout, American-Style Imperial Stout, Bronze
Port Brewing Co. and The Lost Abbey, Cuvee de Tomme, Wood- and Barrel-aged Sour Beer, Gold
Port Brewing Co. and The Lost Abbey, Red Poppy, Belgian-Style Flanders/Oud Bruin or Oud Red Ale, Silver
Port Brewing Co. and The Lost Abbey, Brouwer's Imagination Series Saison, Other International Ale, Bronze
Port Brewing Co. and The Lost Abbey, Veritas 002, Experimental Beer (Lager or Ale), Bronze
Rubicon Brewing Co., Winter Wheatwine, American-Style Wheat Wine Ale, Gold
Russian River Brewing Co., Salvation, Belgian-Style Dark Strong Ale, Gold
Russian River Brewing Co., Temptation, Wood- and Barrel-aged Sour Beer, Silver
Sacramento Brewing Co., Red Horse Ale, American-Style Amber/Red Ale, Bronze
San Diego Brewing Co., Hopnotic IPA, Imperial or Double India Pale Ale, Gold
Schooner's Grille & Brewery, Old Diablo, Barley Wine-Style Ale, Gold
Schooner's Grille & Brewery, Irish Stout, Classic Irish-Style Dry Stout, Bronze
Stone Brewing Co., Stone Pale Ale, Extra Special Bitter or Strong Bitter, Bronze
Third Street AleWorks, Blarney Sisters Dry Irish Stout, Classic Irish-Style Dry Stout, Gold
Trumer Brauerei Berkeley, Trumer Pils, German-Style Pilsener, Gold

Links and commentary to come, after I've had a cup of coffee...

Congratulations, Vinnie!

In a bit of Bay Area craft brewing news, local boy Vinnie Cilurzo was awarded the “Russell Schehrer Award For Innovation In Craft Brewing” at the World Beer Cup in San Diego today. All the more reason to celebrate tonight with a bottle of Temptation (if you haven't drank your allotted single bottle already, that is). All hail the supremacy of the Bay Area craft brewing movement!

PS - And what? A Toronado in San Diego? Hwa?

Bilocation Monday

Not to give too much of a Catholic slant to today's posts, but there's no way I'm going the cheesy pop music reference on this one. This coming weekend is the annual fabled Cathedral Hill beer dinner, which means that the City will be crawling with some of our country's finest brewers over the next few days as they bask in the glow of getting the gourmet food pairing treatment they richly deserve, one that's characteristically reserved for vintners. The upshot for folks like me who neglected to get tickets to the quickly sold-out dinner is that we'll be treated to some other events while they recuperate around the Bay Area on Monday. Of course, that also means you have to somehow be in two places at once, if you want to hit the two best parties.

In this corner! Rob Tod, brewer for the consistently outstanding Allagash brewery in Portland, Maine, is hosting a (sold out?) tasting at the Trappist in Oakland, featuring the following libations:

Barrel-Aged - Musette
Barrel-Aged - Odyssey

Série d'Origine - Interlude

...in addition to:

- Allagash White
- Allagash Curieux (served with eggplant and goat cheese focaccia & turkey and gouda cream biscuit)
- Black (served with Fleur Verte herbed goat cheese plate & almond fig cake)
- Allagash ?? Tripel aged in oak with the Rosalaere culture (unnamed unreleased beer)
(served with a Roth Kase Braukase Trappist Style cheese plate)
- Allagash Four (served with a flourless chocolate tort)

And in the other corner! Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head Brewing's founder, will be loading the jukebox at Toronado with NWOBHM before pulling out some Olde Beer & Moldy Cheese at 6:00 p.m. to celebrate DFH finally making its way into Bay Area taprooms. It's not sold out, but just because they're not selling tickets, making for a mosh pit of a tasting, for sure. Featuring nothing less than:

- 2007 Olde School Barleywine with Fiscalini Bandaged Cheddar
- 2007 Immort Ale with Isle of Mull Cheddar
- 2006 Chateau Jiahu with Berkswell

And while it's not quite the litany of beverages you'd get to sample with Mr. Tod, the fact that you couldn't even get your hands on these wickedly rare beers in San Francisco unless you agreed to sell your soul (and a bottle of Temptation) on a beer trading site is why we're going to be suggesting Motörhead and the boar sausage instead of hitting the Maze on April 21st. A recap, complete with photos of me licking Sam Calagione's beautiful face, are certain to follow.

A -tion by any other name

Likely to be followed by Conjunction Junction, What's Your Function Belgian Ale, today's spotlight is on a beer that was damned impossible to be as tasty in the glass as it is in theory. Not that it isn't very good - it is. Marred only by a slight metallic aftertaste (that could very well have been storage fault), it's a dubbel-esque amber ale with rich, deep complexity, light-bodied and effervescent yet with a raisin sweetness and a big fruity punch from the yeasts that only grew in intensity as it opened up in the glass. Fellow Aleuminati member Meat described it as the beer "responsible for turning me on to micro-brewed beers and getting me to travel down the road of different beer tasting." But the story behind this brew, alas, is even tastier. Let's test the old eyesight on some superfine side label print:

Salvation. The name of two intricate Belgian-style ales, created by us, Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing and Adam Avery of Avery Brewing. After becoming friends a few years ago, we realized we both had a Salvation in our lineups. Was it going to be a problem? Should one of us relinquish the name rights? "Hell, no!" we said. In fact, it was quickly decided that we should blend the brews to catch the best qualities of each and create an even more complex and rich libation. In April 2004, in a top secret meeting at Russian River Brewing (well, actually it was packed in the pub and many were looking over our shoulders wondering what the hell was going on), we came up with the perfect blend of the two Salvations. Natalie, Vinnie's much more significant other, exclaimed, "We should call this Collaboration, not Litigation Ale!" "Perfect," we shouted!* We celebrated deep into the night (or is that morning?). Fast forward to November 14, 2006. After talking about it for over two years, we finally decided to pull the trigger and Vinnie made the journey to Avery Brewing to brew his Salvation exactly as he does in his brewery. This was blended with Avery's Salvation on December 11, 2006 creating Batch #1 - here is Batch #2. We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed brewing and blending it. All profits from this joint venture will fund a return educational trip to Belgium with our bros Tomme (Port Brewing), Sam (Dogfish Head Brewing) and Rob (Allagash Brewing). This pilgrimage will enable us to learn even more about traditional brewing techniques to combine with our already strange and unique styles here in America. Gezondheit!

No, really, that's all on the side label. On one hand, this whole endeavor seems ripe for this discussion on craft beer marketing's effect on its perceived cultural status, but the lingering results are much more positive, reinforcing some of the greatest (and most marketable) tenets of craft brewing: It's made by hand, by real, visionary individuals, within a convivial atmosphere, that has a laudable, respectable history and artistry, and is a shared product of passion and love. And for that reason alone, it's the best use of fine print on a beer label since Lagunitas' Undercover Investigation Shut-Down Ale.

* This is my favorite misuse of an exclamation point, ever.

Boontling for bloochin' harpers

The next notable brewfest of Northern California, the Boonville Beer Festival, is nearly upon us, which is good enough reason to comment briefly (and shaggishly) on the near-extinct dialect of the region, the somewhat disputed* language of Boontling. If you're a come-on boy looking to barney an apple-head while tasting aplenty bahl steinber horn come this May, it would pay to bone up on your Boont yebbelow lest you want to look like a real tally-whacker.

The Anderson Valley, a bucolic, pastoral appellation that runs east to west through southern Mendocino county near the coast, was historically isolated enough that it harbored its own unique character, as well as a contact language that's been described as a pidgin-English reputedly borrowing from Scottish Gaelic and Irish, and some Pomoan and Spanish. The irony won't be lost on devotees of Hop Ottin' IPA that some believe this language developed likely while locals did business with the Native Americans and other European settlers while establishing their hops farming industry. The other (and probably more plausible) origin story of Boontling ascertains that it was a sort of pig Latin for the kids of the area, a highly stylized slang used to speak in code around adults (ignited by a dude named Squirrel, nonetheless). This would explain both the short lifespan of the language as well as its popularity amongst the contemporary anti-establishment counterculture that pervades this part of the world.

Sadly, the most thorough chronicler of the language may have taken the unpublished secrets of Boontling with her to the grave, as Myrtle Rawles passed away in 1988, and her husband, Austin, a noted source for her book on the subject, died in 1969, just three years after Boontling: The Strange Boonville Language ($42, anyone?) was published. Thankfully, copies of her writings still exist, and the Anderson Valley Museum and Anderson Valley Brewing (not to mention Mendocino Middle School!) are doing their part to ensure that we pickem ups can sharpen our noch harpin'.

Here's wishing you all a slow lope'n a beeson tree Friday!

* The whole "beer" thing is a total prank, though.

In honor of our beloved brewdogs

In the same way that the lambic brewers of Pajottenland consider the spiders that take care of housekeeping duties in their brewhouses throughout the summer as totemic good luck critters, it could be that in the breweries and wineries of the Pacific coast, it's dogs that deserve that role.

And it's a darn shame that floods and fires (not to mention systemic yuppification) have kept Rogue away from its origins in Ashland, since there's pretty much no way (sorry, Sierra) that I'm driving all the way to Newport to enjoy this brewfest in memorial honor of John Maier's singularly awesome brewdog, Brewer. Check it out:



I didn't even check on the site, but have to imagine that alongside the 50-odd craft beers they'll have on tap (and dog dancing?!) they'll be pouring some of this for our loyal companions.

Dog days for Dogfish?

Amongst the rumors that came out in yesterday's romp was one that should get fellow NorCal craft beer enthusiasts rather excited: Seems like Vinnie from Russian River is planning on singlehandedly taking on distribution of some breweries that we've long been missing out on, with bottles showing up at select fine beer retail establishments this summer. That means we're finally going to get our grubby little hands on the Dogfish Head, Alesmith, and Pizza Port (meaning Lost Abbey) wares that we've long deserved. When I saw him later at Toronado, I could've kissed him (but I had onion breath).

And, in other DFH-related rumorness, word is that Dave just smuggled a case or two of the much-hyped special release Palo Santo Marron into Healthy Spirits, if you're freaky like that. Strong brown ale aged on Paraguayan wood? In the words of Jack Van Impe - it's a great time to be alive, Rexalla!

Every month is Belgian beer month

But April, especially so... One gets overly, some might say unduly excited at the prospects that Toronado's yearly month of Belgian love could deliver. So it was with great terror that we came across this sign posted to the door yesterday when we arrived to get our fix:

There was a point when I thought that that picture was going to be all I'd be posting this morning. But no! Actually, our timing actually worked out to be somewhat of an advantage, considering when we finally slipped in, we essentially walked in on the tail end of a total (and somewhat secret) lovefest: the annual Toronado Belgian beer and food pairing dinner, whipped up by local beer chef Sean Paxton Bruce Paton (of the infamous Cathedral Hill beer dinners) [thanks, Alan]. Brookston, Vinnie, David - all the local beer cognoscenti were there and particularly chummy having just finished a 12 11 course [thanks again], 15 (!) beer tasting day that had started at 11:30 am. And the beers! Oh the beers. Started with one of my all-time favorites, a draught pour of the Cuvee van der Keizer from Gouden Carolus, a complete stunner of a strong dark Belgian special ale, and it just got better from there.

From front to back - Val Dieu Grand Cru, Brasserie Dupont Avec les Bon Voeux, and a spur of Bosteels Kwak. (And yes, that's the cleanest, brightest Toronado you're ever going to see.) Thanks to the kindness of a slightly inebriated stranger, we also got to sample one of Russian River's mostest specialest barrel-aged beers, the Toronado Twentieth Anniversary Ale, as poured from a 3L (!) cork-finished bottle, a truly exceptional, high-octane Flanders red. The cruelest month? Eliot obviously never paired a saison with boar sausage...

The Session #14 - Griz revisited

Back in late 2006, the online version of the local fish wrap knocked out a quick character study on one Mr. Greg William Miller Stein, in what was intended to be a series of vignettes that exuded a certain provincial vibe, framing a deliberate tableaux comprised of the iconoclast pirates of the Barbary Coast. And sensibly so, as he's a bit of an easy target as a 300-plus pound, 6' 2", mid-60s, dyed-in-the-wool alpha hippie, complete with standard issue Uncle Jesse beard and overalls, not to mention the lone proprietor of a home beer/wine/cider/sake supply shop in the great city and county of San Francisco. Not to mention, he has the habit of churning out gems like this one:

I answered the phone the other day -- and I really was ecstatic about this -- I answered the phone and I couldn't think of what my name was. If I could have totally forgotten about it for a longer than I did, I would have said I'd have made it. I was that close. But it came to me.

And while his wife - always in the store, ready to lend a hand - goes by Barbara, most people know Mr. Stein by his adopted moniker: Griz. And as I'm no better a man than the good local leisure journalists of this fair burg of mine, I'm taking aim on that same easy target today in reply to Stonch's klaxon call to The Session.

Growing up, I always had fond, strange memories about the beer my father made with one of his good friends, a beer that I oddly recall tasting and smelling like a perfect German pilsner, a memory that was surely reformatted, corrupted, and rewritten once again as my senses of taste and smell hooked into that fine convergence of poorly modified continental malts and Hallertauer hops as a young boy visiting his family biyearly in Darmstadt. In my early twenties, I came across a book on my parents' shelf that had to have been their instruction manual, Byron Burch's Quality Brewing, within which, as a bookmark, was the business card for a homebrew supply store on Taraval, way out in the outer Sunset. I visited that store once before heading up to school in Eugene, where I had a fairly unremarkable time assembling my pioneer brewing rig and gathering the makings of what would turn out to be a rather raunchy pale ale, and moved on. There was more homebrewing back up in Oregon, fueled by a growing thirst in turn inspired by the climactic years of a music degree and nightlong, nearly gymnastic sessions of Mortal Kombat. By the time I'd returned to the city I've always been happiest to call home, that store on Taraval had since disappeared. So, I went packing across the park to Brewcraft, recipe sketches in hand, met Griz, and had my entire conceit of brewing turned on its head.

Much has been said about Griz, his philosophizing, typically awesome store soundtrack, sometimes challenging customer service skills, crazy handwriting, and near-boundless enthusiasm for a good chat about anything and everything. People love to comment on the somewhat feral nature of the shop, crammed to the gills with ingredients and gear, dark corners hiding surplus mysteries (and often a small dog), and the incredibly enthusiastic and friendly people he finds to help man the storefront. Lacking from all the Griz-centric discourse, sadly, is his personal approach to homebrewing, and what wisdom he imparts on his budding, impressionable Bay Area zymurgists as they enter his lair in search of knowledge.

In fact, most of the advice he dispenses to the casual beginner is slightly unnerving in its vagueness, its decidedly ambiguous and unscientific nature, a style attributable perhaps to 40-plus years of brewing combined with a Zen-like philosophy of "letting go" formed by the aleatoric beauty of nature found in the I Ching, the post-LSD trippiness of quantum mechanics, and the slacker/drifter mantra of "whatever." When pressed for the exact, precise details of a chemical process, he almost flinches as the duty-bound part of his psyche forces the buried knowledge out into the open like forcing water through stone. You'll get your spot-on answer about Iso-Alpha-Acids and the relation to Isocohumulone to apparent bitterness and hop utilization at varying pH levels, but he'd much rather tell you to just stop worrying, add an ounce of Hallertauer at the end of the boil before moving on to his thoughts on current issues facing the Ute Indians and theories on Inner Richmond architectural styles (the short answer: caffeine). And this was eminently difficult for someone like me, a young wannabe perfectionist who was ready to tap into the databanks of a the local superhomebrewer and who wanted to get everything *just* right.

"Don't ever set out to emulate a beer, because you just can't do it no matter how hard you try." Might as well go out and buy that beer you revere so much while working on making one of your own that you like even better, he might say. Sure, he'd look at the recipe idea you brought into the store and subtly recommend little tweaks here and there. And sure, after he lectures you on the amount of money, number of scientists, loads of high-tech gear and whatnot supporting the major professional brewers in the world in their pursuit of consistency and flawlessness, he'll reply to your request of an Anchor Porter-style recipe with some runic scribbles on a blank sheet and a set of barked orders to whomever's manning the grain bins. But if you really want to see him light up, approach the topic of wild fermentation, when the brewer admits the limitations of his control, and nature takes over, like it does in the naturally fermented apple ciders of Griz's youth. And this, an aesthetic of brewing that takes into account the wilderness factor, the magical, unreliable and oftentimes pleasantly surprising roll of the dice involved in asking a pot of grains to convert their starches into a sugar that some helpful microorganisms can further refine into a psychoactive drug (not in replacement of the hard sciences involved, but of higher priority in the ethos of brewing), is the world into which Griz took my little hobby, and from there it'll never leave.

The regrettable coda to this little essay is that I haven't had the chance to see master Griz in over a year now, thanks mostly to the ever-increasing challenges on my time presented by work and parenthood, but also a casualty of having moved pretty far from his shop. Place that alongside my eagerness to make my own mistakes now (in no small part due to Griz's own guidance) , and an online shopping habit inspired mainly by laziness, and the main incentives for my hanging around his shop haven't been strong enough to change my current habits. But as a guru, Griz is always calling me back, to introduce my daughter, shoot the breeze (about Jungian analysis or Napoleon's horse, likely), and remind me that while reflecting on the complexities of life, it pays to "relax, don't worry, and have a homebrew."

Tasting notes - Troubadour Obscura

But first... I'd like to respectfully ask for the attention of the Brewers' Association, all you certified beer judges, the GABF, World Beer Cup, and other friends of finely crafted beerstuffs: I think it's high time we officially recognize Belgian Stout as a uniquely classifiable style. The division to which it currently calls home (#16E Belgian Specialty Ale) has most certainly outlasted its welcome as a vague, catchall net thrown around the staggering variety of "special" ales which happen to be born of the most prodigious brewing nation on Earth. So, for starters, I'd like to propose we begin with cutting these fine and unique stouts from the herd. If there's room enough to include a pigeonhole for Baltic Porter, after all...

Anyway, onward.

Finally. After weeks of devastatingly glorious, distracting weather - weather that impeded my ability to come indoors for anything, be it the Toronado barleywine fest, Beerapalooza or what have you - nature seems to have finally returned to its prescribed course. The mist, fog, wind and cold that belongs on this stretch of the calender has returned along with the promise even colder, wetter days ahead. That gives us just enough of a window to finally clear the fridge of this year's hibernally-appropriate beers, before we make way for the saisons, märzens, gueuzes, and witbiers: and that, my friends, means stouts.

Not just any stouts, though. Belgian stouts.

Cut to the chase: Troubadour Obscura is the relatively scarcer sibling to the Troubadour Blonde that's garnered considerable shelf space in Belgian-friendly outlets, perhaps owing its own uncommonness to a confluence of retail myths: If it's has to be weird and expensive and pitch itself solely off the charm of its label, it needs to at least look nice, light, and drinkable. Honestly, I'm more surprised that our titular singer looks identical on both bottles. An 8.5% pitch black stout would seem more the territory of a Tom Waits or Lordi-styled crooner.

Surprisingly, though, it's an easy sipper. Whereas the imperial stout style has come to be defined by bigger, roastier, more bitter (and naturally, more alcoholic), Obscura follows the cream stout route to its logical continental conclusion. Slightly sweet, toasty (but not acrid), warming, and thick, it also carries a richly complex aroma from the yeast and fermentation that distinguishes itself immediately from its traditional brethren. In other words, this is not the drink you'd match with your finest aran and basket of grilled oysters, but one that you'd pair with dark chocolate, candied ginger, or an dessert plate of fruit and cheese.

Frankly, there's no truth in its status as a fringe category, as there are plenty of commercially available options out there, and the one that got us interested was this one: Van Den Bossche Buffalo Belgian Stout. Whereas I think it was the Wyoming in Des that urged her to pull this one off the shelf to try it (yes, that's a bucking bronco on the label, the most obvious icon for a strong, black, Belgian ale), it paved the way for what she describes now as her favorite style. It shares elements of some of her other favorite beers - Old Rasputin and Barney Flats in particular - in that its typical flavor profile is smooth, round, and balanced, with no jagged edges in terms of bitterness, apparent alcohol, overt sweetness, or hop aroma, but at the same time carries along with it that distinctly Belgian spiciness along with a neatly nuanced dark fruit and clove character and pumped extremely high with carbonation from bottle conditioning. The De Dolle example, a local favorite, is perhaps the most "Belgian" of the bunch, with a sharper, slightly more wild profile, but with enough roastiness, chocolate, and coffee to keep it from veering into black saison territory.

Belgian ales have almost certainly hung their success in the world craft beer market based off two things: the mystique of Trappist and other monastic breweries and their distinct styles, and the strong golden ale as modeled after Duvel. And it's debatable that their successes have something in common with the stratospheric rise of the pilsener: clarity. The strong golden and tripel have subtle differences, and are worlds apart from pilsener, but all can share a brilliant clarity of color that's been an appealing aspect for beer drinkers ever since clear glasses for drinking were invented. Based off that, it's not shocking that Belgian brewers wishing to follow the successes of Westmalle and Duvel would hesitate to delve into the world of dark, obscure brewing. But maybe based off the American craft beer world's insatiable thirst for strong, well-crafted stouts, more Belgians will follow suit and bring this style into the mainstream.

The seven-hour Belgian beer tasting challenge

An idea like this would probably create some logistical difficulties for even the most Cannonball Run-inspired American craft beer aficionado, but Belgium, on the other hand, is a much smaller country, leading to the sincere possibility that with a good car and a better (designated) driver, you could pull off hitting the 30 breweries that are including themselves in this year's first annual "Open Brouwerijendag." I'd be curious if any American craft beer meccas (Portland?) would be open to such an event to show off some local pride on this side of the Atlantic. At least if they pulled something like this off in San Francisco, part of the fun would be the gamble of trusting public transit to help you make it through the day...

In defense of the radler and adulterated beers

On days like today, when the weather permits, my body agrees, and I know I'll pretty much have the place to myself to stink up the joint once I arrive here, I love to ride my bike to work. It's certainly something I was never extraordinarily enthusiastic about as a kid, but like the never-abating amplification of my fondness for beer and sausages, it must be a result of German aging genetics along the same lines as my receding hairline that I now get so much enjoyment out of it.

Of course, as an occasional radler myself, I also tend to enjoy the occasional radler as well, as the close connection between biking and beer is a storied one. But, as a beersnob of the highest order, I'm also acutely aware of a certain level of disgust that pervades the aficionado circles when anything other than beer is poured into a beer glass.

Some of this I can understand, certainly. There are times when I find myself staring at an unwanted slice of lemon floating in a hefeweizen, or joking about how even the addition of lime only barely makes Corona palatable, or dealing with the shame of sitting in front of a pink Berliner Weisse. Mostly, though, I think the "if the brewers had wanted X in there, they would have added X to it themselves" argument is missing out on the final link in the chain that begins as barley and ends up in my belly: Once that bottle is in my hand, it's in my hand to do what I want with it. The brewer, once that bottle is filled and capped and on the truck, must let it go forth into the world to live its own life. And if that life consists of being cut 50% with lemonade, so be it.

Folks who dabble in cocktails could teach beer drinkers how to be more comfortable with the idea of adulterating their drinks for alternative experiences, for one. There's a very protective air that surrounds the craft brewing scene that perhaps lingers from the days when we all thought that craft and microbrewed beer was in threat of having a temporary existence, one that could be snuffed out at a moments' notice by ImBev or A-B or some other giant corporate entity eager to force feed us sheeple more of the same pale, watery lager. This sacred attitude about our burgeoning craft beer scene's products may be the root of the disgust I gather from other beer geeks, and wonder if with time, the attitudes will relax once we all agree that copious amounts of amazingly crafted beer are all around us, and not going away any time soon - so let's have a little fun, while we're at it.

And while there is loads of anecdotal evidence about the history of adding flavorings to beer after it's "done", from table-side spice tinctures in Belgian bars, to wassail and mulled beers, to cocktails like the Picon bière, there's at least one completely practical reason to do it: sugar. The balance of fermentable and unfermentable sugars in a beer is what allows for the sensation of "sweetness" or maltiness, and fruit sugars are very easily fermentable. Why, then, are all those creepy fruity lambics that you see at the supermarket so very, very sweet, you ask? Well, because if they haven't pasteurized the beer, they're adding a sweetener like saccharine, which is not fermentable, to the beer. Yummy, no? Hard apple ciders around these parts are traditionally semi-sweet, so either they halt the fermentation process when the sugar readings are right, or they pasteurize the finished cider and blend it with unfermented apple juice. All this is well and good, but we craft beer nerds like our beer like we like our women: alive. So, if you wanted to add some sweetness to your fine, bottle conditioned beer (for whatever reason, no judgment here), you'd best be doing it right before you drink it, lest you want some wild and crazy super-dry and explosive beer/wine frankenbooze on your hands.

Lots of pontificating just to get a splash of lemonade in my pilsner, I know, but it's on the sidelines of the larger "ethical treatment of beer" (I myself a card-carrying member of PETOB) debate regarding additives, flavorings, and post-bottling adulterations we silly experimenters seem to fancy. Try it yourself and see if you can admit there's some joy to be had in doing things your own way. One thing's for sure: It's unquestionably easier to tackle the last stretch of your ride when you're doing it on radler power...

Like my living room, but with a stock ticker

Which, if I were you, I'd be leaving turned off for the time being, especially if you're trying to relax with friends over a drink. This story from yesterday's AP newswire offers an interesting glimpse into what some people think is missing from the bar scene: pour-it-yourself beer taps, at your table. While the creators obviously left no legal stone unturned before unveiling this depressing convenience in Georgia, they're certainly missing out on some other aspects - the social one being the biggest head-scratcher for me, as I imagine it is for anyone who goes to bars hoping to a) talk to people other than those at my "private reserved table", b) chat with a bartender about what's on tap, what's new around the joint, and other general breeze-shooting, and c) crazily, pay someone else to pour me a drink for a change.

Here's the video for even more insight. Why not just stay at home, folks? Granted, if those taps were hooked up to something like Delirium Tremens instead of Miller Lite, this post might have had a different tone...

WTF - Jolly Pumpkin's La Roja

A cat, in some sort of a swashbuckler or pirate costume, poses with a cunning, mischievous grin on his face while on board what one could only assume to be the schooner under his command, quite possibly christened La Roja. "Mahalo!" reads the label, Hawaiianly thanking me for giving this unique Jolly Pumpkin concoction a whirl. And oh, what a whirl. An amber, oak-aged (read: sour, not "oaky") bizarro-beer, this Belgian-inspired bit of madness comes from the obvious brewing mecca of Dexter, Michigan. And what's in a name, anyway? It's a joyous conundrum of weirdness that just begs the question of whether the contents of the bottle could possibly be as fun as the packaging and backstory.

Like the good people at Russian River, the Jolly Pumpkin folks post a bottle log containing release notes for each of their beers, giving consumers a hint at what to expect in terms of flavor, aging possibilities, and more, and as far as this batch is concerned: "Sherried barnyard funk" is right. This is a strange and wicked bit of brewing wizardry, this red cat is. Sour and fruity like a Flanders red, but way more dry, vinous and earthy than that, with a blending that's far more representative of the older barrels than the new, as in Rodenbach or Duchesse de Bourgogne, where the sweetness of the younger blends can make you believe there are cherries and currants floating in your glass. No, this is serious stuff, and brilliantly so. It's exactly what a barrel aged beer should taste like: worth cellaring, challenging to the palate, deeply rewarding once confronted, structured to match perfectly with fine cuisine, and richly nuanced enough to warrant 750 mL of tasting enjoyment. So to you, Captain Spooky Ron J (General Mischief Maker, chief squeegee operator), I say this: as weird as the voyage ahead appears, there will be no mutiny on La Roja. Lead the way.

For those of you who really like Heineken

At first, I thought I was just witnessing the next stage in the "beer as gourmet" evolution that's been exhibiting itself through the retail catalogs lately, one you could follow from the monogrammed pilsner glasses to the stainless steel kegerators to this: A countertop draft beer system, offered by the discriminating home kitchen retailers Williams & Sonoma, complete with level indicator, temperature gauge, and full-on LCD hoo-ha fanciness. An item which, for all intensive purposes, should have rocketed to the top of my overly-optimistic wish list and force me to consider which of our current kitchen appliances would have to make way for it (toaster?), this little contraption is sure to win over a certain cervisiascenti with its charming good looks and clean lines. But the catalog image (which isn't reprinted online) betrays its sinful limitations: A Heineken logo on the tap handle. Maybe, you're thinking, this thing is so cool that it comes with a whole pile of beer Pogs (remember Pogs?) that you could sort through and insert in the display on the handle whenever you change kegs? No. You do not change kegs. You do, however, pay $299 to essentially buy a nice fancy case for something you can buy at 7-11 for $20. So before you go and order this for your sweetie (Mother's Day, anyone?), be aware that a) it cannot be gift wrapped, and b) it's kind of a crock unless you really, really like Heineken.

Tasting notes - 1809

Of all the historical styles of beer that seemed doomed to sink into the wort of oblivion, obscured by the barm of time, lost in the trub of moderization, Berliner Weisse has most certainly outlived its expectations, to the point where its novelty and scarcity might soon be its saving grace. Whereas in the 17th century this style was easily the most fashionable and commonplace in the chic urban taverns of one of central Europe's most rapidly populated metropolises (both before and after the 30 Years War - during the war, scarce and valuable wheat was reserved for baking), its quenching, refreshing effects should have by all means been no match for the burgeoning effect of Bavaria's lager explosion and the following KO punch of the Czech pilsener. But, we humans like our underdogs and are prone to the weakness of local pride, reasons alone which probably account for the tenacity of this strangely-brewed, much-maligned, and typically adulterated relic of a brew.

Enter Dr. Fritz Briem, Manager of the Doemens College of Technology, Technology Consulting and Faculty Brewery Technology, and head of the Siebel-Doemens international brewing course, stage right. Apparently, that's what it takes to inject some life into Berlin's namesake beer: a PhD from Weihenstephan and a crack team of German scientists from the highest profile brewing academy on the planet. At least they did a good job of it.

I could go on about what exactly this style is all about, but if you look at the label in the image above, you'll see that the good doctor has all but forsaken art in lieu of a near novella on the subject. Before we go any further, check it out:

Already in the 1600s the Berliner Weisse Style Beer was mentioned in documents by the French Huguenots as they crossed Berlin on their way to Flanders. In 1809, the Emperor Napoleon and his troops celebrated their Prussian victory with it. This Berliner Weisse is brewed with traditional mash hoping [sic] and without wort boiling. This along with a traditional strain of lactic acid bacteria provide a fruity and dry but palateful character. A character that Napoleon and his troops characterized as "lively and elegant."

The is the first of the Historic Signature Series, aka "forgotten styles brewed according to their historic recipes by Dr. Fritz Briem of the Doemens Institute," that I've had the joy to sample, and it really is a joy, as the 1809 is a spot-on mimic of the only other major surviving example as made by Berliner-Kindl, and likely quite similar to the one favored back in the day by Albrecht von Wallenstein. It's got a puckeringly quick, sharp, almost citric sourness, a clean, grassy grain character, and only the slightest hint of hop bitterness in the finish. It actually has a great deal in common to the Belgian sour ales, like gueuze and faro, but without the "wild" cheesy, horsey aromas that can dominate those styles. It's that dominantly rustic quality, the haze from the suspended yeast and unfiltered wheat, and natural carbonation that betrays their family ties. It's lighter in effervescence, however, much lower in alcohol (2.8%!) and much more evocative of the German perfection-in-engineering vibe than the Belgian crazy farmer kitchen sink ethos. There's no spontaneous brettanomyces-driven fermentation here, my friends: No, the good doctor has taken care to bring along his own lactobacillus to this party.

One could almost think of this style as a missing link between the highly evolved Belgian lambic family of beers and the traditional southern Bavarian weizen beers. However it fits in the spectrum of Europe's fringe styles, though, this weirdly deviant (mash hopping? no boiling?) style deserves a bit more of the spotlight, and one could only imagine how it would benefit by some modern craft brewers' interpretations.

Quickly now, before the sun comes back out

Stop right there. Calmly step away from the cooler, and keep your hands where I can see them. Now without any sudden movements, put down the Bitburger Pilsner and Hoegaarden. It may seem like spring has already been underway for weeks, but that suggestion would leave you bereft of one of the last great pleasures of wintertime: an excellent, well-aged barleywine. Thankfully, there's still some rain and gloom in the forecast, so pull out a nice piece of stinky blue cheese, some fatty, salty salumi and check this out:

Billed as Des' top choice (of the ones we got to choose between) at the 2007 Toronado Barleywine Festival, the good people at North Coast Brewing are offering the 2005 Old Stock ale as a cellar release - and they'll even ship it to you if you're in California. It's a stunner of the style, and if you bought a four-pack of it when it hit the shelves two years ago, you're amongst the rare and dignified if you managed to preserve a bottle or two for vintage's sake, so now you can redeem your gluttony, refill your supply, kick back with Tennyson and guiltlessly open one up as a toast "'gainst the winter's balm" while waiting out the last of Demeter's wrath. And then spring can officially begin, lhude sing cuccu and all that jazz.

Holy dunkelweizen! The beer-signal!

San Francisco's beloved beer bottle and draught shop has taken a page out of the Batman bible by implementing an extremely high-tech emergency response alert system aimed at immediately informing the city's ale enthusiasts of impending malt procurements. From their recent email blast:

When we receive an extra special shipment of beer, will we activate the Beer-Signal. At that time a beer bottle insignia will appear near the store front.

That's right, folks. While cruising SOMA on your fixed-gear, keep on the lookout for the signal around 8th and Folsom lest there be a distinguished delivery in the vicinity.

Ladies, and gentleman, the Beer-Signal has been activated.

Of course, when that email came in, I quickly replied asking what peculiar parcel they'd parlayed, and was promptly told the surprise would be spoiled if that's how the beer-signal worked. So I begged...

While on his journey, if Odysseus made a pit stop at the City Beer he would be pleased with the offering from Allagash, the beautiful barrel aged Odyssey.

And there you go! For the record, City Beer has got their grubby little hands on one of Allagash's finest oak-aged contrivances. I promise not to wreck the surprise next time they illuminate the beer-signal...

Beer? In Fairfax? Ask the eight ball...

It's a question that could only be answered by the auspicious orb of our communal Ouija-baiting youth and the compositional imperative of Pamela Z. Anyone who's walked the henna-tinted and patchouli-scented lanes of our fair town of late would be sure to notice a certain something, a certain "ghost town" vibe creeping through the vacant storefronts, "For Rent" signs fading in the sun, the je ne ce qua of a depressed business climate in an area that for all intensive reasons ought to be booming. There's a commercial malaise infiltrating our little hamlet, one that doesn't seem to be affecting the belly-dancing costume jewelry shops or the salt crystal lamp Tibetan Buddhist hemp fabric so you can rest medicine outlets (or the 7-11, for that matter), but one that has called for the demise of many locally-owned outfits, including our only CD shop, a bookstore, and a movie rental outfit, which certainly leaves you wondering what weird wind is blowing to cause such a stagnation, and when it will relievedly change direction again.

And in the wicked path of the weird wind might be something a bit more dear: our very own public house. As reported by Brent in our local rag, it looks like there's a little land and lease tussle beneath the green, idyllic pasture of Fair-Anselm Plaza.

From an email by our trusty publican Mike Altman:

"This brewpub has been a long strange amazing trip so far, one we hope to continue for years on out. We want to be able to teach [our son] Joey how to make those fine sudsy elixirs of love & hand crafted sodas you have all come to love and cherish.

Much of this, though, is out of our hands. We have tried since last August to sign a long term deal, so that we may be here for generations to come. All we can do now is continue to bring all our guests that experience we strive so hard at achieving while waiting to see what happens with the building. We will know this month whether the building will change hands, and are hopeful that we will be about to work out a fair long term lease."

The good news at the moment is that it looks like the betters' odds are in favor of the Sacto developers purchasing the land - lock, stock and barrel - and focusing their energy on the wasted lots across the avenue, leaving Mike with a new landlord and a new lease on (his business') life. We shall see in two weeks' time, or thereabouts...

The other good news in local brewing and beer-drinking news (despite the lack of any advertising whatsoever, and the fact that the benefactor of the event - the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce - hasn't even updated their online calendar since 2007 to show that it's actually happening) is that the 13th annual Fairfax Brewfest is on for the Saturday after next, March 15, at the Fairfax Pavilion. It's a great event, with good music, excellent food, and even better beers, probably from the fifteen nearest and dearest breweries, my guess being: Iron Springs, Marin Brewing, Moylan's, Broken Drum, Magnolia, Lagunitas, Drake's, 21st Amendment, Rafters, Beach Chalet, Russian River, Steelhead, SF Brewing, Thirsty Bear, and Wunder Brewing (too tired to link, check here instead).

Keeping spirts healthy, monthly

Sorry for the 7x7-specific posting, but this is should certainly be of interest to any locals who have stumbled unwittingly into the labyrinth of Belgian malt advocacy that is Eureka Valley's Healthy Spirits store: It's now hosting a beer club to help guide us through some of their more obscure offerings - especially ones which are price-prohibitive [read: 'spensive] enough to give the typical buyer pause while browsing. Good man that he is, beer manager David Hauslein is putting together packages of two to three beers per month (at around $30 a pop) with extensive tasting notes and even food & cheese pairings (for those of you who eat, too).

Worried that the choices will be too pedestrian? Take the current releases, then:

Birrificio Le Baladin - Nora
herb/spice hybrid ale
abv: 6.8%
Brewed in an Egyptian style with ginger, myrrh, and orange peel.

Brasserie Caracole - Nostradamus
Belgian brown ale
abv: 9.5%
Gold medal winner, 2002 World Beer Championships

And like other similar type clubs (in the wine world, at least), if you like what you get, you can buy more at a pretty nice discount (a discount that actually extends to the cheeses, as well). I'm not one to typically shill for local resellers, but since this store's relying primarily on word of mouth and a rather quiet MySpace page, I figure it's the least I can do to repay them for providing me with my RDA of Troubadour Obscura.

Which came first, the chocolate or the beer?

It's a philosophical question I ask myself every evening [F] while resting my dog-tired feet by the fire [T], sitting in my rocking chair by the window [T] enjoying my routine dessert of a glass of Westvleteren 12 [F] and chili-infused certified free trade organic dark chocolate [T]: which invention truly preceded the other, chocolate or beer, and what would the answer say about the base priorities of the human psyche?*

Well, if this were some namby-pamby chocolate lover's blog riddled with Cathy references and blink tags and hot embedded MIDI Steisand action, I'd be referring you now to the latest scientific proof that indicates it was chocolate, not sweet heavenly beer, that was the original South American use for the bean of the cacao tree.

But this is Pfiff!, my friends, so I am proud to refer you to this bit on the recent archaeological findings on how it was beer that the ancient Hondurans were brewing up in those cute little pots since at least 1200 BC.

And if you'd like a hint of what that might have tasted like, who better to turn to that everybody's favorite historical brewing recreationist, Sam Calagione? Granted, I'm sure his Theobroma won't be nearly as vile as the spontaneously fermented chocomuck that they were most certainly whipping up to enjoy with a round of patolli or for sale in the stands at the tlatchtli game (there's a reason there's a tube on the side of the urn, so that you can tilt it and drink the liquid that's trapped underneath the thick skin of yeast and mung). In fact, it'll probably be delicious, as Sam's a freaking pro with or without his Levi's, and good brewers have long recognized the flavor (if not the actual ingredient) of chocolate [sorry, you have to search for it] as an integral component of beer's taste and aroma for ages.

Maybe some other time we'll do a little tasting round up of beers that include chocolate in them (and yes, they all do seem to show up around Valentine's Day, shockingly), as their numbers are rapidly increasing and involve such craft brewing champs as Ommegang, Sam Adams, Young's, and Bison - but we'll sadly have to pull a Maxim and review Dogfish Head's latest like they were the Black Crowes, until we can finally get some of that action around these parts.

A quick side note: Sam - Mr. Calagione - if you're reading this, heed my banshee wail: Northern California needs more than just Dogfish Head ads in Northwest Brewing News, we need to see some actual bottles on actual shelves. The few ales of yours I've had the good fortune of trying while in such exotic locales as Tucson, Arizona (the Raison d'Extra a particularly stunning example) have been nothing short of the finest craft beers I've ever chanced upon. But this "parched market" of the Bay Area foodie Nation would undoubtedly offer good business for your fine creations. And if you doubt the interest here, maybe a quick email to Forrest Allen, the beer buyer for the SOMA Whole Foods would dispel any of your concerns - or I imagine the folks at City Beer and Healthy Spirits would be more than happy to try to persuade you. Certainly you wouldn't want to post the 2008 release calendar online for the whole wwworld to read if you didn't want us to enjoy the fruits of your historically delicious creations, right? And when you come visit, don't forget to bring Randall!

* Answer: It says our psyche likes to party.

Yes, I missed it. Yes, I suck. Yes, I know.

For the first time in years, I missed the Toronado barleywine festival due to outrageously phenomenal weather, but that didn't stop Brookston from obviously having a blast and getting some prime blackmail shots out of it in the process. The good news is, North Bay mavericks Lagunitas won top honors - and I just happen to be sitting on a certificate for a tour of that brewery gifted to me by a friend, so maybe I'll get to try the 2006 Gnarleywine while stirring the mash for the 2008 batch...

A LongShot by any other name...

If you're the competitive procrastinator type, there's probably just enough time left to whip up something maltilicious (if you keep it simple enough) to submit for this year's LongShot homebrew contest, hosted by good man Jim Koch and the equally good people at Sam Adams now for the third year in a row. (For Jim's sake, though, you might want to avoid anything that requires copious amounts of a ridiculous variety of hops.) Like the article above mentions, anyone who's ever brewed their own beer has doubtlessly had a friend comment, "Dude, you could totally sell this stuff!" after trying one (or two (or three)) of your amateur amalgamations - not that pushing pyschoactive, centrally-acting depressants through their systems should inspire unwarranted compliments or anything.

The nice thing about a contest like this one, especially for a homebrewer like myself who isn't part of any brewing clubs or routinely submits specimens for AHA competitions and doesn't actually have a clear idea my own beer's mediocrity, is that after losing out to Joe Bob BillyJo's boysenberry dunkelhefe, I can say with certainty, "No, no, I really shouldn't try to sell this stuff. And hey, I just lost four bottles of my primo hooch down the drain to the Boston Harbor." Not just that, but they'll be kind enough to send you copies of their judging notes so that you can finally learn what diacetyl and brett and acetaldehyde and dimethyl sulfide actually means.

Not to mention, here in this house we hardly ever brew the same thing twice - even if it starts out as a duplicate of an earlier successful recipe, the obnoxious experimental improviser in me inevitably has to go and change some major ingredient or process, just for kicks. But maybe you're more like my friend Christopher, who loves certain recipes of his so much that he brews them with the regularity that the rest of us brew coffee. If you're one of those brewers - and you really believe what your friends have been telling you all these years while they take advantage of your generosity at their parties, weddings, bat mitzvahs, parole hearings, what have you - go on, I dare you. Just think, your entry might cut through the other thousands of entries to make to the top, allowing yourself to be depicted as a line drawing caricature on a beer bottle instead of a milk carton for a change!

Würmhole

I recently opined that there might be a subterranean shortcut to Belgium somewhere in San Francisco due to the recent outcropping of north European specialty bars and restaurants, and I think we may have found it - and you certainly need to go underground to find it. While La Trappe's upstairs dining room could still be mistaken for the model North Beach Italian restaurant that it replaced on the corner of Greenwich and Mason, what with the simple line of small, flower-adorned tables against the tall windows overlooking a turn on the cable car route, it's when you venture downstairs that you think you may have struck upon an anomaly in the space-time continuum and were spit out in a ratskeller style tavern just north of Reims.

And ohhhhhh, what a tavern it is. 150-plus bottled Belgian-style beers plus just about a dozen brilliant tap choices, and with a menu perfectly suited to pair with the beverage choices a la bière et gastronomie belge, the cellar space has a small bar where you can belly up and chat with the bartender about your choices in the beer book (which isn't even entirely necessary, as the book has detailed descriptions of every single offering), a dozen or so tables, and a dark, cozy, low-to-the-ground (as you'd likely need to be by the end of the night) lounge that in any other locale would likely be called a "chill room", but here, with the low stained-glass monastic lighting, stained glass windows, candlelit tables, and furnished nicely in dark, dark wood, the proper name would more likely be "the refectory."

And in due tribute, we kept it mostly monastic in our (admittedly limited) tasting choices for the night. Off the tap list I had the joy of trying the Konongshoeven Quad (and yes, as of September, 2005, once again officially a Trappist product), a thickly syrupy cara-molasses monster that still paired far too well with my frites with spicy aioli, and Des enjoyed a bottle of the Rochefort 6 (they were out of the 8 and didn't offer the 10, sadly), which was surprisingly rich and full-bodied for being at the low end of that brewery's range, a nicely spicy, well-balanced mahogany treat that only made me yearn for the 10 (which I still haven't found, thank you very much) all that much more.

The real winner of the evening's cavalcade of the malted stars was the (on tap!) Gulden Draak, a dry black behemoth with a nearly impenetrable root beer float head on it, deliciously reminiscent (but stonger, intenser, deeper, and just "more-er") of some Belgian stouts that we've been comparing lately. A gift to the patient drinker, as it took about 5 minutes to pour, it matched as well with the charcuterie and cheese plate as I imagine it would have with dessert. And the food, not an afterthought, was quite good as well: I decided to save the chicken waterzooi for our next visit as I was drawn to the Marin Sun Farms burger (okay, I was really just drawn to the frites, but still) served on a brioche, while Des enjoyed the coconut curried moules et frites (again with the frites!) served in a branded Wittekerke mussel pot.

As dark as it is down there, and as dorky as I generally feel taking photos of food and menu pages (doesn't stop me from writing about it, though, does it?), I do always manage to get a shot or two of the little sprout (here seen "all done" after reading the beer book, which does give you the chance to see just how nicely it's put together - see the flipped and zoomed version below). Page 14 (!) doesn't really do the menu justice as it's all about the bottles they stock from European countries outside of Belgium, but I do think I'll have to give the Babycham a go next time I'm in the 'hood looking for a warm summer's lunchtime bevvy. (Oh, and that one that Mia's covering on the bottom? That's Belzebuth, the 13% abv strong pale from France. She's hiding it in fear we'd mistakenly order it.)

Unlike another recent Belgian cuisine outing we took, La Trappe completely deserves a re-visit, if not just to try the stewed apples, but also for the other 13 pages of that book to go through. Next time, maybe I'll glance through the door at the end of the hallway past the restrooms to see if my hunch is correct, and that the Manneken Pis is only a few steps further along.

Proof that teh internets loves us and wants us to be happy

For those of you who have long dubbed the online forum, the chat room and the blog as vast wastes of time, those of you who deride others for their instant messaging, Facebooking, MySpacing, Craigslist-missed-connectioning and cat-macroing, those of you who think we all oughta stop with the googlebits and the tubes and the pron and go outside, get some fresh air, lose some weight, maybe kiss a girl... I give you this:

Sure, it's not like we can control the weather or end world hunger or calculate the last digit of pi or find proof of terrestrial visits by aliens, but we can make beer. Or better yet: We can inspire beer. De Regenboog's BBBourgondier is Johan Brandt's commemorative ale (and pretty scarce with a limited production of a mere 50 cases per year) brewed in honor of the Burgundian Babble Belt, the definitive and singular online community of Belgian beer nuts. And it's not the only one: Dany Prignon also once produced a tribute beer under the Fantôme label BBB Babillard. How much input the members of the forum actually had on the recipe is pretty debatable, but one thing's for sure: It's a damn fine beverage and the folks at the BBB are most certainly proud to be associated with it.

A hazy, yeasty, slighty wild concoction, this. Figgy dark fruits, sweetly evident dark sugars, and harboring a slightly yeasty bitterness that gives way to a vinous and dry finish, the Bourgondier is like the farm-raised bastard child of a Belgian strong ale and a British barley wine. Way less effervescent than a typical Belgian, and only truly giving up its secrets once warmed to a good 60 degrees, the caramel layer becomes balanced by a certain herbal brightness which could either be coming from the hops or intriguing addition of valerian root - a not-so-coded reference to this truly being a nightcap of a drink.

It's refreshing, too, considering the spate of beer-related groups cropping up all over the net now, seeing as it's become de rigueur for folks to build their own topic-specific social networks via sites like Ning. Two newer ones in specific - Democracy's Drink and The Aleuminati - both have professional and home brewers, BJCP judges and PBR acolytes, published beer writers and *ahem* paltry beer bloggers counted amidst their ranks. And when I find myself feeling a little guilty about taking a minute to check on the forum discussions or upload some ridiculously dorky photo of a nice-looking pour, I just have to tell myself: Hey, maybe there is a greater symbiotic relationship between brewer and taster than ever before. And who knows? It's not distributed computing by any means, but if the lowly discussion forum can create give rise to the Bourgondier, anything is possible.

Hoptical illusion?

While curiously scouting the newest offerings from the regional brewers in hopes of backing up the claim from my last post that we'd be seeing a reaction to the current hop fiasco via low- and no-hop beers, I stumbled upon something that looking as foreboding as black clouds across the beer horizon: Cascade-afficionados Sierra Nevada has started putting an ESB - "Early Spring Beer" [their words, not mine] - on shelves. I can't remember seeing this submission from our friends in Chico in years past, and is even conveniently labeled (in case you find some in an abandoned trailer party time capsule in the future) as the "2008" vintage. After trying it, both Des and my initial reaction was that it's essentially a de-hopped amber ale pitched as being in the British brewing tradition of balance over bitterness. (Frankly, I pictured them standing in a near-vacant hops warehouse and trying to figure out how they were going to be able to brew enough of their bread-and-butter SNPA for a summer's worth of barbecues and baseball games.) But oddly, its (uncited) entry on Wikipedia lists it as almost 10 IBUs higher than the iconic pale ale. What gives? Of course, my taste buds could also be shot - the best use we found for the ESB was in a cream sauce for some chicken cordon bleu - but still, Des' nose never lies.

Of course, it's probably not wiki-vandalism at work, but rather the concept of hop bitterness perception versus actual IBUs. Could it simply be the crystal malts masking the hops, or a difference in water treatment, or even just a different level of carbonation?

So while I haven't yet found the smoking gun to prove my theory on the move to reduced hop usage, one interesting point did crop up in the research on the ESB [and please, people, it's extra special bitter] that Sierra Nevada's offering as its spring seasonal: The hops used - English Challenger & East Kent Goldings - are imports, rather than varietals from the West Coast's Yakima Valley stable. And it's even dry-hopped! Maybe the winds of change are already blowing...

A completely hopless situation

My good friend Christopher - a dedicated habitué of hops, baron of bitterness, cuckoo for beaucoup IBU - is feeling the pinch this season as our good friend humulus lupulus is in short and desperate supply. Still brewing his stable of homebrew favorites but having to substitute AAs from lesser gods of the hop pantheon with previously unknown varieties, he's feeling the pinch like the rest of us. Gone are the Fuggles, the Willamette, the Hallertauer and Hersbrucker, the Cascade and Chinook, the Saaz and Tetnang; in their place one finds Simcoe and Sorachi Ace, Cluster and Centennial, Millenium and Magnum. If they're green and bitter, we're resignedly throwing them in our kettles - even if they do sound like they were manufactured by Monsanto.

So what's the enterprising yet frugal brewer to do? Well, one option is to take a stroll in The Man's Garden and examine some bittering and flavoring options often overlooked in deference to the Reinheitsgebot that most homebrewers feel some sort of weird allegiance towards. If you're the type of homebrewer that decided to first start making a mess of your kitchen for reasons that had nothing to do with the gist of an antiquated set of laws designed to protect the use of winter wheat for use in bread-making, you've probably got a touch of the aleatoric in you. With the global harvest situation looking dire and prices climbing exponentially, it may just be the right time to let your freak flag fly.

There's plenty of reading material out there to get yourself started, too. To get started, The Homebrewer's Garden has an entire section devoted to alternative bittering and aroma herbs. You can also see this as an opportunity to try your hand at some historical styles, like gruit (yes, the beer that supposedly increases sexual drive - enjoy).

If, on the other hand, you're a more risk-averse brewer, you may just want to check what's coming down the pike from your local craft breweries to see if there's a style you'd like to emulate. (I'd bet good money that we're all going to see more low- or no-hop beers on store shelves sooner rather than later, while everyone tries to figure out some slick marketing trick that will allow them to pass the 100% increase in production costs on to us consumers.) The exceptional Williams Brothers brewery in Scotland makes a full roster of delectable historic ales (again with stimulated "animal instincts"!) the that use little or no hops. And big man on campus Sam Calagione has built almost his entire reputation upon some of Dogfish Head's crazy (yet scientifically crazy!) interpretations of ancient beers.

Meanwhile, it might be worth your while to rekindle those friendships of yours that may garner access to their sun-drenched backyards. Perhaps you could even send them a fun, conversation-starting present...

Highway to helles?

Hey kids! Find the six differences between these two images:

The question remains as to whether our good friends on Haight Street caught the irony of the parody... almost to the day! *shudder* Enjoy those strong ales responsibly, kids!

I thought 42 sounded a little convenient

Forget the hops, free the malt!

I've never had any reason to feel one way or the other about Alabama. I mean, they've gone ahead and admitted (albeit in 2007) that the whole slavery thing was pretty unfortunate, and heck, we'd be without Muscle Shoals if it were not for the Yellowhammer State. But alas, the heart of Dixie is also a heart of darkness, one that is ruled quietly by a shadow government called Anheuser-Busch. At least, that's the impression you'll likely gather once you read this. Sadly, it appears that Alabama is enjoying its reputation as the last state in the union (sound familiar?) to limit beer container sizes to one pint per unit, and with a ABV of at most 6%, which severely limits the variety of ales and lagers available to the good people of Birmingham, leaving them with - you guessed it - more Bud Light than you could ever possibly want.

Thankfully, Free the Hops (or Alabamians for Specialty Beer) is working towards a solution, not only by pushing for a change in legislation, but by calling for a boycott of their biggest obstacle, the lobbyists working for Birmingham Budweiser. If you agree that they're being denied some of the brewing world's most carefully crafted and greatest treasures, not to mention some of the very best beers made here in the US, go on and help them out.

Pairing beers with food music

Noted wine industry provocateur Clark Smith recently posited the notion that amongst the many environmental variables that elevate or ruin the experience of tasting, music has a profound and quantifiable effect on the perception of the main qualities of taste. Which is great, because as much as I love talking about music, this hasn't really been the right forum for it...

While the somewhat generic suggestions he's proposed (and then tested) have been met with more than a whiff of skepticism (he makes a better oenologist than a musicologist), there's certainly something suggestive at the core of his thesis. While the link between pairing different sensations of taste and smell certainly dominate the foodie world - think beer- and wine-maker dinners, meal suggestions printed on wine labels, perfume-prohibitive tasting sessions - we, as bundles of receptive sensory organs constantly merging information from every which way, most certainly synthesize what we're listening to while we taste.

It's easy to close your eyes, but nearly impossible to not hear things. As one commenter wrote in response to the Smith article mentioned above, we all enjoy a certain level of synaesthesia. Rather than pretending that you can truly immerse yourself in the tasting experience in anechoic surroundings, you're much better off engaging the psychoacoustic nuances that are potentially invigorating or blunting the finer points of your chosen bevvy.

So why carry on about this subject here, in this little bastion of beer on the far west side of the blogosphere? Simply put, I think beer is a better control in this experiment. Of all the arguments against Smith's theory, the one that counts the innumerable variables has the most weight. Music is inherently subjective, making such Music Theory 101 concepts such as "major and minor tonality", along with grade school newspaper CD review adjectives like "happy" and "aggressive" mostly moot in any scientific survey. And worse than that is the subjectivity of wine itself. A recent study showed that the assumed dollar value of a wine affects how its quality is perceived (as if you needed any more proof of the socioeconomic stigma associated with fermented grape juice). Beer, on the other hand, has the underdog advantage of being perceived as of base or little value. All the better for letting the actual flavors do the talking.

Oh, I could go on and on, really. Seriously. But instead, I'd love to hear some of your suggested pairings. In our next installment (hopefully with some audio to get you started), we'll revisit this with some proposed music+beer+heaven equations of our own. At the very least, it makes for a great tasting party premise: call your friends, bring a bottle of something interesting and your iPod and get the notepads out...

The "lost" year, ep. 3 - newsy linknibbles

From around the web this past year, here's a few things worthy of a click and ctrl+D that never developed into fully-formed posts:

The 2:40 Beer Podcast - Get it? 2:40? The curious world of outsider beer blogging gets serious when WFMU gets in on the act.

New York's Best Beer Bars (courtesy of Gridskipper) - Even old Brew York was once Brew Amsterdam.

The Science of the Cellar - Why strong beers age so well. Good info if you're the type of person debating whether or not to try brewing something you're infant daughter will be able to enjoy on her 21st birthday (clue: don't bother).

Archaeologists uncover secrets of ancient ale - Either that, or the prehistoric Irish had some pretty big dogs. An especially noteworthy post thanks to its inclusion of a list of watering holes in Middle-earth.

WTF - Wenches??

I'm sorry, but no. M'main man Alex done hipped me to this most egregious affront to all that is decent and pure about getting schnockered. Maybe - just maybe - after tasting 80 (!) beers in a row would I consider using the word "wenches" in a press release. But really? Seriously? Be sure not to miss the "Beautiful servers/ambassadors dressed in Specially designed sexy costumes with an around the world theme", a number of whom are depicted on the site. I can't wait to join the bros and "gauge stylistic preferences against my own personal preferences" of the exotic ales of Skankistan!

The "lost" year, ep. 2 - the frowny face files

Following up from the other day's highlight reel of items that sat on the Pfiff! backburner last year while we attended to more pressing distractions, here's a quick hitlist of things so unfortunate they made me reach for a nice, comforting beer:

The death of Michael Jackson
This is a little bit of a cop out because I did, in fact, find the time to give a quick memorial to one of food journalism's most inimitable contributors. And there's not much to add to the eulogizing that Jackson has received: Simply an irreplaceable voice in beer (and whiskey) commentary, I was tempted to take up some of all y'alls time about how it was his humor and wit that was the reason a lot of us to decided to sit down and publish our thoughts on something as commonplace as beer, what with us all obviously having other interests or passions that we could easily voice our opinions on. But the ideas never really gelled, never became anything worth writing down, and by now there are plenty of folks who have taken the time to talk about how much of an inspiration Michael was for them.

Prices on malt and hops at an all-time high
The email from Griz opened "What hop'ned?" Flooding three years straight in Europe, farmland conversion to ethanol-producing corn in the US, 5-year hop contracts being written up by the major breweries, and replacement of flavor and aroma hops in the fields by "super alpha" varieties in the Yakima valley pretty much erased the cost benefit of homebrewing over, say, hitting the corner store for a six-pack. That and the fact that you had to scour all the online homebrew shops to find any hops that weren't five years old...

Clambeer
Not much to say about this, really, but the day will come when I'll get bored enough to combine Anheuser-Busch's newest "I double-dog-dare you to try it" beverage with some of this with a dash of this other monstrosity to create Cioppino beer under the project codename Cloverfield.

Arr. My beloved, ye broke.
I'll miss you, oversized Piraat tulip glass. You're irreplaceable (kinda). And yes, I recognize the irony of the situation.

When we next meet: I'll be summing up the little newsie bits that were worthy enough of getting me to copy the url into a blank new post, but failed to inspire the least bit of interesting commentary from yours truly...

The "lost" year, ep. 1 - the highlight reel

As promised, here are some of the great things about 2007 (that I neglected to mention previously) they made me reach for a nice, celebratory beer:

The Belgians are coming! The Belgians are coming!
It was the year of the Chouffe, as three new Belgian bars - The Trappist in Oakland, La Trappe in North Beach, and The Monk's Kettle in the Mission - all introduced the masses to what has really been a tenet of beer epicurean/snob life for ages: Belgian beer is a perfect match for the Bay Area's foodie obsessives. Mussels steamed in witbier? Chimay cheese plates and frites with curry ketchup? Add these venues to the ever-expanding Frijtz franchise, and these joints'll soon be outnumbering the taquerias.

The Healthy Spirits & City Beer Store Nexus of Beerjoy
Trace circles around Healthy Spirits, the City Beer Store and Toronado on a San Francisco map, locate the point at which the circles intersect, and dig a hole at that spot, you're likely to strike a portal to Belgium, or at the very least, Valhalla. With peerless square footage dedicated to the proper storage and glorious display of some of the world's rarest malted concoctions (I write as I finish a glass of Allagash Musette), these two newcomers to the retail scene promise to be for beersnobbery what Plumpjack was to winesnobbery, which is to say, open it up to the masses for everyone to play along. Especially Healthy Spirits - located in the aptly named Eureka Valley neighborhood on the north border of the Castro, it's a true oasis behind an unassuming corner store facade. Outstanding.

Maui Brewing Company makes case for serious brewing on the islands

So what if I told you that there's a little brewery in a run-down old strip mall in the midst of the condo-mania that is the northwest coast of Maui? And that one of their specialties is a coconut porter? And that they package limited quantities of their beers in cans? And that they don't even have outdoor seating? Not interested? What if I told you that for all that is good and holy in the name of Gambrinus that you have to go? You'd think I was joking, wouldn't you. I'm not. It's actually quite phenomenal. Seriously. Some of the best brewpub beer I've ever had. Even their Belgian is extraordinary. And that coconut porter? It's amazing. And the cans? Well, read this.

DeProef does it all

This was the year we discovered the panoply of offerings from this Belgian brouwerij (thanks, Shelton Brothers!) which could easily be called upon to introduce anyone to any style of Belgian ale. In a recent discussion with the buyer at Healthy Spirits, who denounced their version of the Flanders wild ale for not being brett-y enough, I opined that, like the rest of their selections, acted as a gateway version to the more seriously nuanced interpretations you could find. Everything from an imperial saison to a dark all-malt quadrupel to a old-style witbier, these guys can (and do) run the gamut with style.

Up next: the stuff from last year that I wanted to spend more time bitching and moaning about, but didn't...

Pfun pfacts! Hey kids, did you know that in Austria, a Pfiff is a measurement of 0.125 liters, and asking for a "Pfiff" in a restaurant will get you a teeny glass of beer? Try it!

Three years and still pfiffin' on...

Another year, another anniversary of sorts - the leather anniversary, as it were.
According to Blogger's "born on" dating scheme, Pfiff! has surpassed the blog shelf life many times over with us entering our fourth year of half-heartedly stinking up the web with semi-factual ramblings on all this cerevisiae. (Not that you'd know it from looking - entering pfiff into google reminds one that as much as 'net loves itself some good beer, half-nekkid women's what makes the Interwebs™ really hum.) And while it hasn't been the most blogorific year for me - a newer, busier job at which I actually can't even view the site due to being so subversive and naughty naughty, and my adorable little timesink of a daughter being the biggest hurdles to high-quality alco-journalism - it has been a pretty spectacular 12 months in terms of the beverage itself.

More information on Pfiff! can be found on the internet.

So how to we plan to celebrate? Well, considering that Fairfax nearly became an island in the middle of Ross Valley last night, it seems like the perfect time to fire up the kettle and brew up a lazy partial mash Scotch Ale, whilst enjoying the snacks and beverages I plan on commandeering on my trip to Healthy Spirits this afternoon, and quite possibly returning to this here keyboard to start posting the "lost" beer files of 2007 - all the blogworthy items that got waylaid by other various distractions... Needless to say, there's a lot of them! Cheers, all, and thanks for reading these past three years.

Save your barstool!

With the snow level in the Bay Area dropping to 1,500 feet today and more dark, damp, and cold promised for the foreseeable future, one's mind naturally turns to the comforting, fortifying things in life. Like barley wine, for instance. Which, incidentally, just happens to be the focus for one of the more globally attended beer festivals outside of Munich every mid-February which means it's time - yes! - once again, to mark your calendars for the Toronado Barleywine festival. It's simple: Just pop your head in sometime next week, order a drink, put a coaster on the rim of the glass and step out like you're grabbing a smoke. I guarantee that when you come back in two week's time, your seat will still be waiting for you.

I know, I know - I mention it every time it comes around, and in a past year mostly bereft of posts, it seems like an especially lame thing to comment on. But c'mon, It's like not mentioning Kwanzaa or Sea Org Day. It would simply be duplicitous of me to call myself a beer lover and not make reference to our very own Walpurgisnacht. For old time's sake, here's a refresher on some festivals past... See you there!

Event - The San Francisco Beer Story

For those of you who've always wanted to ask your friends if they'd like to accompany you to the Commonwealth Club for a discussion forum but were afraid they wouldn't have beer, here's your chance. And no, I'm not referring to either "Conscious Capitalism: Resolving the Conflict Between Consumerism and Progressive Innovation" or "Gratitude: The Science and Spirit of Emotional Prosperity", but rather this:

The San Francisco Beer Story: History, Culture, Taste, Cuisine
The American craft beer explosion currently enlivening the gastronomic scene has long had its epicenter in San Francisco, where brewing traditions and techniques have been thriving since before the Gold Rush. Join the San Francisco Brewers Guild and a panel of industry experts to learn about beer pairings with a variety of cuisine and explore the colorful history and culture of the area's brewing scene. The program will conclude with a tasting of exquisite artisan cheese paired with delicious beers from these brewers: 21st Amendment, Anchor Brewing Co., Beach Chalet/Park Chalet, Gordon Biersch, Magnolia, San Francisco Brewing Company, Speakeasy Ales and Lagers, ThirstyBear Restaurant and Brewery, and Wunder Brewing Co.

Friday, January 25th - 5:30 p.m., Check-in | 6:00 p.m., Program | 7:00 p.m., Tasting | Club office, 595 Market St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco | $12 for Members, $18 for Non-Member

Tickets available here.

From the ashes, and stuff!

After a bit of a beerblogging hiatus (and what better word? "Latin, from hiare to yawn"), we here at Casa Pfiffa hope that the hallucinagenic inspiration that the holiday's gluttonous overindulgence can provide will be the catalyst for some more regular installments here. Until that magic happens, however, I'd be remiss if I didn't pass along this nugget of wisdom from kind reader Michael, aka Horsecore (!) aka Demonseed (!) in regards to a little treasure hunt I initiated many moons ago. In response to this blatheringly pleading post from April of 2005 (here's to the glorious eternal nature of blogs!) regarding the most hircine of ales, Michael writes:

I happened upon this ale quite by chance at a well known wine merchant in Pleasanton, California. I took a bottle home and was REALLY impressed with it. I understand that the ale is only made once or twice a year and in very limited quantities [he later emailed me to say: "The guy that makes the ale actually bottles around 600 bottles a month (I must've been thinking of a different ale that's done in limited quantities)." Still sounds limited to me!]. All of the production and bottling takes place on the brewers goat farm. The store is called The Wine Steward in downtown Pleasanton. The ale it tucked away in the back of the store on the bottom shelf of their white wine/champagne cooler. Not many ale drinkers shop there if you haven't guessed. They currently have two bottles, one of which I plan on buying as a gift today. If you're anywhere near the SF Bay Area and liked the ale well enough to make the trip I'm sure it'll be there for a while.

He included some related links worth checking out as well, here, and here, which lead me to find out there's actually 10 bottles of the stuff sitting on a shelf in SOMA right now... To be continued!

Beer alert - Abt 12 on tap

Almost deserving of those high tech little Drudge sirens, new Belgian-inspired beerstaurant in the Mission The Monk's Kettle looks likely to draw a certain breed of drinker purely on this promise alone: They're serving St. Bernardus' awe-inspiring Abt 12 on tap. That's like finding the monks of Westvleteren singing Christmas carols on my doorstep on choral risers made of cases of yellow cap.

Here's a quip from their info page:

We looked around this city recently and saw that the choices for beer were too limited for a city that thrives on good tastes. Plenty of wine bars, yes, but what about the beverage we all love to love? We are in a city saturated with breweries (in California, and up the coast in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska as well), but there is so little in the way of a place to get a quality beer. And so, we are changing that.

Hear, hear! I'll admit I'm a little skeptical, purely based off the shiny-fancy Cigar-Aficionado-color-scheme website. But I'm easy to persuade. Verrrrrrrry easy....

Thanks, Alex, for the tip...

PS - Yes, we're all quite aware that there hasn't been much action lately on the old Pfifferroo, but that's all about to change, what with updating this site being #78 on the new year's resolutions list (#32: design a bottle opener for infants; #29: figure out where all these flies are coming from; #8: learn Uzbek) and a huge deluge of backlogged half-posts and photos and reviews and all sorts of crazy crap. But don't expect much until the holidays are through. Have a crazysafesexybeer holiday, all!

Tasting notes - De Proef Reinaert

With Belgian beer month having just passed into fond memory - hence the low yield of of posts through the month of April, no excuses yet for May - it's a good time to reminisce about some of the wonderful imports (oh Silly, oh Bernardus, oh Troubadour!) that made their way through the taplines at Toronado last month. But amidst the panoply of wickedly rare beverages that found themselves settled comfortably in my ample belly, wild ales were conspicuously absent from the varietal line-up. Enter the fox!

De Proef Brouwerij's Reinaert belongs to that family of beers that's oft neglected when it comes time to celebrate the products of the world's finest artisinal brewing culture, simply because while those events take advantage of the opportunity to open their market to a new audience, they worry that said audience isn't properly prepared for THE FUNK.
The what, you say? In the same way your mother would have discouraged you from drinking milk from a carton you'd left on the radiator for a few days, most professional brewers would discourage the novice from letting their beer get fermented from whatever microorganisms just happen to be hanging out in the cobwebs of your brewhouse. But there are distinctions amongst the wildbrewers of the world regarding how and when they allow the funk to funktimify their creations, amongst those the Flemish being the most conservative (with the possible exception of the British wood-barrel brewers who probably don't consider themselves "wild" at all, yet whose beers undeniably reveal low levels of bacterial infection through a malolactic fermentation that slowly softens and horses [read as a verb] up the beer during aging).
The vulpine entry in De Proef's phenomenal Brewmaster's Collection (which features such other luminaries as an imperial saison and imperial wit) is no more offensive at first blush than a saison with hints of oak and a touch of sourness. As it warms in the glass and your senses open up to it, however, the deeply complex aromas of yeast become more apparent, but nowhere near the face-melting barnyard bonanza one would encounter from a straight up geueze.
Like a diplomat from the great funky beyond, Reinaert might just serve to open discussions with the American craft beer enthusiast with an invitation to take a walk on the [redacted: I just couldn't bring myself to write it].