Session 77: IPA: What’s the Big Deal?

Is anyone really surprised by the rise of the IPA in American Craft Brewing? It seems (or seemed) the logical initial step in the systematic rejection of domestic macro beer by your average craft beer drinker: replace neutral with overpowering and small with big. Sure, there were a couple of potential contenders for this spot—RIS, the other beer nerd Ur-beer—but IPA is currently trending as the beer de jour of craft brewing: it comes in white, brown, black, red, rye, DIPA, TIPA, imperial, and session forms, in addition to the regular ol’ IPA. Oh, and don’t forget British, American, and Belgian versions. In other words, IPAs have become the male version of the handbag: a necessary accessory craft beer drinkers can’t do without. So I get it, but that doesn’t mean I’m jumping on the bandwagon. What I’m really looking forward to, though, are the next couple of steps craft beer consumers will (hopefully) make. We’re already at the start of the turn to smaller, flavorful beers—see the “session” listing for IPAs above, although there are numerous others available, like Humulus Session or Swing. Need I overly emphasize the adjective small here? After that, maybe we can imagine an increased acceptance of subtlety? I know, I know, that’s crazy talk. But I’d like to see craft beer drinkers realize that making a good lager, craft or not, is actually quite hard. Not that everyone needs to make one. Or even like them. But let’s be honest, craft beer could benefit from a touch more healthy discernment as a remedy to arbitrary opinion. Which is just another way of saying knowledge. Because, after all, looking down your nose with nothing but self-righteousness when you lack the ability to understand difference is the epitome of poor taste. And there is certainly enough of that going around already.

The Session is a monthly first Friday beer blogging event; this month is hosted by Justin at Justin’s Brew Review. Drink and blog, y’all.

(7/5/2013)

Session 70: In the Words of Chuck D

It is my firm suspicion that “hype” is one of the middle stages of beer geek development, quite possibly the longest, somewhere between “sanctimonious” and “jaded.” Actually, it may be coterminous with the first one. In fact, many people may never get beyond the “hype” stage—I like to think of it as the equivalent to the anal stage in human development. C’mon, you all remember that point where you absolutely had to try some fancy-pants beer, no matter what the cost. And for that reason alone, it is also the most over-exploited stage by the brewing industry, mainly because, well, the other stages are not so financially lucrative. Sure, both the earlier and later stages can contain the impetus towards or the residual impulses of the “hype” stage, but neither is nearly so rampant with a complete lack of impulse control.

Then there is the fine line between “hype” and “quality.” The overwhelming and ubiquitous nature of “hype” tends to stand in the way of attempts at both subjective and objective discussions regarding beer. You know, whichever one you favor. And where do beers that earn a name based on exclusivity and scarcity fit in? I get Dark Lord as a product, and even a day-long event, but I don’t find Dark Lord that exciting. I know, I know, the heresy. Rather, our favorite moments are when we get to discover something interesting on our own—when we choose something off the shelf and take it home, and get to determine from that experience whether the beer has any merit on its own. Like our recent experience with Epic’s Utah Sage, or even our recent visit to Flat 12 Bierwerks in Indianapolis. Both were a product of our interest in discovering beer on our own terms. Sure, no one can completely escape the colossal juggernaut of “hype” created by beer advertising and social media. But it tends to leave you alone the more you ignore it.

The Session is a monthly first Friday beer blogging event; this month is hosted by David J. Bascombe at Good Morning... Drink and blog, y’all.

(12/7/2012)

The Session #67: How Many Breweries in 2017?

As Derek notes in the the announcement to this Session, “the latest brewery numbers recently released from the Brewer’s Association, [...] counted exactly 2,126 breweries in the United States. To put that into context, you have to go way back to 1887 when the United States had that many breweries. It’s an astonishing 47% increase from just five years ago in 2007 when the tally was a mere 1,449, despite the United States slowly recovering from a serious recession over this period. And according to the Brewers Association, another whopping 1,252 breweries are in the planning stages.” To clear everything up, I can tell you that there will be 2589.5 breweries in the United States in 2017. The half is to prevent ties. 

If I were to base my guess on what is happening in Dayton, OH, the town I live in, I’d actually have to go a lot higher. When I moved here in 2006, there was nothing in terms of local breweries. While there was a fantastic German-American brewing history, and there had even been some recent attempts and failures prior to my arrival, no one was up and running when I showed up on the scene. All that should change shortly. Currently, there is one small brewery that has recently opened, Dayton Beer Company, as well as several others that are in the planning stages: Yellow Springs Brewery, Toxic Brew Company, Fifth Street Brewpub (which is planned as a co-op collective, and yes, I am a member), Eudora Brewing Company, and Vitruvian Brewing Company. There may be more I don’t know about as well. Will they all actually end up open? I don’t know. Can they all survive? Again, you’re probably asking the wrong guy. But I will say that it is exciting to hope. I do think that higher numbers are sustainable, albeit with at least one big caveat: it will depend upon how these breweries market themselves on the local scale. I do think that 3-4 local, small scale breweries can be sustained within a city the size of Dayton, specifically if there is not cutthroat competition by one or more to take over and drive the others out. If growth becomes the model that these breweries pursue, however, I would expect to see the numbers drop, not only locally, but nationally—I think that the caveat I am offering here plays well beyond the Dayton region limits. I would like to imagine Dayton—and the United States writ large—with more local, fresh, and most importantly good, beer. And while I understand that markets dictate a need to sell beer as a product, the dream of becoming the next big thing is certainly not sustainable with the numbers provided by the Brewer’s Association. Then again, I read books for a living, so what the hell do I know?

The Session is a monthly first Friday beer blogging event; this month is hosted by Derek Peterman at Ramblings of a Beer Runner. Drink and blog, y’all.

Can I have my winning beer now, Derek?

 

(9/7/2012)

The Session #66; or Highlander’s Beer-y Revenge

So there can be only one, huh? That means making some choices. And when it comes down to it, I want a beer that is bright and refreshing when young, and yet able to age gracefully into something subtle and complex. I want it to combine Old World know-how with New World innovation. In other words, I want a beer that can be all things to all people. And that beer? An American-hopped Belgian Pale Ale/Saison with Brettanomyces. When young, it offers citrus, pine, and resin hops backed by light candy sweetness, bitterness, and bright carbonation. And when older, the earthy straw and loamy tang of funk sparkles crisp and tart on the tongue. Really, it’s more like two beers for the price of one. Which, in part, may be the best thing about this beer: just when the hops begin to fade and disappear, the Brettanomyces (and/or other potentially appropriate souring organisms) starts picking up. I call that win-win. And while some may quibble that my combination of BPA and Saison is cheating, we’re basically just talking a lighter, Pilsen malt-based beer here—the American hopping takes the potential differences between the styles in hop types and schedules. Sure, the specialty grains are different (well, kinda), but I can always use the Saison designation as justification to throw pretty much anything that I want into the mash-tun anyway. At least that’s what Phil Markowski tells me. Plus, like any good American, I reserve the right to use whatever yeast I deem necessary at a given moment—as long as it is appropriately attenuative, of course. And don’t forget the reciprocal bugs to finish off any lurking fermentable (and unfermentable!) sugars. I mean, who wouldn’t like a BPA made with Simcoe and Wyeast 3522 Belgian Ardennes? Toss in the White Labs Platinum Series WLP 644 Brettanomyces bruxellensis trois, and you had me at Belgian.

Not surprisingly, I’ve tried my hand at a couple different versions of this beer. The Dandelion Saison with Brett B was delicious enough that it was hard not drinking it all young (sure, I went light on the hops, but that was so I could discern the dandelion). An earlier version of this beer used the dregs from a bottle of the Bruery’s Saison de Lente. I currently have a Cherry Saison with Brett B that, almost four months in, is still slowly bubbling away in the carboy. By far the best version, however, is the Hoppy American Belgian Pale Ale I made with yeast cultured from a bottle of Jolly Pumpkin’s Bam Biere. I have four bottles left, one of which I drank while typing this post (see picture above). Damn, that beer is good. And I’m not alone. I’d consider the Bruery’s Saison de Lente and Anchorage Brewing’s Galaxy White IPA with Brett professionally-made versions of the beer to end all other beers offered here; there are undoubtedly others, like Goose Island’s Sofie, as well. Saison de Lente undergoes a delightful transformation in the bottle—one year later, it is nothing like the beer when fresh, and yet both are a delight. Next year, I’ll have a three-year vertical to try, and I’m excited to see how it continues to change. And when I had a bottle of Galaxy White IPA in San Francisco in May, it was bright and citrusy, just developing an underlying funky tang; the bottle I had earlier this week had decidedly shifted towards barnyard funky deliciousness, with the hop flavor all but disappeared. My first thought when trying the second bottle: that’s the one.

The Session is a monthly first Friday beer blogging event; this month is hosted by Craig Gravina at drinkdrank. Drink and blog, y’all.

(8/3/2012)

The Session #65: On the Solo Tip

Like most Americans, early on I was socialized to believe that doing anything by yourself was, well, weird. This included pretty much most aspects of life: clothes, beliefs, interests, etc.—you know, be one with the herd. The problem for me was that I didn’t work that way. I didn’t mind being alone for hours on end, reading and thinking, and I found quite a bit of pleasure in consciously (albeit quietly) deviating from accepted social norms. At the same time, I did learn to fit in, by which I mean I learned to be a social creature, if for no other reason than the stark realization that willfully ignoring and contravening social conventions carried far more social costs than merely being a loner. And, with time, these attitudes expanded to include other age relevant elements of my life, like beer in general, and drinking in specific, once I became of age for such pursuits.

The conforming public extrovert and rebellious private introvert went on until I was in college, when one day, when I was meeting friends for a beer, I ran across a professor of mine, who was drinking a pint by himself in the bar and reading a book. I remember this moment very specifically for two reason: 1) I had skipped class that day, and 2) he is the first person in my memory that I actively recognize as drinking alone in public. And he was most certainly enjoying himself doing it. I was so shocked that I walked over to ask him what I had missed in class that day. He looked up, happily answered my question, and then returned to his book. Clearly, company was not needed. The feeling I experienced at that moment can be best described as a combination of being impressed coupled with cognitive dissonance—here was someone who was not afraid to display his introversion publicly. So simple, and yet the thought had never crossed my mind. And thus was born my embrace of public introversion. Over the course of the next couple of years, I experimented: bars, coffee shops, restaurants, movies. These quasi-public, quasi-private endeavors allowed me to realize that, on occasion, these events were more enjoyable when done alone: I could focus on enjoying the task at hand, be it reading, eating, mulling over a pint of something specific, or enjoying a film. Yes, all of these experiences can, at times, be enhanced by the company of others. But not always. So here’s to the times when drinking alone is its own reward.

(7/6/2012)

The Session #52: Breweriana

Like most former 30-somethings, I was initially seduced by the ease and grandeur of the internet. This reciprocally led, of course, to my e-Bay period. You know what I’m talking about. I mean, you can pretend that you don’t know, but you’d be lying. Anyway, while others focused on things like favorite childhood toys (Thundercats, for example), I went in for Olympia beer paraphernalia. Why that? Mostly because my grandfather had worked for Olympia back in the day—I remember getting the all access tour as a kid and being blown away by the size of the tanks. Plus, we got to check out the sweet falls pictured on the label. Anyway, because of this, Olympia always felt like family.

Can you see the family resemblance?

The initial thing I went to e-Bay looking for was a “Powered by Oly” patch. It featured a keg with smoke and dust shooting out behind it—as if it was a car peeling out really fast. Both of my brothers and I had these patches on our overalls as kids. Nothing like rocking the Oly patch on our OshKosh B’goshes. Looking back, it does seem kinda odd to have a beer patch on the clothes I wore to school, but, after all, it was the 70’s. Anyway, I looked and looked, but could never find one. But there were tons of other cool Olympia merchandise. So I started buying it. The quirk to my collecting was that I generally mailed whatever I bought to other family members—sweet glassware and pitchers went to my brother with the kegerator, while I doled out hats, Hawaiian shirts, t-shirts, sweaters, patches, bottle openers, bottlecaps and all kinds of other crap to everyone else. I even had family friends ask to be included on the list I used to pass stuff out. While I kept a few things for myself (like this sweet beer can hat), most of it went elsewhere.

Two things led to the end of my e-Bay collecting. One, I realized I was spending far too much time trolling e-Bay for esoteric purchases. After all, since I lived in the Northwest, the vast kinds of arcane beer and hydroplane paraphernalia was well-nigh overwhelming. But the real nail in the coffin was when the old tanks from the Olympia brewery started showing up on e-Bay. Yep. Seriously. After using the Olympia brewery for years to brew all of the regional beers it owned (which was, at this point, all of them), SABMiller decided it was time to shut down the brewery and move production to a newer and out-of-state facility. Now, while I knew this was happening, I didn’t realize that all of the liquidated stuff no one wanted would end up on e-Bay. And it kinda drove it all home. So while I still have a couple of my e-Bay finds, I’ve moved away from the collecting. Although I do want to end on a happier note: the coolest thing I scored from my days with e-Bay were 300 unused Olympia beer caps, most of which I’ve subsequently used on my own beer. Now that’s awesome!

(6/3/2011)

The Session #51 and ½: The Great Online Beer & Cheese-Off, Part Deux

This tweener version of the Session (see results of Session 51) allows for more cheese and more beer. Always good together. My plan was to focus on the one cheese I could actually find, Humboldt Fog, and then grab as many beers from the list as possible. Or at least what was affordable. Oh, and invite a couple of friends over to assist us in the tastings, as some of these beers only come in big bottles. Oh, the humanity.

What we’re drinking:
Schneider-Weisse Adventinus (from Brookston Beer Bulletin)
Duchesse de Bourgogne (from Wine and Beer of Washington State)
Saison Dupont (from The Brew Lounge )
Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere (that was us)
Harviestoun Old Engine Oil (from 99 Pours)
21st Amendment Monk’s Blood (from Ramblings of a Beer Runner)

Since I didn’t take notes, the top 3 cheeses from each of us will have to suffice:

Elli
1. Harviestoun Old Engine Oil
2. Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere
3. Saison Dupont

Jeff
1. Saison Dupont
2. Harviestoun Old Engine Oil
3. Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere

Jeffrey
1. Saison Dupont
2. Harviestoun Old Engine Oil
3. Schneider-Weisse Adventinus

Tom
1. Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere
2. Saison Dupont
3. Harviestoun Old Engine Oil

Tabulating our rankings in a reverse-point manner (3 for 1st, etc.) makes Saison Dupont our overall winner (9 points), followed by Harviestoun Old Engine Oil (8 points), Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere (6 points), and Schneider-Weisse Adventinus Weizenbock (1 point). The Duchesse did surprisingly poor, although I would say it was the bottle we had more than anything else—very very sweet and almost no sourness or complexity. Dupont was the best match for the entire cheese—it mixed well the crumbly inner cheese, the funky outer cheese, and the sharper rind. Dee-licious!

Thanks, Jay, for the great idea. A fun time was had by all, even if we don’t have the notes to prove it...

Cheese it!

(5/20/2011)

The Session #51: The Great Online Beer & Cheese-off

So on Friday we were “occupied.” Not like in we were invaded or anything, but merely otherwise involved. You know the drill. So the fun and hijinx of the Session and Jay Brooks’ call for a cheese and beer bonanza had to be postponed until today. Rather than take any sort of scientific approach that focused on pairings, we went with the four cheeses and four beers approach. You know, mix and match. Embrace the random. Here’s what we grabbed:

Cheese:
Champignon Mushroom Brie
Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog Goat Milk
Vintage 5 Year Gouda
Widmer 10 Year Cheddar

Beer:
Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere
Weihenstephaner Hefe Weisse
Westmalle Dubbel
Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout

Let the fun begin!

Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere: Humboldt Fog matches Bam Biere for a couple of reasons: the funk in the outer layer of the cheese melds well with the sharp mineral-ly and funky components of the beer—sort of complementing funks—and the sharper inner crumbly and creamy goat cheese matches the brightness and spritziness of the beer. None of the other three were a terrible match, although Widmer and Champignon were both too subtle to hold up to bright mineral funk of Bam Biere. Vintage Gouda did have the complexity to hold up to the beer, but the nutty, biscuit, and creamy flavors didn’t balance correctly.

Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier: both Champignon and Vintage Gouda work decently for similar reasons: each pairing offers a study in opposites. The creamy density of Champignon balanced the brightness and softness of the beer, while the stronger flavors in the Gouda offered a different texture and character of flavors against which to balance the lighter and brighter beer. The flavor of Widmer Cheddar completely overpowered the gentle flavors of the beer, which was an interesting shift from the way it was overwhelmed by the Bam Biere, while the Humboldt Fog just didn’t quite work—the creaminess of the goat cheese didn’t work in the ways that it did with Champignon.

Westmalle Dubbel: sadly, none of the cheeses were a good match for this beer. Both Widmer and Vintage Gouda offer a similarity in complexity, with the nutty caramel of Gouda fitting in with Westmalle’s fruity malt character, but neither was a perfect match. As well, the creaminess of Champignon balances the complex malt character, but not exactly. And the funkiness of the outer layer of Humboldt Fog did not work well with the soft, gentle, and complex malt profile at all, although the inner creamy part was a better match.

Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout: Widmer Cheddar found its match: it brings out the sweet molasses character of the beer, and each balances the other nicely—both are improved via the pairing. Champignon brought out the roasty chocolate character of the beer, but was overall less interesting, and Humboldt Fog got covered over and didn’t work. Vintage Gouda was an interesting match, but as Elli offers, “neither did anything for each other.”

The remains of the day...

Best Pairings: in terms of the final tabulations, we had a split decision. Elli found the Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout and Widmer 10 Year Cheddar the best match, while I thought the Jolly Pumpkin and Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog the best match. But since we both got to eat fancy cheese and drink fancy beer, I’m pretty certain we’re both winners.

(5/8/2011)

The Session #50: How Do They Make Me Buy The Beer?

Another month, another Session. On April Fool’s, no less. This one is hosted by Alan McLeod at A Good Beer Blog, who asks, among other things, for us to ruminate on the conscious and unconscious mental calculations we use to purchase beer. In other words, he gets to play Freud to our collective nuerotic and hysteric beer drinking Dora. Good thing I get to drink beer while I wax poetic about my personal beer math.

I’m an easy sell. If they make the beer, I’ll certainly consider buying the beer. After all, I like trying new beer, and I like brewers that are willing to experiment. So I’ll pretty much try anything once. For example, the massive influx of saisons over the last two years has been a real boon to my palate, as not only did I get to try numerous different examples, I got to compare them with the Old World examples that defined the style. That, my friends, was some good drinking. However, the litmus test for a second purchase of the same beer comes down to the quality of the product as well as the brewery’s ability to consistently repeat my experience—it doesn’t necessarily have to perfectly repeat the experience, but it does need to be consistently enjoyable. At the same time, there are certain experimental beer varieties that have already worn out their welcome in my book. Like pumpkin ale. This year, I tried Jolly Pumpkin’s La Parcela, only because I knew it wouldn’t be the standard fare. But Jolly Pumpkin is one of the few breweries that has a carte blanche signed by yours truly. They could make a Tiger Blood beer and I’d buy it with no questions. Actually, Jolly Pumpkin could probably go far more extreme, and I doubt I’d bat an eye. Which I guess means that my thoughts on a brewery also count in the accounting.

I can, however, be turned off by the advertising choices of breweries. I do on occasion make snap judgements about beers, mainly based on labels, which on occasion impedes my beer sampling. Sometimes this bites me in the ass. My initial reaction to Bear Republic’s Hop Rod Rye was to dismiss the beer because of the dorky hot rod-themed label. Yes, that was a mistake on my part, one that I rue to this day. My bad. Other beers, however, earn and actually deserve my scorn. Beer labels that objectify women’s bodies, or that use racially or sexually charged language (or in many instances, do all three) don’t deserve my business. I’d say they don’t deserve anyone’s business, but the engrained nature of sexism and racism in the global economy is a conversation pretty much no one likes having—for most people, socially conscious beer means enviromentally friendly beer, not examining their own belief patterns. After all, that might take the fun out of beer. And as the beer math goes, for most people that doesn’t compute.

(4/1/2011)

The Session #49: Regular Beer

Regular beer has been an ever-shifting descriptor during my life. I came of age in the Pacific Northwest during the early heyday of craft brewery explosion. That means my memory crosses the generations. High school was all Olympia and Rainier. Sure, they were domestics, but they touched a cord and addressed a need. You wanna talk game? Vitamin R hired Mickey Rooney, and Olympia was already on the national circuit. In college, everything changed. I recall the times as an undergraduate in Eugene when Widmer Hefeweizen was fighting for tap space and pricing itself to beat out domestics. This was the same time where I could roll into the local 7-11, and score 22 bottles of Rogue, which was something that I took for granted until I moved East for graduate school. I also recall summers in Seattle when the bartender at Red Hook’s Trolleyman would fill our bike bottles with beer as we headed out the door.

With all this said, one of my regular beers for a long time was Rolling Rock. This was in part inspired by moving to Buffalo for graduate school, where Saranac didn’t inspire me in the ways that Northwest brewing did. They tried, but they weren't living up to what I had left behind. Rolling Rock was an easy-drinking beer, and it had been a favorite of my mother’s. (Note: one of my brothers recently crushed my fond memories by informing my that my mother liked Rolling Rock because Dirk Pitt drank it. Yes, Dirk Pitt of Clive Cussler fame. And I guess this inspired my mother to like Rolling Rock. When I thought it was her own interest in beer. But I didn’t know this at the time.) So I drank Rolling Rock, and several of the East Coast beers that were trying to be good. When Ommegang and Southern Tier came around, and Victory started showing up in Buffalo, life turned over a new leaf. Things were good. But Rolling Rock was always there for me, too. And I remembered that.

Then one day I noticed that the horse on the beer cap and label changed. Not a lot. But it had changed. Then I noticed that the city at the bottom of the front of the label had changed from Latrobe, PA to St. Louis, MO. I felt violated. No, really. The glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe aren’t in St. Louis. When I realized what that meant, I felt really violated. You can laugh. But I did. Something died in me that day.

I still drink Rolling Rock on occasion, but the taste is always bittersweet. Maybe it is because I’m angry. Maybe it is because craft brewing caught finally caught on on the East Coast, and I could finally find the beers that hadn’t been there before. And now, with the craft brewing explosion, there are things I like all over the place. “Regular” beer is much more plentiful than ever before. Even in Dayton, OH, I can find beer that fits. Southern Tier Pale Ale does the job, as does Rivertown Dunkel and Jeffrey McElfresh Smoky Brown. That’s right, I rely on local homebrew to get my regular fix. I also travel enough to see the regular beer I wish was local as well as regular: Full Sail Session, Bruery Humulus Session, and Iron Horse Hop Hub Pale Ale offer a peek, but this list could go on and on. To the break-a-break-a-dawn even. But regular beer. I want more session-strength American craft beer. And I want more local beer. Maybe you don’t live in he hinterlands, but I do. Who is with me?

(3/4/2011)

The Session #48: Cask, Keg, Can, or Bottle

The Session is a first Friday beer blogging adventure begun by the likes of Jay Brooks of Brookston Beer Bulletin and Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer. The idea is to get a body of like-minded individuals all writing about the same topic, so I figured I’d toss my proverbial hat in the ring and see what happened. Can’t hurt too bad, can it? This month’s host is Simon Johnson at Reluctant Scooper. Kudos, my man.

So, Cask, Keg, Can, or Bottle, hmmm? My answer revolves mostly around the location of consumption: bottles for at home or at a friend’s house and casks/kegs for those nights when I’m stepping out on the town. I will confess that my greatest attachment is to bottle-conditioned beer, mostly because of the license it provides to store beer that I can pull out and drink at my leisure over a longer period of time. Sure, bottles can have problems with oxidation in the long run, but let’s be honest: who has the cash to store whole kegs? And who regularly pulls out a keg and invites over the appropriate number of people to drink it? Although if you are the type of person who ages kegs, and you need help with them, please call me. I’d be happy to do my part. After all, when at home, bottles do provide a greater diversity of options, albeit in the exact same manner that kegs do when out on the town. Given the current rise of canning, I could be easily convinced to embrace cans for the same reason, although I am not sure if a bottle-conditioned/live-beer-in-a-can is a possibility—anyone know?

Kegs and casks are always enjoyable, but I more connect them with being out on the town, with kegs as a stand in for the normal evening out, and casks representing special one-off events. While beer culture is on the rise in Dayton, OH, there are only about four or five locations that have an extensive tap selection, and casks are few and far between. For example, I know that there is a firkin of Hopslam that is going to be tapped locally next week, which I will undoubtedly attend. And I most decidedly enjoyed the Heavy Seas Loose Cannon 420 Cask that made an appearance last April 20th. I’d certainly love to see more casks, but since I live in Dayton, I also need to remain realistic. Until we get a brewpub of our own with cask events every Friday (or even once a month), casks are still strictly special event-grade material. As well, the growth of the craft beer world has reciprocally made some of these events less enjoyable to attend locally—at times overly-crowded and at others a bit too aggressively uber-masculine. While such growth may be good for beer, it is not necessarily so good for me. Remember, kids, beer is not a contest.

Having said that, I do wish, however, I was attending the Bruery’s First Firkin Friday, which represents the type of experimentation and possibility that such an event should embody. They’ll be pouring five different versions of their Saison de Lente: a cask of Saison de Lente 2011, while on draft will be Saison de Lente 2010, Saison de Lente 2011, 100% Brett Saison de Lente 2011, and 0% Brett Saison de Lente 2011. Oh, the possibilities. Think of all the variables to taste that are represented in that line-up. While beer may not be a contest, I still can have beer envy, can’t I?

(2/4/2011)