The Beers of Summer, Part II

After serious and deliberate Research, I came up with six summer brews I can recommend in good conscience. Why only six? Because I had about five minutes on BXR and a lot of ground to cover. It went crazy fast anyway. Here goes:

Arcadia Whitsun (Battle Creek, MI)
Arcadia prides itself on brewing in the English tradition. An orangey wheat beer may seem like a departure from the norm, but it’s subtle and there’s a maltiness and balance that makes it seem more familiar than it otherwise might be. Full-flavored, drinkable and with a slightly bitter finish that leaves you ready for more.

Tin Mill Skyscraper (Hermann, MO)
Hermann’s first brewery since Prohibition makes a number of good to very good beers. This is one of the latter, a German-style pilsner with recognizable malt and apple flavors. Richer and more full-bodied than many pilsners; imagine Heineken without the suckage.

Schlafly Kolsch (St. Louis, MO)
Another German-style beer and one I come back to year after year. Not the most flavorful but there’s enough there to keep things interesting. Refreshing, lightly citrusy. Good times.

New Belgium Somersault (Fort Collins, CO)
On tap at The Pasta Factory’s new location, there is an up-front sweetness to this beer but it finishes dry (and leaves you wanting more).

Tallgrass Brewing Halcyon (Manhattan, KS)
Available in cans at Schnucks, this golden, cloudy American wheat is surprisingly creamy with a great citrus-sweet balance. I liked it even better as it warmed slightly. Like Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat all grown-up, and better. My favorite of the ones tasted.

Thornbridge Kipling (Derbyshire, England)
One of the more interesting beers I’ve tried lately. An American Pale Ale, brewed in England with the flavors of the South Pacific. Utterly delicious, refreshingly bitter and drinkable. A real joy, and available at Arena Liquors tomorrow afternoon.

The King of Sneers

I know firsthand how hard it is to get an accurate picture of what someone is trying to say from a news article. But this Post-Dispatch story contains so many whoppers from Anheuser-Busch President Dave Peacock that it’s hard to imagine I’m misreading him:

Peacock got passionate in his defense of Budweiser. It wins blind taste tests again and again, he said. “It is the perfect liquid,” he said, allowing that to sink in, then adding, “I don’t say that out of arrogance.

“We have just as good a story as they do,” he said, referring to the craft brews that tend to harp on their craftsmanship and history. “We just have been remiss in explaining that.”

He said even consumers who hated Budweiser didn’t want anyone to mess with the label. Peacock said he was moved to wonder, “Why don’t you buy it if you’re so passionate about it?”

He also recalled that after the A-B InBev merger in 2008, he was approached by people upset that A-B and Budweiser were being bought by a foreign company. He sounded flummoxed. “If you bought more (Budweiser), it probably wouldn’t have sold,” he said he told them.

Here’s what is actually hurting A-B, and Budweiser in particular: it’s not very good. And as American taste preferences - from food to wine to beer – continue to develop (improve?) over the last generation or two we’ve figured out how not very good it is. I’m not averse to a Bud at the ballpark now and then, but there’s so much beer being made right now that tastes like something – that is actually interesting. And you know those little breweries you ran out of business in St. Louis a century ago? We want those back.

4 Quick Notes

Olive Cafe: Good, not great. I like the kofta (both plate and sandwich), which is as subtle and addictive as the excellent hummus. The chicken on the chicken kabob sandwich was tender but oddly flavorless and the pita isn’t as good as the stuff you can get in bags (and freeze!) at World Harvest. The temperature of the restaurant is out of whack half the time. In December people were wearing gloves inside; last night it was 85 degrees at least.

Sycamore Restaurant: Family dinner the other night was a treat. Gnoochi and a side of snap peas were a hit with the kids and my duck two-way (seared breast and confit of leg) was rich and tender (and fantastic left over). Mrs. SMEs’ halibut sounded good on the menu and looked good on the plate but didn’t taste like much of anything. On draft, the St. Gen. IPA is worth a taste; in bottles, try the Founders “Devil Dancer” Triple IPA.

Broadway Brewery: Go check out the new summer menu, which has greatly expanded and become a vegetarian’s wet dream. We ate very well the other day on grilled margherita flatbread, a fantastic kale soup and creamy polenta cakes topped with a stunning, punchy ragout of tomatoes and summer vegetables. Could have passed only on the chorizo and cheese dip. Bravo, Broadway.

Jazz: Um, yuck. How does this place stay in business? My gumbo was okay, but a platter of crawdads was nasty. Unfresh, no spice, just bad, bad, bad. And I don’t think it’d be possible to more comprehensively break a creamy Cajun pasta sauce than they did. Awe-inspiring, really.

First America, now the world?

Having enjoyed stratospheric growth in the New World, are U.S. craft brews set to take on the (insular, dismissive, lucrative) European beer market? Stone Brewing is betting so:

But Greg Koch, co-owner of Stone Brewing, wants to change that. Based in Escondido, California, Stone just closed its request for proposal (PDF) to construct a brewing facility in Europe. If it works out, in a few years Stone will be the first American craft brewery to make its product outside the United States.

Columbia Beer Enthusiasts

Truth be told, the last tasting of the Columbia Beer Enthusiasts wasn’t one I’d been looking forward to. Lambics and sours. Hell, I didn’t even know what a sour beer was. But that’s probably why it turned out to be the most interesting. And now I have a new love, one that has been consummated four or five times in just a week since the tasting. People I’ve shared it with – who don’t even like beer – love it. Lambic.

Beer no longer recession-proof

If our nation can still be saved, Nate Silver just may be the guy who tells us how to do it. Or, he may just be the most accurate chronicler of our disintegration. Either way, we’re buying way less beer. Historically there’s been no correlation between GDP and alcohol sales for home consumption. But,

something was very, very different in the fourth quarter of 2008. Sales of alcohol for off-premises consumption were down by 9.3 percent from the previous quarter, according to the Commerce Department. This is absolutely unprecedented: the largest previous drop had been just 3.7 percent, between the third and fourth quarters of 1991.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Columbia Beer Enthusiasts

A result of the resounding popularity of the Columbia Beer Enthusiasts group, friend and home-brewer extraordinaire Jamie Smith has created a nifty, more social-networky site for the group. Stop by and sign up if you like beer.

Wine Cellar beer dinner

The Wine Cellar and Bistro held its sixth annual beer dinner last night, this time featuring the beers of Bell’s Brewery. Because I generally find the Wine Cellar’s food innovative and well-executed I will not dwell for too long on the universally underheated food that came out last night. Craig Cyr’s creations are whimsical and fun, but they rely on precision timing. A “white cheddar emulsion” that has sat on a cold plate for even three or four minutes arrive a little chilled, for instance. Every course save the desserts suffered the same fate. It is possible that they simply do not have the kitchen to turn out 50 or 60 identical, temperature-sensitive plates at once. That’s tough to do. Four other people we talked to reported the same problem, which we encountered at last year’s beer dinner as well. Normally the Wine Cellar is excellent, so enough on that.

Then, the beer.

Beer Gets its Day

Marcia Vanderlip, intrepid Columbia Tribune food editor that she is, has not historically been a big beer aficionado (I’m still in the novice stage as well). But she stopped by the last Columbia Beer Enthusiasts tasting and has a nice write-up in the food section, also stopping by Jamie Smith’s downstairs “brewery.” The man’s got four homebrews on tap and the ones I’ve tasted have been fantastic.

Kudos to him, to Marcia for branching out and to understanding wives everywhere. Thanks for putting up with our (mostly tasty) quirks.

Photo by Nick King of the Columbia Tribune

IPA and Hefeweizen Tasting

Sycamore was again host to twenty-plus “members” of the eclectic Columbia Beer Enthusiasts group last night. We were a motley crew, with some bringing their excellent homebrews and others (me, for instance) stabbing wildly at Joe’s, Top Ten Wines or Patricia’s for whatever seems to fit the theme of this month’s gathering.

Last night it was IPAs and Hefeweizens and again, I had tasted only three or four of the thirty-odd beers we sampled. In big tastings like this it’s usually the outliers I come away remembering. The Calabaza Blanca jumped out immediately. Shockingly dry, it reminded the guy next to me and I of a less-fruity vinho verde wine mixed with club soda. Very different than anything I’ve had before; kudos to the guy or gal who brought it.

Two others I really enjoyed were:
Dunkels Hefeweizen (from the German brewer Tucher)
Heavy Weizen (from Southern Tier brewery in NY)

The full list of beers tasted is here. The next tasting is September 22 at Sycamore. 9pm. Theme: Scotch, amber and brown ales.

Lager Tasting

Monday brought the second meeting of the Columbia Beer Enthusiasts. The theme this time was lagers and the turnout was impressive. A good twenty or so people crammed a cluster of tables in Sycamore Restaurant, passing bottles of beer around. The assembled drinkers had done their homework; I’d only had one or two of the beers before. The full list is here, but my favorites were:

Sprecher Black Bavarian Lager
Eliot Ness Amber Lager
Samuel Smith Organic Lager

The next tasting is August 25 at 9pm, again at Sycamore. The theme is IPAs and Hefeweizens.