Daily Loaf

It is known throughout the land – I am flamboyantly enraptured with every single beer produced by Left Hand Brewing. Their Milk Stout is the most excellent session stout ever, JuJu Ginger is the best accompaniment for sushi since wasabi, and Polestar Pilsner is so yummy it makes an ale junkie like me develop insane cravings for lager. But most of all, Left Hand’s seasonal and limited beers conjure intense feelings of euphoria – Oak Aged Imperial Stout, Rye Bock, and the Midnight Project collaborations with Terrapin Brewing. Read the rest of this entry »

With the holidays approaching, the glorious bounty that is winter seasonal beer begins to descend upon the shelves of local bottle shops. One of my favorite seasonal offerings is the Petrus Key to Heaven gift pack, which features 6 unique brews from Belgian brewery Bavik-De Brabandere, many of which have been wood aged for at least two years. Among these fine examples of Belgian brewing are the sour lactobacillus joys Aged Pale and Oud Bruin, and the beefy, malty Dubbel Bruin.

A Blond Ale is also included in this cornucopia of Belgian funkiness. The bottle features a monk resembling pimp Santa on the label, proudly displaying his key to heaven and goblet – no doubt full of high-quality beer. Since Santa is down with snow, the North Pole, reindeer, and all that, Petrus Blond is best served cold, unlike many Belgian ales whose flavor characteristics are at their finest around cellar temperatures. Read the rest of this entry »

In the mountain town of Boulder, Colorado, Avery Brewing operates with imagination and a commitment to craft beer. The brewery’s website proudly asserts, “we brew what we like to drink — with utter disregard for what the market demands — and search out fans with equally eccentric palates.” They found me many years ago, and since then I have thoroughly enjoyed my fandom.

I think Adam Avery is the bees knees. Now president and brewmaster, he was once a homebrewer who became ambitious enough to start a commercial venture. And since the beginning, the beer produced by the brewery that bears his name has been consistently excellent, challenging the way I think about how beer should taste, how much alcohol it should have, and how large a dose of hops should be added.

Ellie’s Brown is one of my favorite examples of the brown ale style. The brew takes its name from Adam Avery’s former canine companion, a chocolate lab named Ellie (1992-2002) whose likeness is depicted on the label. Read the rest of this entry »

Cigar City Brewing is relentless; they refuse to stop making ridiculously great beer. RateBeer recognizes their Hunaphus Imperial Stout as one of the world’s ten best Imperial Stouts, and Big Sound Scotch Ale ranks among the top ten of its style. Then there’s Bolita Double Nut Brown Ale, which ranks #1 in the brown ale category on RateBeer – it’s the best brown ale currently produced on the planet as judged by a massive group of very critical beer nerds. Yep, in our own backyard, folks. This is truly beer history in the making.

The side of Bolita bottles reads:

Bolita was a type of lottery popular with the working class citizens of the Ybor City district of Tampa. Bolita means, ‘little ball’ but profits from the illegal (and often rigged) game were anything but little. In the 1920’s Tampa native Charlie Wall was the undisputed kingpin of the Bolita racket.

Our Bolita is a Double Northern English-style brown ale that has a complex malt forward character with notes of chocolate, toffee and hints of roasted nuts in the finish. Bolita pairs well with Baklava, Big Band music, cool evenings and robust cigars.

Sounds great. Now check out this variation — Bourbon Barrel Bolita. It begins with Cigar City’s Bolita Double Nut Brown. After three weeks of fermentation, the brew is transferred to Maker’s Mark barrels. Three months later, it hits the bottling line, where each bottle is filled by hand and then individually numbered. Since this batch of Bourbon Bolita only yielded 221 bottles, it is a pricey beer, but it’s completely worth it. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this past week:

Cool-N-Save: An eco-friendly energy saver for your air conditioning unit (Video): Jennifer Meier writes about how the Cool-n-SaveTM system affixes to the top of most home air conditioning units, resulting in a substantial drop in ambient temperature of up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit. The Cool-N-Save(TM) system has also been rated by the US Department of Energy and EPA as an Energy Star Partner.

Signs of hope: are our environmental efforts making a difference?: Linda Taylor shows us an example of how environmental efforts can make a difference, even if they take years to come to fruition.
Read the rest of this entry »

For the past few years, Pete Slosberg of Pete’s Brewing Company (as in Pete’s Wicked this-and-that) has been teaming up with Alan Shapiro, president of SBS Imports, and Daniel Del Grande from Bison Brewing to craft a limited special release beer that benefits a good cause. The Reunion collaboration was inspired by the late Virginia McLean, a former coworker of Slosberg and Shapiro. The trio worked together when Pete’s Brewing Company was in its early stages, at the forefront of the American craft brewing movement that took place in the mid 1980’s. With 100% of Reunion proceeds benefiting the Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research, almost $100,000 has been raised as of early 2008.

The Reunion fundraising effort began in 2007 with a 7.5% ABV imperial brown ale brewed with 6 organic malts, hopped and dry hopped with 3 different varieties.

Reunion ‘08 Red Rye Ale is also made from all organic ingredients — barley, flaked rye, hops, caraway seeds, water, and yeast. It is essentially a chemical fertilizer, pesticide, and additive- free version of Pete’s Wicked Red with a rye and caraway seed injection. Read the rest of this entry »

I go crazy for flavorsome brown ales, so I am totally thrilled to finally have access to Smuttynose Brewing Company’s Old Brown Dog Ale, a recent newcomer to the local market. Hailing from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Smuttynose concocts a variety of excellent beers — a delightfully peaty porter, an IPA bursting with Amarillo hops flavor, a big huge quad, a monster Russian imperial stout, and so on. Today, I turn my attention to their delectable brown ale, which won a silver medal at the Great American Beer Fest. Read the rest of this entry »

Florida Micro Beverage has been putting in serious work. This local distributor of beer, wine, and soda has picked up a slew of new products for the coolers of local beer bars and shops. Among these exciting brews — extensive lines from North Carolina’s Highland Brewing Company, Fort Collins Brewery out of Colorado, and Erie Brewing Company from Pennsylvania.

Erie Brewing turns out a superb product mix, including Railbender Scottish Ale, Mad Anthony’s American Pale Ale, and Presque Isle Pilsner. The brewery’s product naming celebrates Pennsylvania’s history, particularly the people and places involved. Their current seasonal, Drake’s Crude Oatmeal Imperial Stout, takes its name from Edwin Drake — as in Drake’s Folly for all the history smarty pantses — the first guy to successfully drill oil in Northwest Pennsylvania.

Drake’s Crude Oatmeal Imperial Stout definitely lives up to its gooey industrial nomenclature. As it pours into an American pint glass, the bulky black body supports a frothy cap of khaki head that reduces to a thin layer of diverse sized bubbles. Read the rest of this entry »

Nøgne Ø Brown
English Style Brown, 4.5%
Norway

Norway: home of freaky death metal, smoking hot models, and user-friendly light lagers. Who knew they could produce such multidimensional ales? The Nøgne Ø (pronounced non-yay) brewery truly breaks the typical Scandinavian beer mold, turning out a line of big, bold beers, all of which I find thoroughly satisfying. It was hard to pick one brew from Nøgne Ø’s extensive line, but after careful consideration and extended scouring of distributor product lists, I chose the Brown Ale.

The grain recipe combines a little bit of everything: wheat, Maris Otter 2-row barley, chocolate malt, brown malt, amber malt, and caramel malt. Imagine the head brewer sweeping his arm across all the grain-littered counter spaces at the brewery — “let’s just put all this in the mash.” But this mad mixture works, as the sheer maltiness of this brew is pure heaven. Read the rest of this entry »