Laurelwood Brewery (Portland, Oregon) - Organic Free Range Red
I got this bottle right when I heard that they just started bottling their Red. I’ve had it on tap numerous times and boy, it sure tastes great out of a bottle too! Nice work Laurelwood, you’ve never ever let me down! The beer is a red color, not as dark and mahogany as many of the reds I’ve recently had. The flavor is like toasted bread and caramels. There is an initial wonderful taste and it just continues to warm up; it just gets better and better as you sit there. I appreciate this beer because it has a lot of characteristics of a good IPA, but it’s much earthier and warmer. It seems to be a good beer for fall, winter, and early spring.

Russian River Brewing Company (Santa Rosa, California) - Pliny The Elder IPA
Pliny The Elder is well-known among Oregonian beer lovers. It’s definitely a beer that we are jealous that California brews it and we don’t. Some consider this one of the best beers ever brewed. I agree…one of the best, but maybe not the best (Ever tried the Double Mountain IRA???) It has all the makings of a great IPA: the pine needle aroma and taste, a great hop burst, some citrusy flavors including grapefruit, and a warm ride, and an aftertaste that keeps going. It’s a lot of fun to taste this one. Unfortunately, if you are not in certain parts of California it may be hard to find. For Portland, It occasionally comes to New Seasons and Belmont Station. I’ve had it on tap at Henry’s and I’m sure Horse Brass gets it occasionally. I picked up a few of them when I heard it was in town.

Bridgeport Brewery (Portland, Oregon) - Hop Harvest Ale
This is a triple hopped beer. Enough said right? So you are expecting to be completely blown away. Unless you know your Bridgeport beers, you will be expecting to be blown away. However, Bridgeport has a more refined taste. Their Imperial Hop Czar was way crazier than this beer. This one is nowhere near as piney and doesn’t burst with outrageously intense bitterness. But it’s not called the Hop Czar is it? No, it’s the Hop Harvest. The taste is actually closer to the normal, lovely IPA they produce but with extra strength from the hops and an extra freshness, and at imperial levels. I don’t think it’s meant to be a “Skull Splitter,” “Hop Monster,” or “Tricerahops.” Not that any of those beers are wrong, they are all good. I call this an excellent beer; this beer is very well crafted and unexpectedly maintains the classic IPA that Oregonians have come to love. It comes with a nice green foil too. Thank you Bridgeport.

This post was originally posted on beerandscifi.com

Popularity: 9% [?]

Product shot of Budweiser American Ale provided by Anheuser-Busch

Budweiser’s first ale officially rolls into stores today, Monday, September 29, although I spotted it in my local beer store on Saturday. The significance of this beer goes beyond a brewer introducing a new product. This is America’s largest brewer introducing a craft beer.

The reactions to this ale have run the gamut in the beer community. Some think it will be the downfall of craft beer. Some think it will ultimately be a failure for Anheuser-Busch.  We tasted the American Ale and it is decent, if not outstanding. Microbreweries can make small batches of experimental beer to test how their customers will receive it. A-B doesn’t have that luxury. They need this beer to appeal to as many people as possible in order for it to be a success. I think that is why this ale is sort of a middle-of-the-road amber but it could tun out to be a “gateway ale” that introduces the masses to craft beer.

Only time will tell if A-B’s marketing muscle can convince their customer base to try something different or convince craft beer drinkers to try something with a Bud label. Calling it an “American” ale and a “new style of ale” is transparent marketing chicanery that reveals how they hope to position this beer in the market. However, A-B’s new owner, InBev, is not known for its patience or willingness to experiment so I think that if American Ale isn’t a hit out of the gate, it will disappear quickly.

A six-pack of American Ale is supposed to be about $1.50 more than a six-pack of Bud. The price I saw was $6.99 for a six-pack which is only slightly less than your average craft beer. This could be a problem for Bud since regular craft drinkers, who are used to paying a premium for good beer, won’t see much of a savings over their normal beer and regular Bud drinkers may not be willing to pay a premium for a Bud ale when a Bud lager is what they are used to purchasing and drinking.

[Update 10/7] I found American Ale for $5.77 for a six-pack which is a little cheaper than other national craft beers, like Sam Adams.

Whether this beer succeeds or fails, I think it is a validation of the craft beer industry. When the big boys start to copy your product, it means your product is worth something. Craft beer sales make up only 4.5 percent of the total US beer market but are growing faster than the overall market at about 7 percent compared to around 1 percent. Craft beers sell for higher prices as well, which is obviously something the macro-brewers would like to duplicate.

What do you think? Is this the end of the craft world as we know it or will this ultimately help the craft industry?

Popularity: 10% [?]

Budweiser is exploring new ground with their first ale which will hit stores in one week on September 29. It is already available in draught.

Appearance:
Nice copper color as you would expect from an amber ale. Huge head that lingers for several minutes after the pour.

Smell:
I don’t know if it was because of the size of the head or the temperature of the beer, but the first fragrance I got was… Budweiser. This is weird because this beer has little in common with a Bud. Once the head went down a bit and the beer warmed up, I got definite caramel and some light grassy hops scents.

Taste:
The taste was true to the smell. It’s fairly malty at the front, with caramel being what I tasted most with some subtle biscuit flavors mixed in. The hops hit at the back of the palette and are nicely balanced with the malt. The hops linger after you swallow, a bit much for my taste, but the bitterness is not overpowering.

Mouthfeel:
I would call this beer is medium-bodied and smooth.

Drinkability:
I wasn’t sure what to expect from an amber ale made by Budweiser. I was pleasantly surprised. It is well-balanced and hoppier than I expected, though not overwhelmingly so. I think this would make a decent session beer and maybe a good “gateway” beer to the world of craft brews for those who are usually Bud drinkers.

5.3% ABV

Popularity: 11% [?]

Follow me as I brew a dark and malty Belgian dubbel ale.

First, there is some confusion about what exactly a dubbel ale is. Dubbel is simply a term used in Belgium for ale. It implies fairly strong ale, say 6.5-9% ABV, but it is not twice as strong as other ales. There are also Belgian tripels which are generally the strongest ale offered by a brewery or pub. These terms should not be confused with the English terms double and triple which are pronounce the same.

Now to the brewing…

I bought the ingredient kit a few weeks ago from Beer Nut when I was in Salt Lake City for a concert. Ingredient kits are a great way to experiment with different styles without having to navigate the labyrinth of beer ingredients by yourself. Many brew stores offer them but if yours doesn’t, just check some of the larger brew suppliers online. The kit comes with liquid malt extract (LME), dry malt extract (DME), specialty grain (black patent I think), Saaz and Spalt hops pellets, dark Belgian candi sugar, White Labs Trappist Ale liquid yeast MLP500 (not pictured), bottle caps, priming sugar, and several grain bags.

One thing that did not come with the kit was recipe-specific instructions. There was a sheet of general brewing instructions, which you can download here, but nothing specific to brewing a Belgian dubbel like when to add the hops. I called the store to ask and was told to use the most bitter hops for the full boil and the other for flavoring.

I have been having trouble with my yeast under-fermenting lately so I decided to make a yeast starter for this beer. The day before I planned to brew, I boiled a quart of water and 1/2 cup of DME for 20 minutes, cooled it, poured it into a sanitized growler, and added the yeast. There are a couple of reasons to use a starter. If you are brewing a high alcohol beer, using a starter will give you more yeast cells so handle the higher alcohol. The starter also guarantees that you have a healthy batch of yeast. I wanted to make sure the yeast was good before I started brewing so I didn’t end up wasting a batch of wort.

I started by putting 2.5 gallons of water in the brew pot and bringing it almost to a boil. I then turned off the heat, put the grain in a grain bag, and put it in the water for 20 minutes. Then I put the grain bag in a strainer and poured some of the wort over it to extract as much of the sugar as possible.

I added the candi sugar, LME, and DME, stirring each to dissolve it completely before adding the next. Once all of the sugar was dissolved, it was time to bring it up to a boil.

Once the water was boiling, I put 1 oz of Saaz hops in a hop bag and put it in the wort to boil for 60 minutes. I’ve found that using a nylon bag for hops results in a cleaner beer because very little, if any, hops makes it into the fermenter. After 40 minutes I added the 2 ozs of Spalt hops and after 10 more minutes I added a yeast fuel tablet (not included in the kit).

After the 60 minutes was up, I put the lid on the pot and put it in an ice bath to cool it down enough to pitch the yeast starter without shocking the yeast.

Once the wort had cooled to 76° F, I ladled it into a 6 gallon carboy using a sterilized measuring cup, added enough water to bring the total volume to a little more than 5 gallons, and extracted some for the original gravity (O.G) reading of 1.067. Since there were no instructions with the kit, I’m not sure what the O.G should be but this is a pretty high which is good. I’ll need a final gravity reading around 1.015 to hit the target ABV of 6.7% which shouldn’t be a problem. I then added the yeast starter and put an airlock on the carboy.

The next day when I checked to see how the fermentation was going, the kraeusen was bubbling out of the air lock. While this indicated a vigorous fermentation, which is good, if the air lock gets clogged, the pressure will blow it off and spray beer everywhere.

I replaced it it with a blow-off tube that will allow the kraeusen to escape without letting air, or anything else, in.

I’ll move it to a secondary fermenter once the fermentation is complete then bottle a week or so after that. It probably should have several months of conditioning in the bottle to be at its best but I doubt it will last that long.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Skunk Beer. If you’ve never been unfortunate enough to have had skunk beer, count yourself lucky. If you have, then you know what the British were dealing with in the early 1700’s trying to get beer south around the west of Africa, across the equator, around the Cape of Good Hope, and then back north across the Indian Ocean to the British soldiers and citizens there demanding beer in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. Extreme temperature changes, and long, hot storage conditions cause beer to go bad- real bad. So, in the face of such pre-refrigeration conditions, the British brewers set to work with what tools they had- namely more alcohol and more hops. Alcohol is obvious, but hops are extremely astringent and are added as an antibiotic and stabilizing agent.

George Hodgson from the Bow Brewery in East London finally came to a solution by taking his Pale Ale recipe and considerably increasing the hop and alcohol content. The result was a bitter, very alcoholic Ale that survived the trip to India and was actually drinkable at the end of the trip. Hodgson became a legend.

At about the same time, similar conditions afflicted the trade of Beer to Russia, and a similar solution was found, only this IPA stood for “Imperial Pale Ale”. Soon enough, political conditions ceased trade with Russia, and most “Imperial” brewers simply switched markets to India, making the “IPA” acronym synonymous for either brew.

Eventually, breweries opened up in Asia, and ultimately refrigeration and modern storage removed the need for the extra kick and hops, but the brew still has a following, because some people simply like the taste! Even in its heyday IPA’s rarely went above 8% ABV, and today’s popular IPA’s are less than that, usually between 5-7% ABV.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Ale is one of the two major styles of beer, the other being lager. The primary characteristics of ale are:

• It is top fermented, meaning the yeast floats on the top of the wort in the fermenter rather than settling to the bottom.
• It is fermented at warmer temperatures, generally above 60°F.
• It is the oldest form of beer.
• Ale is typically fruitier and more full-bodied than lager.

Random facts about lager:

• In some American states is the term determined by law (wrongly) to indicate a brew of more than 4 percent weight (5 by volume).
• The word ‘ale’ comes from the Old English ealu, in turn from the Proto-Indo-European base *alut-, which holds connotations of “sorcery, magic, possession, intoxication.”

There are many different kinds of ale:

• Pale ale
• Dark ale
• Brown ale
• Light ale
• Irish red
• Belgian
• German
• Scotch
• Old ale
• Cream ale

Here is a nice diagram of all beer types arranged in a sort of family tree. Michael Jackson also has a decent beer styles section on his Beer Hunter site.

Beer 101 is an ongoing series intended to help the average beer drinker learn more about the mystical beverage we call beer. If there is a topic you would like covered in Beer 101, leave a comment, visit the contact page.

Popularity: 9% [?]