American pilsners, v. 2

Pilsners get no real love from American beer geeks.  Maybe a bit at the high end -- the ones that aim for the more aggressively hopped German or Bohemian styles.  But even that's a bit of a stretch for American brewers who for better or worse often saw themselves as moving away from the dumbed down mass-market American versions of the style.

Don't get me wrong, I like a PBR now and again, but they are beers to throw down not to savor.  So it was a surprise to find that some of the new American "pilsners" are really kind of tastier versions of this easy-drinking end of the style.  Really for BJCP judges, these would be maybe premium light lagers rather than pilsners proper.  Full Sail's Session Lager is already a favorite of mine in this category, but in tasting a bunch of beers labeled as pilsners, a couple of others stood.  Call them surprisingly tasty not-quite pilsners.

• Red Hook Rope Swing (US, 5.3%)  They call this a "summer pilsner."  It's a really nice easy-drinking beer, though it poses a bit of a conundrum.  It's somewhere between a pilsner and an English-style summer beer.  The beer has a light golden color, with a slight haze and solid carbonation.  In the aroma it has a light fruity ester and almost an orangey hop note -- both very "English" -- along with the clean malt.  It doesn't scream "pils malt" but at least it's a very clean 2-row malt.  Similar profile in the flavor with a clean malt flavor, a hint of orange and pear-like ester, then a quick hit of bitterness.  The floral hop flavor stays into the finish.  This one is not dry as pilsners often are, but has a touch of sweetness without being heavy.  It's a really nice, complex beer but not a traditional pilsner at all.  The website lists the hops as Saaz, but I would have thought Goldings for sure.  Red Hook also say it's 25 IBU and 12.7 Plato, with malts listed as pale, carapils, Caramel and Munich.  Not by far the best as a pilsner beer, but it's a lighter beer with a lot of character.  I'll have to look for this again!

• New Belgium Blue Paddle (4.8%) A summertime seasonal from New Belgium, very refreshing beer and a bit of a surprise to me.  It's one of the lighter of the US pilsners in gravity.  Given this and its very light color, I thought this would be a little low on flavor.  The aroma didn't have very much going on; a faint malt note and that was about it.  But in the mouth there was a nice complex maltiness -- fat German pils malt, a bit of graham cracker like graininess, and a dry finish with a bit of a hop bite.  Again, not the number one pils, but an interesting beer.

By the way, a quick note on two continental pilsners that don't really fit established guidelines either.  Or at least not BJCP categories.  I'm not in favor of ever-proliferating categories like the Brewers' Association seems to be, but I also think that a lot of American homebrewers and beer judges don't really recognize that there are beers that are similar, but not quite the same as, some of these established style.  Two examples here too:

• Steigl Goldenbrau (Austria)  I love this beer.  It's marketed as simply a "lager" by the Steigl brewery, though they add that it's 12 degrees Plato (about 1.048, ie, classic strength) and lightly hopped.  Probably best considered as a helles by BJCP categories, unless you want to add yet another category - Salzburg style lager or something.  Full golden color and clean pils malt aroma with just a hint of sweetness.  Fat, full, dry malt profile that I just can't get enough of.  The touch of bitterness emerges at the end, just drying out the finish.  I think this one is drier and more pils like than the Steigl pils maybe, though I actually like that beer better.  It's an exceptionally lovely, delicate beer.  Which of course means the morons rate it a "B" on BeerAdvocate and a 28 on RateBeer.  I guess it's not a "craft beer."

• Karlovacko (Croatia) 500 ml.  Maybe this would be called an example of an Adriatic Pils or some such?  Just say it's in the Bohemian tradition I guess.  But this bottle has the flavor that almost all of the Croatian pilsners have.  I drank a lot of this stuff when I was there -- about 20 years ago now...good lordy I'm old.  Karlovac is inland a bit, not far from Zagreb.  Did I tell you the story about ingratiating myself with the traveling New Zealand national rugby team at the Zagreb bar since I was apparently the only one around who could figure out the local currency system? Another time maybe... Anyway the beer.  Not everyone will like it but it is typical of the area.  The aroma features pils malt and clean hops with more than a touch of sulphur.  A touch of the "green bottle aroma" which is actually kind of a feature of the beer, even locally, and not entirely unpleasant.  Flavor has the same malty/lagery/sulphury profile as the aroma.  The really full carbonation dries it out a bit.  Maybe 35ish IBUs, but the bitterness seems rounded rather than sharp.

American pilsners, v. 1

Hey all.  Warmer weather is rolling around.  I'm brewing a Munich style Helles as I write, just for something light and malty.  Father-in-law drank me dry on a pretty reasonable pilsner I had just the other week too.

Over the last many months I've been taking notes on a few of the craft brewed American pilsners that I've seen on the shelves.  Pretty scattershot, but it seemed as if there were quite a few new ones that I hadn't tried along with a few old standbys that I have.  It was also interesting to go through some of these beers with a group studying to take the BJCP exam for the first time as well -- it's one thing to suck a few of these beers down at a picnic, and its another to stop and think about them.  So here's my notes on a few, pulled together out of the chaos...call this the first in a short series.

GERMAN STYLE PILSNERS
There are a few American beers that aim squarely for the aggressively hopped, dry German style.  I love them, it's kind of fun to see other homebrewers and craft beer drinkers come back to them and realize how good they are.  While the brewers may put their own spin on it, and in some cases add an "American" twist too, these beers are very much within an established style.  Recognizing that "passion is not an ingredient," these are very good, clean, and refreshing without being boring in the least.

• Victory Prima Pils (US, 5.3% abv).  Snappy aroma - floral with a touch of citrus.  Fluffy and very long lasting head.  This beer is bitter to the level of the classic German pilsners, in the same range as the Schell's. This is one of the more aggressive German style pilsners available to American audiences.  Maybe 40-45 IBUs?  The clean malt makes it seem like more, actually.  The boatload of hops give it almost a soapy finish that some people really don't like.  Really nice beer, though it's lacking some of the malt presence of my favorite continental versions.

• Schell's Pils (US, 5.3%)  Bitter!  Really sharply bitter, at the level that German-style pilsners should be, I'd guess maybe close to 40 IBU based on this bottle, though it seems less on draft.  Pretty floral hop aroma, with a bit of vine-like greenness.  Clean pils malt in the aroma as well, though not the fat, pillowy malt of some German examples. I think I like the draft better -- this bottle is fresh, but has a bit of a steely tang in the finish that mars it a bit.  Not sure if this is from the water or just the hop bitterness contributing this.  I served this one to folks in the beer judging class we're doing and had them judge it blind.  They liked it less than the Victory, but the bitterness of both beers surprised them.

A couple of others worth mentioning that I liked very much but which were new to me.  The Left Hand looks like it's a year round brew.  The Full Sail was a one-off in a series, if you didn't try it you'll just have to take my word for it.

• Left Hand Polestar Pilsner (US, 5.5%) Very light color, straw rather than gold.  Slight haze. Clean malt flavor with a bit of depth to it.  Sharp bitterness, and floral hop on the finish.  This one is not a favorite, but it is a nice change of pace, the floral note is pronounced and makes it really stand out.  For the record, this one is very American in ingredients as well. They list ingredients as Weyermann pilsner malt along with American 2-row, and American versions of German hops -- Magnum, Mt Hood and Sterling.

• Full Sail "LTD Edition Lager" (US, 5.6%)  This was apparently #3 in their limited series. Full Sail's "Session" beers -- the lager and the dark -- are two of my favorite easy-drinking everyday lager beers.  This one is aimed squarely at the German pilsner style.  This can get lost in all the description so I'll say it clearly -- this one is REALLY GOOD.  Full gold color, relatively deep in color actually.  White head that settles quickly.  Full, rich, malty aroma even as soon as the bottle cap comes off.  Clean but fat lager malt with a hint of floral hop.  Maybe even a bit of American hop sharpness?  In the flavor, the bitterness sneaks up.  It comes a second after you expect it.  Very firm bitterness -- it's listed as 35 IBU, and I guessed about 40 based on the bite in the finish.  It has a bit of sweetness actually but the hops and carbonation make it finish dry. A little "soapy" in the finish from the hops.  Interesting that it tastes American -- the malt is fat but not "Euro."  Seems like I was right on that; website lists 2-row (presumably American), 35 IBU and Sterling hops.  Really nice beer.

Firkin Fest 2011

So Firkin Fest, or I should say Firkin Fest the Fourth. At the Happy Gnome. Once more I had the happy duty of serving as a judge -- this time with a LOT more beers on than the first year, when I also did it. (Life has intervened in cruel ways for the middle two years -- and nearly did again.)

Some of the beers were great. Some were not so great. But since the judging teams got them blind, I can't always tell you which were which. So I will narrate this in pictures. (The full list of beers is here though, and more picks and people's choice winner announcement are here.  Plus Michael Agnew has the overall recap here.  So far I haven't seen the judge's winner list posted yet officially, so I will stay mum till I do!)

1.  Synchronize  the pastel silicone sheathed electronics.  It's 11 am and nearly time to start judging beers before the crowds press in.  Early "VIP" entrants start coming soon and by 1 when the regular tickets get you in, the line is wrapped around the block.  Good thing too -- this is one of the beer fests that actually pays for the beers instead of begging brewers for donations.  Good for you Happy Gnome!

2.  Looking at the tent before it's jammed with people. There are about 80 firkins of beer. A "firkin" is a cask of medium size, and as the beer geeks know they are traditionally conditioned in the cask, and served from the cask by gravity dispense (like here) or via handpump. It's 30 degrees out today (see chunks of ice), so they're not warm.

 3.  Two of the British beers here, ones I'm looking forward to having.  (Incidentally, both were quite clear -- unlike many of the local beers).  Thornbridge's Jaipur I have not had before. Really nice, very drinkable, and surprising in its astringent, tannic bite. For American tastes, it is quite dry for an IPA and not smashing you over the head with fruity hop. The Bitter and Twisted is a great beer that I love in the bottle -- very unique lemony hop character that I will have to write about soon. Both really lovely beers.

 4.  Twenty for me, one for you. No, actually in the foreground are the pours I'm tasting, the other half Fletty's tastings of the same beers. We have three judging teams, and there are a lot of beers to get through still.

 5.  It's not very formal, but we do actually have a plan, and though no one ever believes it, there is work involved.  We divide the beers into dark, not dark, and eclectic categories.  So porters and stouts (mostly), pale ales and bitters and light beers and even some lagers, and then everything with blueberries, maple syrup, mushrooms, oak, and whatever else.

6.  One big issue is just the drinkability, but another important one for a cask beer festival is the condition of the beer -- carbonation, clarity, and whether this method of serving compliments the beer or brings out interesting things in it.

 7.  Curt is an extremely friendly guy.  Just at the moment he is telling me to put the damn camera away and get on with the judging.

 8.  More "not dark" beers to do in various degrees of not-darkness.

9.  Also plenty more dark ones!

"Hoss" Rye Lager

5pm Saturday, nice beer

Hoss Rye Lager
Great Divide Brewing Company (Denver, CO)
(6.2% abv, my bottle was $1.87 at Ale Jail in St. Paul)

Picked this one up the other day just on a whim.  It's not what I expected and its kind of a neat idea.  Definitely worth trying!  Instead of going down the usual road of building up a rye pale ale, Great Divide instead put together what amounts to a rye Maerzen.  So it has a malty, rich body from the Munich malt that plays well with the spicy rye notes.  At the same time, the rye livens up the malt and keeps it from being overly heavy and full.  This is actually a really nice O'fest style!

By the way, the bottle says it pairs well with veal bratwurst, barbecue chicken, carnitas tacos, Camembert cheese and German chocolate cake.  I don't know about the cake.  But the rest, yes.  It's a good beer to serve with food.  I'll buy more!   Good idea, Great Divide.

Wine descriptors and BS and figuring out what I think

Should we really try to emulate the wine world in our descriptions of beer? It's an endless debate and I admit I go back and forth on this. The question was brought up for me again by an interesting article in Slate (here) which calls out the wine world for very clearly being influenced by price more than actual flavors in the descriptions.

I'm getting cassis and flint.

The sharpest critics call the high falutin wine descriptions out as bullshit and I can't say I completely disagree.* It's also elitist -- it's a pose as much as a position; it's meant to signal the author's own refinement and sensitivity as well as to demarcate those who "get" such descriptors from those clods who don't or can't or never had the chance to compare "truffle" and "graphite" or "black currant" and "fig". And it's also funny and slightly ridiculous and everyone knows it. (Soupçon of asparagus anyone?)

Still, I'm not quite so sure beer folks should throw out the idea of building better descriptors. I also prefer the more technical definitions of a beer, at least at first -- I want to know if it's dry or sweet, bitter or malty, thick or thin on the tongue. But "bitter" doesn't say much about the actual character of the flavoring hops -- are they like blackberry or pine tar, or are they like a squirt of grapefruit up your nose? And what about the character of the malt? Sometimes "fig" actually is what it tastes like!

I guess when it comes down to it, I think problem in the wine world is the pretension rather than the actual descriptors. Most beer descriptors are pretty direct and unpretentious -- even when we are talking about the non-mainstream beers.  Almost everyone know what grapefruit tastes and smells like, right?  And pine tar?  And more than once I've heard things at competitions along the lines of "this beer smells like apple Jolly Ranchers, doesn't it?"**

But sometimes the more exotic descriptions are actually apt and probably they are worth keeping.  There is a difference between black currant and fig, and beers can sometimes have either of those flavors. And if you've never had either -- well, maybe it's time to live a little.  Sometimes water character can lead a beer to taste "flinty" or even "gravelly". And no, I don't go around licking gravel, but your nose can and should pick up those "flavors" and sometimes you're sitting there trying to describe a beer and they seem right. And if someone describes an aroma in your beer as "sultana" instead of "raisin" or "white grape" or something, then maybe ridicule them for being obnoxious. But immediately after that, try your beer and see if just maybe they're on to something.

(I thought this was going to be a short post! By the way, Pete Brown has an interesting writeup of a wine/beer pairing comparison where he ends up favoring the wines, at least for some dishes. It's here if you haven't seen it.)

Notes:
* Personally, and this is just me, but I would prefer a different methodology for both of these. Instead of figuring by probability of a word for expensive or inexpensive, for example, why not use the data to build a vocabulary, and then cluster (or some similar relational method) by co-occurence?  Then test for differences across the price? That way, you can talk about types of descriptor. And you can test whether the differences actually compare with differences in the taste of the wines.

** I've also myself described some beers as smelling "like banana Now-And-Laters," especially the American beers that try for a Belgian thing without really handling the yeast well.  Actually the wikipedia list of Now-And-Later flavors is a good, non pretentious place to start with white wine descriptors too!

Brew Dog Hardcore IPA

Another snowstorm here in bee-uutiful St Paul today, so everything on the agenda is cancelled. Now the kids' playdates are over, it's time to drink a beer.

Brew Dog: They are hardcore

I recently wrote a bit about Brew Dog and said something stupid to a friend about not being able to get it here. This friend reminded me that you can...for a price. It ain't cheap, but I thought I should give it a shot, so I picked up the Hardcore IPA, and I'll try to get some of the others soon.

4 hop cones???

The beer is listed as an "explicit imperial IPA", with 9.2% abv. There is an odd bit of marketing on the back for an IPA -- the lads at Brew Dog (sorry, that's "two humans and one canine companion") set out to impress with a listing of all of the stuff that went into the beer, including (they say) 2,204 grains of Maris Otter malt, 9.9 trillion yeast cells, and....4 hop cones.  Umm... do they mean four varieties?  Or does "hop cone" have a different meaning in the UK that I'm unaware of?

As for the beer itself, it's very fruity/malty in aroma, with background hops. It actually comes across in aroma more like what Americans tend to think of as "barley wine" rather than "IPA", though admittedly there's a blurry line between them sometimes. The malt side of the aroma is plum/prune/toffee, with a sort of dried apricot ester. The hops are like orange, apricot and pineapple more than the punch of grapefruit/pine that typically mark US versions. It's definitely more "IPA" in flavor, with a big bitter kick in the teeth right up front.  It's a big beer but it's nicely attenuated. It's a bit full in the mouth but it's dry enough to actually drink a bit of it. Malt stays in the background in the flavor though again its a fuller, richer malt profile than many of the US versions. Nice, though I'm not sure it will bump Maharaja out of my fridge.  (Wife adds "This is good.  Mmmm-mmm-mmmmm.")

Beer for thought

What can you say when someone gets it so right?

Friend-of-the-little-beers Stan Hieronymus takes on the ranking mentality of Beer Advocate and Rate beer. The beauty of what he's writing comes in using a recent piece by Malcolm Gladwell (on the stupidly one-size-fits-all way of doing college rankings) to make a similar case for beer. It's a different take on the whole "style" debate.

(Stan's post is here.)

What's less clear is how one could do a better job. Pandora's music algorithm is one model Stan thinks about.  But that's a pretty formal way of going about it! I think a more "wiki" way that is more tied to description than rating might work too.  Think of the difference between book reviews and the star ratings of books on Amazon.  Star ratings (even with short opinions attached) are kind of dumb for products like books--or beers--which people can approach in different ways and for different reasons.*

As Stan says, how do you compare a pils to an Imperial stout? Well, one way is to have knowledgeable people approach both on their own terms. Read and decide for yourself. Some movies and beers are objectively bad and people will likely agree. Some are good in different ways and will appeal to different people. My own model for thinking about this is Roger Ebert, who likes some movies I hate, and hates some movies I like. But I always like reading his opinions and get something out of it.

This is something he has written on, though I can't find it now.  But a good example is his passionate takedown of 3D.  Whether you agree or not, you know exactly what he thinks and why.  By the way, I think his is also a good model for "best of" lists, which I think have their place.  Yes, they are idiosyncratic, and that's a good thing. Make a passionate case, let others make their own passionate case for their own choices. If only more beer reviews were like that!**

Whatever you think on this, be sure to check out Stan's blog and the discussion underway there.

Notes:

* I think about this a lot because in my real job I do a lot of book reviews for academic publications, and I am on the editorial board of a book review journal.  In that capacity I worry a lot about the very anodyne, paint-by-numbers approach that most academic book reviewers use.  There are reasons for this, but it absolutely kills actual, engaged intellectual debate.  Which is the whole point.

** If only more book reviews were like that!