Category: Front Page

Rauchbier is neither cool nor easy to love. But in a world of fruited slushy sours and pastry stouts, the assertive smoked beer stands apart.
Steeped in history and tradition, yet challenging to appreciate, rauchbier (literally “smoked beer”) has, for much of the craft beer boom, resisted a revival. The style is brewed with malt or wheat that’s been smoked over beechwood or oak, resulting in a beer that’s decidedly not for everyone. But, despite its assertively smoky flavor—or perhaps because of it—rauchbier is having a moment.

The city of Bamberg, Germany, takes pride in claiming to be the birthplace of the style. One local legend tells of a cloister that caught fire and burned to the ground, sparing only the brewhouse and a reserve of malted grain which, having been exposed to smoke, subsequently gave the local beer its distinctive flavor. The tale is mostly hogwash, though; most beer made before the advent of modern malting technology likely expressed some level of smokiness from the kilning process. Nevertheless, Bamberg remains the cultural epicenter of rauchbier, though the style is gaining popularity in a number of brewing circles.

In many ways, rauchbier represents the polar opposite of the current craft beer zeitgeist, which has embraced the mass appeal of fruited slushy sours, soft and juicy New England IPAs and saccharine pastry stouts. The rising stock of rauchbier—whose flavor is divisive and anything but sweet—could be attributed, in part, to an inevitable backlash to the status quo. Paired with a certain underdog status and niche reputation, rauchbier ticks all the boxes of beer snob catnip.

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Over the past going-on fifteen years of The Pour Fool, there is one thing that has never varied, never really waxed or waned at all, and that is people emailing me with complaints, insults, and "corrections" of things I've written. They email me because I refuse to allow nonsense like "You suck! You now NOTHING about beer (wine)(whiskey)(whatever)!!" onto the site and nothing goes on the site unless I approve it. Many people, improbably, have wailed about "censorship!!", as though The Pour Fool is a public utility or the airwaves.

It's not. Continue reading "The Pour Fool: A Brief History of Flaming"

A brewery owner pal of mine in Michigan messaged me this morning, with a link to the page where this message from Larry Bell, founder of Kalamazoo, Michigan’s iconic Bell’s Brewery. You see one of these things and you an feel it coming: Larry Bell is selling his brewery…which many readers of this website take as a definite signal that it’s time to watch Steve Body go ballistic.

And I did…a little.

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Adam, Reuben, Warren, and Grace Robbings/Photo by bizjournals.com

This scene above was the first time I ever heard the phrase, “Stay Frosty“. It probably was for a lot of people. I’m sure the screenwriter for Michael Biehn in “Aliens” probably didn’t dream that up. Dan O’Bannon probably heard it somewhere – being in LA, probably at Venice Beach, as uttered by some surfer dude – but everybody instantly knew what it meant. As a handy alternative to “Be cool!” (“Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary”, doncha know?) it was dead-bang perfect and it stayed with me ever since. I can’t use it in everyday speech, of course, because I’ve never been Cool a second of my life but Biehn pulled it off with a ton of élan, and so have a few others I’ve heard use it.

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Written by Franz Hofer

Scotland is a walker’s paradise of wild and dramatic landscapes. Long-distance trails hug the banks of deep lochs and rugged coastal shoreline. They traverse glens and windswept plains, and pass in the shadow of craggy peaks. You could lose yourself for weeks on end along Scotland’s walking paths and hiking trails, all the while striking that three-note chord “in which the mind, the body, and the world are aligned.”

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People ask me at least two, three dozen times a month, “What’s your favorite beer?“

I’ve been tasting – as in sip half an ounce, swirl in mouth, linger, and spit. NOBODY can do this job and drink a full beer each tasting. You’d have a liver the size of a Kia Sportage within months – somewhere around 1,500 beers a year for almost fifteen years, now. That’s in addition to the several thousand I drank back before I got full-time serious about doing a beverage blog. How in God’s Name can I possibly choose ONE beer, out of something over 25K, as my “favorite”

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 I’m still trying to figure out if I made a mistake. I stepped away from a mini-BOS table because I had what I thought was a prejudice towards an entry. Some considered the entry a tad problematic. My view was different.
 It happens.
 We were judging in the brewery at Star Spangled Brewery in Clarksville for The New South Brewoff. Always a grand time when I can do it, if not a grand time for those who do like Millie, my wife. BTW: apologies to those at NSBO: at least for a while I am getting away from individual reports on each competition. I think it more interesting to judges to bring up judging questions rather than what I judged, number of entries, etc.
 When it comes to one entry, did I make a mistake? I can only give you my perspective; especially when takes on that entry were so different. Continue reading “A Beer Judge’s Diary: A Hoppy Question”

STOP RELEASING PUMPKIN BEERS IN JULY, DAMMIT!
Ok so it wasn’t really all that eloquent, but I know a lot of people feel the same way, so I decided to finally share (for those who don’t know), why we see pumpkin beers hit the shelves earlier and earlier every year.

Psst! Check out our Halloween glass, Dead Men Drink No Ales.

Why are pumpkin beers released so early?
The short version is most people don’t buy a lot of pumpkin beers. The average consumer buys his or her first six pack or two, and then doesn’t purchase any more. That means competition is fierce, and it becomes a race to see who can get their beer on the shelf first. Over time this led to breweries releasing them earlier and earlier to beat others to the punch.

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Written by Franz Hofer

Augustiner is Munich’s retro-hip brewery. That wasn’t always the case. Until relatively recently, Augustiner-Bräu was considered a dusty old brewery. There’s no denying its age: Founded by monks in 1328, Augustiner is Munich’s oldest brewery. But conceptions of tradition change. Today, the brewery’s use of wooden barrels, its retro bottles and labels, its rejection of mass advertising, and its engagement on behalf of Munich’s architectural heritage has garnered the brewery a cult following thanks to its sense of tradition.

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Sam Adams Utopias is a spirited blend of multiple batches of our extreme beers, some held in reserve for just this coveted biennial release. In fact, some of the beer dates back nearly three decades, aging in wooden bourbon casks. Brewers then finish the blend in a combination of Carcavelos, Madeira, Ruby Port, and Sherry Oloroso barrels. This year, for the first time, brewers also aged a portion of the blend in Sauternes French oak wine casks which brings subtle notes of honeyed apricot and caramel to the rich layers of flavor.

“We pioneered the barrel-aging and blending process of Utopias almost thirty years ago and continue that time-honored tradition today,” said Jim Koch, founder and brewer of Samuel Adams. “Since the introduction of Utopias in 2002, brewers have explored uncharted territory with each brew, experimenting with different kinds of aging barrels, new flavors, and different blending techniques. The result is always special, spirited, and worth…

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