Month: December 2013

Kate Baker and Suzanne Schalow founded Craft Beer Cellar in Belmont in 2010, and today, at any given time, its 1,500 square feet of retail space are filled with more than 1,000 beers from 350 breweries. Beers are organized by region, from Worcester to the West Coast, with an emphasis on local brews. Employees have jobs like Head Beer Geek, Ambassador of Fine Ales and Lagers, and Hoptologist and wear hooded sweat shirts emblazoned with the words “Beer Geek.”

“People take two steps in the door and they don’t know how to proceed,” says Brian Shaw, who opened a Craft Beer Cellar in Newton Centre recently, joining franchises in Winchester, Westford, and Braintree. “People say, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t know there was this much beer.’ ”

Is there ever. And now Baker and Schalow are betting their model can work elsewhere as they expand to New Hampshire and Vermont, as well as Florida, St. Louis, and maybe Seattle. Their goal is to make people think about whether to buy a Pretty Things Jack D’Or or a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale as carefully as they would wrestle between a cabernet or a merlot.

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Diacetyl (dye-assa-TEEL, or dye-ASS-itle) is probably one of the most well-known flavors related to brewing. It’s buttery aroma is easily recognized at levels above threshold but, as much as is known and recognized about this compound, I’m constantly amazed and disappointed by how much “butter-beer” is still being produced. This post will briefly explore the various ways that diacetyl arises in beer.

Background

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One must ask: what exactly, in comparison, do mega brewers need this cut for?-PGA

 

image courtesy danieljmitchell.wordpress.com 

 

WASHINGTON — Beer politics are getting frothy on Capitol Hill.

American microbreweries are asking Uncle Sam to cut their federal excise tax so they can grab more market share from Coors, Budweiser, Corona, Miller and other brands that have become household names.

The big beer makers, meanwhile, support proposals that would cut excise taxes for all brewers, regardless of size.

Both sides, which were once united, are polite enough to praise the products made by the other camp but disagree on how to reduce one type of tax that affects the price of beer.

 

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Profiled by Ken Carman fro Professor Goodales

This is skewed too far towards ginger. And it’s not the best side of ginger. It’s not “bad.” It’s just unbalanced.

The body is medium the ginger is way the hell upfront, allspice and cinnamon are way in the background. Brown with hazy highlights. Mouthfeel is a firm medium body with ginger as the main focus. The malt is mostly pale with some darker malts, mostly slighter roast but they too are way behind the ginger which dangles from the roof of the mouth and refuses to let go. The warmer it gets, the more annoying the ginger becomes.

Mouthfeel, again ginger with about a moderate body and low, but OK, soft, carbonation. A tad slick.

Aroma is ginger, more ginger and, ah, ginger. Again there is a malt background but it’s elusive, hides behind the ginger.

Tad off white head, pillow. Slight chill haze. Brown at probably 24 srm with no highlights due to haze. A very dense looking quaff due to the haze. The head nags as if it’s wants to hang around, briefly, then fades to the edges of the glass.

There’s a great brown ale based begging to be let out behind a ginger gate here.

93 with a 97 for style on Rate Beer, 84 on Beer Advocate. I can’t go higher than 3.

Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”

Courtesy manship2.lsu.edu

 

MIAMI — Florida wildlife officials say a man tried to trade a live alligator for beer at a Miami convenience store.

State Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission spokesman Jorge Pino says the man received a citation for illegally capturing and trying to sell the gator.

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Winners

Jared Whalen and Chris McGreevy. First place for 19C: American Barleywine. Name: Big F’n Beer. From Northern Kentucky Homebrewers Guild.
Graham Barron: second place for 16C: Saison. Name: Rye-Son. From Covert Hops Society.
Robert Miller: third place. 12C: Baltic Porter. Name: Baltic Winter. From Brewmasters of Alpharetta.

For the rest of the winners, please click HERE.

 

  347 total entries, 216 judged on Saturday, December 7th, 22 judges on Saturday, 7 stewards.

  Fugetaboutit: 2013, this isn’t the first time for us to this delightful beer judging-based rodeo. It’s kind of like a yearly tour of Chattanooga. This year it was at the Knights of Columbus, and I must say for all the locations this one seems to provide the best atmosphere: no restaurant noise, no workmen below building a yet to be open pub and no pending kid’s party rushing us through judging.
  The plan was to leave Nashville at 4 because of the time change: the competition started at 9. However, an aging collie decided to wake me up at 1 by pacing the room and by the time we were through I had cat napped maybe half an hour at best. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: Fugetaboutit 2013”

 

On a recent Monday morning, the stretch of Route 100 that runs through sleepy Waterbury, Vt., was bumper-to-bumper. The line of Camrys, Sierras, and Outbacks, some from as far away as Illinois, inched forward in the crisp air, their drivers united in a singular goal.

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: b-e-e-e-r.

Jen Kimmich sighed at the chaos. She knew what they’d come for. They’d been arriving every Monday for the past two-and-a-half years, more every week, to the point where they now crowded the parking lots of the nearby Phinne nail salon and the Merchants Bank, both on the wrong side Rt. 100, forcing their owners to dash across the state highway to reach their journey’s end, a cramped retail shop in a modest beige building that housed the Alchemist brewery.

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