A Lone Star but A Lot of Beer

During a recent weekend trip to Austin, Texas, I had a chance to sample a few local and non-local craft beers that were pretty good. When my wife and I arrived on Friday night to the house of our friends, Dianna and Johan, I was greeted with a cold bottle of Fireman's 4 Blond Ale from Real Ale Brewing there in Austin. A nice beer overall with good flavor and finish.

Saturday afternoon Johan took us out to Central Market which had an incredible beer section. Austinites are very lucky to be on the cutting edge of large supermarkets (they are the original home of Whole Foods which is now nationwide) that specialize in organic, fresh and unique products at reasonable prices... including beer. I selected two individual pint bottles to purchase with plans on having one later that afternoon and one on Sunday afternoon. The first one I picked up was Hop Stoopid from Lagunitas Brewing Company in Petaluma, California. I cracked it when we got back to the house and shared it with Johan. Incredible hoppy flavor as the name might imply and smooth finish and no bitter taste at all. A very, very good beer. After some research I found that this wonderful beer is considered a Double IPA - make that an "award-winning Double IPA" - which is by far my favorite sytle of beer.

We all attended a concert later that evening and dined at a local chain eatery beforehand called Opal Divine's. I was delighted to see that they carried a great beer selection including several products from Austin's own, Live Oak Brewing. I chose their IPA, of course, and it wasn't bad. I may have liked it more if I didn't still have the smooth taste of the Hop Stoopid Ale still in mind. The folks at Live Oak do a tour of their small microbrewery as well which I would like to check out next time I am down this way. The beer selection at the music venue was typical and boring, but I did get a kick out of having one my favorite "mass-produced" beers, Shiner Bock, for the first time in a can. All four of us actually toured the Shiner Brewery (in nearby Shiner, Texas) the last time we visited Austin and it was a great tour. Shiner is a great success story in terms a small brewery producing great products and gaining some amazing national success.

Sunday afternoon before our flight home I popped the cap on the second pint bottle I had bought at Central Market. This was was called Small Batch 471 Double IPA from Breckenridge Brewing in Colorado. Double IPAs as I mentioned above are my favorite style of beer and this was the first one I had gotten in a bottle and I have to say I was fairly disappointed. It wasn't a bad brew overall, but it really lacked the pure hoppiness of double IPAs I had tried in the past, and still had the coarse bitterness of an English-style IPA - totally different from American IPAs.


Thanks to Johan and Dianna for showing us such a great time and thanks to Austin for providing great opportunities to try really good beer in a great American city.

Getting Off the El for Some Ale

On a recent day-trip to Chicago, my wife, Ashlee and I, and our friend, Joy, rode the El from downtown north a few stops and took a walking food tour of the Wicker Park/Bucktown neighborhoods. The tour was excellent and the food superb and one of the six stops included Piece Pizza and Brewery in the Wicker Park area. This small microbrewery produces several medal-winning beers. Including in our tour was a taste of their Golden Arm Kolsch. Not bad but way too light for my liking, so while everyone was enjoying their delicious pizza I slipped up to the bar and ordered a glass of their Camel Toe Double IPA (photo above). Now we are talking! Excellent hoppy aroma and taste and 9% AC. Dark amber color with full body and smooth finish. Definitely gotta come back up this way and try a few more of their products (photo right).

I was also able to try a glass of Goose Island Seasonal Winter Ale at the nearby Wicker Park Tavern while Ashlee and Joy did a bit of shopping. Goose Island is also produced in the Chicago-land area and their winter ale was strong and smooth with a beautiful copper color. Not a great aftertaste, but a good beer overall.

A Long Hiatus...

I have been on a self-imposed hiatus from drinking any beer thanks to a low-carb diet that my wife and I have been on for a month or so. It has been worth the sacrifice since I have shed over ten pounds that I needed to lose. I have more pounds to lose, but enough is enough!! I had to have some beer and attending the Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival in downtown Nashville this weekend was just the thing. This is a traveling festival that visits a lot of large cities and this was its second annual stop here. My friend and mutual real beer lover, Nate, attended last year and said it was pretty good, so I agreed to go with him and his new girlfriend, Ginny, this year as well as my wife, Ashlee.

As Nate had said, it is a pretty good little festival with 60 beers to taste (not all microbrews, but you take what you can get), 40 different bourbons and several choices of local BBQ. They had tasting stations set up in the bottom floor of Nashville Municipal Auditorium and the $25 entry price got you a tasting glass, a T-shirt and all the hooch you could down in a 6-hour span (the BBQ was extra). Most of the beer samples were poured from bottles although a few brewers had kegs on site for draught pours. There was also a tasting class offered by New Belgium Brewing out of Colorado that included three of their newer concoctions. These three, plus any new ones I tried at the tasting stations, are listed below in no certain order along with a quick judgement:

- Leinenkugel's Amber Lager- decent but not worth a second taste

-Brooklyn Winter Ale - pretty good with a nice finish
-McSorley's Irish Black Lager - OK, but not great especially compared to some of the great Irish brews I had recently on The Emerald Isle.

-New Belgium Bierre de Mars - nice color and finish to this fragrant ale

-New Belgium La Folie - a wood-aged sour brown ale (it was definitely brown and it was most definitely sour)

-New Belgium Blue Paddle - their first attempt at a lager. Not bad, but not as smooth as the Bierre de Mars

- Schafly # 15 Oatmeal Stout - actually a bit watery and fairly disappointing

- Mike's Apple Spice - OK, not technically a beer but this stuff was great - they warmed it and it was a great fall treat - and yes I like Mike's Hard Lemonade as well

- Kona Pipelane Pale Ale - decent brew with a nice color

- Stone Mill Organic Ale - Yuck! The big boys strike again with a faux-microbrew that's just a soapy-tasting mess. Stick with what you know, Michelob.

The rest of the festival was spent visiting with old, familiar friends like Sweetwater 420, Rogue Dead Guy Ale, Dogfish Head 60-Minute IPA and Magic Hat #9.