beers of conviction

Session #24: A tripel to Twitter for

The SessionThis is my contribution to The Session, today celebrating two years of beer bloggers (and now Twitter users) writing about the same topic on the first Friday of the month. Visit Musings Over a Pint for the roundup. To follow it “live” on Twitter head to that site and search for #thesession.

Today the theme for Session #24 is “A Tripel for Two.” Host Dave Turley asks that we pick a Belgian-style tripel to review, and to tell “us why it’s your pick to share with that special someone.” After all, Valentine’s Day is only eight days out, although I don’t expect it to be a beery day. We have reservations at Cochon in New Orleans and I’ll be surprised if their beer menu equals their wine list.

But a good tripel, or what I’d call a good tripel, matches such a range of dishes it works well at almost any table. Of course I like my tripels sneaky bold, without the obvious alcohol or lingering sweetness that some prefer, with spicy yeast character usually accented by noble hops. Earthy and dry at the finish.

Captain Lawrence Xtra Gold, for example even though it blatantly breaks the noble hop rule. I don’t have a glass of it in front of me, so my drinking notes are from the fall of 2007, when I wrote about the beer for All About Beer magazine’s Beer Talk.

Here’s some of what I wrote for AABM:

Were there orange or mango groves in the flatlands east of Antwerp you sense this is the beer the monks of Westmalle might have come up with. Appropriately sub-titled an “American Tripel.” Citrus aromas and flavors from Northwest hops blend seamlessly with juicy orchard fruits and a bit of candy sweetness. Bready and yeasty on the palate, standing nicely against substantial alcohol. Hop flavor throughout, though in no sense bitter, tart and dry at the finish.

That’s more than 140 characters, so I guess I have to work on the Twitter version.

 

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.