Dulles Airport Take-Off Tasting Tour:  Sterling, Ashburn and more:  Craft of Brewing (TCOB) Hyp-O-Crat,

Date:  April  15, 2019

The Story—  We discovered TCOB (The Craft of Brewing) almost by accident as we sought out the relatively new Dynasty Brewing Company, whose brewer had crafted a plethora of superb beers at several breweries — including and exceptional Mother Tupper’s Imperial Rye Pale Ale.   And Dynasty is wonderful and we’ll end this series with a very hard-to-brew triumph of theirs.   B

But there — in the same strip mall– was a brewery that hadn’t shown up on our brewery maps (yet), but seemed to actually brew.   We went back the next day to find a Brew on Premise that did its own Brewing on Premise to present a fine selection of beers from a very small brew kit.   The house brewed beers are served from pour-your-own taps at one end of the facility and the other holds the rows of tiny brewing vessels for the POB operations.

Other than the fact that the glassware was really basic, we were impressed with the place.   We had a hard time deciding which one of their beers we would feature in this lower Loudoun tour.  We settled on a beer than may not show how they avoid errors, which they do, but how the interpret styles, which they do well.

The definitive Irish Dry Stout is, of course, Guinness, which we can sample even more directly than ever from the St. James Gate Brewery at their American Guinness, Halethorpe, Baltimore, Brewery.   But the Guinness that we know and love is probably a gentler beer than the original “stout”.  “Stout” was once a term for a “stout porter” – a dark beer of above average strength an intensity.

Most, though not all, American brewers produce a “robust porter” when they want to evoke the earlier strength of the beer, but some continue to call these 6% to 7% dark beers dry stouts.   Sometimes it’s best to just ignore the labels and taste the beer for what it is.  So here, from an unlikely brewer brewing an unlikely interpreation of a style, is our first beer of the lower Loudoun area, a very nice big easy-drinking dark –maybe Irish-ish-  stout.

The Beer— Creamy and roasty.  Very dark malts and a gentle blanket of of the notrogen.  Some almost acrid black bitter late actually helps.    Ellie noted that even though it doesn’t have oats it tastes like it does.  A great example of how you don’t have to have $5 million bucks to open a brewery that can produce good beer.

Value —  Very good — made all the better by the fact that you can pour exactly as much as you want and go back if need be.

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.

For the next several weeks we’ll feature fun places to explore beer — and much more–a different destination each week.   Our beers of the day will feature beers from this wonderfully wet destinations.  This week we’re featuring beers in the Dulles-Sterling are of Northern Virginia.    A caveat as always: the vast majorities of craft breweries may have a few beers that are usually available, but their most interesting beers are usual season or one-off brews that we may rave about, but you can’t find.   Our specific beer descriptions can tell you what sorts of beers the brewery does well; if you don’t find the exact beer on tap, you’ll probably find something similar.

Surprising Wilmington: At Chelsea Tavern, a Baltimore Find: Heavy Seas Schnee Boot Barrel Aged Ice Bock

Date:  April 14, 2019

The Story—  We’ve been to the Heavy Seas brewery and are pretty conscientious about grabbing their new releases.   this beer, however, illustrates one of the new realities of the current beer scene — unless you are fanatically committed to a brewery or small number of breweries, you can’t keep up with what’s new on the market.  Twenty five years ago we knew of almost every release by every local brewery.   Now we find beers from our back yard we’ve never heard of in unheralded bars in… Wilmington, Delaware.

The bar was the Chelsea Tavern on market Street that opened in 2012 in an attempt to bring some life to an urban nighttime jungle.  It’s just a short barrel roll from the Stitch House Brewery and part of reason to stay and play downtown.  Chelsea has apparently weathered the death of its founder two years ago and offers 30 taps and a very full menu.   We were able to find a couple of beers we hadn’t seen elsewhere, and that’s pretty impressive for a city that was a beer desert before this decade.

The eisbock style originated in Kulmbach, a mid-sized town in upper Bavaria.  When we first visited the city, they had four largish distinctly different regional breweries.  The fest was unlike any we had seen — a single tent serving the festbiers of four breweries.  Mergers have left the city one, but it tries to maintain the brands, and to some extent, the flavors of the quartet.   “Kulmbacher” as a style refers to a dark, stronger than average, lager.  A recent lager competition featured variations brewed by more than a dozen breweries from a recipe from beer historian Ron Pattison.   Alas, it was at Urban Chestnut, and not within range of our travels.

But the style that’s most distinctively Kulmbacher is the Eis Bier style (Ice Beer).  It was undoubtedly  one of those wonderful brewing mistakes that have shaped the industry for many centuries.   Someone left a barrel of normal to slightly high strength in a shed or a porch and, ignoring the fact it might have frozen, tapped it anyway.  We chuckle to speculate the condition of the revelers after consuming a liter or two of a beer that usually left them able to work and this time left them unable to walk.

We, again unintentionally, repeated the process a few years ago with a keg of our Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Ale –an IPAish 6% ale that we left on tap on our back porch in the winter.   I’d love to tell you all the effects, but we actually don’t remember some of them.  What we did notice during a Washington thaw was that suddenly this wonderfully rich ale was mostly water.

Ice bock, then, comes from a strong to very strong beer that’s partly frozen.  The water is removed and the residue is sort of distilled –and very strong.   There’s some question whether the process is legal in the United States, but we don’t see many signs of enforcement.  The Scottish brewers Brew Dog’s 41% Sink the Bismack apparently used the technique; it’s come into the US in un-labeled bottles (smuggled we assume) that might as well have had “moonshine” stamped on the cases.

Kulmbacher still produces an eisbier.   The legendary ungloved Michael Jackson had, of course, a more extensive tour than we did and told us he saw miles of piping — far more than needed to transport the beer.  He thought they probably froze and thawed the beer as it traveled in the brewery.  Perhaps the added advantage was that it would be pretty hard to prove the system was engineered to reduce water and increase the booze.

We’ve featured Heavy Seas many times before in this blog.  It’s a reason to move to the mid-Atlantic.  They do “normal” beer well, big beers very well, and almost always, huge beers hugely well.   This is not only an eisbock, but it’s barrel aged, something the brewery does exceptionally well.   It’s no sunken Bismarck, but that only means that you can (a) afford it and (b) survive it.   One link to the battleship is, however, is that it blew us away.

The Beer—  Big dark rich and woody. with as much farmhouse as barrel in the wood.  Lots of dark and rich flavors roll on– some Rosemary, licorice, orange, treacle, dark caramel. WHOOOF!.  Needs to warm to show its sherry notes.

Value — Good to very good.   This sort of a beer isn’t cheap to produce and it isn’t cheap to drink.   This was eight bucks for a quarter pint.  “Fair” we thought at the time, but as we recall the depth and complexity of this elixir I’ve thought more about what I’d pay for another.   “A lot”, my English teacher said to me, “is a place to buy a used car or a Christmas Tree” and not a measure of quantity.”   Sorry, Mr. Gilbert, I’d pay a lot for another glass of this beer.

 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.

For the next several weeks we’ll feature fun places to explore beer — and much more–a different destination each week.   Our beers of the day will feature beers from this wonderfully wet destinations.    A caveat as always: the vast majorities of craft breweries may have a few beers that are usually available, but their most interesting beers are usual season or one-off brews that we may rave about, but you can’t find.   Our specific beer descriptions, can tell you what sorts of beers the brewery does well; if you don’t find the exact beer on tap, you’ll probably find something similar.

Surprising Wilmington: Stitch House Rye Knot? Rye IPA.

Date:  April  13, 2019

The Story—  Stitch House is a big place, well financed, with the brewery behind glass as you enter, a good sized bar and busy dinging area that despite its size sported a 20-minute wait.   They offer the requisite plethora of styles and brew most of them well.   One of the few disappointments was the helles lager, which was authentically sweet, but less smooth and almost devoid of hops.   That should have alerted us to the fact that we were in a brewery that treasured sweetness as much as those in upstate Pennsylvania.   Once you understood where you were, you could make good choices and have a fine night.

Rye, however, has a way of diminishing excess sweetness and comes across with a husky grainy and spicy taste.   Rye beers 30 years ago tended to be edgy and rough, but producers of the rye brewers use now have learned how to put a leash of the edge and leave the spice and husk that makes rye beers distinctive.   Ellie has always liked rye the way I’ve like hops.  We’ve each taught the other to appreciate both.

The Beer— The 7.5% abv gives a sturdy platform for a wide range of hop flavors over a tasty, mildly caramel, only slightly husky malt.  Citrus flavors, spice and some leaf.  Full bodied with some metal lasting.  Over the top but tasty.

Value —  As with the Sho ‘Nuff Stout from yesterday, it very good.   A 25 cl glass for $3.50 gives your a good taste without wrecking your budget or your liver.

  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.

For the next several weeks we’ll feature fun places to explore beer — and much more–a different destination each week.   Our beers of the day will feature beers from this wonderfully wet destinations.     A caveat as always: the vast majorities of craft breweries may have a few beers that are usually available, but their most interesting beers are usual season or one-off brews that we may rave about, but you can’t find.   Our specific beer descriptions, can tell you what sorts of beers the brewery does well; if you don’t find the exact beer on tap, you’ll probably find something similar.

Surprising Wilmington: Stitch House Sho ‘Nuff Stout, Strong Stout

Date:  April 12, 2019

The Story—  Stitch House is doing for downtown Wilmington what Fegley’s did for Bethlehem — take a lonely canyon of a downtown and pull people in to make it a destination for good times.   They’re not alone – a number of eateries and the beer-centered Chelsea’s all pull on the wagon, but a brewery is a draw like few other types of businesses.

It’s a bit ironic, but we’ve found that in Germany, when we find an old town hanging on to it’s vibrancy, there’s usually an historic brewery that’s anchored the survival.   In America, downtown resurgence is usually powered by a new brewery.  In both cases, as megabeers slip in popularity, the little guys are not only succeeding, but are helping others to succeed as well.

In Wilmington, Stitch House is a short safe walk from Hotel DuPont.  The 2013 grand Hotel is a pricey but worth-it splurge in the heart of the city.   (We were advised not to stray far from the main streets and a small army of police cruisers in the area led us to believe we got good advice.) We’ll have more to say about the place in tomorrow’s Beer of the Day Post.

Strong stouts are sometimes called Export Stouts.  Ironically they’re hugely popular in the Carribean and in Africa where those who have traveled there tell us that  the slogan “Guinness is good for you” is accepted on faith even by pregnant women.   The Guinness you get i tropical climates is far from the clean low-booze draft we get here and not so far off from this Sho ‘Nuff we feature today.

A slight digression:  if you’re a big fan of Export and strong stouts take a drive south — it’s little more than an hour– to Guinness’s only American brewery in Halethorp, Baltimore, Maryland.   Guinness taps beers you can only find in those tropical countries and in the original St. James Gate brewery in Dublin.

But before you do, Stitch house offers a rich and sustaining version of the style to ease your voyage back to the hotel.

The Beer—  There’s much going on in this 7% strong stout.  Very dark. Dark roast and black strap molasses and it stops just short of licorice.  (Ellie thought it didn’t quite stop.) Chalk and a touch of cream/paste evens it out as it drinks.  Some char and even smoke evolves. I’m not sure I’d want 4 of these, but I’m grateful for the one I had.

Value — Very good.   A 25 cl glass for $3.50 gives your a good taste without wrecking your budget or your liver.

 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.

For the next several weeks we’ll feature fun places to explore beer — and much more–a different destination each week.   Our beers of the day will feature beers from this wonderfully wet destinations.  A caveat as always: the vast majorities of craft breweries may have a few beers that are usually available, but their most interesting beers are usual season or one-off brews that we may rave about, but you can’t find.   Our specific beer descriptions, can tell you what sorts of beers the brewery does well; if you don’t find the exact beer on tap, you’ll probably find something similar.