What's brewing this weekend

I've got a crowd of around 15 coming over this weekend to talk about forming a local alumni group of my college fraternity. I expect there'll be some beer sipped, but in a responsible, adult manner. Even in school we weren't exactly the Animal House crowd.

As for what'll be on offer: I've got some Sweetwater 420 in the fridge finally, picked up on a trip out of town for Thanksgiving, along with some Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA. There's also still some of the Sam Adams Honey Porter, Abita Turbodog, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and a Hoegaarden or two. Then there's whatever else the other guys decide to bring along.

What will you be sipping this weekend? Where, and with whom?

Today's column: Keeping warm with bubbling beer

(Recipes coming soon, btw. -Ben)

With the mercury plunging, a good beer or two may warm you up, once the capillaries in your face relax and turn your cheeks rosy. But that serving temperature — cool to ice cold — might just give you the shivers this time of year.

It's never too cold for a beer, really, but if you're looking for another way to warm up with a cold one, why not heat it in a pot? Of course, it's important to add more ingredients than just the beer.

Winter's chill winds make it the right time for savory, slow-cooked stew or a nice, hot chili. And a bowl of either can benefit from cooking with the right beer.

The dark, roasted flavors of porters and stouts are a big part of many stew and chili recipes.

Porters are ales made with barley that's dried at higher temperatures before the brewing begins, yielding a darker malt. Stouts follow the same model, with some of the barley actually roasted and unmalted for a dry, crisp effect.

Those methods tend to result in full-bodied beers with intense flavors. Adding a bit to a stew can lend a bitter complexity, and some recipes even replace the broth outright with a bottle or two.

Countless beef stew recipes classify themselves as Irish with addition of some the Emerald Isle's most famous export, Guinness Stout. A version from Margaret M. Johnson's Irish Pub Cookbook that credits the Guinness brewery's bar calls for a half pint of the thick, black beer. It swirls with the savory flavor of sirloin cubes browned in oil and butter, and the stout mixes well with the slight tang of carrots, parsnips and turnips.

In chili, stouts' and porters' roasted malts, plus the more intense bitterness from hops, can help to balance the spice from hot peppers. One colleague at The Star uses the Turbodog porter from Louisiana's Abita Brewing Co. in place of beef stock, then adds venison or bison meat for a truly unique flavor, though he says beef works just fine, too.

Another Star staffer (we eat a lot of chili here) uses dark lagers such as Samuel Adams Boston Lager or Michelob Amber Bock in place of inky porters or stouts in a lightly spiced chili recipe. Standing in for the dark complexity of roasted malt: bittersweet chocolate, which helps balance that spice even more.

Slow cooking is a favorite method for many of these dishes, in part because of the way it tenderizes chunked meat and allows seasonings to penetrate the other ingredients. Adding a bit of alcohol only intensifies the tenderizing effect, and the malt and hops can really work their magic given a few extra hours.

Using a slow cooker, though, takes time. Perhaps there's no better way to spend that time than sipping whatever beer didn't make it into the pot. At least the kitchen should be warm.

What's brewing this weekend: Leftovers

Appropriately for the holiday weekend, I'm just trying to take care of what I've got left in the fridge before beginning a search for something new. So far that's meant some Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (ol' standby) and Abita Turbodog. There's also a Sam Adams Honey Porter or two left in there that I might get around to pouring.

What are you drinking this weekend with your leftover turkey and dressing?

Today's column:Hey, porter: Rich, dark brew is a sweet winter classic

11-19-2008

Since porter derived its name from an early popularity with people who carried things for a living, it's sort of fitting that many people now think of it as a winter beer.

After all, it's this time of year that people are toting loaded shopping bags, hefting big dishes to the feast table and hauling the family off to visit relatives for the holidays.

Or maybe it's that the deep-dark colored ale, with its malty-rich flavor tastes so good alongside all those holiday dishes that tend to appear only near the end of the year — slow-roasted turkey, brown-sugar-encrusted sweet potatoes, any number of sinful deserts.

Porter is said to have taken its name from the hard-working laborers around London where the beer was born in the 18th century. The characteristic dark brown or even black color comes from the special varieties of malted barley, the grain that is the bedrock of most beer. As with all brews, first the barley is soaked to allow the seeds to germinate, then heated to dry it and promote the conversion of starch to alcohol.

For porters and other darker beers, some or all of the barley is dried at higher temperatures, changing the color and flavors of the resulting malt. Generally speaking, the higher the temperature, the darker the malt and the more complex the flavors. Brewers mix and match malts to achieve their desired tastes. "Chocolate" malt can add caramel or vanilla flavors; patent malt is dried hot enough it turns black and picks up an acrid smokiness. Crystal malt is roasted in a rotating drum before the drying process, and can give the resulting beer an extra sweetness.

Porters, like their cousins the stouts, pair well with a number of entrees, and their rich body makes them an excellent base for chili and stew recipes. And all those roasty flavors mean the dark beers are an excellent match for rich deserts, playing much the same role a cup of coffee does alongside a slice of pie or cake. It might sound counter-intuitive, but the next time you pour a glass of porter, hold back just a splash in the bottle and drizzle it over a bowl of vanilla ice cream — you'll never need chocolate syrup again.

Below are a few good porters from American brewers; all can be found either in area restaurant coolers or on local store shelves — at least you won't have to carry them far to get them home.

Sierra Nevada Porter — A good, straight-up basic porter, with a rich taste from chocolate and caramel hops. Naturally for a West-Coast brew (Sierra Nevada is based in Chico, Calif.), bitter hops balance out the sweetness.

Samuel Adams Honey Porter — True to porter's heritage, Boston Beer Co. uses English hops varieties alongside the roasted malts, then sets it all off with a bit of Scottish honey. The brewer suggests trying it alongside glazed ham and roasted vegetables.

Rogue Mocha Porter — This is your dessert beer. With generous doses of chocolate, black and crystal hops, it'll stand up to the richest, gooiest dessert you can serve. Try it with ice cream, as mentioned above; even better with a warm fudge brownie underneath that scoop of vanilla.

Brewer recalls Sam Adams over broken glass

Boston Beer Co. is recalling Samuel Adams beer sold in bottles shipped from one of its glass suppliers.

The bottles may contain small fragments of glass that could injure drinkers if ingested, the company said. They've set up a Web site with information about the recall here. Bottles embossed with the code "N35 OI" at their base should not be drunk, according to the site.

According to news reports, including this one from the Boston Herald, the defective bottles come from an Owens-Illinois plant in Auburn, N.Y. Bottles from four other plants are not affected, the company says. OI has a release about the matter up here. it takes issues with Boston Beer Co. calling the bottles "defective," saying they appear to have been made according to OI's standards.

Boston Beer Co. is offering refunds, according to the Herald story. The recall Web site has a page where consumers can enter the code at the bottom of their bottles.

Has anyone out there found they have the affected bottles? What are you doing with them? Has the company offered to mail you a refund?

WaPo: Superlative brewing

Boston Beer Co., maker of Samuel Adams, has become known for exploring the limits of beer, including its flavor, alcohol content and last but most certainly not least, price.

The latest product of Sam Adams' extreme-brewing arm is the 2007 version of its Utopia. It's got the highest alcohol content ever recorded in a beer, at 27 percent by volume, according to this story from The Washington Post earlier in the week. It's also pretty darn pricey, starting at $120 for a 24-ounce bottle. That's assuming you can find one. The brew can't be sold in 14 states (including Alabama, of course) because of the high alcohol content (despite the fact that it equates to about 54 proof, much less than many liquors very legal in those states).

Boston Beer recommends serving Utopia in two-ounce pours, according to the story. That would equate to about $10 a serving.

Yikes.

World Series of Beer: Top of the order

Here's the first of our spotlights on beer from the states of Massachusetts and Colorado, coinciding with the World Series being played between the Boston Red Sox and the Colorado Rockies. Boston is hosting the first game at the legendary Fenway Park, so Massachusetts is up first.

The lead-off hitter for the Bay State is none other than Samuel Adams Boston Lager, brewed by the Boston Beer Co., whose headquarters is just about three miles south of Fenway.

This was the first offering from Boston Beer when it launched in 1985, just as the craft beer movement in the United States was gathering steam. It's still the company's flagship beer, one of dozens of regular, seasonal, premium and "extreme" brews. Most Sam Adams is actually brewed outside Massachusetts, in breweries in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

The beer has a rich, malty character and a nice hops profile that was revolutionary when it was introduced. Now a classic, it holds up well in what's turning out to be a golden age of American beer.

As I write this, it's 3-0 Red Sox in the top of the second inning.

An old column

Added this from The Star's archive and backdated it, since I wanted to refer to it in another post. Enjoy.

Pitcher This: A Rock by any other name ...

04-11-2007

People drink beer for lots of reasons, and it’s not always the brew that makes a brand a favorite. That’s how I always saw Rolling Rock.

I just lost credibility with some connoisseurs for typing that. Who needs ’em?

Rolling Rock is not, I’ll admit, a sophisticated brew. It’s a simple American lager, a little sweet and very mild. The unique, blue-and white- painted labels have long carried a message “as a tribute to your good taste” that ends with the cryptic characters “33.”

Rolling Rock was brewed for 67 years at the same brewery in the same small town in Pennsylvania. That town, a Jacksonville-sized place called Latrobe, also birthed golf great Arnold Palmer, plus my neighbor and yours, Fred “Mister” Rogers.

I say “was brewed” because Anheuser-Busch, the global conglomerate responsible for Budweiser, bought the Rolling Rock name last May for $82 million from InBev, a Belgian firm that bought a Canadian company which bought Latrobe Brewing from the Tito family, who first brewed Rock in 1939 in a brewery that dated to 1893.

But AB bought the name — not the brewery. The company moved production of Rolling Rock to a Newark, N.J., plant last summer. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said 200 workers stood to lose their jobs when the Latrobe plant closed. The paper told of families who’d worked there for generations. Stunned, most vowed never to drink a New Jersey-brewed Rock.

And for every brewery worker, there were thousands who’d formed a bond with Rolling Rock despite its uncomplicated flavor. Many must have stories that revolve around the beer in the painted green bottle.

Mine? I remember two buddies in college drinking more of it than they probably should have, the beer fueling vows of eternal friendship. And my three months with the Air Force in Kuwait, where we went beerless in deference to Muslim custom. My friends back at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., sent a care package with a plastic Waffle House menu and a bottle of Rolling Rock — which they’d drained, of course. Jerks.

All that was before another Air Force buddy, who’d been posted to England, introduced me to stouts, ales and Irish reds, my first steps into a broader beer world. But I always had a soft spot for Rolling Rock. And every bottle of it I ever touched — including the one I tossed in a Kuwaiti trash bin in the dead of night, fearing a court martial — rolled out of the same western Pennsylvania town.

Until now.

I’ve got nothing against Anheuser-Busch. Love the commercials. But Rolling Rock’s charm was its story, its tie to a town synonymous with the brew. Painted on the bottles now is, “Latrobe Brewing Co., St. Louis, Mo.” Like the Latrobe workers, I’ve had my last Rock.

So I was thrilled to hear that LaCrosse, Wisc.,-based City Brewing, which bought the Latrobe plant in September, announced a deal last week to brew Samuel Adams there under contract for Boston Beer Co. City expects to have 100 people working in Latrobe by the end of the year, 250 within three years.

Now, Sam Adams has no more to do with Latrobe than Anheuser-Busch. But that beer’s launch in 1985 is at least partly responsible for the revival in regional and craft brewing now sweeping America. I can’t think of a better fit.

The bottle will be brown and the label paper, but I’ll raise a Sam Adams this weekend for the good people of Latrobe.

As a tribute.