Braven (@ Mercury) Flashy Way NEIPA, Ipswich, Ma.

Date:  October 22, 2018

The Story—  Eric Feldman with his friend Marshall Thompson started home brewing and stepped up to a brewpub in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.  Eric expanded the business by contract brewing at Saratoga but had a rude awakening call when that brewery closed.  He moved quickly and nearly seamlessly to Mercury Brewing in Ipswich, which has brewed for a legion of breweries in the last several years.

Mercury’s beers vary; at their best they are quite acceptable.  When the brewers they work with don’t bring much to the table, not much shows up on the table.  Eric must have watched this beer like a mother chicken.  It’s one of the best that’s ever come out of Mercury’s tanks.

The Beer—  Chewy and quite dark with deep fruit and chewy malt.  Fruit holds but dank prevails.  Herbal. Very slightly nutty but that just adds to the mix,   Ellie found it rather dry for a dank beer

Value —  Good.  You could certainly do worse for your money,

This week we return to the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

Next week we stay in the US with a full week of Guinness beers — a few from Dublin, but most from “Guinness Open Gate Brewery” in Halethorp, near Baltimore, Maryland.  We’ll talk more about the venue in our main post and highlight seven exceptional beers– most from the Baltimore Brewery, but a couple of can’t miss beers from Ireland you can only get here.

About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

Central Waters Peruvian Morning Barrel Stout, Amherst, Wisconsin from Half Time, Poughkeepsie, NY

Date:  October 21, 2018

The Story—  This is another fine beer we found at Half Time in Poughkeepsie New York.   The store is a couple of miles outside the city, but if you’re thinking of going there consider a night in Poughkeepsie.   The Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel is a somewhat weathered, but fundamentally clean and sound huge relic of too new to be historic and to historic to be quite spiffy, it

The Beer–A nice blend of full chocolate and softer dark fruit, dark roast and some herbal hops.  Chewy and creamy as it drinks.  Barrel and coffee add to the depth.  Nutty cocoa comes in later.  Ellie observed that the very good milk chocolate might be Peruvian.

Value –Very good.  You won’t regret the few bucks it take to bring this home.

This week we return to the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

Next week we stay in the US with a full week of Guinness beers — a few from Dublin, but most from “Guinness Open Gate Brewery” in Halethorp, near Baltimore, Maryland.  We’ll talk more about the venue in our main post and highlight seven exceptional beers– most from the Baltimore Brewery, but a couple of can’t miss beers from Ireland you can only get here.

About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

Burial Bloodtusk Keller Lager, Burial, Asheville, NC from Half Time, Poughkeepsie

Date:  October 20, 2018

The Story— Asheville, North Carolina has become the Portland, Oregon, of the East Coast.   Big national breweries like Sierra Nevada and New Belgium have moved in, but the number of smaller independent breweries remain legion.

Burial has a remarkable reputation among beer connoisseurs in the South.  We’ve found their beers variable — hits and misses, but the hits have often been out of the park.

Keller beers trace origins to Germany where breweries aged beers in “kellers” cellars carved into hillsides that provided natural refrigeration through summer months.  At their best, a soft tasty slightly fruity yeast brings hops and yeast together in a beautifully balanced sessionable lager. Not all yeasts are tasty enough to feature in an unfiltered beer even if they create good drinkable beers, and that’s especially true with lager yeasts.

We’re tough on Keller Lagers; we produced a double win at the Great American Beer Festival with our Keller Pilsner, and not many keller beers approach what Old Dominion and St. George did for us.   But this one brought an ovation from Ellie and a standing-O from me.

A word on the source– as we’ve mentioned here before, Half Time Poughkeepsie is one of our go-to great beer stores in our thrice yearly great beer trek from Boston to our home in Maryland.  This fall we skipped the others and just went to Half Time and found over a hundred beers we haven’t seen before (and boy do we look!).   If we bought sours indiscriminately, which we gave up last year, the haul would have been even greater.  It’s worth checking expiration dates, but Half Time does better than most mega-beer stores in keeping fresh beers on their shelves.

The Beer— Soft flavors attest to a skillful keller approach.   Softly chalky and softly sweet and softly fruity with a you guessed it, soft bitter at the end. Some soft sucrose and berry fruit along the way. Maybe pretty hoppy for the style in a traditional sense, but so was our Keller Pils.   Ellie noted that the yeast was modest and retiring and tasty– and that’s just what a keller beer yeast is supposed to be.

Value — Very good to excellent. We’re sorry we didn’t come home with a case of it.

This week we return to the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

Next week we stay in the US with a full week of Guinness beers — a few from Dublin, but most from “Guinness Open Gate Brewery” in Halethorp, near Baltimore, Maryland.  We’ll talk more about the venue in our main post and highlight seven exceptional beers– most from the Baltimore Brewery, but a couple of can’t miss beers from Ireland you can only get here.

About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

Lariano Tripé, Lariano Sirone, Italy at La Belle Alliance, Milan

Date:  October 19, 2018

The Story—  La Belle Alliance is one of at least three pubs in Milan that should have been in the first edition of our Drinking In the Culture and surely will be if the 2020 revision comes off as planned. The revision is going to be a challenge because we intend to stay within our self-imposed requirement of naming exactly six of the best places to drink.  We haven’t figured out what La Belle Alliance is going to replace.

I’m still annoyed by the pub’s policy of serving almost all their exceptionally good range of beers and ales in US lager style “shaker” pints.   The glass isn’t named for the religious order, but for the fact it was designed to make mixed cocktails.   Beer bars started using it because it was cheap and could stack without breaking.  It’s about the worst way to present a beer than anyone has invented.

Aside from that so-far-from-Belgium annoyance, La belle Alliance ranks among the great beer bars of Europe.  The range of beers is exceptional and the staff is knowledgeable.  Staff at other good beer bars say it’s where they go to drink.  It’s a ways out from the center, but an easy rambling ride on one of Milan’s antique trolley cars that makes the voyage almost as fun as the destination.

“Tripel” refers to a Belgian monastic style that isn’t really that old, but had clear parameters — at least for a while.   It’s very strong — 8% or more– but strikingly delicate.   Fruity– often with some banana, metalic and with a bit of dryness from candi sugar and just a breath of funky abbey yeast.   Delicacy and subtlety are the hallmarks, and that’s a tall order in a strong well-hopped ale.   Added spice and fruit is either inappropriate or an abomination.  For us, less than one in 25 tripels we taste come even close to the mark, but we keep buying them in hopes of golden nirvana.

Lariano’s version captured the essence, if not all of the specifics, of the style and dazzled both of us.  This style of beer is very very hard to make this well.

The brewery recommends pairing it with fatty cheese.  They are spot on, but it’s good with so much more.  Only the 8% ABV would keep us from drinking this by the 20 oz. pour with hot dogs at a ball park.

Beer—  I’d like to try it with the yeast more settled. As is, it’s maybe a bit yeasty and chalky for style, but actually nicely within specs.   Bitter hops and a lasting mild tart lemon are authentic too.   Ellie pointed to the soft tripel funk with sugar, gentle metal and some tropical hops.

Value — Very good to Excellent — At just over six bucks for a….shaker…. pint, it’s hard to imagine a better bargain in a big city in Italy.

This week we feature HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE–  Surprisingly good beer in “bad beer cities.”  The best we’ve found in researching our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.)   We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.

Tomorrow we return to the US to highlight some great beers we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

Baladin Smoked Dark Ale, Piozzo, Italy at Eataly World

Date:  October 18, 2018

The Story—   We’re still at Eataly World, sipping our way through an array of Baladin beers that would require us to sell our car even if we could find them in bottles at home.   Here, you can get them for the normal price of a beer in a good sized city almost anywhere in Europe or the US.

Today’s standout is a dark smoked ale.   It’s hard to challenge Bamberg’s Heller Brewery’s Schlenkerla range of smoked beers, but this one gives the champion a good match for a few rounds.

We wrote of habituation yesterday — it’s interesting in a spiced ale because you never know what’s going to recede, but it’s necessary in a smoked ale because the smoke gets in the way of the flavor of the beer as you begin to drink it. The habituation softens the presence of the smoke — with Schlenkerla it softens to a lovely accenting spice in about a liter.   Other smoked beers can take more or less time to subdue the initial smoke and one of the strengths of this beer is that habituation happens pretty quickly so you don’t have to have a liter or two to fully appreciate it.

The Beer—  Smoke dominates but doesn’t oppress very clean smoked malt.  – it recalls sweet smoked fish or meat — there’s a suggestion of honey malt, some stone fruit and clean roast.  Habituation starts early and lets the roast and fruits build complexity.  Soft smooth, slight creamy with a full body and an eventually very good balance.  Ellie may have needed more time than I did to habituate — or maybe I just liked the smoke flavor more than she did.   She gave it a good rating, but for me it was one of the best on the trip.

Value —  For Ellie, good; for me, very good to excellent.   Certainly well worth a few bucks to find out what it does for you.

This week we return to HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE–  Surprisingly good beer in “bad beer cities.”  The best we’ve found in researching our next book – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.)   We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.

Next week we return to the US to highlight some great beers we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.