Speaking of Beer

So our plane landed in Portland, and my wife and I had more-or-less successfully unloaded the kids and the stuff (roughly in that order), and we were schlepping bags/herding cats through the airport, when we were greeted by the smiling faces of our friends Jason and Beth. It turns out Jason was smiling for a special reason, as we had no sooner thrown the kids and stuff into the rental car, when he grabbed me and informed me that we had to go and drink, right this instant. I waved goodbye to the family, and then Jason whisked me off to a little place called Tuck’s Brewery.

It turns out the urgency was warranted: Tuck’s is only open from Noon to 6 on Saturdays. That’s it, no more, you snooze you lose. It’s in a little strip mall on Portland’s west side, an unassuming facade with a deceptively Old-Milwaukee-esque sign over the door, holding the promise of lots of fake wood panelling within. I know about deceiving appearances and all that, but I still wasn’t quite prepared for what came next. Passing beneath that flashing neon “Pub Open” sign ushered me into one of the coolest beer experiences of my life.

We were in fact greeted by cheap panelling, but that’s beside the point. It was quite clear that only two things were important here: The nine tap-handles behind the bar, and the guy who was pulling them. That would be Max Tieger, brewer, bartender, and bouncer of Tuck’s. He’s blunt, brash, and not afraid to ban you from his place for life if he doesn’t like the cut of your jib. He’s also a freakishly talented brewer, and justifiably proud of his eclectic and groundbreaking beers. Jason and I went for the sampler, and I’m surprised I didn’t get whiplash going through this set of brews: a golden ale, an alt beer, a berry-bursting framboise, and a spicy witbier, all zigged and zagged me. Each was a solid, even excellent example of the style. Then it started to get really wild.

First came the Imperial Stout, served on nitro. Beneath a creamy tan head that would make a Guinness lover weep with joy was the quentessential silky black brain torpedo we all know and love. I wasn’t in a “stout mood”, but one sip and I was ready to order up a pint. But then came the next beer: A Belgian IPA. Say wha? Initially I wasn’t sure: the nose promised big hops, but the first sip hit me with that funky phenolic belgian yeast flavor, only to be followed by an agressive bitterness settling on my tongue like a cloud of little spikes. Wild. And after a couple more hits, I was sold. The flavors of the hops and yeast marry well, and add a whole new dimension to the IPA experience. Fantastic stuff, and I ultimately did order up a pint.

But that wasn’t all. Turns out Max has beers “in the back” that you apparently need to charm your way to. I guess Jason was one charming mofo, because we ultimately got treated to the best Tuck’s has to offer. That would be Farmer’s Daughter, which I’m guessing is a belgian saison, but infused with vanilla and just about the best fucking beer I’ve ever had in my life. And then came the trippel, which is obviously Max’s favorite child, and an absolutely stellar example of a terrific style of beer. We ordered up a growler of each.

Now the bad news: Tuck’s is about to close for good. However, Max will be soon opening his own place (called, appropriately enough, “Max’s”), so weep not. Keep your eyes out for more from Max Tieger, and keep your ears out for Tuck’s on an upcoming Speaking of Beer.

WHOOO-WEEE! (to quote one or more of the Duke Boys and/or Skywalker Men), my vacation has definitely taken a turn for the BEER. As I write this I am in Portland, with one incredible Oregonian beer experience under my belt, but I’ll keep this entry about yesterday, when I was hanging out with friends in Chico, CA. The beer-related highlight there was the afternoon spent at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company brewpub/brewery/retail outlet/experimental hop farm. You’ve probably tried their Pale Ale [and if you haven't a) what's wrong with you, and 2) wait a few weeks for an upcoming "very special" Speaking of Beer podcast], or maybe their Porter. I don’t want to gush fanboy-like, but they have been in the game a long time, have reached a fairly high level of financial success, and still put out a helluva good beer.

It turns out that if you visit the actual place, many surprises await. If you have a fairly hip beer outlet, they may carry three or four Sierra Nevada brews (including seasonals). When my friend Matt and I sat down at the pub and ordered a sampler, we were greeted by SIXTEEN little glasses filled with all shades of the beer rainbow. They had a kölsch as the lightest, almost Bud-like, entry; not one but THREE different wheat beers (”Wheat”, “Crystal Wheat”, and a hefe-weizen), several variations on the Pale Ale (blonde all the way up to an IPA, with about 5 steps between), and (of course) their Stout and Porter. To go through all of that side-by-side was a bit overwhelming, but I got used to it. After tackling the sampler, I ordered an IPA, and really started to relax.

Matt and I then took a self-guided tour of the brewery and bottling plant. The place is set up to really crank out the beer. The fermenters look like the tanks at an oil refinery, and the bottling area is cranking out cases faster than Laverne and Shirley ever dreamed of. It’s freaky that the beer is so good when that part of things felt so “mass-produced”.

On the way out we checked out their hop farm. One of the guys at the restaurant said that this is a labor of love for the owner, Ken Grossman. The vines look cool, but apparently its not that easy to grow quality hops in that particular climate. Still, once a year they harvest them and pour them into a special beer available, of course, only in Chico. It’s a company town, but what a freekin’ company!

Yeah, so this site is basically to support the podcast, but I realized the other day that it’s actually a BLOG too. Since I’m on a vacation through Northern California (a.k.a “beer country”), with a hop up to Portland (a.k.a. “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me! beer country”), I thought maybe I should record some of my beer observations for my loyal site-checkers (both of you, you mad crazy sunsabitches).

So far I’ve been hanging with family, and not getting out much, but I’ve discovered BevMo and have “gone to town” there. Two trips to this California “Beer Barn” have netted me many beers, both local and far-flung, and even inspired me to record a show with my brother-in-law (though I’ll leave those beers out of the following discussion so as to maintain a semblance of suspense for any listeners).

Highlights thus far:

Unibroue’s Don de Dieu. A wheat tripel. Like most of their beers, this one takes the phrase “belgian funkiness” and raises it to new levels. I swear, I kept thinking of Dr. Pepper when I was drinking this, but by the bottom of the glass Dr. Pepper became my favorite soda ever.

Lagunitas’ Censored (a.k.a. “The Kronik”). I’ve been aware of Lagunitas for a couple of years now, but always dismissed them as Stone wannabes. Sorry Lagunitas! This particular beer is great, like a homebrewer’s wild hair (”I’ll brew an Imperial Amber!”) gone horribly right. Skewed in the sweet direction, but with a nutty crystal malt finish and a healthy ABV. Good stuff, dood.

Mendicino’s Red Tail Lager. Yes, Lager. It’s a recent addition to their stable, and an obvious attempt to cash in on the undisputed success of their flagship beer. I’m pretty over-the-moon for Red Tail Ale, a great anytime easy drinking beer that nonetheless rewards your attention should you feel inclined to pay it. Ditto the Lager, but with that clean lager profile we all know and love. A “light beer” even a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA lover can enjoy.

Marin Brewing Co.’s Hefe Doppel Weizen. OK, I’m not sure what to think of this one. By cranking up the Doppel, they lost a large part of the Hefe, if you know what I mean. It’ll give you a buzz, but much of the wheat beer personality is trampled by the strength (a relatively big 7% ABV). It was pretty chunky, too.

That’s all for now. I’ll keep you posted as the trip gets more beer-o-centric. Til then (as the man says), drink well.

SNAKEBITE

Combine equal parts stout and hard apple cider. Serve in a pint glass.

BLACK VELVET
Combine equal parts stout and champagne. Serve in a fluted glass.

MOONGLOW

12 oz. American amber ale, 1 oz. Amaretto, 3 oz. half and half, a 1â?„2 oz. of Irish cream liqueur and mint leaves (minced). Mix all ingredients gently in a shaker. Pour over ice in a short goblet and garnish with a mint sprig.

BERRY BLAST
12 oz. American light lager, 11â?„2 oz. strawberry daiquiri mix, and 1â?„2 oz. simple syrup. Mix strawberry daiquiri, syrup and 2/3 of the beer with ice and shake to degas. Strain and pour into a pilsner glass. Now add the remaining beer and garnish.

ALL-PURPOSE GRILL/BARBEQUE RUB

3/4 C paprika (sweet or hot, as best suits you)
1/4 C ground black pepper
1/4 C salt
1/4 C sugar
2 Tbs chili powder
2 Tbs garlic powder
2 Tbs onion powder
2 tsp cayenne
1 - 2 Tbs Ingredient X (something that makes it your own!)

Mix together thoroughly, store in cool, dark place. Makes ~2 cups.

BRATWURST IN GUINNESS

Place 4 - 6 brats in a covered skillet. Add one can of Guinness. Bring to boil and reduce heat. Let simmer until Guinness is reduced to a thick syrup consistency. Turn brats occasionally as they simmer to cook evenly.

Variations:

•Cut one whole onion (large pieces) and add to the brats when adding Guinness.

•Make a “boat” out of aluminum foil and cook on the grill.

(recipe courtesy of Michael R. Mennenga)

HEFE CHICKEN

Beer mixture:

One full bottle of hefeweizen. (your favorite kind, for example Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse or Widmer Hefeweizen)
1/4 cup brown sugar
Add spices to taste.
(suggestion: one whole clove garlic, 1 tsp rosemary, 1 tsp thyme, 1 1/2 tsp salt and pepper)

Prep:

Place chicken pieces in a skillet with a couple Tbs oil and brown for 5 minutes.
Transfer browned pieces to a roasting pan and add 1st part (half) of the beer mixture.

Bake for 30 minutes at 350° F

To the remaining half of the beer mixture add juice from two whole lemons (about 1/2 cup) and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Add remaining beer/citrus mixture (part 2) and continue baking for 30 minutes basting pieces with pan drippings every 5 minutes or so until a thick coating forms on the chicken.

Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before serving. (This lets the coating set up so it does not slide off when moved)

Variation: Replace lemons with orange juice or grapefruit juice

(recipe courtesy of Michael R. Mennenga)

TRADITIONAL WASSAIL

2 pints of malty English ale, like Samuel Smiths Pale Ale
1 cup sugar
6 eggs, beaten
pinch of cinnamon
pinch of ginger
pinch of cloves
pinch of nutmeg
4 apples

Pour the ale into a saucepan and heat. Add sugar and spices and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Gradually add a small amount of the hot liquid to the beaten eggs, as for custard. Return to saucepan and cook, stirring constantly, until slightly thickened. Meanwhile, core the apples, place them in a casserole dish, cover them in foil, and place them in a preheated 325 degree oven for 25 minutes. Place apples in a heat-proof punch bowl, and pour the hot mixture over. For authenticity, garnish with toast.

We score our beers based on a fairly standard beer rating rubric, primarily meant to enhance the beer-drinking experience. The beers are evaluated on five characteristics:

APPEARANCE: This is how the beer looks after it has been poured into an appropriate glass. Look at color, clarity, and head. Color can range from the palest straw yellow to pitch black, clarity from crystal clear to deep murk, and head from effervescent fizz to dense cream. Most important is your reaction to how it looks: is it inviting you to take a sip, pour it down the drain, or something in between?

AROMA: A significant chunk of beer enjoyment can come before you take your first sip. Bring the glass up to your nose and take a sniff. What does the smell remind you of? Keep in mind there can be lots going on here: sweetness, grass, flowers, perfume, spices, musk, toast, grain, berries, toffee, citrus, and more, often with weird combinations and surprises, await you in the beer’s “nose.” Are you intrigued, put off, or something in between?

TASTE: Here’s where the aroma evolves into something more. The tongue can detect sweet, sour, and bitter flavors in beer. Often, the themes established by the aroma continue more strongly in the taste. Sometimes, however, surprises await. A beer that comes on sweetly might have a bitter bite on the back of your tongue; a beer that promises hops might be more like honey than hoppy. Does the taste trip your trigger, gag you with a spoon, or something in between?

MOUTHFEEL: Quite literally, how the beer feels while in your mouth. Mouthfeel ranges from watery to syrupy. After you take your first sip, notice how this evolves, as some beers can start fairly dense, but then evaporate away, while others coat your mouth and refuse to leave. Think in terms of “body”: light, medium, and heavy, but also in terms of dynamics: cloying, effervescent, inviting. When it comes to what your beer’s doing in your mouth, do you dig it, hate it, or something in between?

HOLISTIC ASSESSMENT: My favorite category, because here you can rave about the beer that, on paper anyway, you should hate, or totally bag on a beer you’re “supposed” to love. Beer drinking is as much about the “experience” as it is the chemicals. We are opinionated animals, and with this category you can let your totally biased opinion fly. Did a beer defy your expectations? Reward it! Was it a crushing disappointment? Punish it! No wrong answers here, just what did you think of this particular beer on this particular day?

Each category gets 10 points. A 5 means “OK, that’s fine.” Anything that catches your attention in a positive way warrants additional points, and anything that catches your attention in a negative way warrants deducted points. Total them up, and you’ve got a number out of 50 that expresses your beer experience!

By the way, we use this whole scoring thing primarily as a way to focus our attention on our beer-drinking experience at the time we’re drinking the beer, and to provoke conversation. It’s a bit of a “McGuffin” (to borrow a term from film school, which, as it turns out, I never attended). What I’m trying to say is that simply paying attention to the beer you’re drinking is a reward unto itself, and the numbers come in a very distant second to the experience.

Drink well.

J.R. Murdock sent me this pic:

Quoth J.R. :”Something to do with those old desktops now that everyone has a laptop”

This week (May 15 - 21) is the inauguaral American Craft Beer Week. It’s a great excuse to spend much time visiting your local breweries and/or brewpubs. You can actually earn “points” by doing so, and win pint glasses, T-shirts, or even a trip to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver this September. Plus, you can drink lots of REALLY good beer.

All the details can be yours by visiting the URL above, or simply by clicking here.

Thanks to Eric for the tip!

With a little help from my friends, I’m starting a podcast about beer.

Beercasts abound, and while their quality varies wildly, they’re all bout our favorite topic, so they can’t be that bad. What’s a new ‘cast got to add to all that sipping and slurping and slurred speech? Well, when I inform people that I’m starting a podcast about beer, after we get through all that “what’s a podcast?” stuff, they invariably say something like, “You’ve got to have something else in there too–you can’t just talk about BEER the whole time…” To them I say, “Oh yeah, just watch me!” Beer is a deep, deep topic, and it’s also a helluva lot of fun. And that’s me in a beerglass: I’m into philosophical good times.

Besides being a tasty drink that can give you a wicked buzz, beer intersects almost every aspect of the human condition: beer is history, beer is science, beer is metaphor, beer is cuisine, beer is lifestyle, beer is a social tie that binds. Beer is snakes on a motherf****n’ plane, man! No beercast out there (that I’ve been able to uncover) touches upon all of these aspects, and surely none do it in my particular style.

What can you expect from “Speaking of Beer”? A little “Ebert and Roeper”, a little “Good Eats”, a little “Mythbusters”, a little “DragonPage Wingin’ It!”, a little “Geek Fu Action Grip”, a little Charlie Rose, a little whatever-the-hell-else pops into my head. I’m a pretty eclectic guy, influence-wise, but I like to think I only steal from the best.

One part of the show I hope you really embrace is the “drink along” aspect. Each week we’ll feature two beers. On the show, myself and one or more of my rotating cast of co-hosts and special guests will consume them in real time, and discuss and disect our experiences as we go (NOTE: tangential conversations are almost inevitable because–hey–we’re drinking beer), and evaluate each beer at the end.

While we’re doing this, I’d really like YOU to be doing it to, with the exact same beer if possible. Think of the beer segments as a sort of “commentary track” to your beer. For those willing and able to play along, I’ll post the beers for the next show on this site at least a week in advance, giving you some time to track them down. I’ll also list 2 or 3 close alternatives that would make admirable substitutes. It’s a cool way to expand your beer horizons, and you might just find a new favorite in the process.

Besides the featured beers, there with be an Interbeer Interlude and a Beer Geek Moment segment. The former will rotate among Beerlosophy (philosophical musings inspired by beer), Burpin’ Legends (putting beer myths and beer lore to the test), Beer as Folk (interviews with beer/homebrew industry insiders), and Adjuncts (non-beer topics beer lovers enjoy, e.g. barbecue or cigars). Cute names, huh? Anyway, you never know what you’ll get til you tune in. The Beer Geek Moment will be a short (I promise!) but deep delve into a narrow geeky topic, like yeast strains or malting techniques, that will give you tons of cred at your next beer-themed event.

I hope you’ll like it. Stay tuned for further development. I’ve got one show in the can, but I’m still struggling with the start-up stuff (note the generic coolness of this site!), so expect the first show to hit the podosphere in a couple of weeks. Listen for me on Wingin’ It, and I’ll try to keep you updated there as well as here.

Cheers!

I’m a long-standing beer enthusiast, who’s ridden the waves of the craft beer revolution out of the dim watery megabrews of my young adulthood. I tasted my first homebrew in the late 1980’s, and was from that time forward captivated by the concept of engineering my own buzz. Many, many dozens of batches of homebrew followed, from the expected (stouts, hefeweizens, IPA’s) to the experimental (Crunch Berry Ale–with real crunch berries!).

My homebrewing endeavors reached their pinnacle at the dawn of the current decade, when I was awarded the Silver Medal in the “stout” category at the Arizona Homebrewer’s Association’s Octoberfest competition in 2000. It was my first and only foray into competitive brewing.

As a by-product of all that brewing, I’ve developed a deep appreciation for beer in all its manifestations. I’ve tasted the best I could find all over the world, wherever fortune would take me, including brews from (and consumed in) California, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. There’s lots of terrific beer I’ve enjoyed from other places as well, and one of many reasons to keep living is the anticipation of all those great beers I haven’t yet tried.