The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin.
On the first Friday of every month, one beer blogger hosts The Session: Beer Blogging Friday. He or she chooses a specific, beer-related topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received.
For more information, view the archive page.
One of the things I most enjoy about blogs and personal writing in general is the ability to have a window into another's life, in a semi-voyeuristic way. So I'd like to know your beery guilty secrets. Did you have a particularly embarassing first beer (in the same way that some people purchase an atrocious song as their first record) or perhaps there's still a beer you return to even though you know you shouldn't? Or maybe you don't subscribe to the baloney about feeling guilty about beers and drink anything anyway?
You're also welcome to write about bad drinking experiences you've had as a result of your own indulgence or times when you've been completely wrong about a beer but not yet confessed to anyone that you've changed your mind.
It took another decade, not until August of 2011, for New Belgium to begin to distribute its beers here in Virginia. In the intervening years, one would hear paens to Fat Tire's excellence, whispered in hushed tones of reverence. Or loud sarcastic put-downs from 'craft' beer snobs: "Flat [sic] Tire, it's nothing."
I may have been in the latter camp. There were too many choices for full-flavored beers, imported and local — here in the mid-Atlantic U.S.— for me to have given a drinker's whit for yet another 'amber ale.' I was turned off by all the hype about Fat Tire's advent. Furthermore, I am a representative for a wine and beer distributor in northern Virginia that does NOT sell the beers of New Belgium. Thus I had an occupational reason to dislike the beer.
But, in an attempt to maintain a beer blogger's unbiased credibility, I dutifully purchased a bottle of Fat Tire, popped it open one evening after work in early September, poured it in a glass, and sipped. And ...
"Hey, Mikey, " I liked it.
Why? Because the beer tasted fresh.
Despite having been shipped a couple of thousand miles, despite sitting in a wholesaler's warehouse and on a supermarket floor, this Fat Tire tasted as fresh as an amber ale might in a local brewpub. An initial aroma of piney hops and sweet fruit —not overpowering but assuredly evident. Then flavors of gently toasted bread sprinkled with brown sugar. Finally a dry —but again, not assertive— finish of piney hop bitterness.
I cannot emphasize enough the startling freshness of the beer in the bottle. There are many 'craft' breweries that produce much more assertive beers —including New Belgium itself, which brews several Belgianesque beers. But there are very few 'craft' breweries with the acumen —that obviously New Belgium has— to preserve that just-brewed-at-the-brewery freshness in a bottle, opened many miles and days removed from the brewery.
New Belgium can be lauded for its technological 'greenness' and for its benighted treatment of its employees. But, don't forget its beers.
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Hugh Sisson, the founder and general partner of Heavy Seas Brewing, out of Baltimore, Maryland, has plans to brave the heavy traffic of Tysons Corner, Virginia.
Wednesday evening, 16 November, he's co-hosting a five-course dinner at Wildfire Restaurant. Sisson's co-host is Wildfire's Executive Chef Eddie Ishaq, who has designed a menu of five different courses, each to be served with a different Heavy Seas beer. Sisson and Ishaq will discuss the nuances of food-with-beer pairing, for each course specifically, and in general, as a how-to.
RECEPTION
FIRST COURSE
SECOND COURSE
THIRD COURSE
DESSERT COURSE
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As even a casual reader of this blog may notice, I am an advocate for cask-conditioned ale. Real ale, as it's also called, is a method of serving beer as fresh as it should be, almost as if the beer were being poured for a drinker directly from a brewery's fermenter.
Here in America, there is a nascent style of Real Ale, different in several respects than that brewed and served in the 'mother' country of the UK. That's a post for another day, but it might be summarized as:
But as to point #3, those extra-cask ingredients often mask the the just-baked breadiness derived from fresh yeast, still active within the cask. That's the marvelous aroma that pervades the air in a brewery, but which is often not transferred to the finished bottled or kegged product. So why hide it in a cask?
I was recently present at Eventide Restaurant, in Arlington, Virginia, for a tapping of a firkin of Smoke on the Water, a so-called Imperial Smoked Porter, brewed by Baltimore, Maryland brewery, Heavy Seas.
The 8% alcohol-by-volume porter — according to the US Beer Judge Certification Program, porter is a style of ale that is dark brown, with flavors of bakers chocolate and a touch of roast)— had only a faint wisp of smoky flavor from peat-smoked malt.
But — there it was! A toasty, fresh-from-the-oven baked bread aroma, indicative of fresh, active yeast. Yes, there were hop aromas, floral and citrusy, and a slight smoky character from the peat, but neither were invasive enough to obscure the heady aroma of a brewery's freshly fermenting beer.
Delicious! I ordered a second round.
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Since 1997, Cask Marque has been ensuring that the cask ale you drink in pubs in the U.K. has been in perfect condition. Qualified ass...
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