Upstate New York, Part III

After another weekend in Saratoga Springs with college friends, I have a few more beers from Upstate New York to log.

Davidson Brother's IPA
Tap -- The Parting Glass, Saratoga Springs, NY
no hops in aroma whatsoever... and few more in flavor. slightly sweet and very pale. an incredibly weak ipa.
Score: 5

Lake Placid 46'er Pale Ale
Bottle -- Minogue's Beverage Center, Saratoga Springs
hazy pour, spiderweb lacing on glass... fruity, mild taste... drinkable, but a little bland. lake placid's frostbite ipa was a much better, more flavorful beer.
Score: 7

Mendocino Black Hawk Stout
Bottle -- Minogue's Beverage Center, Saratoga Springs
dark looking beer with thick head: impressive... smell of sweet malts, and even a little alcohol... flavor is chocolate malts, but mostly water... very thin. mediocre. it was much more enjoyable the next morning when i tried to make it into a breakfast stout by adding a little coffee...
Score: 4

Mendocino Saratoga Lager
Bottle -- Minogue's Beverage Center, Saratoga Springs
this is listed as an octoberfest, which is quite interesting. flavorful with lots of sweet malts... smooth and sessionable. i had low expectations for this one, which helped produce such a high rating.
Score: 8

Southern Tier Back Burner
22 oz Bottle -- Gordon's, Waltham
a barleywine wtih an even 10% abv. very cool looking mahogany color. first word i would use to describe aroma would be hoppy. dan went the other way: juju fruit. the flavor too was very hoppy, reminding me more than anything else of bear republic's red rocket ale. dan was thinking stone's arrogant bastard. hoppy, alcoholic, and some molasses / cocoa in back of flavor. while dan and i had different takes on the beer, we did agree that this is not your traditional barleywine, but is still a nice beer.
Score: 7

Southern Tier Jahva
22 oz Bottle -- Walpole Wine & Spirits
an imperial stout with an even 12% abv... are they rounding these numbers off? black pour. smell is sweet, some hops, no coffee. flavor is mostly burnt chocolate malt, and again, some hops but very little coffee. coffee flavored beer isn't for everyone, but i like it. and with a name like jahva, you really should bring it. a disappointment.
Score: 6

Keep an eye out for:
Davidson Brother's Dacker Authentic Adirondack Ale
Bottle -- Minogue's Beverage Center, Saratoga Springs
copper/orange pour with thin lacing... sweet malty aroma... sweet caramel is joined by piney hops and fruity overtones... medium mouthfeel, grainy, drinkable. this is exactly what an ale is supposed to be.
Score: 8

My Dad's Thoughts

I have mentioned this before, but my Dad is a big fan of the beer blog. (In the picture below, he is the one in the middle.) I knew I was in trouble when he raided my fridge looking for all of the beers I had tried in the previous week. And now he has written a full article about beer (in his collumn for our local paper, The Kennebec Journal).

A couple of quick thoughts.
1) My Dad won me over on Shipyard's Prelude. I first tried this beer at a Mexican restaurant in Portland, and the spice of the meal probably made me miss some of the complexity in this one. But enough excuses. I would actually rate Prelude as a 9, which makes it one of Shipyard's finest offerings.

2) Maine is a hub for brewing. My friends dismiss this as my homerism for everything Maine. There will be a full rebuttal to come.

3) Breakfast stouts! Oh yeah, this has a post written all over it... and one very angry fiancee. Anyways, read on.



Raise a stein to toast first-rate beers brewed in Maine
By George Smith, 07/23/2008
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/view/columns/5245040.html

Beer is driving Maine's economy forward, one bottle at a time, in microbreweries all over the state.

This is very good news.

Maine is carving a niche and earning a reputation for the very best beers, while the nation's favored brew, Budweiser, goes international with the purchase of Anheuser-Busch by Belgian brewer InBev, a huge conglomerate that now can boast a bevy of brews from Beck's to Bud.

There's nothing new about this, either. Fifty Maine breweries prospered during Prohibition, causing the state's governors to occasionally call out the militia to stop the illegal beer brewing. Today we're taking a different approach.

In 1985, Maine was one of the first states to allow microbreweries to serve their own brew on premises. Many of these brewpubs whipped up such delicious concoctions that they expanded into the retail market.

I'm learning a lot about beer by reading son Josh's beer blog (http://www.joshsbeerblog.blogspot.com/). What father wouldn't be proud of a son with his own beer blog?

OK, his mother and I are most proud of Josh for his chosen work at My Brother's Keeper at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, serving the most needy in the Brockton area.

But Josh's beer blog is really interesting. He's broadened my beer horizon with detailed analyses of more than 450 beers: stouts, porters, ales of every kind.

I was hooked the first time I tasted excellent beer on our honeymoon in Germany.

When we returned to Munich a few years later for Oktoberfest, sitting in huge tents with 5,000 others, eating slivers of salted white radishes, drinking hearty, tasty beer in huge steins, I knew I'd found my beverage of choice.

For years, I bought German beers St. Pauli Girl and Beck's until great beer came to Maine, made by our very own microbreweries.

We have some of the world's best and that's not just bragging. Maine brews often top their competitors at national and international events.

There are plenty of good ones nearby, including brewing companies Sheepscot Valley in Whitefield, Kennebec in Gardiner, Oak Pond in Skowhegan and Kennebec River in the Forks.

Preferring stouts and porters, my personal favorite is Sebago Lake Trout Stout (of course, a fish on the label!), with a score of 9 from Josh using a scale of 0-to-10. It's difficult to find locally, but Bridget Palmer at The Lighthouse Wine and Seafood Market in Manchester special orders it for me.

When I turn to ales, Shipyard often is the top choice and its Prelude is a winter ale that I continue to enjoy through the summer. It's a great beer that gets a 7 from Josh.

I stockpiled some of it after a visit to Shipyard's interesting brewery in Portland.

Over Father's Day, we gathered some of the family at a camp at Round Pond on the coast, and Josh treated me to a carefully selected six-pack. I felt a bit like a traitor with the selection of a Smuttynose Robust Porter (a 10 from Josh), brewed in Portsmouth, but this one has quickly become a favorite.

Of course, there have been brews that disappointed, no more so than a splurge on a $6.75 imperial coffee stout brewed with "real fair-trade coffee" by Montreal's Brasserie Dieu du Ciel.

The stout is called Péché Mortel (French for "mortal sin."). It was not sinfully delicious. I learned that I like coffee and I like stout, but I don't like coffee stout.

After the first sip, I remembered Lin's admonition that, "It should be spectacular. No beer should cost that much!" It wasn't and it shouldn't.

But it might be a great breakfast beverage.

Of course, I'm kidding. Surely I don't have to caution you to drink responsibly and never operate any kind of motorized vehicle under the influence of alcohol.

One of the great aspects of microbrews is that they're designed to be savored -- not chugged. And they are expensive, too. These are beers for "when you're only having one."

Actually, I'm sitting here right now, sipping my one beer for the evening, an Andrew's St. Nick's Porter (an 8 from Josh), brewed by Andy Hazen and his son, Ben, in a Lincolnville barn shared with a 32-year old goat.

Andy puts his Golden Retriever "Miller" on the label along with "Brewed in Maine" in bold. You've got to love that.

Join me, won't you? It's good for our economy.

George Smith is executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine. He lives in Mount Vernon and can be reached at george@samcef.org.

HOMEBREWING!

Well, you probably saw this coming. Starting to brew my own beer has been in the back of my mind for about a year now. When Kelly and I were looking for new apartment's, my biggest questions concerned access to a garage in which I could start my brewery. Things began to get serious when I purchased The Complete Joy of Home Brewing by master brewer Charlie Papazian. Come the Fourth of July weekend, Dan, Kelly, and I were en route to Walpole Wine & Spirits, which also had a pretty decent homebrewing section.












Now I don't like shopping, but on matters of great importance I am very deliberate. I examined all the different homebrewing kits, checking the equipment included with my notes on what I would need. (It was upon opening one of the kits up that I drew the ire of the stores staff...) One of the biggest decisions was whether to buy one of those easy homebrewing kits, or a brown bag that the store had put together with all of the ingredients needed for that recipe. I chose the later since they included the style I had finally settled on: a pale ale.











$225 later I was the proud owner of: 6-gallon carboy, 7-gallon food grade quality plastic bucket and lid, 16-quart stainless steel pot, funnel and strainer, 2 plastic hose, racking cane, bottle filler, spigot, airlock, hydrometer, thermometer, 24 glass bottles, cleaning brush, bottle caps, bottle capper, 2 cans and 1 bag of malts, 2 packages of hops, and 1 package of Irish moss. (36 more bottles, bleach, and a stirring spoon I had at home.) Now it was time to start brewing!











In many ways, this was the easy part. I quickly decided homebrewing is more cooking (something I can do) than chemistry (something I cannot do.) For those of you who are interested, here is a stripped-down list of the steps to brewing your very own pale ale:

1) Put bag of grain malts in a gallon of water to steep and bring to boil.

2) Remove grains. Add two 4 lb cans of malt extracts and 1 oz of Liberty hops. Boil for 30 min, stirring constantly.

3) Add 1 oz of Cascade hops and Irish moss. Boil for 15 min more.

4) Strain pot (this is called wort) into 6-gallon carboy (glass jug) filled with 4-gallons of cool water.

5) When temperature is below 90 degrees, add yeast and agitate carboy. Place airlock on top of container. Let ferment for 10 days in a cool, dark place. Do not -- under any circumstances, as much as you may want to, as good as it may look, as much as she may try to seduce you -- drink the wort.

6) Siphon beer into bucket with 2 cups of sugar at bottom. Pour beer into bottles and seal with bottle cap.

7) Age for 16-18 days. This, obviously, was the hardest part.

8) Drink the beer!











You can see that homebrewing really isn't that difficult... although I suppose I should withhold judgement until I try the beer first. Really, the waiting is the hardest part (that wort is a delicious smelling temptress!). Which brings me to the name of my first beer: The Waiting Is The Hardest Part Pale Ale. Ratings to come in another 10 long days.

CBC Summer Seasonals

As you will see in my list of Best Brewers I fell in love with Cambridge Brewing on my very first visit. My second visit to sample their summer seasonals was just as good... despite the poor bartender's head exploding when Dan, George, and I all ordered a sampler of all their seasonals. I'll rate these in the order that I drank them, from weakest to strongest.

CBC Half Wit Belgian Style Wheat
an unusual cloudy peach color... typical belgian smell of banana and cloves, but also a strong citrus aroma... fruity taste with both citrus and something resembling a peach flavor... grainy mouthfeel -- i liked it. (george did as well, dan did not.)
Score: 7

CBC Hefe-weizen
yeasty aroma... taste of banana and wheat, and also quite tart... smoothness you would expect in a hefeweizen... 6% abv is something you might not expect... a slightly unique and very well crafted hefeweizen. the best of their summers. (george agreed, dan seemed less excited.)
Score: 9

CBC Bitchin' Bitter
a copper amber beer... sweet smelling, but aroma is more buttery than anything else... taste is of grassy hops and something else i cannot place... very true to style. (dan agreed, george seemed less sold.)
Score: 8

CBC Tripel
slightly cloudy, golden appearance... aroma is singularly of malts... bready malts bury anything else cbc was going for here... i prefered their tripel threat. (dan and george liked it more than i did.)
Score: 6

CBC Arquebus
a "summer barleywine"... sickeningly sweet in both aroma and flavor, honey and green apple... this strongly reminded me of a white wine... not pleasant. the blunderbuss was far superior. (dan and george strongly agreed.)
Score: 3

CBC You Enjoy My Stout
an imperial stout, and another sweet offering from cbc... molasses and alcohol register presence strongest... pretty good, but i guess i was expecting something more here. (dan liked it, george did not.)
Score: 7

Belgian Quadrupel vs. Belgian Strong Pale Ale

I am really getting into Belgian styles of beer, but more often than not it is a Tripel or a Witbier that I am drinking. So trying new Belgian styles is a high priority on my shopping list. Here are a couple of good New York brewers take on two very different Belgian styles.

Brooklyn Local 1
750 ml Bottle -- Gordon's, Waltham
thanks to dan on providing this one; i almost purchased it on my way to his house as i had heard very good things prior to. a belgian strong pale ale -- it even sounds awesome. golden pour with fluffy white head -- nice lacing... fruity, yeasty aroma... distinctively belgian yeast dominates taste, with fruity apple overtones in background... alcohol is well disguised, but it goes down so smooth you almost want to chug it right down... excellent.
Appearance: 4/5, Arom: 8/10, Flavor: 10/10, Palate: 5/5, Overall: 18/20, Total: 4.5
Score: 10

Ommegang Three Philosophers
Bottle -- McKean & Charles, Waldoboro, ME
a belgian-style quadrupel, my first i believe. interesting pour: dark brown with a reddish tint, neat head... bold aroma of sweet toffee, raisins/molasses... wow, surprisingly strong taste of tart cherries, and some alcohol... VERY sour finish that lingers on palate... interesting but not great.
App: 5/5, Aro: 8/10, Flv: 6/10, Pal: 4/5, Ovr: 12/20, Tot: 3.5

Score: 8

My pick: Brooklyn Local 1