Beer-cation Tips

I’ve just returned from a week long vacation visiting pals in Madison, Wisconsin. (Mostly the same cast of characters from my trip to GABF in September.) Madison is like a lovely beer wonderland. It was a great trip. Wisconsin is known as a great craft beer state, but no matter where you’re going, you can have a beery good time. Here’s some general advice on beercations.

They ought to be proud

Find the local craft breweries: This should seem like a no-brainer, but it bears emphasis. Look up which craft breweries are based in your destination state. Beer Advocate’s Beerfly is a great tool for this, since you can easily search by state. Most states (those worth visiting at least) have a few craft breweries whose wares you can’t get elsewhere. Wisconsin alone has New Glarus, Central Waters, Ale Asylum, Capital Brewery, O’so, Furthermore and Lake Louie — and those are just the ones that are extremely common on tap in Madison. If there’s a brewery close by, make sure to visit it. Brewery tours are generally a dime a dozen — it’s not that exciting to look at fermenting tanks and inactive bottling lines. There are exceptions, though. New Glarus was gorgeous, both inside (huge space, cool lab where you can peek in on dudes in lab coats) and out (parked on a scenic hillside in a faux Swiss hamlet.) More importantly, most breweries have a tasting room, and many have “research and development” beers on tap. These are beers brewed in tiny batches to test on beer geeks that will likely never leave brewery grounds. New Glarus only had one, but when I visited Oskar Blues outside Boulder in September they had a dozen, and Cigar City in Tampa is famous for having tons.

One day...

Find the local watering holes: Most major cities have at least one brewpub, where a few varieties of beer are made on site. (New York City, for what it’s worth, only has the very underwhelming Heartland Brewery locations.) To be honest, a lot of brewpubs are kind of mediocre. You’re happy to support the local guys and drink their beer, but it’s nothing you’d go out of your way to procure. There are exceptions, of course. In fact, some brewpubs have the accolades to go toe-to-toe with the best regional craft brewers. Minneapolis’ Town Hall Brewpub’s IPA, Masala Mama, is consistently rated among the best in the world. Watch City Brewing in Waltham, Mass. impressed me greatly when they brought their wares to a beer festival in Boston. Madison’s own Great Dane Brewpub had some terrific seasonal beers.

You should also find out where the city’s best non-brewpub beer bars are. This leads us to the next tip…

Find regional craft breweries unavailable at home: This might take a little bit of research, but it will pay off big time. By now you know that some of the best mid-sized craft brewers don’t distribute in New York, just like many of those available in NYC don’t distribute in, say, California. You should find out which highly-regarded breweries you should expect to see that aren’t local to your destination. There are many ways to do this research. I might try looking at the Beer Advocate top 100 list (my guide to this list notes beers that aren’t available in New York), or finding some other “top breweries” list. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some acclaimed regional breweries you can’t find in New York: Bells, Three Floyds, Great Lakes, Boulevard, Russian River, Pizza Port/Lost Abbey, Alaskan Brewing, Deschutes, Odell, and Terrapin. All of these are available in fair portions of the country, so asking around for them is a good starting point.

Employ your drinking survival skills: This too should be a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised. I posted a survival guide to beer festivals a while back, and those tips are critical for any period of heavy beer drinking. In short: carb load (don’t worry, you’re on vacation), get plenty of sleep, and drink water like it’s going out of style. All this will help your beer-cation be enjoyable instead of look like a series of outtakes from Midnight Express.

The Pullout Epidemic

Editor’s Note: Thankfully, this piece has nothing to do with a proliferation of the “My couch pulls out…BUT I DON’T!” t-shirt spotted at last year’s Great American Beer Festival.

Now that Goose Island’s purchase by AB-InBev is all over even the mainstream news, most people know that craft beer is experiencing a major growth spurt. Like awkward 12-year-old you, the craft beer world’s excitement about the growth is being tempered by growing pains. Over the past several years, many craft breweries have expanded capacity in order to supply markets further and further away from home. Now, for many brewers, demand is greatly outpacing supply. Several breweries have sounded a retreat from faraway lands in order to better shore up the home front.

In the past few weeks we’ve seen Allagash pull out of two states (after having pulled out of several more over the past year or two), Great Divide pulling from seven states entirely and five more except for major metro areas, Avery pulling out of three states, and Dogfish Head leaving four states. We haven’t had breweries leaving the NYC market, but our friends (?) in Connecticut have been hit hard.

Dogfish Head’s pullout probably received the most attention, since they’re such a high-profile craft brewery. Last month they announced that they’re pulling out of Indiana, Rhode Island, Tennessee and Wisconsin, as well ceasing their small amount of international distribution. Sam Calagione, best known as one half of the Pain Relievaz and also occasional brewer, summed up the reasoning:

In order to get our supply closer to your demand, we’d need to get a big, big pile of money and grow, grow, grow. We are not excited by that. We get excited by having fun, brewing a bunch of great beers and growing at a slower, steadier pace.

In the blog commentary on these pullouts, many people are arguing that these breweries are “victims of their own success,” but I’m not sure that’s the best way to look at it. As the craft beer industry has exploded, many have assumed that unfettered growth is the best business model. Sell beer, buy more equipment, make more beer, sell more beer further away, &c. Sam explains why that model may not be best, especially for an industry like craft beer that depends heavily on innovation and experimentation.

Cigar City Brewing in Tampa is one brewery that seems to be taking Sam’s preferred approach. Earlier this year, rumors flew that CCB was going to pull out of NYC and Philadelphia due to lack of supply. These rumors turned out to be unfounded, but neither has CCB undergone the expansion one would expect from such a hyped brewery. Instead of reaching further markets, Cigar City is shoring up supply in its already-existing territory. Furthermore, they’re using a bunch of their energy and resources developing experimental beers in tiny batches that will never leave Florida.

Having to weather brewery withdrawals also gives us all the opportunity to do something we should be doing more of: drinking locally. Sometimes nothing beats an Avery Majarajah or a Dogfish Head Indian Brown, but if you’re reading this site, odds are that there are dozens of fantastic craft beers made within an easy drive of your front door. If your favorite regional brewery leaves your home state, maybe you should take the opportunity to get better acquainted with your local brewmaster.

The Can Revolution Marches On

Hey, I get to use this picture again!

A while back, I wrote a piece on the advantages of craft beer in cans. Canned beer still seems to have something of a stigma in the general population, but the issue is all but settled in the craft beer world. You will still find beer geeks who insist that beer from bottles actually does taste better, but most will admit that there is no appreciable difference in taste, and all but those who are likely paid off by the fearsome glass lobby readily admit the many advantages of cans. They are more eco-friendly, they cost less to ship, they are easier to carry, and they completely protect beer from light.

That piece I wrote in October profiled beers from Oskar Blues, 21st Amendment and Surly, all of which can virtually all of their beer. These breweries have always known the power of the can, but since then, several well-established craft breweries have announced that they will start canning some of their beer, too.

Two icons of the craft beer industry will begin releasing their flagship beers in cans for trail runs later this year. As was announced in January, Vermont’s own Magic Hat Brewing Company, craft beer gateway for thousands of New Englanders for the past couple of decades, is releasing its ever-popular Magic Hat #9 in cans later this year. In the unlikely event you’ve never tried it, it’s a light and sweet pale ale brewed with apricot extract. It’s a popular gateway craft beer, but most beer geeks leave it by the wayside once they’re ready to ditch their training wheels.

Can do

The other exciting can release is a gateway craft beer that most beer geeks (like me) keep around until the bitter end. That’s right — in late 2011, we will start to see Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in cans. Bill Manley from SN confirmed those rumors on the Beer Advocate forums last week. He says that the cans will only be a small part of the brewery’s output, so don’t expect those stumpy little bottles you love so much to disappear. But canning definitely seems like a logical step for the brewery that was named 2010’s Green Business of the Year by the EPA. Manley says they’ll start with the Pale Ale in the fall and probably start canning a few other brews shortly thereafter. I, for one, can’t wait.

Another established brewery that recently started canning is Colorado’s Avery Brewing Company. Their line of canned beers is slightly old news, since it debuted last fall. For now they’re only canning a handful of their beers — their simpler, more accessible offerings. But Avery has some real heavy hitters in their lineup. If their canned beer line is hugely successful, could it only be a matter of time until we see a canned barleywine? Or even something barrel-aged? As more and more established breweries hop on the can bandwagon, it will be interesting to see if they start canning their big beers.

Reinheitsgebot Blues

I always like seeing craft beer-related articles from mainstream sources. I’m very interested in keeping abreast of what the non-beer geek world is saying about our obsession, and how well they’re saying it — I looked at some mainstream Best Beer Lists a while back. Yesterday, Slate published a very thorough and expertly-written piece about the decline of the German beer industry. I’m hoping we see more pieces like this from mainstream sources, and less top-10 slideshows calling Bud Light Golden Wheat an amazing craft beer.

Oktoberfest isn't going anywhere, for better or worse.

But I digress. Christian DeBenedetti’s article “Brauereisterben:  The Sad State of German Beer Culture,” tries to identify the reasons why beer production and consumption in Germany has plummeted in the last two decades. Beer consumption has dropped by about a third since a generation ago, and the number of breweries has halved. Germans blame structural factors (an aging population, etc.), but the author notes that as beer sales decline, sales of crappy mixed and alcoholic energy drinks are skyrocketing. The most reasonable explanation is that the German beer tradition contains the seeds of its own destruction.

I’ve discussed the Reinheitsgebot a few times on the blog before. As a refresher, it’s the German beer purity law, enacted in 1516, which mandates that the only ingredients allowed in beer are barley, hops and water (yeast was later added when people discovered it, and wheat was added at some point as well.) Though the Reinheitsgebot was officially repealed around the end of the Cold War, almost every brewery in Germany still abides by it, and most of them proudly proclaim their compliance.

Aventinus...truly a beer to serve to your wine geek friends.

It’s not difficult to see why German brewers are proud of their purity law. As DeBenedetti points out, the Reinheitsgebot ushered in a new era of quality control. It’s also a powerful link to the past to think that the beer you’re drinking is essentially what your lederhosen-wearing great-great-great grandparents drank. Finally, some of the greatest beers on the planet are German-made in the traditional style. Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier and Schneider Aventinus are probably both in my own personal top 15.

While the Reinheitsgebot doesn’t prevent brewers from making wonderful and complex beers, it clearly stifles certain sorts of innovation. It’s not just that the purity law excludes some powerful ingredients like coffee, chocolate, cinnamon, honey, orange peel, and countless others that brewers have used to great effect around the world. As the truism goes, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data,” but both the author of this piece and I have noticed that German beer geeks tend to turn up their noses at flavorful American craft beers, even those made with only the four magical ingredients.

This disdain for the “gimmicky” American craft beer scene seems endemic to Europeans. (In my admittedly limited experience, this is especially true to German and English expats stuck in America.) Americans add truckloads of hops to their pale ales just for shock value, or to see how far they can push the envelope. They make 12% imperial stouts just to brag that their beer is as strong as wine. They lack “beer culture,” or “appreciation for beer,” or any sort of sophistication on the topic. German beer culture has kept products fairly constant for centuries, and many of those products are great, so why mess with a good thing?

But the fact is that German beer culture is dying at the exact same time that American beer culture is thriving. I’ll gladly admit that there is a portion of the American craft beer scene that looks something the the European stereotype — they just want the hoppiest, the booziest or the next big thing. But take a sip of a Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, or a North Coast Old Rasputin, and if you tell me that it’s not a world-class beer, make no mistake: I will fight you. And those are just beers that are brewed with only Reinheitsgebot ingredients. I’m not even talking about Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, or Hopslam, or any of the number of amazing American craft brews with other ingredients.

Regardless of your opinion of the essence of the American craft scene, there’s no mistaking that all of this innovation is a huge part of what’s driving youth to good beer in record numbers. DeBenedetti concludes:

Innovation is happening, if slowly, but German brewers and the drinking public will need to truly embrace change to get the country out of its rut. Blind adherence to a centuries-old edict isn’t working anymore. The crucibles of great brewing traditions should be preserved, by all means, and the classic beer recipes and brands along with them—but there can be no doubt: It’s time for new blood in the kettles.

I don’t know nearly enough about German culture to try and give a diagnosis of my own. But it’s hard to look at a thriving American beer culture, a dying German one, and not pay attention to the obvious major difference between the two. Goodness knows Germany is perfectly capable of innovations in other fields. Let’s hope that their brewing industry can join the trend.

Great Taste! Less Filling!

Nope, nothin' wrong with that. It's a metaphor about the dry hopping process.

Beer marketing has changed since the days of the classic “Great Taste, Less Filling” slogan and women wrestling in a fountain. It seems that more and more macrobrew commercials are trying to take a page from craft beer’s playbook and talk about the beer or brewing process itself. Of course, everything they’re saying is total B.S., full of meaningless marketing jargon and vagaries. But they’re talking about hops now! Come with me as I wade through the bullshit and let’s dissect a few of these BMC gimmicks.

The Gimmick: “Triple Hops Brewed Miller Lite”

The Claim: Their website claims, “Ever wonder how we make Miller Lite taste so insanely great? Triple Hops brewing! Great Pilsner taste comes from our three-step brewing process:

1. Create Flavor
2. Develop Balance
3. Lock-in Taste

We put THREE hop cones in our beer!

Why it’s B.S.: Oh, plenty of reasons. Let’s start with the general and move to the specific. It seems that they’re touting three hop additions in the brewing process. Nearly every beer you’ve ever tasted has at least three hop additions. It’s how beer is made. The first addition, at the beginning of the boil, makes the beer bitter. The second addition, sometime in the 2nd half of the boil, is primarily for hop flavor. The third addition, at the very end of the boil, is primarily for hop aroma. It’s not all that complicated, and I think that Miller Lite’s demographic could understand it easily enough. Of course, Miller Lite has no hop flavor or aroma, so they have to use meaningless marketing jargon like “Lock-in taste.” Plus, they don’t mention what kind of hops or how much they add. Back in 1982 when Miller Lite first hit the market, they released the ingredient list, which was filled with all sorts of nasty stuff you don’t want in a beer, but relevant to this discussion is that they used chemically modified hop extract instead of actual hops. They claim that now they’re “all natural,” but who knows.

The Gimmick: Miller Lite Vortex Bottle

The Claim: The grooves in the bottle’s neck unlock that TRIPLE HOPS BREWED great Pilsner taste!

Man up, pussy!

Why it’s B.S.: Like the Triple Hops Brewed gimmick, Miller Lite doesn’t really say exactly what the “vortex” created by the grooves is supposed to do. Is it supposed to release aromatics, like agitating a tulip glass? Miller Lite doesn’t have any! And even if it did, you’re drinking straight out of the bottle, so you’d obviously miss any aroma. (Remember kids, never ever drink directly from the bottle unless you’re at the beach or something. And if you are, you should have brought cans anyway.) One of the horrid and offensive “man up” commercials for the vortex bottle features the following exchange (paraphrasing from memory here):

Clubber guy in sunglasses: I don’t see what’s so great about this bottle.

Half-naked waitress: It’s got grooves. Maybe if you take off your sunglasses, you’d see that. Also, man up and quit being a faggot.

Notice that, again, the waitress doesn’t explain what the grooves are supposed to do. I like to think that Clubber Guy in Sunglasses is actually a beer geek, dragged to a shitty club with his friends, and was actually asking what the grooves do expecting a coherent answer. He’s wearing sunglasses since he has that Tony Sparano disease. Receiving nothing but idiocy and insults to his masculinity, he withdraws into the sweet, sweet sounds of Corey Hart.

The Gimmick: Frost Brewed Coors Light!

The Claim: It’s frost brewed so it’s as cold as the Rockies!

Train in vain (heh)

Why it’s B.S.: “Hmm. We can’t think of a single good thing to say about our beer’s taste or aroma. Wait! I know! It’s cold!” Coors Light’s entire marketing campaign is based on the fact that their beer is colder than everybody else’s. Their cans have the mountains that turn blue so you can see when the beer is cold! (To paraphrase David Cross on the matter, when deciding which sense to use to determine if something’s cold, touch has a pretty good track record.) What exactly does “frost brewed” mean? Their water starts out colder than everyone else’s? Well that doesn’t matter, you have to boil the water to make beer anyway. It’s in near-freezing temperatures when it’s fermenting? Well that’s just lagering — that’s how that particular style of beer is made. Plus, one of your first beer geek lessons is that you don’t want your beer to be too cold anyway. Especially with stronger and darker styles, more flavors come out as the beer warms. On top of that, cold beer numbs your taste buds. I’ll give Coors the benefit of the doubt that that’s not what they’re going for.

The Gimmick: Beechwood-aged Budweiser!

The Claim: Budweiser’s award-winning flavor is thanks to the beechwood aging process!

This guy looks legit

Why it’s B.S.: Okay, Budweiser’s not as guilty here as the light beers above. If you dig around their website, they actually explain what they do with beechwood. It’s not aging at all — basically they boil beechwood chips to remove any traces of wood flavor, then put them in the fermenter to speed up the process a bit. Gives the yeast more surface area to work with. It’s a fine process, but Budweiser’s being disingenuous. Now that craft beer is getting bigger, they suddenly break out their old “beechwood aged” advertisements which were retired for a while. The term evokes images of beer aging for months in barrels, which of course, many craft beers do. There’s nothing wrong with their beechwood technique, but don’t think it adds anything at all to the beer.

My Favorite New Beers of 2010

Tis the season for year-end lists. Who am I to think that I’m above the fray? Of course, since taste is subjective, I can’t pull a Pitchfork and do “best new beers.” Instead I’ll pull a New York Rock Market and do a list of my favorite new beers of 2010. Given that this is the New York Ale Project, I’m going to limit this list to beers that are (or were seasonally) pretty easily available in New York. That means no Goose Island Bourbon County Coffee or Vanilla, which are sure to top most lists this year. No brewery-only releases, like Cigar City Hunaphu’s. No Firestone Walker Parabola, which supposedly is making it to NY this year but isn’t here yet.

In no particular order:

Pretty Things KK 1901: I’ve mentioned this one several times on the blog, as I went to the beer’s release party back in September. It’s a unique beer based on a brewday document from 1901. Kind of like an unholy matrimony of a dark sweet porter and an IPA, except the darkness comes from brown sugar instead of roasted malt, which is an interesting but extinct technique. It’ll wreck your palate for a little while, but KK well worth trying. There are a few bottles left on NYC shelves so grab one — when it’s gone, it’s gone.

Hop Bomb

Brooklyn Detonation Ale: For all of his skill and charisma, Brooklyn Brewery head honcho Garrett Oliver can be a bit of a snob. In his mostly wonderful book, The Brewmaster’s Table (which I’ll review one of these days), Oliver disparages the new American IPA tradition, claiming that “anybody can throw a bunch of hops into a kettle.” Brooklyn’s got their East India Pale Ale, a mild (and mediocre) English-style IPA, but have never given hopheads much to think about until 2010. Detonation is a big American double IPA that can throw its weight around with the hoppiest of them. It’s a nuclear explosion of hops with delicious, sweet malty fallout — definitely in the East Coast style. One of Brooklyn’s best in a long time. Hopefully Mr. Oliver will warm to the style.

Sierra Nevada Fritz and Ken’s Ale: Fritz and Ken’s Ale was the first of the series of collaborations to celebrate Sierra Nevada’s 30th anniversary this year, and in my opinion, the first was the best. (Ken is Ken Grossman, king of Sierra Nevada. Fritz is Fritz Maytag of Anchor Brewing, another California craft beer legend. Fritz actually sold Anchor shortly after this beer was released, after owning it for 45 years.) It’s an imperial stout with major chocolate and mocha flavors and compares nicely with some of the rarer and most sought-after stouts out there, yet it was on shelves everywhere for months early in the year.

Ommegang Zuur: This beer has met with mostly decent-to-tepid reviews, which surprises me. Zuur is an Oud Bruin, or sour brown ale, brewed with cherries. I think it’s a fantastic take on a style that many American breweries don’t attempt. It’s sour and chock-full-o cherry, but neither is overwhelming. It’s a complex brew that I think is accessible to all, even those who don’t think they like sour beers.

Ithaca Super Friends IPA: I reviewed this one on the blog a while back. It’s an IPA brewed with Brett, a wild yeast strain that winemakers shun but that gives Belgian sour and wild ale styles some of those distinct funky flavors. As I said in the review, I think the unorthodox combination is a real winner, and I expect to see more breweries take a crack at it. In the meantime, let’s all hope that Ithaca and all the collaborators on the beer (Captain Lawrence, Flying Fish and more) make another batch. Maybe they can even bottle it!

Dogfish Head Bitches Brew: I reviewed this one as well. Bitches Brew, an imperial stout blended with an Ethiopian honey beverage, became this winter’s “it” beer when the first episode of Discovery’s “Brew Masters” featured its creation. Beyond the hype, though, it’s still a tremendous beer. The first batch coincided with the 40th anniversary of Miles Davis’ landmark album of the same name, but DFH released a surprise second batch a couple of weeks ago, so you should still be able to find it for a little while. Smooth, baby.

Greenport Harbor Hopnami: These guys out on the North Fork of Long Island started to build a name for themselves in NYC this year. Their Leaf Pile pumpkin ale seemed to be on tap everywhere this fall, and was greatly enjoyed by geeks and non-geeks alike. I’ve sampled all of their wares at this point, and Leaf Pile is good, but the Double IPA Hopnami is the real jewel of the bunch. I’ve got to say that this the East Coast is coming back with a vengeance in the IPA arms race. The Greenport Harbor folks are in New York City pretty frequently to pimp their beers, and they’re all great guys, so hit up a tasting sometime and meet some local rising stars.

A New Yorker’s Guide to the Top 100: Part XII

Welcome to the eleventh installment of New York Ale Project’s series, a guide to drinking Beer Advocate’s Top 100 Beers on Planet Earth list in NYC! The list is based on BeerAdvocate.com user’s average ratings for each beer, weighted by number of reviews and another few factors. I’ll be counting down with 10 beers each week. I’ll give a little description of the beer and tell you how you can get your grubby little hands on it.

Check out Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, Part IV here, Part V here, Part VI here, Part VII here, Part VIII here, Part IX here, Part X here, and Part XI here! (And the fake Part XII here)

The Abyss stares back...

#5: The Abyss by Deschutes Brewery (Bend/Portland, OR): Not available in New York. Deschutes is up there with Surly as a brewery I hope against hope will start distributing in NYC one day. One of the finest in Portland, OR, which is one of the finest beer cities around. The brewery’s beers available throughout much of the Western US, so there’s a good chance you’ll come across it in your travels. The Abyss launches each winter — it just launched in Oregon a week or so ago. It’s available at fancy stores in Deschutes’ distribution range for a little while until it’s gone, so it’s not too tough to trade for a bottle. It’s an amazing 11% ABV imperial stout, with all the goodness that suggests. There’s a good chance it would be even higher on the list if it wasn’t for 2009. There was an infection somewhere in the production of the 2009 batch, and many people ended up with sour, gross stout. Many others ended up with delicious Abyss, so buying a bottle of the 2009 edition is a big game of Russian Roulette. The brewery claims that they have found and destroyed the barrels that caused the infection and they should be good to go in 2010. We hope so.

Breakfast of champions.

#4: Kentucky Breakfast Stout by Founders Brewing Co. (Grand Rapids, MI): The third and highest rated of Founders’ three amazing Breakfast Stout variations. This one, like The Abyss and several others on the list (including Goose Island Bourbon County, a real favorite of mine), is a bourbon barrel-aged imperial stout. The difference between KBS and Bourbon County is night and day. As I explained, Goose Island BCS is a real whiskey lover’s delight, but if you hate the stuff you probably won’t like the beer. KBS, on the other hand, has a discernible and delicious whiskey essence, but it’s a real showcase for chocolate and vanilla, and to a lesser extent coffee and oak. Does this sound amazing to you? How could it not!

In New York: KBS is released each March to much fanfare and passing out, and this is the first March that Founders will be available in New York. The beer will certainly be available on tap around then, and from time to time in great beer bars throughout the year. (I’ve had it at George Keeley’s and I think 4th Ave Pub this year, and I know it’s been elsewhere, too.) The bottle situation, which I’ve talked about before with Founders, is trickier. Recently it seems I’ve been seeing more Founders bottles around, but whether that’s a sign of more distribution or just a temporary influx is unclear. Either way, we’ll be seeing some bottles in March I’m sure, but it will be one of those “buy it ASAP or it’ll be gone” situations.

The hop champions

#3/#2: Pliny the Elder/Pliny the Younger by Russian River Brewing Co. (Santa Rosa, CA): Not available in New York. The top 2 Double IPAs in the world, which occasionally flip flop in the rankings (and one or the other occasionally guns for the #1 spot for a little while), so it makes sense to look at them together. The Elder and Younger are brewed at Russian River, which has several sour beers on this list. The Elder is, to many geeks, the Double IPA against which all others are judged. Bottles are fairly common in its range, but it doesn’t show up East of the Rockies, with one notable exception: kegs show up every so often in Philadelphia’s beer bars. That was my first experience with Pliny, before I was a beer geek but after I had already decided I wanted to be one some day. If you want a bottle, you’ll have to travel out west or trade for one, but like I said, it’s pretty common out there and it’s not difficult to find friendly traders who will hook you up.

The Younger is another matter entirely. Russian River releases a very small amount on tap each winter at the brewpub and in a few special bars in the distribution area (they’re saying February this year). With the insane hype surrounding this beer, they’re no longer filling growlers as of this year, so you can forget about your friend out in Sonoma shipping you some. If you want to taste it, you’ll have to make the pilgrimage yourself. I haven’t had the pleasure, but one day…

Fact: Whoever got these sold their soul.

#1: Westvleteren 12 by Brouwerij Westvleteren (Westvleteren, Belgium): Here we are. Minus a few short usurpations by the Pliny brothers, Westvleteren 12 (Westy) has held the #1 spot on Beer Advocate’s list for years now. It’s a trappist quad, dark and malty and weighing in at 10.2% ABV. Part of this beer’s allure involves the hoops you have to jump through to get it. Like all Trappist breweries, Westvleteren (aka St. Sixtus Abbey) sells the beer to raise money for the Abbey and charities. Westy takes it a step further, though, by banning the sale of their beer anywhere but to individual buyers at the Abbey. You need to call them in advance to reserve it (good luck getting through). You need to give them your license plate number. You can buy a maximum of 1 case. You aren’t hooked up to a lie detector…yet.

Despite the best efforts of the monks, a black market for this beer exists. I know of venues in NYC that have had bottles for sale from time to time (no, I won’t tell you, and besides, the ones that I know of don’t do it anymore). Because of the difficulty acquiring this beer, some folks argue that it’s overrated and that it’s getting a major “hype boost” in the rankings. There’s only one way to find out: try it for yourself. It’s valuable but possible to trade for on the trading sites. That’s what I did. In fact, I’m drinking one as I’m drafting this. Read the review that I’m going to put on my blog shortly. Also, there will be a “what did we learn” conclusion summarizing it all.

Thanks for reading all of this!

America’s Best Young Breweries

One of the amazing things about the Cigar City Brewing brouhaha (read about it here if you haven’t) is that the brewery is only about two years old. You’d think they were old hands with the attention they get on the craft beer scene, but they’re young — one of the reasons the extension of their wet license is so important. If it’s yanked, they could lose their amazing gains very quickly.

The CCB Affair got me to thinking — what are some other standout breweries that have reputations beyond their years? There are plenty of new companies out there that you’d think have been around forever if you’re new to the craft beer scene. Believe it or not, I only came of official US drinking age in 2007 (makes you feel old, right?), so let’s use that year as the cutoff as I give a few mini-profiles of my favorite young breweries that you can get in NYC.

The Bruery (Founded in 2008 in Placentia, CA): One of the most talked-about and in some ways most controversial breweries around these days. The Bruery (portmanteau of “brewery” and “Rue,” the founder’s last name) specializes in bottle-conditioned beers made with unusual ingredients. Their Autumn Maple is the first beer I’ve ever tasted made with sweet potatoes (I didn’t care for it last year, but maybe they changed the recipe because I liked it better this year). Trade Winds is a Belgian-style golden ale made with Thai basil and rice.  Not all of their beers are so out there, but they’re all big and bottle-conditioned.

Two of The Bruery’s limited releases are flashpoints for controversy in Beergeekvania. Black Tuesday is a brewery-only release imperial stout that clocks in at about 20% ABV. It’s also the beer most closely associated with the craft brew hype machine. Bottles that end up on eBay regularly go for well over $100, which many geeks think is antithetical to the craft beer movement. The other controversial beer that you can hock for hundreds of dollars is called “Partridge in a Pear Tree.” It’s the first in a “vertical” series of holiday beers The Bruery’s putting out over the next 12 years (they’re up to Three French Hens this year). I put “vertical” in quotes because a true vertical tasting consists of samples of the same beer from different years (e.g. I’m planning to do a vertical tasting later in the winter of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout from 2007-2010), whereas the 12 Days/Years of Christmas series, like Stone’s Vertical Epic, consists of entirely different beers each year.

Regardless, The Bruery makes some great brews. You can find wine sized bottles of many of them in specialty beers stores across the city, and sometimes on tap at beer bars.

Pretty Things Beer and Ale Project (Founded in 2008 in Cambridge, MA): Readers of my site know well my fondness for Pretty Things. They’re a gypsy brewery, making their wares in other breweries that open their doors to Dann and Co. Pretty Things beers include the fantastic Jack D’or saison, the Saint Boltoph’s town brown ale, and a few more. They also have their “Once Upon a Time” series, when they make beers based on historical brewing documents. You can read more about the brewery in the link above, but Pretty Things is a real up-and-comer that could soon join the ranks of the elite.

Hill Farmstead Brewery (Founded 2009 in Greensboro, VT): This brewery is brand new, but it’s completely blowing beer geeks away. For example, read this thread on Beer Advocate, with comments like, “I will say this – I have had many of the beers purported to be the best on this site and out of all of them, Hill Farmstead has been one of the few breweries that blew me away across the board,” and “Damn it all of you, keep you voices down!” They’ve been making surgical strikes into NYC recently, with events at The Blind Tiger and Spuyten Duyvil this past week. Hopefully it’s a sign of wider distribution to come. Many of the most renowned beer tasters in the world are saying Hill Farmstead is the absolute truth, so it looks like Vermont has something really special on their hands. There’s a great article about the brewery and the brewer here.

A New Yorker’s Guide to the Top 100: (Not) Part XII

**EDIT**: It has come to my attention that I got these names off the wrong list on Beer Advocate. My bad. If Strom Thurmond were elected President we wouldn’t be having these problems. Stay tuned for the ACTUAL top 5, including a REAL-TIME REVIEW of the world’s #1 beer, next week!

Here it is. The grand finale. The top 5 beers in the world according to BeerAdvocate.com voters. Drumroll, please…

#5: Corona Light by Groupo Modelo S.A. de C.V. (Mexico City, Mexico): Once I drank this beer. I was instantly transported to a tropical beach with impossibly blue water, relaxing in a lounge chair with two or three bikini-clad babes. My cellphone rang, and I immediately threw it into the ocean like a skipping stone. Then I decorated a palm tree like a Christmas tree. All this because I don’t conform to your rules, society.

#4: Natural Light by Anheuser-Busch, Inc. (St. Louis, MO): A legend. There’s no way I can do this amazing beer justice. So I’ll defer to Boatshoes, BeerAdvocate user and good friend of the NY Ale Project, and his masterful review on BA:

Mmmm, mmmm, smells like a big handful of corn and sweaty pocket change…So, when I was a child I lived on a farm in the midwest and we had our own well. One time after coming back from vacation in the summer, the well had settled with a lot of iron and the water was hard as hell and tasted like it has been soaking in copper pennies. If you took that water, carbonated it, tossed in some lead paint chips, and added some cheap alcohol, that’s pretty much Natty.

With such a ringing endorsement, you’d be a damned fool not to go out and buy a suitcase full of Natural Light right now! Remember: the preferred glassware for this treat is beer bong.

#3: Coors Light by Coors Brewing Co. (Golden, CO): Coors Light has an alluring base taste of water, with lovely faint corn flake notes. What sets this beer apart from the stiff competition in the Light Lager category is the cold-activated can. When those Rocky Mountains go from white to blue, you know that your beer is finally cold enough that your tastebuds will be numb and frozen in delight! Most importantly, since Coors doesn’t let their workers unionize and bust strikes with scabs, you know that they pour their full heart and soul into making this product. Well done, Coors!

#2: Michelob Ultra by Anheuser-Busch, Inc. (St. Louis, MO): True story: if you drink this beer you will in short order become an Adonis with a sixpack you can grate cheese on. Michelob Ultra is so healthy that it actually burns calories and bulks you up while you drink it! Whereas most beers are made with malt, hops, water and yeast, Michelob Ultra is made of magic. One 12 oz bottle has negative 500 calories.

#1: Bud Light by Anheuser-Busch, Inc. (St. Louis, MO): Now we have reached endgame. The supreme beer in the land. Appearance: captivating. Aroma: stunning. Taste: orgasmic. Mouthfeel: legendary. Drinkability: the difference. And don’t even get me started on how good it is when you add artificial lime-like flavoring! This is the top selling beer in the United States. Who needs quality ingredients, craftsmanship or any flavor or aroma when you have a hundred million dollar ad campaign?

A New Yorker’s Guide to the Top 100: Part XI

Welcome to the eleventh installment of New York Ale Project’s series, a guide to drinking Beer Advocate’s Top 100 Beers on Planet Earth list in NYC! The list is based on BeerAdvocate.com user’s average ratings for each beer, weighted by number of reviews and another few factors. I’ll be counting down with 10 beers each week. I’ll give a little description of the beer and tell you how you can get your grubby little hands on it.

Check out Part I here, Part II here, Part III here, Part IV here, Part V here, Part VI here, Part VII here, Part VIII here, Part IX here and Part X here!

We’re down to the top ten beers in the world, according to Beer Advocate voters. I’ll be doing 10-6 today, and 5-1 Thursday.

Taste, as always, is subjective, but these are brews that have stood the test of time and fickle tastes, and are the ten highest rated with thousands of reviews. Whether you like top ten lists or not, these are all beers you should seek out furiously. By almost any metric, they are among the absolute best in the world.

You've never been worthy.

#10: Imperial Russian Stout by Stone Brewing Co. (Escondido, CA): If you’ve been reading this whole series, Stone is an old friend to you. It’s tied with Russian River for most beers in the top 100 (seven), but unlike Russian River, you don’t have to travel out west to find it. Stone’s dominance of the top 100 is all the more impressive since these beers span several styles — strong ales, IPAs, CDAs, and now an imperial stout, the style with the most representation in the top 100. I’m running out of ways to say that this is a dark, chocolatey, roasty, very powerful beer. But Stone’s Imperial Stout is truly mouthwatering. It’s called a Russian Imperial Stout, by the way, to hearken to tradition. The style was invented in 18th Century England to export to the imperial court of Catherine the Great, which apparently couldn’t get enough of the stuff. So there you go.

In New York: Maybe the best part about Stone is that their stuff is easy to find and fairly cheap compared to most beers of the same quality. That’s why they’ve probably the best craft brewery in America. The Imperial Stout comes in a stately bomber, which is on shelves in beer stores, supermarkets, you know the drill with Stone by now.

#9: Trappist Westvleteren 8 by Brouwerij Westvleteren (Westvleteren, Belgium): Not available in New York. We’ve seen a few of the eight Trappist breweries on this list already, but Westvleteren (“Westy”) is the holy grail. Their beers are undeniably amazing, but many beer geeks think that the reason they’re the highest rated is that you can only get them at the brewery itself. Westy has the smallest output of all of the Trappist breweries. I’ll talk a bit more about the brewery and its policies when I get to the other Westy beer on the list on Thursday. Trappist 8 is an incredibly complex dubbel with aromas and tastes of dark fruits, spicy yeast and an herbal quality — it’s almost like Port wine, though with very fizzy carbonation. It’s not quite as hard to trade for a bottle as its big brother (again, you’ll see on Thursday), but you’re still a lucky person when you get your hands on one.

Smashing.

#8: HopSlam Ale by Bell’s Brewery (Kalamazoo, MI): Not available in New York. Bell’s, the pride of Kalamazoo, recently announced a $52 million expansion aimed. They’re shooting for 20% annual growth, and will likely make the top 10 craft breweries by sales for the first time this year. But I wouldn’t hold my breath about them coming to NYC any time soon. Larry Bell, the eccentric HBIC of Bell’s, has a history of getting into fights with distributors. He pulled out of the Chicago market a few years back because of a fight with a distributor, and last year he sued a Michigan distributor to try to prevent its sale to AB-Inbev. Word on the street is that Mr. Bell has already burned bridges with New York distributors, but I heard that thirdhand. In any event, HopSlam is one of the best IPAs around, and it’s a shame you can’t get it in NYC. It lives up to its name, especially in the aroma. It has one of the cleanest, purest, most delicious hop aromas on Earth. It comes out early each year, and it’s well worth a trip to Philly or DC to try to pick up a sixer or two.

Creepy children aside, it's one of the world's best.

#7: Founders Breakfast Stout by Founders Brewing Co. (Grand Rapids, MI): We’ve already seen Canadian Breakfast Stout on the list, which is a version of this beer aged in maple syrup barrels. We’ll see one more variation on Thursday in the top 5. But this is where it all began. This beer is a coffee oatmeal imperial stout. With so many stout variations in one, it sounds like the result might be a muddled mess. I assure you it is not. This is a ludicrously good beer. The taste has smooth, delicious milk chocolate, definitely milder than the more bitter chocolate kick I’m used to in stouts. The coffee’s good. There’s just a hint of spice, which adds a nice level of complexity without being overdone. Alcohol comes out a bit as it warms. It’s sweet up front, and has a nice bitter finish with a little hoppy hint. To me, at least, this is one of the beers that I’m 99.9% sure that I could pick out of a lineup blind ten times out of ten. The chocolate, coffee and oats combine for a one-of-a-kind treat.

In New York: Like Stone, you probably know the deal with Founders in NYC by now. It debuted in New York earlier this year, to the eternal delight of NYC beer geeks. Breakfast Stout isn’t as common as Red’s Rye or Centennial IPA, but it’s on tap at beer bars throughout our fair city often enough. Bottles are a different story. Founders doesn’t have enough bottling capacity for the NYC market, but 4-packs show up at specialty stores occasionally. Keep your eyes open and you’ll eventually get lucky.

Trappistes Rochefort 10 by Brasserie de Rochefort (Rochefort, Belgium): The highest non-Westvleteren Trappist beer on the list. For that matter, the 2nd highest non-American beer on the list. This beer is a Belgian Quad, which is the strongest, darkest, most alcoholic of the abbey-style beers. Sweet caramel, dark fruit, some chocolate and spice all tied together by a nice alcoholic kick are the style’s trademarks, and Rochefort 10 may be the best. There’s a bit of a rivalry between Rochefort and Westy fans in the US, with Rochefort fans saying the only reason Westy’s more highly rated is because you can’t get it here. I’m not taking sides — I’ll just say if you like abbey-style Belgian beers you can’t go wrong with either.

In New York: Rochefort’s beers aren’t produced in huge quantities, but they do make it to the U.S. and New York. Check the shelves of your specialty beer store and you’ll probably be able to find it. Some Belgian restaurants have it, too.