Quick review: Short's Cup a Joe coffee creme stout

Though there is a tradition of drinking beer at breakfast, I've not been one to indulge. Til today. Out of coffee filters and desperate for a cup of joe, I had a Short's Cup a Joe coffee stout. Brewed with fair trade, organic coffee from Higher Grounds Trading Co., the beer pours an oily, thick, dark brown with a substantial, persistent, tan head that, as you can see in the picture, got away from me on the pour.

The aroma is dark roasted, coffee, with some berry-like, dark fruit. Mouthfeel is rich and creamy, the influence of milk sugar evident. The flavor screams coffee. Dark, delicious, kick-back-with-the-morning-paper coffee. There's a pleasant, fruity acidity balanced off by sweetness. The finish is long and smooth, cappuccino all the way.

Suspense. Surprise. Satisfaction.

I love the moment when I get to crack open the first bottle of a new batch of homebrew. From listening for the sharp "hsssst" that indicates good carbonation to seeing the head, color, clarity (or lack thereof), taking in the aroma, and having that first taste, it's a total sensory experience.

It's a moment full of suspense. Sure, I could see how things were going while I boiled the stuff, and I sampled some flat brew during bottling, but the moment of truth is that first bottle. The beer is young at that point and will certainly continue to change, sometimes in surprising or even drastic ways, but I find I get a strong indication of how it'll turn out down the road from that first bottle.

The other day, I got to have this experience again. My IPA had been in the bottle for around nine days, and it was finally time to have one. The hsssst sound wasn't quite as sharp as I had hoped, but there was some there. I felt tense and excited, really eager to see how this thing that I had put a fair amount of work into had turned out.

The brew poured a glorious amber-orange. I could see it wasn't super carbonated, but it did form a nice head. I do hope that it carbonates a bit more to carry the wonderful aroma, which was full of blackberry and floral qualities - with more subtle citrus notes - as I had intended with the particular combination of hops I had used.

I had the first taste and literally let out a whoop of joy. Firm and malty, slightly sweet, medium-full bodied, and with excellent grapefruit, blackberry, and floral flavors and a sharp, clean, but not overwhelming bitterness. It's rich, delicious, and bursting with flavor. I was surprised, then delighted, and a wave of satisfaction washed over me. A minute later my wife came home, and I handed her the glass and just said, "Try this."

Now, I should mention that we've been drinking a lot of IPA's and double IPA's lately. She had no idea this was the first bottle of homebrew. She smelled the beer, nodded approvingly, and then tasted it and said, "Wow! This is great! What beer is this?" When I said it was the new batch of homebrew, she let out her own little whoop and hugged me to celebrate.

Satisfaction indeed.

Beer, friendship, and the shared table

Beer-related tweets often include #beerpeopleRgoodpeople, a hash-tagged statement of truth. There are a lot of remarkably generous, kind, fun, smart, and creative people in the beer-loving and beer-brewing world. From craft beer devotees to homebrewers and commercial brewers, the beer world attracts terrific folks. And these folks gather in pubs, at tastings, in homebrew clubs, at festivals large and small, and over meals, not to mention over the net on Twitter and Facebook.

Beer and companionship go together. It's not uncommon to say or hear something like, "Hey, wanna grab a beer?" No one says, "Hey, let's go grab a wine," though they might more generically say, "Hey, let's grab a drink." Regardless, dropping by the pub with a friend and grabbing a beer is one of life's real pleasures. Not that people don't drink other beverages together, but there's an inviting, accessible quality to beer that's lacking in other drinks.

Beer serves as a social catalyst, a bridge between people, and it can also be thought of as part of a broader tradition of shared food and drink bringing people together. Even the president had a "beer summit" - though he appeared to need some advice from the craft brew community about what to serve. Ahem.

The tradition of a shared table (or side by side barstools, whatever suits) is woven into the fabric of human history. Major holidays have also been called "feast days" for good reason. Shared meals have always marked major occasions, whether the meal is a Thanksgiving, Easter, or Christmas feast, a Passover seder, a state dinner, a wedding feast, a celebration of victory, etc. The masterminds of the American Revolution and, later, U.S. Constitution hashed things out in taverns over ale and other beer drinks popular at the time. My fellow lawyers often talk about fighting in court but being able to grab a beer together afterward, the latter showing that the fight was professional, not personal, and that there is mutual respect.

Beer is part of this human tradition of the shared table, which seems to transcend cultures and therefore be in us. Beer brings us together, eases tensions (in several ways), and is a social spark. Sure, there are other social catalysts that we can gather around, including other alcoholic beverages. For a goodly number of folks, though, beer is the catalyst of choice, and this clearly isn't limited to craft beer.

At the IPA tasting at Arbor Brewing earlier this month, I met folks similarly dedicated to the enjoyment of craft beer and homebrewing. The beer was fantastic, and so were the people. It was a joy to talk with them about what we were sampling and share tales about the triumphs and tribulations - and utterly comical moments - of homebrewing. I ran into the father of one of my daughter's classmates there. Turns out he's a homebrewer, which I hadn't known. We got to talking, and he informed me that he was growing his own hops. After a little more talk, he offered me a couple of rhizomes. Now, less than two weeks later, I have two Cascade rhizomes ready to plant. Beer people are generous, and beer brings people together.

For me, beer has even helped to rekindle a friendship that has been dear to me for over 25 years. Beer writer Sean Nordquist and I became terrific friends at the age of 12. Seventh grade, new school, awkward adolescence: you get the picture and probably lived it, too. When we were teens, Sean had a space in his family's garage that he cleared out and made into a hangout, and we and a couple of other friends would hang there into the wee hours, drinking strong coffee - brewed beverages have apparently always mattered to us - and talking about life, the universe, and everything. Eventually, though, we went to college far apart and ended up in Florida (him) and Michigan (me).

We were in each other’s weddings, and our friendship at its core has never wavered. But we did go through long periods of not picking up the phone or writing. I think that if you had asked either of us about our closest friends, each would name the other right away. I have no doubt that he thought of me often, as I thought of him. With our history, our friendship was enduring, but actual contact had become too rare.

I know it sounds hokey, but our interest in beer brought us back together. I had become interested in homebrewing, and it turned out that he had been brewing for some time. We started talking a lot about it, and about beer in general. Then he had a business trip to Cleveland, not far from here, and I was able to get away for a night, which we spent at the Great Lakes Brewing Co. over beer flights and great food. Sometimes it takes something concrete, and it can be a little thing indeed, to rekindle a friendship.

Now, Sean and I talk often about beer, brewing, and beer writing, but we also talk about so much more: our kids and marriages, politics, our jobs (real and dream), mutual friends, old times, current times, and the times we hope lay ahead, adventures we’d like to share and how we might achieve them – and sometimes how we might not be able to. It's all part of life, and it's all fair game.

I have another friend who moved from Michigan to California, and he and I use Skype to have a beer "together" and chat. He's too far away to share the table or hang at the pub together, just like Sean is, but we do try to keep our tradition of grabbing a beer alive with the technology we have at our fingertips. I've also used technology, particularly Twitter, to connect with other craft beer devotees. I'd love to meet them in person someday, but for now we're having a pretty good time connecting over the internet. 

It all comes down to human connection, and for me, beer has facilitated that, and the connection is, in turn, more important than the beer. So, on that note, "Hey, wanna grab a beer?"

IPA tasting at Arbor Brewing Co.

Spice, lemon, pine, flowers, grapefruit, caramel, orange, herbs, apricot, hops forward, malty, balanced, bitter, huge, subtle, dry.

Just a few flavors and descriptions for the brews poured at Arbor Brewing Co.'s fabulous, sold-out IPA tasting last night. Call this blog entry a thank you note.

The folks at ABC know how to put on an event. There were enough tickets to provide for a great crowd, but it wasn't so crowded that we had to wait for a pour or couldn't move around or pause to chat. The beer selection was wonderful, and there was plenty of brew for all. Fortified by a nice buffet, everyone appeared to have a great time. I met fellow homebrewers, chatted with ABC brewing staff, and communed with my hophead brethren.

Some highlights for me included the frighteningly drinkable Bell's Hopslam and Lagunitas Hop Stoopid. The Bell's featured huge grapefruit aroma and flavor softened by apricots and buoyed by a honey-malt sweetness. The Lagunitas also had apricots in the aroma and was somewhat earthier and very well-balanced. Those were two of the high ABV, 100+ IBU giants tucked down in the cellar, where I could also take a gander at a small beer cellar where ABC barrel ages some brews. A couple of barrels were in active use, with tiny airlocks perched incongruously on top. I'd love to try what's inside.

Here are a few more of the brews that I especially enjoyed:

• Michigan Brewing Co. High Seas IPA: Well-balanced, with a mild sweetness, pine, and lemon. A nice dry finish.
• Bill's IPA Lot from ABC: Tiny batch. Quite golden in color, with an amazing hop flavor sequence of grapefruit, then lemon, then pine, then back to grapefruit. Delicious.
• ABC Arborealis: One of my absolute favorites of the night. Beautiful balance, piney with grapefruit and spice as well. Simply a gorgeous beer. Actually went back for a second sample of this lovely elixir. Apparently, this is on tap at ABC's Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti. ABC, please bring it to the mother ship.
• Founders Double Trouble DIPA: Somewhat vinous aroma joined by citrus and apricot. Citrus and apricot feature in the flavor, but also very floral and somewhat piney. Malty as well, yet didn't feel too heavy. Outstanding.
• Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree: Hefty, malty brew, a bit syrupy, orange and earthy flavors, caramel as well. An amazing beer. Can't wait to have more of this one.
• New Holland Mad Hatter Imperial IPA: Huge, hops forward brew, grapefruit aroma, flavors include pronounced orange and pine.
• Great Divide Titan IPA: Floral but also surprisingly biscuity aroma. Balanced, then bitterness predominates in the finish, offset by a touch of remaining sweetness. Lemony and resiny in the finish.
• Lagunitas Maximus IPA: Huge malt profile with some biscuit, all there to support the citrus and floral hop profile.
• Meantime IPA: The only English IPA in the tasting. Very different than any other beer I tried there. Caramel, toffee aroma. A touch fruity, but not citrusy. Sweetish, with a spicy hop profile. Bitter in the finish.

There were a lot of other terrific brews there, many of which I tried, some of which I sadly didn't get to. Only one brew that I sampled missed the boat, in my opinion, and since it may have been that it was just late in the tasting and my palate was probably toast, I won't say more about it now.

I'm a big fan of ABC. The place has supported the Ann Arbor community and been a huge part of the beer scene here for 15 years. They've hosted too many charity events to keep track of, been instrumental in efforts to keep downtown vibrant, and have supported local farms by sourcing more and more of their menu items from them. Oh, and did I mention that they make fantastic beer, too, in a remarkable range of styles?

ABC has a beer tasting on the second Thursday of every month, and I'm looking forward to several more this year, including bock and Trappist beers next month, fest beers in September, Michigan beers in October, and Belgian ales in November. I'm grateful for the opportunity. In the meantime, the IPA tasting has me looking forward with glorious, delicious anticipation to when my homebrewed IPA is ready. That batch is going into the secondary fermenter for some dry-hopping tomorrow. 

Maybe the third time really is the charm

It was brewing day here in the House of Fermentation this past Saturday. I put together an amply hopped IPA that, I hope, will have just as ample a malt foundation to balance and support the hops. Time will tell, as it always does in brewing.

Two days after brew day, my five year old woke up super early because he had to go to the bathroom, which just happens to be the room with the easiest to control temperature in the house at this time of year.  So, it's where the fermenter is perking along almost like a tiny steam engine. It smells like a brewery in there, or maybe like a hop farm, and he remarked in a sleepy voice, "What is that crazy smell?" Of course, he wasn't surprised at all when I told him it was the beer.

This was my third batch of homebrew, but my first one with organic ingredients, and I want to mention briefly how this came about. I think quite a bit about not just craft beer itself, but the beer business, the place of these breweries in local and regional economies, the environmental impact of brewing and stewardship of the environment by brewers, and community and political involvement by breweries. Along those lines, I recently read Fermenting Revolution: How to Drink Beer and Save the World by Christopher Mark O'Brien. In the course of touching on many aspects of the industry, the environment, and politics, he made a pretty compelling case for brewing with organic ingredients as much as possible.

Brewing with organic ingredients is totally consistent with how we cook at home, and O'Brien discussed his involvement with Seven Bridges, an organic brewing supply coop in Santa Cruz, California. So, I visited their website, and before long, I had ordered up an organic IPA recipe kit. I also ordered some additional hops to spice it up further. Now, I've finally gotten to brew it up.

I'm an extract brewer, and a novice at that. As I said, this batch is just my third. The first was a brown ale that went fairly smoothly except for a brief fiasco with a too-small brew kettle, and the second was a steam beer that turned out as a malty amber after I discovered too late that the original gravity was too low when I first brought the wort up to volume; I had to add more malt, and it made it taste like a rich and fruity amber ale. You learn from every batch. Maybe it was that this was my third brew and three's the charm, or maybe it was that the kit was really well put-together, but this batch went great. I was able to totally relax and enjoy as the elixir came together, filling the house with its pungent aroma. The windows were open, music was playing, and making this batch was the meditative experience that I was hoping for. The other two batches were fun to make, but this one was even more than that.

While I've found both of my previous kits (not from Seven Bridges) to be a bit under-malted, this one was perfect. I could have gotten a touch over 5 gallons out of it and still hit the mark on the original gravity, but I wanted the OG a tad high in an attempt to balance the additional hops. The kit was easy to use, and Seven Bridges was straightforward to deal with. The website is pretty well-organized, and my kit arrived promptly and in pristine condition.

I'm eager to get my next kit from Seven Bridges; I've got my eye on a Belgian-style golden ale, which just sounds awfully good right now. And I have to admit, it feels rather good to brew organic. I'm curious about whether the availability of organic barley and hops will increase and whether we'll be seeing more commercial breweries brew up organic offerings. Just like with every batch, time will tell, though if it's something people want to see, they needn't wait to make their voices heard at their favorite breweries.

Why we celebrate Oberon Day

Yesterday was Oberon Day, an official state holiday in Michigan. Lines were out the door at some pubs, and beer stores have artful displays of colorful six-packs with that inviting sun logo. Bell's Brewery has released our beloved spring/summer brew!

But why do we celebrate the release of Oberon? Is it the gorgeous golden-orange color that virtually luminesces? Is it the rocky pure-white head the color of puffy clouds floating in a blue sky? Is it the spicy-citrus aroma? Is it the dash of orange in the taste, or the touch of clove? Is it the assertive-but-not-too-much carbonation? Is it the finish with the fading citrus gradually replaced with a clean dryness and balancing bitterness?

Well, sure, in part. While some folks pooh-pooh this brew as an "entry" craft beer, I am quite fond of it. It does what it does very well, and much of what it does is refresh. Without meaning to imply in any way that it's simple to make such a beer, I think that Oberon does something that feels simple and straightforward, and it excels at it. Nothing wrong with that.

Even more important, though, is that it heralds the spring and summer, and that means a lot around here. Oberon, in short, is bottled optimism.

Its release signals that people will be getting outside again after a long winter to peer at the sun and feel it warm their bones. It means that the spring thaw is for real, and that the pleasant days will start to outnumber the crappy ones. It means daytime warming and still-crisp nights, and then the heat of the summer will be around the corner. It means flowers and gardens and farmers' markets, outdoor dining, walks and picnics, canoeing and kayaking, and time on the playground with the kids. Here in Ann Arbor, it means that townsfolk and the students lucky enough to stay for the summer will experience the particular joy of summertime in this lovely little city.

For some, it's a reminder of particularly sweet times. My wife and I, after knowing each other for a year in graduate school here, started dating in the warmth of late spring many years ago. She and I had more than a few Oberons together, whether on tap sitting outside at a pub or cracking open bottles in her backyard. Heck, back then, it might still have been called Solsun, but this post isn't meant as a history lesson any more than it's meant to be a beer review. The connections between senses and memory are strong. Really strong. The aroma, taste, feel, and sight of a beer can all be reminders of other times that we've had it, who we were with, what we were doing, or just how we felt.

Perhaps the giddy euphoria on Oberon Day is also about experiencing some optimism in tough times. Our state is wracked by a recession that started way before the nation's did, and it's not likely to recover with the rest of the county. People are out of work or under-employed in droves. There is no clear path forward in Michigan, and our state legislature has been reminding folks lately of clowns running around willy-nilly at a circus: funny, tragic, unpredictable, and somewhat scary in a way that's hard to place exactly. In this environment, the winter can feel particularly cold, dark, and endless.

Yet even here, the craft beer industry is growing. Beer is what many describe as an "affordable luxury," as I discussed a bit in an earlier post. Folks are very loyal to their local breweries and brewpubs, which can become hubs of community activity. Breweries reflect and enhance local flavor in ways literal and metaphorical. They employ local people - not in droves, to be sure, but we shouldn't sneeze at it, either.

We live in a state where the national-scale industries - mainly the car industry and its servant industries - have crumbled and contracted. They remain significant players, but as they've faded, no other industry has stepped in to fill the void. Our governor, echoing the President, points to green energy, and that's a possibility. But we shouldn't ignore the potential of industries that operate on a regional and local level, and brewing fits the bill nicely. Some go national, to be sure, but to me, that mainly means that they need to keep hiring in order to support their expansion, and that's a good thing right about now.

We need Oberon Day. We need that bottle of optimism to unleash our bottled-up optimism, and we should celebrate the release of a major product from one of our greatest breweries. Is this a lot to put on the slender shoulders of a bottle of beer? You bet. But when a beer taps into such a terrific feeling for folks, that's worth some celebration.

More magic from Short's

Some things are worth the wait.

Short's Brewing released the Magician a few days ago, which the brewery describes as a dark London-style red ale.  I picked up a single 12-oz. bottle, and now I want six more.

To me, it felt almost like a welcome new take on a brown ale, like a cousin to the oh-so-tasty Short's Bellaire Brown.  But the Magician is quite different, too, and there's more than ample room for both in the Short's stable.  As a quick aside, the Bellaire is Short's terrific take on American brown ale, bursting with a toasted flavor (that's the main similarity to the Magician) that's complemented by a roasted bitterness that lingers into the long, smooth finish.

The Magician pours a cloudy, light brown with amber highlights.  It had a tan head that dissipated quickly.  The aroma is toasty and buttery with a fruity touch, and the taste follows the aroma closely. There's buttered toast with a nutty dryness in the finish, reminiscent of lightly toasted pecans.  There's an earthiness, too.  The Magician is rich with a silky quality on the palate. The diacetyl buttery/butterscotch tones work terrifically well in this beer, richly supported by the silky mouthfeel.  

Good stuff, and it's exciting to see it on the shelves.