beers of conviction

Saint Somewhere on Good Morning America

I’m not sure why I watched the clip of DRAFT magazine publisher Austin Wilson’s Good Morning America appearance all the way to the end, but what a pleasant surprise.

The last beer they get to is from Saint Elsewhere Brewing Co. in Tarpon Springs, just north of Tampa.

The contrast between this tiny brewery and everything, beer billboards included, around the Super Bowl stadium is stunning.

Tuesday at the brewery founder Bob Sylvester motioned to his mash tun and brewing kettle in one corner, then three fermenters in the other. “You’ve had the tour,” he said, chuckling quietly and smiling.

I figure he’s smiling more after Friday’s GMA, so I posted a picture and a little bit more at Brew Like a Monk.

 

How strong is a standard beer? Not 8% abv

In some of the many discussions about Session Beers (like here and here) the fact that Utah brewers make a range of great beers containing less than 4 percent alcohol by volume usually comes up.

So it’s nice to see them get a little credit in Sunday’s New York Times: “Brew Pubs Gain an Unlikely Following in Utah.” But — whoa! &#151 when I read this paragraph I don’t know if somebody got confused converting alcohol by volume to alcohol by weight (4% abv equals 3.2% abw) or perhaps had a few beers first.

Utah still has quirky alcohol laws, including one that sets a limit of 3.2 percent alcohol — a little more than half the amount standard in most beers around the world — for beer sold on tap.

Does this mean that Vanessa Chang figures a standard beer contains almost 8% abv?

And how strong would a Session Beer be? Six percent? Lew, there’s work to be done.

 

Beer as the star on the newsstands

One thing you notice when you don’t have an address you can have your magazine subscriptions sent to is which magazines, including those about beer, have the best presence on newsstands.

Beer Advocate, for instance, has none — by choice. Brew Your Own and Beer Magazine are particularly strong (with the latter appearing in gas stations across Canada). You can count on finding DRAFT and Imbibe at most Borders and Barnes & Noble, while All About Beer is a little more hit and miss. Which is why I still haven’t seen the AABM with Santa on the cover, but yesterday tracked down the January-February DRAFT.

So a bit of news. After putting a personality such as Leslie Nielsen or Jeremy Roenick on the cover for its first 14 issues DRAFT went with a big old glass of beer. Interesting given yesterday’s reports that brewing giants Anheuser-Busch and Heineken have hired new celebrity spokesmen for their beers.

Good to see beer as the star. The cover says “The Best of Beer” with 2009 in large numbers behind the glass. The words promote “25 Beers of the Year,” “200-plus Top Beer Bars” and “35 Ways Breweries are Going Green.”

I’ve already rambled on enough about the silliness of “best” lists, so do what you want with the link. Instead I’ll confess there is one end of the year best I look forward to. That’s Stephen Beaumont’s Taste of the Year. I don’t always agree but he seems to get it right two years out of three and this is one of them.

The beer? Go look yourself. You’ll see it’s from the same brewery as two other beers on the DRAFT list.

 

Should you, do you, the smell the cork?

Lost Abbey corkI do like the sound of bottle of beer being uncorked, the pop followed by the lively sound of carbonation, or perhaps . . .

“Oh, bleep, we’ve got a gusher.”

Not to harp on the beer versus wine thing but that’s one thing beer has over wine (Champagne excepted). I thought about this a couple of weeks ago when I watched a waiter hand a customer in the restaurant a cork after he opened a bottle of wine. The man sniffed the cork and nodded, then the waiter poured a bit of wine. The man swirled and sniffed, then nodded again. The waiter went on to pour two full glasses.

Was there a point to this? I understand that sommeliers will sometimes smell a cork for a sign that a wine might be “corked” but it is hardly dependable. And beer is susceptible to the same problems with tainted corks.

But I don’t think you are going to catch me smelling the cork next time we have a bottle of Ommegang or Saint Somewhere or some other beer sold with a cork-and-cage top. Just doesn’t feel right.

 

Obamagang? You can’t call a beer that

How’s this for having fun?

Brewery Ommegang in New York’s specialty beer releases include a 6.2% abv draft only release just in time for Barack Obama’s inauguration. A company press release explains it will be called Inauguration Ale because . . .

“The TTB won’t let us call the beer Obamagang on the keg label. So it will be known legally as Inauguration Ale 2009, but the tap handles will be more . . . um . . . direct. The style lies between a porter and stout, with a bit of Kriek and a touch of chocolate blended in. It will be on draft only, beginning with the inauguration – in limited areas including DC, NYC, Syracuse, Philly, Chicago and Boston. We will donate a percentage of sales to charities in the respective cities where the beer is sold, and we’ve asked our distributors to match our donations and pick the local charities. (Also please note that the beer is not an endorsement of Obama.)”