Triumph New Hope Best Bitter

Date:  October 7 , 2018

The Story— New Hope is a riverside, and occasionally an under-river view seeker’s paradise not far from where Washington crossed the Delaware and won one of his relatively few battles.

Triumph is a small chain; this one’s been here a while — we had a beer from them in 2005 and visited twice in 2007.  Their beers were good and New Hope was beautiful then, but our return this year found a brewery that had developed strikingly more sophisticated beers and a B-no-B (Bed but no Breakfast) that was one of the spiffiest (with prices to match) that we have ever encountered.

The brewery, which stood largely alone in our first encounter, is now a part of a huge development on the west side of the tracks but still a 10 minute walk from either of the best B&Bs.  Big concert-ready open halls with a large game area as well attest to the big crowds this place attracts.  Tables cling to the walls in the big open spaces with lots of post industrial wood and brick about.     Lots of TVs and games.  one page but varied menu.

They had an oddly enforced 2 beer per couple limit that we haven’t seen anywhere elsewhere in PA, though they claim it’s state law.  This “anti drunkenness” measure requires you to finish the style you’re drinking before you get another and if you want to sample multiple styles before you eat, that’s fine as long as you finish them before you put food in your stomach.  We’ve seen the same “law” enforced in Maryland by far less than 1% of the servers that we’ve encountered there.

The menu is only a page, but still offers a good variety of choices.  Lots of TVs and games draw groups of friends.   Patio space outside overlooks the tracks.  The best part is that very professional brews range from fairly good to hit it out of the park.

The Beer—  Strikingly authentic best bitter.  Supposedly Burton on Trent style, though few beers this good come from Burton any more; it’s very nicely balanced which the best of the premium bitters achieve on the other side of the pond.   Delicately delightful with some caramel and biscuit and ale fruit late, with a long lasting gentle bitter.   Ellie’s comment:  wow.  double wow.   I could drink this 4.6 % session all night.   We were only sorry that our duty to you, dear readers, forced us to move on to other styles.

Value —  Absolutely Excellent!  Six bucks for a non-pint pint would normally be a fair, but un-special price, but it’s so much cheaper than flying to England and then wishing you were back here.

All this 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.

Later, we’ll return to HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE 2018–  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.

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.

Spencer Devon Hush Hush DIPA, Fredericksburg, Virginia

Date:  October 6 , 2018

The Story— Spencer Devon is one of our favorite breweries anywhere.  A night in this brewpub will reward you with top notch beer and food to match.   We met the founders on the door step of their yet unopened brewery a number of years ago.   When they described what they wanted to do we couldn’t wait to return.  We have– several times– and have never been disappointed.

This beer is from 2016.  One of the problems in doing a “beer of the day” is that the next day the beer will be gone, so you won’t find this — just as you won’t fine many of the beer of the days that are smack dab current.  We hope these beers serve a as a guide to where to find good beers and enjoy styles that might be similar.

The Beer— Spencer Devon Hush Hush DIPA is a fine example of Spencer Devon’s skill – though they also do lower alcohol beers quite well.   The Hush Hush has hops in yer face but with a solid clean malt foundation.  Spicy, even peppery hops, with tangerine and pineapple.  It’s a big hopfest that Ellie called “0ff the wall but yummy.”

Value —  good.   $7.50 for a 10 to 12 ounce glass isn’t a bargain, but you get what you pay for.

All this 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.

Later, we’ll return to HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE 2018–  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.

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.

Elav Punks Do It Bitter, Comun Nuovo, Italy at Il Santo Bevitore, Venice

Date:  October 5 , 2018

The Story— We’ll stay in Venice for our last beer of this string of European entries (tomorrow we head back to the states.)   Il Santo Bevitore means “the Holy Drinker” and names one of our favorite pubs in Bologna as well as the absolute best beer bar in Venice.  As far as we know, only the name connects them.

In reviewing our notes for these posts we discovered we had tasted scores of good beers in Venice, but only eight that really rose above the “good” in craft beer these days.  We found fully five of those in three visits over two years at Il Santo Bevetore.   It’s a cute, waterside (which isn’t that rare in Venice) beer specialty pub.   The number of taps isn’t that unusual these days, although the dozen and a half made them unique a few years ago.  The selection and quality of the beers, however, puts this bar into an elite group of superior Italian beer bars.   They usually have a featured brewery — we’d call it a tap takeover– and those beers are brewery fresh and carefully tended.

The brewery of the moment on our trip this summer was Elav, a small brewery in Comun Nuovo, a village not far from Bergamo, which is northwest of Milan.   The brewery started with a tiny system less than 10 years ago – bigger than Sam Calagione’s soup pots at the original Dogfish Head, but not by much.   A few years ago they leaped to a commercial sized brewery — more or less 20 barrels — that allows them to distribute as far as Venice.  A pale ale, X 114, was as good; we picked this because it seems to be the beer the brewery sees as its flagship.

The brewery says “The trademark of the Punks Do It Bitter is the consistent Dry Hopping, with Mosaic and Cascade, which gives it the characteristic citrus fruit evident in every phase of the tasting.”  Dry hopping, which involves adding hops while the beer conditions, was a signature feature of our Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale in the 1990s.  One of the reasons we produced it was to show the world how important it can be to a full hop flavor.   Today, dry hopping is almost standard in hoppy craft beers.  Still the Mosaic and Cascade dry hopping (we won’t add Michael Jackson’s sotto voce comment about the term) with some Palisade and Columbus blend well and distinctively in this exceptionally good session beer,

The Beer–Some pale caramel and an unusually full body for 4.3 with lots of 20th and 21st century US hops.  Lingering bitter is unusual and nice.  The brewery calls this a British Bitter but, at least traditionally, you’d be sent to the Tower of London (the prison, not the gems exhibition) for using Mosaic and Palisade.  Whatever the “style,” it’s a nice beer.

Value — Good.   $8.75 for a pint, but you’re drinking craft in Italy, which is taxed higher than mass market beers there.   And a much lower tip than you’d pay in the states delights your server.

All this week have featured HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE 2018–  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.)   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.

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.

B2O Grodziskie from Beer Shop Venice, Italy

Date:  October 4 , 2018

The Story—    Michele welcomed us with a free sample of the draft of the day and challenged us to name the ingredients for a full glass.   Our ability to name not only the ingredients but the style set up a great visit,

Grodziskie beers, Polish smoked low alcohol beers, disappeared from the earth decades ago. They’ve made a minor comeback as brewers search desperately to produce something that isn’t being done by all of the 15 other breweries within a 10 minute drive of their taproom. We tasted B2O’s version in Venice’s Beer Shop, a small store that has helped enormously in changing Venice from a good city to drink beer into a very good one. It was their “mystery beer of the day”– identify the key ingredient and you get a free draft of it. We knew the style well enough to spot the style and the ingredient (albeit stumbling seriously on the pronunciation) and that was our ticket to a couple of hours of great beer conversation, swapping beers stories and books and learning much that we didn’t know about the Italian beer scene.   The place is packed with interesting beers; we still so deeply regret that our suitcase was already full….
>>> Grodziskie is a style that can get as edgy as Berliner Weisse – some of the half dozen we’ve had were hard to finish– but this was one of the two best we’ve ever had. (description above). We were grateful for more.
>>>Some of the early examples from 5 years ago were interesting but profoundly un-moreish. We wondered how populations would tolerate something as acidic. We think this interpretation is entirely credible as something a village would celebrate a few centuries ago.>>>Beer Shop Venice is a short stroll from the Rialto Bridge and just a block or two from the Devil’s Forest Pub, probably the best of the tourist area’s watering holes.   It’s new and we found it essentially by mistake when we were wandering around the neighborhood.
>>>Parenthetically, the only other example that matches this in our experience comes from a relatively obscure but most enjoyable brew pub in Conyngham Pennsylvania. Smoke in both of these is restrained and the pale malt is allowed to make the experience pleasant. Conyingham Brewing, by the way, is worth the short detour from I81, almost half way between Harrisburg and Scranton. There are motels only a couple of miles from the brewery and you might need them.

The Beer—  Very soft – almost creamy despite the 3.2% Soft fruit, slightly salty with some on a leash and an end of gentle pineapple tang.

Value —  Well, for us it was unmatched — we drank on it for the price of knowledge.   Definitely a good deal.   In general Beer Shop’s prices are quite fair in the context of the Italian beer market.   You’d pay much more for the beers he carries back in the states — if you could find them.

All this week we feature HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE 2018–  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.

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.

Zapap Sick Boy Columbus IPA, Castello di Serravalle, Italy

Date:  October 3 , 2018

The Story— We end our stay in Bologna with this post, and today we leave Il Punto with considerable reluctance to find other great places to spend an evening.   Zapap is a brewery a few miles outside of Bologna, but they have an outlet in the midst of one of the best streets for beer in Italy.

A couple of blocks west of the iconic Mercato delle Erbe,  the narrow Via del Pratello runs west from Piazza Malpighi.  For one of Europe’s best pub crawls, drink your way down it almost to the end, but turn right on Via S. Rocco chug past Brew Dog and end your crawl at Il Punto.   Actually, don’t even think of trying this in one night — and it has to be a night because most of the best places don’t open until very late in the afternoon and sometimes only in the evening.

We were only in Bologna for 4 days, so we couldn’t come close to having full drinking experiences in more than a handful of the many many watering holes along the way.   Zapap was compelling — a brewery tasting room experience in a field of multi-taps, it was a trip to the country in downtown Bologna.   In Italy the term “Pub” can refer to a drinking establishment that is relatively refined (Il Punto) or downright funky (Pub 27 in Pompeii).  There is no specific term for “dive bar.”  If there were Zapap would certainly fit it.  it’s clean enough, if quite funky, and the staff is wonderfully friendly.   You can run though an impressive selection of the home brewery’s offerings.

The Beer—  The Sick Boy Columbus IPA is a fine showcase for the Columbus hop, grapefruit and orange flavors ride on a soft and chalky, softly sweet, malt.  Close to a NEIPA but with better balance and more interesting depth than most of the NEIPAs we’ve tried.  I loved the hint of black pepper that emerges as it drinks.  It’s a well made beer similar to what you could find in the states — if you were lucky.   it’s not easy to make a beer this interesting without it being in your face.  Extreme beer fans won’t flock to it, but save for the 6.8% ABV, I could spend the whole night with it.

Value —  Very good.   One middle man less leaves more of your euros in your pocket.

All this week we feature HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE 2018–  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.

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.