There is still room and time to sign up for the Malty Beers event of the Twin Cities Perfect Pint Beer Club. This is the first of three events that will focus on the flavor contributions of individual beer ingredients. This month the ingredient is Malt. We’ll be tasting malty beers from Munich Lagers to Scottish Ales to Bocks, Porters, and maybe even a specialty beer or two…or three.
So which beverage pairs better with food, beer or wine? Dogfish head owner and brewer Sam Calagione and sommelier Marnie Old have been testing this question with beer vs. wine dinners across the country. In these dinners, a beer and a wine are paired with each course of the meal and diners are asked to vote for the beverage that they feel was the better pairing. According to their recent book He Said Beer She Said Wine, the answer is not quite as obvious as wine drinkers might believe or as clear cut as beer drinkers might desire.
He Said Beer She Said Wine is a decent primer on food pairing for either beer or wine. It begins with chapters giving the basics for each beverage, including ingredients, production process, and the flavor characteristics of major styles/varietals. Each writer then ties these things back to food pairing. For instance, Old writes about the source of and sensory perception of acidity in wine. She then goes on to explain how that acidity interacts with salt in foods to smooth out and enhance the flavors of each. Calagione describes the bittering effect and flavors of hops and explains why hoppy beer is a good match for rich fatty foods. Both Old and Calagione do a good job of outlining the basics of beer and wine tasting and providing some general guidelines for food pairing.
From the basics the book moves on to chapters dealing with different foods. There is a chapter for cheese, 
fruit, vegetables, shellfish, fish, poultry, meat, fruit deserts, and other deserts. Each chapter includes a section illuminating why the characteristics of wine or beer make each the perfect match for a given food group. Again, each writer does a reasonably good job of explaining the relative strengths and weaknesses of their chosen beverage as it relates to each type of food. Old sings the praises of white wine with fish, while being forced to admit that spicy foods are a tough match for most wines. Calagione trumpets the beauty of a variety of beers with meat, while conceding the difficulty of dealing with some vegetable treatments. Each chapter ends with a selection of dishes and a specific beer or wine pairing suggestion for each.
The final chapter is a guide for staging your own beer vs wine event at home. It includes common sense tips, recipes, and pairing suggestions.
The whole book is couched in the language of the beer vs wine challenge. While I love a good competition and can talk trash with the best of them, this was the part of the book that I found annoying. Each individual food section ends with a back-and-forth between the writers in which they supposedly made the arguments for their libation directly to one another. While this was sometimes witty, in most cases there was little of substance here. After a couple of chapters I was tempted to skip over these pages and move on to the meaty stuff. Despite this, He Said Beer She Said Wine is a good read for anyone interested in learning more about pairing beer with food.
So which beverage does pair better? Calagione and Old report that the results at their events have always been close. The winner usually edges out the loser by only one course and the overall tally is even.
Saint Somewhere Brewing
Tarpon Springs, Florida
Style: Saison
Serving Style: 750 ml Bottle
Aroma: Loads of fruit and perfumy spice. Pears. Bready malt.
Appearance: Crystal clear and deep golden in color. Second glass was cloudy from yeast in the bottle. Mousse-like white foam that lasted a long time.
Flavor: Pear, apple and strawberries. Light bready malt. Perfume spice flavors, coriander and star anise. Sweet with a dry, peppery finish.
Mouthfeel: Medium-light body with effervescent carbonation.
Overall Impression: This is a great Belgian style Saison. The fruit flavors are intense and are supported by a subdued but rich bready malt. Complex and refreshing.
Prior to moving to the Twin Cities I lived in Chicago. I still make regular trips down and even spend two-months a year here doing theatre work. Even with all this time in the Windy City, I had never made it to the Map Room, a great beer bar on the North Side. Last night, having finished work early, I decided to remedy this situation. I’m glad I did.
When I arrived, the place was packed. It turns out that Tuesday is “International Night.” With a two drink minimum you can partake of the free international buffet, which last night consisted of a so-so selection of Persian dishes like shawarma and stewed eggplant with pita and rice from Noon-O-Kebab. It was nothing to get excited about, but it was free. I used to live around the corner from Noon-O-Kebab and know that they have great food. I think I must have gotten my buffet plate after it had been sitting for a while.
Once the buffet crowd left, the place opened up a bit and a more serious beer crowd took over. It’s nice to look down a bar and see everyone seated there with a glass of great beer in front of them. By complete chance, I happened to pull up a stool at the bar next to the owner. He told me that Tuesday is not the best night to come as there tends to be a lot of people who just come to slam their two beers and eat the free food. I have to agree that it was better after this crowd cleared out. Another treat for me in this visit was meeting manager Jay Jankowski, another Certified Cicerone. We had taken the test in Chicago on the same day and were the only two people from our testing group to pass. There are very few of us at this point, so it is nice to have the opportunity to meet and talk beer.
The beer list at the Map room is fantastic. They offer over 200 unique brands with 26 taps, cask offerings on hand pump, and a bottle list that never ends. They always use the correct glassware and I was impressed to see that they have a device to rinse the glass with cold water before pouring. It’s a nice touch. They have a wide selection of beers that are not available in Minnesota, so that is where I headed. I started with Well’s Bombardier, a light English bitter loaded with toffee and caramel malt backed with a light earthy bitterness. I have seen this beer in bottles at the Four Firkins, but I have never seen it draft in the Twin Cities. Next was a Christmas ale from DeKoninck. I had only last week had the DeKoninck Belgian Pale Ale for the first time. The Christmas ale is basically a lightly spiced version of the original. While this was tasty, I think I prefer the original. The spices seemed to cover up some of the nice bready malt and fruity character that I enjoyed in that beer.
From there I went for the Alpha King pale ale from Three Floyds in Munster, Indiana. First let me reveal a bias that I have about Three Floyds. Like Surly, I find that Three Floyds has a reputation that is out of line with the actual beers that they produce. This is not to say that either brewery makes bad beer. In fact, they make very good beer. It’s just to say that there is an excessive level of hype surrounding their beers. I mean, it’s just beer. That said, I found Alpha King to be too over-the-top grapefruit hops for my taste. I like balance in a beer and I really wasn’t getting nearly enough malt from this beer to support the extreme level of citrus hop flavor.
Finally, I took some Cicerone advice from Jankowski and had a Red Eye porter from Two Brothers. This was my favorite beer of the night. A strong Baltic style porter brewed with coffee, this was a full bodied brew with tons of chocolate, coffee, and roasted malt character. The Two Brothers beers are available in the Twin Cities. If you see a bottle of Red Eye I recommend picking it up.
I am currently in Chicago working on a theatre project at a halfway house on the Westside. While here I am staying at a priory. For those not familiar with what a priory is, think convent for priests. In past years working on this same project, I have stayed in an actual convent. I have to say, the priests have it better than the nuns. While being shown around the place it was pointed out to me that the refrigerator in the TV room is normally stocked with beer, although tonight it seems to be sadly lacking. I may have to remedy this. The refrigerator in the second floor common room, a quite well appointed room I might add, did have a couple of cans of Busch. Seeing as the Prior invited me to make myself at home, I had to avail myself.
I grew up in St. Louis. The Anheuser-Busch brewery tour was a frequently visited local attraction during my years at college. While I do still enjoy a Budweiser on occasion, I had not had the pleasure of indulging in a can of Busch in many a year. According to the Anheuser-Busch website, “the brand is the country’s largest-selling subpremium-priced beer in all major demographics.” So…in keeping with the spirit of of cheap beer night, here are my tasting notes.
Anheuser-Busch
Style: American Lager
Serving Style: 12 oz Can
Aroma: Very light sweet malt and sulfur. Pronounced green apple.
Appearance: Pale yellow. Brilliantly clear. Small white head that collapsed almost immediately.
Flavor: Tart green apple and lime dominate. Fairly sweet with little other malt character. Low bitterness and no noticeable hop flavor. Finish is watery with some lingering apple tartness.
Mouthfeel: Light body. High carbonation. Not much else.
Overall Impression: There are no off flavors as green apple acetaldehyde is acceptable for the style. This beer is very clean, but like many of the beers from cheap beer night, this seems a little sugary sweet. Green apple tartness balances this to some degree. Would be refreshing outdoors on a hot summer day, but there really isn’t much here.
Firestone Walker Brewing Co., Paso Robles, California
Style: Robust Porter
Serving Style: 22 oz bottle
Aroma: Chocolate and caramel with subtle roast. Light fruity notes, raisin. Oats.
Appearance: Pitch black with a big and persistent tan head. Loads of lace.
Flavor: Caramel coffee dusted with bittersweet chocolate. Light burnt raisin and burnt sugar/blackstrap molasses. Late in the palate an aggressive hop bitterness asserts itself with a pronounced citrusy hop flavor. Alcohol is noticeable. Finish lingers on hops and roast malt.
Mouthfeel: Alcohol warmth. Creamy on the outset but an astringency sets in when the hops kick in. Medium carbonation.
Overall Impression: A big and full bodied, roasty robust porter. I’d be inclined to call this a Baltic porter. The citrusy hops are a little too much for me and clash with the caramel/coffee flavors. Astringency also detracts.
When: Saturday, March 21, 2009
Cost: $20
You must be a member of the club to attend. Go to the Twin Cities Perfect Pint Beer Club to sign up and RSVP.
Malted grain is the backbone of beer. Next to water it is the primary ingredient. Malt is the source of the sugars that are fermented by the yeast. It is a major contributor to every sensory quality of beer including flavor, aroma, mouthfeel, and alcohol level. Malted grain gives beer that wonderful sweetness and rich bready, toasty, roasty, nutty, caramel, coffee, and chocolate notes that make beer lovers swoon.
For this meetup we’ll focus on malt. We’ll enjoy the bready goodness of southern German lagers. We’ll taste the tantalizing toasty notes of the Bocks and savor the sweet caramel of Scottish ales. We might even revisit last month to revel in roast.
This will be the first in a series of three meetups in which we will explore the main ingredients in beer, malt, hops, and yeast. At each session we will taste beers that highlight one ingredient over the others to develop a better understanding the flavor and aromatic contributions of each ingredient.
Stone Brewing Company, Escondido, California
Style: Belgian Strong Golden well hopped with American hops]
Serving Style: Bottle
Appearance: Light golden and clear with a big mousse-like white head.
Aroma: Light fruit, peaches. Spicy clove. Alcohol.
Flavor: Light fruit. Peaches, but like the syrup from a can of peaches. Pepper and clove spice. Hop bitterness is pronounced. Flavor seems more continental spicy than American citrus. Dry finish that lingers on a tart orange. Alcohol is a little hot.
Mouthfeel: Medium body. Medium-high carbonation. Very dry finish. Hot alcohol.
Overall Impression: A nice version of a hoppy Belgian Tripel. Would benefit from a little aging to let the hot alcohol mellow a little.
I had escaped the cold and snow of Minnesota. The sun was shining brightly. The temperature temperature in the San Francisco Bay Area was hovering in the mid-sixties with a cool breeze blowing from the west. This was the perfect day for a drive north into the wine country of Sonoma County for a tasting. A beer tasting of course. Today the brewery of choice was Lagunitas in Petaluma. Known for big, brash, hoppy beers, Lagunitas was long one of those mysterious breweries who’s beers we in the land of the cold could not get. In the last year, however, these brews have become available in Minnesota and they are flying off the shelf.
The afternoon at Lagunitas began in the tasting room before moving on to the tour, which started at the bottling line and ended at the brewhouse. I am going to go in reverse. The brewery was much bigger than I expected and much bigger than the pictures on the Lagunitas website would indicate. It turns out that they have not updated the virtual tour on the website since installing a new brewhouse that has dramatically increased their output capacity. The old brewhouse was a 30-barrel system that would only allow them to brew one batch at a time. The new brewhouse is an 80-barrel system with separate mash and lauter tuns, allowing them to have three batches working at any one time. It is the biggest brewhouse that I have seen at a smaller brewery. Another thing that I found interesting about the brewery was that the fermenters are kept outside. They are glycol jacketed to allow for precise temperature control, as are fermenters in most breweries. The mild climate in Northern California allows them to operate efficiently outdoors in a way that more extreme climates would make impossible.
Now on the the tasting room. The tasting room at lagunitas is like a loft version of a fraternity house basement. Overlooking the bottling line, it is full of old overstuffed sofas and chairs, a foosball table, and a bar against one wall a row of with mismatched bar stools. We sampled six beers with fairly generous pours, Pils, Censored, IPA, Hop Stoopid, New Dog Town Pale Ale, and Gnarlywine.
What I know to be my favorite Lagunitas beer, the New Dog Town Pale Ale, was unfortunatley spoiled by the 
order in which the beers were served. This is a very drinkable American Pale Ale with a HUGE piney hop presence. It is not an extreme beer or a big beer, but it was one of the last two beers served. After sampling IPA, Hop Stoopid, and Gnarleywine I am afraid the Pale Ale was a bit overwhelmed. Because of that, my favorite beer at the tasting was also the one that struck me as the most interesting choice of brews from a brewery known for big hoppy brews. Lagunitas Pils is a wonderful example of a Ceczh style pilsner, with a full sweet/bready malt and loads of spicy/perfumy saaz hops. Easy to drink and tasty.
Hop Stoopid, soon to replace Maximus in the Lagunitas lineup, is described by the brewery as a Triple IPA. Aside from the 102 IBU bitterness rating, I don’t see what makes this anything more than a Double IPA. It’s modest 8% ABV certainly wouldn’t warrant the tripel designation. Whatever you want to call it, it is a nice beer, surprisingly more balanced than the IPA, it has a big grainy, caramel malt backbone to support the gigantic grapefruit hop presence.
The Gnarlywine, an 11% ABV barleywine style, was also nice. Less bitter than I expected, but still bitter enough to call it an American barleywine, this beer has a malty sweet richness that goes down easy. The alcohol presence is apparent, but not hot or solventy. While good to drink now, it will be even better with a year of age on it. Buy a bottle and lay it down for a while.
The Censored and IPA were my least favorite of the tasting. This is not to say that they are bad beers, I just didn’t feel that they held up to the others. I like balance in a beer and I find the Lagunitas IPA to be short on the malt character needed to back up the big hops. Censored, a red ale, just seems to fall a little flat compared to the others. Again, the hops were the dominant note with some toasty malt coming through as it warmed. Perhaps if I were drinking a pint of this beer without comparing it to five other Lagunitas hop bombs I would feel differently. It certainly is not a beer that I would turn away.
While in Winona, Minnesota on business for a couple of days, I did as I always do when on the road, I searched out places to find good beer. This is not exactly an easy task in Winona. The choices are rather limited. However, while eating lunch at Culver’s, I looked across the parking lot to see that the bowling alley sign also read “Wellington’s Backwater Brewing Company.” Back in my hotel room I looked it up online and sure enough, there is a brewpub in the bowling alley. Of course I had to check it out.
That night I went in for dinner. I immediately ordered a sampler of all the house brewed beers which included a wheat, a pale ale, and a nut brown ale. They also brew an oatmeal stout, but that was out. Sadly, with the exception of the wheat, the beers were all very dissapointing. Each had a slightly vegetal and stale taste that was not pleasant. So, I ordered the wheat to accompany my BBQ sampler platter. The menu says that the wheat beer is a Kolsch style. I think I would classify it more as an American wheat, as the body and overall flavor profile were not as delicate as I would expect from a Kolsch. Whatever you want to call it, it was pretty tasty and went very well with the fine BBQ. As I was getting ready to leave, I saw the brewer, Chris Gardner in the brewery and took a moment to introduce myself and arrange to meet with him the next evening.
The next night Chris filled me in on the history of the brewpub. The bowling alley had been started by Chris’s father in the 1960’s. The idea for the brewpub came in 1995. At the time Chris was homebrewing and working at a liquor store/homebrew supply store connected to the bowling alley. One day while reading the Midwest Brewing News, he saw an ad for a 1-barrel brewhouse that Bell’s Brewing was selling. He talked to his brother, by then the majority family owner of the business, about buying the system and adding house beers to the menu. This was at a point in history when brewpubs were popping up all over the place so it seemed like a natural. One year and a lot of money later, the brewery was operating. Chris, a graduate of the short course at the Siebel Institue in Chicago, has been producing four house beers and an occasional specialty ever since. He brews once a week for a total annual output of around 55 barrels.
I tried all four beers again on this visit. I must say, they were all much fresher tasting. Chris explained that he has a hard time getting the staff to run the beer out of the lines at the start of an evening. I suspect that the samplers I had were first pours that consisted of beers that had been sitting in the lines overnight. The stout, that Chris took straight from the bright tank, had a rich, creamy mouthfeel and nice chocolate and roast malt character. The pale ale tasted very fresh with a bright citrus hop character and underlying caramel malt. The brown was toasty and lightly bitter, but seemed a little on the sweet side for my taste.
I very much enjoyed my visit to Minnesota’s smallest commercial brewery and my conversation with Chris. While none of the beers are outstanding, if you find yourself in Winona looking for a decent beer, I would recommend a visit to Wellington’s Backwater Brewing.