Sam Adams takes on Heady Topper, Enjoy By IPA

When I talked to Jim Koch, founder of Boston Beer Company, two years ago, he made pretty clear that he didn't like standing still. He didn't want his company to stand still, either. Keep innovating, keep trying new things, or die. That was the idea.

In today's craft beer world, in which the best beers in the world are always the Hot New Thing instead of the Rock Solid Classic, that's the right approach to take. People demand new. They demand their breweries keep mixing things up.

Photo courtesy of masslive.com, by Michael Beswick

Koch and his mega Samuel Adams brand are going to be shaking things up soon. First, by releasing a huge canned double IPA inspired in part by Heady Topper, and more notably, by demanding that it only stay on shelves for a short period of time, akin to Stone's Enjoy By series but even more aggressive. They're going to mandate that after 35 days it gets pulled from shelves in order to ensure freshness.

That's a pretty bold move, especially for a brewer as big as Sam Adams. It could change how some beers are handled at retail.

First, the beer itself. Koch recently told BostInno, "When you look at some of the iconic big IPAs, like Pliny the Elder or Heady Topper from here in New England, part of what makes them so renowned is people drink 'em fresh ... They get 'em at the brewery. If you have those beers two to three months into their life, they're not the same."

This beer is going to be an unfiltered double IPA clocking in at 10% ABV and available only in 16oz cans.

In other words, very inspired by Heady Topper.

Dabbling in big, hoppy beers is a bit unusual for them. They've done IPAs for years, of course -- they had an IPA way back in the 1990s before almost anyone else, messed with DIPAs several years back with Third Voyage, and these days have a full line of them, including Rebel Rouser (not to mention their awesome single-hop pack from a few years back). So, despite the scorn they get, they can do hoppy, too.

But a Heady clone is new ground for them.

The REAL new ground will be their stringent shelving policies for this beer, though.

They plan to give it a 35-day shelf life. After that, it must be pulled from the shelves. Wholesalers are probably going to do some grumbling about that, but you know what? It's a great move. I've ranted about bottle dating before, and for good reason. You want to be drinking your IPAs as fresh as possible. When they linger on the shelves too long, they go downhill ... some of them pretty quickly.

So why not force freshness? It's done with other types of food and drinks. If we care about it enough for frickin' Little Debbie snacks to get yanked after a time, we should care about it with beer, too, to the point of taking an aggressive hand in getting older IPAs off the shelves.

Retailers might not like it, but I'm all for it.

Though Sam Adams no longer gets much respect among today's beer crowd, I'm generally up for trying anything they do. This one will be released only in select markets (and they haven't said which markets yet), so we'll see if I can get my hands on some.

Busting 5 More Persistent Beer Myths

Some time back, I pulled out my trusty bow and quiver and, after accidentally killing my pet cat and a small family of nearby chipmunks*, took aim at some pernicious beer myths.

It's time to take aim at a few more, because there is no better feeling than lording some pointless piece of knowledge over someone in an effort to make yourself feel a little better about your small, sad little life. This selection is perhaps a touch more subjective than the last, but I have the benefit of being right, so I'm not too worried about any subjectivity here.

Here are 5 beer myths you should totally stop believing:

Contract Brewing is Bad

Photo courtesy of CraftCan on Photobucket

• CraftCans

Contract brewing is something of a dirty word in the world of craft beer. Guys like Jimmy Carbone of Beer Sessions Radio routinely rant about how he refuses to support or respect contract brewed beers. Some have proclaimed it will be the death of craft beer. The idea of contract brewing is simple: you have a beer you want made, and you pay another brewery to make it for you. This may be because you don't own your own equipment, because your brewery doesn't have enough capacity, or for other reasons. The bottom line is, contact brewing is when Beer A is brewed down the road at Brewery X instead of by the people who own Beer A. And this really gets some people up in arms.

Which is silly. What matters is what's in your glass. You can't taste "passion." Owning your own brewery or equipment doesn't magically imbue it with magical properties that turn it into "real" craft beer. And guess what? If you've enjoyed some Sixpoint, Terrapin, 21st Amendment, Samuel Adams, Brooklyn, and even for a brief time Russian River, among countless other breweries, you've probably enjoyed some contract-brewed beer. (In order to keep up with demand while installing new equipment, Russian River had Firestone Walker brew Pliny the Elder for them.) Contract brewing is a business decision, nothing more, and despite what some idealists would have you believe, craft beer is a business. If the recipe is good and the end result is tasty, that's all that matters.

Lagers Are Boring

These lagers are delicious, you fool! Image from heavemedia.com

Chat with some beer geeks (especially those just starting their exploration of beer) and you're bound to run into more than a few people who are quick to proclaim their disdain for boring old lagers. So bland! So dull!

Guess what? You're probably talking to someone who isn't as familiar with beer as they claim to be. "Lager" is a broad category, just like "ale," and it includes many styles. Lagers are simply beers brewed with bottom-fermenting yeast, usually at a colder temperature and often (but not always) stored in cold temps for a time after brewing. Legendary beers like Ayinger Celebrator or Aventinus? Lagers. Landmark smoked beers like Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Urbock? Lagers. Baltic porters? They're lagers. Marzens aka Oktoberfest beers? Also lagers. Dunkels, schwarzbiers, bocks of all types? Lagers, lagers, lagers. If you really think all those beers are boring, you're either lying to save face or you have the most one-dimensional palate ever.

IPAs Were Invented To Survive The Trip to India

This one involves a little bit of hair-splitting, but if the Internet was invented for anything, it was for hair-splitting. According to this myth, the beloved India Pale Ale (IPA) was invented by George Hodgson in order to survive the long trip to India, something other beers couldn't do because they didn't have the copious amount of hops that IPAs did. He jacked up the ABV and hops to survive the trip, and that was that.

It's a great story, but it's not so simple. For this one, I'm going to turn things over to people a lot smarter than I am. First, take a gander at this excellent breakdown of some IPA myths by the outstanding beer historian Martyn Cornell, then throw in this one for good measure. This fantastic post from Beer Church tells the real story in clear terms. And one more to wrap things up from the superb Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. It all boils down to this: Other beers made the voyage to India just fine (especially the ever popular porter) and what evolved into today's IPA was largely an accident. It was never "invented," it merely evolved, and even that wording is a bit dubious. So there.

The Guys At (Insert Big Brewery Here) Are Terrible Brewers

Mitch Steele, brewmaster at Stone

Visit any thread on any beer discussion group that happens to mention Budweiser or one of the other mega breweries and inevitably you'll see a slew of comments about how awful those brewers are, if only they knew how to brew real beer, maybe Bud should hire someone with talent, blah blah frickin' blah.

There's no two ways about it: those comments are stupid. The fact of the matter is, the big breweries employ some of the most high skilled, best educated, most thoroughly trained brewers on the planet. Yes, even Budweiser. If they brew boring beer, it's because it's their job to -- and make no mistake, being able to make every can of Budweiser in America taste exactly the same is really damn hard. Even excellent craft breweries sometimes have some variation from batch to batch. Try doing the same with a beer so "simple" there is no place for off flavors to hide. Further proof can be found in the craft beer world. Mitch Steele, brewmaster at Stone, is just one of many former big brewery brewermasters who have moved into the craft wold (and who have done a killer job at it). Chris Lohring, founder of Notch Brewing, calls the big guys "the most technically proficient brewers in the world." Basically, hate their beer all you want, but respect the skills of the guys who make it. They're some of the best, even if their bosses don't let them show it.

The Big Breweries Use Sub Par Ingredients

Hops and barley. Photo by Algerina Perna

At the risk of being called an apologist for the big brewers -- two entries about them in a row will do that, despite this blog being a clear indication of what I tend to drink -- I'm going to go ahead and tackle this one. This myth is simple: the big brewers like Coors and Budweiser buy all sorts of cheap, shitty ingredients and bottom of the barrel hops and grains so they can make their lousy beer as cheaply as possible.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The fact is, those mega brewers have contracts with the same hop and grain producers who provide the ingredients for craft beer. They've invested a lot in them. Further, because of the huge volume of business they provide these farmers, they get first dibs on the product -- and they're known to have stringent standards. "Each truckload of barley is sampled and tested at delivery. If it fails to meet company standards for quality, the barley is rejected and likely becomes cattle feed." Stone's Mitch Steele has discussed this on podcasts, saying that the folks at A-B were damn near tyrannical about buying the best on the market before anyone else could. And as for the adjuncts, I've already addressed that. The finished product may not be for you and me, but it's not because they're using lousy ingredients. It's because they're tying to reach Joe Six-Pack who just wants to down some beers and watch the game.

So there you have it. Five more beer myths that needed busting. Agree, disagree? Comment down below and give me the validation I crave.

The End.

*This is probably a work of fiction. I probably didn't kill any animals in the writing of that post.

The Ugly Truth About Craft Beer

Craft beer in America is exploding. As of 2013, there were over 2,388 breweries that had or where operating in the United States, with literally hundreds more in the process of opening. (UPDATE: As of 2016, there are now over 4,000 breweries in the United States!)

Craft brewers are making tremendous strides in converting people to the idea that the pursuit of flavor is a damn good thing. While the big beers continue to lose market share, the craft segment is growing. It’s no longer unusual to see excellent craft beers on tap in even the most generic of chain restaurant or dive bars. The fact that I recently had Ommegang’s Fire & Blood at an Applebee’s, of all places, is astonishing.

But craft beer has a dirty little secret: most of it is mediocre at best.

Not only is most of it pretty mediocre, when it comes to the dozens of new breweries we see every week, a lot of it is actually pretty bad.

We don’t like to talk about this truth. We craft beer enthusiasts are focused on spreading the gospel of good beer. On swaying people away from tasteless mass-produced lagers. On finding the next great beer to celebrate.

There is nothing wrong with any of that, either. It’s all a part of what makes getting into better beer so much fun. It’s a joy to explore new beers and introduce others to beers they will come to love.

The fact is, though, most of those thousands of new breweries just aren’t very good. They're being launched by well meaning people who made homebrew their friends loved, and based on that decided they were ready to go pro. They're young guys who are only a few years removed from their Steel Reserve days ready to show the world how it’s done because they have some clever ideas, brewers who saw how Sam Caligione broke the rules and figure they can do it, too, and so on.

It’s not that easy, though. As a homebrewer myself (and a decidedly average one at that), I know the daydream. I know about fantasizing about beer ideas and everyone loving them and all that.

The reality of brewing is much different.

The rah rah rah! your friends give you should never be taken to heart. Just like writers should never take the praise of friends and family too seriously, neither should brewers. If you are not your own worst critic, you are doing something wrong.

Sadly, many of these drinkable-but-not-particularly-good homebrewers are now vying for shelf space in the pro world, making the chase for good new beers a crapshoot for the adventurous drinker.

If you are exploring craft beer and stick to better known names, it’s hard to go wrong. There is so much good beer out there it's impossible to keep up. The folks who have earned a reputation have done so by earning the trust of drinkers over the years. Few big name craft brewers don’t actually deserve their reputation – I’m looking at you, Rogue, and your overpraised, overpriced swill – but what about the thousands of new brewers we have seen spring up in the last five years or so?

There is a reason why few have ended up on your radar, and it ain’t marketing.

It’s because they are bland.

I hate to say it, because I LOVE supporting the new guy, the little guy, the local guy. I tried to champion them in my Year of Beer series for the Philadelphia Weekly. Thing is, most of the stuff I explore from the newer breweries just isn’t very good. It's drinkable, and that's it.

That's the truth.

And it’s a truth too few of us craft beer enthusiasts are talking about. We’re so intent on carrying the anti-big brewer flag we forget that being a cheerleader for craft is not enough. We have to demand that these new brewers make a quality product. These small breweries need to be good if the craft movement is going to grow beyond a mere niche (and rest assured, it's still a niche), and we need to be willing to call them out when they're producing mediocre product.

Because too many of them are.

PS -- if it seems like I pointedly avoided naming names in this post, it's true, I did. I don't want to trash anyone in particular, though I did have a number of newer craft breweries in mind when writing this.

Busting 5 Persistent Beer Myths

Beer = serious business. It would be an outrage to let misinformation float around beer circles, just an OUTRAGE, so rather than risk hordes of beer nerds taking to the streets or me having a small conniption or panic attack or something after hearing someone get something wrong about beer (see also), I'm going to debunk a few common beer myths that get passed around even in today's Beer! Beer! Beer! world.

Because the only thing better than sharing your love for something like beer, hopefully with some good friends, is getting a chance to play "I told you so" and know-it-all for faceless Internet people. (I might be exaggerating. Maybe.)

Beer In A Hot Car Will Skunk

This one goes back to just about every beer drinker's youth, especially if their youth involved drinking mass quantities of shitty canned lager. Mine didn't, but growing up in a small town like Lakehurst meant I was usually surrounded by people looking forward to their next 30-pack pound down in the woods. Anyway, the idea was that if you left your beer in a hot car, it was going to skunk.

Nope. Skunking has nothing to do with warm beer or out of date beer or anything like it. Skunking is purely a result of light exposure. Skunking is the result of the way hops interact with UV light; that interaction results in the horrible aroma and taste we called "skunked." It's the reason why beers in green and clear bottles are so often skunked. (I'm looking at you, Heineken.) Hot conditions can lead to stale beer, but that's different. That gives you a flat tasting, cardboard-like beer. Skunked beer? It's all about leaving it exposed to light.

The English Drink Their Beer At Room Temperature

This one has been kicking around for years, too, passed along like a bit of common wisdom beyond questioning. The English, they say, drink their beer at room temperature. Sometimes the claim is broader than that, Guinness is thrown into the mix, and it's said that any pale person who lives in a rainy island environment drinks warm beer.

This myth probably comes from the fact that up until recently (and even now, if you pay attention to big beer commercials), Americans wanted their beer ice cold. The English, meanwhile, served their cask ales at cellar temperature. Compared to the U.S.'s icy brew that seems downright warm, but in fact, cellar temperature is a quite cool 55 to 60 degrees, well below room temperature. And in truth, it's the better way to enjoy a nice stout, porter, or barleywine, anyway.

Canned Beer Is Bad

This one is simple: If the beer comes in cans, it's bad beer. Cans are bad. No good beer comes in cans. Cans are bad for beer. Etc.

I have already made the case for canned beer, so no need to get deep into it. This myth came about because yes, at one time the only beer you'd find in cans was lousy beer. Canning equipment is expensive, and discerning beer drinkers did not like the metallic taste they gave off, so you just couldn't get good canned beer. But these days, cans are lined (no metallic taste), great breweries can their beer, and savvy craft beer lovers know the delivery method doesn't matter since you're pouring it into a glass at the end, anyway (I hope). And to be honest, I didn't need to have this entry, since after years of knee-jerk bias most of craft beer is now embracing canned beer. Hooray!

Dark Beer Is Strong

Anyone who has tried to introduce people to better beer has heard this one. If a beer looks like anything other than golden straw, it's "dark beer" and will be "strong" and etc. etc. etc. Folks are utterly convinced that Guinness is a meal in a glass that only real men drink. Anything dark must be strong, and so on.

Look, a color is just that: a color. The color comes from how deeply the grains used in making the beer are roasted. That roasting has no bearing on alcohol content. You can make black beers as light as Coors Light and light beers that will knock you on your ass. Guinness, in fact, is nearly as low calorie and alcohol as a light beer! People think it's heavy because it's dark and because it's bubbly thanks to nitrogen rather than carbon dioxide, which gives it a creamy fullness. Besides the color, though, it's practically a light beer!

Beer Made With Rice or Corn Is Bad

Most of these myths have been directed towards casual beer drinkers, but here's one perpetuated by beer geeks themselves - and it's a nefarious one. The idea is a simple one (as myths usually are): "That beer is made with corn and/or rice! Ewww!" If you make a beer with these ingredients (or so-called "adjuncts" in general), you are bad, it is bad, and everything involved is bad. We want natural ingredients and etc. blah yada.

My beer geek friends, it's not what goes into the beer, it's what you DO with it. If adjuncts were bad, one of the most respected categories of beer in the world would be gone! (Trappist beers and abbey ales are made with larges amounts of sugar and candi sugar.) The truth is, there are great beers made with corn. Beers from The Bruery, Dogfish Head, and many others are made with rice. And even the famous Pliny the Elder is made with hop extract, according to none other than Vinnie Cilurzo himself. For a bunch of open-minded beer lovers, beer geeks can often be the WORST when it comes to being CLOSED-minded! So just remember, it's not what goes into the beer, it's what the brewer does with it. All you need to remember is that good beer tastes good and bad beer tastes bad.

You can read Eric's regular beer reviews at the Philadelphia Weekly's Drink City Year of Beer. Or, you know, here on this blog.

For Jim Koch and Sam Adams, variety is the spice of life

If you have one of the best selling and best known craft beers on the market, it would be easy to understand putting your time and resources into expanding its reach. When that beer is a pioneering brew like Boston Lager by SamuelAdams, it’s especially easy to understand.

Jim Koch, founder of Samuel Adams, doesn’t see it that way. For him, being safe is boring.

"The day I want to make the same beer every day is the day I retire,” Koch told me during Philly Beer Week. “It is as exciting today as it was in 1984 when we first started."

During the week-long celebration of all things suds in the City of Brotherly love, Koch bounced around to various tastings and tap takeovers and food pairing events, during which yet another array of new Samuel Adams beers were showcased. There was Honey Queen, a braggot that will soon be released as part of their Small Batch series, a barrel aged porter, and a load of others – not to mention creative pairings, such as pancakes made with their Blueberry Hill Lager. Even this year’s summer mix pack contains several new beers, including a really tasty rye witbier called Little White Rye brewed with orange peel, coriander, and sage.

The question is, why? When you have one of the most successful flagship beers in craft beer history (Boston Lager) and some of the most popular seasonals on the market, why the never-ending flow of new beers?

"A brewer always wants more beer. One of the things that continues to motivate me is that there are some really innovative styles of beer that no one has made yet. I want to be one of the brewers who makes them,” Koch said.

It might be easy to dismiss that as marketing speak if it wasn’t for the fact that Samuel Adams has done exactly that for years. Way back in the 1990s they blew the lid off what beer could be with Triple Bock, a barrel-aged brew that at the time was the strongest in the world and which was like nothing that had ever been done before. That sort of rule-breaking and innovation continued with beers like Millennium, a 20% ABV barrel-aged strong ale, Infinium, their ground-breaking champagne replacement, and Utopias, which is perhaps the most complex beer on the planet.

Meanwhile, in addition to constantly introducing new beers in their mix packs, their Barrel Room Collection introduces big, challenging beers in limited quantities, and their Small Batch Series has turned into a line that is constantly doing interesting things, such as double IPAs, gingerbread stouts, bocks with chocolate and chili peppers, and Americanized versions of the elusive Gose style of beer.

I had my first Samuel Adams in 1994, and over the years I’ve had over 90 different beers by them. Over ninety! And I’ve missed quite a few in recent years, brews that slipped past me before I had a chance to get them. Koch keeps variety whores like me in a constant state of “oh, here’s something new to try!” He likes it that way.

“I’ve been doing this 29 years. I don’t have anything to prove. I just want to enjoy my job,” Koch told me.

And pushing the boundaries as if they were still the fiery little upstart they were in 1984 is one way he does that.

Can’t say I’m inclined to argue with him.

(Photos taken from various other blogs)

Beer can bring people together

Beer brings people together, and that's one of the big reasons why I love it. When I wrote for the Philadelphia Weekly, I tried to point out how beer has been interwoven with our history, both real and imagined, getting right down into our myths and legends.

But what's really important is how it is interwoven into our lives on a personal level.

A fantastic example is this news story about a mini-mart -- a damn Wawa, really -- that serves great craft beer and around which a community has formed. It's a mini-mart with beer. The guy who owns it focuses on great beer. And the people in the community have made it a rallying point. Just go read the story to see what I mean, because it's COOL AS HELL.

More than any single part of that story -- more than the rare beer and selection and prices and did I mention the rare beer? -- the part that I love, admire, and respect was this:

Chung had larger ambitions when he tapped that first keg in 2009. "I didn't want the place to be just a convenience store, or a stereotypical convenience store," he says. He'd come to this very store himself as a child. It was part of his upbringing. He knew it had been an understated presence in West Seattle since the 1940s. "You know the old-time general store -- a drugstore that was a gathering place?" he says. "That's the type of feel I wanted."

The community seemed to crave that, too. With their pints, more and more people started to linger. Now in one corner of Super Deli Mart sits a thick fallen-cedar table courtesy of a regular that would look more at home in some Northwest-chic hotel. A regular group of up to 20 locals gather around that table every Wednesday evening to argue beer styles and grouse about the Seahawks' latest disappointment -- as if Super Deli Mart was some postmodern Elks Club.

"My wife and I have lived in the same house for 17 years, and I've never known the people on my street until we started coming here and drinking about one-and-a-half years ago," Cary Schroeder, 43, said on a recent Wednesday while having a beer with his wife, Jody. "It really has brought the neighborhood together."

That's powerful stuff. It's the kind of thing every community needs. Whether a watering hole or community cafe or merely a general store where you see the same people on a regular basis, these are the kind of places that knit people together. You don't know you need a place like that in your life until you find one, or until you've had one and lost it.

I grew up in a small town where not only were there several such places in one tiny community, each watering hole itself was a micro community within an already tiny community. I loved the town so much I wrote a book about it.

These days I live in the midst of suburban sprawl. Subdivisons and strip malls. Places like the ones I describe are few and far between, especially if you live in a neighborhood like I do, where walking or biking to the nearest place to grab a drink or have a sandwich and read the paper involves crossing multiple busy roads.

The POINT, which I left a long time ago, is that beer probably lends more texture to your world than you even realize. Usually for the better. EMBRACE it. Go have a beer at your local watering hole, even if their beer stinks. The beer isn't the important part, it's that you'll be closer to your community and the people in it. And that's not a bad thing.

Cheers!

Flying Fish opens its new brewery on Saturday

New Jersey's largest craft brewery, Flying Fish, will be opening the doors of its new brewery to the public for the first time on Saturday. According to a story in the Courier Post:

Flying Fish plans to open its doors to its new neighbors on Somerdale Day, on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Kennedy Boulevard.

“We’re going to do our first public tours for Somerdale Day,” said Muller. “Somerdale Day is going to be in front of our brewery, so we’ll open up that day and let the public take a peek.”

Flying Fish previously brewed in Cherry Hill (and as of this writing they're still operating there). Cherry Hill traffic sucks. I doubt that's why they moved, but it's certainly a big reason why I have never toured their old brewery. Scooping your left eye out with a teaspoon is more enjoyable than driving through Cherry Hill.

Anyway, they're moving because they're undergoing a major increase in capacity. In other words, they want to make more beer. Lots more. And that's cool, because they make good beer.

With all the (well deserved) hoopla surrounding Kane and Carton, two of New Jersey's newest craft breweries, both of which are winning raves, folks seem to be forgetting Flying Fish.

But Flying Fish has been here all along, churning out good beers since 1996, long before today's huge craft beer explosion. My personal favorites are the Exit Series beers, offbeat brews made with News Jersey ingredients. With the exception of Exit 4, an excellent American Tripel, these beers have been one-time brews that you have to grab before they're gone. I spoke to one of the brewers at a beerfest last year, and he told me the new brewery would allow them to bring back some of the best of the Exit series and package them in six packs. I can't wait!

A lot of people don't realize that New Jersey has a number of excellent breweries. River Horse is a personal favorite (look for their Tripel Horse, and in a few months their Oatmeal Milk Stout). High Point, aka Ramstein, makes traditional German style beers to much acclaim. Cricket Hill has been on a roll lately with their Reserve series. And Boaks makes big, interesting beers that are sure to turn your head (try their Monster Mash!). For good measure throw in Climax and you've got a good array of New Jersey beers to choose from, and that doesn't count the many brewpubs in the state.

And if you're not from New Jersey, find out who brews in your state. Try out their beers. Support your local brewers!

In the meantime, I'll be waiting for the next installment of Flying Fish's Exit Series ... cheers!

Does Dogfish Head live up to the hype?

Just like any breed of geek, beer geeks can be a knee-jerk lot prone to pounce before they've heard your entire message. (I like to think I know geeks, what with being a coauthor of Geek Wisdom and all.) So let me say this up front: Dogfish Head fans, I am a fan, too. I like their beer and will explain why. Dogfish Head critics, I am not a DFH fanboy. Their beer is often flawed and I will explain why.

So with that out of the way, let's just get into it. Let's try to take an honest look at Dogfish Head, a brewery with fans more rabid than even Stone and Rogue, and beers that are just as divisive as both.

DFH's shtick, to use a term more dismissive sounding than intended, is to break the rules. To do so-called "extreme" beers. To throw out the rulebook and, to paraphrase founder Sam Calagione, to let their freak flag fly.

That's not a bad thing. Hell, it's the thing I most admire them for and it's what makes their most interesting beers, well, interesting. They brew with ingredients people just don't brew with and resurrect ancient recipes (as best as they can guess them) and push things to extremes just to see if they can.

But it also means their beers can run very hot and cold. They can divide people like few others. When they do great beers they do fantastic beers. Their Bitches Brew (a big imperial stout blended with honey-based Tej), Palo Santo Marron (a giGANtic brown ale aged on rare wood), and Sah'Tea (an old Finnish beers with a Chai-based twist) are some of the most intriguing beers on the market. I'd put them up against almost any beer I've had. Yet when they're bad, let's be honest, they're bad. Beers like the ginger-laden Pangaea are overpriced and gimmicky (even if that now retired beer did drink okay), Black & Blue is an unlikable fruit drink that doesn't know if it's beer or champagne, and in my opinion Black & Red is the most disgusting, vile beverage ever put in a glass, a concoction of chocolate and mint that tastes like a mouth full of dank toothpaste. I genuinely couldn't even finish a 2 oz sample at their Rehoboth, DE brewpub.

Keep in mine, those are only my opinions. Part of the fun of all this is that people will disagree with my views, and strongly. With Dogfish especially, these beers are so far off the beaten path that there is rarely any middle ground with them. You love 'em or hate 'em.

In between the above extremes they have excellent beers that challenge and delight you, or gross you out, or leave you thinking they're overrated. The 90 Minute IPA is an example of the latter; some think it's divine, others say it's a hot, malty mess. For the record, I like it, but I also don't think it's a great double IPA. It's a strong ale ... but we're getting into geeky terminology here. The bottom line is, these guys experiment a lot and few brews are what you expect. If they do a beer, it's with a twist. If they do a Belgian, they muck with it. If they do a stout, they go big. (Really frickin' big!) If they go for an older style, do they a freakin' Aztec chocolate beer that tastes like no other chocolate beer on the market. Yeah.

And yep, sometimes this stuff falls flat on its face. Hard.

None of this is a bad thing. Not if you're willing to accept the bad with the good. Not if you're willing to accept the idea that if you experiment hard you'll sometimes stumble. These guys often take chances. They even rope respected brewers into it. Sure, even their basic quirks aren't always great. For instance, I love their 60 Minute IPA, but in the world of IPAs it's honestly just 'pretty good' rather that GREAT. Really well balanced thanks to their innovative way of adding hops, very tasty, but among the best IPAs in the country as some would have you believe? No.

Yet that doesn't matter. Not really. Because the whole point of checking out this brewery is to drink something way off the beaten path. To blow the doors off your expectations ... and yeah, to sometimes have something that sucks on wheels.

The bottom line is, Dogfish Head makes really freakin' good beers that are often unlike anything you've had before. And sometimes they make bad beers that are too damn hot with alcohol, or are too imbalanced with offbeat ingredients, or that are just plain boring for the price. It's true, fans. They really do. Some of their experiments suck.

And that's okay.

The reason we (meaning "I") admire them is for their willingness to experiment. Yeah, sometimes the results stink. And sometimes the cult of personality surrounding Sam gets to be too much. (That's a subject I avoided in this post like the coward I am, but for the record, he seems like a personable, down to Earth guy to me, the sort of dude you'd love to drink beer and talk music with. Especially music.) But DAMN, when they nail a good beer, it's really damn good!

So it's like this: It's okay to say they get too much hype among some beer geeks because that's probably close to true when you consider the many awesome brewers who don't get a fraction of the attention, but if you think they have nothing to offer when it comes to beer because they're all based on hype, you're wrong, wrong, wrong.

Cheers.

Hey brewers, DATE YOUR BOTTLES!

Dear brewers,

Please date your bottles.

It's a simple matter that means a lot. I will not buy your IPA if there is not a date on the bottle or if I don't know for sure it just got to the beer shop, i.e. it's a seasonal beer or I literally saw it come in stock. If I'm browsing bottles in a great shop and am eager to take home an IPA, yours won't even be in the running if there is not a date on the bottle. And don't you want my business?

I'm not nit-picking, I'm just a beer enthusiast who has been burned too many times buying IPAs that were past their optimal drinking date, getting the bland cardboard trash you certainly did not intend for your customers to drink instead of the awesome hop taste and aroma you wanted me to have.

So please date your bottles.

I love to cellar beer. I have a rotating "cellar" 200 bottles strong and love aging beer. But if your beer is not marked with a date, I may be inclined to choose some other barleywine or imperial stout or strong ale over it. After all, a few years down the road I'll at least be able to tell how old those other bottles are when compared to yours. And don't you want my business?

I'm not nitpicking. I'm just a beer enthusiast who loves to lay down beer for a few years but who isn't willing to piss away his money on laying down beers that don't have defined dates on them, given that cellaring beer is such an expensive hobby in the long term.

So please date your bottles.

The craft beer movement is exploding, and that is awesome. Craft beer has had its ups and downs before, but since the 1990s things have always gotten better, especially when it comes to informing beer drinkers. Informed beer drinkers make for beer drinkers who grow craft beer as a whole. Giving information to your customers grows your business. And don't you want my business?

I'm not nitpicking. I'm just a beer enthusiast who believes that the more information you give your customers the better. The folks at Samuel Adams started to make the idea of dates important before many others, and breweries like Rogue and Southern Tier offer detailed information on their bottles (though shame on Rogue for not dating those bottles). So why can't you?

Of course you can. It may be an investment for you, but it will also be an investment in the folks who buy your beer.

So please date your bottles.

What's on tap for Celebrating the Suds

This blog isn't updated as often as I'd like. If I had my druthers I'd post every day. Time doesn't permit, but that doesn't mean Celebrating The Suds doesn't have a slew of posts in the works. In progress we've got articles on how to acquire rare beers and how to get into the beer trading scene, along with commentary on Dogfish Head, bottle dating, beer snobbery, and mixed packs.

We're also going to be posting MUCH more on homebrewing, including how to turn recipe kits on their head, how to conserve water while brewing, aging your homebrew, and photos and recipes of our own misadventures in brewing.

We'll also be digging more beers out of the cellar for the From the Cellar series, including Old Rasputin, Dogfish Head's Raison de' EXTRA and Red & White, Weyerbacher Fourteen, Ommegang Abbey Ale, and several more.

And naturally, there will be plenty of Quick Sips. In the queue are Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye, Southern Tier Pumking, Deschutes Black Butte XXIII, Delirium Tremens, Long Trail Coffee Stout, and THE GREATEST FRUIT BEER IN THE WORLD, along with more than a dozen others.

Finally, after the success of Bell's Week, we've decided to do a few more themed weeks. Our focus is going to be regional breweries in the northeastern U.S., focused on New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. Right off the bat, I'll be aiming to get my hands on some flights of New Jersey brews (my home state) for themed weeks.

So yeah, much more to come. Cheers!

How to get those rare and limited beers?

Sometimes you might check out this blog and say, "Cool beer, how do I get it?" Then you realize the beer is not available in your state or, even worse, only had a very limited run. For example, a recent beer I intended to review only had about 100 bottles ever produced. Nonetheless, I got my hands on it. This is the beer. (Sorry for the lack of review, folks. Didn't get around to it. But if you want some, email me at ericsanjuan@gmail.com, because I think my local shop has some as of August 2012.)

And many beers I have reviewed -- and even more I haven't, like the upcoming AWESOME FRUIT BEERS I will review -- aren't even available in the state I'm writing from, New Jersey.

The good beers available in my state (and yours), that's easy. Just find the best liquor/beer store you can. Search around. Check hole-in-the-wall joints if you have to. Find a shop willing to bring in good stuff. And then be cool with the people there. I don't mean kiss up just so you can get good beer. That's lame. These are people, after all. I mean realize some of these guys are your fellow beer geeks, people you'd get along with anyway, so TALK TO THEM. Good shops will eventually remember you. If you're a good customer they'll set aside good stuff at your request. If you treat people well, they'll treat you well.

But what about stuff not available in your area?

Here's how I get beers like Son of a Peach, Russian River Temptation, Bell's Oarmans Ale, or Telegraph Gypsy Ale, none of which are available in my state. And it's simple.

I trade for them. And I get this in return (clock for a bigger view):

BOOM!

Yep. Trading. There is a robust beer trading scene online through which you can swap beers from all over the country, and sometimes the world. I've traded with fellow beer geeks from California, Georgia, Wisconsin and elsewhere to obtain beers I couldn't get elsewhere. (Wisconsin, for real, because WOW New Glarus sure is awesome.)

It's pretty easy. You get in contact with a trader offering something cool, offer them something cool in return, exchange details, and ship out your beer. Keep in mind, it's not legal to ship by the post office. Most traders ship by FedEx or UPS. But it works fine. Just operate in good faith and be smart enough to deal only with people who have a good rep and you'll be fine.

Anyway, here are some good tips to get you started. I trade through beertrade on Reddit, but many other communities, such as Beer Advocate, host even bigger trading communities. Just have some good beer available to you, get online, and start trading! It's pretty fun, you can get beers you couldn't otherwise, and opening a package of beers you've never seen before is AWESOME.

It really is. Imagine getting this package from Wisconsin:

You know it.

Beer & Mythology, a pairing for the ages

Ever notice how many beers are named after gods from mythology or crazy creatures from old fables? A LOT of them. As part of the Philadelphia's Weekly's annual edition celebrating Philly Beer Week, I penned a spiffy little feature about this link between beer and mythology called "There's a Reason So Many Beers Are Named After Myths, Gods and Monsters." Take a gander at an excerpt:

Drinking beer: It’s an act that transcends mere enjoyment, isn’t it? Throughout history, we’ve had an almost spiritual connection with our beer, one that leans toward the most fierce, primal part of who we are as human beings. Whereas wine is seen as civilized, refined, and at times erotic, beer conjures up something quite different—something wild, something untamed.

In ancient days, triumphant warriors returned home from a day of plunder to down their ale while bragging of victory—intoxication swelling each boast into a bloated, fantastical account of deeds that defy human abilities. Small wonder, then, that so many modern beers are named for creatures and heroes out of myth and legend. Osiris Pale Ale. Storm King. Griffin’s Bow. From Egyptian gods to hidden beasts seen only in fleeting glimpses, we attach a level of EPIC to our brews that no other beverage can match. The idea of Odin’s Beard coffee or Serpent’s Tail orange juice would strike us as silly, but when it comes to beer, it just seems natural.

Part of the reason is that beerlike beverages go back at least 9,000 years, predating recorded human history. In a sense, they have been with us for as long as there has been an “us.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE