Weekly Beer Thoughts: Oktoberfest and Random Reviews

While all of you dedicated craft beer connoisseurs were out there partying this past weekend at several Oktoberfest parties throughout our lovely Washtenaw County brewpubs, your truly was doing house projects. Yeah, that's right - I'm lame, you got a problem with that?

As some of you out there are aware, my wife and I are expecting our first child in a few weeks. I feel that I have officially crossed over into fatherhood as apparently this past weekend I was more concerned with my yard (Damn crabgrass!) and various house projects on my ever growing "honey-do" list than with sampling fresh Oktoberfest and Marzen-style brews during some area Oktoberfest bashes like at Corner Brewery (Friday) and Original Gravity in Milan (Saturday). Yes, pretty soon I will be wearing bermuda shorts with very thin, long black socks hiked up to my boney knees, and saying things like, "A penny saved is a penny earned," and "Cold enough for ya?"

So I hope you all enjoyed it you lucky sacks - I do love Oktoberfest and this time of year and I believe this is the first year in a while where I haven't visited at least one place and listened to polka while drinking gigantic liter-sized mugs of traditional German brews like Marzen, Oktoberfest, classic Pilsener, Dusseldorf Altbier, Dunkels and wheats. Going completely off topic for a sec, if you ever find yourself in the Newport Kentucy area (or you know, like Germany), I suggest very strongly to visit the Hofbrahaus where it feels like Oktoberfest year round.

As a consolation, there are some pretty awesome local events coming up in October:

- Oct. 2, Ashleys in Westland will be holding their Oktoberfest party

- Oct. 2, the Corner Brewery in Ypsi will be celebrating John Lennon's birthday with a concert fundraiser. Funds raised will benefit the Peace Scholarship program for the Local Veterans for Peace chapter. And then on Oct. 5, the Corner will be releasing their seasonal Dusseldorf Altbier, Olde Number 22. In my opinion, probably the most well-rounded beer in Matt and Rene Greff's portfolio, I very much enjoy the fruity/estery notes balanced with roast and caramel coupled with the somewhat low-alcohol session beer style.

- Oct. 14 from 7 to 9 p.m., Arbor Brewing will be hosting their "Best of Michigan" beer tasting...sounds wonderful! I wanted to weep when I found out I couldn't attend their Belgian tasting a few months ago, this should be fun.

Random Reviews

Samuel Smith's Yorkshire Stingo

(This first review was written by my friend and partner in beer, John Zengel. He is a Seibel Institute grad and has been in the beer and retail industry for most of his adult life. He recently wrote a spot-on review on Samuel Smith's Yorkshire Stingo...Stingo is an old English term for strong or double beer)

I love Samuel Smith beers but the $10 price tag has kept me away from this beer but, while visiting a friend in Michigan I found a retailer selling it off for $4.99 a bottle!

The beer pours a cloudy reddish-brown color. With a nice creamy, dense somewhat dusty brown head of foam. The nose is strong almost brandy-like the alcohol is evident. Smelling of cherries, plums, and raisins. There is a little sourness going on with the oak, a lot of dark fruits. Very complex nose, suggesting a heavy, warming brew.

The taste and body of this beer was crazy. One of the few brews I've had that didn't drink the way it smelled. It was smooth, and creamy with that characteristic Samuel Smith fruitiness. It was very easy to drink with lots of dark fruits, toffee, some sourness, a good vanilla-mellowness from the oak.

All around a very drinkable, not to heavy, complex brew that hide it's 8 percent alcohol quite well. I could of easily drank this beer all night. Glad I got it for the price I did but, I would defiantly purchase this beer again at regular price. Wish I would of tried it sooner. Has good aging potential.

Founders Nemesis 2010

(This next one is from yours truly on the highly sought after Nemesis from Founders Brewing. It is a seasonal beer that changes every year, last year they brewed a very delicious wheat-wine and this year they decided to up the ante with a super malt, super hopped and super alcohol barley wine)

Appearance: Pours flat, as the beer warms a foamy sticky head forms as you swirl the glass. A deep, beautiful dense crimson to dark chocolate color. More sticky, yeasty lacing appears on the glass.

Smell: The nose is absolutely massive. The aroma fills the air around the glass with very thick notes of brandy, chocolate, old bannanas, leather and a very distinct hoppy cedar backdrop. The gathering of these very complex aromas was probably the most impressive thing about this beer to me. As the beer warms, however, the booziness becomes a little overpowering maybe could have used some more carbonation.

I suggest very strongly to use a large brandy glass or a roamy wine glass to drink this beer, it really encapsulates the smell - helps distinguish between the varying and overlapping aromas.

Taste: More brandy and chocolate up front along with sugar-coated figs, vanilla bean. For a beer with so much alcohol in the smell, 100 IBUS and 12 percent alcohol by volume, this was amazingly smooth to drink. As if they were going for a big malt and alcohol-forward beer that you can drink more than just one of (devious bastards).

The cedary hop complexity I got in the nose was pretty much absent in the taste, a little disappointing I guess but a very small blip on an otherwise wonderful fall seasonal. There was a fresh cedary hops bite in the finish and the lingering after taste.

Saying goodbye to summer in style

As a way to say goodbye to the summer, myself and a friend of mine recently indulged our palate and our appetite. We coupled steamed mussels in a tomato-based sauce with crusty bread with a 2008 Drie Fonteinen Oude Gueze.

Traditional gueze is a blend of one, two and three-year old lambics and then aged in oak barrels that makes for a beautifully amber tinted beer that is basically stripped of any bittering hop flavor. There are very bright and lively notes of fresh peaches and champagne in the smell. The taste is highly tart, oily almost and I'll be the first to admit that it's not for everybody, and I would be hard pressed to share more than one bottle myself. But this beer, especially paired with the mussels, was just awesome and certainly lived up to the hype of Belgium's hallowed Drie Fonteinen or "Three Fountains."

For anybody who watches Anthony Bourdain's "No Reservations" on the Travel Channel, he has sort of coined the term "Food Porn," and there is actually one episode titled Food Porn where he eats some monstrously delicious stuff that made my arteries clog from just watching it.

And despite the blatantly juvenile jokes such a term might lead to, participating in food porn can be serious business (hee-hee, snicker). What it means is to basically indulge and then over-indulging in delicious and more often than not very fatty and simply decadent foods. It's pornographic!

Well, our meal in question didn't stop with the mussels and I believe that day has been the closest to a "Food Porn" day as I have ever reached.

Next up for us was lamb shoulder chops which are fatty but still good, with a balsamic vinegar reduction and fresh rosemary. Gotta have rosemary with lamb, it just doesn't work without it. But, going with our succulent chops was one of my favorite all-time beers and at that point in the summer, extremely hard to find - Jolly Pumpkin's Biere De Mars.

Biere De Mars is Jolly Pumpkin's version of the Franco-Belgian Biere De Garde, but I actually believe there is another style that is called just Biere De Mars. Mars is French for March, indicating the traditional seasonal aspect of the brew like the German's Oktoberfest "Marzen." This wonderful concoction was more roasty than the Oude Gueze but still reached back to that sour, oakey tartness that makes Belgian inspired sour beers so savory. There is a reason why Ron Jeffries' Biere De Mars, like other JP seasonals, are highly sought after - they are very good and this bottle carried some robust flavors of Granny Smith apple, sour candy, oak and some mossiness.

That day was certainly a marathon of delicious food and even more delicious beers. Here's to summer...nice knowin ya!

Weekly Beer Thoughts: Tis the season...for beer!

Fall and beer go together like apple pie and America, Laverne and Shirley, Batman and Robin, peas and honey, the 2 a.m. Taco Bell run and morning shame, up and down, day and night, black and white, yin and yang - well, you get the picture. One thing leads into the other in a variety of mutually beneficial ways, and for pure-blood Michiganders (certainly a cold-weather people) the advent of malt-forward, roasty, high-alcohol seasonal beers such as your garden variety barley wines and double stouts is a shining, bright light breaking through those inevitable snow-filled clouds.

Yes, it is no coincidence that Michigan is the "Great Beer State," and is a very cold-weather region when it wants to be. I remember the winter we had two years ago where I literally shoveled my driveway every day for five days straight. It was me vs. the snow and I feel like in the end it was pretty much a draw, but I celebrated with the aforementioned beers anyway!
But it's not just cold weather that benefits and somehow encourages heavy drinking but it's all the lovely amenities that come along with this wonderous season. What are these totally awesome things Mr. Austen you might be asking, well have you heard a small American phenomenon called NFL football? And what about its slightly embarrassing, yet equally important cousin - fantasy football? Yessss...fantasy football, there are a lot of men and women (yes, I said it there are women who play fantasy football and are very good) who are reading that last sentence and shaking their head in enthusiastic approval right now.

Say, what you want about fantasy football and the fantasy football nerds out there but you know what, it's nice especially when you're an adult to play games; to get lost in something competitive that has no real consequences except possibly the loss of man card. I lost mine quite a while ago when I voluntarily offered to carry my wife's purse, so I'm all good baby!
I think by now you can tell I am a cold-weather type of guy. I look forward to the snow...for like the first two weeks then I start cursing the day I moved to this god-forsaken state. But, that doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the summer as well, and there are certainly warm weather beers that do the trick and I wrote about some of those in a post here.

So now is a good time to take a look around at your fall seasonals, check your favorite breweries' websites and have a nice chat with your favorite beer monger about what is coming out or what has already come out and, as always, cheers!