NEUSTADT SCOTTISH ALE – CANADIAN IN A CAN

So my pal “Pete” comes all the way to Barcelona last month bearing a can of NEUSTADT SCOTTISH ALE, from NEUSTADT SPRINGS BREWERY in Neustadt, Ontario, Canada. We were meeting for business there, and sometimes we execute beer trades upon doing so, though I incorrectly and rudely assumed trades were off this time. This particular tall boy can flew from Canada, to Spain, to the United States, and finally flew down my throat this past weekend. Peet once brought me a can of the excellent brown ale NEUSTADT 10W30 back in 2008; I scored it a fetching 8/10 and wrote about it here. Could the magic repeat itself over three countries and two years? Could it? Let’s find out.

NEUSTADT SPRINGS BREWERY are very concentrated in their brewing. It appears they only make four beers for sale, all generally fairly low in alcohol and harkening to fairly traditional styles. No imperial Russian black IPAs for these fellas, no sir. NEUSTADT SCOTTISH ALE is a deliciously rich scotch ale, full of malty flavor and tasting of heather n’ rye. Nah, actually it just tastes like a classic clean Scotch ale. It pours quite light for the style, and is about 4.5% ABV. A little bit nutty, a little bit of sweetness, and a whole lot of malty richness. I think these guys get it. They’re a big two-fer-two for in my book. 7.5/10.

HOPPY, BELGIAN & AMAZING: THE BRUERY’S “MISCHIEF”

Those big bottles from THE BRUERY, the upstart, new kid pride of Orange County, keep showing up all over California, and for some reason I haven’t been paying them quite the respect that I should be. Strange, because their SAISON RUE and ORCHARD WHITE beers are among my favorites anywhere. BRUERY beers are generally not cheap, and yet why should they be? These guys are envelope-pushers, and they do Belgian-style ales like few others. I think I’m going to have to vault them into the top tier of my personal pantheon after this latest creation, though. Whoa. It’s called MISCHIEF, and it’s a “golden, hoppy Belgian ale”. Is it ever. It’s also the “beer of the year” around my house so far, 2010’s first totally perfect quaff.

Since I now drink my ales with an eye half-cocked toward its place on the scale – sure, it’s pathetic, but it’s a natural outgrowth of rating beers to begin with – I always anticipate that first big gulp. I’ve tasted enough over the years to know in that first one whether I’m going to love it or just tolerate it. There are exceptions, of course – last week’s NEW GLARUS CHERRY STOUT was a huge deviation from the rule. Yet THE BRUERY’s “MISCHIEF” was a winner from the first millisecond it hit my tongue. I adore this beer. I think I wanna marry it. Is it a Belgian IPA? Sure, whatever. It has a slight lemony tartness and a really thick mouthfeel. The hops, the yeasts, the ingredients in general just totally coat the tongue. I also got a little bit of sweet pear and that pepper/spice characteristic you see in some saisons. It hits only notes of perfection. It even looks amazing. I also just learned THE BRUERY has made it a year-round brew. Huzzah! 10/10!

ALPINE BEER's “NELSON” – A FULL ONE

THE BEER ROVER had it, and said it was the best beer of 2009. THE VICE BLOG had it, and gave it an A+, which I believe is the highest honorific one can bestow upon a beer. It made sense that HBJ was going to have to have it soon as well, but only if someone brought me one from San Diego or I found my way down there. As it turned out, Craig & Beth from San Francisco’s CITY BEER STORE brought me one – well not me exactly, but they brought several cases of ALPINE BEER COMPANY beers to their store and then sent out the “beer alert”. I foolishly wasted 48 hours before responding to the alert, and by then, all the bottles of ALPINE EXPONENTIAL HOPPINESS were gone, and all that was left was the “meh” PURE HOPPINESS that I’ve had a couple of times, and the lighter-only-in-relative-scale IPAs DUET and NELSON. Oh, and a bunch of other non-IPAs from Alpine Beer Company as well that we skipped this go-round.

The beer in question in our discussion today is ALPINE NELSON, the one that prodded the aforementioned gentlemen to bust a proverbial nut. Let it be said that this outstanding IPA busted my nut as well. This is a 7% or so ABV India Pale Ale that’s based around the Nelson Sauvin hop from New Zealand, and that also serves up some “European rye” in the mix (and which I admittedly did not pick up on whilst drinking it). NELSON is nearly opaque, thinner than most bombshell IPAs. The major fruits are all out in force on this one: oranges, tangerines and grapefruits all combine into a sweet/tart/delicious mix that adds up to a flat-out amazing taste. Bitterness is certainly there, but it’s no scorched-tongue hop beast by any means. Simply put, it’s the best beer by ALPINE BEER COMPANY I’ve had by a mile, and it’ll register in the upper half of the Hedonist Beer Jive 75 for sure once we update it. 9.5/10.

I WATCHED THE “BEER WARS” MOVIE

Last year I very gladly sat on the sidelines when the documentary “BEER WARS” was released in a somewhat bold one-day-only-in-theaters marketing ploy. It got the beer blogosphere, such that it is, yakkin’ and shuckin’ and jivin’ all of out proportion with the film’s actual importance because finally someone, someone was paying attention to their beloved naval-gazing hobby. I figured I already had a pretty good sense of who the “bad guys” were; in fact, I don’t think the corporations behind boring tasteless lagers are bad guys at all. I’m completely uninterested in their product, and to that end, I’m about as interested in their machinations as I am those of the Snapple Corporation or the people who make Fiji Water. Which is to say – not very.

Yet I had hours to kill on a long flight to Europe, and I wanted to load up my laptop with some documentaries. “BEER WARS” was on iTunes for a can’t-be-beat rental price of $1.99, so I figured hey, I’m “reporting this beat”, I might as well see what the hubbub was all about. And there was indeed a hubbub – I remember paragraphs of dissent being spilled from the bellies of boors, young men dismayed with filmmaker Anat Baron’s lack of focus on their craft beer heroes (what about Stone?? Where was Vinnie??!?), or on her personal involvement in managing something called “Mike’s Hard Lemonade”, which she passed off as being relevant beer industry experience. The film was nitpicked to death in blog posts that I skimmed, not altogether unfairly in some cases. While well-edited and entertaining, how you approach “BEER WARS” should probably depends less on what sort of beer you like to drink and more on how you view the parasitic relationship between big business and big government. Perhaps I’m showing my hand by the use of word “parasitic”, no?

See, Anheuser Busch, InBev, MillerCoors and the others are doing what you’d do if you had archaic laws and government toadies protecting you. They’re not evil, per se – the lack of government-ensured healthy competition is evil, and even that is overplayed as craft beer continues to make incredible inroads into the big brewers’ market share the last few years, despite obstacles. Taste, quality, freshness, and experimental ingredients are starting to win over American palates, and even the post-prohibition three-tier distribution system that Baron and others rightly decry is not keeping great beer from changing minds, one person at a time. It’s why there are winners like Sam Calagione from DOGFISH HEAD, who makes wonderful beer and is thriving because of it, and losers like the film’s other “little guy/gal” foil, Rhonda Kallman. Kallman made a caffeinated beer called MOONSHOT that no one was buying, and no matter how hard Baron tried to tug on my heartstrings for this poor ‘lil upstart businesswoman, fightin’ against the big bad corporations with her pluck and heart of gold, I wasn’t moved, and was annoyed by the film’s insistence that I should be.

Baron’s film’s flaw is that she tries to “Roger and Me” the CEOs of the big beermakers, but only in the name of telling a stupid-simple story of Big Beer Bad/Little Beer Good. No, “big beer” doesn’t have to be bad (nor "little beer" good), and the palate-changing revolution is being led from below, which is a story she only partly tells while trying to bash corporations, what with their “greed and thirst for power”. No, like Google and Apple and Southwest Airlines, they’ve got a bottom line to focus on, which means giving the people what they want or think they want. To the extent that craft brewers can re-shape that perception – and they obviously are – it’s a wonderful thing for us lovers of quality. Salvation in the form of a completely disrupted business model is coming at the big brewers directly from the people like a slow-moving sledgehammer, just as it came at the music industry, the travel industry and the newspaper industry. That’s the David vs. Goliath story that I think “BEER WARS” initially wanted to tell, but it got derailed enough on cheap sentimentality and ham-handed populism to end up being something I’d not recommend you spend the 90 required minutes watching.

OUR LAST HOMAGE TO CATALONIA - MASIA AGULLONS “PURA PALE”

Well, not “homage” exactly, but this Catalonian beer traveled with me all the way from Barcelona a few weeks ago, and I’m determined to try to find some love for it. MASIA AGULLONS floored me with a beer of theirs I had several times at LA CERVETECA in Barcelona called RUNA ALE; my pithy purple prose about it is proffered here. Based on that experience, I bought a bottle of their PURA PALE to take home with me, and on an otherwise uneventful Thursday night last week, I busted it open. PURA PALE’s a litte “raw”, just full of sediment and with a slightly skunky taste. Yet it’s not skunky like something that went bad, but rather like an off-beat take on the artisanal English pale ale.

You guys know that HEMP ALE from HUMBOLDT BREWS? I actually like that beer, even if few others do – well, this is sorta like that one in its uniqueness. Deep and rich, and colored slightly brownish-yellow, PURA PALE seems almost totally devoid of hops, and instead has substituted a weird mélange of fruit, malts and baked vegetables or something. It’s still very drinkable, but nowhere near the smokin’ greatness of RUNA ALE. Get that one if you’re heading to Catalonia anytime soon, and maybe give this one a sniff only if you see it on draft. 6/10.

LOST ABBEY’S “THE ANGEL’S SHARE 2009”

Here’s a trend I’d like to applaud. Some pioneering, top-tier brewers have begun to notice that the common man has been effectively frozen out of purchasing their rarified ales due to price considerations, and they have therefore have rectified matters by introducing smaller, pint-sized versions of their large bottles at a slightly more approachable price. Ounce for ounce, it may not be as good of a deal, yet I happily bought this 375ml bottle for a mere $16.99, as opposed to the $30+ that the 750ml bottle typically goes for. Just noticed RUSSIAN RIVER’s also got a 375ml corked-n-caged version of their world-beating DAMNATION out there these days as well. Good for them both. These beers both deserve sampling by a greater subset of societies’ many stratas. I hadn’t had an ANGEL’S SHARE in several years, and I was beginning to think it was going to stay that way.

LOST ABBEY, as you may know, are among the greats. Just last month we tasted their FRAMBOISE DE AMOROSA, and it’s another one they’ve knocked out of PetCo Park. Did I suspect THE ANGEL’S SHARE 2009 was going to be amazing? Of course I did. And so it was. This bourbon-barrel aged monster has a deep, rich toffee taste that grabs your taste buds and keeps them singing. There’s no head on this one, nada. Just silent, still and intense-looking. You absolutely get alcohol in both smell and taste, another reason why I’m glad I got the small bottle of this 12% beast. Well, “monster” and “beast” – that’s just dumb hyperbole. It’s simply a wonderful big beer, with a smooth mouthfeel, and cocoa, raisins and toffee notes that are ever-present and definitive. Of course, there’s an undercurrent of woodiness/oak as well. Loved it, and again, I applaud the packaging decision made by the Lost Abbey marketing department. 9/10.

ONE NIGHT WITH NEW GLARUS “CHERRY STOUT” – UNPLUGGED

Aaron from The Captain’s Chair blog proved to be a perfect gentleman whose mama done raised him right when he sent me replacement bottles of NEW GLARUS beers that broke in transit during our recent beer trade. Not only that, he threw in a bonus beer for my troubles. Now that’s a Great American. The bonus was this NEW GLARUS “CHERRY STOUT” – part of their “Unplugged” series where the brewer just goes off the hizzle and does whatever it is he wants, ye publick be damned. I love that sort of thing, and it’s why I was pretty excited to give this one a go.

But wait. Alack! My first impressions of this were just awful. An initial assault of cherry cough drop intensity – yes, cough drop, not real cherries. It even had that medicinal numbing feeling you get what you’re sucking on a Luden’s cherry cough drop, which is the goal when you’re trying to get over a sore throat, but not when you’re tipping back a craft beer for liquid enjoyment. I couldn’t taste any roasting, nothing stout-like at all nor any evidence of the professed “oak aging”– nothing. Then something happened. Room-temperature warmth started creeping into the beer, and lo and behold, that harsh flavor settled into something that was actually enjoyable. The roast started peeking through, as did some alcohol sweetness, molasses and even some hops. The overall body of the beer is thin, but I daresay I was flat-out bummed when I drained the last sips. Seriously, this is the most abrupt mid-beer mind shift I’ve ever experienced. I went from something close to disgust into something closer to worship. Now how did they do that? Recommended if you want to take a similar ride. 7/10.

CLEARING THE CACHE WITH “BEER HAIKU”

You know how some of you drinkers are always going on about having to “clear the stash”; i.e. cleaning out your overloaded beer fridges, cabinets etc. with blowout tasting sessions? I myself have been to a couple of these stash-clearing parties, and depending on the host’s level of beer dorkitude, they can be the best ticket in town and a truly blessed event (I’m thinking of you, Brian Yaeger). Me, I’ve got a different problem. I’m still the guy who tries to drink a new-to-me beer just about every time I pick up a glass. Maybe 3 out of every 4 beers I drink is something I’ve never had before, which keeps it fun and invigorating. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a particularly heavy drinker per se, but I drink enough new ones that I don’t have enough time to review & document them all for you here in the proper manner. And not that you’d really want me to, right?

So let’s try something new to “clear the cache” of beer reviews tapped into my phone. I’ve never written haiku before, I don’t think, but seeing as I just had sushi the last two nights, I’m in a Japanese frame of mind. I really think so. Here are a few beers I’ve tried over the past month that we just haven’t gotten to reviewing here on the HBJ:

ABBAYE DES ROCS BRUNE (pictured here)

Oh, English brown ale/ Not Tripel Imperiale / Where’s the alcohol?
6/10

UNIBROUE “EAU BENITE”

One superb tripel / This isn’t La Fin Du Monde? / Yankees can’t get this
9.5/10

CERVEZA EL FLABIOL TORRADA

On draft in Spain bar / Made in Belgium, the dude said / I didn’t like it
5.5/10

CASCADE BREWING “APRICOT” (pictured to your right)

Fruity and tart, no head / Tartness lingers on mouth roof / Very good, not stellar
7/10

MOS’KA NEGRA

Dark ale – but wait / Who snuck lager in my house / No taste here at all
4.5/10

So I can’t write a haiku to save my life, it’s obvious – but I cleared five beers outta the cache and gave you a concise consumer guide to boot. What’s not to love.

GOOSE ISLAND’s “SOFIE”

Chicago’s GOOSE ISLAND BREWING made a series of complex Belgian ales in simple packages this past year or two, and dubbed them all with fancy European names like JULIET, MATILDA, PERE JACQUES and this one we’ll be discussing today, SOFIE. This beer looks and tastes like a tripel, and bursts out of the bottle in a total explosion of foam, as you shall observe here. I got tired of waiting for it to calm down, so I snapped my picture, sat down for dinner, then came back to collect the beer five minutes later.

GOOSE ISLAND SOFIE actually isn’t a tripel, though. It’s an oak-aged saison with a lot of the characteristics of the tripel. There’s a pronounced taste of orange peel, along with lemon. SOFIE clocks in at a relatively approachable 6.5% ABV. It’s a zesty, yeasty sort of ale, with slightly more bitterness than I was counting on. Aged in oak, as I said, and that woody, earthy taste is present as well. Wow – “woody”, “earthy”, “bitter”, “zesty”, “yeasty” – I think we just blew all our Belgian adjectives on one single beer. It’s a complex craft beer for sure, but fell a little wide of the mark for me, as did PERE JACQUES and MATILDA (JULIET has yet to make herself known to me). 6/10.

REPORTING FROM THE FRONT AT GRAND TETON BREWING NIGHT

It was to be a night like any other night – or so I’d thought. Just an average Monday night out, sucking down a couple beers with a bro – or so I’d thought. Nay, I stumbled upon GRAND TETON BREWING pint night at Barclay’s in Oakland this past Monday, an unadvertised, barely-promoted event where “punters” could sample a range of GRAND TETON beers and even cart home their own souvenir pint glass. I’m serious!! So throwing caution to the wind, I cancelled everything; called my wife and told her not to expect me until daylight, called in sick for the next two days, and went to town with the help of my #1 favorite brewer from the great state of Idaho. Here’s what I tried:

Oh wait a minute – let me tell you why my plans changed and I drank only GRAND TETON beers on this epic night. Just a few weeks ago I thoughtlessly threw a 12-ounce bottle of their BLACK CAULDRON imperial stout into my cart, and then drank it a couple nights later to “get it out of the way”. I loved it – an awesome, fantastic, big bad aggressive imperial stout. So naturally, I’m curious about this brewer. OK, back to the recap. Here’s what I tried:

PURSUIT OF HOPPINESS – Of course, they lose a half point on our ratings scale for the bad pun in naming the beer. But other than that, this imperial red ale was excellent. Smooth but biting, with maltiness not being laid on too thick, and really tingling and delicious. I didn’t see if it was bottled but if it is I’m going to grab me some. 8/10.

LOST CONTINENT OAK-AGED DOUBLE IPA – An understated oak-aged IPA, at least compared with the Southern Tier Unearthly I wrote about earlier in the week. It might be a notch down from that one, but it’s still really, really good. At this point, three beers overall into my exploration of Grand Teton Brewing, I decided that these guys are major alemaking heavyweights. 7.5/10.

SHEEP EATER SCOTCH ALE – ….And this one totally confirmed it. Our waitress told us this was “weird” and that we might not like it. I told her that she was weird, and that she’d better bring me one of these scotch ales, chop friggin’ chop. This beer is decidedly not weird. It’s a dark, roasted, deep and mysterious scotch ale, close to black in color and really rich and full bodied. If I didn’t have a set of car keys in my pocket and a home with a warm bed to get to (I lied above, of course), this would have been served to me in a much bigger glass than the one you see here – and then another after that to boot. 8/10.

AVERY BREWING’S “DuganA” IPA

Not sure where things fell down on this one, but the gap between my review-stoked expectations of AVERY BREWING’s latest IPA “DuganA” and my pleasure with actually drinking it was far wider than I’d expected. Now granted, I’m not much of an AVERY MAJARAJA fan either. But just about everything else they make is stellar, and the advance word that this was a supreme IPA fit for the kings. And while I didn’t really dig it, it’s not a bad beer at all. Let’s see if we can figure this one out together.

AVERY DUGANA (I think I’ll start calling it that, Doo-GAHN-ah, just to be annoying) pours a lovely orange/copper color, just like you knew it would. It’s strong and piney like a particular strain of the IPA family should be. So you’re happy, right? Wrong. It’s not “juicy” by any means – in fact, I’d daresay it’s a DRY, almost chalky IPA. Say what? Wait a minute, it even tastes a little bit like aspirin. Yeah, aspirin – a “kiss of death” word for beer. That said, I can still see the appeal here, because it’s got some interesting balance and deep, rich IPA flavor going on. But compared to what I was hoping for? Not so much. 6/10.

SOUTHERN TIER’s “OAK-AGED UNEARTHLY”

This is the first bomber I opened from my recent acquisition of East Coast beers from MM, the fella that more or less turned me onto SOUTHERN TIER BREWING and their incredible line-up of intense & wonderful beers a couple years ago. Now they’re one of my top 5 favorite brewers in the world, and the creators of the finest India Pale Ale to ever pass my lips, GEMINI. Now you may know that ½ of GEMINI is made up of another outstanding Double IPA from the Southern Tier family – UNEARTHLY. We reviewed that one right here. Now there’s an OAK-AGED UNEARTHLY. You know it’s totally gonna rule. And yes, it totally does.

SOUTHERN TIER OAK-AGED UNEARTHLY is truly all about the oakiness. You smell it, you taste the wood, and it lingers on the top of your mouth for a few heartbeats past the swallow. A very crisp beer, OAK-AGED UNEARTHLY brings forward the piney hops, and layers in a sweet undercurrent and a thin-to-medium body. If the sweetness is coming from the 11% alcohol, I can’t tell, but it would stand to reason. Again, it’s more oaky than it is hoppy, and really “renders” like a finely aged beer. Didn’t think you could do it this well with an IPA. I don’t know what else to say, folks. When you’re on a winning streak this hot the way SOUTHERN TIER are, why would you even listen to a piker like myself? Another flat-out superb beer from one of our nation’s best. 9/10.

YOU SAY LA TRAPPE, I SAY KONINGSHOEVEN – LET’S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF

Last September I finally had my first beer from famed Dutch Trappist brewer LA TRAPPE, who market their beers in the US under the KONINGSHOEVEN brand. It was their QUADRUPEL, and you may recall that I thought it was “shockingly bad”. A huge surprise, too, because people the world over seem to love this one. It also generated some of my favorite comments on this blog, including this one from Niklas: “You've lost your damn mind, son. Recalibrate your palate and try again. Disgraceful.”. So the other night, my first night in Barcelona on my trip a couple weeks ago, I took Niklas’ advice and recalibrated my palate. Then I ordered a LA TRAPPE BLONDE, this time under the native La Trappe branding. Now granted, I had this right after a CHIMAY BLUE in a beautiful Belgian chalice, and man o man is that a great beer. I think the ubiquity of CHIMAY Red, White (“Cinq Cents”) and Blue keeps me from drinking it except when it’s the best choice on a restaurant menu, but that BLUE is something special.

Anyway, I’ve definitely got a beef with LA TRAPPE/KONINGSHOEVEN after my second sub-par beer from them. I mean, really folks – this stuff’s just weak. LA TRAPPE BLONDE is thin, bland and almost like a lager, and it has this cloying perfumed smell that also shows up in the taste. Some yeastiness is present, way way back in the distance, placed there as an afterthought. It might quench one’s thirst, yet there are a lot of ways to do that, starting with water, which is the superior drink in my book. It’s so far removed from the masterworks of the other Trappist brewers – ROCHEFORT, ORVAL, WESTMALLE, WESTVLETEREN etc. – that it’s truly in a remedial class by itself. 4.5/10.

NAPA SMITH AMBER

NAPA SMITH BREWING are upstart entrants hailing from Northern California’s wine country, a total family brewery (The Smiths!) who employ a longtime veteran named Don Barkley as their head brewmaster. They’re starting to catch on with the hoi polloi here in the Bay Area, and I remember reading a review of their BONFIRE IMPERIAL STOUT on a blog (Brewed For Thought, probably?) that made me rush out and buy one. It’s still in the fridge, awaiting the proper imperial stout star alignment. My only other experience with them was tasting their IPA on draft a few months back, and I scored that one a 7/10, which you best believe is better than yr average beer.

Draft is also how I encountered NAPA SMITH AMBER a few weeks ago as well, this time at the SF Ferry Plaza Building’s burger restaurant Taylor’s Refresher (which has its roots in the Napa Valley, and which sells this beer in their St. Helena location as well – I know ‘cause I saw it there). This is a really classic and slightly left-of-center amber ale. No, it’s not an imperial. It’s a tingling, somewhat bitter red ale, quite sweet as times and full of robust, mouth-filling malts that add a lot of character. It tasted absolutely like I want one of these to taste, “very 1990s”. Back in the 90s, the amber beer was my go-to style; I didn’t know about Belgian beer yet. Every microbrewery (that’s what we called them, kids!) has one, along with a wheat beer, a pale ale and a pilsner. This harkens back to that time, and adds that curveball hoppiness and bitterness that’s more a hallmark of the past decade. Nice. 7.5/10.

TWO FRESH ONES FROM CANADA

Friend of Hedonist Beer Jive “MP” graciously donated several Canadian ales to our cause during his recent business trip to San Francisco. While we never actually met, this fine representative of his gold-medal winning hockey powerhouse of a country actually dropped off several beers at the front desk of his hotel for me; all I had to do was pick them up and then commit to drinking them. Done and done. There are little craft breweries spread across Canada; my recent visits to Toronto confirm that you can even run a world-class beer bar serving nothing but great Canadian artisanal beer. I recently completed the second part of my commitment to MP and drank the beer he so kindly provided me – here’s a report on two of them.

SCOTCH IRISH CORPORAL’S BITTER BROWN ALE – This Ontario brewer allow you to make no mistake about their heritage, and they reflect it well. This make a classic copper/brown ale (I’ll bet they love how Beer Advocate categorizes it as an “American brown ale”), very close in flavor profile to an ESB, with a light caramel taste and mild but noticeable hopping. The caramel is akin to those light tan-colored ones, not the rich and intense sugar bombs so popular with candy makers these days. This beer is bitter for sure, also a bit nutty and buttery. At 4.3% alcohol, it’s probably the easiest-drinking beer we’ve had in a long, long time. Please note that I enjoyed this in my rarely-used “Dusseldorf stein”, pictured above. It’s a high-quality beer that I’d definitely like to grab on tap at some point in life. 7/10.

GREAT LAKES DEVIL’S PALE ALE – Yeah, I was hoping this one would be devilish, too, what with the big “666” on the can, but – no. It’s a metallic English pale ale, totally thin and bland, all malts and bitterness and almost completely lacking in flavor. It pours dark, so that’s something. Sorry, MP, but I can’t condone this sort of alemaking, even if you guys are better in hockey and all that. 4/10.

More Canadian beer chicanery to come!

I LOVE YOU BUT I’VE CHOSEN SURLY DARKNESS

If that title’s a little off-putting, check this out and you’ll see why I had to appropriate it. So here we are. SURLY DARKNESS. The 18th finest beer in the land. You know, every time we drink one of these over-hyped beers I’m in total anticipation at the first sip. Is this going to be an OMG OMG OMG mother of all beers, a la BROOKLYN BLACK OPS or THE ABYSS? Or will it give me a much-needed chance to post a jaded, curmudgeonly review about overhyped beers, a la PLINY THE YOUNGER or DREADNAUGHT IPA? That’s just one dimension of the anticipation, my friends. Then there’s – oh yeah right – the taste & enjoyment of the beer itself. Who could forget about that part of the experience? Let’s get to it, shall we?

SURLY BREWING came to my attention thanks to their punk-rock vibe & brewers all ratted out in tattoos, along with a lot of early excitement about the beer itself. Radical. Aaron from The Captain’s Chair was kind enough to send me SURLY FURIOUS, which totally knocked me for a loop, and the big boy, SURLY DARKNESS. Darkness doesn’t pull any punches, even out of the gate, featuring a member of recently-reunited garage punk band The Mummies on the bottle itself. It pours jet black with a beautiful head of coffee foam, and smells of barely-filtered coffee, some earthiness, and alcohol. 10.3% of this is alcohol, so that adds up. Then you get into it, and like a lot of these intense imperial stouts, it’s roasted, bitter chocolate and hops all the way.

Only a few sips in and I realized that despite the ingenuity that went into this one & the large, aggressive roastiness (which I often love), its filmy texture and chalky mélange of flavors would prevent it from being one of the greats. I drank the whole thing, looking for things that I'd love, and only found things that I liked. Say you removed any limited-edition, once-a-year whatsis, and conveniently forgot that people stand in long, freezing lines to buy this beer, and instead got a nice 10-ounce pour in a fancy-pants glass? You’d say, “thanks, that was real nice, now how about a different beer – maybe a blueberry pale ale or a goddamn ice water with lemon?”. I’m totally glad I tried this, I’m a better and more complete man for it, but I can’t in all due justice go with anything greater than a 6.5/10.

MORE THAN ONE WAY TO FOLLOW THE HBJ

You guys are probably pretty technically sophisticated, right? So I don’t need to tell you that there are other ways to get your Hedonist Beer Jive ranting-n-raving delivered to you besides clicking on a bookmarked link every day or two. Or Googling “Hedonist Beer” every time you remember that we exist, and that you haven’t come to visit in a while. Here are a few ways to “enhance” your HBJ experience:

1. Follow us on Twitter. Or more specifically, follow me. I try to post a "chirpy" (I think that’s what they’re called) every time I write something here. I’m @jayhinman.

2. Add Hedonist Beer Jive into Google Reader. Google Reader, if you don’t use it, is an amazing way to stay on top of the many stellar blogs out there. Just cut this link – http://hedonistbeerjive.blogspot.com – and paste it into the “Add a Subscription” field in Reader. Then every new post will be there for you to marvel at, aggregated with all the other stuff you’re interested in. Easier that that – click on the “Subsscribe to HBJ” link you see on the right comlumn here, and just add it that way. You can even make it a box on My Yahoo, if that’s something you use. (Me, I set up a My Yahoo page in 1997 or something, and I’m too lazy to make the switch away from it).

3. Got an iPhone? Get Byline. BYLINE simply takes your Google Reader feed and displays it beautifully on the iPhone. I think it’s the application I use more than any other in the iPhone. It’s a couple bucks, but come on – you’re worth it.

Just a few ideas, you don’t have to take ‘em or anything, but we’d like to crack 200 average daily readers in 2010 (we’re still holding strong at about 130 a day) and maybe these tech tweaks will help make it happen.

DUPONT’S SURPRISING “LA BIERE DE BELOEIL”

In the US, BRASSERIE DUPONT means saisons. Amazing, delicious saison-style ales from Belgium – yeasty, complex and refreshing. There’s SAISON DUPONT, DUPONT AVRIL, FORET, and several others. They’re all fantastic, seriously; to a beer, these are wonderful ales that I could drink anytime and anywhere. It took my trip to Spain a couple weeks ago to taste something of theirs that was dark and different, and when I ordered it, I didn’t even know it was a DUPONT thing. I found a big bottle of LA BIERE DE BELOEIL in the beer fridge at LA CERVATECA in Barcelona, and my pal AS and I split it with relish.

As I gingerly poked, uh, “tasting notes” into my iPhone, I saw that LA BIERE DE BELOEIL has some foreign gobbledygook on the bottle that said “Dupont a Tourpes”. You mean those Saison Dupont fellas? Well now how about that? To me, this is a classic Belgian dubbel, ripe and strong with the taste of dates and figs, with a thin body, strong aroma, and a sharp bit of zinging spiciness that’s rock solid. Over at Beer Advocate they’re calling it a “Belgian strong pale ale”. Hoooo-kay. This is a “meal” sort of beer, a big, bad complex 8.5% ABV sort of ale that will stand up to freshly-slaughtered animal of some kind. And so classically Belgian. Really top-tier stuff. Let me know if you see this one in the US after grabbing a bottle for yourself first. 8/10.

THE HEDONIST BEER JIVE 2010 GUIDE TO MUSIC

There’s probably a contingent of folks who came to this beer blog at some point from one of my now-defunct music blogs – DETAILED TWANG or AGONY SHORTHAND. Others reading this probably have zero interest in obscure, sub-underground, dirty pop, garage rock and noise from around the world, and would much prefer this post to be about the SURLY DARKNESS beer I had two nights ago or another dig at PLINY THE whatever. As it turns out, me pontificating about beer has won out overall; I only have the quote-unquote “bandwidth” to write pithy posts about beers I’m drinking than my former free time to engage in long-ish posts about bands & records – though I do have yet another music blog currently active called HIGH WATER EVERYWHERE. But yeah, I sure miss posting mp3s, and trying to force my musical opinion on others.

To that end, let me present to you a slight diversion from our normal programming, and give you my gift to the craft beer and extended community: THE HEDONIST BEER JIVE 2010 GUIDE TO MUSIC. It’s a set of 27 songs from this past year, some even released just the past couple of weeks, that I find to be outstanding work by the youth of today. They’ve been gobbled up from a variety of other sites, bought straight from iTunes, or came off of old-school CDs that I actually bought. I’m constantly prowling for new stuff – just like I do with beer; in the blood, I reckon. In order to successfully enjoy this collection of mp3s, you have to be okay with a little bit of dirt and grime; with sometimes loud-ish guitars, and with Australians. I know that’s a leap for some of you. These 27 tracks can be burned to a CD if you like, or popped into iTunes or your “Zune”. You’ll find them to span the gamut from buoyant, garagy pop music (Dum Dum Girls, Happy Birthday, Rantouls) to unrelenting psychedelic noise (Kurt Vile & the Violators, Major Stars) to disjointed, stuttering post-punk (Wet Dog) to straight-up punk moderne (Overnight Lows, Black Jaspers).

The common thread is that this is the music I’m loving right now, and I sure hope you do too. Track listing and link to download is below – beer talk returns next week. Please go buy this stuff in iTunes or a store or wherever it is you do your shopping if any of this happens to catch your fancy.

Track listing

1. Jail La La – DUM DUM GIRLS
2. Girls FM – HAPPY BIRTHDAY
3. My Wet Tongue – HAPPY HOLLOWS
4. Little Green Hat – THE RANTOULS
5. Lower Leg – WET DOG
6. Clarence – SIC ALPS
7. (A Girl Called) Saccharine – DAN MELCHIOR’S BROKE REVUE
8. City of Rotten Eyes – OVERNIGHT LOWS
9. Smear – AN EXPERIMENT ON A BIRD IN THE AIR PUMP
10. Walkin’ Out – THEE ALMIGHTY HANDCLAPS
11. What Started The Noise – SUPER WILD HORSES
12. Purgatory – DICK DIVER
13. Vorpal – WHITE MYSTERY
14. Wandering – THE YOLKS
15. I Wear Black – TY SEGALL & MIKAL CRONIN
16. Little Bit of This – THE RANTOULS
17. El Jita – PUFFY AREOLAS
18. Malfunction – USELESS EATERS
19. Smart Car – BLACK JASPERS
20. Freudian Slips – BIG TROUBLES
21. She’s So Crazy – MICKEY
22. Still 16 – THE RANTOULS
23. Vietnam – HAPPY HOLLOWS
24. Aaron – WHITE MYSTERY
25. Denial – KURT VILE & THE VIOLATORS
26. Sugar Boat – THEE OH SEES
27. The Space You Know – MAJOR STARS


Download “The Hedonist Beer Jive 2010 Guide To Music” (this is a .zip file)

THE HOT KNIVES BEER BOOK!

Before there was THE VICE BLOG, there was HOT KNIVES. Hot Knives was and remains a food blog with a heavy, hedonistic emphasis on great beer. They remain one of the best reads out there, and when these guys decide to cook some food and drink some craft ale, they get their hands dirty and go for it, then write about it with aplomb and panache. Now they’ve taken their beer writings – or at least the best of ‘em – and collected it into a mini-book called GREATEST SIPS. I just got mine in the mail yesterday and haven’t dug in yet, but just skimming through it, I was already laffin’ a bunch. I can recommend it in advance, mostly because I’ve read the posts that are collected here. It’s kind of cool, too – the publisher they’re using does this just-in-time thing too, where they only print it when you order it. You can do so here, and tell them the HBJ sent ya.

HOMAGE TO CATALONIAN BEERS – MOS’KA!

While in Barcelona last week I did what I always do on work-related road trips, which is seek out the local ales for consideration (and comfort). Time was when I’d poke around obscure record shops, or maybe go to a museum or something, but now it’s pubs and beer bars like LA CERVETECA and CERVECERIA EL FLABIOL, the two best places I discovered in Barcelona for deep contemplation of Spanish (and Belgian) craft beer. At the former, I discovered a brewer from Girona, Spain called BIRRART MOS’KA. This guy (Josep Borrell) is on a one-man crusade to bring exceptional artisanal craft beer to Spain, and currently bottles four beers, all with a similar 12-ounce bottle design. I “considered” two of them, and brought another one home in my suitcase. Let’s discover together what I thought of them.

The first was MOS’KA TORRADA, and it’s a real humdinger. TORRADA is an artisanal amber beer that’s smooth and creamy and pours a nice red-tinged brown. Really, really flavorful – with strong malts, honey, and some hops that linger. TORRADA includes loads of sediment for you sediment fans out there. Picture a less-yeasty, more creamy version of a Belgian amber and you’re in the ballpark. I loved it, and after this and the RUNA ALE we talked about two days ago, it’s when I knew I’d stepped on beer paydirt in Barcelona. 8.5/10.

The other MOS’KA product I poured down my throat is called MOS’KA POMA. Spanish speakers in the audience may recognize that word translating as “apple”. And you’d be exactly right! Think of this one as a bitter apple wheat beer. It’s got that certain special I-don’t-know-what that I discovered in all the local brews; maybe it’s the water, but the local beers here just taste different than the imports and our own US micros. Fruity and citrus-packed, with a little bit of lemon and a TON of carbonation. A strange sort of pale ale that was not a thirst-quencher per se, but really one to work on slowly. And yeah, it was really good as well, just a notch down from the TORRADA at 7/10. I brought a MOS'KA NEGRA home in my bag, so we’ll talk about that one another time, OK?

HEY, LOST ABBEY MAKES A FRAMBOISE

I started this blog back in early 2006, and back then the only experience I’d had with tart, sweet Belgian lambics were the ones from LINDEMANS. These are available even in corner liquor stores in the US, and I learned pretty quickly that these mass-produced lambics, decent enough as they are, use fruit adjuncts (gasp!!!) instead of real fruit. I remember taking a beer appreciation class in 2005 – which actually inspired me to create this blog – and the guy just relentlessly bagged on LINDEMANS and the fact that they didn’t stuff real bushels of raspberries or dozens of real peaches into their beers. Since then I’ve regrettably barely skimmed the world of the lambic. People who love this stuff really love it, and me, well I just don’t know yet. I had a CANTILLON FRAMBOISE back in 2009 that was so puckeringly perplexing that I couldn’t even score it, giving it an “Uncertain” rating.

At CITY BEER STORE the other night, I noticed that LOST ABBEY had a new beer on draft, LOST ABBEY FRAMBOISE DE AMOROSA. I marveled over the fact that I hadn’t tried a new one from these guys in well over 18 months, back in their glory days of 2007-2008 when new bottles were showing up on the shelves every month. Why not try their Framboise? Well guess what folks, it’s excellent. This is everything what I’d want a tart, ultra-fresh raspberry beer to taste like – packed with fresh and zinging yeasts, and puckering on the mouth but not so that you stop what you’re doing to clear the palate with water (which is what I had to do with the CANTILLON – rookie!!). It’s Belgian-style, full-stop, made right down there San Diego way. It’s absolutely drinkable and a much better intro to the style than those “adjunct” beers – right? You know Tomme Arthur and the gang don’t mess around. 8/10.

HOMAGE TO CATALONIAN BEER, PART ONE

So you'll never guess where I was last week. Oh OK, it was Barcelona, Spain. Yeah, crazy, right? I may travel a lot for my job but getting an overseas pass - even if it's in cramped coach with an inconvenient flight change and a load of discomfort - is a new one. Last year I was in Madrid and Seville for pleasure and did, in fact, try to ingest local craft beer there with not a lot of luck (here's my dispatch about Madrid's NATURBIER). I casually mentioned to a couple of fellow drinkers at December's Pacific Coast Holiday Beer Fest that I was heading to Barcelona in February, and they burst with enthusiasm about this place called LA CERVETECA that was an absolute must-visit. Was it ever. Given that I had five nights in Barcelona, would the fact that four of them included visits to La Cerveteca surprise you? Yeah, this place is that great.

Jeez, where do I start? OK, I'll keep this and my next post limited to the Spanish (dare I say Catalonian) craft beers that I tried, though I found multiple unheard-of Belgian ales and other wild cards on this trip that I'll write about later. If you've heard anything about a burgeoning artisanal beer culture in Southeastern Spain (I hadn't before this trip), let it be said that there's no friggin' doubt about it. There is now some outstanding beer from this part of the world, and my cup raneth (??) over with the bounty of the region thanks to my targeted visits to La Cerveteca and CERVECERIA EL FLABIOL, both of which I researched via Beer Advocate's invaluable "BeerFly" beer-related travel guide. LA CERVETECA is just amazing - a beautiful, open, German-style beer nook where you drink while standing over barrels and which has local beer on draft and a deep selection of micros from around the world. Funny enough, outside of their many local beers (this has got to be ground zero for Catalonian beer), they also have heavy stock from CANTILLON, NOGNE Ø, AECHT SCHLENKERLA, FLYING DOG (!) and ANCHOR BREWING (!!). The guys that run and work the place are exceptionally friendly and even speak a little inglés, which helped me and my drinkmates in picking out the best in Spanish beer, stuff we may never see again.

Foremost on the list is the beer pictured above, one that I absolutely loved and had on draft twice - MASIA AGULLONS RUNA ALE. This is served on hand pump at La Cerveteca, and it's a superlative bitter brown ale. It has a giant frosty head of foam, and is remarkably fresh tasting. Tingling bitterness and lots of exciting dark fruit flavor - prunes, nuts, and some caramel. My friend PW, a guy weaned on UK ales, said this is one of the most exceptional British-style ales he'd had in a long while. I thought it was like a cask brown ale with wildly more hops & fruits than expected, all the while being light, refreshing and low-ABV. RUNA ALE was the highlight of the trip, drink-wise. 9/10.

Another interesting one I got to try is from a local outfit named DeDUES called DeDUES CERVESA D'AUTOR. I was actually gently warned against this by the proprieter of Cerveceria El Flabiol - he called it "unusual and indescribable" - but I thought it was kinda cool in its 13-ounce bottle, if exactly as he described. It's sort of like if you decided to make an "imperial" English bitter, then ramped it up with more hops and a really strange collection of yeasts. Mahogany red, chalky, bitter, and totally unique. Intriguing, but probably not something I'd want to try again. 6/10.

I'd tell ya more but I'm getting too thirsty just typing this stuff. Coming up - the beers of BIRRART MOS'KA and more....!

THE MAYFIELD “ICONOCLAST” SERIES, AS CONTEMPLATED BY A MERE COMMON MAN

Perhaps you saw those bottles of $42 beers from a hitherto-unknown California beermaker called MAYFIELD BREWING hit the shelves of Whole Foods last year. “The Mayfield Iconoclast series?”, you asked yourself, as I did – “…How do I not know a thing of this nectar that must be so richly magnificent & otherworldly that it is able to garner twice and thrice the price of other already too-expensive beers from celebrated brewers the world over?”. I suppose that everyone who saw the three fancy bottles of MAYFIELD ICONOCLAST in their three fancy flavors asked themselves that, unless you already knew the back story, which I didn’t and still don’t. It is inevitable in this explosive abundance of artisanal craft beer that the market would evolve to support ever-higher price points, and as a good capitalist, I’m very much in favor of the market working out whether this gamble on the highest of the high end is a good one for John Aldrete, a one-man operation who started Mayfield Brewing in 2007. Yet forgive me my skepticism against the price multiple vs. other world-class beers would be equaled by a quality multiple as well. I decided to head to a rare Mayfield tasting at the very same Whole Foods where I first espied it to find out.

As part of SF Beer Week, Mr. Aldrete, accompanied by his helpful, glass-stacking 8-year-old son, was doling out 25-cent pours of his three beers in the wine section of San Francisco’s 4th Street Whole Foods one evening. I threw down a big $1 so I could try all three – and then some! The tasting was done very much the way a Napa Valley wine tasting is – a little bit goes into your glass from the luxuriously-appointed bottles, you swish it around, you chat with the owner, and you get maybe three swigs to form an impression. Given that, it was actually somewhat hard for me to get a read on the first one, ICONOCLAST AURORA. Aldrete called this an “altbier” infused with white wine, or perhaps it was aged in white wine barrels. Hmm. It sure tasted like wine to me, closer to chardonnay than altbier, and perhaps that’s where this high price-point stuff is coming from. Market this as a beer for people who love wine, and the market just might bat an eyelash your way.

Next was ICONOCLAST ECLAT, which I swear he called a “IPA”, aged in oak wine barrels. I could care less what someone calls anything as long as it’s good, but this small pours were making it hard to get a bead on anything. What do you want for 25 cents, right, Hinman? Shut up and sip your wine-beer. As suspicion mounted, Aldrete delivered the counterpunch in the form of ICONOCLAST NOCTURNA. Hold on here. This is incredible. A creamy imperial stout aged in port wine barrels, Nocturna tastes like a fantasy port/stout dream beverage, so delicious I made it my “bonus round” selection just so I could contemplate its magnificence again. You want 42 bucks for a big bottle of this? Why not? It’s a big party, your fanciest fancy-pants friends are coming over, and you want to bust out something that everyone’s going to swoon over and make you a superstar to both your beer and your wine-lovin’ friends. In other words, most couples you know – or should I say that I know, couples where the husband drinks beer with me, and the wife drinks wine with my wife. A ha. I’ve just divined the MAYFIELD ICONOCLAST angle, and at least with NOCTURNA, everyone will be happy and gay that you spent $42 to help get them that way.

I intend to ask Mr. Aldrete for an interview in the near future so we can all learn more about this stuff (seems like a totally humble, friendly and knowledgeable guy), but for now, let me say that it is indeed possible that this is no sleight-of-hand hocus pocus. I’d love to hear what you think if, in fact, your lips have graced the sides of a glass with Mayfield Iconoclast beer in it.

ELYSIAN & GREEN FLASH CORONATE “THE RED QUEEN”

So after saying publicly on the Twitter that I wasn’t going to be attending any of the back-slappin’, shuckin & jivin’ SF BEER WEEK events, I turned coat & went to the unveiling of ELYSIAN BREWING and GREEN FLASH BREWING’s collaboration saison THE RED QUEEN last week. This took place at City Beer Store in San Francisco on a Wednesday night, and truly, I chose this event more out of convenience than anything else, seeing as how I’ve bagged on Elysian’s beers in the past & was only a fan of the Green Flash half of the partnership. And though I don’t know who’s truly pulling the strings with this beer, let it be said that Elysian is definitely getting a halo effect at a bare minimum from helping to produce this outstanding beer. Allow me to tell you about it.

THE RED QUEEN is a dark orange saison to die for. Fruity, incredibly juicy and just-out-of-the-vat fresh, this beer takes the saison sideways. It has a wonderfully earthy smell, which is something you’d expect, right? But it made its mark with me for its robust flavors of tangerine, honey and yeasts, all mingling together in one of the more fruit-forward farmhouse ales I’ve ever tasted. I’m willing to bet there are some similarities in pedigree with the GREEN FLASH SAISON I wrote about before and which currently resides in the Hedonist Beer Jive 75. That’s a picture of THE RED QUEEN right there, and yes, that’s the dollar I tipped for the privilege of being able to drink one. I don’t know if it’s a one-shot-and-done sort of beer or if there’s a potential for bottling & draft accounts, but like the Green Flash Saison from two years ago, this one’s easily scoring a big 9/10 on the HBJ scale.

DIEU DU CIEL's "SOLSTICE D'HIVER"

Another day, another knockout beer from Montreal, Quebec's DIEU DU CIEL - or as they like to call themselves when they get excited, DIEU DU CIEL! This time we're talking about SOLSTICE D'HIVER, a winter seasonal that reached my eyes & ears via a number of channels, both online and off. The talk was that these guys make a ton of great beers, and yet besides the trophy-laden PECHE MORTAL, this was their flat-out best. I'm inclined to agree - this barleywine is totally top-tier stuff.

It comes in a 12-ounce bottle and that's OK cuz it's a big'un - 9.8% alcohol. SOLSTICE D'HIVER is a warming, sweet barleywine, without a lot of the intense hoppiness you'll find in some versions of this style. The taste is burnt sugar, maybe a little pineapple if you can believe it, and that delicious maltiness that gives off quite an aroma. You can smell that it's a high-ABV beer, but not necessarily taste it. Absolutely wanted another glass, and that doesn't happen to often with the big boys. I'm hooked on this outfit's beers, and I'll keep buying them as I see new ones. 8.5/10.

RUMINATIONS ON "PLINY THE YOUNGER"

I've long slogged through life with the cross to bear of being what seems to be the only human alive who believes RUSSIAN RIVER's PLINY THE ELDER double IPA to be a "lesser" beer. Sure, it's good enough, but after careful contemplation of 5 glasses or bottles of it, I think I'm pretty certain that it's in the lower third of the Russian River (arguably our country's finest brewer) panoply, and it's a little south of average for the ultra-hoppy, Double IPA style. I find this opinion raises the hackles of the many who feel PLINY THE ELDER to be manna from heaven, and I've enjoyed some of the comments on this blog calling me heretic, "Judas" and whatnot.

Then there's the fabled PLINY THE YOUNGER. This beer comes out only once a year, and it's the 11% ABV, souped-up version of the Elder, and when it appears in its exceptionally rare handful of locations (usually just in a few California bars), it's snapped up & glugged down like a cooler full of Gatorade found after three parched days in the Gobi Desert. Right now it's actually tied with TRAPPIST WESTVLETEREN 12 on Beer Advocate's "Top 100 Beers" board as the single greatest beer in the entire world. Now me, I'm a San Francisco resident, and both Plinys are brewed about 80 minutes north of me. The fact that until a couple days ago I'd never tried RUSSIAN RIVER PLINY THE YOUNGER was a crime against drinking, and seriously lowered my credentials as a, um, "beer journalist" and maker of tastes. So when I got the email from Oakland's excellent beer bar THE TRAPPIST that they'd have a keg of this liquid gold on tap for a few hours, I drove- nay, I sped - over there after leaving work early to ensure I'd get to finally ingest a glass of the greatest beer on god's green earth.

Now you readers of this blog, you know I try to be a teller of truths, while holding a little bit of my tongue in my cheek at times. But I can't fathom this PLINY THE YOUNGER thing either, I just can't. Yes, it is ludicrously hoppy. It smells like a hop bath, and the only beer I've ever had this intense was DRAKE'S HOP SALAD - which, let the record show, is the better beer. I can't say that this is really that amazing of an experience. It is strong, it is well-constructed, but the sort of consciousness-raising beer experience one expects from the world's great beers? No, it's nothing of the sort. It's an experimental, kick-your-ass, hoppy ale that you'll remember for its intense bitterness and that's about it. And around here, my friends, that's what we at Hedonist Beer Jive like to call a 6.5/10.

SCHNEIDER WEISSE “ORIGINAL”

I have an until-now unarticulated but dormant beer resolution for 2010 to actually drink a few German beers and try and develop some level of expertise on the great ones. I’m not a lager guy, but I totally love the hefeweizen, the dunkel weizen and even the hardcore eisbock, and I truly need to drink more of the original masters and less of the American copycats in order to get the proverbial big picture – and have fun whilst doing so. To that end, I ordered a SCHNEIDER WEISSE “ORIGINAL” the other evening at Café Biere. They had this beer listed as “ORIGINAL AMBER”, and that’s certainly fair since that’s its color, but this is rich, delicious dark hefeweizen all the way.

Tart and actually a little hoppy, this beer is probably closer to the “dunkel” side of the wheat beer tipping point, but who’s counting. It has an exceedingly fresh taste and smooth mouthfeel, giving it that whole I-could-drink-this-all-night feel that moves units & gets the German people good & drunk. Keep in mind that the brewer behind this, SCHNEIDER & SOHN WEISSBIERBRAUEREI, are the same masters behind AVENTINUS beers and the recent excellent collaboration with BROOKYLN BREWING. These guys don’t mess around. Definitely recommended. 7.5/10.

ITALIAN CRAFT BEER, UH, I GUESS

Mention “Italian beer” to any beer drinker with a moderately-evolved palate, and until two years ago those two words would have been met with hoots of derision & outright mockery until you were forced to hang your head in shame. Nothing’s worse that getting all psyched up for a nice Italian meal, only to find the only beer choices being those “premium” Italian beers PERONI and MORETTI. Gross. Give me Coors Extra Gold or Blatz Light any day. Word on the street is that there’s this new wave of Italian brewers, bold risk-takers in the middle of one of the world’s great wine countries who are crafting incredible artisanal ales, some of which are starting to be sent over into North America for beer dork contemplation. Me, I’ve been looking for the right beer to get involved in the Italian scene. I believe based on last night’s evidence that I am still looking.

Johnny over at MONTEREY DELI – the outstanding beer store/market a mere two blocks from my house – got in this new Italian beer in a funny-looking bottle by an Italian brewer called ORO DI MILANO called RISERVA SPECIALE. He hadn’t tried it yet, so I decided that I would. It may be that I’m “breaking” this beer in the Northern Califorina market. It’s a dubious honor. ORO DI MILANO RISERVA SPECIALE is definitely a major jump above the Italian macros, but considering that those are undrinkable, it’s a small step to scale. This one’s still trending toward the “macro ale” side of the ledger, with an intense, off-putting malty sweetness that really defines and overwhelms the beer. It’s 8.2% alcohol, but the sugary sweetness tastes like a by-product of the malts, and I dunno, it’s just not done in a way that hits me where I live. Light, nearly opaque amber (they call it a “brown amber ale”), this has a thin-to-medium body, with tastes of really light caramel and even liqueurs. Yeah, that’s it – it’s like those cheapo liqueur-filled candies you get in those phony chocolate bottles of Jameson Whiskey, except this has a grainy, malty beer taste instead. I’m none too impressed. Who out there knows of a really stupendous Italian beer I can drop some coin on instead? 5/10.