Author: Professor Good Ales

If you’ve been reading this column regularly over the past 17 years, you’ll probably have noticed that one thing I rarely do is write negatively about anything.

I don’t really review beers, and if I do in any way, I only do so if I enjoy them. This is because tastes are subjective and what I may find displeasing might be really tasty to someone else. It’s like any creative endeavor: I may love a certain book or film or song, and you may hate it. It’s just the way it is with anything that isn’t based on empirical data. (A certified beer, for example, can tell you if a beer is well-made according to the style it’s in, but their opinions mean nothing when it comes you whether you should like it or not.)

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Milk Stout with banana, pistachio, cardamom, chocolate, vanilla, and cream

Profiled by Ken Carman

Nose- banana and slight banana peel-like, brown sugary sweet with cream sense, chocolate behind all that, no cardamon, slight vanilla. No yeast sense.

Appearance- obsidian black: no light shines through. Very creamy head that doesn’t last except around the edges of the meniscus. Head coats glass thickly with tan to light brown. The side of glass head lingers.

Flavor- firm alcohol right up front, slight higher alcohol sense. Also high in the balance. Slight roasted barley-like sense in the aftertaste. Again: banana but a slight sense of the peel. This may be hop related. Slight bitter, if so, no flavor. But I think, more likely, it’s the pepper sense from cardamom. I get no pistachio, but pistachio is a very gentle flavor. Not sure how anyone brewing would make that pop out. And I think it would be disguised by many of these additions. Just a hint dry. Balance is to the banana. Reminds me of a banana boat. No yeast sense.

Mouthfeel- the body is actually low side of medium. The pepper sense clings to the roof of the mouth. Banana coats the whole mouth. This quaff lingers FOREVER with banana and pepper/cardamom. Low carbonation tingles the palate. Slightly creamy. Slight warmth. As it warms the higher alcohol (slight) sense vanishes: odd. Slightest astringency due to pepper sense.

Overall- This is an incredible beer. If I were to brew this I’d do it just a little less dry, but worthy either way. The warmer it gets the sweeter it seems to be. IfI were in a competition I might pull a point or two off for lack of pistachio; but how do you get that into a beer? Mild flavor that mixes so magically with the other flavors it seems to disappear like some thing place in a mirror box.

A must try beer.

Untappd: 3.8 out of 5
BA 89% 5 stars
No Rate Beer rating found

4.5

Welcome to the PGA beer rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.”

_____________________________Beer HERE

The history of beer is largely working-class history, which means, given the status of working-class history, much of it is forgotten. When it’s black working-class history … Thus the long love of rural (and urban) working-class Jamaicans – and probably other West Indians as well – for draught porter is a subject you will struggle to find recorded anywhere.

Draught porter was sold from draught porter shops, in existence in Kingston, Jamaica from at least the Edwardian era; from casks in refreshment parlors that also sold fried fish and bread; and also by travelling salesmen, who would call out “draaf porter!” as they travelled on foot around rural villages in the Jamaican interior, carrying a large tin container with a spout, and cans in quart, pint, half-pint and gill (quarter-pint, pronounced “jill”) sizes, for serving. Jamaica also had itinerant ice-cream salesmen, who would sell a blend of “frisco”—ice-cream and “snow ball”, shaved ice flavored with fruit syrup, mixed together—and “a measure of draught porter for the older folks.” A report in the Kingston Gleaner in August 1936 described a treat for the “deserved poor” of Linstead, in the Jamaican countryside 20 miles from Kingston, where an “appreciable sum” was collected by the local Salvation Army to buy and distribute rations of beef, rice, bread, cake, soap and iced draught porter to more than 300 people.

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Beer played a vital role in early civilization’s diet, religion and daily life, and it continues to be enjoyed around the world. None of that would have been possible without women brewers.

“Women absolutely have, in all societies, throughout world history, been primarily responsible for brewing beer,” says Theresa McCulla, curator of the American Brewing History Initiative at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Women in ancient brewing

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Satire, folks, satire- PGA

HELL—A shocking new report has been released which reveals that Hell does, in fact, serve beer, but unfortunately they only serve super-hoppy IPAs that taste like soap.

Longtime sinner and atheist Erick Bowser, who authored the report, died last week wearing an “I hope they serve beer in Hell” T-shirt. Bowser remained hopeful after his death, but he soon came to realize the only beer they had on draught in Hell was of the IPA variety.

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Last night, Congress passed a $900 billion Covid relief bill in which Senators had a tucked in few extraneous goodies, including making permanent a beer tax cut passed three years ago:

Securing permanent federal excise tax recalibration for small brewers has been a top priority for the Brewers Association since 2009. The temporary lower rates were due to expire on December 31 unless Congress extended them or made them permanent. “Inclusion of the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act (CBMTRA) in the year-end legislation is the direct result of the hard work and efforts of the Brewers Association, state guilds, and our member breweries,” said Bob Pease, president and CEO, Brewers Association. “Thank you to everyone for a true community grassroots effort, and to our legislative champions in Congress.”

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Pennsylvania’s Voodoo Brewery has, since its inception, followed a relatively non-traditional path. Despite growing in recent years to become one of the East Coast’s most buzz-worthy breweries, garnering attention for Good Vibes, their West Coast-style IPA, an assortment of Hazy IPAs, and one of the country’s most well-regarded barrel-aging programs, at one point early in their 15-year history, the Meadville, PA-based brewery nearly faced bankruptcy.

However, since brothers Curt and Matteo Rachocki joined the organization as owner-operators in December 2011, they’ve sent the brewery down a path that bucked industry standards, and are now aligned to explode by employing a new twist on a familiar business model.

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The popular Goose Island Brewhouse in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood has permanently closed after two-and-a-half years of operation, the latest fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The 10,500-square-foot brewpub announced the shuttering late Friday afternoon via its Facebook and Instagram accounts. Goose Island Beer Co. is based in Chicago, and has been owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev since 2011. The company wrote Covid-19 has had a “significant impact” on its Philadelphia business.

Goose Island Beer Co. opened its Philadelphia concept at 1002 Canal St. in spring 2018. The local brewhouse was well-trafficked by Philadelphians across the city, Fishtown residents and people attending shows at neighboring music venue Fillmore Philadelphia. The project includes indoor space as well as a large outdoor seating area.

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For the second time, the Pabst Brewing Company is leaving Milwaukee.

The brewer announced today that the Captain Pabst Pilot House, 1037 W. Juneau Ave., located in Milwaukee’s Brewery District – which occupies the original Pabst Brewery complex – will close for good in December.

The brewing system – which was making 4,000 barrels a year – located on the lower level will be moved to Pabst’s now-headquarters of San Antonio.

Pabst shuttered its brewery here in 1996 after 152 years.

The current iteration opened in spring 2017 in a former church building that was once part of the original Pabst Brewery.

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We all know the Big Deal IPAs: The Plinys, Workhorse, Jai Alai, Stone IPA and Enjoy By, Dogfish 60 and 90, etc. etc., etc.

What we do NOT do – ANY of us – is taste every IPA made in the US. Nobody does. So when anyone says, “This is The Best IPA”, they’re just indulging themselves either in homerism or hyperbole. In truth, there is NO SUCH THING AS “BEST”. There is ONLY “best of what I have sampled”.

There are over 8,000 breweries working in the US, now. Most which make an IPA at all usually make more than one. Let’s just say that each one makes three. That 24,000 IPAs. No one has even come close to trying them all. And it follows that there will be some out there that you might like better than the Plinys and Enjoy Bys and the 90s.

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