December 18th - Fitger's Wildfire Lager and Surly Smoke

Another week in the Month of Awesomeness finished up with a double shot of beer.  Surly Brewin'g's Smoke Lager was the main entry of the day but an even bigger drinking vessel was consumed first, Fitger's Wildfire Lager.

A few of us spent a weekend at the North Shore of Lake Superior last month and the trip really kicked off with an afternoon (ok, late morning into afternoon) of drinking at Fitger's brew pub in Duluth. I got through pretty much every beer that I wanted to try that day except the Wildfire Lager. I did have a sample of it and it was hot. I mean damn spicy hot.

They make it with peppers, habeneros and hatch I believe and it doesn't give just a tingly sensation like all other pepper beers but this stuff is like drinking Tabasco sauce. The flavor isn't as intense as Tabasco but the heat is definitely there. I was the only one in the group intrigued by it but the responsible side of me (there actually is one) kicked in and said I had enough at that point. So I did the next best thing and bought a growler.

Fast forward to yesterday. I knew I'd need help with the growler and I also knew it would pair perfectly with food so I enlisted the help of my friend Noe who has been a big help in my Mexican cooking skills. He really liked the beer like I knew he would and he was surprised at the heat that came from the beer. What we both really liked was the pepper flavor that is very prevalent in this beer as well.

Needless to say it paired very well with the tamales, carnitas and chorizo that we ate for lunch. One pint was plenty for me so I decided to save the rest of the growler to make my own carnitas tonight with it. I'm really looking forward to it, especially since I'm making my carnitas with my new favorite pepper, pablanos. I love the smokiness you get from them and can't wait to see how the beer and the peppers work together.

The next beer is a style that's a usual suspect when Noe and I get together for beers and dinner, smoked beers.  It's a style of beer that I'm not crazy about by itself but is one of my favorites when paired with food. This was a bottle from my cellar and not from the upcoming release and while the smoke faded slightly, the presence still left made for a nice glass of beer to finish up the meal with.

The Great Minnesota Beer Get Together

As you may or may not know, the 2010 National Homebrewers Conference was in Minneapolis (technically Bloomington) last month. Homebrewing wasn't really on my radar when tickets went on sale for all the events so the seminars and everything else really didn't mean too much to me.

What did mean a ton to me though, was that a lot of my out-of-town friends were going to be in the Twin Cities for the conference and I was going to get to meet some of them for the first time.

Twitter was something that started slow for me, something I did just to see what it was all about. It also coincided with the explosion of my craft beer hobby and I soon found out that the two went hand in hand. I tweet about plenty more than beer but the majority of my interaction is about beer and most of it is with friends I met because of beer.

My biggest problem about social media is that too many people use it as a substitute for real friends. "I have 258 friends on Facebook" "Oh yeah? How many would meet you at the bar for a beer?" "Ummmmmm" Exactly.

I understand it's not always feasible to have a beer with a Twitter (or Facebook or whatever) "friend" when you live in Minneapolis and said friend lives in Texas. But that's what made last week so cool, I got to meet several Twitter friends in person for the first time and got to drink beer with them and friends that I met on Twitter but have had the fortune to hang out with before.

Here's the quick recap. Melanie from Atlanta (aka @mstrachan on the Twitter) was the first in town, she arrived with her friend Eric on Sunday night. I had volleyball league that night though so we didn't meet up till Monday night when we had a few beers at Town Hall. Josh (aka @joshareed on the Twitter) and his wife Elizabeth joined Melanie, Eric, Allison, Marie and me for a pretty fun get-to-know-ya Monday night.

Wednesday afternoon is when it all took off. Brett (aka @BrettGlenna on the Twitter) got tickets for a bunch of us to go to the Twins game that night and I decided to invite everybody over to Isenberg's Neighborhood Bar that afternoon so I could showcase some of Minnesota's finest beers before the game.

Josh was first to show up and eventually the rest of the crew showed up - Brett with Frank (@fnbarrett on the Twitter), Maggie (@SudsyMaggie on the Twitter) and Norm (@NormskiBrewer on the Twitter) in tow and Allison with Melanie and Eric. Norm and Maggie are from Washington and Frank is from Iowa (but don't hold that against him).

I spent the days leading up to Wednesday assembling as many Minnesota beers as I could find and the final count ended up being around forty available for us to try. We got through just over two dozen of them (give or take) before it was time to leave for the Twins game. Everybody got a taste of beer ranging from Schell's to Brau Brothers to Summit to Surly to Lake Superior to Lift Bridge. Not everybody tried every beer, but everybody got their fair share of a taste of Minnesota.

It was also the largest gathering of "Getting Tanked with Frank" panel members in history. OK, it was the first gathering in the short history of the hottest new podcast on the internet but that's what made it so significant. I had met Frank once before and Brett several times but this was our first group gathering (minus Mar, Ben & Laz).

The Getting Tanked with Frank logo was also born that day:

Allison and I met up with Frank and his wife and kids and with Brett and his wife and Maggie down at Target Field where we got to hang with Norm for a bit too. It was a beautiful evening and we got to see a fantastic game from Scott Baker, 12 strikeouts in a 2-1 Twins victory.

The next night, I got off work and stopped by home to grab some of the beers that we didn't get to the night before and headed down to Bloomington were the gang was hanging out (sans Frank & family and Melanie & Friend who headed home).

I brought some of the beers that we didn't get time to try from the night before including Surly Furious, Surly Abrasive Ale and a growler of Town Hall's Masala Mama. Didn't get a chance to stay too long since everybody had to return to the fun of the conference.

The next night Allison and I again headed down to the hotel after work, this time with a growler of Barley John's Wild Brunette and the just-released-that-very-day Lift Bridge Minnesota Tan and Brau Brothers Rubus (an imperial blackberry porter). Also included for the west coasters was a bottle of Bells Hopslam, past its prime but still worth trying for those who never have before.

After having dinner at the hotel with the gang, Allison and I left them to their fun again and headed back home since we were leaving for New Ulm the next morning.

While I was in New Ulm, I wanted to try a Schell's Hefeweizen on tap since it was in season and I had a hot tip that it was at the B&L Bar downtown. I ordered a hefe for me and a Schell's Stout for Allison and posted on Twitter that we were there. Not long after, I felt a pat on my back and saw yet another Twitter connection sit down on the barstool next to me. It was David Berg from Schell's (aka @schellbrewer on the Twitter).

Dave and I have been conversing on Twitter for awhile and I've wanted to meet up with him for awhile so it was great to finally have the chance to get to do that. We had a couple beers and shot the shit for awhile and had a great time. If my parents weren't waiting for their Happy Joe's chicken, I have the feeling we could have had a few more than we did. At least we finally got to have that first one and I look forward to having more in the near future.

The next morning after making a Father's Day breakfast for my parents, we took off for the Cities to pick up Norm & Maggie from the hotel so we could head to the St Paul Summer Beer Festival. Allison dropped us off and we soon met up with the rest of the crew and began sampling.

I was a little disappointed that some breweries only showed up with one or two beers and that some only showed up with regular stuff that I could drink whenever I wanted but I did find enough to sample about 24 different beers.

I was surprised that I didn't run into more people that I knew but I did run into a couple of very important cogs in the Twin Cities beer community, Dan and Bryan from the Four Firkins. Always good to see those guys, especially outside of work.

Eventually the day was wrapping up and Maggie, Norm and I had to figure out what we wanted for our last beer before Allison picked us up so that we could get Maggie and Norm to the airport on time.

We decided that it was fitting to end the day with a Surly. I hadn't been there all day since the program only listed beers that were already in my fridge at home. Maggie went up to grab a sample for both of us because I was busy BS'ing again and returned with the surprise of the day - Surly Brown Eye. Oops, I meant Surly IMPERIAL Brown Eye (sorry Todd!). I forgot the exact style that it was but it was a great way to end the day because it was easily my favorite beer of the day.

Thus ended an epic week of beer drinking with awesome people. Epic is a term that gets tossed around too much these days but I can't think of a word to better describe it. I was sad to see Norm and Maggie go, I had such a great time hanging out with them. I felt a lot better though because I knew we'd get to drink again hopefully very soon!

*Editor's note - Yeah, I'm a couple weeks late posting this son of a bitch. Sorry about that. I got writer's block for the events of the last day. OK, that's a lie. I just got lazy and then forgot about it. But better late then never. Now go drink a beer that was made close to where sleep at night.

Beer Club, Volume Eight - Saisons!

Well, it appears that spring has finally sprung in Minnesota. About damn time. I thought it was time to start introducing the group to some beers that go down well in the summer so that they don't try drinking an imperial stout when mowing the lawn and accidentally revert back to Miller Lite.

Wheat beers/witbiers/hefeweizens were all on my radar but I decided to start with my personal favorite of the summer styles, saisons. Admittedly, I needed to brush up on some good examples myself as I had tried less than ten different ones before April's Beer Club meeting.

I knew that I wanted to do Lift Bridge's Farm Girl and Surly's CynicAle, both because of the local angle and because they're damn good beers. Another one that was a personal favorite had to make the cut so Goose Island's Sofie was on my short list. A visit to the Four Firkins helped round out the lineup with Alvey's help. He recommended Ommegang's Hennepin (I felt silly for forgetting that one) and also Saison Dupont which he said was the classic example of the style. A couple new arrivals, Victory Helios and Great Divide's Colette rounded out the list.

I had tried five of the seven beers on the list and I usually like to try most of them before Beer Club so I bought a 375ml bottle of the Saison Dupont and drank it on Sunday. I was a bit leery when I saw it came in a green bottle and pretty disappointed when I popped the top and smelled some skunky aromas. Luckily though, the smell faded quickly and it turned out to be a pretty good beer.

After October's meeting, I realized how devastating it can be to have an awesome beer in the middle of the lineup followed by a less-than-awesome beer. I hadn't had Sofie since last year and had only tried it twice but I was confident enough in my tastes to move the Dupont from the end of the lineup. To cover my ass though, I put Hennepin at the end with Sofie second to last because I knew I liked Hennepin and I knew it was another renowned example of the style. My fear was that the skunky aroma in the beginning would turn the guys off a bit to it and I didn't want to finish the night on that kind of note.

Beer Club Monday rolled around and we were a little light compared to the full capacity Trappist month in March but that was OK with me, I love good attendance but I think about six people is the perfect number and that's exactly what we had. We started off locally with the Farm Girl and the Cynic which both surprisingly had some mixed reviews.

The new litmus test that I started using is "Would you drink this beer over Miller Lite (or whatever your favorite macro was) if they were the only two beers in a bar?" and also "Would you drink this over Summit (or whatever your go to easily accessible standard craft beer is) if they were the only two beers in a bar?" For the most part, everybody picked the saison in question over the macro with a couple exceptions but they didn't necessarily beat out the go to craft beers for as many people.

Note - I don't use Summit in that second question as a slam to Summit at all. On the contrary, I use it as my example because for about a decade now, I've walked into every shit bar just hoping they have Summit because they've done such a good job getting into bars in Minnesota that they're my oasis in an otherwise bad lineup of taps.

We moved on to the Colette which for some odd reason was Great Divide’s first appearance in Beer Club. They make some incredible beers (Yeti, Hibernation Ale, Titan, Hercules) and I’m glad the group finally got exposed to them. The Colette seemed to be one of the middle of the road, everybody liked it enough that they’d drink it again but there was no raving about it. I had it at right in the middle myself but will seek it out to drink more.

Then came the Helios. Oh my, I wasn’t ready for this one. Or should I say, the group wasn’t ready for this yet. My first experience with “da funk” came from Saison Brett from Boulevard last year. It’s kind of hard to describe other than using the term funky. Well, Helios has it too. Now don’t get me wrong, I personally didn’t think it was a bad thing and neither did Brett but we’ve come across it before.

Convincing the rest of the group was a whole other thing. My question was and remains, how do you tell someone who’s getting into beer that aromas of “barnyard funk” and “horse blanket” not only not bad but sought after? The Helios wasn’t too overpowering but for Pat, Phil and Paul L, it was shit. Literally.

Pat's reaction to da funk

Brett and I liked it and Paul U was on board for the most part but the other guys were less than enthused and choked down their samples. I’m thinking we could have some issues for certain styles in Beer Club’s future. But we’ll cross that bridge to the barnyard when we get to it.

Next up was Saison Dupont, considered by many to be the epitome of the saison style of beer and was once named by Men’s Journal as the best beer in the world. It went over very well. It did have a bit of the skunky aroma which I learned from Brett is actually more of a sulfur aroma, or DMS (dimethyl sulfide) in the very geeky section of the beer world. The thing about it with this beer was that it luckily faded quickly after the initial pungent punch to the nose and the beer ended up being very enjoyable. It did spark a good discussion about aromas and the difference between skunky and DMS notes.

Brett popping his (former) favorite saison

Next on the list was Sofie. Up until this point, this was my favorite saison and it remained in the top slot after going up against the others as well. It was the winner of the night in a landslide and even prompted Brett to change his mind on his favorite saison. If this stuff keeps happening, I might start to think I know something about beer!

Beer of the Night

The final saison of the night was Ommegang's Hennepin. It went over well but also a bit uneventful. I should have trusted my instincts and moved Sofie to the end but at least Hennepin was liked by most and wasn't a bad beer to end the nig ht on.

We finished the night with a few random beers including Matt Schiller's "Double Broken Tap" Imperial IPA (142 IBU 8.4 ABV). Matt's another home brewer that I met via Twitter. He brought me a couple bombers of his beer one night after work and after we drank one together, I grudgingly decided to save the other to split with Beer Club. It's a damn good beer and everybody loved it. Can't wait to drink more of it one day.

Matt's Double Broken Tap IIPA

Thus ended another successful Beer Club. I'm not sure that saisons went over real well for the whole group, but at least we were all exposed to something new and will hopefully continue to try more of this unique style of beer.

***Note - One thing that I wanted to mention was the perception of price in regards to packaging. The main reason I picked Helios to add to the lineup was because I thought it would be good to have a very affordable option and since it was only $3.99 a bomber, it really fit the bill.

One comment I always hear about Surly is how they're so expensive because $10-12 for a four pack of cans isn't what people are accustomed to paying. Well, the "cheap" bomber of Helios comes out to about 18 cents an ounce and the "expensive" CynicAle comes out to about 16 cents an ounce. All perception.

I'm not trying to knock Helios or say that Surly is the new cheap beer on the block, I just wanted to mention it so that you're always aware of what you're actually paying for a beer. The Hennepin was another good lesson in paying attention. If you buy a 750ml of cork and caged Hennepin you'll pay about $8 for it. If you buy a 4 pack of 12 oz bottles you'll pay about $10-11 for it. The 750ml costs about 32 cents per ounce, the 4 pack costs about 22 cents an ounce.

Bottom line is do the math, figure out the best value for your dollar and be able to afford more good beer.

Darkness Falls Across the Land

Last Saturday was Christmas for beer geeks across the land, for it was Darkness Day at the Surly brewery. Darkness Day is the one day out of the year that you can buy the holy grail of beer, Surly's Russian Imperial Stout - Darkness. (Actually, this year if you're lucky you might be able to track some down at liquor stores somewhere but I digress).

I've been up and down the spectrum on Darkness Day starting with "oh, that sounds really cool, I'll have to check it out" to "it costs HOW MUCH per bottle???" to "well, maybe I'll just get a bottle or two" to "people start lining up at WHAT TIME??? guess I won't be getting any" to finally "screw it, I'm just gonna wait in line behind the total die hards but ahead of the lazy wannabes and see where it gets me."

My plan was to get there at about 9:00 on Saturday morning and hope that I was one of the 800 lucky people to get a wrist band that allowed me to buy my allotment of 6 bottles of Darkness. I talked Allison into coming with me both for the company (although I made so many new friends that day it wouldn't have been an issue) and for her wrist. I'm not sure how many of my friends that wanted me to get them a bottle actually had plans or how many just didn't want to put in the effort but I'm a trusting guy and a good friend (I think) and bought some extras for them. I feel a bit responsible for getting my small group of beer disciples into loving good beer so I thought I owed at least a few of them a bottle.

I envisioned the scene at the brewery dozens of times the week before DDay both while awake and while sleeping and as I was getting ready Saturday morning I decided at the last minute to push it and get there a few minutes earlier. When I came around the corner and didn't see masses of people lined up for miles I figured I got lucky. Sure enough, we set up our chairs at about the #225 spot in line (according to the rough count of our new neighbors in line). That was at about 8:45 and by 9:00 there was probably another 50-100 people behind us and shortly after that we were now in about the middle of a 400+ line of people.

So it seemed that we got lucky showing up when we did and even luckier because the weather was picture perfect. Sure, there was a brisk fall chill in the day but it was finally sunny and after a few Surly Coffee Benders to kick off the day and warm me up a bit I didn't even need a jacket. Speaking of Coffee Bender, Surly c0ntinued to be a kickass organization by bringing out a keg of Coffee Bender for those of us waiting in line. It's a true sign of class to support your fans by bringing out free beer when you have nothing to gain from it and that's a shining example of why Surly is as great as they are.

It didn't take long to find familiar faces in the crowd and to make friends with new faces because everybody there was there for the same reason, they love good beer and wanted to have fun. Because of that reason and because of the nice weather, the time seemed to fly and before we knew it they were opening the gates and Darkness had begun to descend upon us (I swear they picked Darkness as the name of the beer because it's so fun to write shit like that).

Once we got inside the gate we met up with Phil and Becky and proceeded to get the business side of things done. We hit the Surly swag room to buy a couple t-shirts and some glassware and then got in line to buy the beer. The girls went on a beer run while we waited in line to buy our Darkness.

Allison brought me back a Birch Aged CynicAle (I liked it, I think I like regular Cynic better though) Then, I heard the news... there was one keg of Darkness tapped and for sale. The girls went to wait in that line while Phil and I bought our bottles and brought them to the car and I returned to the beautiful sight of a goblet full of Darkness.

I had it for the first time a few weeks back when they tapped a Firkin of it at the 501 Club (see Surly Darkness and Surly Wet) and thought it was pretty good but I wasn't sure that it was worth all the hoopla. I'm not sure if it was the extra bit of carbonation zip that the keg provided over the firkin but that glass of beer was maybe the best glass I've ever had. The flavors were alive and dancing through my mouth like nothing I had ever tasted before. It must have been the slowest I've ever drank 12 oz of beer before, I'd take just enough to coat my tongue and enjoyed every drop I could.

The highlight of my day happened when I met one of my Twitter buddies, Surly Boy Wonder who I saw walking around. We had been chatting back and forth leading up to Darkness Day and when I saw him, I walked up to introduce myself. After a few words he handed me a bottle of 2008 Darkness. I thought he just wanted me to check it out so I gave it back to him and he told me it was a gift. I've always said that you can't beat free beer. Well, good free beer is better. A free bottle of vintage Darkness? Well that just cannot be beat. It definitely made my day and that says a lot considering how great my day was.

We spent the rest of our day there just taking in the scene and trying some new beers. After my Darkness was gone I decided to try the Smoke. I thought that even if I couldn't get any Darkness I could at least drink something that looked close to it. It was pretty tasty. Another highlight of my day came when I decided to try a glass of the Tea-Bagged Furious. It was right in line with the Darkness for me for how great it was. It bums me out that a lot of these beers aren't available year-round but I guess that just makes days like today that much more special.

I wished that we didn't have plans that night because it meant we had to leave a couple hours earlier than I would have liked. But since that was the only minor downer of the day, I can't complain. I got Darkness for myself and for some of my friends and had a blast doing it. Just like after Surlyfest, I'm already looking forward to next year's Darkness Day and will be bringing more people with me.

Beer Club, Volume Two - India Pale Ales

So when I first envisioned creating Beer Club, the first goal I had was simply to find some people who would discuss all the good beers I was suddenly drinking. Since IPA's/Double IPA's are my favorite style of beer it was natural that I'd be drinking a lot of them (25 of the 95 beers that I've rated so far). Oktoberfest was too natural of a fit for the first Beer Club meeting since so many of them were coming out right before the first meeting.

The next meeting wasn't so natural to anybody but me and the more I thought about it the more I thought I might have made a mistake by picking IPA's so quickly in our lineup. Sure I had open minded people but still there were plenty who just weren't big fans of IPA's. Maybe I was just talking myself into it as well but I kept telling them that they just haven't had the right ones and that the concept they had in their minds of IPA's (bitter beers) wasn't completely accurate and I'd prove to them that they did like (the right) India Pale Ale's after all. (A little background if you're not completely familiar with the style, click here - India Pale Ale)

Another big part of the reason that I chose IPA's is because I figured I had some pretty good knowledge about them and could pick out a pretty good lineup. So while I wasn't going to learn much about the beer I knew that I could be a more effective leader/president/founder of BC/HMFIC and everybody else would be better off because of it. No use in the blind leading the blind this soon in the life cycle of the group.

After searching my brain's database and emailing Alvey at the Four Firkins, these are the ones that I came up with for tasting:

Founders Centennial IPA

Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA
Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA
Founders Harvest Ale
Stone India Pale Ale (IPA)

Two Hearted Ale

Surly Furious

I knew that the night would wrap up with Furious because I've been spreading that gospel for awhile now and Bell's Two Hearted and Stone's IPA have been two of my favorites ever since I've tried them. I wanted to throw Dogfish Head in the group even though it wasn't one of my favorites just because I knew it was a popular beer from a popular innovative brewery.

The Centennial and the Torpedo were on Alvey's advice and the Harvest Ale was a last minute addition by me. I didn't really want two from Founders but they were different enough from each other and I just fell in love with the Harvest Ale when I had my first one.

So, the group was a bit mixed up from last month's with Paul U, Kris, Mike and Pat returning and Phil and Brent joining as guest stars. All of the tastings went pretty well and people started to realize (much to my relief) that I was correct in that they did like IPA's, just didn't know which ones.

The star of the night was unquestionably the Founders Harvest Ale. I felt bad for the Stone IPA because it followed the Harvest and I couldn't believe how little support the Stone got until I started tasting it myself. Harvest was a TOUGH act to follow. Bell's definitely was well liked and the Furious performed like I thought it would (very well).

In retrospect I'm going to have to go back and re-rate some of these on Rate Beer because some of them lost a little bit when compared side by side to others and others gained a bit. I'm going to stay on record that Two Hearted and Stone's IPA are two of my favorite India Pale Ales, Founders Harvest Ale is officially my second favorite and Furious just cannot be stopped no matter what I put up against it. It is the godfather of all beers.

In hindsight, I may have still made a mistake by picking IPA's so early for the club even though they went over much better than anybody expected them to but at least everybody can get right to ordering one in the bar or picking some up from the store. In fact, I picked up some Harvest for Paul and for Kris when I made my run for more the next day.

I'm very pleased at how well the meetings have gone so far. People have been open minded and talkative and very receptive of everything way beyond my wildest dreams. Who knows? Maybe this thing has some legs and will be a fixture for a long time. I certainly hope so.

Surly Darkness and Surly Wet

I've been looking forward to Surly's Darkness Day for quite awhile now so needless to say I was pleasantly surprised when I heard that they were tapping a firkin of it last Tuesday at the 501 Club in Minneapolis. I was able to somehow convince a couple buddies who are far from beer geeks to join me and after figuring out the logistics, all of us could enjoy as much Darkness as we could get our hands on and then move on to $2 Coffee Benders (that's like stealing) without having to worry about who was driving.

We got there about a half hour before the firkin was tapped and they gave me the look that made me wonder if I was worried about getting there early for no reason. After grabbing a Furious to sip while we were waiting and chatting with Omar Ansari for awhile we grabbed a table close to the bar to wait for the Darkness to be unleashed. As it got closer to eight bells, the bar area got fuller and fuller as other beer geeks poured in.

We each took a spot where we hoped to be noticed by the bartender and eventually got back to the table with 8 glasses of Darkness between the three of us. Here are my notes from it:
Appearance is that of...darkness. No head, sweet aroma with a soy sauce type of smell. Sweet, thick syrupy mouthfeel with little to no carbonation. Lots going on in the flavor with chocolate and coffee coming out the most for me. Nice smooth almost creamy finish.

To my surprise, my two friends (including Pat of Beer Club fame) also liked it. I didn't expect them to be big fans of such an aggressive beer knowing what they normally would choose. My main goal of course from this night was to finally get my taste buds on this insanely popular beer but I also to give it a taste to make sure I want to buy my six bottles of Darkness when the day comes (I do).

After finishing the night off with a couple Coffee Benders and a CynicAle, some very nice lady (I believe she said she was married to a Surly employee) gave me a kickass Surly T shirt on her way out of the bar. All in all, it was a good night.

I've been hearing plenty of buzz about the new IPA that Surly was working on lately, the Wet Hop, and I've been very antsy to try it. While imperial stouts like Darkness have been climbing my favorites chart, IPAs are still where my heart belongs. I ran into the brewery one night to buy a sweatshirt and they were in the process of brewing this and the place smelled like heaven.

I heard the first kegs were going to be unveiled at Roat Osha, a Thai restaurant the I've never heard of but it didn't matter, I wanted... nope, I needed to try this beer. So I convinced Allison to go there with me so I could give it a taste.

Turns out, it was damn good. The bar was crowded because of the beer and also the Twins game and I really wanted to try the food so we got a table and ate some amazing food while I sipped my beers. I was impressed at how well this beer went with spicy foods (I ordered mine a 5 out of 5 on the spice scale). Here are my notes:
Brownish red in color, not much head because of the pour. Very hoppy aroma, smelled a lot like tangerine to me. One of the best beers I’ve ever smelled. Flavor was more mild than I expected, sweet and tangy and still very hoppy with a nice lingering bitter finish.

I'm not sure if this makes sense or not, but in my very amateur opinion I usually draw a line between hoppy and bitter. I realize they go hand in hand but to me a beer can be very hoppy without being overly bitter (in either the good way or the bad way) and it can also be bitter without having the hoppy notes that I'm used to looking for and loving. Maybe one day I'll find out of it this is crazy or not but for not it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

That being said, it looks like more bars are popping up with kegs of Wet and I think I'd be doing myself a disservice if I didn't mosey around to those bars and enjoy them while I can. I'll make a toast to those of you who are unfortunate and do not have access to this Surly offering. I'll also think of how lucky I am to be living where I do, I guess part of me must have known deep down that Surly would be opening its doors less than five miles from me when I picked this neighborhood to buy a house back in 2005. Guess I'll have to toast to that as well.

Cheers!

Surlyfest!

I've been looking forward to Surlyfest ever since I heard about it and I wasn't disappointed. Luckily Josh was available to head to the fest with me since everybody else seemed to have a prior engagement.

I kicked off the day with a Coffee Bender and when Josh showed up at my house, we had a Surly CynicAle in my bar before we took off for the brewery. I had only had a sample of this before when I took the tour and wasn't super impressed with it but after hearing good things about it I decided to give it another try and picked up a 4-pack at the Crystal Liquor Barrel when I ordered my keg. I'm not sure if there were too many other beers for it to stand out or just my "well it's no Furious" attitude but after giving it another chance it blew me away. I'm sure part of it is the fact that I've been drinking and loving a lot of wheat beers and saisons over the summer but this is one of the top that I've had. Gave it a 3.9 on Rate Beer and said:
Cloudy yellow color, foamy white head that quickly dissipated. Wheat, yeast aroma with a hint of citrus. Wheat flavor with a slight hoppy note, lingering tangy finish. I enjoyed this much more than I did at the brewery tour. It stands up much better alone than in a lineup.

The day started off with a nice bonus as we found out we got 5 drink tokens instead of the 4 that we expected and got better when we heard Tool playing until the first band got fired up.

The place was surprisingly undercrowded for a sold out event but it might have just seemed that way because I'm used to Bockfest in New Ulm. The food was very reasonably priced and pretty kickass (Josh had his first Chicago dog experience). We got at couple of minutes of chat time with Omar and met head brewer Todd as well.

Ran into Alvey from the Four Firkins and he introduced us to some very cool fellow beer lovers. I found out that it's very easy to have a discussion with random strangers at an event like that because you know that most of them probably love the same stuff that you do.

Kudos to Omar for making the call to make the socially responsible decision and limit the number of beers everyone could have instead of seeing how many he could sell in a four hour time period. I would have loved more tokens but it was nice to not have "those guys" in the crowd that are working on their fifth beer by the time you get in the gate.

I didn't do an official rating on the Surlyfest beer even though I had a couple of them but do not fear, Surlyfest made an appearance at the inaugural meeting of Beer Club (more on that to come). It was a great time and I decided that we're definitely getting a good sized group or even a small army to attend next year. You heard me, plan on it next year.

Catching up with beers from the last week or so

Finally I get a chance to sit down and recap the last 10 days or so. Let's start off with a new source for beer that I discovered at my nephew's birthday party while chatting about beer with my brother-in-law's brother. Princeton's Liquors (http://www.princetonsliquors.com/) in Maple Grove was a very pleasant surprise for me. The Four Firkins and the Liquor Barrel remain my go to places for obvious reasons but these guys had some new stuff that I hadn't seen before and they give you a 10% break on bottles if you buy six at a crack.

I checked it last Monday before the kickoff of the opening double header of Monday Night Football. I decided to rate a few that I had tried before (and one that I hadn't) while cleaning up the bar after Freedom Fest the Saturday before. I started with the...

Surly Hell
As I stated when I first tried it, it reminded me of what I think Heineken (German for a skunk's ass) and Rolling Rock are trying to do. Although I found out at Surlyfest (more on that to come) that if you don't drink Surly plenty cold, that skunky aroma rears its ugly head. I gave it a 3.8 on Rate Beer and said:
16 oz can from Golden Valley Liquor Barrel. Light golden yellow in color, medium foamy white head. Slight yeast aroma and (perhaps due to unconscious suggestion from reading the description) fresh bread as well. Slightly bitter flavor from the hops but smooth and light on the palate. Not usually one of my favorite styles of beers but this is probably the best one that I’ve tried.

Hoegaarden
One of the summer's greatest surprises. I picked this up from the Firkins for the gal after asking what a good next step for a Blue Moon drinker would be and little did I know how much I'd like it myself. Too bad it's made by InBev. Oh well, I think this is still my favorite Belgian that I've tried so far. It got a solid 4.0 on Rate Beer for me and earned the following comments:
Pale yellow pour with thick foamy white head. Fresh, yeasty wheat aroma with some spice coming through. Clean taste with a hint of citrus and the coriander does make an appearance along with other spices. Light mouthfeel with a smooth finish. Great beer.

Point Nude Beach Summer Wheat
This one has been a bit of a Jeckle and Hyde for me. I loved it at the Point tasting at the Four Firkins but the first bottle I had at home didn't seem to have the same flavor. Each one has been a bit different for me but I still can recommend this, especially to someone who likes the lighter side of beer. I gave it a 3.2 on Rate Beer because it did what I expected of it and said:
Yellow pour, slightly cloudy. Aroma is wheat, faint citrus to it. Not a lot of flavor, slight wheat/yeast with a hint of orange. Not overly flavorful but as the description says, great beer to drink while enjoying summer activities as it is quite refreshing.

Founders Breakfast Stout
This is a bottle that I picked up at Casanova the last time I made my Stone/Dogfish Head/New Glarus run. I was saving it until I saw that the Four Firkins got some in and also that Princeton's carried it. A couple neighbors were watching MNF with me and I was exposing them to some new beer and they both gave this a taste when I cracked it and actually really liked it which surprised me because of what I know their tastes normally are. This was so damn drinkable and flavorful and definitely one of my top new beers. I can't wait to get some more of this. It got a 4.4 from me on Rate beer.
Thick black pour with a brown head. Heavy chocolate aroma with a hint of coffee. Smooth, definite chocolate flavor with a fantastic lingering sweet finish.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful for me in regards to new beers even though I really wanted it to be a prolific beer rating week for me. Oh well, a nice treat for me was Wednesday night when I found out that Famous Dave's had Bell's Two Hearted Ale on tap. Why doesn't everybody?

The weekend in review is coming very soon.

A Renaissance Man

Saturday I went to the Renaissance Festival for the first time. It seems like something I should have been going to for years. At least I finally corrected the mistake. It turned out to be a good place for beer as well as there was plenty of it on tap and luckily for me there was some from my hometown of New Ulm. Not only did they have Premium and Premium Light, they had the new Oktoberfest so my choice was easy.

There's always something that makes me smile about having a beer before noon, ten in the morning in this case. I didn't bother to remember enough about it to give it an official rating but I do know that I liked it quite a bit, it especially paired well with a turkey leg.

After getting so many props from the State Fair crowd about my Surly shirt last weekend I thought I'd see how the Renaissance crowd would react. Same thing, different festival. Apparently there is always a handful of Surly fans around and this shirt is like my secret handshake with them.

I also bought a few beer drinking receptacles at the festival as well, starting with a viking horn that performs double duty as a beverage holder and a noise maker. I also bought a nice commemorative mug as something a little bit nicer to drink from. The big purchase however was the leather mug. The price was a little bit sky high and it took me quite awhile to say screw it, I'm splurging. I really like the idea of using it at Bock Fest and any other beer festivals that I go to. It's nice and light and durable and should see hopefully many years of service. Next year I'll bring it to the Renaissance and tell them to fill my barrel with beer.

Skol!

A weekend of supporting my local breweries

Last Friday I swung by Surly Brewing to pick up my tickets for Surlyfest. I'm hoping that Paul is able to go with me but either way, I wanted to make sure I had a couple tickets. I also picked up a Surlyfest Tshirt and a Darkness goblet and chatted with Omar for a few minutes about the Vikes, tailgating and the Surlywagon which will have a presence in Minneapolis this fall at football games.

Had a wedding to go in Bloomington and decided to hit the area early to avoid rush hour traffic and have a beer in the meantime. Since Majors was just a mile or two from the church, it seemed like a good place to go. I saw they had Firebrick from Schell's on tap and had been meaning to try that again for awhile so I ordered. It happened to be happy hour so I got a 2-for-1. Nice. I'm not sure if it's because I'm not too familiar with that style (Vienna-style lager) but I wasn't able to pick a whole lot of flavors out of it. It's a solid beer that I rated a 3.3 but it didn't really stand out in the crowd for me. Of course, in a lineup of macrobrews, I'd order this every time. Here's my RateBeer review:
Tap at Majors. Deep copper color and a faint malty aroma. Medium mouthfeel, with the malt again coming through as the main flavor for me. Decent beer, I'll drink it again.

Saturday I went to the State Fair and of course my mission was to see what this beer on a stick from Summit was all about. So I took off, wearing my black Surly shirt to represent and was surprised by how many comments I got on it ranging from "nice shirt" to have-to-stop-and-give-a-high-five. Even the guy in the Summit booth liked it.

Speaking of Summit, the beer on a stick isn't exactly what you might think. It's a small paddle with holes cut out for you to put three 7oz cups of Summit into, one EPA, one Oktoberfest and one Horizon Red. At $7.50 it's not a bad deal for the State Fair, especially if you haven't had them and want to sample some of each. If you brought your paddle back you could get a "refill" for $6.50. So I did and since they let you call audibles I got one Oktoberfest for Allison and two Horizon Reds for myself because that beer is really growing on me.

Also traded in a 27" TV (the gigantic kind) for two four packs of Surly Coffee Bender. The price for electronics has definitely changed quite a bit in the past 5 years or so.

Went bowling later that day and had a couple Surly Benders on tap for only $3.15 which is pretty much like stealing. Check it out if you can - http://www.newhopebowl.net/ Great pizza, good deals on bowling and did I mention $3.15 glasses of Surly Bender?

Sunday was quite uneventful for beer due to back to back fantasy football drafts followed by volleyball at 8:00 but I had to have some beer or it wouldn't have seemed like a draft. Had a couple Coffee Benders during the first draft and a tall Honeyweiss during the second one.

Last night was pretty much the same story, had dinner downtown and it was accompanied by a couple Surly Furious pints. Looking forward to life slowing down again so I can get caught up with all the good beers I have on deck.

Cheers!