It seems as though I have been waiting for years, and I know the folks at www.beeradvocate.com have actually been waiting for over 10 years. They have pulled it off! I just received the inaugural issue of Beeradvocate magazine. It really feels great to know that there are other beer geeks and even beer snobs out there that lap this stuff up with as much enthusiasm as I do.

The Alstrom brothers (Todd and Jason), have built their beery credentials the hard (and fun) way, one beer at a time. Ten years ago they started a website that was dedicated to sharing their love and respect of beer with the world. Today, “Beeradvocates” everywhere exchange information and reviews of beer. They post beer-related events schedules, beer road-trip reports and offer suggestions of great places to have a beer. It’s a great resource for beer geeks everywhere…

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On a recent visit to Sam’s Club, I ran across a mild cheddar cheese from Cabot that is made with Harpoon IPA. I had to give it a try. Cabot does a respectable job with all of their Vermont cheddars I have tasted, but I am just a beer snob, not a cheese snob…

I have run across beer cheese many times before, but what makes this one different is the beer that is used. Harpoon IPA, while not a standout in the IPA department, definitely delivers enough hop flavor to be head and shoulders above most tasteless lagers that are usually blended with cheese. The cheddar blocks are soaked in the beer for 24 hours just before packaging.

The cheese itself is on the mild side of white cheddar…

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I can’t say that I’ve ever directly asked that question to a bartender for fear he might spit in my beer. But it actually doesn’t take long to figure out the answer for yourself. The criteria is simple: Is your serving glass clean enough to allow a proper head to form on the beer, and will it maintain that head? Are the carbonation bubbles forming and not sticking to the inside of the glass? If so, then it is ‘beer-clean.’ Even glasses that have been cleaned free of debris and germs may not pass the test.

Trade abuse of glassware is just going to happen. Bus-pans full of salad dressing mixed with who knows what; and in the bottom is a beer glass. There is also Aunt Millie, who along with her occasional beer, leaves a bit of her lipstick with every sip. That glass didn’t have a scarlet rim when it arrived from the restaurant supply. Even after a 190-degree, soapy trip through the commercial dishwasher, traces of Aunt Millie’s DNA can still be found. It’s the fats and oils that are the usual suspects. Lipstick on any glass is just plain gross!

Many bars, restaurants and homes try very hard to present an obviously clean glass to the guest. Some may even be obsessive about getting them spotless. Bar-sink sanitizers claim to be “no-rinse,” but will kill the head on a beer if not rinsed. Many automatic dishwashers use rinse agents in order to assure there are no water-spots on the glass. Rinse agents do this by using chemical surfactants, which also work against beer head formation. I hand wash all of my bar-ware at home with a very little bit of Dawn.

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The average beer drinker in the U.K. is doing just that, drinking average beer. Like our very own Homer Simpson, the English are lapping up flavorless macro-lagers faster than a fleet of Chevy Suburbans drinking petrol. Cyclops is the latest marketing and information campaign set on an odyssey to reverse this trend.

The British Isles have a proud beer history, known for originating many styles of ale that we drink today. Bitter, pale ale, porter and stout are just a few great British styles brewed around the world and which have always been brewed best in the Isles. Traditionally, these ales are served at cellar temperatures from barrels. The beer is lightly carbonated and is dispensed either by gravity or pumped up from the cellar by hand. Brits and beer geeks refer to this beer as “Real Ale.”

Marketing is a powerful thing. Over the years, large Euro-brewers like Heineken and Interbrew (now Inbev), along with many British brewers have slowly and methodically convinced the British beer drinker that “flavorless yellow fizzy beer” is good. In recent years even our very own Bud and Bud Light have become standards in the typical London pub. The reasons why this is so are too numerous to cover in this article.

In the 1970’s, a group of British beer traditionalists formed a consumer organization called “The Campaign for Real Ale” or CAMRA for short. I’d liken them to The NRA of beer. They were able to influence legislation that stemmed the tide of large breweries being able to monopolize the pub industry, thus preserving the real ale tradition. Most folks in the U.K over age 35 have probably heard of CAMRA. They are known well enough to have had a song written about them (taking the piss out of them) called “CAMRA Man”. (more…)

It’s never too late to review and recommend a good book. Although “The Brewmaster’s Table” (HarperCollins) was published in 2003, it has become a classic. You may have seen the book’s author, Garrett Oliver, on the Food Network; or you may have quaffed down one of his Brooklyn Brewery beers where he is brewmaster.

Garrett Oliver has been the foremost catalyst in beer’s modern culinary revolution. A self described bon-vivant, Oliver is one of the more flamboyant brewers and spokesman on the American craft beer scene.

He begins the book with a description of the brewing process, with an emphasis on the ingredients that make-up the complex flavors in beer. The latter point is very important because Oliver uses this as the underlying methodology for properly pairing beer and food.

Oliver has been known to openly challenge some of the country’s foremost wine sommeliers to food pairing “throw-downs.” He has also boldly proclaimed beer’s superiority to wine, when it comes to the subject of pairing with food. His influence cannot go unnoticed. Chefs such as Mario Batali and Bobby Flay have made great efforts to improve the beer selections at their restaurants. Because of him, many leading chefs have also accepted the reality of the wide range of complex flavors that beer can offer.

“The Brewmaster’s Table” is a great handbook for exploring the art of beer/food pairing. The book also features a complete and concise review of the major beer styles of the world, along with very enjoyable photos. It is not a cookbook. In fact, there is not one recipe within its 372 pages.

Every beer-geek or foodie should have this book…

Beer Myth: Stouts (Like Guinness) are made from what is left in the bottom of the barrel.

Beer Myth-Busted: The Stout style of ale is an off-shoot of porter. There are Irish dry-stouts, sweet stouts and imperial stouts, to name a few. Stouts are made from a complex recipe of roasted barley and other grains. It’s the roasted grains that give the stout its roasty, chocolatey and coffee-like flavors. The roasted grains also give the beer its opaque black color, much the same as the colors found on burnt toast. This is the result of a chemical process called the Malliard Reaction.

Stouts are conceived, formulated and brewed to be stouts. I make stouts and porters and I don’t even own a barrel! They are not by-products of another beer in the vat.

I desperately tried earlier to post this blog in real time during my abduction episode, but my PDA’s browser somehow let me down. (Or was it an electro-magnetic force field of some kind?) I feel like Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I have been tormented the last few days by an unrelenting “signal” from afar. It beckons to me, occupying my thoughts and certainly influenced some planning for a recent business trip.

My current business travel requires me to visit Charlotte, NC, and as always, before I go anywhere, I check the Beerfly on www.beeradvocate.com. I always come away with some good ideas for my evenings on the road. This time I will seek a close encounter of the beery kind. This should be interesting since North Carolina recently “modernized” its beer laws, which now allows the sale of some of the best beers in the world. I can only hope West Virginia will do the same someday soon.

I will rendezvous with a spacecraft that serves some of the best beers available in the universe, The Flying Saucer Beer Emporium near the UNCC campus. I am pleased to find that one of the finest beer-bar chains has a location near UNCC; although it does not surprise me due to the fact that they seem to always locate near a university. The Flying Saucer now operates 11 locations from Texas to North Carolina.

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Ok, I admit it (isn’t it already obvious?) I’m a Beer Snob…

It was Christmas Eve and as usual we celebrate at my in-laws with a very traditional Italian Christmas feast. The highlight of the meal is spaghetti with calamari sauce. There are many other fantastic selections of lightly fried seafood, vegetables – and don’t forget desserts.

I always try to bring an interesting beer that will match up and two of the brothers in-law usually enjoy whatever it is. We usually also have a Chianti or some other dry table wine. Before we headed out the door for the feast, I realized the only decent bottle of beer I had to bring was one that I had hoped to cellar. It already had 2 years on it, but I thought that I should not go empty handed. I was ready to sacrifice it to the spirit of Christmas with the family.

This year, I was surprised to see that brother in-law Al arrived with two bottles of a great Sicilian wine called “Pinocchio.” I turned him onto it after having it at a “Wine Shop” tasting at Capitol Market. Unfortunately, the other brother in-law was laid up with a major head cold and missed the feast totally, leaving Alberto and me to do the all of the quaffing.

I got as far as opening the cage on the Caracole (Yes! It’s corked!), then beer snobbery set in… What in the heck was I doing! There was no way I was going to open this particular bottle in such a scenario where it would not be the star of the show. Besides, there was a strong likelihood I would wind up drinking most of it myself, due to the wine being there as well.

And it’s not that I’m not worthy (or that Al is not worthy). But this couldn’t be the way it was supposed to end for this wonderful bottle of Belgian artisanal ale. No one would have even taken note of how well-crafted and sublime this beer is. It would not have received a proper eulogy with all of the other feasting going on. A beer like this one is meant to be savored and shared. It also should really match the food that was to be served along with it. Today was not the day. I discretely twisted the cage back in place and stealthily removed it from the table.

We wound up splitting a bottle of Edmund Fitzgerald Porter with some chocolate desserts. The Caracole will have its day!

I am usually behind any reasonable program to educate people against drinking and driving. With that said, I was a little insulted by the latest publicity stunt pulled off by the Bennington, Vermont Police Dept.

The Bennington PD decided to start “profiling” beer drinkers this past holiday season by distributing beer glasses emblazoned with the Bennington Police Department logo. A friendly reminder to all of us heathen beer drinkers, the scourge of society, not to drink and drive. Why not do it for wine glasses which are small, easy to drink and contain the same amount of alcohol as a whole pint of beer? Or cocktail glasses that deliver the strongest dose of alcohol per serving?

This is just one more example of the ongoing bias against beer and beer drinkers in our society. Why does it exist? Did we earn it? Even the big three US brewers apparently think the same way about us. Look at the way they market to us (successfully, by the way). They use mindless, sophomoric characters, dogs, twins, bikinis and, of course, it’s less filling — so drink more! They know that when they convince you to drink beer with almost no flavor, you can and will drink much more of it. Craft beer drinkers are less likely to binge on double IPA.

I am certainly not arguing that beer drinkers are not a contributing factor when it comes to DUI; but beer drinkers are not the sole cause of the problem.

So, I guess since beer has been the drink of the common man for over 6,000 years, and common men are the perpetrators of DUI, then the beer drinker must be the perpetrator? This must be the twisted logic going on in the minds of the police department in Bennington.

The money would have been better spent on simple education about body weight and the relative alcohol strength among beer, wine and cocktails. I find that most adults do not understand simple alcohol by volume, nor do they know how many drinks of certain ABV they could consume for their weight. Then there are those who just know they are hammered, like Mel Gibson, who was drinking a bottle of tequila (not Tequiza) when pulled over and arrested for DUI recently.

The offense is DUI, not DUIB (driving under the influence of beer). It is a serious issue in this country and it can ruin lives. Singling out beer drinkers on this issue is short sighted and ignorant of the real causes.

Check out the American Homebrewers Association’s online BAC (Blood Alcohol Content) calculator for Beer Drinkers: http://www.beertown.org/education/calc/bac/bac.aspx

Taste Beer!

Kay Dillon, general manager of the recently opened Blues BBQ near the Clay Center, stands near the armada of taps and beer in bottles available at the restaurant’s bar. Photo by Douglas Imbrogno

I have been to the new downtown Charleston location of Blues BBQ a few times since they opened in the old Chef Dan’s spot across from the Clay Center (there is another in South Charleston). It is one of the better beer bars in the Charleston area with at least 15 bottled micro brews and 20 or so bottled imports, plus a few surprises on tap. They also tout a wide selection of quality wines.

Blues BBQ is, first, a restaurant with pretty good food (which also is available at the bar). The bar is non-smoking, which makes for a good place to hang out and actually taste what you are drinking. A few notable items on tap are Appalachian Ale from WV Brewing, and Cold Trail Ale from Mountain State Brewing in Thomas. Cold Trail tastes like an underwhelming version of an American style wheat beer. I would classify it as a “transition beer” to convert macro lager drinkers.

Another tap space is taken by Harpoon IPA, which is an OK beer, but has by no means kept up with the “Hophead” movement in this country. Of course, the restaurant features the obligatory Guinness and Bass taps for making Black & Tan.

My faves on the bottle list include Ayinger Altbarisch Dunkle, Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter and Shiner’s 97, a nice Schwarzbier (Black Lager).

The bar staff will give you a cold glass (at least they give you a glass) with your beer and they are amply stocked with room temperature beer glasses for us beer snobs. They try to keep many of the bottles at “back room” temperatures instead of freezing them tasteless. I wonder how that is going to work out during the summer months? I would suggest they add separate cooler to keep the beer at around 50 degrees.

Overall It’s a decent place to go for a beer.

If You Go: Blues BBQ is at corner of Leon Sullivan Way and Lee Street. Open 10:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Thursday (kitchen closes 9 p.m.); 10:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday (kitchen closes 10 p.m.); with a brunch from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Call 720-7873.

– By Rich Ireland