Had Dogfish Head's unusual Aprihop last night. It was pretty good. The apricot is there, but understated... not an overly fruity beer, but nowhere near as awful as some fruit beers out there that also aren't overly fruity.

I'll name some names in a moment. First, my notes.

Appearance: Poured a thin off-white head which dissipated quickly. The beer itself is a slightly hazy walnut-gold-copper color.

Smell: Apricot dominates the nose, but it's not overpowering—very pleasant, in fact. There's some subtle hop action going on there, also.

Taste: First impression is the apricot. It's good, but not cloying. Then there's rich, bready, nutty (toasted?) malt. Clean hop flavor which doesn't overpower the fruit. The apricot is mild, not bitter at all (I once brewed an apricot ale that was on the bitter side... probably from the skins).

Mouthfeel: Thinnish, almost a fruit juice character happening. Not as full-bodied as some (most?) IPAs.

Overall it's a good beer, if different from what you'd expect a fruit beer to be. You've got the characteristics of a good IPA—7% alcohol, hops—with the pleasant aroma and flavor of the fruit hanging out in there. It's worth buying again.

It scored 86 out of a hundred on BeerAdvocate. 97% of reviewers liked it with a thumbs-up.

Okay, to the naming names part I mentioned. I think the overall worst apricot ale I've ever had was from the now-gone Birkebeiner Brewery in Spokane, Washington. Most of their other beer was pretty good, but man, their apricot really sucked. It was just too... earthy, I guess, and lacking in the actual fruit flavor.

Also, I've written before that Bend Brewing Company had an apricot ale I didn't like, but last summer's version was much better.

FestiveAle—another fine and slightly unusual beer from Rogue. Why unusual? It's a Saison style beer brewed with, among other things, Grains of Paradise (which is actually a spice from West Africe similar to cardamom), myrtle leaves, bitter orange peel, and ginger root. I think I can honestly say I've never had anything (much less a beer) with Grains of Paradise in it.

I thought it was a good beer, though. The BeerAdvocates don't entirely agree, but hey, you can't win 'em all. My notes:

Appearance: It poured highly carbonated—the first pour was half a glass full of head. It's moderately hazy, the color of orange straw.

Smell: Floral, citrus. Has a phenolic sour aroma that reminds me of Belgian beers.

Taste: Rich, grass, spicy, perhaps plum... it's a Saison through-and-through. Buttery and creamy. Bitterness might be coming from the orange peel, otherwise there's a low hop presence.

Mouthfeel: Medium bodied (I need to work on this description... I use this a lot). It has a rich feel, though airy and a bit sparkly due to the carbonation.

And yes, I'm sure someone will point out the spelling discrepancy between the label image above and on Rogue's site with the way I'm spelling it here (I've added an extra "E"). The bottle I have is actually spelled with the "E" also, so I'm guessing Rogue has since updated the name and not the website. Just so you know. :)

Yes, it's already been all over the internet, but I just had to do it too: Asahi Breweries has designed a robot beer refrigerator that will open a can of beer and pour a perfect glass every time. They're planning on giving 5000 of these away... in Japan only.

To win one of these, you'd need to find 36 seals on specially marked Asahi beers. So it's kind of a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory thing.

So, how long before someone here in the states invents a beer pouring robot?

Tonight I opened up the bottle of India Pelican Ale (from Pelican Pub & Brewery) that I found at the Newport Avenue Market here in Bend. That's a find, actually, because I'd never seen any Pelican brews anywhere outside of the Oregon Coast. The Pelican is one of my favorite breweries for the location alone: right on the beach. Literally.

Anyway, to the beer. Super hoppy! I'm not kidding here; if you're on the fence about hops, avoid this beer (I really hate to give that kind of advice). This is one of the hoppier beers I've had in a long time. And, it's at 7.5% alcohol... all the hallmarks of a good IPA.

Notes:

Appearance: Crystal clear copper-gold in color. ½-inch of off-white (bisque) creamy head.

Smell: Hops, resiny and grassy. Cascade hops are really prominent. Perhaps a hint of juniper.

Taste: Hoppy is the keyword here. This beer is full of Cascade hops, almost to the exclusion of all else. There's a bit of creamy malt in the background, and the barest hint of an alcohol bite... all hidden by the hops.

Mouthfeel: Medium, rich and carbonated.

I like it! So does BeerAdvocate. They rated it 87, 93% approval. It's a good IPA—really good.

Darn, now I want to head over to Pacific City to hit the brewery...

Not a whole lot to write about tonight, mostly because I'm super busy on a web project that needs to be done by the end of the month. But I did try a bottle of Widmer's Snowplow Milk Stout tonight, and I quite like it; I'll do a formal review later.

And my pumpkin ale needs to be racked; tomorrow marks the seventh day in the primary. So, I'll probably rack it Friday to a secondary for another week or so before bottling.

I had this beer last night, actually, but didn't get around to writing about it yet: Melbourn Brothers Strawberry. I found it at Ray's Food Place on Bend's west side, hadn't heard of it before. It turned out to be quite good, very much like a lambic—Melbourn's relies on spontaneous fermentation by wild yeast.

The best way to describe this beer is to compare it to a rose champagne, I think. And strawberries, strawberries, strawberries. Did I mention strawberry? Seriously, my wife even liked it, and she's notorious for hating beer.

My notes:

Appearance: Poured into a Pilsner glass, it resembles a slightly dark rose champagne, pink and orange. Faint pink head, very thick and creamy.

Smell: Strawberries! Very sweet. Champagne again, hardly any beer character.

Taste: Strawberry sweet and a bit tart, a nice combination. Similar to Lindemans Framboise. A hint of malt in the background, but no hops.

Mouthfeel: Sparkly, on the thin side, thinner than a lambic, more like (you guessed it) champagne. Seems appropriate.

As for the inevitable BeerAdvocate review, they scored it 84 out of a hundred, with 96% thumbs up. This would make a good Valentine beer.

Yes, I'm still on the topic of Poor Richard's Ale. Today I thought I'd share the extract-based recipe for Poor Richard's that I devised based on the all-grain recipe (PDF)—for those of us homebrewers who don't brew all-grain yet, or don't have the time.

The recipe is a bit simpler than the original; it's extract-based, for five gallons, and for a 60-minute boil with a two-stage hop addition rather than three. (You could stay with three if you liked, though.)

Ingredients:

• 6 pounds Light (Pale) or Extra Light Dried Malt Extract (DME)
• 2.5 pounds flaked corn
• 1.5 pounds Crystal or Caramel malt, 20°L
• 1 pound Special Roast malt
• 1/8 pound Black Patent malt
• 1 pound (1 1/3 cups) molasses (blackstrap is fine)
• 2 ounces Kent Goldings hops
• English or Scottish ale yeast (Wyeast 1968 or 1728, respectively)

Directions and notes:

Steep the grains and corn in your brew kettle as the water heats up (this is basically Papazian's method for adding grains to extract, the easy way). Remove the grains and add the malt and molasses as it comes to a boil.

I substituted the biscuit malt from the original recipe with Crystal because biscuit requires mashing (whereas Crystal, Special Roast and Black Patent do not). Technically, the corn requires mashing too (though I don't know if this is strictly necessary for extract—will the flaked corn still lend its characteristics to the wort even if not mashed?), so if you wanted to do a partial-mash, you could go back to the biscuit, drop the DME down a bit and use one pound of 2-row malt for the mash. If you do this, I'd follow the mashing guidelines of 154°F for about 45 minutes.

I'd suggest a hop schedule of 1.5 ounces at the beginning of the boil, and ½ ounce for finishing, with 15 minutes to go.

I bumped up the molasses amount from the original recipe to lend the more authentic flavor he suggested (he cut back the molasses for more "modern" sensibilities not used to it). I happen to like molasses in beer, and I'd push for the more Colonial style.

And I'll be brewing this myself, sometime—gotta put my money where my mouth is. :)

Tonight I got to drink a pint of Poor Richard's Ale at the Bend Brewing Company, although there's a caveat: the place was packed, so it was standing-room only in the bar, thus I didn't get to really do a proper tasting.

It was pretty good, despite that. Reminds me strongly of an old ale (similar to BBC's Outback Old Ale, if memory serves me), although it had a stronger, misplaced hop bitterness than I would have accounted for.

Here's some abbreviated notes (from memory): dark red chestnut color; decent head. Sweet malty flavor with a nice full profile mouthfeel. I can't say as I could detect any corn or molasses per se, though I couldn't identify roast malt or black patent, either. Very malty, but with a striking hop bitterness that actually seemed out of place for the beer.

I had trouble placing the bitterness at first, because it didn't resonate as a hoppy, resiny bitter flavor, but ultimately I decided it was a clean, strong hop. Maybe they dryhopped the batch? It wasn't bad, but the bitterness was distracting, it seemed to clash with the style. I'd rather it was more subtle.

Decent beer, though I'd like to be able to sit down and take notes and be able to reflect on it a bit more—standing in the bar, shuffling out of the way frequently kind of detracts from the experience. Hopefully I'll at least be able to try Deschutes' version to compare the two.

Last night I finally got around to making the pumpkin ale that I talked about way back in November (the pumpkin was frozen, so I was still able to use it). I followed my recipe here, with a couple of variations: I used American 2-row malt for the partial mash instead of Vienna, used 20°L Crystal instead of 40, and I'm going to wait until bottling to add the vanilla and spices.

The session went well, although my hydrometer reading gave me a whopping original gravity of 1.080! That seems very high to me, so either I underestimated the amount of partial mashing I did—perhaps inadvertantly brewing an Imperial Pumpkin—or my hydrometer's off. I won't know until I take a final gravity.

And this morning, less than 12 hours after I pitched the yeast (using the new giant smack packs from Wyeast), there was a nice bubbly activity in the fermenter. Looking good!

More on it as it progresses.

Tonight I cracked open the bottle of Siletz Chocolate Porter. I had high hopes for this beer, after reading some of the BeerAdvocate reviews, but I hate to say I was disappointed.

I don't know if I got a bad bottle (I suspect I may have), but it was definitely not what I was hoping for. It was drinkable—not like it was spoiled or badly infected or anything, just... off. My notes:

Appearance: Black-brown, red-hued mahogany. Chocolate milk head, about ¼ inch thick, dissipated quickly. Some of the larger bubbles had an iridescent, soapy look.

Smell: Dark chocolate (not overwhelmingly chocolate like everything had me believe), strong aroma of roast malt, black patent maybe.

Taste: Astringent and sour and dry. Not lactic sour, necessarily, but over-roasted (burnt) sour. Dark roasted malt at the back of the throat. Possibly coffee. No appreciable hops, no chocolate that I can detect at all.

Mouthfeel: Too thin for a porter. Has a soapy feel to it—oily almost.

And no, even though I mentioned "soapy" twice I don't think there was soap in the bottle or anything like that. (If there was, I'm sure I'll find out soon!) The oils in chocolate can do that, if they used real chocolate.

Perhaps I'll try this beer again down the road, give it some time just in case it was a bad batch, or an old bottle that went bad or something.

I highlighted Anderson Valley's Winter Solstice when I was doing the Beer Advent Calendar last month, and tonight I tried a bottle of it myself. I'm glad I did! It's an excellent beer. My notes:

Appearance: Poured clear, a bronzed-copper/amber-brown color. Two fingers of creamy beige head dissipated slowly. Nice lacing on the sides of the glass.

Smell: Floral, raisin, fruity. Plum pudding comes to mind.

Taste: Reminds me of an old ale. It's plummy, raisiny; there's the telltale alcohol strength in the background. Rich, dark fruit, spicy—I can't identify the spices, but the impression I want to convey is rich, moist, dark fruitcake.

Mouthfeel: Perfect. Smooth, medium-thick. Not chewy like a stout, but just right—a perfect balance for a strong winter warmer.

I really need to pay more attention to Anderson Valley's beers; I've only tried a couple but like this one, they've been very good. I'll drink Winter Solstice again, definitely.

Over on Slashfood Sarah Gim has blogged about "Learning to Drink Beer". I had to comment, of course, but first, a review of the beers she tried:

• Tecate and Corona: needs lime, otherwise just "okay."
• Samuel Adams: bitter, had to add lime.
• Pilsner-Urquell: skunky. Becoming suspicious of green bottles.
• Miller Genuine Draft: best of her picks.

Okay, not a terrible list for a first-timer (I like that she tried Pilsner, even though it sounds like it was skunked). Here's the comment I left, which I think could stand fairly well for any first-timer to use as a guideline:

Beers that come in green or clear bottles tend to be skunked—that is, exposure to sunlight and even excessive fluorescent lighting initiate chemical changes which give it the skunky smell and off-flavor. If they're stored properly (i.e., cool and dark), there should be no problem, but in the real world... be warned.

My picks, to branch out:

• As others said, avoid generic American lagers. If you must, however, drink Pabst :)
• Lindemans Framboise Lambic. You won't even know it's beer.
• Widmer Hefeweizen. Lemon wedge optional. It's a good introduction to American microbrews.
• Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar. A bit darker, with a delicious and unusual nutty flavor.
• Big Sky Moose Drool. Don't let the name fool you, it's a very drinkable brown ale from Montana.

When you're ready to explore the darker and heavier stuff, Guinness is a good start.

If I were to add to the list, I'd probably reference some other fruit beers (Pyramid Apricot Ale, for instance) and some additional microbrewed lighter beers to offset the generic stuff: Deschutes Cascade Ale, perhaps, or Fat Tire Sunshine Wheat. Yeah.

Today is Poor Richard's Ale Day—the 300th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Franklin and the day most participatory breweries are serving up their version of Poor Richard's Ale. Has anyone been able to try this beer yet? I'd like to get a chance to try both Bend Brewing Company's and Deschutes Brewery's (both local to me) sometime during this week.

Anyway, if you haven't yet, get out and support your local brewery and try some Poor Richard's.

Michigan has something like 70 breweries, according to the Michigan Brew Tour site. Who knew? Not only does that site have a linked list of breweries, but I like this idea:

Not only did we want to visit every Microbrew in Michigan, we also "had to have" a souvenir growler. Nothing better than bringing some microbrew home.

Picking up a growler from each visit. I wish I'd thought of that. They're up to 63 so far.

Chris (another local blogger) tags me pretty good. Too funny, I got a good laugh out of that. Plus, a bonus: it's a good review of Old English 800!

Gotta love Sundays. :)

You've noticed that I've been reviewing more beers lately. I'll be doing a lot more of that over the coming weeks and months; part of what I've done with some of my Christmas and birthday money this year was buy a bunch of beer that I haven't had before, and I plan to post a review and tasting notes for each.

I suppose if I'd made any New Year's resolutions, this would be one: try as many new beers as I can!

Anyway, I thought I'd post a list of the beers I've bought recently to try. Not counting the ones I've already reviewed this year. (Not doing links, either... I'll link them as I review them.)

• Celis White
• Alaskan Winter Ale and 2005 Smoked Porter
• Otter Creek Copper Ale
• Siletz Chocolate Porter and Winter Warmer Ale
• Melbourne Brothers Strawberry
• Pelican Brewery India Pelican Ale
• Saison du Pont
• Rogue FestivAle
• Trappistes Rochefort 10
• Dogfish Head Aprihop
• North Coast 2004 Old Stock Ale
• Anderson Valley Winter Solstice

I've also been eyeing Widmer's Snow Plow milk stout and Goose Island Stout, which I saw at Fred Meyer...

Side note, to Central Oregonians: I've said this before, but I think Newport Avenue Market on the westside really has the largest and best beer selection in town.

Wow, talk about a strong beer: tonight I had the bottle of Rogue's Imperial India Pale Ale that I got for Christmas. It comes in a 1 pint, 10 ounce (750 ml) black ceramic bottle (similar to the Imperial Pilsner that I also had), and weighs in at a staggering 9.5% alcohol by volume!

It was quite enjoyable, though. Here are my notes:

Appearance: Poured a hazy straw-orange, with a finger of slightly off-white head. Head retention was nice.

Smell: Hops! And alcohol. Perhaps floral? (That would likely be from the Cascade hops.)

Taste: Alcohol! It's a strong IPA, with a powerful resiny residual hop bitterness. Any malt sweetness is offset by the hops and the high alcohol. Suspected Saaz hops were used, and I was right (according to Rogue's notes).

Mouthfeel: Medium-bodied and smooth only offset a bit by the carbonation. I think it's just right for an IPA... but the high alcohol is surprising based on the mouthfeel alone.

Overall, an excellent beer, very very strong. This will not be to the casual beer drinker's liking, however; you have to be serious to enjoy this beer.

BeerAdvocate agrees; they scored it an impressive 90 with 99% thumbs-up. This is definitely a beer you should buy, if you find it. But don't plan on driving or doing anything productive for awhile after drinking it! :)

Portland, Oregon made the New York Times' travel section in a big article about the brewery scene there. It's a decent piece—nothing earth-shaking, but pretty cool for the coverage it gives. They highlight a half-dozen or so breweries, plus the Horse Brass Pub.

Portland has more breweries - 28 - than any other city in the nation if not the world, and it has arguably become one of the best destinations anywhere for beer-tasting....

"It's beer; it's not a Michelangelo," Mr. Nelson quipped about his brews.

And perhaps that sums up Portland's beer culture at the moment. Good beer has become so commonplace that it has blended comfortably into the fabric of social life. Instead of fancy distractions, a big scene or a big screen, there is simply craft beer and a craft of another sort - the art of talking.

The breweries they write up are Widmer, BridgePort, Concordia Brewery (at McMenamins Kennedy School), Hair of the Dog, the Horse Brass (the one non-brewery), and one of my favorities, the Tugboat. I've been to each of them, except Hair of the Dog, and I can confidently say that they're all excellent places.

Via alt.portland.

Tonight I tried a new beer I picked up, Demolition from Goose Island in Chicago. It was quite good! Classified as a Belgian strong (pale) ale, it weighs in at 8% alcohol by volume. Here are my notes:

Appearance: Hazy gold-orange in color. Poured with a ¼-inch head that was creamy and bisque in color, but dissipated rather quickly. Not much lacing on the sides of the glass, surprising for the higher alcohol content.

Smell: Clean, cut grass; slightly floral. Maybe a bit of hops, but not much. Straw?

Taste: Grass (again), strongish alcohol, though not biting; Czech hops (Saaz, according to the label)—you can taste them, mild but there, ever-so-slightly spicy, in the background. It's a well-done hop bitterness. Nice Belgian malt, maybe biscuit. Very Belgian through and through; perhaps there's Belgian candy sugar as well.

Mouthfeel: Medium to thick bodied, rich and nice. Just right! Smooth and drinkable—just short of chewy, which is appropriate.

Overall: Yum! I'm glad I have another bottle of this, it's very, very good. Very drinkable; you can tell the alcohol is there but there's no unpleasant bite from it. I'm glad I found this; I may go back for more.

It scored 85 on BeerAdvocate, with 94% approval. If you see this in a store somewhere, do yourself a favor and pick it up. Or better yet, head over to Goose Island in Chicago and try it on tap...

Something I found yesterday but forgot to post about. The guys behind BeerMapping.com that I posted about also have a beer feed aggregator. They're pulling the RSS feeds of beer blogs and sites and aggregating them on the page. Nice. I think I already have all the same sites/feeds loaded up in Bloglines, but I'll be checking this out from time to time.

Just chalk this up to random humor: Slashfood reports on a guy who experimented with adding Skittles to beer.

The one, the only, the original, Skittlebrau.

I personally am not a big dark beer fan. But the Crazy Engineer household would be remiss if we didn't try the actual Skittlebrau.

Eurkea!

This isn't half bad.

The sugar cuts the bitter beer taste and and leaves you with a mellow sweetness that isn't bad drinking. Now, letting it sit for 30 minutes isn't advised, but some leisurely drinking is okay. There is a slight odd aftertaste, but no odder than other beers with Skittles.

What? You don't know what "Skittlebräu" refers to? Shame on you. :)

I wrote the other day in my Oregon and Washington Brewery Map post about how they use Google Maps to show you the breweries in the two states. Well, check this out: the US Brewery Maps from the Beer Mapping Project. Holy cow, it's the first site on steroids! They list some 1430 breweries and brewpubs across the entire country.

And, the quality seems to be better than that first site, too. The Bend map is completely accurate, as near as I can tell. And they're blogging about it too, that's always a plus: gotta like transparency. This site is definitely getting bookmarked.

A few months back I'd blogged about Anheuser-Busch brewing a seasonal pumpkin ale. Now they have a winter offering, too: Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale. Yes, that link is to their press release, and yes, it's been out since December somtime, but one of their PR people sent me the link on my contact form, so I decided to blog it.

And frankly, it doesn't sound like a bad beer:

Brewed with dark roasted caramel malts and all-imported hops and aged on toasted bourbon oak casks and whole Madagascar vanilla beans, this winter brew is the second to be launched in a series of specialty seasonal drafts.

If I had access to it, I'd try it. BeerAdvocate even gives it a passing grade (though only 14 reviews so far) of 82. Not bad.

I received a six-pack of Cacade Lakes' Monkey Face Porter from a friend for Christmas, and figured it was time for a review. I've been shockingly lax on reviewing our local fare here, I realize; so, expect more beer reviews and tasting notes in the future on local brews (and more generally).

First, tasting notes that I jotted down:

Appearance: Solid dark amber-brown in color, rich coffee. Poured with a half-inch of tan head that dissipated quickly.

Smell/aroma: Mahogany, roast malt, black patent, dark chocolate. No real hop characteristic.

Taste: First impression: smokey malt. I can taste the black patent and roasted malt. There's some chocolate, but not as prevalent to me. Dry. Coffee-roasty-bitter, but very mild hops. Pretty straightforward porter, no off flavors, and nothing fancy lurking in the background.

Mouthfeel: On the thin side of medium; thinner, I think, than a porter should be. Creamy carbonation.

My overall impression is a decent, dry, creamy yet thin porter. I can taste the black patent malt, it's bitter but not overwhelming. I like it, it's very drinkable. The website talks about chocolate quite a bit, but it's just not that prevalent for me. Still, it's a good porter, if thin bodied.

BeerAdvocate is on the fence, scoring it 81 (out of 100), with only 64% approval—it's important to note, however, that only 13 reviews are applied to this score, so it's not as representative as some of the more well-known beers.

I mentioned a "geeky homebrewer point of view" yesterday, and was interested when this article appeared today elsewhere: Understanding the beer geek. It's an okay article, nothing too earth-shattering or meaningful, though. Although this one quote sounds to me like obsessive Star Trek fans arguing whether they're referred to as "Trekkers" or "Trekkies"...

"I am a beer aficionado and a beer scholar and a beer historian," Brewer said. "The term beer geek originated about 10 years ago. People began describing themselves as beer geeks. It's someone who is so absorbed with beer. It's people who get over the top with anything. In Vail, you're ski geeks."

Aficionados, on the other hand, Brewer said, are better educated and most of them are in technical professions.

Sometimes I wish there was an easy way to emote "rolling my eyes" online. I really don't see any difference. Beer geek, aficianado, whatever, they're all sides of the same coin.

Poor Richard's Ale—this is the one I mentioned the other day that I'd blog about. It's not a beer being served up by any one brewery—and actually, the idea behind this is, I think, pretty neat. January 17th is the 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth, and to commemorate the event, Tony Simmons of Brick Oven Brewing (ostensibly now Pagosa Spring Brewing) has developed a recipe that he believes approximates the favorite type of colonial beer that Ben Franklin drank.

You can check out his notes and recipe (for five gallons, all-grain—homebrew friendly) here (PDF)—they seem well researched and formulated:

MASHING - Eighteenth century texts say to, “Bring your water to a boil and put it into the mash tun. When it has cooled enough that the steam has cleared and you can see your reflection in the water, add your malt to the tun." In my experiments, this translated to a mash temperature of approximately 154F. This mash temperature is supported by both Noonan’s recipe for an 1850 Scottish ale and Daniels’ recommendation for an Old Ale.

HOPS – I suggest Kent Goldings as they were “discovered” in the 18th century and proved extremely popular for brewers both in England and abroad. By comparison, Fuggle hops were not bred until the 19th century. And, regionally grown hops from the Americas had very inconsistent harvests and also did not become widely available until the 19th Century.

(Since this is an all-grain recipe, and I am to date still an extract homebrewer, perhaps I'll formulate an extract recipe based on this. I'll post it here, of course.)

The cool part is, breweries around the country are brewing this recipe this month to commemorate the anniversary. (The main page I linked to has a state-by-state locator of breweries that are doing this.) So, you can likely find this beer wherever you might be—assuming you're close to a microbrewery, that is :).

The other cool part is from a geeky homebrewer point of view: since every brewery is brewing this ale from the same recipe, it's a fantastic way to gauge the relative qualities and skills of each brewer based on this beer. And, it's fun to see how each brewer interprets and tweaks the recipe for their respective systems.

Here in Bend, both the Deschutes Brewery and Bend Brewing Company are brewing up Poor Richard's. They're set to be released the 21st and 15th, respectively. Awesome! I can't wait to try each one. I'll take extensive notes and blog about them. It's like an assignment! :)

This is very cool: Oregon & Washington Brew Map, a Google Maps-enabled live map based on listings of all the known breweries in the two states. Pretty comphrensive, but I do have a few comments: some of the locations are off (the ones I can point to for sure are here in Bend), and it's missing a pointer to at least one: Cascade Lakes Lodge in Bend (on the west side). Other than that, it's really good.

Oh yeah, true to Google Maps, you can get the driving directions, too. But if the location is off, then I can't vouch for how well they'll get you there :). 

Via Slashfood (again!).

Over on Slashfood today a couple of beer posts caught my eye. The first, Beer: it's a diet food, right?, speculates on beer health marketing in light of a recent FDA announcement:

According to a recent FDA announcement, "whole grain barley and barley-containing products are allowed to claim that they reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD)." As we all know, beer contains barley!

The other one, Poor Richard's Ale, mentions something I've been seeing floating around the radar lately but haven't commented on: brewers are brewing beer to commemorate Ben Franklin's 300th birthday coming up (on January 17).

In commemoration of this historic event, craft brewers from across America will join together to make and serve Poor Richard's Ale. There will be nearly 100 breweries in 35 states participating in this event. The name of the ale comes from Franklin's book Poor Richard's Almanack published in the mid 1700's.

(Get to the "official" Poor Richard website here. I think I'll have a more substantial post for this later.)

You can stay current on Slashfood's beer posts from their beer category page.

There's a post on Metroblogging Portland about the history of McMenamins Rock Creek Tavern. It's a highly compressed version, but I still enjoyed it. Don't forget to read the comments, too.

Opened in the Prohibition-afflicted 1920s as a grocery and a feed store for farmers.

Served beer in 1933 about seven nanoseconds after Prohibition's repeal. Yay, day.

Bombed in a 1935 labor union war.

Became a juke joint in the 1940s.

Just like on my other blog, it's the year end wrapup for all the data. I'm a bit surprised by the numbers I reached here; for only ramping The Brew Site up (as a blog) just over a year ago, these seem to be pretty impressive. On to it!

• Number of blog entries: 222.
• Approximate total number of words: 38,371.
• Average words per blog entry: 172.8.
  
  Overall, it looks like I wrote nearly as much here as on chuggnutt.com. I was sort of wondering why my output over there had gone down compared to 2004, but now I realize that it didn't—half the stuff I wrote ended up over here instead!
  
  
• Total visitors: 236,445. This is unfiltered, so it includes bots, spiders, RSS readers, etc.
• Average visitors per day: 647.
• Total real visitors (approximate): 119,300. This is the actual number, with most of the bots and such filtered out.
• Average real visitors per day: 326
• The most active month was October, and the two big traffic spikes account for that: 3,810 visitors on October 12 and 3,795 visitors on October 13. These hits were to the post Nicotine beer which got picked up big on the search engines.
• Ten most popular blog entries:
  1. Nicotine beer: 7,774
  2. Molson Kick: 6,817
  3. Samuel Adams Utopias: 2,247
  4. Samuel Adams Triple Bock: 1,622
  5. Gluten Free Beer: 1,387
  6. Google results for Molson Kick...: 1,312
  7. More on gluten free beer: 1,241
  8. Buffalo Bill's Pumpkin Ale: 1,024
  9. Best beers, according to RateBeer: 933
  10. Homebrewing in Get Fuzzy: 780
• Total number of comments (not counting spam): 182
• Most popular searches on this site:
  • pumpkin: 240
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For Christmas I got two specialty bottles of Rogue beer, each 1 pint 10 ounces in resealable ceramic bottles (like Grolsch). I opened one of them up today: Morimoto Imperial Pilsner. The review summary: I liked it!

First, an oddity: there was no carbonation to the beer to speak of; only the slightest hiss when I popped the cap and no head formed when I poured it. Very odd; reading the reviews on BeerAdvocate, they all mention a nicely carbonated beer. Oh well, you get an odd bottle from time to time; it didn't detract from the beer for me.

Aside from the lack of carbonation, the beer poured a nice, slightly hazy straw-orange color. Darker than a traditional pilsner, it reminded me of a pale ale, though the aroma was the subdued, hoppy-ish "pilsner smell" I associate with the style.

Taste first impressions: hoppy alcohol bite, like a light barleywine. I like barleywines! :) The mouthfeel is more substantial, (again) more pale ale-like than pilsner-like, smooth, creamy. Medium bodied, not too thin.

It's dry, though "barleywine sweet"—that is, you can taste the malt. And the hops. BeerAdvocate reviews describe a fruity taste, but I'm not getting that at all. This might sound strange, but the phrase "hop syrup" comes to mind—I suppose because without carbonation, I get a syrupy sense from the beer.

It's good, though—I quite like it. I would defintely drink this again, though with 8.8% alcohol by volume (they do put the "Imperial" in it!), it's not a beer you would drink an abundance of.

The BeerAdvocate score is 89 (out of 100), with 98% approval. Quite so.

And, a little bit of triva: I first tried this beer at the 1999 Oregon Brewers Festival; this was (I believe) the first year Rogue had brewed it, special for the Festival. My (poor) recollection of it then was a lighter, more pilsner-like strong beer. Unusual at the time, but very good. Good enough, anyway, that they brewed it commerically starting in 2003.

Here's a fun little first-of-the-year account (or end-of-the-year, depending on how you look at it) of something you rarely get in commercial beers: excessing foaming.

I had a bottle chilled to about 45 degrees and when opened, foam immediately started spilling out of the bottle. I quickly got it into a pint glass, where I was left with a half-inch of liquid in the bottom and foam that was three inches above the top of the glass.

To top it off, the foam still kept coming out of the bottle like a lava flow. It took about 10 minutes for the rambunctious brew to settle down....

I'm guessing the makers of this batch did not let the beer ferment long enough before bottling, and the excess unfermented malt combined with the too-active yeast to cause the excessive foam. Chilling it in the freezer had no effect on the foaming.

The beer in question: Arcadia Brewing Company's Battle Creek Special Reserve. Once he got past the foam, he gave it a decent review.

I had this happen to a homebrewed batch of brown ale once; you would open a bottle, and foam would start rising. I even had a bottle from that batch explode. And I've noticed a tendency in other brown ales I've brewed to be excessivly carbonated, too; I don't know if it was the yeast I chose and didn't ferment out, too much priming sugar in the bottles, or (just as likely) a random infection from a wild yeast or bacteria that over-carbonated the batch.

Via Beer - The Blog.