'Tis the Season

It's December, you know what that means: time for Christmas music, Ugly Sweaters and rich, dark Porters and Stouts West Coast Amber Ales?

I might be alone on this one, but while most in the craft beer community are shifting from Pumpkin beers and Oktoberfests into darker beers, colder temperatures have had me craving Hops far more than normal.  It probably has something to do with a great brew out of California a couple weeks ago after randomly picking it up at my local Craft Beer go-to, but that story is for another night.

Tonight I'm going to talk about a beer that comes from a little closer to home: Ambergeddon, brewed by Ale Asylum right here in my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin.

I first had an Ambergeddon back in October of last year when I was just getting into craft beer, and it might've been a little more intense than I was ready for at the moment.  The second time I had it was over the summer at Vintage Spirits & Grill.  Vintage has the absolute best deal on beer in Madison: 1 dollar Wisconsin brews after 10 on Monday nights.  In addition to a constant supply of Ambergeddon, they typically had at least one offering from Furthermore, another brewery in the Madison Area that has put out a lot of interesting brews.

Anyway, Ale Asylum is a brewery that's really taking off in the Madison area.  It's a mainstay at a number of downtown locations in the city, though it hasn't really managed to expand too far beyond city limits.

This beer has  really hit the spot for me lately.  It's got the right amount of hops and alcohol that doesn't overwhelm.  Right now, I'm definitely giving it a solid A.

Beer Advocate's take on Ambergeddon (it got a B in their new rating system? huh...SHOCKER)
RateBeer's take on Ambergeddon

Have you had Ambergeddon? Do you agree with my take? Let us know in the comments!

Happy Fathers Day

Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there.

My mom and I headed over to the liquor store earlier today to pick up some beers for quality father-son bonding.

My dad is a self-described "locovore", so I decided to go with some beers that have more of a local flavor to them.  Unfortunately, none of the great breweries in Madison sell beers that he doesn't get regularly, so I had to stretch it a little bit.  I'd say that New Glarus is close enough to Madison to count that as local, so we got him a 4-pack of their Imperial Weizen, as well as a bottle of their Belgian Red.  We finished it off with a beer that was local to me while I was living in Milwaukee, Lakefront's Bridge Burner--seriously, I lived a few blocks from the brewery.  That was awesome!

Dad and I split the Bridge Burner and each had an Imperial Weizen.  He definitively told me that he preferred the Bridge Burner.  Frankly, that surprised me a bit.  He generally prefers beers that are more like the Weizen, though he isn't huge on higher alcohol stuff so I guess it makes some sense.

I'm not really sure which one of them I thought was better.  I love weizens and I definitely have no issues with higher alcohol, but the Bridge Burner was a very good beer.  To be honest, I'm not actually a huge fan of a lot of the stuff at Lakefront (it's not bad beer, it's just generally not my style) but this was a very nice one. The Belgian Red is an entirely different experience, as it's a low alcohol cherry beer.  I actually got it for him on his recommendation, and we split it.  I'd agree with his initial take: it's absolutely phenomenal.

Did you give/receive any Father's Day brews this year? If so, what?

Better late than never

Well, thanks to some computer issues, I wasn't able to post for The Session #52.  This really sucked for me, as it was a topic that is very relevant to this blog.

As host of Session #52, I’ve decided not to focus on the substance of beer, but the material that plays a supporting role. Bottles, coasters, cans, labels, ads, tap handles, church keys, hats, t-shirts, tip trays, glassware and signs have been collected by fanatics ever since beer has been sold.

 I can probably come up with about 50 posts for this topic, and since I'm way too late for the session this month and all I'm doing for the time being is working on job applications, cover letters, resumes, and a plot in a community garden I think I'll give it a shot.

I guess that the natural place to start this topic for a blog about a beer bottle collection would probably be with the bottles.

Back in the fall of 2010, my longtime friend Phin moved into an apartment owned and operated by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  The apartment that he moved into wasn't cleaned out particularly well, as there were a number of alcohol bottles left on display.

The bottle that stood out to us was called Sigmund Snopek's, a beer that was apparently brewed by Lakefront Brewery, just a few blocks from our apartment.  It gave us the idea to put more bottles on display.  Since then, we've moved into a new apartment (where we at one point had 99 bottles of beer on the wall), and then moved out of it after graduating college.  According to the Facebook Photo Album I made, we have at least 160 bottles in the collection (I think it's probably over 200, but I haven't uploaded a lot of the pictures yet.) 

We made a set of rules about putting bottles onto "The Wall", and have since come up with a number of unwritten rules.  Unfortunately, now that we're no longer living in that apartment, The Wall is currently a set of bags tucked back in a corner in my parents' storage room.

I have a tendency to rate beers a little differently than most, in that I break it down into rating the bottle and rating the beer itself.  For instance, a review that I'm planning on doing sometime in the near future is for a beer called Polygamy Porter.  It wasn't my favorite, but it wound up being put on display (translation: it was one of 34 beers to be on the front row of one of the two shelves) just because of the funny name and bottle art.

Anyway, moving out of the apartment was pretty rough on the collection, as not only are the bottles no longer on display, but a handful had to be thrown out since there was no room for them.  Fortunately though, most of those were watery macro lagers that we didn't really want anyway.  Not to mention, the political drama unfolding in the state left a number of the bottles on the boycott list.

Well, I'm rambling, so I think I'll end this post.  I'll be back tomorrow (or later tonight) with another long-winded post about some of the other beer-related goods I'm collecting.

My thoughts on the attack on Wisconsin craft beer

It's been a pretty crazy time for craft beer in the state of Wisconsin.  Faced with a situation where craft beer sales are growing fairly rapidly and macro sales are dwindling, it seems that MillerCoors is now attempting to put a halt to that growth in the name of defending themselves from Anheuser-Busch.

I will freely admit that I'm not a fan of Scott Walker, but I also feel that it's important to note that this is not a Republicans vs. Democrats issue.

Glenn Grothman (the Republican who called the Capitol protestors "slobs") and Bob Jauch (a Democrat from the northern part of the state) voted against passing the motion.  It has bipartisan support and bipartisan opposition.  By painting this as an evil plot by the Republicans, people are seriously damning the chances that this will be taken out of the budget bill or changed in anyway, as Republicans stand by Governor Walker.

My opinion is that removing this motion from the budget bill, then negotiating it to a point where it helps the state as a whole is something that all Wisconsin voters can agree is a good thing.  Protecting small businesses in a growing industry is a good thing, no matter what political affiliation you have.  Promoting products that are made in America by companies that are entirely based in America (unlike SAABMillerMolsonCoors or Anheuser-Busch Inbev) is also a good thing. 

If small brewers were truly made exempt by the motion?  I'd be all for it.  While I personally don't like MillerCoors products, the company still employs a good number of people in the state.  Anheuser-Busch does not.  As a result, I am perfectly fine with Miller protecting itself from A-B.  There's just no reason to throw a group that collectively makes up 6 percent of the market under the bus in the process. 

If you're in the state of Wisconsin, please help prevent this motion from becoming a part of the budget bill.  Contact your legislators and let them know you oppose this motion if Craft Brewers aren't protected

And to think, I was embarrassed to even post its name

On Tuesday, Phin saw single bottles of the Sam Adams Longshots series available in Whole Foods.  By Wednesday, they were gone.

Clearly, we needed to buy a six pack of these guys before we lost our chance.

Wednesday night I had a chance to try a couple of them: the Blackened Hops and the Honey B's Lavender Ale.

Blackened Hops:
Yikes, this one is not my style at all.  All I got was hops, hops and more hops.  I wound up getting to the point where I just had to drink it as fast as I could.  To someone who enjoys the American microbrewery style of hopping the shit out of everything, I can see how this would be a likable beer.  Frankly, I disliked it to the point where I can't even rate it.  It gets the first I that I've ever given.

Honey B's Lavender Ale:
I was nervous as hell when I opened this one.  I thought I was about to drink Bed Bath & Beyond in a bottle.  My nerves weren't really helped when I took a whiff of the beer and got...nothing.  No lavender, no honey, no hops or malts.  I truly couldn't smell anything.

I've always been a believer that the "aroma" wasn't really all that important in a beer because it's almost always very similar to taste, but I now realize my mistake.  If nothing else, the aroma lets you know what the hell you're about to get yourself into.  I took a sip and found that I actually liked this one.  It's got a pretty strong honey flavor, but that's a flavor that's always worked for me.  Combined with the light hops and the lavender flavor, this was a surprisingly good beer.  I give it a B.

Finally, tonight I drank the Friar Hop.  I was saving it for last because I anticipated it being my favorite, but as it turns out I actually liked Honey B's Lavender Ale better.  The beer is a Belgian Ale with an American twist--namely, the hops.  While a lot of hop heads get bored with the different Belgian style ales, I think it's best to leave them as they are.  The hops were interesting, but in my opinion they made things worse.  I give it a B-.

Have you had any beers from this or a prior Longshots series? What did you think of them? Let us know in the comments!

Breckenridge Vanilla Porter

Even as much as I have gotten sick of the giants of the beer industry, I have to give them credit.

They are very effective marketers (even when they run stupid campaigns like this.)

They make it a point to add gimmicks to their products, and they convince people that they make high quality beer.  

Breckenridge Brewery in Denver is launching a hilarious new ad campaign that's poking fun at the major beer companies (well, mostly at MillerCoors).

You can check out the commercials here.

We've got a bottle of Avalanche Ale in the collection, but we drank the six pack of it months ago and I didn't get a review done, so Phin and I decided that we'd head over to the liquor store and grab something else by them.  We went with the SummerBright Ale.  I downed my half of the six pack last night and sprinted to the liquor store 15 minutes before it closed to grab a six pack of their Vanilla Porter.  I had read some good things about it on Beerit, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

One of the things that I read about it was that it was a great dessert beer. That had me a little nervous, as I thought it'd wind up being a Summer Shandy-like. Fortunately, there are still qualities that I'd associate with beer in the brew, and in my opinion the combo of the sweet flavor in a porter really works.  Maybe for people who are bigger fans of the style, this one doesn't work, but I like it. 

I give it a B+.

Vanilla Porter on Beer Advocate
Vanilla Porter on RateBeer
Breckenridge's take on Vanilla Porter

Have you ever had Breckenridge Vanilla Porter? Agree with my take on it? Let us know in the comments!

I should have known better

Last night I made a terrible decision.

With the Oklahoma City Thunder beating the Memphis Grizzlies by 6 points in overtime, I told my roommate that I would "finish a beer by the end of every overtime".  We had done something similar during the epic six overtime game between Connecticut and Syracuse a couple years earlier, when the two of us and a couple other friends finished a game of beer pong during every overtime.

Given how ridiculous this series has been, I should have known better.  Thanks to a last second three pointer by Greivis Vasquez (who seemed to be throwing up a junk shot in hope of drawing a foul and getting 3 free throws), the Grizzlies were able to take the game into a second overtime period.  Nobody took control of overtime number 2, but fortunately the Thunder were able to finish it off and save my liver in the third overtime.


And on a side note, I absolutely called Vasquez taking that shot after Mike Conley and O.J. Mayo fouled out.

But anyway, my beer of choice last night was Bell's Oberon.  I didn't really start getting into the craft scene until August of this year when my roommate turned 21, so I missed my shot at Oberon last year.  But thanks to a well-placed ad (that will be the topic of a future article), I tried some at a local bar and loved it.  I threw one into a mixed six pack while I was at Woodman's, and my dad decided to get me a couple of six packs of it for my birthday.

While a lot of "beer snobs" don't like it because...well...they're hipsters and love to hate what's popular I guess, I think it's great.  (On that hipster comment: a lot of people I've talked to who don't like it cite "the fact that 'commoners' like it" as a main reason they're not big on it.)  I've had other beers that tried to mix traditional wheat beers with hops, but in my opinion they tend to make it all about the hops.  This one has a great balance of the two, and it's a good beer for almost any occasion.  It's a "lawnmower beer" that tastes good enough to be consumed one or two at a time.

In terms of overall quality, it's not as complex as a lot of others, but I don't really care.  It's a versatile beer that I think tastes absolutely great.  I give it an A.

Oberon on Beer Advocate
Oberon on RateBeer
Oberon on bellsbeer.com (it should be the first one that shows up)