Professor Good Ales

Written by Franz Hofer for Tempest in a Tankard

 

If you have any preconceptions about Genesee and the Genny Light your parents drank, set them aside. Genesee Brewing Company, the venerable Rochester brewery that has been rolling out barrels of beer since 1878, has started serving up heavy-hitters like an Imperial Black IPA in their recently-opened Genesee Brew House overlooking High Falls.

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Elysian Brewing Co. loves their pumpkin beers. The Seattle-based brewery produces and bottles four pumpkin-themed beers annually—Night Owl pumpkin ale, The Great Pumpkin imperial pumpkin ale, Dark o’ the Moon pumpkin stout, and Punkuccino coffee pumpkin ale—as well as various other tap-room offerings that showcase the orange gourd. They also hold their annual event the Great Pumpkin Beer Festival, now in its tenth year.

We caught up with Elysian founder Dick Cantwell and head brewer Steve Luke to ask for some tips on brewing beer with pumpkin. Here’s what they shared.

1) Use pumpkin throughout the brewing process.

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Profiled by Maria Devan for PGA

This poured a lovely orange with yellow hues in it and good clarity. Had a fat head that fell slowly and left lace. Simply gorgeous in the glass. Reminds me of a pretty girl with a stature if you will.

Nose is tempting with a hefty hit of toasted bread crust first that gives way to some light but luscious caramel. A faint bit of herbal on the nose a small hint that the very kernel of this grain might just be a bit nutty.

Tastes just like that. Smooth, malty, a grainy little edge and a light little herbal. Sweet too. Rounds out at the back palate with a faint bitter. Drying, dry and lingers with a bit of malty sweetness. Lovely, clean and very good. Medium mouthfeel that is thin meaning not thick or heavy.

Perfect!

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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Maria Devan lives in Ithaca, NY and is frequent reviewer of beer and a beer lover deluxe.

I’ve yet to meet a beer style that has more people either lovin’ or hatin’ on it than pumpkin beer.

This delicious and seasonally-based style is so well liked that in the month of October it rivals the popularity of India pale ale, the top-selling craft beer style in supermarkets across America. In fact, pumpkin beers are so popular that for the first time ever, the style will have its own dedicated category at the 2014 Great American Beer Festival. Yet for every fan, there’s someone else defiantly taking a stand against it.

Why do some beer lovers have their knickers in a bunch over pumpkin beers? Is it the fact that pumpkin beers (along with the rest of the seemingly endless pumpkin-flavored foods and products) are often released before fall properly begins? Or is it the flavor combination of pumpkin and pie spices that creates the divide? Maybe it’s the way some brewers use alternative forms of pumpkin that are not picked fresh from the vine and put straight into the kettle?

 

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Syracuse’s Empire Brewing Co. is facing an attack from a galaxy far, far away — Hollywood.

The Armory Square brewpub recently applied for a trademark on a beer it calls Strikes Bock. Lucasfilm, producer of such movies as Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, has filed a legal notice that it opposes the trademark and the name.

Empire has been making the beer for about seven years, said owner David Katleski, but never applied for a trademark because it was only ever served on tap at the brewpub.

But Empire is now building a larger brewery in Cazenovia, where many of its popular beers will be bottled and labeled for sale in stores, restaurants and bars. That led Katleski to seek a trademark.

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A Finnish brewery has made good on its 2013 promise to recreate a 1840s-era beer salvaged from the bottom of the ocean: The Guardian reports Stallhagen brewery is ready to release Stallhagen 1842 and Stallhagen 1843, beers that scientifically re-create the brew discovered on-board a Finland shipwreck (the shipwreck, discovered in 2010, dated back to 1842). Stallhagen’s brewmaster teamed with scientists from the Leuven Institute for Beer Research to determine the specific types of yeast and “living lactic acid bacteria” used in the original beer, which researchers concluded originated from Belgium. The modern-day recreation results in a beer “much sweeter than modern brews because of the way the malt was produced.” (Stallhagen CEO calls the flavor profile “Champagne-like,” noting that the light and subtle flavors represent how “luxury beer tasted in early 1800s.”)

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Maybe it’s the cooler, darker afternoons. Maybe it’s the wind, rain, and drifting foliage. One way or the other, fall makes us craft autumn beer styles—märzen, a.k.a. Oktoberfest, especially. But one oft-overlooked beer style (or collection of related styles, actually), is the humble brown ale.

Derived from English, German, and Belgian origins, the tawny colored ales get their color and malty backbone from roasted barley. They range in flavor from hoppy to sour to biscuit-bready and even nutty.

What’s your favorite brown ale? Tell us below.

And read on for five recommendations of five different brown ale styles from around the country.

Rockies
La Folie – New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, CO
A Flanders oud bruin, or “old brown” style beer, New Belgium’s La Folie—a mainstay of their adventurous Lips of Faith series—varies from year to year, blend to blend, but always rocks a pleasant tart-tannic tang from the interplay of oak, cocoa-like malts, and souring lactic acid. It’s been a pathbreaking beer for over a decade. Seek it out. (7%abv)

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