Category: Beer

Profiled by Ken Carman

Some dark malt, mostly pale. Very fresh smelling, but mostly elderberries stand out in aroma. The malt sense in background. Very.

Foggy, brown. Almost no head.

Elderberry deluxe with firm malt mouthfeel. More than a tad tart and a hint of sour. Not all that pleasant to be honest.

High side medium mouthfeel. A little harsh and bitter from the fruit. Too long of a boil with fruit, perhaps?

This is kind of like a gruit, tho from what I’ve read they did use hops. You’d never know. Elderberry sub’d for hops, essentially.

Yes, it is palatable, but not as pleasant as one would hope. 3.8. Way too elderberry focused, which makes it hard to continue drinking after a while. I really like the concept, but more focus needed to be had for drinkability.

81 BA, 55/22 RB.
3.8

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.”

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Ken, WHO???

Profiled by Ken Carman

Black as hell with some deep ruby highlights. Light tan foam head, about ½ inch thick. This looks quite dense, and deep. Slight ruby red highlights at the edges in a strong light. Can’t be seen through, other than that.

Aroma: nice deep roast, no hops, fresh smelling and a slight lager yeast sense. This bugger is packed with malts, and a lot of dark malts. But hard to pick them apart. No hop nose.

The magic here is in the mouthfeel and the taste. NOT aroma. DEEP , malt sense. Heavy gravity obvious. Thick. Chewy. Obviously tons of grain and slight lager yeast sense. Getting sulfur way in the background; very light. If not from the yeast, most likely, then water? Does not seem a defect, more just part of the lager sense. The malts are dark, yet not roasty in the same sense as one would get from a stout, or an out of balance Baltic. It’s more like a deep, debittered, dark malt sense.

This is one of the better Baltics I’ve had. It is Baltic, as one would expect from Devil’s Backbone which has several examples listed as a “classic of the style” on the 2015 BJCP guidelines.

85 BA. 97/90 RB.

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.”

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Yes, to the left is Ken Carman. Obviously Ken is a creature of 2 dimensions so he can slip in and out of breweries and sample their wares. He also has been known to sneak into WWE matches and pants the people in the ring just to underline how silly the farce called “pro” wrestling is.

May cut off mid play…

“Like shellfish… there will be a die off…”

Image courtesy cdn0.wideopenspaces.com

The Topic: Where Have All the New Breweries Gone?

Written by Ken Carman

Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay, Clarksville Carboys and Music City Homebrewers, who has been writing on beer-related topics, and interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast, for over 15 years.

Where have all the breweries gone
Long time passing
Where have all the breweries gone
Seems so long ago…
-apologies to the ghost of Pete Seeger

 What I fear: it’s the year 2020 and there are a vast number of empty buildings where once there used to be breweries.
 Couldn’t happen? Seriously, I don’t know the year: I just picked 2020 out of my creative muse, and I don’t know for how long. But sooner or later, like shellfish every spring on the Emerald Coast, there will be a die off.
 I have been so happy as of late. I started homebrewing because, in the early 70s, I discovered the real world of beer doesn’t consist of just knock offs of German Pilsners with rice, or corn, as filler. I didn’t know the Rheinheitsgebot wasn’t written into law simply out of some innate German anal sense of purity. It was because the larger German breweries were trying to crush small breweries by mass producing, get this, brews with cheap adjuncts.
 The Germans legislated against it. America embraced it. So most taps when I first started drinking beer basically had the same beer, with slight variations. Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

 Will the Predator try to kill Ted, Kathy, Millie and Ken as they enter No Li Brewery? 


           Perry Street Brewery
           1025 S Perry St #2, Spokane, WA 99202
           Phone:(509) 279-2820

           No Li Brewery
           1003 E Trent Ave, Spokane, WA 99202
           Phone:(509) 242-2739

           Iron Goat Brewery
           2204 E Mallon Ave, Spokane, WA 99202
           Phone:(509) 474-0722

           Laughing Dog Brewing
           1109 Fontaine Dr. Ponderay ID 83852
           (208)263-9222
           (Though, in another spot on their site, they list it as Sandpoint)

   Ken Carman is a BJCP judge; homebrewer since 1979, club member at Escambia Bay, Clarksville Carboys and Music City Homebrewers, who has been interviewing professional brewers all over the east coast for over 20 years.

 My oldest brother, Ted Carman, escaped to the west coast, and eventually Spokane, Washington, many moons ago, and now also has a cabin in Sandpoint, Idaho. Despite all my tours as an entertainer I have never been west of Texas, and haven’t seen my oldest brother since 2007, the brother who started my life’s adventure into music in the late 50s. So last week we flew out to Spokane via Seattle. What a great opportunity to see him, his wife, his grownup kids and discover… 
 …new BEER!
 Joking aside, what we did do had to be limited. Millie and I weren’t even sure if we were going to get out, and that if we didn’t, no big shakes. The object here was visiting family. Plus, Ted and Kathy aren’t all that geared towards beer hence, even if we did get out, we knew any reviews would be brief.
 Three of the four breweries are in Spokane, one in Ponderay, Idaho. Maybe Sandpoint? I saw both cities mentioned on sites that seemed connected to the brewery. Four was all we had time for, on a three day, mostly family-related, visit. Continue reading “Brew Biz: Werts and All”

Nicole thought she could make it to the end of the Finger Lakes Beer Trail, but she never made it out of Penn Yan. Just another in the thousands of cases where a long-thought-dead, mid-19th century illness claims the life of a craft beer enthusiast.

“We assumed we would encounter hardships along the way.” said Nicole’s traveling companion, Steve. “Snow, pot holes, the occasional Amish buggy slowing down traffic, but dysentery? We did not see that one coming.”

Steve himself suffered snakebite while “breaking the seal” in Burdett, a town known for “Don’t Tread on Me” serpent flags, but not actual serpents.

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HERE