DrFermento.Net

Attack of the Mutant Pumpkin (Ales)

One of my loyal readers sent along another trip report concerning the new brewpub at the Silver Gulch Brewing Company. As usual, the review was positive. Another reader had been there a while back and sent me a very detailed re-count of her positive experience there, so this was just more validation that while up north, Silver Gulch is a no-miss experience. The brewery used to host tours only for a brief period on Friday nights. Now all of their local beer freshness (and more) can be enjoyed for longer hours and with great food and entertainment on the weekends.

In this same conversation, my reader forwarded an age-old lament. He was crying in his beer about not being able to enjoy enough locally-produced beers at venues around town. I’ve always agreed. Here’s what he had to say:

“I’d like to sit down with you sometime and discuss something about the beer scene in Alaska that drives me nuts. That is the lack of availability of Alaskan-brewed beers in many of the establishments around the state. The distributors aren’t supporting our locals like they should. Of course, they aren’t going to do anything to piss off their big mega-brewer accounts. A definite conflict of interest there”

Let’s use this as a case study. I’ll begin by asking some questions. This will be just like you are in school again, only this time, use beer to enhance your thinking skills. So, if you’re able, saunter over to the refer (or kegarator, or wherever you keep your fermented goods) and extract yourself a TCO, sharpen your crayon and consider the following questions concerning the above statement:

1. What do you feel our local distributors’ responsibilities are when it comes to promoting local beer? Is the concept of “distribution” different than the concept of “promotion”?
2. When a distributor considers taking on the distribution of a local beer, what factors do you think matter the most to the distributor?
3. When it comes to the distribution of beer, what do you think the brewery’s responsibilities include? Are their responsibilities over when the beer crosses under the warehouse door, or is there more?
4. How much influence do the larger breweries have on a distributor’s decision to carry a brand or not carry a brand?

Okay, that’s enough time. Hope you slammed your beer! Put your crayon down now and go get another beer.

Here’s my spin on the whole thing. The premise that our local distributors don’t support local brewing may or may not have some merit depending on how you define “support.” If supporting a local brewery means actively distributing their product we can get closer to evaluating the relative success on a case by case basis. Consider for a moment, however, that not all of our local breweries have signed up with distributors, and there are a variety of reasons for this. Some just don’t want to because it’s cheaper and easier to distribute their own product, especially if the distribution network is confined. Take Kodiak Island Brewing Company, or Haines Brewing Company, for example. They may have the greatest beer in the world, but guess what? They only make enough to support their respective local communities, so distribution is a moot point. Oh, sure, they occasionally throw us a bone, and it just makes us thirstier for their product, so we look for it. It’s not at Humpy’s. It’s not at Café. It’s not at Tap Root, and it’s certainly not at the Brown Jug Warehouse or La Bodega. Who’s fault is that? Don’t point at the distributor. It’s really no one’s fault.

The other half of the equation is the barkeep or publican. Consider another crucial point. There are a finite number of tap handles in Alaska, plain and simple. In order for a new beer to be put on, guess what? A beer has to be taken off. What if all the beers already on the tap line are very good? Café Amsterdam drives this point home very well. Kassik’s Kenai Brew Stop and Kenai River Brewing Company (KRBC) all have respectable beer and Amsterdam’s Ken Pajak is eager to share their wares with the discerning Anchorage beer drinking community. But Pajak has to make a choice. If he wants the beer to go on right away, something has to come off line. That’s not practical. Who takes a half a keg of beer offline in deference for another? It’s been done, but it’s not very practical. So, Ken has to sit on the Kassik’s or KRBC product. Where does he store it in the mean time? What’s happening to the beer as it waits? Is it as fresh as the brewer intended? The bottom line question is that, is there room for another keg? I challenge you to find empty taps in town, or across the state. My point is that a distributor can be very passionate about a product, but can’t convince the barkeep to put it on. The barkeep may be very passionate about the beer and want to put it on, but doesn’t want to take another beer off. Who’s fault is that?

Of course, there’s much, MUCH more to this, and I haven’t even begun to answer my own questions above, but what about the responsibility of the craft beer lover that wants to see more local beer on tap? There ARE some direct things that person can do to influence both the publican and the distributor to work with more local suds. As consumers, we all vote with our feet and we vote with our dollars. This means we have a voice. Here’s what I do. Without fail, when I got to any restaurant to have dinner and the server asks me if I would like something to drink with dinner, I never fail to ask “What local beer are you serving?” If the answer is Alaskan Amber, or Alaskan Pale, I’ll sometimes even take it a step further and say, “No, I mean this town local.” What Anchorage beer do you have?” This has nothing to do with the relative merit of Alaskan Brewing Company products; they’re distinctly local Alaskan beers, but in my opinion, there’s more to local beer than Alaskan. What I’m trying to do in my own, miniscule, single voice subtle way is train the server to at least understand that there’s more to local beer than meets the eye. If enough people ask for local beer, the server will mention it to management. “Hey, you know what? I’ve been getting a lot of requests for local beer.” Then, the next time the distributor comes around peddling his fermented wares, he might meet a more receptive barkeep.

Consider also that every time a distributor takes on a new product, the distributor is taking a risk. Understand that when, say, McGinley’s wants to try out a keg of Moose’s Tooth Midtown Brown. The distributor doesn’t run down to the brewery and pick up a keg and bring it back. The distributor buys the beer in advance and stages it at the warehouse for accounts that are already set up or for potential sale. So, the distributor already has money invested in the product and is eating warehouse space to store and maintain it. He assumes some of the risk for shelf life, beer quality and the like. So, it’s not as simple as the consumer making a demand for local beer and POOF, it shows up on the tap line the very next day.

Am I being soft or am I placating the distributors in town? No, I’m being realistic. Are distributors above some unscrupulous tactics? No, I’ve seen them. The distribution system can be one of the most fiercely competitive set of entities around. I’ve seen some downright, vicious tactics. Understand as well that just like there is a finite number of tap handles in town, there is finite shelf space in our liquor stores and premium “facing” is a fought over and fiercely protected commodity. New bottled product requires more shelf space, and the cycle starts again. It’s a regular turf war out there, and because my objective is to make my readers thirsty, I’ll avoid specific examples of some of the shit these folks can pull. And for you distributors that are reading this out there, you know damned well what I’m talking about. Okay, enough on this subject, but in passing, I’d like to thank my reader for emailing me his comment for discussion. He’s new to the blog, so I hope he doesn’t feel like I’m picking on him. Fire at will, kiddos!

I don’t get to the Moose’s Tooth as often as I should. But, when I do, I pay attention, because aside from a long-standing line of flagships beers, there’s always something new and interesting at the Midtown pizzeria. Pizza goes back a long way in my life, but for some reason, unlike the mainstream, I’m not a beer and food kind of guy. Yeah, odd, I know, but it’s true. There are exceptions, and I know it’s blasphemous, but fact of the matter is, I’d rather keep the two gastro-intestinal sensations somewhat separate. Okay, forgive me, Gambrinus, but I’ll make the fateful statement: I’d rather have a soft drink with most food than a beer. Again, there are exceptions, but that’s the rule in Fermento’s dining life. I want to enjoy the beer on its own merit, and although there have been intense gastrointestinal experiences that have combined the two, that’s the exception for me, not the rule.

On top of that, I think that like everyone else, pizza is an intensely personal thing. A strong corollary I’ve always used when people debate the merits of various beers with me is that “beer is as personal as pizza. Ask anyone what their favorite pizza is, and you’re likely to get as many different answers as there are pizza places in town. The same thing goes with beer. Everyone’s got a favorite.” I’ll digress. On the occasion of my 10 year anniversary with the Anchorage Press and my 500^th column, I reviewed highlights of my foamy career with the paper. The second-most question that people ask me is “What is your favorite beer?” Aside from my Desert Island Six Pack (DISP), the answer is vague and always will be. But, again, I’ll answer the question. It’s (my favorite beer is) the one in my hand. That might seem like a cop out, but it’s entirely true. I select every beer for a reason. The beer has to fit my mood, my current tastes, my attitude, and my desires. Those are as shifting as the sands in an hourglass (not to rob the popular phrase from a popular, long-running TV soap opera).

And, I guess I’m a pretty mainstream pizza eater. My current favorite is the All American at the Moose’s Tooth. My favorite pizza style is pepperoni, an all of its various iterations. Oh, and I like mushrooms and extra cheese. Occasionally, if I’m designing a custom pizza at a place, I’ll have them toss on some pineapple chunks. I find that the pineapple chunks cut the intensity of the pepperoni and balance the pizza. Does this sound like I’m evaluating a beer? It all comes together somewhere.

When I was at the Tooth on September 21^st, I enjoyed their Last Run ESB. I believe this was a First Tap selection, and it sounded interesting so I gave it a swirl. The aroma boasted a very nice citrus element with pin notes and light tart elements. These elements seemed to mask the malt contingent entirely, but that changed over the life of the glass. The malt came out in the long run. The flavor starts with an aggressive bitter contingent followed by yeast and baseline malt elements including what I suspect might be some Munich and Victor malts (based on the toasty elements) and some caramel character and a very light diacytel element. This distinctly American interpretation of the style almost confused the intended style to me, but overall, it’s a very enjoyable beer.

Other beers at the tooth include the Pipeline Stout, Prince William Porter, Midtown Brown, Beartooth Ale, Fairweather IPA, another ESB, Chugach Centennial Ale (American Pale), Northern Lights Amber, Alpenglow Amber, Polar Pale Ale, Moose’s Tooth Hefeweizen, Klondike Golden, Raspberry Wheat, and Hard Apple Cider. When the Tooth can do it, expect 13 of their own beers on tap. Perpetually busy, it still remained a great experience, and I managed to have a great beer and a great pizza, although perhaps not at the same time. Argue with me, I love it.

Rob Weller of Specialty Imports is back from a sabbatical in the Caribbean. I thought he couldn’t get in too much beer trouble over there because I don’t often associate the Caribbean with great beer. I know Guinness makes a tropical stout that has Caribbean roots (complete with a brettanomyces element) but one beer doesn’t make a man. In a recent email recounting his trip, he said he might be bringing in an astounding number of eclectic beers that he discovered somehow during his trip (not all of which are from the Caribbean). I’m excited as always to see what he comes up with. I’ve said it before, but Weller has brought in more great beer than this state’s seen in years and years.

Here’s an update to the Sunday, September 30 National Toast to Michael Jackson. Café Amsterdam is the Alaska venue that will represent the state in this national honoring of the recently departed Beer Hunter. All breweries in the state are being represented between 4-7 PM at the toast. Seems like most of the state’s breweries are sending forth fermented goods that will be for sale, the proceeds of which will be donated to the National Parkinson’s Foundation in Jackson’s name. This is not only our chance to make a statement about our state’s recognition of this man’s contribution to the beer world, but to gather and have a libation-ous good time in what is rapidly turning into a distinct designated-driver event. The toast will happen at 5:00 on that evening, but come early to grab a seat or elbow your way to the bar for the next beer.

At Glacier Brewhouse, Bocktoberfest is now on tap. A Double IPA is also enough to bait you into the bowls of the parking-challenged downtown area. Glacier brewer Kevin Burton always has something up his sleeve which might come across as an interesting joke or a good beer.

Lagunitas Undercover Investigation Shut Down Ale is on the liquor store shelves in big, fatty 22-ounce bombers now. This is some deee-licious stuff. I really like the Lagunitas line because the beers are aggressively hopped, the brewery flavor profile has more to do with balance than hop assault. The Undercover commemorates the 20 day shut down of the brewery by the feds in 2006 over a pot bust there. If you haven’t checked out the Lagunitas website (http://www.lagunitas.com/), it’s a must. These guys are out of control and I absolutely love their attitude. They’re right up there with Stone Brewing Company in my opinion and it takes someone as sassy as John Burkett over at ODOM to bring this stuff in to town for us.

As expected pouring this monster in the glass vents off some substantial hop gas in the form of fresh-off-the-vine northwest varieties, followed by a sweet caramel malt aroma. The slightly hazy, fully amber brew stokes up a rocky, almost frothy off-white head that sticks around throughout the sample. The flavor mimics the aroma with an initial well-rounded hop-flavor, only moderate bitterness and a substantial caramel/toasty malt underpinning. The hallmark of this 9.28 percent behemoth is balance. Good luck finding the alcohol until it’s too late. I could easily slam more than one of these bastards, but will do it in a safe setting. Rumor has it that there are more Lagunitas beers coming our way, so keep your lips curled.

I love pumpkin ale, but others don’t. That’s just fine with me. To each his (or her) own. So a brewer tosses some vegetables in a beer. You toss vegetables back with meat and beer too, so what’s the difference? There’s just something about that “slice-o-pie” element in a well-designed pumpkin ale that makes my mouth water. Still, any pumpkin ale has to be a beer first, and not just some over-spiced pale ale with some pumpkin goop tossed in for authenticity. Any homebrewer or commercial brewer will tell you, it’s all together too easy to overdue a spiced beer.

Just for the joy of me and Charlie Brown, this year, we have lots to choose from, and I’m glad to see our local breweries espousing the style. Glacier Brewhouse brewed one, and as far as I can tell, it’s the biggest bastard at 9 percent alcohol. I love brewer Kevin Burton’s attitude when he says “Lots of pumpkins were killed in the making of this beer.” Upwards of 20 pounds of canned pumpkin were used in making the beer, but what makes the beer most interesting is Burton’s use of three different yeasts in fermentation. He’d only tell me that one of them was a Belgian ale yeast, but wouldn’t divulge the other two. I guess it’s some kind of house secret, but no matter, I’m not homebrewing these days and for sure, his recipe is safe. This beer will be released next Thursday (October 4^th).

I guess Midnight Sun Brewing Company got bored with the staple Humpback Jack Pumpkin Ale, because for the second year in a row the venerable Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter is stealing the show. This brewery’s all about bigness, so this should be no surprise. According to brewer Gabe Fletcher, what makes this bad boy imperial is the booze. It’s 7.8 percent alcohol. Yeah, who cares about that when you consider that popular demand made this beer an instant cult classic last year and it’s popular enough this year for the brewery to bottle it and get it on the shelves around town. There IS a god! Both the Humpback Jack and the Imperial Chocolate Pumpkin Porter use very fresh spices from The Spice House in Chicago, so even the Humpback is tweaked a bit this year. The defining element (aside from canned pumpkin) in the Imperial is cocoa nubs, which Fletcher says add the intense chocolate flavor, but not at the expense of the beer’s head, something brewers have to grapple with when tossing chocolate in the pot because the oils bust the head to shit. Apparently the cocoa nubs contain no oils, so the beer’s creamy head is protected. Good head is always good, and I’m glad Fletcher realizes this. Best of all, both beers will be available on tap, and I’m guessing (suggesting?) that venues like Café Amsterdam and Humpy’s serve this stuff side by side so us beer snobs can check them out together. Oh, and just for the record, Fletcher admitted that he siphoned off a good dose of the imperial for rocking up in a bourbon barrel for later release. Boy Howdy!

Oh, and heads up. Also on October 5^th at Midnight Sun, look for the release of a wet hop beer. A “wet hop” beer uses hops fresh from the vine rather than traditional hop cones that have been dried in an oast house (or kiln dried). More and more breweries are moving toward this cutting-edge (and expensive) way of hopping beers. “You have to use about five times the amount of [fresh] hops you would dried hops,” he said. I’m familiar with the process and the concept, but wondered just HOW fresh hops would be here in Alaska where they don’t grow indigenously. “They were picked, packaged and shipped up here through Fed-Ex overnight, and as soon as they came through the door, they were tossed in the kettle,” explained Fletcher. The total elapsed time from vine to beer brine was no more than 48 hours. I know Deschutes makes wet hop beers, and their vine-to-brine time is a couple of hours, but they’re smack dab in the middle of the hop-rich Pacific Northwest growing region. I totally applaud Midnight Sun’s devotion to bringing us the very best, freshest beer they can, so this shouldn’t go unrecognized.

The most interesting pumpkin ale interpretation is bound to come from the Snow Goose Restaurant and Sleeping Lady Brewing Company where brewery Clay Brackley, who admittedly hates spiced pumpkin ale, decided to research colonial ale and came up with his own recipe for a pumpkin beer that reaches back into history.

Back in the days when George Washington and his pointy-hatted friends wore curly white locks, cultivated grain and barley were quite a bit scarcer than they are today and just about anything that would ferment was used to brew ale, which was about as important as water back then. Ale was more stable and cleaner than water, and I’d like to think it was fundamental in the founding of our country.

Pumpkins were abundant in colonial America, and it’s no stretch of the imagination that a lot of the stuff went into making ale. Rumor has it that it was a favorite of George Washington’s and he was particularly fond of a certain pumpkin porter that was brewed right at his place on a regular basis. Brackley set out to reproduce something from this era, and he started out by ordering up some of what he thought were going to be small pumpkins. He got the bigger ones instead, but no matter, there wasn’t much consistency in beer recipes back then anyway, and maybe more was getter back then too. Who’s really counting when you toss 140 pounds of real pumpkins in a modern mash tun that’s not designed for this kind of stuff? “I think I have lost my mind and might never brew this again,” he said, due to the labor involved and the potential for a stuck runoff from the mash tun.

I understand the labor part. I hate cleaning even one pumpkin, just to stab holes in it for Halloween. It’s gooey, messy work, and those pumpkin rinds are hard to work with. This is of course before I discovered that a Sawzall is a handy tool for the job. But 140 pounds? Better Brackley than Fermento. I hope he’s got power tools. As for the stuck runoff part, the sinewy, gelatinous pumpkin pulp doesn’t make a good, natural filter bed for brewing. Malted barley creates a somewhat loose, natural filter that the converted, sugary water can seep through when the mashing process is done and the beer is run off into the brew kettle. Throw pumpkin in the mix and it’s probably akin to tossing a couple of socks in your kitchen sink drain and hoping it will still work. With a lot of work, patience and even good luck, the proportions are just right and it all works like a charm. Brackley’s got the skill and patience and with any luck, we’ll be able to enjoy something our forefathers did in their day.

Also on at the Goose is the Expresso Bock, a traditional German lager with 6 pounds of Kaladi Brothers Red Goat Coffee. Why Red Goat? Bock is German for goat, so it fits. German Munich malt and German dark malt is used in the beer and it’s lagered for two weeks before the coffee is tossed in. Brackley says the caffeine contingent is very low and “unless you drank about a gallon you wouldn’t feel its effects.” Hmmmm… as good as this beer is, I guess I could pound a gallon of it, but I think the alcohol would win.

One of my favorite styles, a Russian Imperial Stout, is also on at the Goose. This one’s 7% alcohol by volume and it’s rich, creamy and good.

I hate to divert from coverage of fresh, local ales, but we’re also getting in Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale from Coors, Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Ale from the Buffalo Bill Brewing Company in Hayward, California (I suspect contract brewed in Portland) and Elysian’s Night Owl Pumpkin Ale from Seattle, Washington. Elysian’s edges the others out in my opinion, but they’re all decent interpretations of the style. Both Brown Jug Warehouse and La Bodaga will stock them all. Buffalo Bills was the first “real” brewpub I visited in my foamy career, and believe it or not, the Pumpkin Ale was available. Buffalo Bills was also the first place I picked up a copy of the Celebrator Beer News, a publication I now honorably write for. If you’re into the pumpkin ale style, you’ve got your work “carved” out for you. Look for my column in the Anchorage Press on October 4^th to cover pumpkin ales.

In addition to the pumpkin ales, at La Bodega, new this week is Pyramid’s Broken Rake Amber, Pyramid’s Imperial Hefeweizen, and Pulaner Oktoberfest.

John Burkett at ODOM says that Silver Gulch Brewing Company’s Octoberfest, Avery’s Old Jubilation and Kaiser Imperial Oktoberfest, Deschutes Jubelale and Lagunitas’s Censored Ale are all due in starting in October.