CBE13: Giddy Up Jingle Horse

After almost a month of tasting and pondering, I have finally found time to sit down and write a few thoughts on what may have been the best beer exchange that the CBE has ever been involved in.  After very little research, and less fact checking, I've decided that this was the most expensive of any CBE's in the history of CBE.

Let's start with the selections from Brewery Ommegang.  Two of the brews from this selection are from the Cooperstown, NY Brewery.  Here is a brief list of things they are known for: Some pretty awesome Belgian Ales (Three Philosophers, anyone?)  Brewing some collaboration brews with HBO for the Game of Thrones series.  Being part of the Duvel Family which includes brands like Brasserie D'Achouffe and Maredsous.  Although the CBE hasn't selected a ton of Ommegang brews, we've made up for it with two beers chosen in this selection, and three total in the last three exchanges.  They're website is pretty fantastic, with recommendations for food pairings, lengthy detail about their beers, and something that has renewed my interest in a potential visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  On one of my many side notes, if you're looking for cool glassware, this is the website you want to visit to browse.  They have a few neat chalices and a lot of very cool designed tulips.

Continue reading, it's going to get good...

CBE12 - Lawnmowers for Rakes Part 2

As a second football week peters out, the CBE was given something that we haven't seen since winter ended... Some cooler weather.  The perfect opportunity to drink some of the beers in the #CBE12 mix.  I took full advantage of that.  I was also watching some games while finishing up Part 2 of the newsletter, and most of it was constructed on an iPad, so I hope the formatting isn't completely ridiculous. And I don't know how pictures are going to work on this. I hope well, or at the very least acceptably.

From the trunk of newly minted parents, the first beer on the second part of this newsletter is Smuttynose Pumpkin.  I went through a few of these last season, and as far as pumpkin beers go, this one is interesting because it's not overwhelming.  It's the Oktoberfest of pumpkin beers. Unlike the Weyerbacher and Dogfish Head, you can have a few of them and continue to enjoy football games all day.  A lot of people say pumpkin doesn't taste like anything, and it's the spices that make a good pumpkin beer. To them, I say, pompion tastes like this...

Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale is our homage to the craft and heritage of America’s brewers. Recipes calling for the use of pumpkins in beer date back to early colonial times, when brewers sought to extend their supply of costly imported malt with locally grown ingredients, such as squash and “pompions.”

In that spirit, we brew our ale with the addition of pumpkin to the mash, along with traditional spices to create a delicious American original.

I've had more and more Southern Tier beers of late, and they're good.  Harvest was kind of a gamble. Not a pumpkin, not an Oktoberfest.  I figured it would be a hoppy and malty fall favorite.  It actually tastes a little grapfruity to me. As far as fall seasonals, it definitely leans to the hoppy side.  It's definitely something I'll be keeping an eye out for, as well as other offerings from Southern Tier.  It's a great "change of pace" from some of the other CBE12 selections.

Harvest Ale is our celebration of the changing weather and the sowing of hops and barley that will be used in our upcoming brews. We usher in the fall with a classic English style Extra Special Bitter of the highest order. Deep ruby in color with an even deeper hop flavor… in fact, we throw fresh English hops into every brewing vessel, then dry hop after fermentation to impart a zesty kick. This beer has real hop character that mingles with fresh malted barley for an experience that will make you wish it were fall year ‘round. 

Cisco Pumple Drumkin.  If brewery's websites had any influence on beer ratings, this would be the worst rated beer of all time.  Even worse than the Breckenridge Vanilla Porter.  Luckily for Cisco, Nantucket, and the entire state of Massachusetts, that is not the case.  The website is the worst.  This one tastes like you should melt marshmallows on it and serve it as the sweet potato casserole at Thanksgiving dinner. It's definitely full bodied, lots of spices going on, but the spices seem a little more subdued than they do in some of the other pumpkin beers. This one tastes like putting a scoop of pumpkin guts into your yam when your about half way through emptying one out to carve some dopey three toothed face into one.  It also has one of the coolest pumpkin beer labels.

Our Pumple Drumkin Ale is a fall favorite on the island.  A deep orange hue and a subtle pie aroma meet a robust male character in this ale which, true to its seasonal reveling, tastes like toasted pie crust in your mouth.  It will finish clean and dry on the palate and leave you wishing that every day could be autumn on Nantucket!

Uinta makes a black lager called Baba.  As in black sheep.  It comes in cans, and I drank some of it this summer.  It's delicious.  I was kind of hoping that the Philly Brewing Company Schwarzinger was going to be like that.  It is vaguely, but it's admittedly not as good. Oddly, none of the bottles that I've consumed have had any head retention.  They were also kind of oddly tart.  And not as roasty as I was hoping they would be.  It's also new enough that there are not comprehensive ratings on any website to get an idea of how well it's being received.  And the website only says...

A German style black lager brewed with premium pilsner and dark roasted malts.

I really enjoy a lot of PBC beers.  The Newbold IPA is pretty good, the Joe Porter (coffee porter) is a favorite of mine.  The Walt Wit is really great.  I was hoping for more.  Maybe next time.

Enjoy your football, enjoy the weather as it finally gets cool enough to actually enjoy these beers.  Enjoy that CBE12 gave you two newsletters for the price of one.  Keep an eye out for Souther Tier Pumking, Stevens Point Whole Hog Pumpkin and Williamsberg AleWerks Pumpkin Ale.  Those will stand up to any of the pumpkins in CBE12.

CBE 12 - Lawnmowers for Rakes Part 1

Nothing says the end of summer like Labor Day.  A short three day weekend, made even shorter by high levels of traffic, anxiety filled family visits, and rained out barbecues.  In an effort to see how quickly we can forget summer and welcome the annual trade of mowers for rakes, CBE proudly presents the first ever fall seasonal exchange.  Filled with a variety of beers that probably would be best drank a month or two from now, as we ease into cooler temperatures and another horrendous Eagles season.  With no further ado, I introduce the concept of seasonal creep...

Yes, it's not October, there are still a handful of 80 plus degree days in our future, the leaves have not actually fallen yet, so it may be too early for pumpkin beers.  Over the past several weeks though, these pumpkin beers have begun to swamp shelve space in all of my favorite beers stores (ie Wegmans and Whole Foods.)  But if you don't buy them now, they're not going to be around when you actually want to drink them anyway, so just consider the middle of August to be the start of fall, and crank up the AC.  There are actually some good reasons for these beers hitting shelves early, as there are for spring and summer beers creeping into the end of winter.  I weeded through a handful of articles and feedback on the subject, and here are some of the more interesting and thoughtful ones.  From Schlafly, Scranton Times Leader, and some idiot at the New York Village Voice.  That last one's important because there is a quote from a Sixpoint brewer about pumpkin beers being released in July/August not being made with fresh pumpkin.  Duh.  But until Sixpoint makes a pumpkin beer that's even half as good as Dogfish Head's or  Southern Tier Pumking, that's not an appropriate argument for waiting until November or December to release pumpkin beers.  It's interesting to read brewers takes, distributors opinions, and customer feedback on the subject.  The bottom line is that we're going to continue to get seasonal beers earlier and earlier every year, because they get allocated earlier and earlier, which means they're going to be sold out earlier and earlier every year.  Which is awesome... I think.  At least we live in a world where distributors (in this specific case Brewers in Mt Airy) now carry 30 odd seasonal selections from just as many breweries, instead of bringing in Camo Cans of Milwaukees Best to welcome Fall.

#CBEleven - Running Out of Clever #Hashtags

For the first time in CBE History, we went with 8 wild cards.  At the onset, it actually looked like it was going to inexplicably produce the most varied style selection.  A lot of people were grabbing summer seasonals and one-off brews.  But as I sit here diligently entering the names and styles of the brews into the master spreadsheet, which will then be returned to the CBE vault, I see a Pale, a Belgian Pale, a Hoppy Wheat, and two IPAs.  Well, not as varied as initially thought, but at least they're all good ones.

I'm really in the sweet spot for newsletters at eleven.  I know I've missed a few here and there, but I can really just look back to some of the old ones, and it pretty much does the writing for me.  For instance, we've seen a Lost Coast beer before.  The Indica IPA.  They have since changed the artwork for it, as well as the description, and I know that because I documented it in the newsletter for CBE 6.  I don't think we had #hashtags back then, so it was just CBE 6.  I also said this about the website:

This website sucks too.  It’s making me dizzy.  Let me copy this description over for you word for word…

And the website is not very good.  The store is even worse.  But in a CBE first, they have a media kit section on the website.  I don't seriously consider myself media, but I'll go ahead and take advantage of it anyway.

There are probably a reasonable amount of questions as to why I used that picture, and why it looks like it was taken with a camera from the set of Boardwalk Empire.  Well, the media room doesn't have any pictures of Tangerine Wheat, and I don't know.  I just drag and drop, the iMac does the rest.  If it wants it to be weird colors, who am I to complain.  The website does describe it though.

A refreshing citrus ale, Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat combines our Lost Coast Harvest Wheat with natural tangerine flavors. Brewed with a combination of wheat and crystal malts, and finished with Perle hops.

Follow me to the other side to see what my "Hot Take" is...

#CBEX or #CBE10

After I finished the newsletter, but before you start, I formatted a lot of stuff that I copied in this one, so some of it may look weird when I hit publish.  I apologize, I was not really on top of my game for this one.  Also... there are no pictures.  So I'm ok if you only read like three paragraphs and give up.  I understand that.  I would ask that you read the last paragraph, that's kind of interesting.  And here we go...

Sorry so late.  I really got caught up in season 5 of True Blood on Memorial Day.  It kind of soaked up a lot of spare time that I would have otherwise used to write/edit a very popular, semi-quarterly newsletter.  Instead, I can tell you in very much detail the setup of the Vampire government and Religion's impact on it's leadership.  You probably don't want to hear about that.  You probably don't want to hear a long winded introduction about my 8th grade BASIC class either.  But there's nothing I can do about that now.  It's already in print.  I added a little bonus to all of the sections, and added some reviews comments from Untappd.  Untappd is a nerd application that tracks all of the beer you consume.  It's kind of like a Facebook for beer, without all the friends, and much less of the anxiety that comes with whether or not you should write on someone's timeline to wish them a Happy Birthday if you don't typically talk to them very often.  Sometimes, Untappd can make it easier to pick out a six pack, sometimes far more difficult.  And occasionally, the comments can be funny if used in the right context.  I'll let you decide.  And now, on with the show...

When I was in junior high school, we had a computer lab. I was interested in the future and took a class. As it turns out the sole purpose of the class was to teach us BASIC. It's the Latin of computer languages; dead. The teacher seemed very high strung, but I guess at the time there was probably a few hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment in there. I mean, between the dot matrix printers, and the 400 lb monitors, the meandering cords and power cables, it no longer surprises me when I look back and remember shocking myself on a metal folding chair, so as to not ruin the computers which in turn took 15 minutes to power up. Can you still do that? Can you still ruin a computer by shocking it? Anyway... We did stuff like write code to make the computer type our name 100 times and other yes/no games, that type of bullshit. It was dumb. There was this one kid in the class that really got into writing code. He made a pac-man-esque game, and added little design features that always ruined the curve in the class. Kids would crowd around his desk to look at his newest program. It was the early 90's, so no matter how good he was going to get at Basic, the graphics were going to be kind of crummy. The purpose of this meandering intro to let you know that I think that kid created the original design of the Two Brothers Website. 20 years ago.  And they are still using it to this day.  I don't really have anything against Two Brothers, their website is just stupid looking.  Cane and Ebel is a Red Rye Ale, selected by @jdodaro.  The Two Brothers Website insightfully says...

Dry, but with a creamy touch of thai palm sugar and the spicy tang of rye, all balanced by loads of the wackiest new hops we could lay our lands on.  Yep, it's an original.  And that's no sin.

Now, what have we learned.  The above quote from the site was actually in all caps, but I thought it would be less mean if I edited the part about them shouting at you.  We've also learned that their hands are called lands.  It's probably a Chicago thing.  Professional breweries should leave the typographical and grammar errors to the professionals.  Namely me.  They were able to correct that label before it made it to the printers.  I had never had this one before, and it was the first #CBEX selection I tried.  I really liked it, and thought it was better than another rye beer I'm very fond of; Founders Red Rye.