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Hedonist Beer Jive (10 unread)

SOUTHERN TIER’s “OAK-AGED UNEARTHLY”

Posted: March 8th, 2010, 6:36pm CET by Jay

This is the first bomber I opened from my recent acquisition of East Coast beers from MM, the fella that more or less turned me onto SOUTHERN TIER BREWING and their incredible line-up of intense & wonderful beers a couple years ago. Now they’re one of my top 5 favorite brewers in the world, and the creators of the finest India Pale Ale to ever pass my lips, GEMINI. Now you may know that ½ of GEMINI is made up of another outstanding Double IPA from the Southern Tier family – UNEARTHLY. We reviewed that one right here. Now there’s an OAK-AGED UNEARTHLY. You know it’s totally gonna rule. And yes, it totally does.
SOUTHERN TIER OAK-AGED UNEARTHLY is truly all about the oakiness. You smell it, you taste the wood, and it lingers on the top of your mouth for a few heartbeats past the swallow. A very crisp beer, OAK-AGED UNEARTHLY brings forward the piney hops, and layers in a sweet undercurrent and a thin-to-medium body. If the sweetness is coming from the 11% alcohol, I can’t tell, but it would stand to reason. Again, it’s more oaky than it is hoppy, and really “renders” like a finely aged beer. Didn’t think you could do it this well with an IPA. I don’t know what else to say, folks. When you’re on a winning streak this hot the way SOUTHERN TIER are, why would you even listen to a piker like myself? Another flat-out superb beer from one of our nation’s best. 9/10.
YOU SAY LA TRAPPE, I SAY KONINGSHOEVEN – LET’S CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF

Posted: March 5th, 2010, 7:00am CET by Jay

Last September I finally had my first beer from famed Dutch Trappist brewer LA TRAPPE, who market their beers in the US under the KONINGSHOEVEN brand. It was their QUADRUPEL, and you may recall that I thought it was “shockingly bad”. A huge surprise, too, because people the world over seem to love this one. It also generated some of my favorite comments on this blog, including this one from Niklas: “You've lost your damn mind, son. Recalibrate your palate and try again. Disgraceful.”. So the other night, my first night in Barcelona on my trip a couple weeks ago, I took Niklas’ advice and recalibrated my palate. Then I ordered a LA TRAPPE BLONDE, this time under the native La Trappe branding. Now granted, I had this right after a CHIMAY BLUE in a beautiful Belgian chalice, and man o man is that a great beer. I think the ubiquity of CHIMAY Red, White (“Cinq Cents”) and Blue keeps me from drinking it except when it’s the best choice on a restaurant menu, but that BLUE is something special.
Anyway, I’ve definitely got a beef with LA TRAPPE/KONINGSHOEVEN after my second sub-par beer from them. I mean, really folks – this stuff’s just weak. LA TRAPPE BLONDE is thin, bland and almost like a lager, and it has this cloying perfumed smell that also shows up in the taste. Some yeastiness is present, way way back in the distance, placed there as an afterthought. It might quench one’s thirst, yet there are a lot of ways to do that, starting with water, which is the superior drink in my book. It’s so far removed from the masterworks of the other Trappist brewers – ROCHEFORT, ORVAL, WESTMALLE, WESTVLETEREN etc. – that it’s truly in a remedial class by itself. 4.5/10.
NAPA SMITH AMBER

Posted: March 4th, 2010, 1:00pm CET by Jay

NAPA SMITH BREWING are upstart entrants hailing from Northern California’s wine country, a total family brewery (The Smiths!) who employ a longtime veteran named Don Barkley as their head brewmaster. They’re starting to catch on with the hoi polloi here in the Bay Area, and I remember reading a review of their BONFIRE IMPERIAL STOUT on a blog (Brewed For Thought, probably?) that made me rush out and buy one. It’s still in the fridge, awaiting the proper imperial stout star alignment. My only other experience with them was tasting their IPA on draft a few months back, and I scored that one a 7/10, which you best believe is better than yr average beer.
Draft is also how I encountered NAPA SMITH AMBER a few weeks ago as well, this time at the SF Ferry Plaza Building’s burger restaurant Taylor’s Refresher (which has its roots in the Napa Valley, and which sells this beer in their St. Helena location as well – I know ‘cause I saw it there). This is a really classic and slightly left-of-center amber ale. No, it’s not an imperial. It’s a tingling, somewhat bitter red ale, quite sweet as times and full of robust, mouth-filling malts that add a lot of character. It tasted absolutely like I want one of these to taste, “very 1990s”. Back in the 90s, the amber beer was my go-to style; I didn’t know about Belgian beer yet. Every microbrewery (that’s what we called them, kids!) has one, along with a wheat beer, a pale ale and a pilsner. This harkens back to that time, and adds that curveball hoppiness and bitterness that’s more a hallmark of the past decade. Nice. 7.5/10.
TWO FRESH ONES FROM CANADA

Posted: March 3rd, 2010, 11:53am CET by Jay

Friend of Hedonist Beer Jive “MP” graciously donated several Canadian ales to our cause during his recent business trip to San Francisco. While we never actually met, this fine representative of his gold-medal winning hockey powerhouse of a country actually dropped off several beers at the front desk of his hotel for me; all I had to do was pick them up and then commit to drinking them. Done and done. There are little craft breweries spread across Canada; my recent visits to Toronto confirm that you can even run a world-class beer bar serving nothing but great Canadian artisanal beer. I recently completed the second part of my commitment to MP and drank the beer he so kindly provided me – here’s a report on two of them.
SCOTCH IRISH CORPORAL’S BITTER BROWN ALE – This Ontario brewer allow you to make no mistake about their heritage, and they reflect it well. This make a classic copper/brown ale (I’ll bet they love how Beer Advocate categorizes it as an “American brown ale”), very close in flavor profile to an ESB, with a light caramel taste and mild but noticeable hopping. The caramel is akin to those light tan-colored ones, not the rich and intense sugar bombs so popular with candy makers these days. This beer is bitter for sure, also a bit nutty and buttery. At 4.3% alcohol, it’s probably the easiest-drinking beer we’ve had in a long, long time. Please note that I enjoyed this in my rarely-used “Dusseldorf stein”, pictured above. It’s a high-quality beer that I’d definitely like to grab on tap at some point in life. 7/10.
GREAT LAKES DEVIL’S PALE ALE – Yeah, I was hoping this one would be devilish, too, what with the big “666” on the can, but – no. It’s a metallic English pale ale, totally thin and bland, all malts and bitterness and almost completely lacking in flavor. It pours dark, so that’s something. Sorry, MP, but I can’t condone this sort of alemaking, even if you guys are better in hockey and all that. 4/10.

More Canadian beer chicanery to come!
I LOVE YOU BUT I’VE CHOSEN SURLY DARKNESS

Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 7:00am CET by Jay

If that title’s a little off-putting, check this out and you’ll see why I had to appropriate it. So here we are. SURLY DARKNESS. The 18th finest beer in the land. You know, every time we drink one of these over-hyped beers I’m in total anticipation at the first sip. Is this going to be an OMG OMG OMG mother of all beers, a la BROOKLYN BLACK OPS or THE ABYSS? Or will it give me a much-needed chance to post a jaded, curmudgeonly review about overhyped beers, a la PLINY THE YOUNGER or DREADNAUGHT IPA? That’s just one dimension of the anticipation, my friends. Then there’s – oh yeah right – the taste & enjoyment of the beer itself. Who could forget about that part of the experience? Let’s get to it, shall we?
SURLY BREWING came to my attention thanks to their punk-rock vibe & brewers all ratted out in tattoos, along with a lot of early excitement about the beer itself. Radical. Aaron from The Captain’s Chair was kind enough to send me SURLY FURIOUS, which totally knocked me for a loop, and the big boy, SURLY DARKNESS. Darkness doesn’t pull any punches, even out of the gate, featuring a member of recently-reunited garage punk band The Mummies on the bottle itself. It pours jet black with a beautiful head of coffee foam, and smells of barely-filtered coffee, some earthiness, and alcohol. 10.3% of this is alcohol, so that adds up. Then you get into it, and like a lot of these intense imperial stouts, it’s roasted, bitter chocolate and hops all the way.
Only a few sips in and I realized that despite the ingenuity that went into this one & the large, aggressive roastiness (which I often love), its filmy texture and chalky mélange of flavors would prevent it from being one of the greats. I drank the whole thing, looking for things that I'd love, and only found things that I liked. Say you removed any limited-edition, once-a-year whatsis, and conveniently forgot that people stand in long, freezing lines to buy this beer, and instead got a nice 10-ounce pour in a fancy-pants glass? You’d say, “thanks, that was real nice, now how about a different beer – maybe a blueberry pale ale or a goddamn ice water with lemon?”. I’m totally glad I tried this, I’m a better and more complete man for it, but I can’t in all due justice go with anything greater than a 6.5/10.
MORE THAN ONE WAY TO FOLLOW THE HBJ

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 6:02pm CET by Jay

You guys are probably pretty technically sophisticated, right? So I don’t need to tell you that there are other ways to get your Hedonist Beer Jive ranting-n-raving delivered to you besides clicking on a bookmarked link every day or two. Or Googling “Hedonist Beer” every time you remember that we exist, and that you haven’t come to visit in a while. Here are a few ways to “enhance” your HBJ experience:
1. Follow us on Twitter. Or more specifically, follow me. I try to post a "chirpy" (I think that’s what they’re called) every time I write something here. I’m @jayhinman.

2. Add Hedonist Beer Jive into Google Reader. Google Reader, if you don’t use it, is an amazing way to stay on top of the many stellar blogs out there. Just cut this link – http://hedonistbeerjive.blogspot.com – and paste it into the “Add a Subscription” field in Reader. Then every new post will be there for you to marvel at, aggregated with all the other stuff you’re interested in. Easier that that – click on the “Subsscribe to HBJ” link you see on the right comlumn here, and just add it that way. You can even make it a box on My Yahoo, if that’s something you use. (Me, I set up a My Yahoo page in 1997 or something, and I’m too lazy to make the switch away from it).
3. Got an iPhone? Get Byline. BYLINE simply takes your Google Reader feed and displays it beautifully on the iPhone. I think it’s the application I use more than any other in the iPhone. It’s a couple bucks, but come on – you’re worth it.
Just a few ideas, you don’t have to take ‘em or anything, but we’d like to crack 200 average daily readers in 2010 (we’re still holding strong at about 130 a day) and maybe these tech tweaks will help make it happen.
DUPONT’S SURPRISING “LA BIERE DE BELOEIL”

Posted: March 1st, 2010, 10:38am CET by Jay

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

As I gingerly poked, uh, “tasting notes” into my iPhone, I saw that LA BIERE DE BELOEIL has some foreign gobbledygook on the bottle that said “Dupont a Tourpes”. You mean those Saison Dupont fellas? Well now how about that? To me, this is a classic Belgian dubbel, ripe and strong with the taste of dates and figs, with a thin body, strong aroma, and a sharp bit of zinging spiciness that’s rock solid. Over at Beer Advocate they’re calling it a “Belgian strong pale ale”. Hoooo-kay. This is a “meal” sort of beer, a big, bad complex 8.5% ABV sort of ale that will stand up to freshly-slaughtered animal of some kind. And so classically Belgian. Really top-tier stuff. Let me know if you see this one in the US after grabbing a bottle for yourself first. 8/10.
THE HEDONIST BEER JIVE 2010 GUIDE TO MUSIC

Posted: February 26th, 2010, 7:00am CET by Jay

There’s probably a contingent of folks who came to this beer blog at some point from one of my now-defunct music blogs – DETAILED TWANG or AGONY SHORTHAND. Others reading this probably have zero interest in obscure, sub-underground, dirty pop, garage rock and noise from around the world, and would much prefer this post to be about the SURLY DARKNESS beer I had two nights ago or another dig at PLINY THE whatever. As it turns out, me pontificating about beer has won out overall; I only have the quote-unquote “bandwidth” to write pithy posts about beers I’m drinking than my former free time to engage in long-ish posts about bands & records – though I do have yet another music blog currently active called HIGH WATER EVERYWHERE. But yeah, I sure miss posting mp3s, and trying to force my musical opinion on others.
To that end, let me present to you a slight diversion from our normal programming, and give you my gift to the craft beer and extended community: THE HEDONIST BEER JIVE 2010 GUIDE TO MUSIC. It’s a set of 27 songs from this past year, some even released just the past couple of weeks, that I find to be outstanding work by the youth of today. They’ve been gobbled up from a variety of other sites, bought straight from iTunes, or came off of old-school CDs that I actually bought. I’m constantly prowling for new stuff – just like I do with beer; in the blood, I reckon. In order to successfully enjoy this collection of mp3s, you have to be okay with a little bit of dirt and grime; with sometimes loud-ish guitars, and with Australians. I know that’s a leap for some of you. These 27 tracks can be burned to a CD if you like, or popped into iTunes or your “Zune”. You’ll find them to span the gamut from buoyant, garagy pop music (Dum Dum Girls, Happy Birthday, Rantouls) to unrelenting psychedelic noise (Kurt Vile & the Violators, Major Stars) to disjointed, stuttering post-punk (Wet Dog) to straight-up punk moderne (Overnight Lows, Black Jaspers).

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

Track listing

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

Download “The Hedonist Beer Jive 2010 Guide To Music” (this is a .zip file)
THE HOT KNIVES BEER BOOK!

Posted: February 25th, 2010, 10:07am CET by Jay

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

Posted: February 24th, 2010, 9:00am CET by Jay

While in Barcelona last week I did what I always do on work-related road trips, which is seek out the local ales for consideration (and comfort). Time was when I’d poke around obscure record shops, or maybe go to a museum or something, but now it’s pubs and beer bars like LA CERVETECA and CERVECERIA EL FLABIOL, the two best places I discovered in Barcelona for deep contemplation of Spanish (and Belgian) craft beer. At the former, I discovered a brewer from Girona, Spain called BIRRART MOS’KA. This guy (Josep Borrell) is on a one-man crusade to bring exceptional artisanal craft beer to Spain, and currently bottles four beers, all with a similar 12-ounce bottle design. I “considered” two of them, and brought another one home in my suitcase. Let’s discover together what I thought of them.
The first was MOS’KA TORRADA, and it’s a real humdinger. TORRADA is an artisanal amber beer that’s smooth and creamy and pours a nice red-tinged brown. Really, really flavorful – with strong malts, honey, and some hops that linger. TORRADA includes loads of sediment for you sediment fans out there. Picture a less-yeasty, more creamy version of a Belgian amber and you’re in the ballpark. I loved it, and after this and the RUNA ALE we talked about two days ago, it’s when I knew I’d stepped on beer paydirt in Barcelona. 8.5/10.

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