Professor Good Ales

Sounds like FUN!- The Professor

Guest brewer Christian Kazakoff, left, of Iron Springs Pub & Brewery in Fairfax, Calif., toasts patrons of the newly-opened Beer Revolution bar in the Jack London Square neighborhood of Oakland, Calif., Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2010. Kazakoff brought samples of his Belgian Dubble style beer as part of San Francisco Beer Week. (D. Ross Cameron/Staff) ( D. ROSS CAMERON )

Written by Jay R. Brooks for mercurynews.com

In other parts of the country, February is traditionally one of the sleepiest months. But here in semi-sunny San Francisco, it’s just the opposite. Yes, I’m talking about SF Beer Week, now in its third big year.

I’m not just a big supporter of SF Beer Week, I’m also a co-founder and organizer — and this showcase for the Bay Area’s beer culture and community is near and dear to my heart. Last year, more than 225 events took place over the 10 days of SF Beer Week. This year’s festivities, slated for Feb. 11-20, promise more than 250 diverse events of every possible variety — specialty tastings, talks, beer-pairings, dinners and even beer brunches.

Join us for opening day at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where more than 35 Bay Area breweries will be pouring unusual, rare and collaboration brews from 5-9 p.m. There will be live music and food booths as well.
Continue reading “Brooks on Beer: SF Beer Week”

(Image courtesy homebrewtalk.com)

Hey “judging” beer is fine. But “snobbery?” Who thought up that crap? Winos? Stouts only with steak, only light Lagers with fish?

Snobs, that’s who thought it up. Not beer lovers.

Scribe has been drinking beer since the early 60s, and not just the kind of swill American brewers insisted on pouring down our throats, thanks to being able to travel out of country a long, long time before you got free crotch grope.

Scribe wasn’t joking when he chose, “Ye Olde,” as a moniker.

Extra Stouts are delicious with fish. A true Kolsch makes a steak taste even better. Or switch them. You choose. Not them. And if it isn’t right, the greatest thing is you get to try again, and again, and again. Some dishes may seem to go best with some beer TO YOU, but that is highly subjective.

If anyone insists on convincing you otherwise, they don’t know $#@! about beer. Tell them to take a bottle of their favorite wine and shove…

Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer, and denies you the beer to cry into.

-Don Marquis, 1878-1937, American journalist

Go to almost any beer site or publication and you’ll run into these claims. Long lists of odd items a beer is supposed to taste like, some of them very weird, funny, yet not the nice kind of “gag” if the damn stuff actually tasted like that. Then you have the fact that the claim a beer has a banana sense that screws actual beers with banana, or at least a yeast that has that characteristic. The attempt is to make beer more wine like with “fine” descriptions that really don’t have a #@!% thing to do with that style of beer. Looks like FUN!!! So Scribe thought he’d try his had at this “unique” style of writing. Thanks to Namraknec for the great mock bottles, since this IS a beer-critique-mockumentary, of sorts. Now as far as Scribe knows neither the breweries or the beer exist, any brewer is free to use these names for their brewery or beer. If you DARE.

The Brewer: The bin Laden Brewery

The Beer:  Smoked and Boiled Baby, bee-atch 5

Boiled Baby tingles the tongue as you cry out more more like a lost child in a WalMart. Crying because you found him and want to take him home. He thinks he is home.

Carbonation, in part, causes the tingle. Or maybe just the diaper hasn’t been changed. Boiled Baby is best aged for that extra aged dirty diaper sense, and extra phenols. Both fruit and vegetable sense: carrots, peas, green beans, squash, orange, milk (yours if you’re Mommy) all smeared into a delightfully brown beverage that’s laced with chunks of wholesome left over Gerber goodness. All roasted over refined camel dung.

YUM!!!
Continue reading “Ye Olde Scribe Presents Beer Blather”

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.

Written by Ken Carman

I remember this even though it came and it went from the shelves I visit quickly, probably because how indistinct it was. How promising it was. A buckwheat ale? Yum. Those of us with fond memories of buckwheat pancakes as kids couldn’t wait to get into… a rather bland, pasty, hop-less, one dimensional quaff?

This is a Belgium import. Brewed by Brasserie De Silenrieux. Belgium? Really? They usually do better than this.

Looking over various reviews on the net I noticed inconsistency pretty much ruled, and not just in taste, but in color, nose and consistency. Since From the Bottle Collection is, by definition, a very past tense commentary, I can’t provide all that, but obviously there’s some production problem and maybe a shipping problem. Both?

Some described it as Flemish sour-like. A few were “bland,” like my reaction. Others “sweet and spicy,” others… well, you get the point. Scores were all over the place.

It’s hard to fairly judge a beer when it either doesn’t ship well or there’s a production problem.

Note: it uncertain how much brewing T.J. actually did. His wife did brew. And he had a slave-brewmaster: Peter Hemings, related to the famous Ms. Sally Hemings, his supposed slave-mistress. Look to the previous post for more information.

From AP and FOX News

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop home is teaming up with a local brewery to launch a new ale inspired by the past.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation says it’s working with Starr Hill Brewery to offer Monticello Reserve Ale, inspired by what was produced and consumed regularly at Monticello.
Continue reading “Thomas Jefferson’s Beer Returns”

Research from Monticello.org

At Monticello, beer ^[1] was a “table liquor” served during dinner, and Jefferson’s earliest designs for his plantation included spaces for brewing and the storage of beer.

In the spring of 1812, while tensions grew between the United States and Great Britain, Jefferson was enjoying his retirement from public life at Monticello. Construction was under way on the brick garden pavilion, and Jefferson embarked on the scientific pursuit of brewing beer – the kind of experiment that he relished. Using malt purchased from his neighbor William Meriwether and hops bought locally, Jefferson was apparently successful in the first brewing attempt at Monticello since his wife had made beer some forty years earlier. On May 12th he instructed his overseer to “bottle the beer.”

Reproduction of clay and glass bottles from fragments found at Monticello

Continue reading “Thomas Jefferson and Beer”

Written by Tara Allen for kristv.com

WASHINGTON STATE – If you’ve ever missed a big play because you were stuck in a long beer line, then one Washington state man has the answer for you. Josh Springer built a tap which fills a beer upside down. The tap fills special cups with a hole and magnet to open and seal the beer at super speeds.

It can fill up to 56 beers per minute.

The “bottoms up” tap is at several spots around the country, including the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas. Springer says he hopes to have it go all the way from Montesano to Madison Square Garden.

Hops from Jordan Family Farms

Posted by pb Rick at pacificbrewnews.com

It’s been three years now since the beer world became familiar with the term Hop Crisis and a lot has been said about the causes and consequences of it since then. On one hand we remember the initial reports blaming the crisis on a perfect storm of catastrophes in the hop world: the warehouse fire in Washington; a devastating hail storm in Europe; growing demand; fewer acres. What followed this storm was a controversial and mostly ignored period where brewers were strongly persuaded into long term contracts with farmers at astronomical prices, creating a miniature boom in hop farms in the United States. With the wonders of hind-sight we can now rationally look back at the crisis that was and hopefully learn to avoid the crisis that is coming.

The Perfect Storm
Continue reading “The “Hop Crisis” Revisited”