A Place to Gather and Talk
If you are anywhere near the Adirondacks this August, or September, the Beaver River Beer Tastings are set for the weekend before Labor Day, Labor Day and September 22nd. For more information please click here.
The first picture is the Norridgewock Riverboat: one way people attending can get to Beaver River. The next is part of downtown Beaver River, and the third is the location of the first tasting.
Continue reading “Pictures from the Beaver River Beer Tastings”
The Topic: Wasps and Beer, a New Beer Frontier
Listening to NPR this morning I heard a report about how the European hornet contributes to the complexity of wine. Apparently they are, unlike other insects, able to pierce the skin of grapes. Inside these hornets there’s a yeast they regurgitate into grapes that helps make wine more complex.
Think that’s “gross?†Well if you like alcohol, then you don’t even want to know what yeast are doing that creates alcohol.
Question: a new frontier for brewers?
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”
These are my beer tastings I run every year in the Central Adirondacks. Below the “more” feature you’ll see a picture of one of the entrances to Beaver River. Will post more in a week or two, when this ad is reposted…
Three FREEBeer Tastings!
Beaver River Station, New York and Stillwater, NY
Have a remote Adirondack adventure WITH beer! Beaver River: a town with no roads going to it, is on the eastern edge of Stillwater reservoir, a few miles past Big Moose, NY. Every year Certified BJCP judge and homebrewer, Ken Carman, offers plenty of free beer and interesting information about styles of beer for beer lovers and the beer curious. These are not your average quaffs. Ken collects VERY weird beers. And during the first beer tasting Salt City Home Brewers will be there: homebrew club out of Syracuse, NY. Homebrewers LOVE to discuss beer and, if you want to more learn about homebrewing, you’re in luck! Imagine all this in an idyllic, remote, Adirondack setting: two of the tastings in a town with no roads going to it!
When and Where?
First date: August 25th. Salt City Homebrewers (of Syracuse) will be there with Ken, behind the Thompson family’s Norridgewock in Beaver River Station. Need to do one of the other tastings? Ask Ken: he’s been brewing since 1979, when Jimmy Carter made it legal.
Sept. 1st: in front of,one of the last, classic, Adirondack hotels: Beaver River Lodge,
September 22nd, Stillwater Hotel, Stillwater, NY.
All tastings: 2pm, except Stillwater, which will start @ High Noon. The ghost of Gary Cooper will NOT be there, nor the ghosts of the Earps, a last name that sounds a tad like what you do after drinking beer.
How do I get there, what if I need to stay over?
Well, on the first two dates the Norridgewock Riverboat leaves at 12:30, and you get a tour of the lake too! Return: 3:30. Tasting begins at 2 in Beaver River, plenty of time, (Tasting starts at 12 in Stillwater 9/22.) You could use your boat or take a boat taxi. Walk in from Twitchell Lake. Norridgewock, Stillwater Hotel and Beaver River Lodge all have rooms. Directions to Stillwater, where your beer adventure begins: from Lowville take the Number 4 Road, then right on to Stillwater Rd, From Big Moose: Big Moose turns into a dirt road. Keep going. At the “T†take a right. Stillwater Hotel on the left about ½ a mile. Going to Beaver River? Please call and make arrangements from there in advance. And PLEASE don’t just keep driving past Still water Hotel. Cars don’t swim.
Unless you have a working Amphicar, then lucky (???) you. Note: better bring a Brit mechanic with you just in case.
Want to know more? Looking for contact numbers? The bear you asked was lost too?
Beaver River Lodge @ 315 376 3010 Stillwater Hotel @ 315 378 6470
Norridgewock @ 315 376 6200 Ken Carman @ 315 376 6625
Continue reading “Free Beer!!!”
This was one of my first beers and, to be honest, I drank it for the booze. Someone bought it for me when I lived near NYC. I’m guessing you know the rest of the story.
I didn’t like it at the time, and I’m lucky to have developed a palate for beer after that because most beer was of this style back then. I had it after that first try, but even that was so long ago I can only give you a distant recollection: yes, it was a just a rather dry version of the usual lagers almost all the brewers in U.S. made: America Lager. Not grainy in any sense, rocky head, urine color (sorry), hops: some, but only a tad that added to the dry sense, very well attenuated. With Rheingold it was all about the mouthfeel as far as making it different compared to Bud, Miller, Schmidts, Stroh, Piels or Schaeffer; a few of the big beers back then available near “the city…” as some insisted on calling New York City, as if it were the only city in the world.
Continue reading “From the Bottle Collection: Rheingold”
Sunday River Brewing
29 Sunday River Rd.
Bethel, Maine
(207)824-4ALE
I’m not going to call this a “review.” That wouldn’t be fair to the pub or the brewer, Stewart Mason. That sounds bad for him, but it’s not. Actually I’m very interested in interviewing him and trying his other brews. Besides, I wasn’t there long enough to make an honest assessment, except maybe about staffing and education of said staff.
I was going to see my cousin near Bangor, Maine, coming out of Tilton, New Hampshire. Especially cutting cross country for the first time that’s a long drive. I had wanted to stop by Brays in Maine, but I was running late. I went there years ago and was quite impressed.
But when I connected with route 2 there was this grand looking place called Sunday River in Bethel, Maine.
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”
This week’s topic: Beer Assumptions Gone Wrong
Whomever thought of all these things when it comes to beer probably didn’t realize there are all kinds of palates out there: palates like mine… like yours.
Two examples…
“Summer” beer: and these comments go for all “seasonal” beers. I have no problem with the sales technique of having seasons for beer, but for my palate the idea I might not want a nice Barleywine by a campfire mid-July is nonsense. The idea I have to enjoy a Wheat Beer that time of year equally foolish. As the years go on, and the more I judge, the more I can appreciate. But even now: wheat beer and I respect each other at best. Give me a nice pale ale if I want to go on the light side, or even a sour. Hmmm… “Sour.” That… I have developed a taste for: I think it started when I started brewing rhubarb ales.
Watch the acid! It’s very acidic and, if you like your rhubarb pie like I do: rip the flesh off the inside of you mouth sour, carbonation may insist you call it a “still.” Ironically it has always fermented, it’s just a carbonation killer when rhubarb is at its mouth twisting best.
RICHWOODS, MO. • Les Nydegger bought 55 acres of rolling woodland west of De Soto about 15 years ago, thinking he would use the land for hunting and fishing some day. But earlier this year, after retiring from a quarter-century-long career at Anheuser-Busch, he decided he hadn’t gotten quite enough of the beer business.
So he cleared an acre of forest, stuck 20-foot-tall cedar poles in the ground and planted hops.
“We thought it would be a neat thing to do, especially for the craft brewers,” Nydegger said, standing near his fledgling hop yard, about an hour and a half southwest of St. Louis. “This is my chance to be a farmer.”
Nydegger has company. In the past several years at least three other area brewers and farmers have planted hop yards, joining a surge of new growers around the country who are trying to cultivate beer’s key flavoring ingredient.
Want to read more? Please click…
There was music in the background…
…no, wait, that was a saw, or a drill, or a grinder…
Maybe all three?
The air was filled with the scent of sweet hops…
Well, it will be, but on the day I visited Fat Bottom, the brewery had tanks, kettles and busy workers remodeling what had been Fluffo Mattress into Fat Bottom Brewing. Fat Bottom will sit on the south side of Main Street; probably THE major northeast conduit out of Nashville… turning into Gallatin Road a few miles from here. Yes, “Gallatin Road,” which ends up in, well, um:Â Gallatin… eventually.
I’d been here before. No, not Fat Bottom. Fat Bottom was still under construction: not up and running for the public when I typed this. But a few months ago I wrote about The Pharmacy: a beer and burger place just north east of Fat Bottom… both are in a part of Nashville that’s been spiffing itself up since we moved here in the late 70s. We didn’t know. We had been mostly in “avoiding” mode since the late 70s. Back then all that lived here were grody vampires, werewolves who had been kicked out of London and an occasional visit by the Blob to wipe off excess blob-ery.
I’m joking! Let’s just say this part of East Nashville has come a long way, and places like The Pharmacy have contributed to one great “spiff,” and soon to spiff up the area even more: Fat Bottom Brewery.
Enter brewer and brew dreamer: Ben Bredesen.
Continue reading “Brewery and Brewer Profile: Ben Bredesen and Fat Bottom”
Imagine yourself spending, or losing if you wish, thousands a week just to ride a kiddie roller coaster. Then, practically the next day as if by magic, it becomes the wildest wild mouse imaginable.
That’s only part of the Cool Springs Brewery story, and part of Chris and Jane Hartland’s story. But let’s go back before that.
Do you hear the time machine running, or is that my over watered coffeemaker?
Oops. Hold on.
I’m back.
Anyway, back to the rightfully proud owners of Cool Springs Brewery in Franklin, Tennessee.
Chris and Jane met in 1997 in Norwich, England. Jane had just finished college and she was bartending at Chris’ local. (For you blithering Yanks that’s the local pub: very community based pubs with regulars. Kind of like Cheers only better with an accent. Or do we have the “accent?”) Chris was in the army and had just got through basic training in Cambridge. He would come back to his local from time to time on weekends and drink only Stout.
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”
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