First I had two beers from Brau Bros. in the space of a couple of days: a Ring Neck Braun Ale and a Sheephead Ale. Ring Neck is delicious! But that’s kind of a no-brainer. I’m pretty easy as regards brown ales and this is a fine one: round and mellow, sweet but not too, a little breath of hop freshness barely there alongside the earthy malt. I went in unprepared for Sheephead; I saw from Nikii’s glass at knitting that it poured amber and I didn’t realize it was an American pale. Smells of piney hops; tastes like bitter hops and lingering hops and ok, I’m ready to not be tasting hops now.

Then, the other day at the Birchwood, I revisited Bell’s Two Hearted. I tried it cold from the bottle once, a couple of years ago when I was still drinking just wheat beers, and my palate couldn’t deal at the time. Bitter! This one pours an almost opaque orangey amber, and I hadn’t known until I read the label right before tasting it again that Two Hearted also calls itself a pale ale. Bugger, I thought. But I forged ahead and it was delicious. Floral aroma, maybe a little citrus rind; the hops are front and center, but they let a little malty roundness come through.

What’s the difference? I’m not sure. The internets say that Sheephead uses wheat malt; maybe that has to do with why it tastes to me like not-malt. Or maybe these are two different hop varieties; I can’t find that info anywhere. The best I could do at putting into words why I liked Two Hearted was that the hops appear up front and then get out of the way instead of sticking around on my tongue all night. You don’t have to go home, hops, but you can’t stay here.

As if Flying Dog heard my lamentations, they produced Raging Bitch for their 20th Anniversary. And, to top it off, I think it’s a much better (and less lemon hinted) beer. Quite frankly, I think this beer is possibly everything that is good about beer in single bottle:

• An amazing hop aroma (my beer disliking wife compared it to tea roses)
• Balanced Belgian start (ripe fruit, but free of over ripe banana flavors that so many dislike)
• Lovely malt midplane (“balanced to perfection” is the only way I can describe it)
• Wonderful hop finish (bitey and clean, but if you don’t like IPAs do not apply)

I’ve field tested this beer on four different people now to make sure that it isn’t simply my love of the brewery and the faux-style driving my appreciation, and it stands up in other’s eyes. The most uncomplimentary thing I’ve heard so far is “I want to have it again because there is so much going on.” Admittedly, this test group all appreciated very hoppy beers.

If you like Belgians and IPAs, you should stop whatever you’re doing and go to the store now and try to find this beer. I have only seen it at crazily affordable prices (for a beer of this caliber) in six packs. It is possibly hiding at your grocery store, especially if they carry Flying Dog Ales normally.

• The Moonshine Stimulus Package: One of my very favorite podcasts, Planet Money, did a piece on Prohibition to explain inelastic goods. Even if you’re not into economics, it’s a wonderful short piece about former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, moonshine, and how beer was done in by prohibition. Among other things.
• To Enhance Flavor, Just Add Water: The New York Times has a really lovely piece on adding water to spirits and wine to enhance their flavor. I’ve had some great watered wine, and everybody loves a good sangria at this time of year.
• Sampling American Pale Ales: I can’t believe I missed this in June (or that I’m linking to two pieces in the New York Times in one post), but they have a great write up of their annual pale ale tastings. Although numbered lists are basically editorial nonsense to drive page views, the top spot this year did go to Flying Dog’s Doggie Style. Yes, I’m linking because I love the beer, the name, and the brewery. Flying Dog is well on its way to being my favorite brewery of 2010, and Doggie Style is an absolute must-drink pale ale for summer.

If you’ve got any links to share, please leave them in the comments!

Although there has been a general trend towards cleaner lines in packaging recently (as noted in the piece, Coca-Cola’s updated labels are a good example), it is interesting that beer labels seem to be following the trend. The intricate, “old fashioned” and “old world” look of beer labels seems to have fallen out of favor for brighter, bolder colors and modern graphic design. I’ll be very interested to see if some of the more storied brands freshen up in a similar way soon.

I got curious about the whole notion of session beers just now, and I’m not too proud to say I had to ask BeerAdvocate to tell me about them, since that page suggests the term’s provenance isn’t all that widely known. Session? Sure, it’s just over 5% abv; I had two in quick succession and I am still upright, just a little bit muzzy-headed. Taking the term in its full historical context, it’s probably not all that applicable to me, cheap date that I am these days. I might could go do my actual job after a couple, but wouldn’t trust myself to work with my hands, I don’t think. I can see drinking Session Black in larger quantities than I would many of the big fat beers I enjoy one at a time, though, and my read is that that’s what people generally mean by it anyway.

Meanwhile, several of the crowd were drinking something they called a beer margarita that I think they made with Corona, and a major buzz was afoot about Jeremiah Weed. Is this a thing everywhere? It’s a thing here. I’m not sure it’s a thing I could be into except maybe with a really high quality lemonade.

A little postscript: I went to a party the other day where I first delighted in a Hell or High Watermelon, absolutely the perfect beer in that moment when I’d just in point of fact mowed my lawn and had to sponge myself off with icy water afterward, and then sipped on a little bit of Beerhive. This is I think the newest of New Holland’s High Gravity series and it doesn’t grab me the way Dragon’s Milk did, I have to say. People seemed really into the honey and ginger flavors in it, but I didn’t find it particularly bitey, just alcoholic. Quite possibly the difference is that our hostess really likes a good saison and I think the style’s not my cup of, um, tea.

Posts to come: little beerfest and a trip to New Glarus! These are exciting times in my mouth.

This wine is probably not for wine connoisseurs, but it works for me. Having given birth three months ago, I spent most of this past year not drinking. Before that, I wasn’t really a huge wine drinker — I found myself moving away from reds and gravitating towards whites (still loving the green, though). I find that ? has a very gentle flavor for a red. A bit of that characteristic bite, but not so intense or mouth-puckering as some, and feels less acidic on the stomach. So far, I have found it to go well with late-night popcorn, a tempeh burrito bol, and solo parenting (as seen in the picture).

If you want to drink some wine, but you don’t want to have the whole experience of drinking wine, check out this one. It’s unassuming, it’s pleasant, and it’s a satisfactory accompaniment to any experience.

All right. If you didn’t pause, you’re reading the wrong blog. You can go.

Only the alocholists still with us? Great.

A huge part of No Mixed Drink’s reason for being, and it’s focus on beer of all the non-mixed beverages, can best be encapsulated by this single conversation:

“Hi!”

“Hello!”

[I know this is boring, but stay with it. It gets more interesting.]

“Have fun this weekend?”

“Yeah. I had a new beer, Dale’s Pale Ale. That beer is awesome.”

“Absolutely. I haven’t had that beer in a… well, a while I guess. You like hoppy beers?”

“Yeah.”

“Dale’s is pretty fantastic. It’s a big beer, though. I can only have a few.”

“Yeah. But it’s so totally worth it.”

[This goes on.]

The key point, for me, about this conversation is that people can bond over a single beer. In spite of time, in spite of place, chances are very good that those beers were almost identical (it helps that Dale’s Pale Ale comes in a can). For me, there is an amazing shared experience thinking that someone can drink the same beer as I can, regardless of time and space. Indeed, some beer drinkers and I are separated by hundreds of years. But basic chemistry and biology means that if something like the Star Trek universal translator were ever perfected, then we could talk about that beer. We would have something in common that is very much about our experience as human beings.

The same is not true for other beverages, other drinks. Wine changes from year to year based on the weather, and in the bottle from day to day as it ages. It’s become a cliche since Sideways, but it’s completely true that the wine you drink on any given day is not the same wine as will ever happen again. I’m lame for pointing this out, but let me: it’s a near religious lesson in life; you can never stand in the same river twice, and you can never drink the same bottle of wine. This experience is as powerful as a shared experience could be; and it can be shared in it’s own way. However, it is very different than beer.

So to, with the mixed drink. The mixed drink, unlike wine, is so spontaneous as to fly in the face of all permanence in the universe. The time, the ingredients, the bartender… all these things make for a true event. Certainly, a great bartender brings consistency, but then you’re likely at a great bar having a great evening (hopefully) that is unique in its own right. It’s different. And, it should likely go without saying that the act of making a drink is a truly expressionist art that everyone can participate in. It’s fun, it’s lively, and it’s a set of skills (including tasting) that it’s truly neat to master.

Beer, of course, is different. It’s a shared experience that is fairly easy to have and fairly easy to replicate. And, although the people, the time, and you all change, the beer (hopefully) stays pretty close to the same. I think that’s one reason the beer and the internet go so hand-in-hand: beer is asynchronous and location independent. Although I could never prove it, I honestly believe that the rise in the internet and the rise in craft beer consumption go together. We all have a place to talk about the weird beer we find in the store now.

That said, there are many lessons in life and many lessons about the beloved by-product of our yeasty brethren. If you’re interested in how the other half lives (and you should be), I can suggest nothing finer than American Drink. They write and drink like everyone should, and they taught me how to make really great grenadine.

If you have any doubt that beer and mixed drinks should, in fact, go together, I refer you to Darryl Robinson’s excellent Drink Up episode on beer in mixed drinks.

If you’re still not convinced, there is nothing I can do to help you.

…

And, yes, this entire post was an excuse to link to American Drink.Twice.

As many of you may know, when moving it is best to bring a broom, bread, and salt. The idea is that these totems mean that your house is always clean, that you are never hungry, and that you, um, have salt. (True fact: this post is research free.) I would add that for any house that is also a home, you should also bring some beer. First, if all you bring is the above you’ll sweep and get hungry, eat some bread (possibly with salt), and then be thirsty. If you add beer to the mix, the problem is solved.

I still have no idea what to do with the salt, but might I humbly suggest that if you move in the dead of summer on 100+ degree days that you bring a truly quaffable example, such as my beloved Pabst Blue Ribbon:

PBR: Helpful for New Houses

Say what you will about “real beer,” but in Europe, for the most part, it just doesn’t get that hot. Halfway through emptying a 29″ foot moving truck, a light American Ale looks pretty good.