Via Utterly Boring comes this article about Sam Adams' new Chocolate Bock (I'm not linking to the original article on cleveland.com because the site has that dumb "register before accessing" form on it):

Limited-edition specialty product from the 20-year-old Boston Beer Co., arguably the most significant player in the craft-brew movement. A marriage of Samuel Adams beer and Scharffen Berger Chocolate of Berkeley, Calif., this brew has won awards at several international beer festivals. It comes in an attractive 25-ounce bottle with a cast pewter label, making it a great gift for beer fans.

Why hoist one: Yes, it does taste like chocolate, but the initial sweetness gives way to a more complex blend of roasted malts with a hint of coffee and vanilla. Low carbonation. Smooth brew doesn't reveal its 7 percent alcohol level.

It's limited edition, so if you can find one, it'll be about $15 a bottle.

I noticed this article a couple of days ago: "Bottoms up for Bend's microbrew industry," about the state of the microbrew climate here in Bend, Oregon.

When McMenamins' Old St. Francis School opened recently in Bend, microbrew drinkers rejoiced, but some also wondered how five microbrew pubs can survive in a town of about 60,000 people.

Microbrew-industry experts say that no one should fear. Bend's growing craft-beer scene is expected to continue to thrive.

The friendly competition among the microbreweries produces wonderful, widely renowned beer, they say, and each of the breweries has a niche that allows them all to succeed.

"Not every town of 60,000 has five brew pubs, but Bend is not the only one in the world," said Paul Gatza, director of the Association of Brewers, a trade association in Boulder, Colo. "It's not unusual in Oregon to get these clusters."

Nice roundup of our local breweries, and how they interrelate in the area.

A new homebrewing blog to check out: SleezySherm Breweries. Looks pretty good, except that the stylesheet isn't working for me in Firefox, but does in Internet Explorer. I rather like the New York Noble post.

Good Christmas wishes to everyone! I know I haven't posted much here as the year's been winding down, but that should change once we're through the holidays. In the meantime, I'll be offline tomorrow, and hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

This is a fun article: Beer Highlights of 2K4. A lot of it is pretty Boston-centric, but I liked the New Beer Trends section:

* American Double Style - A new genre of beer emerged this year, using the typical "bigger is better" American way of thinking, which actually worked for once.

* Craft Beer in Cans - Craft brewers jumped on the can bandwagon hoping to provide a familiar packaging to potential "better beer" crossover drinkers.

* Drinking Better Beer - More and more people switched to better beer in 2004. Have you? Hooray for beer!

* Oak-Aged Beers - The art of maturing beer in various oak barrels added a new depth to the world of beer and was well received by most real beer lovers.

* Proper Glassware - More bars finally started serving beer in its respective glassware. This not only added to the overall experience for the quality beer drinker but its "eye candy" effect also potentially increased beer sales.

Growler Pack
Hit your local brewpub and pick up a fresh growler (or two) of beer. Most places will also sell branded pint glasses, so grab a pair of those, and then ask the bar for some new coasters to go along with them. While you're at it, why not add a brewpub T-shirt? Then, when everything is ready, arrange your gifts in a metal pail and add some brown packing paper as protective filler. You're done! To achieve optimum freshness, try to purchase the growler(s) within a day or two of giving the gift, and remember to keep the beer refrigerated.

Glassware Set
Every beer lover needs a complete set of glassware in his or her beer arsenal, so stop by your local Crate & Barrel (or a similar shop) and purchase one of each of the following: flute, goblet, mug, pilsner, pint, snifter, tulip, Weizen and an oversized wine glass. Obviously, there are more pieces available, but these are the basics that should allow the gift receiver to properly enjoy a wide range of beer styles.

Beer and Cheese Pack
Pair a selection of beers with some artisan cheeses. Include some quality crackers, condiments and meats, and consider throwing in a suitable glass for the beers (e.g., a generic tulip glass for a Belgian-style beer).

Interesting article in The Anchorage Press here about homebrewers having their recipes brewed by microbreweries.

Converting a homebrew recipe to a beer for commercial production is not a matter of simply changing the proportions of ingredients. Certain things are gained and lost in the translation, and because yeast is perhaps the most important ingredient, it has to be just right.

This article is about competitions in Alaska, but I'm sure there are others around the country. I'll have to check around.

I though I'd write a bit about Samichlaus. Samichlaus is probably the ultimate Christmas beer—and has (I've heard) the highest alcohol content of any beer out there, to boot. At 14 percent alcohol by volume, I'd believe that.

Samichlaus—which is Swiss-German for "Santa Claus"—is a dark lager brewed once a year, on December 6, and then bottled the following year. Yep, that's nearly a full year of aging/lagering, and the result is a vintage batch that bears the bottling year on the label.

Michael Jackson (the Beer Hunter, not the other guy) has a good article about Samichlaus here.

It takes almost a year of slow secondary fermentation to develop the full strength of Samichlaus. I can think of no other beer that has such a long period of cold storage (in German, lagering). Nor could the location of the cellars be more appropriate. The whole of the brewery is set into the foothills of the Alps, where the technique of lagering was born (though that was, it must be conceded, on the more easterly side of the mountains in Bavaria).

They can be hard to come by; I happen to have one bottle (vintage 1996) that I lucked upon from a local wine dealer who was going out of business back in the late '90s. I wish I'd had the foresight to buy more at the time, but oh well.

It's quite good, too. Think barleywine, and then (as Emeril would say), kick it up a notch. From what I remember of the one or two I've had (from the same wine shop way back when), it was better than most barleywines I've tasted—but you'd better have a taste for high-alcohol beers before trying it.

And no, I won't be drinking my bottle anytime soon. Since it's so high in alcohol, aging it will only make it better. I've been told that Samichlaus is even good after aging 25 years; I find that implausible though, as they only started brewing it in 1980.

BeerAdvocate.com gives Samichlaus an overall score of 88, with 96% positive reviews. Good comments all around.

Yes, it's been a long week since I last posted. You can keep up with what's been happening over on my other blog for all the gory details.

This item isn't necessarily about beer, but according to this article on ScientificAmerican.com, archaelogists have uncovered evidence that the Chinese were brewing alcoholic beverages—in this case wine—circa 7,000 BC. This would predate the rise of wine and beer in the Middle East if confirmed. Pretty cool; the wine is said to have been a "mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and a fruit."

The perfect gift this holiday season for the home brewer: a Giant Microbes Beer Yeast plush toy! It looks just like the real thing, and it's only $5.95 to boot. Act now!

Opened up the first bottle of my Pumpkin Ale this evening. (I would have tried it last week, on Thanksgiving, but I was too sick.) It's quite good. It has the hint of pumpkin pie spices in the aroma—not as much as I'd like, but it's noticeable (perhaps next time I'll "dry-spice," or add spices at bottling time).

It's a bit hazy; real pumpkin tends to do that, and I even used Irish Moss in the batch for clarification. I also didn't rack to a secondary, which would have helped in this regard. But no matter. The color is a nice copper, just right for the amber dried malt extract I used. When poured, it presented a nice, creamy head.

Tastes good, too. Rich and malty, and spicy, definitely. The hops are there too, but not as prevalent, which is how I wanted it. Good mouthfeel.

It's a winner! I'm going to enjoy drinking it for the holidays.

Last Wednesday I spent some time with Tyler Reichert, who owns the local homebrew shop, The Home Brewer, and Silver Moon Brewing (see my previous entry here), and got a bit of tour of the new brewery/tasting room/retail store he's opening up pretty soon. It's very impressive though there's still a lot of work to be done.

Tyler first plans to have the homebrew shop moved—the retail portion—into the new space within the next few weeks. The timeframe for the brewery relocating is still up in the air, but probably not too long from what I saw. Most of the equipment is on-site but not set up yet. Interesting story about the new equipment; he bought it from a restaurant in San Francisco that had also been a brewpub, but the new owners weren't interested in brewing beer. The stuff had only been used maybe four years and is still nearly good as new—Tyler got a great deal on it.

And it's going to be quite a big step up, volume-wise, in brewing. Right now (I believe) he just has a one-barrel system that outputs 200 barrels a year. The new brewery increases that nearly eight-fold. Impressive.

All in all, it's definitely going to give Silver Moon Brewing much more of a presence in the local brewery scene, and I hope he gives the other guys a run for their money.