The Beer I Drank Today: Special Holiday Ale (Retox Edition)

I decided some time ago that maybe I should take better care of myself. To do this, it seemed best to rid my body of toxins in order to begin a new regimen of eating better and exercising more. I certainly ate better, limiting portions, sugar, caffeine, and even alcohol. (The exercise will have to come later when it gets warmer.)

The program of supplements meant to clean me out was a ten-day deal. Today is the 11th. It's time to undo all the good I've done. It's time to retox as one friend put it. I started with coffee this morning, but a beer this evening was what I really looked forward to.

I decided to finish off one of the few holiday beers I still had left from the...err...holidays. The Special Holiday Ale from the collaboration of Jolly Pumpkin, Nøgne-Ø, and Stone (three of my favorite breweries) hit the spot. Juniper berries, chestnuts, and other spices dominated this malty slice of heaven. When the hop presence wasn't felt, I could swear I was drinking the best, fruitiest Coke ever. And at 9% ABV I was sure not to confuse it too much for a fruity cola.

Welcome back beer. I've missed you. It's been since last year...

This was my first beer of 2010, just in time for Hopslam's arrival tomorrow. Enough of that talk. Let me enjoy my first beer of the year, of the decade.

CBE vs BA 100

Possibly due to the holiday and the fact I live in a college town, last night's Columbia Beer Enthusiast gathering at Sycamore was somewhat small. This was surprising in that the tasting involved only beers on Beer Advocate's top 100 list(s). Granted, the list at BA is lacking a few great beers, but overall it is pretty solid from top to bottom.

The list is fluid as beers are rated daily. One of the beers I brought (Hoppin' Frog's B.O.R.I.S. the Crusher Oatmeal Stout) was ranked at 99 on the American list as of last night, but it did spend time off the list last week. Thankfully, no one minded having to drink such a lowly beer.

I'll detail what we drank below. We started with the lowest ranking beer and moved down the list. I'm not that concerned with rankings. You can look those up if you wish. Here's what we drank...

My contribution to the evening's collection of beers.

Hoppin' Frog's B.O.R.I.S. the Crusher Oatmeal Stout - This was a great place to begin. Someone pointed out that it was too sweet and could stand to age. I love a beer that's very drinkable but you can tell that it will only get better with age, like many beers on this list.

Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter - Too bad this beer was sandwiched between two mammoth imperial stouts. It was a good porter nonetheless. Great Lakes doesn't blow me away, but they always make a solid brew.

Old Rasputin Russian XII - This was as good as I remembered it from the summer: boozy, a touch of cola, so good.

Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout - This one was up for debate. Sanford (of Sycamore) tapped a a keg of this beer (supposedly). Many thought it tasted more like the regular Yeti. I thought it didn't taste like either. I thought I tasted some funk, but I could be wrong. I certainly would finish a pint if you ordered it for me.

Stone Ruination IPA - This was the beer that exposed me to the wonders of craft brewing, my gateway beer. It's always so good. Either because of some aging or the fact that we jut polished off some pretty intense stouts, this one was mellower than usual. No complaints though.

Oskar Blues Ten Fidy - This is a great imperial stout that brings the bitter better than most and is mellower in a can than the syrup usually found in a imperial stout bottle.

Duvel - Spicy...and I think it was skunked. The bottle said that it was pretty new, but it tasted off. Some guys were polite, but I thought it was a case of a bad bottle. I'm pretty sure Duvel didn't taste this way to me before.

Boulevard Saison Brett - It's nice that a MO beer made the list and the tasting. This beer is so much better done than the other saisons I've had over the past couple of years. Sometimes it's hard to believe that it comes from here.

Bear Republic Hot Rod Rye - I love the balance and hop presence of this beer. That said, I'm sort of surprised that it's on this list and so high (40's-50's). It's good, but there aren't beers more deserving than this? Maybe it's such a good representation of the style that it rates high. I've noticed that a lot of brews that defy classification do not make appearances on either top-100 list.

New Glarus Raspberry Tart - What a great way to cleanse the pallet near the mid-point of the tasting. This beer was sweet and not as tart as expected, but it really did the trick. I used to proclaim that I didn't like fruity beers, but I think I'm beginning to sound like all those beer novices who say they don't like hoppy beers. They usually just have to find the right one.

New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red - OK. Two fruity beers from New Glarus in a row? My palet was ready to bring back the malt and hop at this point. Again, this was another excellent fruit beer I didn't expect.


Surly Furious - Simcoe. That ammonia/grapefruit aroma and flavor you sometimes get from your favorite beer? That's simcoe. This beer comes correct with it. Furious indeed.

St. Bernardus 12 - This is my Thanksgiving beer. Give me malt, spice, coffee(?), and a touch of funk to match my smoked turkey. I was more than happy to get started on the week's festivities early with this one.

Russian River Consecration - Wine drinkers can suck it! This beer is pretty awesome. However, I have two problems with Russian River. First, this is a finely crafted beer with even finer artwork on the labels. Why be so lazy as to cover said label with comic sans? COMIC SANS!!! Second, these beers are too pricey. This 750 mL bottle was $25 and the next 12 oz.(?) bottle below was in the $13 range. Why pay those prices when you can get a bomber of New Belgium's La Folie at Arena for the same as Temptation?

Russian River Temptation - Now that I'm done bashing Russian River, I should write about the beer. Consecration and Temptation are two of the most balanced sour beers one can find (if you can find it). This one is more sour than the first, but it's wine in a beer glass. I mean that in a good way.

Founders Breakfast Stout - This beer is pure coffee, but it's done well. The day this became available in MO was the day this place became a little less miserable.

Three Floyds Dreadnaught IPA - Mangoes are my favorite fruit. Why wouldn't you want a beer that taste like mangoes?

Stone Russian Imperial Stout - This is the mother-ship of all Russian imperials. Interesting how much Stone is consumed in our little beer community despite their refusal to distribute here. I'm not sure they have to legally sell in Missouri. We all are too willing to ship their beer or drive to every corner in order fill that gap in our cellars. Either way, this is always welcome at the table.

Bell's Hopslam - I now have a new appreciation for Hopslam. I was always convinced that it needed to be consumed ASAP in order to enjoy the freshness of the hops. The fear is that the hoppiness will fade with time, leaving the beer undrinkable - especially at $19 a sixer. Last night proved me wrong. One of the beers shared last night was cellared and the other was kept in the fridge for the past nine or ten months. I was lucky enough to swipe a sample of each. The cellared beer was very mellow, like a light barley wine. The cold bottle was able to hold onto quite a bit of the grapefruit present in a fresh bottle, but it too was mellower. I will definitely do my best to save a six-pack the next time Hopslam hits town.

Rochefort 10 - "Always good; malty." That's all I had written at this point in the tasting. I think you'll understand why.

Alesmith Speedway Stout - I wasn't sure about this one at first, but it grew on me. Where most stouts pair chocolate with coffee, this one brought the orange zest to the party. There aren't many better combos with chocolate than orange.

Ballast Point Sculpin - Grapefruit and simcoe. I'm sensing a trend in the realm of IPA's and DIPA's.

Abyss - This chocolaty imperial stout actually had some spice but didn't overwhelm you with syrup.

Pannepot Old Fisherman's Ale - Sweet and tart, this beer was lost as it made a solo flight around the table of fallen beer enthusiasts. I was told it's nothing like the real thing. I wouldn't have known the difference at this point in the evening.

Overall, it was maybe the best tasting we've had in the first 18 months of the Columbia Beer Enthusiasts. I enjoyed it immensely, maybe too much. Now, where's my vitamin B?

Get It Together: The Kaiser and the Oktoberfeast

I planned a dinner the other night consisting of stove top brats, German potato salad, and Brussels sprouts with sour cream and bacon. These foods made my "Oktoberfeast" complete...well, almost.

With fall comes a new set of seasonal beers. There are the porters, stouts, and pumpkin beers for sure, but I love a good Oktoberfest. Not being the biggest fan of lagers, I struggle to find a good Oktoberfest brew. Great Lakes out of Cleveland, OH makes a good one as does Bell's. However, Great Lakes doesn't distribute here and the Bell's Oktoberfest was sold in rather limited quantities.

Luckily, Avery's The Kaiser Imperial Oktoberfest hit the shelves here in Columbia this fall. This beer actually reminded me a lot of the cheap, rice-based Burger beer I used on the brats, but it had something more. The yeasts of these two beers was where similarities began and ended. The Kaiser is a thick, syrupy malt bomb that matches the greasy intensity of even the most German meal. If I see this beer ever on a menu at a restaurant, I'm ordering the brats and kraut every time.

Cooking w/Beer: Stovetop Brats

Last night we had what I am calling the "Oktoberfeast." This was a meal featuring German potato salad and some Brussels sprouts mixed with sour cream and bacon. There was an excellent Oktoberfest beer from Avery, but I'll post more on that later.


Now, I've made beer brats before, but this was different. First of all, I cooked the sausage in some water. One good tip I picked up was to poke some holes in the brats so that they would not explode. After the water evaporated, I browned them in the dry pan before adding some onions to cook in the remaining fat. Once the onions were browned, I tossed in a cup of beer and let it simmer.


Usually, I go for a high quality beer, but this time I went a little askew. The beer of choice was a Burger Beer, leftover from my sister's visit over a month-and-a-half ago. It's cheap and stays good forever in a can, but most importantly, it's a German style lager. There really is nothing special about the beer, but I did taste the same yeast as was in my much more expensive and better tasting Avery German style beer.

The Beer I Drank Yesterday

I asked a friend to come over in order to drink my Stone 13th anniversary ale. (Thank you KT.)

That's the Stone on the left, a holy hop bomb that just got better as it warmed. This is how craft beers used to taste to me when I mostly drank Sam Adams and Guinness.

(At this point, I broke out the potato chips so that we could taste something other than the hop assault we just experienced.)

Next was a Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter...more like an imperial stout. Chocolaty, coffee-infused but smooth like a porter should be.

After that, I broke out a surprise in the Stone/Brew Dog/Cambridge collaboration Juxtaposition Black Pilsner. It was black, but I don't know that it was a pilsner. Certainly, it had the crispness of a pilsner and a definite hop presence, but that's where the comparison ends. This was one of those drinking experiences where you just get a little bit of everything: chocolate, raisins (yes, raisins), bananas, [enter beer cliche here], etc. This is maybe the singe greatest beers I've had since...well, maybe since the first beer of the evening. It was good though.

Founders supplied our final two beers, keeping us well within the hops vector. The Harvest Ale is a wet-hopped bastard of a beer. The IBU and ABv numbers are not that impressive, but the beer punches you in the pucker with citrusy hops. We followed that with another great beer from Founders: the DIPA Double Trouble.

There's not much else to say after a tasting like this. Just know that we enjoyed every drop.

Get It Together: Breakfast Stout and Breakfast for Dinner

It was Friday. We didn't feel like going out. We didn't feel like cooking dinner. In this case, the best choices include calling for pizza or making breakfast for dinner (BFD). We went with the latter.

While making our famous pumpkin pancakes (half a can of pumpkin puree and spices tossed into a batch of pancake batter), I contemplated my beer options. This is not an easy pairing. I know that some people drink cheap beer by the pitcher for kegs and eggs events, but I wanted something more appropriate.

Just as I was about to give up and open a beer while I cooked, I remembered the Founders Breakfast Stout I just slipped into the fridge. Although I still content that beer and breakfast do not readily go together, this pairing seemed somewhat fun if not extraordinary.

The bitterness of the beer and the maple syrup left me with an iron-y taste in my mouth; the bacon's smokiness battled the beer throughout; and eggs just don't go with beer. This combo was not ideal.

However, the gooey, pumpkiny pancakes did pair well with the beer on two levels. I like pumpkin and yams with dark chocolate. This beer brings the chocolate. Then there is the roasty-ness of the beer's coffee profile. There is nothing better than washing down buttery pancakes with some coffee.

The pairing was a stretch, but at least it was fun to try. The next time I might make a hardier pancake to go with my breakfast stout for BFD.

Cooking w/Beer: Meatloaf and Pumkin Bread

October rolled in this week. For me, the fall begins on October 1st. This year, the weather obliged as there was definitely a shift toward colder, wetter conditions. Using some fall seasonal beers, I made some dinner.


Meatloaf
I had to make some dinner and we had ground beef in the freezer, so I figured I could make a meatloaf. Several online recipes suggested adding some wine or various spirits to keep the loaf moist and add some richness. I figured there had to be something out there involving beer. I was right.

I found this recipe. I made about 2/3 of the recipe since I had two pounds of meat as compared to three. The key with the beer was to fry up some onions, pour in the beer, and cook it until it was thick (or about 3/4 of a cup).

The loaf turned out great. I could have done more with the flavors, but the beer insured it was moist. Speaking of the beer, I used a Great Lakes Octoberfest. The recipe called for a amber-colored beer, but I went with the fall seasonal from my favorite Ohio brewery.

Here's the recipe...
Ingredients:

• canola oil
• 1 medium sweet onion, chopped
• 10 ounces of bottle dark or amber beer
• dried thyme leaves
• dry mustard
• salt
• Freshly ground pepper
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 cup fresh whole-wheat breadcrumbs
• chopped fresh parsley
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 egg white, lightly beaten

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Coat an 8 1/2-by-4 1/2-inch loaf pan with cooking spray.
2. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until translucent and starting to brown, about 5 minutes. Pour in beer and increase heat to high. Bring to a vigorous boil; cook until the liquid is quite syrupy and the mixture reduces to about 3/4 cup, 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl. Stir in thyme, dry mustard, salt and pepper. Let cool for 10 minutes.
3. Add beef, breadcrumbs, parsley, beaten egg and egg white to the onion mixture. Mix thoroughly with clean hands and transfer to the prepared pan.
4. Bake the meatloaf until an instant-read thermometer registers 160 degrees F when inserted into the center, about 1 hour 20 minutes. Let rest for 5 minutes; drain accumulated liquid from the pan and slice. Serve hot or cold or in a sandwich.

Pumpkin Bread
I stumbled over a pumpkin bread recipe a while ago that used a Dogfish Head Punkin Ale. That beer would be ideal as it uses real pumpkin as its primary ingredient. However, Dogfish Head is not available in MO, so I turned to a local favorite. Schlafly's Pumpkin Ale is one of the two or three best pumpkin beers I've ever had. This was the logical substitute.

The original recipe can be found here (although I reprint it word-for-word below). The only difference, again, was the beer. I'd suggest only using pumpkin beers by Dogfish Head, Schlafly, or Southern Tier. In my humble opinion, those are the only pumpkin beers worthy of consumption. The rest are spiced ales with some pumpkin pie flavoring.

The bread was good and contained a hint of pumpkin without being too pumpkiny or bright orange. I will certainly make this again, but I might add a tablespoon or two of some pumpkin puree to give it a little more pumpkin authenticity. I think it would pair well with a chocolate stout or maybe a porter. Also, I might try it with a black bean chili with chunks of yams.

Here's the very simple recipe...

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, combine:

12 oz bottle of Dogfish Punkin Ale

3 cups self-rising cake flour.

1 tablespoon brown sugar

A dash each of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, but not too much, as you don't want to get in the way of the flavors Sam Calagione and co. have created.

Pour batter into a greased loaf pan, and bake for about 45 minutes, or until top is golden brown, and a toothpick comes out clean.