Session #25: You must read this

A few hours ago John tweeted his roundup for The Session #25: Lager Love is about half finished. Meanwhile he directs us to the reluctant scooper’s tome on the topic.

Why? Here’s one paragraph: “Let’s be honest: lager is shit. It’s a pitiful excuse for alcohol. Drunk from tins, drank by neds, sold in slabs, made in labs. It may have a rich history but it’s been forcibly abducted by the English and had up the chuffer. There are amoeboids avoiding osmosis with passing cells just in case it involves this fizzy pizz of stuff.”

This guy just got added to my feed reader.

 

#29 – Where in the beer world?

Where in the beer world?

Think you know where in the beer world this was taken?

Please leave your answer as a comment.

This is an easy one, and just naming the city will do, so don’t feel the need to turn to Google.

Weekend links, starting with the slimmer A-B

The new A-B: The story begins begins “Critics in the United States and overseas have eviscerated parent Anheuser-Busch InBev for slowing down its payments to suppliers in an effort to conserve cash. Employees say morale has shriveled.”

Sean Paxton is in the kitchen: Two stories really, from the current Imbibe magazine. Beer claims a place at the table is what’s known as the maingamer, while the sidebar Paxton offers tips for putting together a beer-pairing dinner.

Put away the ‘No Fat Tire’ signs: At least in the six (!) new markets New Belgium Brewing of Colorado will enter before summer: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Indiana, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Three NBB beers (Fat Tire, 1554 and Mothership Wit) went on sale in North Carolina on Monday.

Tuesday morning I had a quick conversation with the man behind the counter at Sam’s Quik Shop, a fine beer store in Durham. He said was was happy that now he could just point customers to the stack of Fat Tire when he heard one of his most asked questions. Then he looked at the display and noticed it appeared a lot of Fat Tire sold Monday evening, but almost none of the other two beers. As well as new markets in 2009 NBB has a bunch of new beers coming. Details in the press release.

 

Session #25: Yellow fizz just for you

The SessionMemo to Greg Koch: Here’s a fizzy yellow lager you can cuddle up to. Not all that yellow, I guess, and not necessarily that fizzy. But definitely a lager, a puny 3.7% abv beer in the Munich Helles tradition.

A beer I last enjoyed about six months ago, but I remember well enough to feature as my contribution to The Session #25: Lager Love. And since I won’t be around today to keep up with how this plays out on Twitter, I’ll give you a series of thoughts, all less than 140 characters.

– Surtaler Leichter Typ is light colored, although I don’t know I’d use the word yellow. But when your host asks you have to do your best to oblige.

– Private Landbrauerei Schönram in the German village of Schönram-Petting near Salzburg, Austria, brews the beer.

– It earned a silver medal as a European Light Lager in the European Beer Star competition.

– Yes, it’s a light version of the brewery’s best selling helles (65 percent of sales – a dang nice beer at 5.4% abv).

– You can drink this all night, well maybe 5 liters, and maybe blow .04 on a breathalyzer (the brewer and owner did this to make sure).

– A great beer to shift to after several “big” ones. Because you can still taste it. This isn’t water.

– Smooth (lagered for a silly amount of time), bready, grassy, lots of noble hops.

– Goes well with conversation.

– It says 3.4% on the label, it’s really 3.7% and it tastes twice as big as a 4.2% American light.

– I want this beer brewed close to my home. Not a beer meant to travel, so don’t try it more than 20 kilometers from the brewery.

– Twitter pretty much sucks when it comes to describing the pleasure of drinking this beer.

 

Reminder: Drink a lager for Session #25

The SessionWeather on the East Coast has played havoc with our travel plans and — let’s be honest, this is less important — my Plan A for Friday’s round of The Session, Session #25: Lager Love.

We expected to be touristing around Baltimore on Friday, so I was thinking about stopping by Nacho Mamas in Canton, drinking a Natty Bo and writing about the experience. I’ll grant you that many find this place a bit much. The Mexican food isn’t particularly Mexican, for instance. I’ve heard the there can be lines out the door, which is plain silly.

Natty Bo at Nacho MamasBut . . . you have to love a place where if you don’t see a picture of Elvis Presley or a photo from old Baltimore (mostly sports) there’s a National Bohemian item. National Brewing opened in 1885 and resumed production after Prohibition until it was sold to Carling in 1975, then to Heileman.

Natty Bo was still made in Baltimore as recently as 1997. It’s been brewed under contract since, in several different breweries (wish I could tell you where now). But for many it’s still the Baltimore beer.

It’s a light lager. I’m not sure you could pick it out in a blind tasting with Pabst, Lone Star and whatever similar beer you want to include. And when you order it at Nacho Mamas there is no point in asking for a glass. Drink from the bottle or don’t order it.

That said, it would have been great to drink in Nacho Mamas for The Session.

But we won’t be rambling around Baltimore on Friday. On to Plan B.