Author: Ken Carman

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

Written by Ken Carman

Barrington Brewery and Restaurant
aka: Berkshire Mountain Brewery
420 Stockbridge Road
Great Barrington, MA 01230
413-528-8282
Brewer and owner: Andrew Mankin

As a kid I traveled a few times through the west side of New England, via Connecticut. I was with my father… on business trips. Not the nicest locations in New England, to be overly polite. And we flew into Boston once, going to… ah, once again, “not the nicest locations…” So when my friend Dell, and his mother Kathleen Setzer, kept asking me to go with them to a camp near Otis, Massachusetts, I avoided it like intentionally exposing myself to chicken pox again.

Boy did I screw up.

The Berkshires are every bit as beautiful as my beloved Adirondacks. But on the plus side, I might never have had the adventure of discovering the Berkshires with an adult’s perspective and going places that simply weren’t around back then, like Great Barrington Brewery.

Great Barrington Brewery; otherwise known as Berkshire Mountain Brewing, sits just a few miles north of dead center Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Duh: hence the name. If you’re coming out of Pittsfield or Lee, Massachusetts you take Rt. 7 straight down to GB, but from Becket it’s route 8 to 23 west to route 7 north. It’s be on the eastern side of 7; midst an antique store and several shops in the Jennifer House Commons.

I met Andrew Mankin the brewer, for the first time, last year. A little tall; thin, he is also the owner and the creative inspiration behind this brewpub. He is not classically trained, yet he brews beers that are stylistically more on the mark than most Siebel/UC Davis/etc. brewers I have met. Unlike too many “classically” trained-only brewers I have met, most of his beers I’ve tried are not only on the mark style-wise, but couldn’t be described as bland, or boring. Last year I shared his Vienna with my beer tasters in Beaver River and they raved about it. As a judge I was impressed with the stylistic accuracy of his Vienna, yet just how individually pleasing of a brew it was. A brew can fit the styles quite well, yet be so boring you wonder if you should drink it, or use it to wash your car seats to give it that pleasing beer scent the officers so love. “Well, I was going to give you a ticket, but the interior of you car is so pleasingly odoriferous…”
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Without intent, I have collected well over 1,000 beer bottles since the early 70s. When something finally had to be done about the cheap paneling in this old modular, I had a choice. Tear down the walls while, oh, so carefully, replacing the often rotted 1X3s. Or: cover them with… The Bottle Collection.

Frog N’ Hound Pub Ale

What possesses a pub/bar owner to have someone brew a bland beer when there’s plenty of “bland” to be had? I mean you’d think you’d want something distinctive, but no… so many: not all, are mediocre’ ale versions of Bud. Showing the owner really doesn’t understand those who love craft beer… or that those who drink bland swill may be convinced to “try” in this case… but their brand loyalty trumps good taste and common sense.

Such is the case with Frog N’ Hound, if I remember right. I am assuming it was brewed for a pub, since I had it at a place of the same name, once again “if I remember right.” Been a while. Sadly I seemed to remember it may have been brewed by the brewer at one of the best brewpubs on the east coast, in Willimantic, CT. If so I can’t fault the brewer: I know him… he’s damn good.

Probably brewed this way “by request.” Not “horrible,” just not worth the sip. Then, on a recent visit to Willimantic, I found out that the main brewer for Frog N’ Hound wasn’t David, thank the beer Gods. Since he was stuck in the brewery I didn’t get a chance to ask what he did know about it, And the bartender acted as if I was as ancient as a mummy for even having quaffed Frog N’ Hound. I didn’t dare tell her about the dusty as a mummy bottles from the Bottle Collection: some from the 60s and 70s.

Oh, wait, I did tell her. See what drinking really good beer does?

Frog N’ Hound had a nice label, but that was about it.

Stop by Willimantic Brewing instead. Oh, and expected to see pictures of Willimantic soon, just to further tempt you to stop by. Anything from their taps would be a far, far better quaff than…

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

Written by Ken Carman

Bandwagon Brew Pub
114 Cayuga Street
Ithaca, NY 14830
607 319 0699

Look! See the awning and the steps leading down; below street level?

That’s Bandwagon Brew Pub down there. Shall we visit?

Bandwagon is the newest addition to brew scene Ithaca. It’s also one of the newest additions to the restaurant scene in Ithaca. Ithaca, NY, sits at the bottom of a New York State finger lake called Cayuga. The hills rise all around, as if Ithaca were set as a valuable jewel… highlighted by gorges and a beautiful lake. “Finger” is quite apt. Back during the last ice age the ice sheets dug deep and long to make finger like lakes in mid-state New York.

Standing on a sidewalk, next to the street of the same name as the lake, we face a delightful task: descending into Bandwagon.
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Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

By Ken Carman

The Topic: The BJCP Exam

Last September I took the BJCP exam again. For those unfamiliar, this is the exam that ranks beer judges. I’ve heard the uninitiated joke and make fun, thinking this is something straight out of one of my least favorite movies: “Beerfest.” Oh, I can see the humor; I just think “Beerfest” is one vast dump on a very serious endeavor: filled with cliche’s and misconceptions. One would think from watching “Beerfest” all beer related events are guzzling affairs attended by alcoholic nincompoops.

That’s just the opposite of the actual process of judging beer where one often assesses color, clarity, head, aroma long before the brew gets to touch the lips. Then mouthfeel is assessed before swallowing. It is, like any form of judging, a deliberative process. Samples are small and pouring more from the same bottle is unnecessary and even discouraged by some some highly ranked judges, unless necessary. The second bottle is not to be opened unless there’s something about the first that demands it be opened.

The test itself has a well deserved reputation of being harder than some engineering exams and those who grade it being exceedingly tough. It’s a well deserved reputation. The majority of your grade is culled from the written part, a far lesser part is drawn from a blind judging of beer samples. I think this is backwards. A beer judge who doesn’t know the various BJCP beer categories by heart can simply use the guidelines when they judge. They are given a copy. But a judge without refined taste buds is a poor judge indeed.
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Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

Written by Ken Carman

I dedicate this column to Drew Patterson who introduced me to Sergio’s. That’s Drew with the beard, watching a beer being poured. Drew passed on May 17th. He will be missed more than he, or even his wife Vickie, ever imagined.

A Review: Sergio’s World Beers

1605 Story Avenue
Louisville, KY 40206
(502) 618-2337
 

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Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

Written by Ken Carman

The topic: Beer in the Roman Empire

 

We beer folks be barbarians!
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Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

The Topic: Behind the Anchor Purchase

Written by Ken Carman

The purchase of Anchor Brewing came as a surprise to me. But I should have seen it coming. Fritz Maytag has been in the biz since the 60s and I’m sure everyone with an ounce of knowledge is familiar with how Fritz took Acme, which was about to go crash faster than Wily E. Coyote using the other: fictitional, Acme product, like some variation on those spring loaded shoes, to catch his nemesis.
Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 10 years.

Written by Ken Carman

The Terminal Brewhouse
6 E 14th St
Chattanooga, TN 37408
(423) 752-8090

I was on tour, in the Atlanta area. Now, I could have spent 29.99 plus, and been 15 miles, at best, from all but one of my gigs. Or, stay 70 miles away and be closer to Chattanooga so I could do a review on Terminal. Never guess what “stupid for beer” did?

Chattanooga, Tennessee sits between mountains, or “hills” if you Rocky Mountain snobs prefer, and from the top of one you can see seven states. A river flows busily by if you arrive from the northwest. Chattanooga is barely north of Georgia if you come up from the south and barely beyond the Smoky Mountains if you come down from Knoxville. Negotiate your way through downtown Chattanooga just right and you’ll find The Terminal Brewhouse. You’ll be immediately impressed by one oddity: not your average brewpub visually. Terminal Brewhouse is like a big, tall, wedge, sitting in downtown Chattanooga. Once upon a time it was The Terminal Hotel; one hopes not during the 1929 crash or maybe the name might have been a bit too accurate? Of course “Terminal” was used here in the sense of serving a railroad.

After all, this is the city made famous by trains and a song. Now you can go to a historical building that served railroad passengers and “chew, chew.”

Sorry. Some puns are just so hard to resist.

The former Terminal hotel was also known as a speak easy for a while during the Great Depression, a greasy spoon and even a courthouse. Then it sat for a while, falling apart: vacant.

But now it’s filled with thirsty quaffers, hungry families and steps leading up to its three floors. So the Terminal building receives no more vacant… stairs.

Let’s go inside, shall we?

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