I can’t believe how fast 2006 has gone. It’s true: time accelerates as you get older.
As you celebrate the New Year, be extra vigilant. New Year’s Eve celebrations tend to be ones of excess. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t let others drink and drive.
We here at Hop Talk wish you a safe, happy, and prosperous 2007.
Tui Beer is from New Zealand. The commercials from our Kiwi friends seem funnier to me. Perhaps because I haven’t been inundated with them during a typical NFL broadcast.
We talk mostly about craft beer. That’s what we drink, of course. Life is too short to drink bad beer. However, we recognize that not everyone shares our tastes. For some, light beer straight out of the can is the nectar of the gods. Who are we to suggest otherwise? We also find the manufacturing and marketing of beer to be fascinating topics. There is a definite subculture around beer, and I would suggest that beer fans throughout the spectrum of beer have more in common with each other than, say, any wine drinker has in common with any beer drinker.
We were also in college once, too.
So when Beerfest came out on DVD I made sure to put it at the top of my Netflix queue. I’d seen some of the commercials, of course, so had no illusions about what kind of movie I’d be watching. My wife and I stocked up on some pilsners, put the kids to bed, and settled down to be entertained.
Briefly, Beerfest is the story of two brothers charged with returning their grandfather’s ashes to the family resting place in Bavaria during Oktoberfest. While there, they stumble upon a secret international beer drinking competition. Quarters, beer pong, chugging, funnels, and so on. (In other words, it looked an awful lot like my early twenties.) There is no American team. The brothers discover that they are part of a family that owns one of the local brewers, but that their grandfather was a bastard and their great-grandmother’s reputation is sullied. Back home, they vow to create their own team and avenge themselves the following year.
I didn’t expect Raging Bull, and I didn’t get it. However, I tried to watch the movie without any preconceptions and just took it for what it was. It turns out that the movie is actually entertaining. Sure, much of it seems like the scriptwriters (yes, there was a script) were trying to create some beer-soaked fantasy from their college years, and, yeah, I doubt that there were many women involved in the decision to green-light this, but both my wife and I laughed out loud for most of the movie. The movie never takes itself seriously, and even the one hugely implausible plot point just reinforces that it’s all in fun.
So, my recommendation is to rent this movie, invite a few friends over, serve some light-bodied beer (pilsner or even Märzen if you can get it), take everybody’s keys away, and just enjoy.
If you pay even the slightest bit of attention to beer news and/or the beer blogosphere, you know that regulators in Maine and New York State are trying to prevent the sales of beers from Ridgeway Brewing in southwest England and distributed by Shelton Brothers in Massachusetts, specifically, those that use images of Santa Claus and other secular Christmas icons on the label. (Our coverage: here and here.)
We, and others, have already discussed the hypocrisy and general stupidity of these bans, so there’s no need to go over it again. Fortunately, Maryland is much more enlightened. Since Ron lives in New York, I thought I should support him over this waste of his tax dollars, plus also give a little support to this company being singled out for no good reason. As such, I picked up a couple of these brews with their oh-so-offensive labels and shared them with my brother at our family holiday get-together.
We first tried Seriously Bad Elf. The label depicts an elf, with a devilish gleam in his eye, tracking Santa’s sleigh with a slingshot. It’s described as a double English ale. The color is nice, and it’s got a nice mouthfeel. The best word I can use to describe it is “hearty”. My brother didn’t care for it, but I thought it was pretty good.
The other beer we tried was Santa’s Butt. (A “butt” is an old brewing term for a large barrel that holds 108 imperial gallons.) This is a porter. It’s deep brown in color, though not as dark as some. It was okay. It wasn’t smoky, which was a blessing, but just average. I was a bit disappointed, as a nice porter on a cold winter night is one of my favorite things. (Just as well that it wasn’t that cold outside.)
All-in-all, these two were okay, not outstanding. I certainly don’t want to condemn the other beers in the “series” (Bad Elf, Very Bad Elf, Criminally Bad Elf, Warm Welcome, Lump of Coal) based on these two. Of course, my purpose was more to thumb my nose at the alcohol regulators in Maine and New York, and I’ve done that.
Beer, in my humble opinion, should taste like malt & hops; at least primarily. All other flavors should be secondary to the malt and hops and yeast, especially from ingredients that are not those three.
My favorite beers have only those three ingredients. (plus water, but water shouldn’t add flavor) There are some rare cases where I find extra ingredients a nice addition. But, those flavors should be subtle… very subtle. I want to have to think to myself, “this beer has a nice caramel like sweetness to it”, or “what is that spice I taste in this Winter Warmer?”
I recently had a blueberry beer from Ellicottville Brewery and it was quite good. You were definitely able to taste the blueberries, probably more than I would normally have liked. However, you would be surprised at how well the blueberry flavor complements the malt and hops. They seem to be made for each other. But this is rare that I enjoyed a beer with such strong non-beer ingredients.
Pumpkin beer is another of the few that I don’t mind the flavors to be a bit stronger. Pumpkin and some spice seem to compliment sweet malt and bitter hops well.
Outside of those two examples, I just like it subtle. If you are looking to expand the varieties of beer you drink, even if you are feeling adventurous, I would suggest staying away from those fruity beers. I recommend starting with an ESB (Extra Special Bitter); which despite the name, is not very bitter, and save the whipped cream for the shortcake.
No matter what holiday(s) you celebrate, we here at Hop Talk wish you a joyous, safe, and sane, holiday season.
There are a lot of wonderful holiday beers out there, and we urge you to give some of them a try. I know we will. But please, whatever you do, don’t drink and drive.
(We may be scarce around here for a bit while we spend time with our families. Things will pick up after the New Year.)
In the meantime, go, be with your loved ones. Bring peace and joy into the world.
Okay, that’s not true. And, certainly, we here at Hop Talk would never advocate drinking to excess. Still, we have experienced the phenomenon of the “ten to two” girl*. Fortunately, neither one of us married one of them. Enjoy this offering from Tuborg.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2KZWvdwyOg
* You know the ones. They’re the girls that start looking really good at around ten minutes to 2:00 AM.
Al was just talking about why one might drink Heineken… I saw a billboard the other day for an advertisement for Heineken. It was a picture of a green Heineken bottle on its side and the caption was “Adirondack Green”. (I live near the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York) While the bottle looks cold and refreshing with the condensation sweating down the side, I’m sorry, I’m not ignorant… that green bottle has ruined the beer inside.
You see, hops and yeast don’t mix well with sunlight. It gives beer that skunky taste I’m sure you have come across at one point in time. Chemically speaking:
Brewing chemists attribute skunky flavor to 3-methylbut-2-ene-1-thiol, a constituent of skunk spray. This compound arises from a reaction that light triggers within the beer, and the resulting taste can overwhelm other flavors.
“Humans are very sensitive to this compound,” says Denis De Keukeleire of Ghent University in Belgium. 3-methylbut-2-ene-1-thiol is detectable in quantities as small as 0.004 microgram (µg) per liter. This amount can form in minutes when beer is exposed to bright sunlight, he says.Riboflavin, a compound produced by yeast during fermentation, absorbs energy from light at wavelengths of 350 to 500 nanometers (nm). It transfers the energy to iso-alpha acids, the compounds that give beer bitterness. They then release free radicals—small, unstable chemical fragments—that react with sulfur compounds produced by the yeast. The result is the offending thiol.
Many brewers who want to prevent skunky flavor simply put their product in brown bottles, which block visible light of wavelengths under 500 nm. Some of the brewers who prefer to use clear or green bottles, which let in the problematic wavelengths, use hop pellets that contain chemically modified alpha acids. The altered structure, which contains additional hydrogen atoms, no longer forms 3-methyl–but-2-ene-1-thiol. *
Is “green” the only thing Heineken has to hang on to advertise? I’d say they need to come up with something else but really it doesn’t really matter to me unless they change the color of the bottle they package it in.
Subscriber “Max” (our reliable source) tells us that Heineken comes in a brown bottle… did you now that? (I didn’t) Apparently it does but you will need to cross international waters to find it. I wonder what that tastes like? I’m sure it is quite different from what you and I in the U.S. know.
* via http://www.sciencenews.org/
Al asks for some “greener” beer tips in regard to organic beers. Well, I have one… don’t drink Wild Hop Lager from Green Valley Brewing.
Why…? It is awful.
Why is it awful…? Because once again a megabrewery is trying to make a product that looks like a craft brew, yet they are pouring their money into marketing it and not into making it.
Anheuser-Busch is the behemoth behind this beer and I ran across it at my local beverage store the other day. The shelf price for the beer was about $8 (US) for a six pack. It caught my eye, but not enough to try it. Then, while checking out, I noticed another stack of cases of Wild Hop with a sign indicating it was only $2.99 a six pack “special”. Well, that is the right price to give a new beer a try. I asked why so cheap and they told me a local grocery store decided not to carry it so it was overstock.
Don’t just take my word for it that this beer is no good… ask my wife. I’ve been looking for another beer she might like and her comments were, “weak, alcoholy, and tasted like the garage floor”. While she may not be a certified beer taster, that would be good enough to keep me away.
Oh, that’s right. I don’t.
Apparently, we’re not the only ones with disdain for that particular Dutch import. Jay over at Brookston Beer Bulletin has a summary of Heineken’s new ad campaign, starting with a faux news article about a man who drinks Heineken but, due to amnesia, can’t remember why.
Jay also hits it right on the head when he talks about the power of marketing. Sometimes I wonder if Heineken is playing some cruel joke on us clueless Americans. Outside of the U.S., Heineken makes a beer that is in brown bottles and, from a fairly reliable source, is actually quite good. Good luck finding it here, though.
No, I will not be fooled by their clever marketing. Sure, I’ll laugh at their more clever commercials, all while drinking a nice American craft brew.
