Month: October 2017

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Snoqualmie Falls Brewing “Bunghole”: The Greatest Brown You Never Heard Of

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Good Lord, the sad Brown Ale…for years, now, I’ve tasted Browns that seemed to be made as an afterthought; something the brewery decided to do mostly because they had run through the entire British Ale canon and said, “Oops, we forgot to make a Brown!” The Brown Ale, that delightful little roadside attraction between the Pale and ESB and Porter/Stout Territory, used to be something that was made with as much care as any IPA or Stout or Sour. Breweries took pride in their Browns. Rogue’s “Hazelnut Brown”, Lost Coast’s “Downtown Brown”, Big Sky “Moose Drool”, Bell’s “Best Brown”, Duck Rabbit Brown Ale, even Dogfish’s flamboyant “Palo Santo Marron”, all made a splash when they were introduced and those – along with the best of the lot, Cigar City’s epic “Maduro” core ale and its daring variations – should have pointed the way for a logical continuation of what was shaping up as a lasting evolution of the style, but then…Nothing Happened.

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A Beer Judge’s Diary: Knickerbocker 2017

Judges hard at work in the brewery. If you see the creep with the long blond hair in the back that’s me with his back facing Ms. Millie.

The winners…
Doug Schmidt 1st Place 23A: Berliner Weisse, Brett the Berliner 5
Michael Chiltern 2nd Place 16C: Tropical Stout, Branko’s Big Chocolate Stout
Forest Crawford 3rd M3B: Spice/Herb/Vegetable Mead Red Bush

For the rest please go to https://reggiebeer.com/ReggieWeb.php?Web=1000234

By Ken Carman

I’ve done this before. We’ve done this before. This is the 3rd Knickerbocker for me, second for Millie. The others were quite a few moons ago, mostly because, living in Tennessee, we’re rarely up here this late in the year; though that will change once we move back.
For many years they were at the Pump House in downtown Albany. To be honest, it was a noisy venue, but it did have some advantages. This year they had decided to have it at a hotel. When competition organizer John Lee showed up for my competition this year; dragging Michael ClarkPywar behind the car on a chain… yeah, that was a joke, Michael drove… I told him they were lucky. Music City Brewer’s first hotel experience didn’t go well. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: Knickerbocker 2017”

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Deschutes “Jubelale”: An Autumn Revelry, Bitches

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I’ve been drinking Jubelale ever since the second edition of it was released, back in the vacuous 1990s, and it was then and remains still the beer that I would choose about 99 times out of 100 when I just want to enjoy the sensual pleasure of consuming a perfect beer idea, perfectly made. And that one time out of that 100? That’s usually a time when I can’t get Jubelale because, defying all logic and reason, Deschutes Brewing sniffily insists on not making Jubelale year-round. (the lazy bastards) I’ve amassed cases of Jubel and nursed them along until summer, many times; even into September, in 2010. Yeah, yeah, HopHead fanatics will cringe at that and whimper than my hops had receded(!), but I Do Not Care. 97% of perfection is closer than anybody else is coming.

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Florida Brewery Crafts Genius Plan To Fill Racist Event With Empty Seats


As if you needed another reason to love beer.

When Richard Spencer and his small group of white supremacist fanboys show up at the University of Florida in Gainesville on Thursday, they may be addressing an awfully small crowd.

That’s thanks to a genius plan hatched by the folks at Alligator Brewing, who have pledged to give a free beer to anyone who picks up two free tickets to attend Spencer’s talk, then swings by the brewery instead.

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Brewers Association Jokingly Seeks To Buy Anheuser-Busch, With A Serious Goal In Mind


Craft brewing’s lobbying association announced today that it’s launching a crowd-funding campaign to buy Budweiser’s Belgian parent company, Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev). It needs $213 billion to do it.
The Brewers Association (BA), the Colorado-based trade organization that represents craft breweries, calls its campaign “Take Craft Back,” and so far it includes a new website, hashtags and videos of brewers and others talking about why craft matters. It’s ostensibly the largest crowdfunding campaign in history, seeking to raise money totaling the value of a company that has just completed the biggest corporate merger in history. But the BA doesn’t seem too concerned with that deal, which brought together the world’s two largest beer producers.
Rather, the messaging focuses on the fact that AB InBev has wholly purchased 10 American craft breweries over the past six years and doesn’t identify these brands accordingly. Many in the craft community consider this obfuscation disingenuous, leading the BA to name products made by the former craft breweries as “crafty.”

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Resuming The Pour Fool: An Aggravated RANT

Just yesterday, I had a very unpleasant back ‘n’ forth with a small brewery (which shall, of course, remain nameless) in the Western part of the US. I had planned to visit the brewery next week and then saw a post from them on Facebook.

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Off Color Brewing Wari


Dig into the past of Peru’s ancient Andean empires with Field Museum Curator and archaeologist Dr. Patrick Ryan Williams and his distinguished team of fellow scientists. For the past seven years, they have led excavations at Cerro Baúl, a remote mountaintop citadel that was the sole point of contact between the Tiwanaku and the Wari—two great kingdoms whose dynamic relationship ultimately contributed to the rise of the Incan.

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A Beer Judge’s Diary: Old Forge BIG Beer and Odd Ale, 2017

WINNERS 2017 OFBB
Best of Show BIG Beer: Evan Rauch’s Baltijes Rasa 9C Baltic Porter
Best of Show Odd Beer: Adam Kugler’s The Great Grape Ape 34C Experimental
2nd Place: Blair Richardson’s and Marti Richardson’s Sour Brown 28C
3rd Place: Luke Esoposki’s Specialty Wood Aged 25C
Honorable Mention: Dean Wiensch’s Dabling a Bit Part Deux 5C German Helles
People’s Choice: Michael ClarkPywar’s Hint O’ Mint 34C

By Ken Carman

Why do I lose track? Nothing to do with high gravity and general weirdness, one hopes. I think this is the 4th OFBBOA, though the first year the name was different. But it could be the 5th. Maybe being stalked by a bear (part one) one year has

devoured some of my memory capacity, competition specific? I’m here, he didn’t eat me because Mr. Bear had more of an interest in a nearby outhouse. A long story where I REALLY don’t want to know the specifics of what he was doing in there. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: Old Forge BIG Beer and Odd Ale, 2017”