Month: November 2017

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A Beer Judge’s Diary: Music City Brew Off

No pictures this time, more just a review of the first competition we judged at, probably 1999. It’s been said and done before in this case. Let’s have a break. Next year back to more traditional coverage, maybe?

By Ken Carman

Millie and I started judging at Music City Brew Off. I think it was 99. I still have the 98 guidelines, somewhere. Since then we’ve judged all over the east coast, due in part to the fact we’re from upstate NY originally, and I spent close to 30 years on tour doing kid shows and educational activities.
I thought this year went well, with at least one problem that seems to be increasing: the unavailability of judges. The easy thing to do is blame other clubs for not helping out, but it goes both ways. Clarksville’s August competition had one MCB judge there: Millie, she who apparently has just enough masochism to her nature that she and I have been together since 74.
When will you ever learn, young lady? Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: Music City Brew Off”

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Crux “Tough Love” 2017 [Banished] Edition: The Ultimate Refutation of the Asshole Stout

We’ve all seen this before:

American-style Imperial Stout, 30-weight, insane final gravity, totally opaque in the glass, laced with additives, barrel-aged, and, these days, aggressively hopped.

There was an old car joke, from my high school days: “Why do you call a Pontiac GTO an ‘asshole’? Because everybody has one. ”

Same deal here. Everybody has one of these wood-aged assholes and, many times, they really don’t taste much different from their racy analog. When you get hold of a great one, you know it, instantly…I do, anyway.

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HERE

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Boom in sugary pastry stouts shows craft industry forgetting what beer tastes like


Remember that Budweiser commercial that lit up craft beer a few years back?

It mocked people who dared to smell their beer. Who cared to think critically about their beer. Who created such things as pumpkin peach ale. Well, turns out Budweiser might have had a point.

After six hours wandering the aisles of the Festival of Wood and Barrel-Aged Beer last weekend, I have concluded that craft beer is betraying itself. It is forgetting what beer should taste like.

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HERE

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The City of Portland v. Old Town Brewing


Have you heard the one about the big brewery that sends the little brewery a cease-and-desist letter for trademark infringement? Of course you have—it happens every month or two. It’s usually not great press for the big brewery, and sometimes it even metastasizes into a David-and-Goliath morality tale. Last Wednesday, Portlanders learned of a through-the-looking-glass variation on the story. A little brewery owned a valid, long-standing trademark, but a deep-pocketed large city refused to acknowledge it and told the little guys they planned to license the disputed image to AB InBev. And despite having no clear legal avenue to securing these rights, the city keeps dumping thousands of dollars into their effort to defeat Old Town.

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HERE

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Cooking with Beer: Aged Gouda and Doppelbock Fondue

Not long ago I went on one of the more stellar culinary journeys of my life. Mortadella and bowls of tagliatelle di ragù in Bologna. Mounds of culatello and Parmigiano Reggiano in Parma. Vitello tonnato and carne cruda all’Albese in Alba. Every kind of snail dish imaginable in Cherasco, home of the Cherasco Worldwide Institute of Snail Breeding. (Bet you didn’t know there was one).

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