Name

I was looking forward to this one.

At 5.9%, it was the most mellow of the bunch. No spices. No tricks to cover up the flaws. Just a straight, dark lager, and a deceptively difficult one to brew.

I’d say Corey Martin did all right with A Dark Night in Munich. The homebrewer who won the rights to have his beer sold as 33.3 percent of the Longshot Series winners six pack produced a toasty, malt-heavy lager.

The alcohol was a bit high for the style and there was a strong cherry flavor that seemed distracting. Otherwise, this was a welcome part of the collection.

Aroma (9/12): Toasted bread and dark fruit from the malt. Undetectable hop aroma. There’s a slight tartness, like cherries. No diacetyl.

Appearance (3/3): Deep copper brown with red highlights. Good clarity. Full tan head with good retention.

Flavor (15/20): Toasty and big malt aromas, like a multi-grain bread. A little bit of caramel. Moderate hop bitterness and no hop flavor. Slightly grainy. No DMS or diacetyl. Overall, clean lager fermentation. Warming alcohol heat in the finish.

Mouthfeel (4/5): Medium bodied and grainy. Alcohol heat is warming but not hot. No hop astringency. No diacetyl.

Overall Impression (7/10): This is a nice dark lager. The aromas are a bit fruitier than I expected, but this comes from the malt rather than esters from fermentation. Also, the alcohol is on the high side, bumping it out of style. But overall, this is a well-made beer.

Total Score: 38/50

The morning session.

There was a neuroscience PhD candidate in the room. Some guy from Holland was at the next table. The executive director of the local Humane Society sat in front of me. An accountant at a Burlington-area smokehouse sat at the end and asked questions.

These were among the 40 or so people who’d gathered on recent Saturday at 9 a.m. in a Knights of Columbus hall in Burlington, Vt. The occasion? Drankin’ beer.

May 5th was the judging date for the Third Annual Greg Noonan Memorial Homebrew Competition, named in honor of Vermont’s patron saint of beer who died in 2009 after a brief battle with cancer. (The winners can be found here.)

For me, this would be the first competition I’d ever judged. And beyond a basic familiarity with the rubric (the same point system is used for the reviews on this website), I had only the vaguest notion of what I’d be getting into.

I arrived to find 230 beers needing to be judged (68 had been prejudged in the days prior) and a crowd of confident veterans, patchy bearded hipsters and earnest newbies like me who couldn’t wait to begin.

The conversations were pure geek. In some ways, it was like a dressed-down Star Trek convention. But, instead of Klingon, we spoke in abstruse exchanges of mash temperatures, hopping rates, Belgian yeasts, Brettanomyces, open fermentation, the problem of green bottles and how to re-cultivate yeast from a bottle of Orval.

Intimidating? Yes. All of these people seemed smarter than me. Plus, I was fighting a cold and worried my compromised palate would make a mockery of this event. Judges are paired with at least one other judge, with whom they taste and evaluate beers. Your scores don’t have to be identical, but should come within a few points of each other. If paired with a grand master judge (as I was), I would certainly be revealed a fraud.

Fortunately, that did not happen. At least, I didn’t leave feeling embarrassed. Even more, I learned a few things, which made the 4-hour round trip to northwestern Vermont worthwhile. I’m in no position to say whether this is what every competition looks like (in fact, I’m pretty sure they don’t), but here’s what I took away from the day:

1. Trust Your Tastes — My morning was spent judging American Ales with a red-faced veteran who had 21 years of competition experience under his ponytail. He knew his beer. He had the styles down pat and could not only assign scores but explain his rationale. I worried that when we compared notes, our perceptions would be entirely different. Turns out, we were almost always within 1-2 points of each other.

Later, when judging the “Best Of” in the category, a table of four of us narrowed down the top-3 to two pale ales and an amber. The two pales monopolized the first 10 minutes of discussion. It seemed certain that one of them would be the winner. Then, I sheepishly said I liked the Amber. First, there was a grunt of acknowledgment. Then people dipped back into their samples. Nods of approval. “Yeah, that’s a nice beer.”

The Amber ended up winning.

2. Technology Is Your Friend — Many of us had smart phones, and we put them to wise use. There are 23 BJCP categories, each with multiple subcategories. Even a judge with decades of experience would struggle to keep all of that in her head. And so, this is where the BJCP app came in handy. Rather than shuffle through pages of style guidelines, the app allowed us to quickly look up information needed on flavor, aroma, color, mouthfeel — whatever we needed, really. It was efficient and saved space on the tables that were crowded with dead soldiers (empty cups), bread, water and dump buckets. Just be careful not to spill any beer on the screen.

3. No One Likes a Jerk — Judging beers is not about ripping a brewer’s ego in quarters. The goal isn’t to be Anthony Lane; it’s to provide feedback to help someone get better. Even on the American ale that I scored an 17 –  serious problem with phenolics and some lactic acid contamination issues — we focused on explaining the scoring and providing thoughts for improvement. I could have said it tasted like a burnt tire soda with a shot of Balsamic, but that’s just not helpful. And besides, I’ve made batches that were worse.

4. Judges Are Not Gods and Scores Are Not Gospel — We may have BJCP credentials, and that rightfully gives our opinions some weight. But no judge is a god. This is why we evaluate beers in pencil, not pen.

The Grand Master Judge with whom I was paired in the afternoon was a perfect example. There were several beers where we were 5 or 6 points apart — that’s pretty far. No sooner had I begun to erase than he said, “No, I think you’re right about that. I’ll come down a point or two.” As a beer taster, he is worlds apart from me. If beer drinking were a martial art, he would be a ninja. I, meanwhile, am still in an after school Taekwando class. Yet, he was more than ready to hear other opinions and turn his eraser to the page if needed.

You could say that he, and everyone else in the room for that matter, were judges still in search of enlightenment.

Name

Last weekend’s homebrew competition got me fired up about what some of the world’s greatest amateur zymurgists are up to. And, as luck would have it, Samuel Adams’ Longshot Series recently hit the shelves.

I’ll be spending the next three weeks reviewing the winners in this sampler pack. Until I took my first sip of the Five Crown, I had high expectations.

On the up-side, the beer is a beautiful thing to behold. Thick, mousy mocha head, impressive lacing and obsidian black. But the flavor hit me with a weird metallic flavor that had me double-checking to make sure my mouth wasn’t bleeding. (It wasn’t.) The acidity of the specialty malts got in the way. If they’d eased up just a bit, the improvement in the flavor would have more than made up for any lost color.

Ah well. At least it isn’t boring. Which, after all, is kind of the appeal of homebrewing, right?

Aroma (9/12): Dark chocolate, raisins and stone fruit. Hints of caramel and malted milk balls. A little bit acrid from specialty malts. No hop aroma that I can detect. No DMS. Slightly roasty, but subtle. Alcohol is somewhat evident but not solventy. Smooth and not as intense as I expected.

Appearance (3/3): Deep, opaque black with large three-finger mocha colored head. Foam retention is impressive, especially for alcohol level.

Flavor (14/20): Metallic off flavors really get in the way. Acrid specialty malt characteristics. Roasty, hints of chocolate. Hop bitterness is medium. Alcohol heat comes through as warming but not hot. Little hop flavor. No DMS or diacetyl. Hop bitterness gives impression of a semi-dry finish.

Mouthfeel (3/5): Full bodied, chewy and somewhat grainy. Big carbonation and warming alcohol. Low hop astringency.

Overall Impression (6/10): A beautiful looking Russian Imperial Stout that unfortunately misses the mark on flavor. The metallic off flavors really got in the way, enhancing an acridness from the specialty malts that was very unpleasant. Otherwise, this is an OK beer, with appropriate roastiness and hop bitterness.

Total Score: 35/50

By this, I’m thinking of the $5-$7 six-pack area, typically ho-hum attempts at porter, IPA, pale ale standards. Saranac and Yuengling come to mind. So does Narragansett here in New England.

Much as I love my high-end, expensive experiments, sometimes I just need something cheap to bring to a party or sip while watching the game. Call it the “high-low end.” Not quite Stone or Sierra Nevada, but not Milwaukee’s Best either.

Lately, there’s been some evidence recently that these high-low end beers are gaining popularity.

Last week, the world’s largest beer company, ABInBev, said North American beer sales were up 1.2 percent by volume, according to the Wall Street Journal. It may seem like trivial growth, but then consider that the company has consistently been losing ground in the U.S. for the past couple of years. This time last year, AB InBev had lost 3.4 percent, according to the Journal. The three months before that, it was down 4.5 percent.

What accounts for the turnaround? Bud Light Platinum.

“The main drivers of this result were our strong commercial plan to start the year, solid NFL and Super Bowl initiatives in partnership with our wholesaler network and the rollout of the new and exciting innovations led by Bud Light Platinum,” said CEO Carlos Alves de Brito during the earnings call. “Bud Light Platinum STRs reached more than 0.5 billion hectoliters in just 2 months. And according to our estimates, it helped drive 64 basis points of total share growth for the Bud Light brand family.”

For anybody who doesn’t know, Platinum was one of ABInBev’s attempts (another being its purchase of Goose Island one year ago) to steal back some of the consumers it has been losing to craft beer, which has grown by volume every year since 1969, though it remains at just over 5 percent of the market. ABInBev took its most popular brand, Bud Light, and bumped up the alcohol to 6 percent. To what extent this improves the flavor, I don’t know. But we are left to assume that it is better.

Apparently, the pitch is working. I’ve never tasted Premium. But it falls within, I think, a kind of sweet spot within the broad beer market.

I’ve been thinking about how the sustained economic sluggishness would affect the craft beer industry, and while there’s little evidence to suggest pricier high-end labels are suffering, there does seem to be a bit more interest in the middle tiers of the beer market.

Narragansett, Saranac and Yuengling have also been looking strong. Matt Brewing in Utica, N.Y, which makes Saranac, moved up one spot on the top-50 U.S. craft brewers list released last month, going from the 7th largest by sales volume in 2010 to number 6 last year. Yuengling stayed strong at number 4 on the top-50 overall (craft and macro), and Narragansett this year made its debut on the rankings by coming in at number 50.

Craft beer’s appeal, in part, is that it is an affordable luxury. A really nice beer and rental movie together are still less than you’d pay for a single theater ticket.

But how long will craft stay affordable? Year-round offerings from the largest craft brewers — Samuel Adams, Sierra Nevada, Brooklyn — are easily $8.99 for a six pack and up, depending on where you live. Specialty beers? Nearly as expensive for a 22 oz. That’s not bad, but it is approaching the point where I’m thinking carefully about how badly I want this. And, personally, the prices are inflating faster than my paycheck.

Narragansett, meanwhile, is $8.99 for a six-pack of pint-sized cans (the equivalent of  $6.74 for a standard sized sixer). Plus, the beer doesn’t completely suck. The bock and porter I’ve found tasty. Certainly worthy of having for a barbecue. Bud Light Premium is $5.99.

Based on reviews I’ve read, I’m not sure I’d shell out money for ABInBev’s stab at craft. At least, not while I can afford the better stuff. But if things stay financially tight for a while, sure, I’m sure there’d come a point when I’d give it a chance.

I doubt I’m the only one.

“I was brewing an English Mild Ale and chilled it in the sink next to an open compost container,” said Russell, the “Vermont Homebrew Guru” and author of North American Clone Brews. “The beer got infected, I can only assume from the proximity of rotting fruit, coffee grounds, etc.”

What began as a sessionable English brown ale became “an excellent Oud Bruin, not far at all from a Rodenbach Grand Cru clone.”

So, Scott turned lemons into lemonade. But then, he’s a superb brewer with decades of experience. For the rest of us, pulling off a quality sour beer with the desired balance of tartness and other malt/hop/yeast characteristics is a high mountain to climb.

I’ve been thinking about the challenges of brewing sours since a recent visit to the Flying Goose Brewpub, where brewer Rik Marley waxed on about his Berliner Weisse. There was some debate about how successful the beer turned out, but I’ll say this — the guy has stones.

Sours – a broad category that includes the refreshing German Berliner Weisse, the fruity and winelike Flanders Red,  and distant Belgian cousins Oud Bruin, Lambic (straight and fruit varieties), and Gueuze  – are unpredictable and not for the timid brewer or drinker.

The bacteria causing the “sour” can easily infect a brewery — you should never plan on using that equipment, especially tubing, for anything else, Russell said. He learned the hard way.

But, a bold spirit is often rewarded, as was Russell when he let his English Mild adopt the rich sweet-and-sour profile of an Oud Bruin. Sour beer consumers will discover layers of complexity that they never knew existed and flavors they never knew they enjoyed. “Barnyard,” “goaty,” “horse blanket” blend with “sour cherries,” “green apples” and even “honey” to offer something unique.

Serious beer drinkers should give each subcategory of sour a chance. But for homebrewers, are they worth the effort to brew them? Eh…like anything, brew them only if you actually enjoy them. They take patience. Lambics are aged for years and all sours bring the potential to infect your equipment. Plus, you’re going to have 50 bottles of this stuff, so you’d better want to drink it.

A relatively smaller portion of craft beer drinkers enjoy sours. Russell acknowledged that he wasn’t a huge fan, though he does enjoy the occasional Gueuze or Kriek.

Sours aren’t beers that many American brewers, large or small, offer in regular rotation. But every now and then, you get someone like Marley who just can’t resist.

Rik Marley checks a brewer's manual at the Flying Goose Brewpub

Marley confessed that he was super paranoid when making his Berliner Weisse. He also said it was a fun beer to make. He used a step mash, let it sour, and then commenced with brewing when he felt it was sufficiently “infected.”

“Technically, it was a lot of fun,” he said.

Brewing a Sour

Russell makes a batch of lambic every summer, 10 gallons that he splits between three or four different seasonal fruits (cherries, blackberries, blueberries, currants, whatever is ripe at the time, he said.)

There are a couple of different ways to get the “sourness,” including adding lactic acid to the brewing water or doing a sour mash. I won’t get into the specifics of a sour mash, but if you’re interested, check out this article in Brew Your Own magazine.

Russell doesn’t do a sour mash, nor does he add acid. Rather, he lets the yeast do the work, adding the White Labs Belgian Sour Mix to the secondary with fruit for his lambics.

Another homebrewer, Aaron Brown, has tried several different ways, which he recently shared with me. He doesn’t claim to be an expert, but here’s what he did. (FYI — method 2 seemed to be his preference, though he hasn’t yet tasted the third batch, as it is still on fruit.)

All the following were five-gallon batches:

(1) Peche lambic. 8 pounds of pitted, skinned Pennsylvania peaches that I froze and added to a (probably) 60/40 pale malt-wheat malt base. White Labs Belgian sour mix was the only yeast.  I learned the importance of waiting for full attenuation before bottling a sour with this one.  A few corks popped that winter.  Wild yeast will keep working forever.  This one was only mildly sour.

(2) Soured Red Ale, April 4, 2010.  I saved two gallons of mash water and the grist from the recipe below and let both sit warm in a closed cooler on the porch April 11-13, 2010.  It stank like pediococcus and wild yeast probably should after that point.  I don’t remember the exact temperature in the cooler, but it was probably around 120 dropping to 80 over the course of a day and a half.

10# Pale Malt
1/2# 60L Crystal
1/2# 40L Crystal
3/4# Dextrin Malt
2 oz. Roasted Barley
1 oz. Peated Malt

That was added to the kettle with the first runnings of another mash:

5# Lager Malt
1# Flaked Maize
1 1/3# Acidulated Malt
1/4# Flaked Wheat

60 minute boil (stank up the house) with 1/2 oz of Saaz hops at the beginning.

Yeast Blend: Belgian Sour Mix 1 and Saison I; dregs from Lindemann’s Gueze, my 2009 peche, Ommegang’s biere de mars, Monk’s cafe, Liefmann’s kriek, and some sour stout from Mikkeler.  Aged on maybe 1 oz. of Hungarian medium toasted oak.  Bottle seven months later.

Initial tasting: too much funk.  Worried about vinegar.
About a year old: more well-rounded, effervescent
Two years old: lost its carbonation and tasted like a real, still lambic.  I just submitted it as a straight, unblended lambic in a competition, and we’ll see what others think.

(3) Split batch fruit lambic, October 29, 2011

6# Bohemian Pils
1# Acidulated Malt
2# Unmalted Belgian Wheat Berries
1# Flaked Oats
1/2 Cup All-Purpose Flour Sprinkled atop Grist
Protein rest, 2 gallons @120 degrees for 30 minutes
5.5 gallon mash @ 150 degrees for 75 minutes (at the 30-minute mark drew off 2 gallons, brought to a boil, and returned to raise mash to 155 degrees)

90 minute boil with 1 oz. wild whole hops.  Added 1# cane sugar with 30 minutes left

OG: 1052
Fermented primary with Burton Ale Yeast
After 10 days, split batch into two 3-gallon carboys.

Carboy 1: Belgian Sour Mix Vial, 32 ounces of wild grape juice
Carboy 2: Belgian Sour Mix Vial, 4 pounds previously frozen raspberries, 1/4 ounce dried elderberries boiled in a bit of water

I might keep these running through the summer and add another batch of fruit to them for another year of aging.  Again, check out the Mad Fermentationist for someone who knows what he’s doing.

Additional Resources

Brew Your Own article on Sour Mashing Techniques

Vermont Homebrew Guru “A Belgian State of Mind”

The Mad Fermentationist

Name

The sales clerk told me that this was the most unusual beer he’d tasted. Well then. Sold.

This Austrian beer is made with barley, spelt and two of the oldest grains in the world — Emmer wheat and Einkorn wheat. But where those grains come from is almost as important. They are grown on the Meinklang biodynamic farm, where pesticides are shunned and an astrological approach to farming known as Demeter is embraced.

I’m not sure to what extent the stars aligned to make this beer, but I can say with confidence that it came out pretty well. This is a clean, malty beer with a crisp finish and moderate alcohol that makes it perfect for warm afternoons. It’s not the most unusual tasting beer that I’ve had, and I’m not sure I’d plunk down almost $4 for another bottle. But if kolsch is your bag, you could do a lot worse.

Aroma (10/12): Bready wheat, low fruity esters. No hop aroma. Nutty and some light toasted aroma.

Appearance (3/3): Pale straw color, very clear, close to brilliant. Large fizzy white head and brisk carbonation.

Flavor (17/20): Bready wheat malt. Nutty. Light toast. Low hop bitterness and slight earthy hop flavor. Clean fermentation. Alcohol is moderate, but is warming in the finish. Crisp.

Mouthfeel (4/5): Light body, dry finish. Brisk carbonation. Warming alcohol in the finish.

Overall Impression (8/10): A crisp, dry and refreshing kolsch suitable for hot summers. Alcohol comes through stronger than it perhaps should.

Total Score: 42/50

Berliner Weisse at Flying Goose

There were few moments during the evening when Rik Marley was at a loss for words.

One of those moments came when a customer at his Flying Goose Brewpub said she did not enjoy the Berliner Weisse. Indeed, she sent it back.

A pause. Then…

“No way!” Marley shot back, his shaggy hair flipping back as he recoiled from the insult. “It is impeccable. I don’t accept that.”

Marley had just finished explaining that the Berliner Weisse — a sour, low-alcohol German beer — was his favorite among the New London, N.H. brewpub’s ample menu of 17 beers.

Rik Marley checks a brewer's manual at the Flying Goose Brewpub

Pale straw in color, light in body and booze (3.2 percent) and served with the traditional accompaniment of  raspberry syrup, Marley’s Berliner Weisse represented a professional accomplishment. He’d wanted to make the beer since he tried the Bruery’s Berliner Weisse several years ago. That beer (“F&$#ing awesome,” he said) was crystal clear, tart and dry with virtually no body, he said. Tasting it was a revelation.

“It was like, oh my god,” he said. “This is perfect.”

I won’t go so far as to say that Marley’s Berliner Weisse is the best I’ve tasted. I do, however, respect any brewer willing to put this style on the tap list.

Rik Marley, brewer at the Flying Goose Brewpub in New London, NH

Berliner Weisse, which was called the “Champagne of the North” by Napoleon’s troops, can be technically challenging to make, requiring some tweaks to traditional brewing methods.

Some brewers let the mash sit overnight to “sour” or introduce bacteria directly into the fermenter. It is also common to do a shorter boil, or even no boil at all, (lest you eliminate all the good “contaminants”) and throw hops directly into the mash. Sanitation is also a major concern, as the bacteria could easily infect other beers.

And, as if this weren’t enough reason to dissuade even the most adventurous brewers, there isn’t a real big market for Berliner Weisse.

Two years ago, I visited Milly’s Tavern in Manchester, where the brewer had a Berliner Weisse-style beer called “Bold Horizons.” I ordered a sample. The waitress tried to talk me out of it.

“Oh no. Don’t get that,” she said. “Everybody hates it.”

Marley sports casual footwear in the brewery.

When I insisted, she even brought over a co-worker to talk me out of it. Huh? This brave brewer was not only fighting an uphill battle of technique and popular taste, but he was facing friendly fire? Needless to say, Bold Horizons is no longer on the menu.

Other small batch brewers such as White Birch have tried — and, in my opinion, failed — to make a decent Berliner Weisse. Hopfenstark in Quebec brought a decent Berliner Weisse to last year’s Vermont Brewers Festival. Perhaps my favorite comes from the Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei Bayerischer Bahnh brewery in Germany.

And then there is Marley’s Berliner Weisse. I only tasted it with the Raspberry syrup and, so, don’t feel like I could offer an honest verdict on how well-crafted it is. Doing so would be like charbroiling a nice cut of  Kobe beef, slathering it with A1 sauce and then critiquing how the farmer raised the cattle.

The person who’d ordered — and sent back — Marley’s unadulterated Berliner Weisse eventually changed her mind. After a second sample, which benefited from the addition of the Raspberry syrup, she told Marley that she enjoyed it.

“Now you have to take back that one you sent back,” he yelled, pointing to the bar. “Because that was my baby you poured down the drain!”

Kaiserdom (Bamberg, Germany)

Smoking was a habit I gave up in graduate school, but on some days, I find the smell oddly pleasant. It signals nice weather, camp fires and drinking beer in the Adirondack chair.

Well, fortunately, I’ve been able to resist the occasional craving for a cancer stick and, instead, I get my fix via smoked beer.

Smoked porters, smoked stouts, rauchbier and Scotch ale (though smoke is not always present in Scottish brews.) Much like Belgian sours, smoked beers seem to be a line in the sand among beer drinkers — people either love them or hate them. But I’ve been seeking out the fiery aromas of burning beechwood for the better part of winter and spring.

Just a little background — although I’ve heard of homebrewers using liquid smoke, the best smoked beers derive their flavor from smoked malt. And, typically, brewers go with Weyermann malt from Bamberg, Germany, the epicenter of rauchbier. The grains are smoked over hardwood, preferably beechwood, which imparts a slightly bacony flavor. It is then included in the mash.

Rauchbier at Spezial (Bamberg, Germany)

After my trip to Bamberg, I really got into rauchbiers. I brewed my own version — which came out surprisingly well — and snatched up Schlenkerla as often as I could find it. This brewery is one of the oldest in Bamberg and is known worldwide for its rauchbier.

Schlenkerla’s Marzen is a dark and malty lager. No hop aroma, and the smoothness of the lager yeast really gets out of the way to let the smoked malt come through. Although a modest 5.4% alcohol, the beer is powerful stuff, with a smooth bacon-like flavor that leaves a strong impression. All the other breweries in Bamberg — Spezial, especially — also produce world-class rauchbier.

As far as domestic brewers, Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vt. makes one of the best rauchbiers I’ve tasted. They were serving it at the Vermont Brewers Festival last summer. For those looking for a less frontal assault of smoke, I’d recommend Alaskan Smoked Porter or Stone Smoked Porter.

While searching out other recommendations for smoked beers from North America, I tripped across this Top-9 list* on beerinfo.com:

1. Z Lager – Fort Collins Brewing – Colorado
2. SmokeStack Lager – Maui Brewing – Hawaii
3. Fireside Ale – Weyerbacher Brewing – Pennsylvania
4. Church Key Holy Smoke Scotch Ale – Church Key Brewing – Ontario
5. Cone Smoker – New Albanian Brewing - Indiana
6. Smokestack Heritage Porter – East End Brewing – Pennsylvania
7. Calumet – Brasserie Bièropholie – Canada
8. Scarlet Fire Rauchbier - Victory Brewing – Pennsylvania
9. Imperial Smoked Porter – Sierra Nevada Brewing – California

*(There were originally 10 beers, but beerinfo.com listed Fireside Ale twice.)

Smoked beers can definitely get weird. Schlenkerla also makes a smoked doppelbock, which is one of the most unusual beers I’ve tasted, with a smoked prune flavor that I’m still not sure whether I enjoy. But it’s well-made.

Rock Art's Midnight Madness.

I’ve found that the expectations I bring to beers have a huge pull on my perception. If I’m not prepared for a certain amount of smoke, the beer upsets my palate. I recently had a smoked porter from Rock Art that I really didn’t like. My lip curled a bit because I was hoping for something more modest. In a smoked porter, the rich malt roastiness of the porter should come first and have the smoke accent it. Rock Art overshot the goal, and produced a smoky, low carbonated mess.

Homebrewing

Several weeks ago, I kegged a smoked porter that I’ve really enjoyed. It’s a dark one at about 40 SRM and has ruby highlights. The hop bitterness seems just right and the smoke adds character without being easily identifiable. Less is more. Here’s what I did:

6 lb. 2-row pale malt
2 lb. munich malt 10L
1.5 lb. crystal malt 60L
1 lb. smoked malt
1/2 lb. black patent
1/2 lb. chocolate malt
1.75 oz. Willamette hop pellets (60 min.)
.25 oz. Willamette hop pellets (20 min.)
US-05 dry yeast (in 1 pint starter)

Single infusion mash with 14.5 quarts of 172 F water. Will stabilize at 153-155. Hold for 60 min. Mash out with 5.5 quarts of boiling water. Let stand 15 min. Sparge with 6 gallons of 170F water. Collect 7.5 gallons. Boil down to 6.25 gallons and begin 60 minute boil. Cool to 70F and pitch yeast.

O.G. = 1.064
F.G. = 1.020
ABV = 6%

Other Resources

A friend of mine, Scott “Homebrew Guru” Russell, made his own smoked malt over birch, maple and oak, which he describes here.

Also, if you’re interested in smoking malt, The Homebrewer’s Garden has some good information. It assumes that you’ve grown your own malt or have access to unkilned malt somehow. But it’s interesting nevertheless.

Name

It’s been so long since I had an IPA.

This winter has been nothing but malt. Dunkel, doppelbock, porter, stout. Hops to the back, bread in the driver’s seat and roast riding shotgun. A streak of seasonable New England spring weather (50s, partly sunny, always threatening snow) had me longing for citrus. This is where Lagunitas delivers with Maximus.

It’s a bold beer, great for early spring or late fall, when the air is jacket chilly but still OK for hanging outside. The grapefruit in the hops is quite nice, and the bitterness is not so high that you can’t taste a second sip.

My only problems with the beer were a lack of complexity and also the grassy notes in the aftertaste. Grass is OK in measured doses, but this I found a bit much. That didn’t stop me from having a second one, though.

Aroma (9/12): Tangerine and grapefruit citrus. Hints of lemongrass. Low esters. Some hop astringency. Pale malt body. No DMS.

Appearance (3/3): Amber with golden highlights. Thin head. Lacing. Haze.

Flavor (15/20): Grapefruit and citrus hop flavor. Simple pale malt body. Finishes semi-dry. Noticeable alcohol warmth. No DMS. Grassy aftertaste.

Mouthfeel (4/5): Medium bodied and medium-low carbonation. Low hop astringency. Alcohol warming.

Overall Impression (8/10): A citrusy, high alcohol American IPA. This is hoppy, without being a hop bomb. Good balance of flavors, but lacks complexity.

Total Score: 39/50

Meetings with the state liquor board, computer trouble and all the usual headaches associated with opening a new restaurant had him preoccupied.

“I still have to get flood insurance on the building,” he told me on Monday, apologizing profusely because we’d have to put off talking about his restaurant for a couple of weeks..

(Turns out, he didn’t need flood insurance, as the building owners John and Jen Kimmich already have it. So, there’s one thing Rich can cross off the list.)

Red Delicious and Mikkeller Monk's Brew

In an inspired and bold move, Rich has chosen for his restaurant a location that only seven months ago was blanketed in toxic river silt. The Waterbury, Vt., storefront had once been home to The Alchemist, one of Vermont’s most beloved brewpubs, which had been decimated during Tropical Storm Irene.

Owners John and Jen Kimmich, unfortunately, could not afford to reopen. Shortly after design and construction began, they learned they wouldn’t be able to reopen their basement brewery. FEMA declared the address part of a ‘special designated flood zone’. Under this designation, basement
construction is not permitted. Plus, even though the Kimmiches had flood insurance, it didn’t cover what was in the basement. The brewery and beer was a complete loss.

But Rich, who knew the Kimmiches, decided to give it a shot. The former bar manager at Burlington’s The Farmhouse Tap & Grill, Rich had notions of a beer-centric North Carolina barbecue and weird cocktail joint that is every bit as brilliant and eccentric as it sounds. Oh, and it may even become a distillery.

To be honest, however, this place had me before ‘hello.’ It had me at ‘Cheerwine,’ the southern soda that is the linchpin of a cocktail called Red Delicious. (Other ingredients: Laird’s Applejack, Campari, Noilly Prat Rosso.)

A couple Sundays ago, I stopped in for dinner with my wife and kid. There was a beer list that was rumored to have the More Brown Than Black IPA (Answer: Yes they had it. But, alas, the keg had been kicked in a matter of days.) I did not despair.

Mikkeller Monk’s Brew was my huckleberry and Val went with Red Delicious. My beer, a dark Belgian style Quadruple, was estery, with chocolate and hints of roasted malt. After the food arrived, however, it was difficult to tell.

Brisket, collard greens, potato salad and hush puppies.

We’re talking fork tender brisket with tangy potato salad (mustard base), collard greens, pulled pork, beans, coleslaw and hush puppies that did, indeed, make the child quiet. Four varieties of sauces were in a steel cart set on the table. Bacon BBQ and cerrano vinegar, with the peppers marinating inside, were my favorites. To be

The four sauces.

honest, the food came so quickly that I felt a bit overwhelmed.

The prices were, I felt, appropriate, with entrees costing between $14 and up. This isn’t a barbecue shack. It’s cuisine. Still, just like at Thanksgiving, where the most complimented dish was the easiest to make, I felt the beans were the

Hush puppies with special butter.

highlight. Don’t leave without ordering this side dish, and also help yourself to plenty of hush puppies, served with a tub of butter flavored with corn and red pepper. Long John Silvers this is not.

It didn’t get everything right — the food, inexplicably, was served atop napkins laid across

A "half" of Double Galaxy.

the plate. Little nappy balls of paper do not make delicious meat taste — or even look — better. Also, the beers can get a bit pricey. A “half-pour,” which seemed more like 4 oz., of some higher alcohol beers cost $4. Whatever. I got past it and ordered a Double Galaxy, an 8% Double IPA from Hill Farmstead. No regrets.

I’ll say this — the place ain’t boring. Rich is putting himself out there, with novel cocktails, superb beers, twists on classic Southern flavors — yes, I’m talking about Cheerwine — and also following a tough top-notch act.

He’s paid appropriate respects to the misfortunes of his predecessor. The decor is largely the same and he’s trying to uphold high taste standards. Barring another Biblical flood, Prohibition Pig should find plenty of support from the same customers who dined at The Alchemist.