Top Shelf Thursday, January 2015

It felt good to land back on Thursday nights again.  As much changed rolled out during 2014, culminating at the year’s end, the ritual of setting up, arranging chairs, laying out flight lists, lining up glasses, was terra firma to me.  It was comforting to see familiar faces, shake hands, catch up, find out what’s changed in their lives lately.  It’s exciting, too, to invite & get to know some new folks, learn about their tastes & opinions.  This Top Shelf Thursday felt homey to me, which is important when venturing into this long, dark, cold part of the year.

Speaking of cold & (occasionally) dark – the focus in choosing the line-up was loose, but leaned toward the ephemeral.  The beers selected would only be around for a short time – one-offs, anniversary beers – or had just recently found their way back to The House like some kind of prodigal kid.  Maybe ‘transience’ was the theme, kind of apropos for a new year.  And also a little ironic juxtaposed with the emotional tone I alluded to in the first paragraph.  Anyway…

It just so happened that there were a good many Belgian or Belgian-influenced brews in tonight’s flight.  We started with Zenne Valley edition of Lambickx, from importers & blenders Vanberg & DeWulf, associated with Brewery Ommegang.  This lambic was selected from oak & chestnut barrels from a proprietor in Belgium’s Zenne Valley, then blended to achieve the desired level of flavor & acidity, assertive but not as puckering as some.

We moved from tart & oaky to a tart & sweet mix with Lemon Chiffon Cruller Ale, the fourth in Rogue Ales’ series of collaborations with Voodoo Doughnuts of Portland, OR.  Sweet lemon notes jumped from the glass, buttressed by the use of vanilla beans & marshmallows.  Like or it not, everyone agreed it was like nothing they’d tasted before.

Great Divide Brewing celebrated their 20^th anniversary with a beer of the same name.  This Belgian-style golden ale hit the right notes for the style, & was given a boost of sweetness & fruity depth by the addition of Viognier grapes, putting it a little closer to wine territory.  And Browerij Van Steenberge marked their 230^th anniversary with a Brewmaster’s Edition of their Gulden Draak 9000 (a blonde quadruple), aged in American whiskey barrels.  The wood lent layers of toffee, banana, & coconut to the already flavorful brew, & a cool back-to-back comparison with Great Divide’s variation on a Belgian golden ale.

Counter to their character, The Bruery decided to color in the lines with 7 Swans-a-Swimming, the seventh in their annual series of Christmas releases.  Rather than using non-traditional ingredients or crazy processes, they stuck to style with a conventional (but exceptional) abbey quad with candi sugar.

Once again, Great Divide took a Belgian style & gave it a fruity twist - this time with Colorado peaches – for their Peach Grand Cru.  The sweet peach flavor took a front seat before allowing the drier body of the golden ale to carry through to the finish. 

Shmaltz Brewing decided to break with tradition as well with Jewbelation 18, commemorating their 18^th anniversary.  A dark barleywine with 18 malts, 18 hops, but “only” 12.4% ABV, the flavor hit just where a malty barleywine should (in my opinion), with notes of maple & caramel.

As is their wont, the auteurs at Draai Laag took some liberties with the barleywine parameters in crafting Yodeler, a “Belgian-style” barleywine fermented with four yeast strains, including brettanomyces clausenii.  The result was a full-bodied quad-ish ale with a smoothness that belied its 13.2% ABV & a finish that yielded a little fruity & floral note from the wild yeast.

We trod familiar ground with Huge Arker, an imperial stout from Anderson Valley aged in Wild Turkey barrels.  Make that “familiar, but welcome”, as the bourbon barrel-aged stout was like a hearty, comforting blanket, if just a tad rough around the edges.

And we cracked a new record for strength, topping off an already heady flight, with Dogfish Head’s Raison D’Extra.  This capped the “Belgian gone askew” motif throughout the flight, an 18% ABV strong dark ale with raisins & loads of fermentables, that married dark sugars & alcohol flavors beautifully in a package not too far from rum. 

So we hit some familiar strains, augmented by notes unexpected that somehow still worked.  Again, I think there’s a metaphor here somewhere, as we step intrepidly into a new year.  We let the known ground us, while also moving forward.  The only constant is change, the next step right in front of us.  A big thank you to all who braved the cold to tip a few glasses & embrace the new with us, & have a happy, healthy, & prosperous 2015.    

Dave's Not Here

“I think I’m done.”  John told me that Dave had said this before.  This time was different – the words, the voice, just sounded different.  Retirement had been on the horizon for years (he’d actually tried it once before & it didn’t stick).  John & I started working at The House on the same day; the plan was that Dave, the founder & owner, would phase out over the next year.  One year turned into three, & the guy was still putting in 60-ish hours a week, getting up well before dawn to come in & take care of business.* 

This past September, Dave passed a milestone: 40 years in the beer biz.  That career included owning & running a distributor (Allegheny Beverage), a sandwich & 6-pack shop (Jez’s Mart), a compulsory acquisition by the state to build a highway, then 6 & Save, which called several locations “home”.  About eight years ago, Dave used the property he’d bought along Freeport Street & built a commercial site, 6 & Save’s final spot.  He put in 12 draft lines & began growing his retail inventory. 

Dave found his passion for imports & microbrews at Allegheny Beverage, & wanted to be able to offer single bottles & six-packs at an affordable price (a case of Belgian beer seemed cost-prohibitive).  That inventory grew to 500 different brands within a few years, & a hundred more, & a hundred more, always with a special spot for the Belgians.  The draft list was growing & getting better, too, & the prices were the best in the greater Pittsburgh area.  This unassuming building with the drab exterior had developed a reputation as the best-kept secret around for beer geeks.

In December of 2009, Dave & the staff decided that “6 & Save” wouldn’t cut it - a destination like this needed a more fitting name.  The selection had become (as it still is) the widest in the area, & the owner renamed it House of 1000 Beers to reflect that.  A bold move, yeah, but it was time people got the idea that he wasn’t messing around.  Since that time, up to his last days as owner, Dave strived to offer people more choices than anyone else, & worked his ass off to make that happen.  He made the business a success based on his own interest & motivation, taking chances & assuming expense to bring in brands he knew to be excellent.  We at the shop always wondered if he was a hoarder, or a fanatic – the idea was always more, & different.  He has a collector’s mentality, & so appealed to the niche excited by the new, the rare, the unique.  Atmosphere, cuisine, had always been an afterthought.  It was all about the beer.

It’s hard to separate the business from its founder.  In a way, the new name was both grandiose & humble.  1000 beers – damn!  Yes, but it’s also a house.  A home.  Visiting, it was hard not to feel like you’d stepped into someone’s furnished basement or garage.  The House didn’t feel like a finished commercial space, or a slick restaurant.  It felt like someone had put it together with their own two hands, & wanted to share it with you.  It felt like that because that’s pretty much what it was – a business grown from the ground up, figured out one step at a time.  “House” was also apropos because the man practically lived there.  Though he’s had some terrific help over the years, Dave never stopped being hands on & putting in the work himself.  He was the face & backbone of the business, having walked the floors & stocked the shelves & coolers hundreds of thousands of times.  You’d often find his used coffee cups just lying around.  As it’s become for many of us, this was Dave’s home away from home – a 3,000 square foot man cave, that he busted his ass to make the best he could.

And Dave is done.  40 years, thousands & thousands of beers, countless loyal customers & friends.  He grew an organic business around a genuine love of beer.  And at the risk of sounding like a hack, he did it his way.  It’s a cliché, but it’s also one of the highest compliments I can think of to pay someone.  His business was his own.

A little over a month ago, Dave passed the torch to Art, a smart businessman & proven leader who shares a passion for beer.  The wheels are in motion, John is still in place as general manager, & while Art has plans for The House, they are not to undo what is set in place, but to expand on it.  Like myself, he came here out of respect for what Dave established, what it means to him & so many others.  Doubtless, we’ll still see the man around, but now he gets to cool his heels on the other side of the bar.  Raise a glass.

*Moment of truth: lest you think that Dave is some kind of egomaniac who refers to himself in the third person, it’s time to reveal that “Dave the Owner’s Blog” has been ghost-written for the past several years.  

I Don't Always Drink Beer...

Alright, alright - I almost always drink beer.  But man cannot live on liquid bread alone, & this time of year especially finds me venturing to other pastures.  Mine is not primarily a beer family, & in visiting the houses of kin over the holidays, if I don’t bring the good beer, it usually isn’t there.  Which is perfectly alright – I’m not too insistent, & it gives me a chance to veer off my well-beaten path.  My mother’s side of the family is full of wine drinkers, my dad’s is more spirit- & cocktail-centered, & my in-laws are pretty much a grab bag of whatever.  And holidays or no, sometimes I just get burnt out on beer (I know, perish the thought), or don’t want the bloat, or whatever. 

Even when venturing out of my comfort zone, I have found that my appreciation for other kinds of drinks is enhanced if I can connect the dots back to my beloved home base. Beer offers such a broad plurality of tastes, it’s easy to find bridges to other flavor profiles that might not seem glaringly obvious.  Or, if there’s not a bridge, I can at least see across the chasm & wave to the other side.  I don’t claim to have much knowledge about these beverage families, but here are a few of my favorite beer alternatives (“Malternatives”?  Uh, maybe not.) & their beer-adjacent qualities:

Bourbon.  Duh.  Whiskey is distilled beer, & of the whiskey varieties, I find bourbon has the strongest family resemblance.  The heady, dense sweetness, with notes of vanilla, coconut, cinnamon, oak, honey – it’s no wonder that the wood-aging trend started with bourbon barrels.  Sure, oak barrels had been used to house beer for years, but as far as the recent practice of filling second-use spirit barrels intentionally to impart flavors, bourbon fits like a glove.  Drinking bourbon barrel stouts, barleywines, & Scotch ales (arguably the best partner, in my opinion), paved the way for my appreciation of this fine American liquor, a taste my dad was very happy to see me acquire. 

Islay Scotch.  Scotch puts hair on your chest.  That smoky, grainy taste combined with a stiff alcohol will show you what you’re made of.  Among the Scotch varieties, known for their signature smoky character, the Islay single malts hold a special place, the most peaty, briny, complex, & challenging among them.  I remember my first Laphroaig, thinking it resembled a glass of housefire, AFTER the hose trucks had put it out – smoky, musty, organic, salty, astringent, funky stuff that burned & made me come back for more.  It evoked like no other drink I’d had, like an abstract painting in a tumbler.  Scotch holds an obvious kinship to rauchbier, but I liken the Islays to traditional lambic or other funky, wild ales, not so much in the flavor itself (there’s no sour to be had), but for its unpredictability & straight up weirdness.

Big, dry red wines.  I’m going to sound like a total plebe because I know next-to-nothing about wine – I can’t even keep the names straight.  But if someone offers me a pour, I go for the tannic, oaky reds, the more of both the better.  The acidity, the dryness, the sharp fruit flavor – you can easily connect the dots to Flanders reds & dry kriek lambics.  As more sour beers are finding incubators in used wine barrels, more vinous genes are intersecting with the world of beer.  The first time I had Russian River’s Consecration, you could’ve convinced me it was a wine.  I also think there’s some parallel between the intense reds of California & the power of west coast hop bombs.

Port.  Okay, so there’s one style of wine I know by name.  Believe it or not, we do get a good many oenophiles at the bar, & while talking once with a wine-loving young lady, I mentioned that my wine knowledge is practically nil, with the exception of port.  “That makes sense”, she replied, “It’s the wine that’s most like beer.”  And she was right.  Sweet but deep without being cloying, with notes of leather, a little meaty, even, a tawny port can overlap plenty with a Belgian quadruple, or an English barleywine.  When beers age, natural, subtle oxidation can turn them port-like & smooth.  A great sipper for dessert.

Ginger ale.  Somewhat on the back of the craft brewing surge, there are some cool artisanal sodas being made nowadays.  When my wife got pregnant with our first, I vowed in solidarity to abstain from drinking…in her presence.  While this gave me a hell of a jones, it also presented the opportunity to check out some craft soft drinks.  I’ve always liked ginger ale (ginger’s kind of a weakness of mine), & going through the selections at some of the better grocers around opened me up even more to the variety & nuance in this classic pop.  I saw a parallel to pale ales & IPAs in their use of hops, squeezing so many different flavors out of a versatile seasoning – some were drier, or spicier, or sweeter, or sharper, or bitterer than others.  Speaking to the craft beer connection, my favorite – Thomas Kemper, honey-like with a touch of smoke – used to be owned by Pyramid Brewing.

Coffee.  People are serious about coffee.  I’m not one of them.  I’m just as happy with the cheap stuff, I use cream & sugar, & the nuances of Sumatran vs. Ethiopian vs. Kona or whatever are lost on me.  I came to appreciate the flavor through dark beer.  Cutting my teeth on Guinness (including for breakfast, on occasion), it was not a far leap to come around to dark roast & the earthy, friendly bitterness it imparts.  Coffee finds a natural home in porters & stouts, but can play a really interesting role in an amber (like Peak Organic’s), or other anomalous style (like the black coffee saison we had at last month’s Top Shelf Thursday).  I’d like to work up to just tasting it black, to really get all the subtleties, but have a ways to go.  It’s comforting. 

Surprise – this is getting long!  There are plenty of other neighboring territories of libation whose surface I’ve just barely scratched.  Mead & cider seem to play sister to beer a lot, though their forms seem much closer to wine.  Sake is fascinating, though I’ve yet to try one that didn’t taste like bile to my neophyte palate.  The idea of blending herbs & teas seems to hold vast potential (even hop tea).  And there are many more craft distillers creating all breeds of inventive liqueurs & spirits these days, & mixologists using all sorts of cool ingredients to build some far-out cocktails.  So much creativity going down, it’s hard not to peek over the fence once in a while.

Top Shelf thursday, November 2014: Horn of Plenty

If the recent weather is any indicator, fall is definitely on its way out.  The food-growing season is done, & anything that hadn’t been harvested by the beginning of last week would’ve been killed by single degree temperatures.  So time to eat, right?  Time to buckle down & start storing up fat for the winter.  That might not be such a big priority for us civilized, mobile bipeds, but try telling that to our reptile brains.  Cold air plus more dark equals “build those reserves”, gobble up calories while you can.  Thanksgiving is a great symbol of this transition from the salad days of summer to the lean, survivalist nights of winter.  It made sense for this month’s tasting to reflect that, featuring beers that used food stuffs not included in “traditional” (read: “Reinheitsgebot-compliant”) recipes. 

We started light, with a beer representative of the working season: Saison Rustica, from Virginia’s Hardywood Park Craft Brewery.  This easy, dry farmhouse-style ale would hit the spot on a hot day, with a little twist from peppercorns & star anise in the finish.

The hemispheres met with Wells Banana Bread Beer, from the UK’s Wells & Young’s Ltd.  The toffee notes of an English-style dark ale blended naturally into a sweet banana flavor, a logical extrapolation that saved this from being a gimmick.

Terrapin in-sourced Pineapple Express, the result of an employee homebrew competition.  This Munich-style helles lager was given a euphoric dose of pineapple & smoked malt, creating a sweet, slightly acidic flavor that singed around the edges.  Puff-puff!

Plenty of fruit found its way into tonight’s line-up, & fruit can often mean sour & funky beers (yum!).  ShawneeCraft brought it with their Frambozenbier, a blend of two vintages of their Raspberry Blanche, one of which had been aged in oak.  It was surprising that such a light, subtle source beer created such a tart & intensely flavorful offspring, with big raspberry, big oak, & a puckering sour character.  Free Will Brewing (out of southeastern PA, like ShawneeCraft) presented Alexander, a saison with sour cherries, oak, & brettanomyces.  Sour beers tend to be divisive, & this was no exception – even among fans of sour beers – with its mildly tart body & deeply funky & downright strange aftertaste.

Evil Twin’s collaboration with Sante Adairius Rustic Ales, Joey Pepper, continued with the wild yeast.  This cousin-of-Orval, brewed with white peppercorns, brought a kind of savory twist to the earthy farmhouse notes of the bretted Belgian-style pale.

Our sour departure alit with Rodenbach’s Caractere Rouge, a Flanders red with cranberries, cherries, & raspberries.  This hit hard with the fruit, but showed some restraint with the sour, delivering a sweet beer that veered more toward strawberry than the actual berries it contained.

We stayed in Belgian-esque territory with Too Much Coffee Man from Oregon’s Gigantic Brewing.  This coffee beer took the unusual approach of using an imperial black farmhouse ale as its base, blending the coffee with the spicy phenols & roast of the dark saison – very interesting!

Rather unceremoniously, we passed a Top Shelf Thursday milestone – our 25^th tasting!  I chose to mark this occasion by going a little “off script” & sharing a Stone Vertical Epic 11.11.11 from my cellar.  This Belgian-style amber was brewed with Anaheim peppers & cinnamon which stood out more when fresh, but after aging a few years, melded into a tasty kind of dark fruit pudding with just a hint of pepper flavor, without heat.

It would be a little ostentatious to include a “foodie” flight & not include Dogfish Head, so we invited their Scandinavian ancient ale, Kvasir, to the party.  Brewed with cranberries, lingonberries, birch syrup, honey, yarrow, & myrica gale, you could smell the juniper-like aroma from the table, complimented well by the sweet-tart berries.  Always a mouthful with Dogfish Head!

And for the second month in a row, Avery Brewing lent its muscle to the final course, this time with The Beast Grand Cru.  Avery packed a lot of sugar into this Belgian-style dark ale, with dates, raisins, turbinado, blackstrap molasses, honey, & dark candy sugar, bringing the ABV up to 16.1% & leaving plenty of residuals for a sweet, full-bodied ale. 

It was a fun & interesting exercise to pick out the food components in these beers – after all, beer itself is an agricultural product.  It’s a relatively recent development that things like spice, fruit, & other culinary substances are the exception rather than the norm.  Just another small excursion across the vast continent of beer.  Thanks to all who came out tonight – those who’ve become regulars at our little monthly get-togethers (especially Matt, who hasn’t missed one yet!), as well as those who joined us for the first time.  It was an intimate group; all were, & are, welcome.  Top Shelf Thursday takes off for the month of December – see you in 2015!

(Shelf) Life of the Party

The beer world seems to have quieted down about the “bubble” a bit.  A year ago, two maybe, everyone was in flight over how much growth the beer market could handle.  The pool hasn’t gotten less crowded, but it still appears to be accommodating everyone alright.  One reason is that many of the new producers jumping in are not taking up a whole lot of space – here in Pittsburgh, the model seems to be small, walk-in taprooms & brewpubs serving the local area.  There aren’t a whole lot more bottles from Pittsburgh brewers crowding up the shelves & getting distribution far & wide.  Much like the small, house-only wineries of which there are thousands & thousands, the new stripe of brewer is finding their niche with on-site sales & a few draft accounts, keeping things very artisanal & boutique.  Locals CoStar Brewing penned an eloquent blog entry to this point recently.  CoStar are a great example of this local nano model; incidentally (& fittingly) they’re not that far away from us at all, yet I’ve never had any of their beer.  Nothing against them – I’d love to get a taste, but they just haven’t crossed my path yet.  Maybe they’d be interesting in sending some kegs our way, but if we’re outside of their territory, that’s cool, too.  If they’re into just supplying the immediate vicinity, we’re in the next county over.  I get it, & more power.

So the supply end may be more mindful & self-regulatory than we’d realized.  How about the demand?  Craft beer fans are thirsty.  When I got into this hobby, Pittsburgh had one beer festival a year ( Sharp Edge’s Great European Beer Festival), that by definition did not include any local brewers – or any American brewers, for that matter.  This year, it’s seemed like every other weekend there’s been something beery happening somewhere.  Last week saw Beers of the Burgh – the second Pitt-centric fest this year, no less – a great idea that I’m glad has become worth doing.  The festivals are going strong, & almost always sell out in a short time.  The fans are much more numerous, & thus much more competitive.  Big Pour has sold out in minutes for years. 

So yeah, the festival atmosphere is just one sign that things are heating up.  There are also the crazy special releases, here & (moreso) abroad, that folks line up & camp out for.  The media coverage, with more stories devoted to craft beer in magazines, newsprint, television, & on-line outlets.  More folks are treating craft beer as a hobby, & the numbers on Untappd are way beyond what I would’ve anticipated a few years ago.  And then there’s Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week, Pennsylvania Craft Beer Week, American Craft Beer Week, IPA Day, Stout Day, & probably some other landmark “events” I’m overlooking. 

You get the gist, right?  So maybe the growth in supply seems sustainable given the current demand, but when does the demand trail off?  I’ll make the distinction again that, while not necessarily a fad, craft beer is definitely a trend, on the rise & getting more popular.  The “bubble” may not be a drastic deflation in popularity & sales, just a slowing in the rise, eventually plateauing.  The goal of “20% by 2020” – that is, craft beer getting 20% share of the US beer market by the year 2020 – has been thrown around.  An ambitious target, for sure, but one that I’d love to see reached. 

I don’t think 20% is unrealistic (though maybe not in the next six years), but I do have a hard time believing that the current fervor is sustainable.  Right now, everyone is enjoying riding that wave, but I can see the excitement reaching a pitch & dying down.  Beer blogger & notorious contrarian/curmudgeon Andrian “Ding” Dingle has cited the numerous festivals, “beer weeks”, & other antics as indicators that America, while its passion is undeniable, doesn’t really have much of an entrenched beer culture.  There are the hardcore craft fans, & the majority of the country still drinks mass-produced & -marketed industrialized lager.  There’s little middle class.  Rather than being ingrained into everyday life (as in Ding’s home of the UK), craft beer in the US is still largely fireworks & carnivals – you don’t need a “Craft Beer Week” if the public has embraced it as a whole.  It would be just part of the culture & seen as normal, unquestioned, & not needing promotion & celebration.

I agree with Ding, to an extent.  Riding this wave is fun right now, but my hope is that we see a plateau rather than a crash.  I think there’s possibility for people to embrace good beer as a given in daily life, & maybe five years from now, maybe more, it won’t be something we have to seek out & treat as special.    We might be able to go to any restaurant with a liquor license & order from a list of twenty or forty good beers.  If the festivals are still happening (which I hope), tickets sales might last more than twenty minutes.  The local breweries will stay afloat, serving their people & making a quality product consistently enough that people see they don’t have to go nuts.  The on-line media will stop writing contrarian-for-contrarian’s-sake pieces.  The fiendish hunting will die down, & normal people will get a chance to drink everything again.   And the hardcore contingent will have to chill out a bit, not acting like crazy, entitled assholes if they don’t get their way.  The lines will get shorter.  The party’s gotta end sometime – let’s just hope everyone keeps the promises they made the next morning.  Life will go on, & the beer will still flow.  And it will be good.

To Infinity...and Beyond!

Have we hit a million different beer brands yet?  I don’t mean The House, specifically, but the world over.  Has the number of commercial beer brands with a distinct name, recipe, brewer, etc. reached seven figures?  I don’t know whose job it is to keep track of this stuff, but we must have by now, right?  When you consider all the brewers & all the beers they put out, including year-round, seasonal rotation, one-offs, pub-only, etc., we can’t have not hit one million distinct brews conceived & born.  On a whim, I just now looked up Troegs on BeerAdvocate.  They have 225 documented beers, & I’m sure there are probably a few missing.  That’s one of three thousand-ish in this country, at this moment, so yeah, a million seems very possible.

225 different beers.  Okay, so Troegs has been around a while.  Wicked Weed’s newer, let’s check them out.  186!  Four Seasons is just over a year old, let’s try them.  Ten.  Okay, that’s surmountable (though again, that’s assuming that every beer has been entered).

There are many, many choices.  Our current stock is in the range of 1300-1400 brands, but that just doesn’t have the same ring as “House of 1000 Beers”, so we round down.  If you factor in seasonals & single releases, bottle & draft, it’s likely that the number of beers passing through our establishment annually is double that estimate.  That kind of selection can lead to consumer paralysis, a paradox of choice.  There’s so much to choose from, I’ll stick with my tried-&-true.  Josh Bernstein gave voice to this dilemma in a Bon Appetit article that gained some traction earlier this year.  Can’t venture outside, too scary.  Why pick this one, or these six, & hope they’re better than the other hundreds I’m passing over?  Courage, friend!  There’s plenty of guidance to be had – just ask a buddy, or the web, or one of our friendly, knowledgeable staff.

Another product of this hyper-variety is the “ticker” mentality: the completist, the consummate collector, ever searching out something new.  Dare not drink the same beer twice – there are Untappd badges to be had!  “Hmm, I’ve had Hop Devil, Hop Stoopid, Hop Juju, Hoptimum, Hoptimus Prime, Hop Henge, Hop Nosh, Hop Head Red…  What’s that?  Hop Stalker?  Hello!”  “Yeah, the rum barrel-aged one was good, but I had the rum barrel-aged with scorpion peppers & brett down at Fat Head’s during Craft Beer Week & it was the shit.”  I get both excited & exhausted by this kind of pursuit, & have all but stopped pining for the deeper & more elusive niches brewers carve.  Although, never say never…

America’s craft renaissance is still in its adolescence, & I wonder if we’ll see a decline in breweries putting out scores of different beers & variations a year.  I kind of love that The Alchemist has achieved a pretty meteoric rise on the back of one beer.  If he wanted to, John Kimmich could probably brew & sell Heady alone into an early retirement.  The European model seems to be much more conservative in line-up; to my limited perception, most European brewers (save for the ones borne by the western craft boom like Nogne O, for instance) release between one & six beers, period.  Maybe my provincialism is showing & there are way more European brewers doing a ton of one-offs, but it seems to me that the European example locks in a few styles & brands & does them consistently well.  Imagine if every American brewer whittled down their portfolio to single digits & did that handful really well – there would still be thousands & thousands of great, domestically made beers available. 

Part of me wonders if that’s where we’re headed, would be curious to see that future, & truth be told, wouldn’t mind.  There’s just too much to keep track of right now; I could have a selection of thousand beers for life & be perfectly happy.  And then I remember – this is America.  We like choice & novelty as much as quality.  It keeps the game interesting.  I have to remind myself, too, that American craft brewing is essentially home brewing writ large.  Randy Mosher’s definition of craft beer: “If a homebrew (current or former) gets to decide what the beer tastes like, it’s craft beer”.  Home brewers always having something going – this is in the fermenter, this is in secondary, I’m working on a recipe for this.  Part of the essence of American craft brewing is the individual doing what they want & then sharing it with others, & constantly taking on some challenge, doing something new.  Sometimes they want to do it all at the same time, & it becomes a trend, like I’d mentioned in the case of “session” IPA.  But good luck trying to tell them to tone it down.  The craft brewers may come to the paring down conclusion on their own, eventually.  Or maybe not.  For now, though, there’s still a lot of exploring to do.

Top Shelf Thursday, October 2014: Trick or Treat!

Halloween’s just fun.  There’s relatively little stress (even if you have kids), participation is completely optional, & if you don’t even have to see relatives.  It’s a big party holiday, though I can’t see that it’s reached the “Amateur Night” status of, say, St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve.  It’s not a shit show.  It’s acceptably gimmicky, though in a way that elicits very few eye rolls.  And it’s open to interpretation – if you choose to dress up, you can go as anything from a corpse, to an ex-president, to Lenny Kravitz if you want. 

We designed our “Trick-or-Treat” Top Shelf Thursday to be open to interpretation.  Somewhat predictably, we were treated to beers featuring chocolate, pumpkin beers, & beers with evil-themed names.  There were also a few tricks, with beers throwing interesting curveballs.

Our first “wicked” beer of the evening came to us from Evil Twin Brewing, no stranger to Top Shelf Thursday.  Jeppe delivered a 100% brettanomyces-fermented IPA, Femme Fatale, with the Japanese fruit Kabosu, giving a dry, floral brew with a citric tartness.   Things stayed wild with Luciernaga, the Firely, from Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales – the first “pumpkin” beer of the evening, if in name alone (trick!).  This open-fermented Belgian-style pale hit some very funky notes, with a spicy twist from the additions of coriander & grains of paradise.

We made a 180 with the Double Chocolate Bock from Block House Brewing, a.k.a. Pittsburgh Brewing, a.k.a. Iron City.  DCB represented a drastic departure ideologically - an inexpensive beer from a big brewer - & sensorily, with big notes of chocolate that sharply contrasted with the dry, even sour character of the first two courses.  The next brew stayed the course: Chocolate Indulgence from Brewery Ommegang.  First brewed in 2007 for Ommegang’s tenth anniversary, this delivered a strong nose from the inclusion of Belgian chocolate, while the body packed sharper, fruity flavors from the ester-heavy Belgian yeast.

Dogfish Head transported us through time & space with Theobroma, a recipe from their Ancient Ales series & based on Aztec archeological findings from about 1100 B.C.  It brought some familiar cocoa notes from the use of South American nibs & powder, & twisted it by adding ancho chilies, honey, & a ground tree seed known as annatto.  Personally, I really appreciated the Theobroma & Chocolate Indulgence in this flight, both better than I remember from having them years ago.

What they lacked in creative naming, Boulevard Brewing made up for in flavor with their Chocolate Ale.  Boulevard collaborated with Kansas City chocolatier Christopher Elbow on a beer that balanced Dominican chocolate with malt very nicely & lightly (despite its 9.1% ABV), without tasting like dessert.

Local brew-gooders Helltown brought us the night’s second “wicked” beer (hey, their zip code is 15666!), with their 2013 Barley Wine.  This English-style barleywine delivered a notable heat that remained drinkable, smoothed out by aging on oak & maple.

The secret to making a great pumpkin ale is not being half-assed about it, which O’Fallon Brewing certainly were not.  Their Imperial Pumpkin Ale (another prosaic name, forgivably) packed a wallop at 10% ABV, with a full flavor of pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, & allspice to match.  This was one of the first pumpkin ales to wow me in a long time; let’s hope it makes a comeback next year.

One that will not return, unfortunately, is the Black Butte XXVI, the anniversary release from Deschutes Brewery.  They tweak the recipe on this imperial porter every year, this time adding cranberries, cocoa nibs, & pomegranate molasses, tart fruit that meshed interestingly with a little tannin from time spent in bourbon barrels.

And speaking of bourbon barrels, AND delivering whole-assed pumpkin beers, Avery dropped a bomb on us with their 17.22% ABV Pump[KY]n (the “KY” is for “Kentucky”, by the way, not the personal lubricant, a joke not lost on those in attendance).  This monster of a spiced pumpkin porter, aged in bourbon barrels, was the strongest beer ever served at a Top Shelf Thursday, & approached a pumpkin liqueur in its flavor & mouthfeel.

Definitely saw some mischief being played this evening.  Calling back to this post’s preamble, & the question of gimmicks: one thing that most impressed me about the night’s flight was how a good brewer can take a flavor that CAN be gimmicky (chocolate & pumpkin can raise some eyebrows for the seasoned beer drinker) & display it with depth & substance.  There are plenty of superficial-tasting chocolate & pumpkin beers around, but each beer in the flight was as far from gimmicky as you can get.  Regardless of what additives are used, good beer is good beer, a maxim well illustrated by those poured this evening.  It goes without saying by now, but thanks to those who showed up, drank, chatted, & had a good time.