Well, for the final day on the Advent Calendar, it's Samichlaus, of course! "Samichlaus" means Santa Claus, so I can't think of a better beer for our final day and for Christmas Eve. I've written about it before, so it's no surprise I think highly of this beer. In general, though, you'll either love it or hate it.

When I wrote about this last year, the BeerAdvocate score was 88; now it's dropped a point to 87, though it has a 94% approval rating.

It's been fun writing the Beer Advent Calendar this month, I hope everyone enjoyed it. If I don't get back on tomorrow for a bit, have a Merry Christmas!

I picked today's beer simply because I liked the name: Gritty McDuff's Christmas Ale. I don't really know much else about it, but the website says:

Our Christmas Ale is a robust E.S.B. (Extra Special Bitter) full of holiday cheer. Christmas Ale has a lovely, dark red/amber color and a rich, full-bodied, malty taste with a slightly roasted undertone.... Gritty's Christmas Ale has no additives, fruits or spices. It's just a good honest ale, perfect for the season.

On BeerAdvocate it's racked up a decent 86, with 95% approval. (Only three of those reviews are from this year, however.)

Sounds like a decent beer. And the name "Gritty McDuff" just makes me smile. :)

Today's beer is Holiday Spice Lager from Lakefront Brewery in Wisconsin. You don't see too many lagers as holiday beers (or at least, I haven't come across many while doing this), especially one as potent as this: brewed with honey, oranges and spices, it weighs in at an astounding 9.5% alcohol by volume! The website says:

This beer uses two pounds of honey per pound of malt in its brew, making it an exceptional fortified holiday specialty beer which will keep for years. The spices and hops balance the sweetness of the honey and malt to give this lightly hopped beer its perfect flavor.

Wow. That's a serious beer. BeerAdvocate scores it 88, with 97% approval. Most of the reviews I looked at agree that this beer is heavy on the spices, though not in a detrimental way, and the high alcohol content is well-hidden. I guess that means you'd better watch out when drinking this if you don't already know how strong it is. :)

Today's nod goes to Old Jubilation Ale from Avery Brewing Company in Colorado. It's a big beer; at 8% alcohol by volume, the site says it's "cellarable" for two years. My kind of beer!

Sounds like a winner, too: the website describes "a hint of hazelnuts, and a finish reminiscent of mocha and toffee." And on BeerAdvocate, where it scores 87 with 99% approval, a number of reviews mention toffee, hazelnuts, coffee, sweet fruits, and chocolate.

That's a nice thing about beers like this, and the holiday beers in general: complexity. These beers are meant to be savored and enjoyed, not guzzled down like their lighter brethren.

Only three more days left!

Sorry for the late post! Since it's late, it'll be a shorter one, too.

Today I picked Boulevard Nutcracker Ale from Boulevard Brewing Company in Kansas City, Missouri. It looks to be a medium-amber winter warmer, at 6.1% alcohol. Their website says it's a "classic winter ale, deep amber in color, with hints of molasses."

BeerAdvocate rates it at a solid 85 (out of 100), with 100% approval. Sounds good to me! (Anyone want to send me some?)

I picked today's beer based on a glowing review by Alan of A Good Beer Blog: La Choulette De Noël. However, this won't be a beer for the faint of heart, I think; Alan writes:

Dark copper ale under an off-white creamy rich head. The aroma is horse blanket which sat in rotting potato peels for a week. Sound disgusting? It is not but that is French country ale - beer for people who eat blue cheese and the flesh of horses. A touch of fig and date below and a bit of nut, too. Hazelnut cracked shell - dry and dusty within the richness.

And over on BeerAdvocate, this review note caught my eye:

The idea here seems to be "transparency" — what some may describe as "thinness." The point is to capture natural, ordained flavor in the most discreetly textured medium possible. On that measure, this is a stunning success.

It scores 85 over there, with 96% thumbs-up.

After reading the reviews, I'm coveting this beer. It would be, as Alan says, "the prize."

Back to America again with today's beer, Anderson Valley's Winter Solstice Seasonal Ale. I've enjoyed Anderson Valley's beer in the past (they brew a good amber), but haven't had this one. They say:

Luscious, creamy, smooth, and warming, this medium bodied ale is brewed with Caramel and crystal malts to give it just a hint of sweetness, then paired with our private blend of holiday spice.

It racks up a score of 85 on BeerAdvocate, 95% approval. It sits at a hefty 6.9% alcohol.

Anderson Valley's website indicates that Winter Solstice is "going fast," so you'd probably better grab a bottle if you see it. Unless you think that's just marketing hype... but you could grab a bottle anyway. :)

I didn't realize until today that I hadn't included any German beers on the Beer Advent Calendar... so I'll rectify that now. Mahr's Christmas Bock is today's selection.

Based on the BeerAdvocate profile (the website is all German, with no English that I can find), this is a malty maibock style weighing in at 6.5% alcohol by volume. It's not a typical holiday beer; one review notes:

You have to love the Germans. While everyone else is putting out holiday ales that are either spiced or hopped to the heavens, the Deutschland takes this time of year to put out a malt bomb.

And another says,

I don't know what makes this a 'Christmas' bock, as nothing in this beer really stands out. But taken all together - it is mighty fine.

It scores a respectable 84 with 96% approval.

Today we have Santa's Private Reserve from the incomparable Rogue Brewery here in Oregon. This beer is essentially a double-hopped St. Rogue Red, including "a mystery hop called Rudolph". But don't let that fool you; if you find this beer, you'll be in for a treat.

It scores 87 on BeerAdvocate, with 99% approval. It also has more positive and 4+ (out of 5) scores on the first page of reviews than any other beer I've looked up so far, I think. The same holds true on the second and third pages, too... though frankly, that's what I would expect from a Rogue Ale.

...Yes, in my opinion they're that good. I do wish they would brew more seasonals, though. Perhaps next year...

This beer clocks in at 6% alcohol—not huge, but consider that you'll likely find this in 22-ounce bottles... meaning, you'll feel the kick when you're done with one!

Kind of a provocative title... but that's what Men's Journal has published: Best Beers in the World. It's a bold list; I don't know about their categorization (Lagers & Pilsners, Ales & Bitters, Belgian Beers, Dark Beers and Summer Beers)—I'd be more inclined to rate based on actual style (best porters, IPAs, lambics, etc.)—but they seem to have a decent spread of beers.

Including the obvious picks, like Guinness Stout and Celebrator Doppelbock.

Via Slashfood.

We're over halfway to Christmas and through the Beer Advent Calendar... today I picked Samuel Adams Old Fezziwig Ale. It's not a beer you find on its own anymore, but in Sam Adams' Winter Classics 12-packs. According to the web site, this is the "Christmas cookie of beer," brewed with cinnamon, ginger and orange peel and weighs in at 5.9% alcohol.

On BeerAdvocate it scores 85, with 97% approval. A lot of the reviews talk about how sweet the beer is, along with the strong spice characteristics imparted by the cinnamon and orange peel, in particular.

Sam Adams offers several holiday beers, not to mention their "extreme" beers... selecting just one was tricky—mostly since I haven't tried their holiday offerings! But the Holiday Porter looked good, too... who knows, maybe that'll show up on this list before it's over.

Ahh, Full Sail Brewing—one of the flagship breweries of Oregon. And their Wassail is a nice festive selection for today. Wassail is brewed "with four different malts and a blend of imported hops," and has 6.5% alcohol by volume.

BeerAdvocate: 86 (out of 100) with 96% thumbs-up. In the interest of fairness, though, I'll point out that on the first page of reviews, there is the widest disparity between two reviewers that I've seen: one gives a score of 1.65 (out of 5), the other 4.5. The low review says:

I can't believe I'm drinking the same beer as other people, or the same beer as I've had in years past, for that matter. This beer is, in a word, lame. And sad. And pretty close to tasteless.

Whereas the high-end review says, "The taste is pure heaven...malt, cinnamon, more malt, chocolate. Lots of volume, and nothing left behind. The flavor just goes on and on.... I absolutely love this beer. Superb!"

Go figure. I'll say this though: I've never been disappointed with this beer. It's definitely worth it if you can find it.

Via Hail the Ale! comes this fun link: Beer in 78 languages. Some artificial languages, too.

Arabic — beereh (biræ)
Chinese (Mandarin) — pi jiu
Esperanto — biero
Hawaiian — pia
Japanese — biiru
Russian — pivo

"Pivo" appears not only in Russian, but in Azerbaijani, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian as well. I kind of like it.

Bonus: "awje" in Klingon (literally "root beer"... I couldn't find just "beer").

Today I selected the Winter Ale from the always-reliable Alaskan Brewing Company. This beer has the distinguishing quality of being brewed with spruce tips—yes, spruce tips from trees. Why?

From the seafaring adventurers of the 1700's to the homebrewers of today, adding spruce tips to beer has a rich history in Southeast Alaska. The tender new growth of Sitka spruce tips lends a delicious, yet subtly sweet floral aroma to tea, jelly and now Alaskan Winter Ale.

Spruce beers are one of those rare styles that originated in Colonial North America (U.S. and Canada); spruce was often used in place of hops (when hops were lacking) and as a flavoring agent. I've heard that a flavor characteristic of a spruce beer is Pepsi-like, though I can't vouch for that.

There's a good overall score of 85 on BeerAdvocate, with 95% thumbs-up, though there are several unfavorable reviews.

The Alaskan web site also offers food recommendations (and you know I like those):

Serve with roast goose, turkey, ham or lamb. A nice complement to holiday breads pound cake, or apple pie.

Today's pick is from Belgium: Fantôme Spéciale De Noël. This monster has 10% alcohol by volume, and this strength is not for the faint of heart—if you don't like barleywines, it's probable that you won't like this, either.

Part of the reason I picked it is because I rather liked the name; literally translated (ignoring the obvious "special" part), it becomes "Ghost of Christmas" or "Christmas Ghost." I like the Dickensian Christmas Carol sound of that, although the label is a little more cartoony than the "ghost of Christmas future" image floating around in my head.

BeerAdvocate gives it a score of 88, with a solid 99% approval rating. From reading the reviews I think you can expect an atypically-strong Belgian beer through-and-through. Here's a sample:

The flavor was smooth as silk with a nice caramel maltiness coupled with dark fruit flavors of raisins, figs, prunes and plums. The bittering from the hops balanced the flavors and kept the malt charge in check. The flavor was earthy and spicy and well achieved. The complexity was very, very nice and those same bready aromas came forth in the flavor.

Sounds excellent.

Strange, but true: Tomato-based beer now on shelves. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Yearlong efforts by a Niigata brewery and a Tokyo izakaya pub owner have finally borne fruit: Their tomato-based, low-malt beer is now on the shelves.

Called Tomato Bibere, the reddish brew has a characteristic taste, combining the sweet flavor of a tomato with the bitter taste of hops. One tomato is used in the production of each 330-milliliter bottle.

I've heard—back in the day—of mixing Molson Ice with tomato juice (or V8), making a passable drink... mostly this was stuff I'd heard of in college. But it's hard to imagine the entire beer brewed from tomato. I'd think one of the really big problems is overcoming the acidity of tomatoes.

Any beer drinkers in Japan want to try this and write up a review?

What, you think I'd let Seriously Bad Elf get by without being selected after I'd written about it? This beer's a whopping 9% alcohol by volume, a "very English interpretation of a Belgian Tripel" according to the link.

I can't vouch for it, though—but I do like the bottle :). BeerAdvocate gives it a decent score of 85, but the approval rating is 87%—the lowest approval of the beers I've selected so far. So, your mileage may vary.

I picked up a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale today and realized it would be an ideal pick for today's beer. Sierra Nevada is one of America's oldest and best craft breweries, and their beers prove it. Celebration Ale scores an outstanding 90 (out of a hundred) on BeerAdvocate with 99% approval.

I always like it when the website offers suggested food pairings; Sierra Nevada's is:

With an ale as big as Celebration, you need a dish assertive enough to hold its own. Rich meats such as prime rib, lamb, or wild fowl underscore Celebration’s huge aroma, making a wonderful holiday meal. Intense, earthy pastas also work well—try goat cheese ravioli, a rich fettuccine, or gnocchi with Gorgonzola cheese sauce.

I haven't sampled any of the six-pack I bought today, but now I'm looking forward to it tomorrow!

Today I've picked New Belgium Brewing's Frambozen. It's a tasty raspberry brown ale, with respectable strength (7% ABV) and delightful fruit flavor. It makes for a great holiday brew for people who don't like overly heavy, dark, or strong beers.

About this year's vintage, New Belgium's site says:

Brewer Bill Hepp traveled to Oregon this year to oversee the selection and shipment process. He describes the first moment he experienced this year’s harvest.

“The room was redolent with the thick, summery aroma of fresh, red raspberries,” Bill recalls. “I opened the drum, untied the plastic liner, and scooped out a handful. Putting a few in my mouth, I could tell immediately that this was going to be an excellent year for Frambozen.”

An exceptionally warm growing season made for sweet fruits with a pleasantly tart finish.

I guess I'd better pick some up...

BeerAdvocate gives it a score of 85, with 92% approval. Some of the reviews mention a chocolate tone to the beer, which I don't remember noticing before, so perhaps it's particular to this year's batch...?

Today's beer is not only a seasonal, it's also the first 9% alcohol-by-volume beer brewed in North Carolina since the state raised it's alcohol limit from 6% this year: Weeping Radish Brewery's Christmas Doppelbock.

The BeerAdvocate reviews don't really apply here, as they were for the previously 5.8% alcohol Doppelbock... but of that, it scored a commendable 84.

You may not find this beer outside of the Eastern Seaboard, but you can order it online: 12 12-ounce bottles for $34.99, or $36.99 if you're west of the Mississippi River, with $7.95 shipping. However, even though their website says they use SSL encryption for the order form, I've just tested that out and the order form is not on a secure page. I've emailed them about this, but for now, if you try to submit your credit card, you'll be doing so at your own risk.

Today I'm coming back closer to home and selecting BridgePort's Ebenezer Ale. It's a rich, strong, medium-hoppy beer. It's been awhile since I've had this, but from what I remember it was a pleasantly strong winter warmer. Though reading some of the reviews on BeerAdvocate makes me think I missed something:

Cinnamon potpourri aromas. Gaudy Christmas "craft store" fragrance with too many scented candles and altogether too many cinnamon knick-knacks. Red grapes and a bit of a vinous tone appears.

Flavors of cinnamon-dusted cherries. Rich moist holiday spice cake. A flurry of rugged alcohol burn. Maltiness of caramel and toffee. A modest dusting of cocoa powder. Dry hoppiness. Slight fruitiness in the aftertaste.

Others similar to that make me think "fruitcake." But it did well overall: 84 out of 100 and 94% thumbs-up. Pick up a sixpack and try it out; hopefully you won't be saying "humbug" :).

Today we travel to France for Brasserie Duyck's Bière De Noël, a Saison-style ale that is, according to their website, "Darker than the traditional amber beer, its torrefied undertones are reminiscent of flowers and caramel."

The site also notes:

Produced with more malt than Jenlain Ambrée (3 different types of malt made from French grown barley and 3 varieties of the most aromatic hops from Alsace), this top fermented, unpasteurized beer, best served at between 6 and 8°C, has a rich amber glow, a denser head and stronger alcohol content (6.8% alcohol by volume).

Sounds good to me. Though I doubt I'll be able to find any locally, I'll keep an eye out.

It has a strong showing on BeerAdvocate, with 87 out of a hundred. And 100% thumbs-up from the reviewers. Amusingly, the reviewer who gave it the lowest score (3.4 out of 5) wrote, "Not bad for a French supermarket beer."

Today's pick is Sly Fox Christmas Ale. I don't really know anything about the beer, or the brewery, but I'll trust BeerAdvocate on this one: a score of 87 with a 100% reviewer approval rating. The Sly Fox site gives this description:

A malty, full-bodied red ale made with traditional mulling spices: Ginger, Clove, All Spice, Cinammon & Nutmeg. If this one doesn't get you into the Christmas spirit, you truly are a Scrooge.

The BeerAdvocate reviews all indicate the beer was served on-tap, though the Sly Fox website says it's currently not on tap, with the line "6.5% ABV bottled, 5.5% ABV draft"—so it may be offered in a bottle, but if not, you'll have to be in Pennsylvania to try it when it's available.

Today I chose Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale for Day 4. This is a nice, understated beer—I didn't notice the spiceness that's prevalent with other holiday beers. Clear, sweet and hoppy, it packs a respectable (though not excessively high) alcohol (by volume) of 6%. Their website gives serving suggestions:

Roast goose, smoked turkey with oyster dressing, rack of lamb, candied yams, Smithfield hams, fresh pears and apples, Christmas cake. Serve in crystal tumblers or traditional Yorkshire nonik pint glasses.

Sounds like quite the Christmas meal! This is definitely a worthwhile beer to drink while the snow is falling.

It scored 83 out of a hundred on BeerAdvocate, with 92% of reviewers giving it a thumbs-up. The only thing I'd watch out for is the clear bottle—stored improperly, beer in clear bottles can skunk quickly. (Some of the reviews on BeerAdvocate mentioned skunkiness and the clear glass, which prompted me to mention it.) So this gives you an excuse to buy a bunch at a time—to rescue them from the market and store them properly in your pantry :).

Today's pick is Goose Island Christmas Ale. At 5.6% alcohol by volume, it's a little weaker than one would expect from a winter warmer/holiday ale, but don't let that fool you. From their website:

Every year to celebrate the holiday season, we brew up our Christmas Ale, and with each year we change the recipe slightly so that you have something special and new to look forward to. Traditionally, our Christmas Ale is a complex, strong, brown ale that develops well in the bottle for up to five years.

I've been to Goose Island once, many years ago, and I remember quite liking the beers they brewed (I got a sampler). This beer looks like it would be no exception, and the BeerAdvocate reviews agree. They scored it 86, with 99% approval. They generally note a sweet and spicy profile, noticeably hoppy.

Yes, I already wrote about this back in October, but today's beer is Deschutes Brewery's Jubelale. Each year Deschutes selects a new artist and theme for the label, and locals always look forward to when this seasonal is released.

Strong, malty, caramel-y, roasty, every year Deschutes hits a home run with this beer. The BeerAdvocate folks agree, with a score of 88 (out of 100) and a 99% approval rating.

If you can find this beer, buy it. Buy a sixpack. And since each year's label is commissioned from a local artist, keep a bottle (empty or full) around each year to compare the various artwork. (Alternatively, check out this site which has the Jubelale labels going back to 1998.)

I thought it'd be neat to kick off December by doing a "Beer Advent Calendar" here, featuring a different Christmas beer each day up to Christmas. So, the first beer is Anchor Christmas Ale.

Each year the recipe Anchor uses to brew this beer is different, as is the label. The website says:

Each year our Christmas Ale gets a unique label and a unique recipe for the Ale itself. Although our recipes must remain a secret, many enthusiasts save a few bottles from year to year—stored in a cool dark place—to taste later and compare with other vintages. Properly refrigerated, the beer remains intriguing and drinkable for years, with different nuances slowly emerging as the flavor mellows slightly.

Anchor has been brewing this seasonal since 1975. Expect a spicy, malty, strong-ish winter warmer.

On BeerAdvocate it racked up a total score of 86 (out of 100), with a solid 94% approval. A good number of the comments mention an overall gingerbread character. If you can find this beer, buy several—one to drink, the rest to save and age for later Christmases. (If you do plan to save them, store them in a cool, dark place.)

In keeping with my apparent trend in pointing to historical beer items, I thought this anecdotal bit of history about the Fesenmeier Brewing Comany was interesting. (Though it died as a result of Prohibition.)

Sons of the German Fesenmeier family, which had started a brewing beer in the Cumberland, Md., area shortly after the Civil War, came here in 1899 and bought the 6-year-old American Brewing Co.

The new owners overcame all sorts of obstacles to sell their product, including unpaved streets and swamps that stood between the brewery in Central City — later West Huntington — and its retail markets in Huntington, a devastating fire in 1905 and the 1913 flood. But Prohibition was the last straw, and longtime employees were laid off and scattered in all directions.

Interesting article: Ancient Egyptian Alcohol, with a large section on the beer of Ancient Egypt.

Beer was depicted on the walls of the tombs, as were scenes of the ancient Egyptian brewery. It was probably very similar to the way beer is still produced in Sudan today. Traditionally, beer was regarded as a female activity as it was an off-shoot of bread making - the basis of the beer were loaves of specially made bread.

Most likely, the beer was not very intoxicating, nutritious, sweet, without bubbles, and thick (the beer had to be strained with wooden syphons, used as a straw, because it was filled with impurities). Though the later Greek accounts suggest that the beer, instead, was as intoxicating as the strongest wine, and it is clear that the worshipers of Bast, Sekhmet and Hathor got drunk on beer as part of their worship of these goddesses, because of their aspect of the Eye of Ra. Tenenit was another ancient Egyptian goddess of beer.

Via On Tap.

A little post-holiday-yet-Thanksgiving-related beer history: American History Shaped by Colonial Beer Run. The Pilgrims landed where they did (Plymouth Rock), which by the whims of history gave us the tradition and holiday of Thanksgiving, because they needed beer.

Slashfood beat me to the punch and points to a BeerAdvocate article on Thanksgiving beer pairings.

Hors d'oeuvre Hour
Kick things up a notch with a moderate level of hops. The hoppy characters in Pale Ales will pair nicely with salads, a slew of cheese varieties, fruits, and many hors d'oeuvres, without overwhelming any flavors. But don't go too bitter.

* Anchor Liberty Ale
* Harpoon IPA
* Smuttynose's Shoal's Pale Ale
* Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Dinner
Eating poultry, gravy, stuffing, etc? You could kick the day up a notch by pairing your meal with some strong Belgian-style ales. Their higher alcohol percentages cut through fats and starches, provide an edge of sweetness, and boast very diverse and complex flavors that lend themselves very well to this pairing.

* Allagash Grand Cru
* Avery's Salvation
* North Coast's Pranqster
* Ommegang's Rare Vos

Yes, I know I'm too little, too late for the big day, but maybe this could apply to leftovers this weekend. :)

Pfiff! has a fun post on one of the strongest of beers, Samichlaus.

Unlike most beers that strive for this level of strength, Hürlimann's crown jewel is not highly hopped, resulting in a brew that (when drank young) is seriously sweet, rich, and chewy, to the point where you wouldn't be surprised to see it poured over an ice cream sundae.

That reminds me, I still have a bottle of Samichlaus in the pantry...

This is very cool: this site is being used as a news source for Topix.net, a news aggregator site that pulls news from sources all over the web—and just added blogs recently as a source. I saw my Stone Age Beer article show up on the Topix.net Beer News page (screen grabbed below).

I don't know why, but this seems to add a feeling of legitimacy to this whole blogging thing. :)

The last several posts have taken an historical theme, so I thought I'd throw in another: Binge-drinking an age-old problem (via A Good Beer Blog).

Experts have uncovered evidence that 12th century Londoners drank ale by the gallon, starting at breakfast time, due to poor quality drinking water....

Looking back only 700 years, London had over 1,300 alehouses - one for every 50 people living in the city.

John Clark, curator of the Medieval London gallery, said: "Most people, including children, drank ale made from malted barley without hops.

"The even drank ale for breakfast, and got through up to a gallon, or four-and-a-half litres, a day each.

"At a price of a penny per gallon, only the poorest had to make do with water." However, he pointed out that this ale was much weaker than the beers people drink today.

By the gallon? Wow... considering you only need a half gallon or so of water a day, the "binge drinking" label isn't far off.

Not a whole lot more to say about the article; I just thought it was an interesting snapshot of beer in the life of medieval England.

November's issue of Discover Magazine has an article titled "Stone Age Beer" (unfortunately, the full article is only available to subscribers) about Dogfish Head Brewery's attempt at brewing a 9,000 year-old beer from China. (Other articles are here and here.) It's a pretty interesting story, beer brewed with rice, grapes, hawthorn berries, honey, and such, emulating as closely as possible the conditions they guess the beer was brewed under. But I found myself wondering about how authentic such a beer could be, especially when (by federal law) they were required to use 25% barley malt, so I was delighted when the author chronicled his own experience attempting to brew the beer in a more authentic fashion.

McGovern, Calagione, and Gerhart seemed satisified with the day's brew. I was not... Château Jiahu, it seemd to me, was still too burdened by the present....

Two technological hurdles stood between me and quality. One was starch conversion; starches are long chains of sugars and can't be consumed by humans until first broken down. The second challenge was attracting enough wild yeast to ferment those sugars quickly, before marauding hordes of bacteria and fungi turned the brew into a frightful and possibly hazardous libation....

I was down to my last option: chewing the grain and spitting it out. Horrifying, perhaps, to our fussy 21st-century sensibilities, this Neolithic technology is still very much alive today. In Africa they do it with manioc roots; in the South Pacific they do it with kava. The idea is simple: Digestion begins in the mouth. Saliva contains, among other things, ptyalin, a form of amylase. By chewing the grain, I myself would initiate the starch conversion.

So, to remain authentic, he chewed the rice to produce the mash, added raw honey and crushed grapes (for the wild yeast), and added hawthorn berries. Some of you are cringing, no doubt, and his first attempt tanked, but the second was drinkable... or at least drinkable enough.

Lacking an oenophile's nomenclature and nuance, I can only describe it as a sort of Flintstones wine cooler: sweet and sour, with a honey funk and blurry sight lines. With a second glass I proved to myself that it was drinkable and caught enough of a buzz to trip over the border in my garden.

In the end, I was more entertained by the homebrewing portion of the article than the rest. Someday I might try brewing an historical beer like this... without the chewing, though. I'm not that authentic.

One of the things on my list to do someday with homebrew is kegging. Several years ago, I picked up a cornelius keg, CO₂ tank and the necessary hoses and regulator from a garage sale, and as near as I can tell it's all in usable condition. I'd simply have to clean the equipment and recharge the CO₂ tank, and then learn how to use it all, of course.

There's a decent primer here: Introduction to the Cornelius Keg System. I need to remember this: "Bleach should never be used to clean stainless steel because it is corrosive and will cause it to rust with continual use." Another good page is here.

Kegging sure would make things simpler, as far as bottling is concerned. The problem is, I only have the one setup—I'm not brewing enough beer these days to make a difference, but it would be nice to have several kegs on-hand to have a "rotating" tap. Unfortunately, these setups can get rather spendy. This page, for instance, offers a new complete keg setup for $280. Used kegs by themselves generally look to run in the $30+ range.

Whew... sometimes this ain't a cheap hobby.

Picked this article up off the wire: Brewery offers glimpse at pre-Columbian civilizations along Andes. Pretty interesting stuff, concerning an early American brewery circa 600 BC.

The brewery serviced the earliest known diplomatic embassy in the Americas, a palace complex atop a steep-sided mesa in southern Peru built by the Wari empire around 600 B.C. When the empire collapsed 400 years later, residents of the mountaintop abandoned the place - but not before holding a final, blowout feast and burning down the brewery, smashing ceremonial cups in the flames....

The beer was fermented from corn mash - making a potent concoction called chicha that is still brewed in the Andes today - and spiced with peppercorn tree berries.

"This was no mini-brewery operation," said Williams. "It was the biggest early brewery anyone has so far seen. The brewing facility had three main areas: a grinding room for corn, a boiling room with at least 20 huge vats that allowed them to brew 1,000 to 2,000 liters of beer at a time and a storage area with huge, 4-foot-high clay storage vessels."

That meant every five or six days the brewery could turn out at least 500 gallons.

Now that would be an interesting beer to try to brew...

Follow-up from my earlier post about Bad Elf Beer: the state of Connecticut approved the Bad Elf.

The department determined that although state regulations bar alcohol advertising with images that might entice kids, including images associated with Santa Claus, the regulations do not apply to beer labels....

At a compliance hearing before a state liquor commissioner last month, a lawyer for the distributor argued the state would be violating the distributor's free speech rights by banning the labels. Protecting Santa Claus also violates the Constitution's establishment clause, which prohibits government endorsement or disapproval of religion, she argued.

The state Department of Consumer Protection ordered a formal hearing for Nov. 22 before the state Liquor Control Commission.

The hearing was canceled on Tuesday and a ruling was issued in favor of Shelton Brothers.

Interesting how they turned it into a Constitutional issue on the separation of church and state... I didn't know Santa Claus was that overt a religious force. That would have set some interesting precedents had it gone to court.

But after all that, the best part is the punchline: "Shelton said he is not sure when Seriously Bad Elf might make it to Connecticut store shelves."

Sorry I hadn't posted much for the first week of this month—my in-laws were in town and we were celebrating a birthday, so we had a busy week in the real world. Anyway, I still have a bunch of pumpkin in the freezer that I'm going to brew with, and since I mentioned it the other day, I haven't been able to stop thinking about using cranberries in one of the batches of pumpkin ale I'm going to make.

The plan would be to add 5 to 10 pounds of cranberries to the secondary, rather than at the end of the boil. Why? Well, if I added during the boil, there's a good chance the heat would set the pectin in the fruit and create a haze in the beer. And if I added during primary fermentation, the vigorous fermentation process would scrub away a lot of the character and aroma of the fruit.

Of course, I'd have to find fresh cranberries. Or frozen, I suppose, but fresh sounds so much more appealing. I haven't really decided if I'd make this an "Imperial" beer, though... do I really need to get that carried away?

I've got enough pumpkin this year for two nice batches of my pumpkin ale. I'm thinking I'll make my regular recipe for the first batch, and then maybe experiment with an Imperial Pumpkin style recipe for a Christmas/winter ale. Or maybe start with the heftier beer since it'll take longer to mature.

Of course, the "Imperial" concept is something I've talked about before; I suppose it was just a matter of time before someone (Weyerbacher Brewing, in this case) came up with a pumpkin version. 8% ABV, not bad.

Maybe I'll have to take it up a notch and add cranberries or something to my version...

Well, it's pretty debatable (to me, at least) whether this "fermented coffee beverage" can be truly called beer, but that's apparently how it's being marketed. Or something. New Scientist has the article.

Nestec, part of the Nestlé empire in Switzerland, has filed patents in every major market round the world on a "fermented coffee beverage" that pours and foams like beer, but smells of strong coffee and packs a concentrated caffeine kick.

The beverage is made in a similar way to beer, but fine-tuned temperature control stops the formation of ethyl alcohol. So the new drink could go down well with people who want a long tall pick-me-up while driving.

I just don't see the point. Wouldn't you just drink coffee directly? Or better yet... a coffee-flavored beer, with alcohol and everything?

Slashfood also has a post about it.

The state of Connecticut is trying to ban Seriously Bad Elf beer because—get this—they think the label might entice children to drink the beer. I kid you not: State wants to ban beer import because of elf on label:

The state believes it would be really awful for kids to see the label on the British import Seriously Bad Elf.

It shows a mean-looking elf with a slingshot firing Christmas ornaments at Santa's sleigh as it flies overhead.

State liquor regulations bar alcohol advertising with images that might appeal to children. The regulations specifically mention Santa....

Dan Shelton cried foul. After all, his company had no such problems when it sold Bad Elf and Very Bad Elf in previous years. It sells the beer in 30 other states and none have complained.

"We even had a beer called Santa's Butt last year," Shelton said. "They didn't notice Santa's Butt, but they notice this one. How can you miss that big red thing? Minors are not going to be looking to buy beer because Santa Claus is on the label."

That's a bit much... considering you can barely see Santa on the label at all. Pretty weak, Connecticut.

Via A Good Beer Blog, and Slashfood.

Well, it does, but only a little bit. It's really the chemical xanthohumol, found in trace amounts in hops, that appears to fight cancer. Here's the full story from KATU News.

"Xanthohumol is one of the more significant compounds for cancer chemoprevention that we have studied," said Fred Stevens, a researcher with OSU's Linus Pauling Institute and an assistant professor of medicinal chemistry in the College of Pharmacy. "The published literature and research on its properties are just exploding at this point, and there's a great deal of interest."

Quite a bit is now known about the biological mechanism of action of this compound and the ways it may help prevent cancer or have other metabolic value. But even before most of those studies have been completed, efforts are under way to isolate and market it as a food supplement. A "health beer" with enhanced levels of the compound is already being developed....

It's possible, scientists say, that hops might be produced or genetically engineered to have higher levels of xanthohumol, specifically to take advantage of its anti-cancer properties. Some beers already have higher levels of these compounds than others. The lager and pilsner beers commonly sold in domestic U.S. brews have fairly low levels of these compounds, but some porter, stout and ale brews have much higher levels.

However, don't expect to start drinking a lot of beer to prevent cancer: according to this, you'd have to drink 120 gallons of beer a day to get any benefit.

But I'm sure a beer a day wouldn't hurt...

Halloween is nearly upon us, and I've been thinking about appropriate beers for the season. This is becoming something of a series, since I've also written about Valentine's Day beers and St. Patrick's Day, and I'll probably follow up with other major holidays.

Anyway, the first beer the comes to mind as the perfect Halloween beer is Rogue's Dead Guy Ale. It was originally created to celebrate the Mayan Day of the Dead on November 1, so the time of year for it is spot-on. Plus, it's really fine beer. I'm thinking I'll take a six-pack to a Halloween party we're invited to Saturday night.

Next, I'm thinking maybe Maudite. I've never tried it, but I just like the bottle and a stronger ale seems appropriate.

Deschutes Brewery usually brews a Halloween seasonal called Old Sam Hain, but it's only ever available on tap and I've only had it once (I always miss it).

In general, any malty, stronger, hoppy ale would be appropriate, I think. Especially if it's very orange (or amber-orange)... maybe you could do a black and tan with an orange and black (stout) beer—very Halloween! But definitely look for something with a bite to it...

Five years ago Michael Jackson wrote a similar article: Some beers for Halloween. Many more suggestions to be found there.

We made it back from Florida over the weekend, missed hurricane Wilma by two days and otherwise had an uneventful time. Didn't get to sample any local beer or anything, I'm sorry to say. Even worse, I could have had a chance to meet Chris of Hail the Ale!, but since I had no internet connection I missed the boat on that one.

Well, maybe next time...

Ah, we're quite the travelers this year: tomorrow we're flying out to Florida for a week. We'll be visiting my wife's grandparents near Fort Lauderdale and yes, taking some time to drive up to Orlando for Disney World.

It probably goes without saying that I won't be online much, or at all. We're taking the laptop, but time and connectivity may not permit much. I'm not too devastated by this.

And from a beer standpoint, I'm not too hopeful anyway; there's not many breweries listed online, and I kind of doubt we'll have the time to check any out. If we do, though, I'll write about them if I get the chance.

I picked up a 22-ounce bottle of Deschutes Brewery's Hop Trip this evening to try it out (I can't believe I hadn't blogged about this yet). It's one of the brewery's limited edition "Bond Street Brown" series, and it's notable because it's brewed with fresh picked hops. Lots of them.

It was quite good, and strong on the hops. They're right there, up front, and stay with you throughout. Not only is it one of the hoppiest beers I've had, but you can really tell that the hops were brewed fresh—you can taste the green, resiny, grassy character, and you know what? It's really good and refreshing.

The beer itself is a fairly standard, malty pale ale. It would hold up just fine on its own, I think, but who cares? The hops really make this beer.

I don't know if it's available anywhere else, though, you might only find it in Central Oregon. I'm thinking I should stock up before it's gone.

The Pacific Northwest Cheese Project blog has a mouth-watering post on several regional beer cheeses: Rogue Creamery Soba Cheddar (made with Rogue Ales' Morimoto Soba Ale) and Windsong Farm's Hefeweizen Cheddar and Double Trouble IPA Cheddar (made with beer from The Great Bear Brewing Company).

I'm going to have to keep my eye out for beer cheeses now, these definitely sound good to me. Barring that, I'll have to think about doing some cheese tastings paired with beer... I'm thinking a good strong, dark, perhaps even smoked selection of ales would be good accompaniments...

Ahh, the 2005 Deschutes Brewing Jubelale is out! The theme this year is "an après ski party after a day of skiing on Mt. Bachelor," with a definite vintage look. Here's this year's artist:

Andrew Sewall, a graphic artist from Pullman, WA drew inspiration from his youth spent in the Sun Valley, ID area. With his background in watercolor, the scenic picture captures the camaraderie and fun of the après ski scene.

As always, it's very good. And it weighs in at 6.7% alcohol by volume, which is just right as the weather gets cooler.

See also my Jubelale post from last year.

You gotta love traditional/historical beers (I do, anyway): here's a review of Samuel Adams Boston 375 Colonial Ale, on draft only in Boston, that aims to emulate the kind of colonial beer that Sam Adams himself would have brewed.

Pouring cloudy and deep-glowing amber, this unfiltered ale immediately imparts a richly sweet aroma, tinged with a pleasing, earthy acridity. The first pull reveals a smooth and viscous beer, almost chewy, that splits the difference between smoky and sweet, with burnished notes of caramel and brown sugar. Well-hidden, too, is a faint bite of dark rum. That's no accident.

"In colonial days, a significant portion of fermentable materials came from blackstrap molasses," says Sam Adams founder Jim Koch. So while Boston 375 uses two-row Harrington, Munich, and caramel malts, about a third of the fermentable stuff comes from molasses - hence the rum flavor. The subtle smokiness comes from a fourth type of malt, which Koch smoked lightly to approximate what early American brewers would have used.

BeerAdvocate has a more detailed article about the beer. Sounds good... now I only need an excuse to go to Boston. :)

BeerAdvocate reports on a Great American Beer Festival item that I missed: one of my favorite (though least-visited) brewpubs, the Pelican Pub & Brewery, was awarded Small Brewpub of the Year.

For the second time in six years, the Pelican Pub & Brewery was named "Small Brewpub of the Year" at the 24th Annual Great American Beer Festival. Head brewer Darron Welch was named "Brewer of the Year - Small Brewpub". The team from the Pelican Pub & Brewery won three highly coveted medals: Kiwanda Cream Ale won a gold medal in the Golden or Blonde Ale category, MacPelican's Scottish Style Ale took a silver medal in the Scottish-Style Ale category, and Doryman's Dark Ale brought home the silver in the American Brown Ale category.

Kudos to the Pelican! Now I need an excuse to visit Pacific City to get some of the award-winning beer...

Starting tonight you'll see some new ads I'm trying out here on The Brew Site: Chitika "eMiniMall" ads. I've placed them on the individual item pages, and I'll be playing around with them over the next few days to see how things work.

Sorry if it's intrusive... I think they're kind of cool, though, so we'll see.

This just sounds nasty: Nicotine beer in the pipeline:

A Gernam company has come up with a novel way of beating bans on smoking in pubs – put the nicotine in the beer.

A new beer, known as NicoShot, is undergoing testing in Germany with hopes it can be moved toward approval in the next few months.

Each beer contains three milligrams of nicotine and a 6.3 per cent alcohol reading.

It's supposed to help you quit smoking... I don't know, maybe it's just me, but combining two vices like this just doesn't seem like a winning strategy.

Some blowback already: Nicotine beer a no go Down Under.

But there is little chance of the same happening in Australia.

Lydia Buchtmann from Food Standards Australia New Zealand says it has already addressed the issue.

"People overseas were adding nicotine to other things such as mineral water, so we thought we'd be absolutely cautious because while the Food Standards code didn't actually say you could add nicotine, it didn't actually say you couldn't," Ms Buchtmann said.

"So we've since amended that, done a safety assessment and ensured that nicotine can't be added to food or beverages."

And apparently Gizmodo beat everybody by reporting this back on July 13th.

Roundup of some Great American Beer Festival pages around the web:

• Gold Medals & Glory - The Great American Beer Festival: BellaOnline touches on highlights and runs down some of the big winners.
• The joy of blind tasting: Stan at the Beer Travelers blog was at the GABF and talks about the blind tastings required for the competition.
• The GABF 2005 Winners is posted on the official site.
• BeerAdvocate has a quick list of the winners also.
• Anheuser-Busch Honored at Great American Beer Festival: A Yahoo press release that A-B was quick to publish.

When bottling your homebrew, you typically need to "prime" the beer with a bit of sugar to reinvigorate the yeast enough to produce the desired carbonation in the bottle. This primer can be straight sugar (corn sugar is typical, but table sugar would work too), or another source of fermentable sugars, like honey, malt extract, etc.

In the "old days" one method of priming was to add a teaspoon of sugar to each bottle before filling it, which of course would lead to widely varying degrees of carbonation per bottle (and would often cause the infamous exploding bottle problem). Consistency in the amount of primer per bottle is key to avoiding problems like these.

Most modern homebrewing books and techniques call for priming the beer with no more than one cup of sugar (typically one-half or three-fourths of a cup). Usually you boil this with a cup or so of water to dissolve and sterilize, and then add it to the beer before you bottle it, to ensure a uniform distribution of sugar in the brew.

I'm running through the Brief History of Priming here because I remembered a story about an unusual primer a friend told me about: Gummi bears. Yep. My friend Justin knew a guy who tried priming his beer by putting a gummi bear in each bottle before filling it, the idea being the gummi bear would dissolve and the sugar would prime the yeast... needless to say, the result was about as nasty as you'd imagine.

In theory, you could use any fermentable sugar source to prime the beer. Aside from the usual suspects I mentioned above, what other kinds of crazy or unusual things could you prime the beer with? Pieces of candy is the obvious choice; you'd want to stay away from chocolate, though, since the oils would affect head retention and possibly other things. Mints? Jolly Ranchers? Rock candy?

That's what you gotta love about homebrewing: You can experiment with every single step of the process.

Like last year, this one just snuck up on me again: the Newport Microbrew Festival. It was this article which reminded me.

It's Friday and Saturday, October 7th and 8th. Eight bucks admission. I won't be able to make it, there's other plans already in place. Which is just too bad, I love the Oregon coast and Newport in particular.

Okay, I'll have to mark next year's fest on the calendar now so I don't miss it...

The title of this post refers to this article that reviews three energy drink "beers" (You got beer in my Red Bull! You got Red Bull in my beer!): Budweiser B-to-the-E, Tilt also from Anheuser-Busch, and Sparks from Steel Brewing Company.

Of the three products I tried, only Budweiser E is a beer at face value. Tilt (another Anheuser Bush product) and Sparks (Steel Brewing Company) bill themselves as a "premium malt beverage�." With ingredients including caffeine, gaurana, ginseng, taurine, and natural flavors in varying combinations, E is the only product that calls itself "a beer with something extra," although very small letters on the side of the Tilt can read "a flavored ale." Both the Sparks and Tilt also had "certified colors," whatever those are.

Of the three, only E has even slight beer characteristics, including a stale beer aroma, some light husky grain and corn aromas and a crystal clear, light straw color. Similarities fall off the cliff right there, though. E has a sweet, almost tropical fruit smell and the flavor is syrupy. Absent is the hop aroma, flavor or bitterness that defines most beers. Although light bodied, each product's cloying sweetness made it seem fuller. E doesn't list the alcohol content. Sparks weighs in at a significant six percent alcohol, and Tilt at a hefty 6.5 percent. By comparison, an American ale is considered strong when it exceeds six percent.

Sparks and Tilt share nothing with beer. Sparks poured day-glow orange with a brief, alien orange-green head that went flat quickly. Tilt was light, neon pumpkin orange with a dusty orange head and remnant lacing. I'm guessing the manufacturers intend consumers to gun this stuff straight out of the can because in the glass it looks like something that should be lubricating an engine. Maybe this is what "certified color" is all about. Sparks smelled like chewable baby aspirin. Tilt smelled like an orange creamsicle.

Anyway, I thought the review was rather amusing. I'll avoid these types of drinks at all cost.

Tried Full Sail's Wreck the Halls (a 2004 limited edition beer) this evening. For some reason, when I bought it (earlier this year), I was under the impression that it was a barleywine, but it only weighs in at 6.5% alcohol, much too low for a barleywine. BeerAdvocate classifies it as an American IPA, but I'm not sure I agree with this assessment; I didn't get any of the usual IPA characteristics when drinking it.

It poured very orange-copper and crystal clear (until I hit the dregs at the bottom). Nice, just-off-white head. It's not a heavily-hopped aroma, much more floral and maybe a bit of pine. Nothing dramatic.

Taste: mostly by impression, since I couldn't identify any single thing: alcohol (you can taste the 6.5% there), floral hops (not really bitter at all; I'm thinking Cascade hops since they're so citrusy and florally), sweet malt—in fact, it was almost too sweet for me. Not what I expected, I wondered if they used a liberal amount of Belgian candy sugar in the mix. Perhaps the over-sweetness was due to expecting a maltier, hoppier barleywine-type ale? A couple of the BeerAdvocate reviews agree with me on the sweetness, too.

Not terrible, not great (for me), I wouldn't go out of my way for it, but worth the bottle to try.

RateBeer also has a review.

I had this beer the other day from The Black Sheep Brewery, and just the other day beerrag.com had a post about it, too. Small world ("small web"?)!

Riggwelter is a pretty good beer. The Black Sheep website says there's banana fruit aromas, but I didn't get that from it. It was rich and malty, and a bit sweet. Copper-brown color, nice rich head on it. On BeerAdvocate many of the reviews mention the nice lacing, which I concur on. It also accumulates a respectable score of 86 over there.

At 5.7% alcohol, it's not terribly strong, but it comes in larger-than-average bottle, so it's akin to drinking two 12-ounce bottles of an average beer. :)

Overall, an enjoyable beer. Unfortunately, I probably won't find it here in Bend very often, unless one of the upscale grocers carries it.

Today's the first day of the Great American Beer Festival—I almost missed blogging about this (for shame!). The size of this thing is beyond comprehension: 1,669 beers are on tap, 2,358 beers are entered in the competition and 461 breweries are there. It's basically the beer festival mecca.

One of these years, I'm gonna go. And I'll blog it. In the meantime, though, I'll start scanning for other bloggers' reviews of the GABF.

Even Anheuser-Busch is getting into the season, releasing a pumpkin beer: Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale. It's being offered under the Michelob label.

Under development for the last year, the new program will offer different beers to match each of the four seasons, said John Costello, product manager, Michelob Specialty Brands at A-B's domestic brewing subsidiary.

Using pumpkin for the fall beer seemed a natural choice, he said. "I like to describe Jack's as a wicked blend of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove and real delicious pumpkins."

It should also show up in the Michelob Special Sampler Collection, according to the article.

Picked up a sixpack of Pumpkin Ale from Buffalo Bill's Brewing (they who made the interesting Orange Blossom Ale I reviewed a while back) this weekend. Of the very few commercial pumpkin beers I've had, I think this is the best of them. (Not to say it's the best out there; I just don't have access to many.)

It's a decent beer, pretty much what you'd expect from a pumpkin ale: copper-amber color, malty sweet, pumpkin pie essence. It's a little on the light side, in both alcohol and mouthfeel. But, as far as this style goes, you could do a lot worse; I'd recommend it to someone who's never tried a pumpkin ale before (if I didn't have any of my own homebrewed pumpkin on hand, of course), and, it's cheap—I picked it up for $5.99 for the sixpack, which around here is a good deal for microbrews.

The beer didn't fare as well on BeerAdvocate; it only got an overall score of 77 and many reviews are not kind.

Now I'll have to start checking other places in town and see if anyone carries other examples of pumpkin ales...

It's getting to be that time of year again, time for some pumpkin beer! This article reviews six pumpkin ales and lists them in order from worst to best. The reviewer is not kind to the four worst.

6. Post Road Pumpkin Ale — The most robust of the gourd grogs, the rust-hued Post Road doesn't taste much better than tap water after a hydrant flushing. With an extremely bitter initiation that finishes with a pumpkin-like aftertaste, this brew leaves your mouth in a state of confusion.

5. Wachusetts Octoberfest — A shoddy imitation of Sammy's seasonal brew, Wachusetts has that sweet fragrant aroma without the smoothness. It lacks any pumpkin punch, but does produce a great head that tingles your lips....

1. Shipyard PumkinHead Ale — Shipyard takes the cake by resembling a liquid pumpkin pie. All that's missing is the whip cream and a fork. The spicy strawberry blond beverage has distinct nutmeg undertones and lacks that bitter beer aftertaste. Great for the light or occasional beer drinker with a sweet tooth.

Also, check out my pumpkin ale recipe, or see all pumpkin-related Brew Site content.

The Village Voice has a good roundup of New York microbreweries here. Not a huge article, but it highlights and links to 10 breweries, only a couple of which I'd heard of before.

Abita Brewing Company just north of New orleans is brewing a special beer and offering special merchandise to raise money for Katrina aid, reports the Beer Travelers blog and Realbeer.com.

Half Moon Bay Brewing Company is matching donations dollar for dollar for disaster relief.

Cambridge Brewing Company is hosting a Katrina benefit Mardi Gras on October 8th, donating a portion of the sales.

Sprecher Brewing Company has donation links set up on their website and they "are looking to sponsor a Hurricane Relief Benefit at Linneman's September 23rd or 24th."

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

It's creeping up on us: Oktoberfest starts this Saturday, September 17th, and ends on October 2nd. I don't have much to say on Oktoberfest itself that I didn't say last year (I really like what I wrote, so why try to improve on that?), so I'll just start doling out links.

• Raise a stein to Oktoberfest: article about The Great Escape's Oktoberfest celebration, in Lake George, New York.
• Get Out the Lederhosen and Steins: press release/article for Lake Arrowhead Village's (in California) Oktoberfest. Includes a bit about food that goes with Oktoberfest.
• Everyone's Bavarian at Oktoberfest: About Mt. Angel's Oktoberfest, it's 40 this year! It's also starting today and running through Sunday. Sounds like a lot of fun.
• Don't miss Realbeer.com's Oktoberfest guide.

While in Juneau on the cruise, we took a taxi to the Alaskan Brewing Company to see the operation, drink some beer and buy some souvenirs. And take some pictures, of course. Read on for the full review and photos.

More...

Sounds a little strange, but: a French farmer has created a milk beer.

The new drink, Lactiwel, made from milk and malt, contains 2% alcohol and is brewed using a fermentation process similar to that of traditional beer, except that instead of ale or lager yeast, Bernard uses kefir (Turkish milk product) yeast and lactic bacteria.

Sounds like it might be similar to kumis, a fermented mare's milk found in Central Asia.

First found reference to this here, an online French newspaper. I can read some of it (it's in French), but I don't really see anything that describes how the Lactiwel actually tastes or anything.

It's good to see breweries pitching in and helping in whatever way they can in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Here's a few pointers:

• Anheuser-Busch brewery bottling water for hurricane relief: AB has got several of their breweries canning drinking water and delivering it to the Gulf Coast.
• Here's a picture of one of those cans of drinking water on Flickr.
• Brewery, employees donate $24,000: Our local Deschutes Brewery matched employee contributions and raised a good chunk of money.
• Miller Brewing Company Boosts Water Commitment to Aid Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts: Miller is donating water and is donating up to $1,000,000.

I'm sure there's many, many more stories here. Let me know and I'll post them.

Hail the Ale is reporting that "German designers want male drinkers at Oktoberfest in Munich to wear skirts this year." Oktoberfest Frock.

Er... that's just too strange.

Actually, "Oktoberfest Frock" sounds like a good name for a beer. How long before someone brews it?

Since going on the cruise I've been thinking about beers on cruises. As I mentioned, the beer menu on our cruise had a paltry selection: Miller, Coors, Bud, and the couple of breakouts Bass Ale and Foster's Lager. (There was probably Heineken and Beck's, too, I don't recall for sure.) Needless to say, I was hoping for a better offering.

The wine list on the ship, on the other hand, was expansive. You could buy wine packages for the cruise, each package staggered in pricing and having its own list of wines, or simply order from the considerable general wine list. This of course got me thinking, if they can have such a large selection of wines, why not beers?

Take it a step further, and also offer beer packages similar to the wine packages: for X dollars you get Y beers a day, from a variety of package options. Each package of course has a wide variety of brews, and recommendations on what food they are best paired with.

And, the ship could feature beers from whatever region you are currently sailing. So, Alaskan cruises could feature beers from the Alaskan Brewing Company (a vintage Smoked Porter to go with a plank-baked salmon, perhaps) and other regional breweries (like Granville Island Brewing in Vancouver).

Seems odd that they don't do more of this, so I did some quick searches online, and surprisingly, found some hits:

• Frommer's The Beer-Drinker's Guide to Cruising, Part I and Part II. Interestingly, Part II talks about beers available on the cruise lines, and says this:

  Coming in a close second is Royal Caribbean (www.royalcaribbean.com), whose regular 35-brand list includes quality brews like Bass; Boddington's; Foster's (in the 25-ounce oil can!); Harp, Murphy's Stout, and Murphy's Amber (Ireland); Kirin and Asahi (Japan); Newcastle Brown Ale (UK) and Singha (Thailand). On Alaska sailings, RCI's ships stock Midnight Sun's Fireweed Honey Wheat Beer and Kodiak Nut Brown Ale (brewed in Anchorage); Grant's Hefe Weizen and Lazy Days Summer Ale (Washington) and Alaska Brewing Company's Alaskan Amber, Alaskan Pale Ale, and Alaskan ESB.

  Man, I must've gotten the short end of the stick or something. Hell, maybe I didn't ask the right questions...
• All About Beer Magazine is promoting Brew Cruises... but it looks to me like they might just be regular cruises with beer-related offerings at each stop. Though looking at the Alaska cruise—which is what we did—the only "local beer culture" you find on that run is in Juneau.
• On the other hand, here's a series of blog posts from someone who went on a brew cruise (to Alaska even). Sounds way better than I was imagining.
• BellaOnline has a short article about Beer Prices on Cruise Ships.

So maybe my next cruise will be a beer cruise...

We only spent a night (and part of a morning) in Vancouver, B.C., not enough time to find out if and where any breweries existed there. At least, not until we ate at a restaurant and I found the Granville Island Brewery on the menu. (Incidentally, the restaurant was Joe Fortes and it was really good.)

I had two of Granville's beers: the Maple Cream Ale and the Pale Ale. The Maple Cream Ale was really quite extraordinary, possibly the best cream ale I've had; not a trace of bitterness to it, hop or otherwise—even my wife liked it (and she absolutely hates beers... except for fruit lambics). The maple was understated but the beer overall was creamy and rich and smooth and just a pleasure to drink.

The Pale Ale, on the other hand, was unremarkable, "just another" pale ale. Not bad by any means, it was a good example of the style, but after the Maple Cream Ale it was just business as usual. It's too bad we never got a chance to visit the brewery itself; I would have enjoyed tasting their various brews.

Maybe next time we're in Vancouver...

Some pointers to a couple of offbeat articles (still going through my backlog of beer news):

• Bring back the gusto!: An essay on the word "gusto" and how Schlitz ruined it in the 1960's:

  Although the ''gusto" campaign ended almost 40 years ago, the damage to the word was done. There may be some who are able to stick ''gusto" into a sentence without thinking beer, but certainly no one who was born before 1960.

  I know I don't associate "gusto" with beer, but it's an interesting read.
• Congress Considers Beer a Luxury—But Not Mink Coats, Private Jets, or Yachts: Notes on trying to roll back the federal excise tax on beer, which was raised in 1990 along with the tax on other luxury items, all of which have been rolled back except for the beer tax.

We're back from our vacation, with a few beer stories to relate. (Actually, we got back on Sunday, but I've been catching up on everything else and decompressing.) I don't have them ready to post, yet, but here's a bit of an overview:

• Though we didn't visit Granville Island Brewing in Vancouver, B.C., itself, I did have a couple of their beers while out to dinner in Vancouver.
• The beer on the cruise ship was dull! Mostly Bud, Miller, Coors, with some Heinekein and Bass Ale thrown in for good measure.
• We visited the Alaskan Brewing Company in Juneau. I'll have a review and pictures.
• We sort of visited the Skagway Brewing Company in Skagway, Alaska. I say "sort of" because the actual brewery closed down three years ago, and all that's left is the gift shop.

Heading out for vacation tomorrow (er, today), so there's a good chance I won't be back online here for nearly two weeks. In the meantime, check out some of these excellent beer blogs:

• A Good Beer Blog
• Beer - The Blog
• Hail the Ale!

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Follow the links they give you, read all of them. I'll expect a full report when I get back :).

Yeah, I know I haven't posted much here this month. August is vacation month; tomorrow we're going camping for the weekend for a family reunion (I've got a cooler full of beer, so this is tangentally on-topic), so I'll be totally offline. Which is nice. For a change.

Next week, we leave for a ten day vacation: we're going on an Alaskan cruise for my in-laws 35th wedding anniversary. We'll still have the laptop with us, and internet access, but I imagine I won't be using it much. At any rate, back on the beer topic, I'll have to explore just how many varieties of beer you can get on a cruise... that, and we're going to try to visit the Alaskan Brewing Company when we're in Juneau. Maybe I'll blog that at the time.

Cheers!

I'm in Walla Walla tonight (as I wrote about last month), and got a chance to visit the Mill Creek Brewpub for dinner. Verdict: worth a visit if you're in or around Walla Walla.

Mill Creek is the only microbrewery within a 50 mile radius of Walla Walla, and it's next door to Whitman College, so I