Beer Profile: Ommegang’s Fire and Blood

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Profiled for PGA by Maria Devan and Ken Carman

Maria…

I just tried Ommegang Fire and Blood and I sure don’t like it.

This poured a murky and darker brown with a stream of effervescence and a fat tan head of foam that fell slowly and left lace.

Nose is a bit confused. There is a brief hint of banana, some lasting cherry, fig and some faint raisin. The yeast is there and it’s light and a bit woody. There is also a nice light caramel.

This drinks a bit flatly as the spelt seems to have muted the rye in the drink. The caramel is light, the yeast is belgian, the beer is dry. The cherry is the most forward fruit with the raisin and fig in the background. The ancho chile pepper tastes dry and seedy and very tame. It does impart a warmth to the throat as you swallow. This leaves a bit bitter and that lingers a little sharply as it really had nothing to contrast or offset it. The flavors were all weak and a bit jumbled.

Ken
Continue reading “Beer Profile: Ommegang’s Fire and Blood”

Beer, Grilled Cheese and Really Clean Clothes

Michael Gordon, Joe Bouvier, Wash HouseNEW YORK (CNNMoney) –

Nestled on a New York side street, a new type of laundromat has opened its doors, offering gourmet cheese sandwiches and drop-off laundry services.

“Our coffee shop is a bar, cafe and a laundromat. It’s a winning formula,” said 31-year old Lee Kerzner, a native New Yorker who opened the Wash House in the East Village last month. “The response from the local community has been amazing. We’re doing more laundry than we ever expected and selling out of coffee.”

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A Glorious Craft Lager Revival Is Upon Us

Note: actual the first sentence is not quite right since other yeasts/organisms are used sometimes. This may be Belgium sours/lambics, or Specialty. There’s even a beer out there using yeast culled off the brewer’s beard-PGA

A beer is either a lager or an ale. Some 90% of beers sold in America are lagers. Yet, around 90% of craft beers sold are ales. While the masses have long-preferred the taste of flavorless “lite” lagers, beer geeks have long gone for the more complex flavors typically found in ales. But, all of a sudden I’m craving lagers. Begging New England friends to procure bottles for me. Recently, en route to Boston, I even took a detour to Framingham so I could purchase my first career growler of lager. My newfound behavior is thanks to Jack’s Abby Brewing and their iconoclastic takes on an oft-misunderstood style.

Lagers dominate the marketplace in most of the world. If you can easily name a beer from a country, it will surely be a lager. Corona in Mexico, Foster’s in Australia, Heineken in The Netherlands, Stella, Tsingtao, Red Stripe, Peroni, Beck’s…and, of course, Bud, Miller, and Coors. The world’s ten best-selling beers are lagers and all taste virtually the same. They don’t need to.

Lagers only differ from ales in that bottom-fermenting yeast is used, they are fermented cold, and necessitate a longer brew cycle (lager is the German word for storage). But “lager” encompasses far more styles than you think, running the gamut from helles and pilsners on the lighter end up to schwarzbier and marzens (Oktoberfests) then onto Baltic porters, dopplebocks, and eisbocks on the more alcoholic end of the spectrum.

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A Beer Judge’s Diary: Judging Forms



 Attention Music City Brewers: the version of this column appearing in the March-April edition of the Music City Brew-Score is a different version from the one appearing here. The MCBS edition, for example, is filled with more local references. There are also other variations that may make reading both interesting.

By Ken Carman
By Ken Carman
  In the last month Millie and I quickly went from pre-judging for NHC (National Homebrew Competition) to AWOG (Amber Waves of Grain) in Niagara Falls, then back to NHC. Of course we’ve participated in many competitions over the years, as well as just this year, using the regular judging sheets all us judges are quite familiar with.
 In this column you will find pictures of the judging forms. On top the sheet used for First Round NHC. Next your standard BJCP judging form, then an example of a highly questionable: supposedly completed, standard form. And the last has somehow been deleted from the server: the AWOG judging sheet from this year’s Amber Waves of Grain, sponsored by Niagara Association of Homebrewers, and several other clubs, if I remember right from my online interview with Terry Felton last year. If I get a chance I will replace it ASAP. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: Judging Forms”

Did Lager Yeast Come from Patagonia?

Patagonian galls such as these harbor the cold-adapted yeast Saccharomyces eubayanus, a parent of the hybrid yeast used to make lager or cold-brewed beer. A field survey has confirmed that the parent yeast S. eubayanus, which somehow made its way to Bavaria 500 or so years ago, is easily isolated in Patagonia. A Wisconsin team recently isolated the yeast, although at low frequency, near Sheboygan, Wis., the first time it has been found in nature in North America.

Patagonian galls such as these harbor the cold-adapted yeast Saccharomyces eubayanus, a parent of the hybrid yeast used to make lager or cold-brewed beer. A field survey has confirmed that the parent yeast S. eubayanus, which somehow made its way to Bavaria 500 or so years ago, is easily isolated in Patagonia. A Wisconsin team recently isolated the yeast, although at low frequency, near Sheboygan, Wis. — the first time it has been found in nature in North America.
And how did it travel to Bavaria hundreds of years ago? OK, this story from beer-history1the University of Wisconsin, Madison on the mysterious origins of bottom-fermenting lager yeast is a little “inside baseball” — for the anorak brigade, as the Brits might say — but it is interesting to brewers and beer lovers.

SCIENTISTS FIRM UP ORIGIN OF COLD-ADAPTED YEASTS THAT MAKE COLD BEER

MADISON, Wis. — As one of the most widely consumed and commercially important beverages on the planet, one would expect the experts to know everything there is to know about lager beer.

But it was just a few years ago that scientists identified the South American yeast that, hundreds of years ago, somehow hitched a ride to Bavaria and combined with the domesticated Old World yeast used for millennia to make ale and bread to form the hybrid that makes lager or cold stored beer.

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Beer Praise and Prose from Maria Devan

me
I didn’t have it yesterday like I wanted because some times life does not conform to our ideas of it or our plans. I had it today and it is sensational. The original whale. When I joined my first beer website THIS is what everyone wanted and I know why.

Ultimately I do not believe in hallucination as truth.
That is a big premise of hype.
The real story goes something like this.
They, the tribe of native peoples, were cooking what they thought was harmless beer
and then it was too late.
They had all consumed the drug.
Imagine that no one around you is in their right mind
and they could not possibly have expected this.
I imagine there was great strangeness.

This beer is a drug. One of the finest.

Thanks @twizzard for the chance to try this great whale.

I didn’t have it yesterday like I wanted because sometimes life does not conform to our ideas of it or our plans. I had it today and it is sensational. The original whale. When I joined my first beer website THIS is what everyone wanted and I know why. Ultimately I do not believe in hallucination as truth. That is a big premise of hype. The real story goes something like this. They, the tribe of native peoples, were cooking what they thought was harmless beer and then it was too late. They had all consumed the drug. Imagine that no one around you is in their right mind and they could not possibly have expected this. I imagine there was great strangeness. This beer is a drug. One of the finest.

Thanks @twizzard for the chance to try this great whale.
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