Greg Clow has posted his roundup for The Session #6 (fruit beers for those who have forgotten).
Looks like we’re closing in on three dozen contributors, which could soon make the bloggers involved a buying force that the bigger brewers will have to sit up and pay attention to. (OK, scratch that, silly idea.)
Look for Rick Lyke’s upcoming announcement of the theme for Session #7. If he sticks with the idea he was thinking about then it’s one we all can (and should) have fun with.
Berkshire Brewing founders Chris Lalli and Gary Bogoff first brewed Raspberry Strong Ale for Christmas in 1990 using three-quarters pound of whole raspberries per gallon and it became in instant Christmas tradition.
When they started making it commercially in 1996 they stuck with real fruit, which is why it seems like an excellent choice for today’s Session. [The Session is a virtual gathering of beer bloggers on the first Friday of the month, all writing to the same theme. Greg Clow hosts today.]
They cut back the raspberries a bit, using one-half pound per gallon, adding them after primary fermentation. “After seven-to-ten days you can see the berries start to turn a fleshy color,” Bogoff said. That’s because the color, and flavor, has moved on to the beer. It pours a reddish-brown that takes almost all its color from the berries because the base beer is a strong pale ale.
“We made it as a Christmas treat,” Bogoff said. “We like fruit, but we thought beers made with extract or syrup ended up more on the soda-sweet side rather than tasting like beer.”
They brewed seven barrels back in 1996, while they made 60 barrels for release on Valentine’s Day this year and plan to brew 80 barrels in December for Valentine’s Day 2008.
“We did it to spoil ourselves,” Bogoff said. “We knew that if we did a beer like this in 1994 (the year Berkshire opened) we’d have been out of business in two months – it was just too weird.”
They quickly discovered that tracking down raspberries for a 210-gallon batch was a bit more of a challenge than for 10 gallons. They ended up ordering raspberries grown in Chile through Sysco. Four years ago they found a local farmer who can provide enough fruit. He harvests the berries in July and August and they are frozen and stored at a nearby ice cream plant.
The result is a deceptively strong 9% abv beer (its nickname in the brewery is “Truth Serum”) that leaves a final impression of fresh raspberry. Underlying malt complexity, the sweet-tart raspberry balance and a relatively dry finish all help it avoid that soda sweetness Bogoff was talking about.
Granted, he’s biased and has been drinking the beer for more than 16 years, but earlier this week he was just another guy drinking Raspberry Strong and he finished his glass before I downed mine (although I was liking each sip).
Had Chris Lalli been around as well I probably would have been third. After all, these guys made this for themselves.
We’re on the road right now – ah, the lengths we’ll go to to find just the right fruit beer for The Session – but I took the time to read Lew Bryson’s monthly Buzz so you should be able to as well.
ESPN columnist Norm Chad is looking for a new regular beer, to replace Rolling Rock, and Lew has plenty of useful friendly advice. Nice and complete, so I don’t really want to add anything.
However, one point of clarification. Chad has an these ABC’s for choosing beer and the first is:
Availability. It can’t just be sold in some tri-county area of North Dakota. Couch Slouch has to travel a lot. And when I’m on the road, I don’t want to have to fall back on Michelob or Miller Lite.
Lews writes, “I want to be able to get my choice of beer anywhere, because I travel a lot too” and later “I’ve got a beer philosophy that’s never failed me in 26 years, and I’m going to lay it on you: there is more than one beer in the world.”
The way I connect the dots that means the best choice doesn’t have to mean exact same beer. What’s best in Amherst, Mass., may not be best in Durango, Colo. I pick those two towns because both have bars known for their beer selections. The Moan and Dove in Amherst and Lady Falconburgh’s in Durango.
I was shocked that the Moan and Dove doesn’t offer anything from nearby Berkshire Brewing – “Because we’re ‘the local beer,'” Berkshire co-founder Gary Bogoff explained, which sounded so counter-intuitive my brain briefly shut down. And that Lady Falconburgh’s recently had beer from only one regional brewer, Ska Brewing (good choice, though).
I’m happy to find Victory HopDevil on tap only a few hours from our house and the selection at Moan and Dove will make anybody who appreciates beer drool, but those are beers I can find elsewhere. So credit goes to those proprietors for making this happen, but when the local beers are really good – and in these cases I know they are – they are going to be my first choice.
I’ve likely wandered off topic, and there are tourist things to get to today, so to get back on track read Lew’s column.