Inspiration at the Rock Bottom

At the beginning of this summer - just a few days after I had decided to take Amanda's advice to start blogging about beer, and a few days before I actually started doing it - We went to the Rock Bottom Brewery for a casual lunch and I ordered their beer sampler (of course). I had taken the time to take some notes, and I just recently found them.

Beers I Sampled

The order in which I like these with my favorites at the top. The descriptions are mostly from the menu, not from me. But they are pretty good descriptions.

Favorite

- Naughty Scot Scotch Ale - The menu described it as having flavors of sweet malt and toasted grain with a spicy finish. They recommend it with ribs or steak.
- American Dream IPA - It is one of the Brewmaster's Choice beers with Simcoe hops. It has an ABV of 6.0% and an IBU of 48.
- Jazzberry - Also one of the Brewmaster's Choice beers. It is Raspberry puree added to a wheat ale. It has an ABV of 4.6% and an IBU of 16.
- Badger Stripe Ale - The menu described it as a red ale with deep caramel malt flavors and subtle citrus hop character. They advertise it as a great first step into darker ales and suggest that it is good with burgers.
- White Tail Pale Ale - It was described as having citrus hops and a caramel malt sweetness which is good with fish and chips.
- Heartland Wheat - Described as a German-style wheat or hefeweizen. It is an unfiltered beer with hints of banana and clove which is good with chicken or seafood.
- Line Drive Lager - One of the Brewemaster's Choice beers in a golden malty Munich Helles style. It has an ABV of 5.2% and an IBU of 20.
- Liquid Sun - It is described as a light beer - a lager, slightly sweet with a clean body and crisp finish. They suggest that it pairs well with pastas or salads.

Least Favorite

My Opinions

- The Naughty Scot had a wonderful rich flavor.
- Jazzberry had a more natural berry flavor than Berry Weiss.
- Heartland Wheat tasted like a beer, not "banana and clove" - but if I thought of bananas while drinking it, I could identify what they were referring to. You can do the same thing if you eat a Tootsie Roll and think of oranges. The clove was a little more straightforward, but it was not strong or distracting.
- Liquid Sun was a light beer. Typically I don't care for light beers.

Remembering Georgia

During the last holiday season, Amanda and I drove down to Tybee Island, Georgia and spent a few days enjoying Tybee Island and Savannah. This was before I began trying to better appreciate my beer. But since the first time I got a beer sampler at the Rock Bottom in Milwaukee, I have always looked forward to getting a sampler at a new brewpub. One day while we were strolling about historic downtown Savannah, we stopped at Moon River Brewing Company on Bay Street for lunch. I had a wonderful lunch (a crab melt or something) and their beer sampler. I don't know why, but at that time Amanda snapped a photo of me and I jotted down the beers that I had. They were:

- Wild Wacky Wit
- Savannah Fest Bier
- Slo-vannah Pale Ale
- Swamp Fox India Pale Ale
- Nick's Balls of Gold (a holiday seasonal which was quite nice)
- Skunk-Ape Stout

Then recently I was reading through a copy of The Beer Connoisseur magazine that I picked up at Milwauke Brewfest this summer (Issue 2 - Spring 2009 to be specific) and there was an article called "Savannah, Ga. Midnight in the City of Ales & Lagers" by Owen Ogletree. At the start of the article there was a section about Moon River Brewing Company. It is Savannah's only brewpub. I didn't know that while we were there - But how lucky am I to have stopped there?! Fantastic!

Moon River Brewing Company is located at 21 West Bay Street. Good food and good beer. If you ever find yourself in Savannah, I definately recommend stopping in for a pint.

Brewing News

There are some very nice regional periodicals on beer and brewing techniques. Although they are all from the same publisher and in a similar format, their articles are completely different and focussed on region specific events, breweries and related information. They are distribited to breweries, pubs, beer bars, home brewing supply stores, etc. A six issue yearly subscription can also be ordered for $20.00. When I had stopped at the Northern Brewer store, Amanda picked up the ones they had in the news racks in the entry way:

- Southwest Brewing News
- Southern Brew News
- Rocky Mountain Brewing News
- Mid-Atlantic Brewing News
- Yankee Brew News

I went through them, and they have some great information and articles.

Maps
Better than the articles are the craft beer maps. They give he name, address and phone number of breweries, restaraunts, beer bars, beer stores and homebrew shops. They show the locations on a state map - It's great info to have if you are going on vacation. Especially if you're like me and like finding the local brew pubs to get their beer samplers. They also have a calendar of events and info on local festivals and beer events, which is potentially very handy on a vacation.

Food

I was also excited to find recipes. Here are some great examples:

In the Yankee Brew News there was a food recipe for American Craft Butternut Squash Risotto By John E. Mahoney, Executive Chef at American Craft (1700 Beacon Street, Brookline, Mass.; 617-487-4289) The recipe is for roasted butternut squash and rice made with Allagash White.

From the Rocky Mountain Brewing News, in the article "Cooking On Tap" by Jamaine Batson there is a recipe for Asian Style Sesame Stout Glaze. It is an all-purpose sweet and savory glaze with sesame oil, stout, soy sauce, brown sugar and a selection of other seasonings.

From the Southern Brew News there was the article "From the Beer Wench's Kitchen: The Bulldog's Crawfish Banditos" by Kerri Allen. It is a recipe for crawfish tails to be eaten with tortillas. She recommends pairing them with beers brewed by Abita Brewing Company in Abita Springs. She suggests Jockamo IPA, Turbodog or Andygator.

Beer

In the Yankee Brew News there was a Kölsch Recipe by Paul Zocco.
In the Mid-Atlantic Brewing News there was an article by George Hummel with beer recipes for a wit and a tripel that homebrewer Bruce Fabijonas served at his wedding as well as a mead recipe from George Hummel himself.
In the Southern Brew News there was a recipe for 8 Hands Brewing's award winning "Better Not Pout Stout" which won "Best of Show" at the Great Arizona Homebrew Competition 2010. In Scott Birdwell's "Best of Show" article he also includes variations for brewing it as an extract/grain mix.

Beer and Games Day

This last Saturday a couple of good friends of mine had a "Beer and Games Day" at their house. It was a brilliant idea. And simple. A bunch of friends get together to drink beer, play games and talk. I had to leave early, but while I was there it was more conversation and beer than anything else. The beer "mandate" was to bring good beer that people might want to try, and our hosts had stocked up on some nice beers in 750 ml bottles which neither of them had not tried before so that we could do some beer tasting.

I had brought a mix of Oktoberfests that I had been collecting to do a personal taste testing (which I have yet to do). I haven't been drinking much recently, so I figured they would be a tasty addition to the community pool of beers. I grabbed a New Glarus Moon Man, which I'd never had before. It was good. It was also the beer that Scott had used to make his beer dip. I had also made a beer dip, but they were two different styles.

Beer Dip
Scott's came from a recipe in Cooking with Beer by Sheryn R. Jones that is made with a can of "mexicorn. It was firm like mine typically is. I doubled the beer in mine and used "fancy" finely shredded sharp cheddar to make mine nice and creamy. As I understand it the two recipes are extremely similar, otherwise. The following is my recipe:

2 packages of cream cheese
2 cups (8 ounces) of shredded cheddar cheese
1/3 cup of beer (I used 2/3 to make the texture creamier)
1 ounce (one package) of ranch seasoning.

More specifically, I use MGD for the beer - it's my standard cooking beer. 2/3 cup doesn't change the flavor much from the normal 1/3.

Comparing the two side-by-side, I liked the creamy texture of mine better, but I liked the flavor of Scott's better.

Then while assembling game pieces and conversing with Scott and Jen I had a bottle of Scott's home-brew porter. It was really good, and it was a reminder that I would really like to pick up home brewing sometime soon.



Then, after several more people had arrived, I cracked into one of the beers Jo had brought - Samuel Smith's Old Brewery (an English brewery) I had their "Tadcaster: The Famous Taddy Porter". Also a very good beer.

Books

While we were talking and drinking, Scott brought out some of his beer books and I looked them over. One was the book he had gotten the beer dip recipe from. He also made a real nice chili from a recipe in the book as well. Being a book about cooking with beer, the chili obviously had beer in it. I believe he said he had used some of his home brewed porter. After eating what he had to offer, I'm beginning to think that I may want to branch out from using just MGD or whatever is handy when cooking. I'm beginning to think (and I should probably already know just from the basics of cooking) that different beers will impart different flavors on the same foods. I want to experiment with it.

The other books that Scott brought out were:
Tasting Beer by Randy Mosher - I have this book myself and had started reading it some time ago. I had set it down and haven't had a chance to come back to it.
How To Brew by John J. Palmer - The gentleman at the Northern Brewer store had recommended this book. They sell it. I think he also mentioned that an early edition of the book is available for free online. He had suggested reading through the online version before starting to brew and then buying the book to have on hand while actually doing it. There are differences between the editions, but I'm not sure which since I haven't seen the online version and I had only paged through the copy Scott had.
The Naked Pint by Christina Perozzi and Hallie Beaune - This looked like a very interesting book so I may either pick it up sometime or see if I can borrow it. I suppose it depends on if I want to keep it or not.

The Mystery of Stemware Revealed


I believe I had mentioned previously that I didn't understand stemware for beer. I get pint glasses, mugs, pilsner glasses and the like. But I just didn't understand stemware. Well Scott explained it to me short and simple. It makes sense now, but I don't know if I can do it justice. The shape holds in the aroma, so you can smell it. The Stem allows you to have less contact between your warm hand and the glass that is holding your nice cold beer. Viola - little things that improve the experience a bit. The same reason stemware is used for wine. He didn't have beer-specific stem ware so we used wine glasses. They worked perfectly.


Tasting

Scott poured us samples of each of the beers he had bought.

New Glarus Belgian Red (it was a cherry kriek-style beer) - It was light and flavorful - very sweet. It tasted like cherry pie filling. It was almost like a spritzer.
Ommegang Abbey Ale - It had a rich fruity-floral maltiness with a bit of caramel malt flavor and a nice strong finish
Chimay Ale - Not my kind of beer. It was good, but I'd rather it be a good beer in someone else' hand. It reminded me of a Carlsburg but lighter. It had that "old man beer" flavor that makes me think of my childhood. Chris described that sour-nearly turned flavor the best when he described it as "horse blanket". It's the best description I've heard for that flavor so far, so I'm going to use it until/unless I find something better.
Hennepin Saisson - It was too light. I can see drinking it after mowing the lawn on a hot summer day, but not really at any other time. I'd choose it over a macro brew, but there are a good many beers out there I would drink first. Scott said he thought it would be good with a salad, but it's not something to drink by itself. Chris and Jo didn't care for it at all.
New Glarus Abt (one of their "unplugged" beers) It had a wonderful maltiness - not too dense but still thick and wonderful.
Stone Ruination IPA - bitter and sweet like eating an orange rind. Strong fruity/floral flavors.

What I Learned

- I learned the place of stem ware in enjoying beer.
- I confirmed that I tend to prefer dark hoppy beers.
- Jo likes dark beers - nice and dense.
- Chris likes malty beers.
- Most of my friends have a good appreciation for the Fat Tire.
- Kyle can get his hands on some beers that you just can't find easily, but he is a solid (but lighthearted) defender of malt beverages such as Old English. (I'd run across this once before while making fun of the non-discriminating price-driven tastes of teenage college students. I had used Old English as an example.)
- Home Brewing still sounds like a lot of fun.
- I want to do more things like this - eat, talk and try new beers with friends.

Time to Shift My Focus

I ran myself short on funds, and I've been pretty busy even though I have now started my new job. That means I won't be going to many places/events or drinking as much beer for a while. Now would be a good time to do some other kind of "research". Maybe get to know more about history, recipes or technical aspects of brewing. Or make a plan of places I want to visit and beers I want to try.

Last Dunkel Lunch

The last couple of weeks I have been crazy-busy and stressed out with work. But all for a good thing. Today is my last day. Monday I start a new job. So what does that mean for my beer journey? It means I have been broke and not involved. The only new thing has been that I tried the Samuel Adams Oktoberfest for the first time. But I'll come back to that at some other time.

My current job is walking distance from downtown Milwaukee, and there are a lot of good places that I can walk to for lunch. I have developed my favorites. Unfortunately, my new job will be no where near downtown, so I decided I needed to have one last Dunkel Lunch. I walked over to the Old German Beer Hall and for $6.50 got myself a half liter of Hoffbrau Dunkel and a knockwurst. Man, I'm going to miss being able to do that. I love Hoffbrau beer.