I tried to go Christmas shopping briefly today, but ended up at the liquor store and then Mammoth Music. I scored some killer Belgian ales and a couple of used CD’s of my all time favorite band, The Electric Light Orchestra. Yeah, I know. I’m dating myself, but that’s the way it goes. Traffic so undeniably sucks from here until Christmas, I thought I’d better stock up for the holidays on good beer and good music and then lay low for a while. So, now I can sit and type until I get beer fingers. I sure love reaching out to all my beer loving friends in the world. Happy holidays (raise your pint). I’m drinking the rather benign Samual Adams Holiday Spiced Porter as a warm up beer for something more substantial.
Here’s a quickie update on the Midnight Sun Brewing Company Seven Deadly Sins Beer Dinners. The gig at the Tap Root Café is on Saturday, December 29. It starts at 7 PM and is pay as you go. That means if you want a beer, go buy one. Some of the Midnight Sun staff will be on hand to talk about the beer and answer your questions. What’s making this even more fun, is the gig is now a costume contest. Dress up as your favorite sin and you’ve just entered for a chance to win a coveted 7DS Beer Box, a gift pack containing all seven beers in the series. Considering that you can’t even buy all of these bottles individually any more, this is already a collector’s item.
Starting at 8:00 PM, the Pilot Cracker Playboys will start cranking out tunes and livening things up (as if they’ll need livening up with a bunch of sins wandering around). That’s why there’s a $7.00 cover charge that night. It will run until 2 AM when your municipal officials deem you’ve had enough to drink and serving alcoholic beverages becomes illegal in town.
The Seven Deadly Sins Beer Dinner at SubZero Microlounge is slated for January 16, 2008 and serves as the official prelude to the Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival. This is actually a sit down, get your ass served affair. Go ahead and balk at the $95.00 a seat price. Now get over it. This is the luminary grip-and-grin session, so if you want face time with the who’s-who of the festival, this is the place. This is also the venue where Humpy’s/SubZero pull out all the stops (and the corks) when it 
comes to both food and beer. Humpy’s Executive Chef Tim Farley is already working out the pairings and details of the food. Simply, the food is exquisite and of course, expect the 7DS beer series along with Midnight Sun’s Fallen Angel Golden Strong Ale, and probably some more specialties that Billy Opinsky is famous for pulling out of his vault.
Still no detail on the Kinley’s 7DS and rumor has it that there will be another gig at Café Amsterdam. Everyone wants a piece of the action, and rightfully so.
People associate La Bodega with good beer, but sometimes overlook the fairly extensive beer glassware the retailer has for sale. Especially when it comes to Belgian ales, the right glassware is just as important as serving the beer at the right temperature and other aspects with ensuring that what’s being tasted is as close to what the brewer intended as possible. You can work that angle by matching the glassware with the beer. In fairness, The Brown Jug Warehouse has some glassware too, but the collection isn’t nearly as extensive.
To get you started, La Bodega is offering a couple of deals. Buy a bottle of Jenlain Noel or Biere de Mars and get a free Jenlain glass. Pick up the trio of Chimay Premiere Red, Cinq Cents and Grand Reserve and a Chimay goblet comes with it. Buying any combination of three Unibroue and receive your choice of any of the many Unibroue glasses in stock.
Recent arrivals at La Bodega include Lagunitas Brown Shugga (six packs) and Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout (are you reading this, Mr. Gruhl?). I find the Brown Shugga story particularly 
interesting. Apparently the brewery wanted to make a barley wine a year or two back. Everything was in order and the crew set to work in the brewery grinding malt, heating water and getting the hops ready for the big brew. Somewhere along the line, someone discovered that the grain bill was significantly light for a barley wine. This was an evening/night brew and there was no convenient source of grain around, so what’s a brewer to do? Rather than scratch the brew, someone came up with the bright idea of going out on a scavenger hunt of sorts and picking up whatever brown sugar could be had in town. Oh, and just for the record, Petaluma is no huge town with 50 pound sacks of brown sugar at just any old retail outlet.
The result? By the time the brew was through, there were over 400 empty 1-pound C&H Brown Sugar boxes littering the brewery floor and a big, brown, swirling monster in the fermenter. Management was convinced that the beer was going to be a disaster with that much sugar and so little malt, but providence intervened and the beer was allowed to perk to life, finish, condition and age. What resulted is what we get today, which is a beautiful interpretation of a big, hugely malt-forward beer that’s different than the mainstream. It’s here in six packs.
The latest update on the Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival, other than that arrangements for the pre-event dinner at SubZero have been established, is that because this year, attendance is going to be carefully managed, Aurora Productions is selling tickets in advance online. This is a prudent move considering that the event has been sold to capacity in recent years and people have been turned away. Now if you’ve got a ticket, you get in. If you don’t pre-buy, it’s your risk.
Log on to www.auroproductions.net/beer-barley.html and click on the “Purchase Your Tickets Online” tab to the right of the web page. This will bring you to a page with all of the Aurora Productions events that have online ticket sales. Note that tickets are sold individually for both days. The tickets are not on sale until Saturday, December 22, but for $30 after that date, you can arrive with tickets in hand, and this is bound to streamline the entry process and get you in front of great beer that much quicker.
The only faster way to do it is to sign up to volunteer to help out at the festival and get in for free if you spend a minimum amount of time with a TAM card manning a booth and serving your friends and neighbors good beer. You can also sign up to volunteer online using the “Volunteer” tab on the right of the initial web page.
The featured dignitary at this year’s event will be Sam Calgione from Dogfish Head Brewing. He will be the sole speaker at the pre-fest Great Northern Brewers Homebrew Club meeting on January 17th. Calgione is obviously well-versed in extreme brewing and that’s going to be his topic. He’s animated, interesting and thinks in paragraphs like I do, so it should be a great presentation.
Although it’s tentative at this point, North Coast Brewing Company may be in attendance at this year’s GABBF, and hopefully they’ll come a-packing with some of their fermented treats from Northern California. See below for an exciting announcement about this brewery’s pending presence in the state.
Just prior to the GNBC meeting on January 17th, at 6 PM in the upstairs pub at the Snow Goose Restaurant and Sleeping Lady Brewing Company the Goose will be releasing the long awaited, Fermento-brewed Imperial Stout that will honor the fallen soldiers on Ft. Richardson that didn’t return from Iraq with the unit. Specifically, Lisa Urban organized the brew to honor my son-in-law, Jeffry Bisson, who was KIA on January 20th. I learned of his demise on the way to last year’s Great Alaska Beer and Barleywine festival. The proceeds of the sale of this beer will go toward the Spartan Memorial on Ft. Richardson, an everlasting edifice so that we might never forget the sacrifice of these fine servicemen and women and their families during the campaign. If there ever was a time, this is the time to pack the house at the Goose and show our support. Thanks once again to Gary Klopfer for donating the materials and his brewery, and the expertise of his brewer Clay Brackley to create the beer.
Help me out with this and see if you too don’t find this odd. Alaskan Brewing Company is releasing a smidgen of their latest beer within their ongoing Rough Draft Series of experimental beers. This time it’s a Jalapeño Imperial IPA. If this isn’t the oddest thing to flow forth from the brewery, I’m misinformed. Now there’s nothing wrong with this at all, and once it’s put into perspective, it makes more sense. Alaskan’s been in the business of staying pretty even keel, even with their experimental beers, only deviating slightly to the right or left of center. My paradigm always tries to convince me that the purpose of the Rough Draft program at Alaskan is to put potential, future full-time beers out in the market to determine consumer reaction and use the feedback to tweak the recipe toward ongoing production. Simply, that’s not true. Sure, the platform has been used to do just that, but overall, the Rough Draft program is as much a creative outlet and reward for the employees that toil continuously to serve the flagship beers as it is a pre-marketing device. The Jalapeno IPA is more than likely just someone’s idea of something fun and different, and I applaud the effort. And, despite my disdain for hot spiced beer, I’ll give this a whirl, because if anyone can do something right, it’s Alaskan. Look for this late next week at Humpy’s and Café Amsterdam.
Keep your mug available for the upcoming introduction of North Coast Brewing Company beers to flow north sometime in the near future. Again, credit Rob Weller of Specialty Imports for pulling the strings to bring this to eventual reality for us.
North Coast out of Ft. Bragg, California, is a long-time producer of stalwart, solid ales and lagers, some of which have historically made my socks go up and down. Weller’s shooting for a pretty aggressive product mix including (if possible and if the sun and the moon and the distribution stars all line up) Brother Thelonius Belgian Abbey Ale; La Merle (saison); Old No. 38 Stout (one of the very first American style stouts that I absolutely fell in love with) Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout; PranQster Belgian Golden Ale; Red Seal Ale (cask conditioned) and Old Stock Ale. I’m sure the mix will ebb and flow over time, but getting any of these beers back up here (we used to get them years ago via the long defunct Inlet Distributors) is a real coup.
Things are really popping over at The Tap Root Café. Look for a Flemish beer tasting sometime toward the end of January. On February 16th, there will be a special Ring of Fire Meadery release at the Café (pay as you go, 8 pm – 2 am, cover to be determined). No need to wait though; here’s what’s on tap at least as far back as last Friday (12/14): Ommegang 10th Anniversary Chocolate Indulgance; Moose’s Tooth ESB; Ring of Fire Meadery’s Pear Cyser; Homer Brewing Company’s Red Knot Scottish Ale, Harvest Rye Lager and Celestiale; Kassiks Kenai Brew Stop’s Beavertail Blonde; Midnight Sun Brewing Company’s Arctic Rhino Coffee Porter; Kodiak Brown Ale; Ooosik Amber and Sockeye Red IPA.
My son and his family arrived from Colorado, and I immediately set forth to twist my son’s liver into submission, much like a father would give a son a loving wedgie as a token of younger years. Direct from the airport, we dragged unto The Moose’s Tooth Pizzeria for a fresh (and heavily anticipated by my son) pie and some good ale. I sampled the Moose’s Tooth Kodiak Red and found it more amber in color, but nicely malt-forward in the nose, with sweets echoing around the edges. Nice caramel and light toasted notes rounded out the sniff. The sample drank easily and somewhat mimicked the nose with the addition of some medium hop bitterness and evidence of alcohol. The medium bodied, amply carbonated brew edged toward a slightly dry finish which begged for repeat sips.
Next was the Williwaw Winter Warmer. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my Alaskan Winter Ale mindset behind me and simply drank and enjoyed th beer without real formal evaluation. I do recall it was tasty, perfectly clear and slightly aggressive in the hop department with fruity and malt notes underneath. It’s rich in what I perceive to be a dry chocolate character and perhaps some light spruce notes (although I suspect my paradigm was kicking in again).
The star of the session, in my humble opinion, is the Dark Days Ale. This opaque beer with easily coaxed rubies in the light pours with a medium tan head. The nose is richly complex with chocolate, big fruits and the like, and the flavor matched up perfectly, again with the addition of perfectly balancing bittering hops, ample floral and slightly earthy hop flavor (Perle and Chinook) in a sweet-centered beer with a dusty dry finish. Nice roast contingents and slight extended bitterness round out the finish. This is an overall very pleasant, imminently drinkable, albeit rich beer that I could enjoy again and again.
Other beers include Alpenglow Amber; Polar Pale Ale; Bear Tooth Brown; Hefeweizen; Klondike Golden; Hard Apple Cider, Pipeline Stout, Fairweather IPA; Smokin’ Willie Smoked Porter; Northern Lights Amber; Moonflower ESB; Raspberry Wheat; Spenard Nite Life; and Prince William Porter.
Along with the usual great suspects at Café Amsterdam this week, welcome the simply incredible Avec les Bon Veux to the line up. Don’t miss this beer. It’s one of the best I’ve had in a long time. ‘Tis the season! You can also get any remaining Samichlaus Helles (bottles) of the two cases Ken Pajak has decided to release. He’s stashing the rest for another year.
Dr Fermento Beer Calendar
12/20/07 Humpy’s CoHoHo With Santa Night 6:00 PM Pay As You Go
12/29/07 Tap Root Café MSBC Seven Deadly Sins Party 7:00 PM Pay As You Go ($7.00 Cover)
01/18/08 Eagan Convention Center Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival 4:00 PM $30.00
01/16/07 SubZero Microlounge MSBC Seven Deadly Sins Beer Dinner 6:00 PM ??
01/19/08 Eagan convention Center Great Alaska Beer and Barley Wine Festival 5:00 PM $30.00
02/08/08 Snow Goose Restaurant Fur Rondy Homebrew Comp. Entries Accptd 11:00 AM $$ Per Entry
02/09/08 Snow Goose Restaurant Fur Rondy Homebrew Competition Judging 10:00 AM Free
02/16/07 Tap Root Café Ring of Fire Meadery Special Release 8:00 PM Pay As You Go/Cover TBD)
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