the session

Session #4: I’ll have green chile with that

Chama River Class VI Golden

Corrales Bistro BreweryWhen we started The Session in March I was hoping each monthly host would not feel constrained to make the theme a particular beer style, so kudos to Snekse for making the June theme Drink Local.

If New Mexico has a state beer adjective it is hoppy, and the state beer style would be India Pale Ale. As I headed down the hill from my house to the Corrales Bistro Brewery for lunch, conversation with my friend Ron and a beer I was thinking “good day for an IPA.”

The temperature was nearing 80 – this is a great time of year in the Rio Grande Valley, with windy season mostly over and morning temperatures still in the 40s, lots of sun and afternoon highs looking at 90 – and I was looking forward to sitting out on the back deck with a clear view of the Sandia Mountains.

As I’ve written before, the most basic route to “downtown” Corrales takes me past the Milagro Winery, so you get a bonus picture of part of its vineyard. Mission grapes were first planted in Corrales in the 1880s, but most were gone by the 1930s. This vineyard was planted in 1985 with more traditional vinifera.

Milagro Winery

If you look at the menu board (above) you’ll note – as I did upon arriving – that no IPA is available. Sometimes the Bistro will have one from Turtle Mountain (up the hill in Rio Rancho), and sometimes from Chama River or Il Vicino (both in Albuquerque). No. 10 is blank because the keg of Turtle Mountain IPA ran dry.

The surprise was that the Bistro’s first brew was available. Understand that the brewery is not the top priority here – owner Fritz Allen wants to run a taproom featuring New Mexico beers, and you won’t find any other place with quite the cross-section of beers (all local) that the Bistro offers.

The brewery is a stitched together three-barrel system that doesn’t include a way – other than the help of nature – to control fermentation temperatures. That presents a brewing problem most places, but particularly in New Mexico. Thus, at the suggestion of Il Vicino brewer Brady McKeown (who lives in Corrales), Allen decided to started with a farmhouse ale brewed in the manner of a saison and with a yeast that likes higher temperatures.

He studied Phil Markowski’s Farmhouse Ales before tackling the project.

Simply called Summer Farm Ale, this beer is light in color and body and didn’t suffer in fermentation (no band aid!). It’s lightly spicy – the brewery serves it with a lime – though not brimming with yeast character.

The picture at the top is the other beer I drank, the Class VI Golden Lager from Chama River (simply called Helles on the board here). I’ve written about that beer before.

It went quite nicely with a pastrami and green chile sandwich wrapped into a tortilla.

I didn’t really mind the State Beer wasn’t available, but I sure as heck was going to have a basic local dish (the green chile, not the pastrami).

The Session #4: Local Brews

The SessionSnekse, of the Gastronomic Fight Club, has chosen the theme for Session #4 and it’s not a style. He wants us all to taste local beers.

His guidelines:

  • You can pick anything commercially made within 150 miles of your house, but try to pick the brewery or brewpub closest to your house.
  • You can select any beer or even a sampler if you want.
  • If you select a single beer, let us know why you choose this beer (e.g. favorite,seasonal,limited edition, best seller).
  • Preferably you’ll shy away from beers with wide distribution outside your immediate area.

    • I like this idea quite a bit, although I have 13 breweries within 150 miles of my house – and this is New Mexico. The Brewers Association last year figured out that the average American lives within 10 miles of a brewery, and next week is promoting the Great American Beer Tour as part of American Craft Beer Week.

    There’s every chance I’ll be walking to Session #4 and drinking a beer available only on draft.

    The Session #3: A Mild by any other name

    The Session(This is my contribution to our monthly Session. Jay Brooks is recapping this month.)

    Britain’s Campaign for Real Ale has designated May as Mild Month – and tomorrow as National Mild Day.

    What does this mean? From the CAMRA web site: “We ask licensees to come on board by stocking this style of beer, encouraging pub-goers to try a few Milds throughout the month and hope that all of our members participate in Mild events up and down the country.”

    Suppose, instead, it were Mild Month in the United States – that the Brewers Association promoted it like American Craft Beer Week. It wouldn’t be enough to suggest pub-goers drop by their local and try the regular Mild, because there’s something of a shortage. (If you look at comments from participants you’ll see finding Milds has been a challenge.)

    It would mean brewing something new, and presenting it as special, which would draw attention to the style. Maybe brewers in a region would get together for mini-festivals. Since Mild truly shines when (properly) served on cask it would be another chance to break out the firkins.

    We’d certainly expect American brewers to explore historical versions of this style. And that would be an opportunity for all sorts of fun.

    In “Brew Your Own British Real Ale,” Graham Wheeler and Roger Protz write, “In the modern sense it means ‘mildly hopped,’ although in the old sense it meant not sour!” They explain:

    The origins of the term Mild ale stem from the early days of commercial brewing. In those days many people did not feel that a beer had matured properly until it was beginning to turn sour, i.e. until an acetic acid taste was beginning to develop. However, the degree of acidity was a matter of individual taste and differences in personal preference were overcome by publicans supplying two grades of beer: Mild beer, which was a fresh immature ber; and Stale beer, which was the same stuff only it had been kept for up to a year and was beginning to turn sour. The customer mixed these in his tankard in appropriate quantities to give him the desired tang. Some moneyed people made a trade of buying mild and keeping it until it was sour and selling it to the publicans at a profit. Stale was therefore more expensive than Mild so many people drank mild on its own and this eventually came to dominate public taste.

    They state that the Milds of 300 years ago were simply immature versions of the standard brown beers of the day. In 1805 a Mild would have had a gravity of 1.085, in 1871 it would have been 1.070 and in 1913 1.050. While we praise Mild as a lower alcohol session beer, they contend that Mild dropped to a gravity of 1.034 for a different reason: “Twentieth century greed.”

    Think what American brewers might do with this information. Some would accept the challenge and stick to beers of 3.2% to 3.6% alcohol brimming with flavor. Others would create something more radical – and clearly not what CAMRA has in mind.

    Guess you should be careful what you wish for.

    Stray thoughts

    – The solution to “saving” Mild probably doesn’t include giving it a new name, but it might help. As Tomme Arthur of Port/Lost Abbey points out in writing about his Dawn Patrol Dark Mild sounds so, well, mild.

    – Last January a New York Times tasting panel picked Ellie’s Brown Ale from Avery Brewing in Colorado as their favorite when they evaluated brown ales. Avery is better known for its range of high alcohol and highly hopped beers, and those are still the ones selling the best despite the NYT publicity.

    “One of our brewers suggested maybe we should change the name (from Ellie’s) to Extreme Mild,” brewery founder Adam Avery said.

    A tasting note

    So the point of The Session is we all taste around a central theme and write about what we taste, so I better give you a tasting note.

    SpicesLike many I can’t stop by the corner store and pick up a proper Mild. So first I thought I’d go with Deschutes Buzzsaw Brown, because at 4.8% it is mild by American standards and because I like it. Then reading Wheeler and Protz convinced me to do something I think I promised not to when we started the Session – write about a homebrewed beer.

    Garden Variety Gruit is brewed in the manor of a gruit ale from the Middle Ages, when the church controlled the ingredients and brewers didn’t use hops. The recipe takes inspiration from Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing, although true to the author’s wishes I didn’t follow his recipe by rote.

    I used a little more lightly smoked malt than he suggested – and, by golly, Wheeler and Protz talk about smoked malt in early Milds – and the mix of spices was different since I walked around my yard and collected stuff I knew wouldn’t kill you. Even though I cut back on the cardamom it still dominates right now, and might forever. It adds an unfortunate astringent note, not totally unlike a badly hopped beer.

    I figure if I keep bottles stored long enough that might fade. Probably about the time the beer (remember, hops are a preservative) starts to turn sour. Then I’ll have a Stale. Is that on The Session calendar?

    The Session # 3 cometh: Think Mild

    The SessionDon’t forget to stock up on some Mild ale for Friday.

    What’s Mild, you ask, and why Friday?

    Jay Brooks tells us everything we need to know about the elusive style. May is “Mild Month” in the UK and Friday is Mild day for a monthly virtual gathering of beer bloggers that we call The Session.

    If you are a blogger we welcome you to join us – just post on Friday and send Jay a link. If you are a beer drinker, then lay in some Mild or have one (or two, that’s the advantage of low alcohol beers) at your local pub, then join us for a little reading.

    Session #3 announced: Misunderstood Mild

    The SessionJay Brooks has made his pick for our third round of Friday beer blogging.

    The theme is “Mysterious Misunderstood Mild.” He picked it to coincide with CAMRA’s May promotion, Mild Month, writing:

    “Saturday the 5th will also be National Mild Day on the other side of the pond. For those of us here in the colonies, we may have a harder time finding a mild to review. But several craft brewers do make one, even if they don’t always call it a mild.”

    May 5 is also National Homebrew Day and Big Brew for homebrewers.

    Although milds are usually, well, mild and low in alcohol, they don’t have to be. The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) classifies milds as English brown ales. The guidelines note that most are 3.1 to 3.8% abv, but lists Gale’s Festival Mild as an example. That beer is 5.6% abv.

    The Brewers Association Style Guidelines (for commercial brewers) on the other hand state that both pale and dark milds should be between 3.2 and 4% abv. English-style brown ales may be 4 to 5.5% abv.

    The bottom line, as you may have noticed with Day of the Dubbels, is that we’re not going to be style Nazis about this. Find a beer, drink it, write about it.