Professor Good Ales

Cider…I admit I have never been a huge fan, especially – My God! – of those bland, boring, low-ambition ciders that are basically just apple juice, quickly fermented, filtered, and bottled. It took me YEARS of tasting – for my old job as a partner and product buyer for the first extensive online beer/wine/liquor website – to even begin to appreciate most ciders. But then, ciders back then were NOT especially interesting, at least the ones our distributors carried. The very first cidery that knocked me for a loop was SeaCider, on Vancouver Island, and after that, Eaglemount, here in Washington. Then came a string of moderately compelling ones; nothing that ever rose to the status of Wow!

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The Brew is Out There!

Last episode we covered beer that isn’t beer – this week we prep for winter’s return by talking the members of the Rhode Island Brewing Society about their epic GOAT Ribs Doppelbock, winner of the Ocean State Homebrew Competition that was brewed at the Guild in time for our HomeBrewCon party! Listen to here their story and how an 8% Doppelbock is the small version!

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I’ve now posted on this website several hundred times and, in maybe a dozen of those, I’ve claimed I was “going to try to make this brief“…

You could live in Las Vegas for fifty years and you will never find a prop bet that is more of a sure thing than, “Steve Body  will fail at ‘making this brief’ “.

I don’t have the Succinct Gene, much as I would like to. Robert B. Parker is one of my all-time favorite authors and he will succinct the ass off a thing. Not me. I’m spiritual cousins with James Lee Burke, another brilliant author who would never settle for fifty words when five hundred will do.

So, when I say I’m going to try to make this brief, the smart money is on giggling.

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What do you get when you take a dedicated homebrewer, an old mill building and a couple of crazy dogs? One very interesting brewery designed straight up with Drew’s tastebuds in mind – IPAs and Saisons and odd things. Drew sits down with Morgan Snyder, owner/brewery/dogdad of Cranston RI’s Buttonwoods Brewery.

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For those breweries that package, an automated bottling (or canning) line is obviously a necessary piece of equipment. And it is actually mesmerizing to watch as bottles (or cans) are fed into the machine, lined up, rinsed, filled, topped, sprayed, and sent off to be packaged with others.

You’ve probably noticed when you’ve been on brewery tours that the employees manning the line wear gloves. This is in part for safety reasons, but it’s also because it’s cold. Standard filling lines run the beer right from the bright beer tanks and into the bottles or cans, and when the beer comes out of the bright tank, it’s anywhere from just above freezing to the 40s Fahrenheit.

That makes sense for the majority of beers—especially for lagers, which thrive under colder temperatures, and even for most ales when it comes to serving temperatures. But for the breweries that practice bottle- or can-conditioning, where yeast is added to a bottle or can to ferment the residual sugars in the beer and thus create a more layered and effervescent beer-drinking experience, cold filling has it disadvantages. Typically, the ale yeasts these brewers use need warmer temperatures to get down to doing their job. So if yeast is added to a package with cold beer, it needs to wait until the beer warms to begin the important fermentation work.

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The First World War ended 100 years ago. It was a cataclysmic event in more ways than one—not just on battlefields in Flanders. Back in the UK, drinkers suffered, too. And their woes lasted long after the Armistice. The war transformed pubs and even beer itself. Not in a good way.

In August 1914, London pubs were open from 5 a.m. until 12:30 a.m., a total of 19.5 hours. It was commonplace for workers to nip in for a quick pint on the way to the factory. That ended when the Defence of the Realm Act (D.O.R.A.) became law in August of that year.

The government worried that munitions workers would spend their days in the pub rather than making artillery shells. Lloyd George, then Chancellor and later in the war Prime Minister, expressed concerns in a speech in Bangor in February 1915:

“Most of our workmen are putting every ounce of strength into this urgent work for their country, loyally and patriotically. But that is not true of all. There are some, I am sorry to say, who shirk their duty in this great emergency. I hear of workmen in armament Works who refuse to work a full week’s work for the nation’s need. . . What is the reason? Sometimes it is one thing, sometimes it is another, but let us be perfectly candid. It is mostly the lure of the drink.”

“The Control of the Drink Trade” by Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1919, page 47.

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The New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) on Wednesday finalized a $1.25 million settlement agreement with Heineken USA Incorporated (HUSA) for 42 alleged violations of the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) law.

The New York fine comes three months after HUSA agreed to pay the largest offer in compromise ever — $2.5 million — to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) for alleged trade practice violations related to its proprietary “BrewLock” draft systems.

The TTB investigation uncovered alleged violations of the Federal Alcohol Administration (FAA) Act, specifically subsection 205 “unfair competition and unlawful practices,” in Florida and later Washington state and New York City between August 1, 2015, and March 26, 2019.

 

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Way too seriously, sometimes, as it turns out.

One of those times involves the Aslin Beer Company owners this week. In an article for Brightest Young Things, Phil Runco dropped the details on the new Alexandria spot, which is now open, and he got plenty of choice quotes that rankled many fans of other Virginia breweries. The one that stood out the most was this one:

“People know us as an IPA and stout brewery, and I know it’s probably a bold statement but I think we could make the best beer of every style on the East Coast,” he says. “It doesn’t scare me to say that. Once we are able to focus on our lagers, we’re going to produce top 3 lagers in the country. That’s what excites me the most: Being able to focus not just on IPAs and stouts and kettle sours but all of the other styles and sub-styles, and executing them at the high standard that people associate with Aslin.”

Andrew Kelley, Aslin co-founder

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