DuClaw Real Ale Festival in Bel Air Sept. 6th

From ads in today's Baltimore City Paper and posters at the Wharf Rat-Fells Point:

DuClaw Brewing Real Ale Festival 2008
at DuClaw Brewing, Bel Air, Md.

Sept. 6th, 12-4 PM rain or shine
$45, tickets on sale midnight August 20th (Aug. 18 for their Pint Club members)
Only 525 tickets available, expected to sell out far in advance
www.realalefest.com
Portion of proceeds to benefit FARM (Fallston (Md.) Animal Rescue Movement

Participating breweries (apparently the final list):
Barley & Hops, Frederick
Brewer's Art, Baltimore
Clipper City, Halethorpe
Clay Pipe, Westminster/Frederick
Dog Brewing, Westminster
DuClaw Brewing, Abingdon
Flying Dog, Frederick
Franklin's Brewery, Hyattsville
Growler's Brewpub, Gaithersburg
Oliver/Wharf Rat, Baltimore
The Raven, Baltimore
White Marsh/Red Brick Station, White Marsh

Free buffet included, live music from Smooth Kentucky, games & prizes
Bottles of DuClaw's Colossus (21%) will be available for sale.
(They're also advertising a Jim Wagner Kissing Booth. You decide whether or not to take them seriously.)

Japanese Beers--Just in Time for Otakon!

Max's Taphouse, in their usual Tuesday night show, is unveiling four new bottled beers from the Baird Brewery in Numazu, Japan:

Rising Sun Pale Ale 5.0% ABV- American West Coast Style
Red Rose Amber 5.4% ABV- Inspired by the steam beer style
Angry Boy Brown 6.2% ABV- Bigger, bolder and Hoppier than most
Kurofune Porter 6 0% ABV- Classic dark English Style

http://www.bairdbeer.com/home.html

Casey Hard, Max's cellar-master, informs me that the company's brewer is either English or American. With a name like Bryan Baird, I would hope so.

The extra-special bonus is that Otakon, the Japanese anime convention, is in town this weekend (same time as the Virgin Music Festival, sadly for some), bringing perhaps 15,000-20,000 hard-core anime and Japanese culture fans to town for three days. It's possible one of them might even make it to Fells Point for a beer...... maybe....... I must admit that sometimes they have to remind a scant few of those fans to eat, sleep, and/or bathe..........

Okay, beer-tasting notes:

Red Rose Amber Ale 5.4%: deep amber, bright with a touch of sediment in the bottle, lovely head retention.... nose very mellow hops, but initial sip is almost an India Pale Ale in hoppiness. This is an ale beer (which uses yeast that ferments at higher temperatures) that was fermented at lager temperatures (i.e. 10 degrees F colder than ale), according to the label........... wait a minute........ Steam/California Common is lager yeast at ALE temps! (We just looked it up to be sure!) So what do we really have here? a nice, VERY malty amber, with the vaguest hint of either oak barrel aging tartness or a touch of Belgian tartness and cloudiness. A terrific woody/piney hop balance and finish. Dry, almost chalky finish, very thirst-inducing........ beware. Great flavors, but not easily categorized.

Rising Sun Pale Ale 5.0%: Classic pale ale deep yellow, rich head retention, richly bottle-conditioned with plenty of yeast sediment. Nose lightly hopped. A dry interpretation of the style, right at home for Asahi converts. Well-balanced for a dry pale ale, bitter hops coasting on what seems to be a sea-foam-laced malt surf. (Okay, kill me, I've become Joe Metaphor!) Possibly the driest pale ale I've encountered in years. Dangerously thirst-inducing.

Angry Boy Brown Ale 6.2%: classic English brown, with a bit richer head. malty nose, slightly sweet, with a hint of hops. QUITE a character-filled (translation: yeast and hop flavors) brown, this comes off the way I would expect Hitachino to do a brown: a touch chalky, nicely hopped, rich mineral and yeast flavors, the latter alluding to Belgian yeast without being funky. Dang, this is good.

Kurofune Porter 6.0%: a touch light for porter color, moderate head retention, nose smacks of yeast initially...... a rich, complex porter, initially reminding me of Alan Eames' Flag Porter from ages ago..... a good rich medium/light roast flavor balanced with a fruity ale yeast, hints of iodine/seaweed and smoke in the finish. A nice one; I want more of this.

Now, just to keep the theme of the night going, because the style I order next is so popular in Japan......... Ridgeway Bad King John English black ale 6.0%: yes, black beer is different from stout even if it doesn't look it. Most black beer in Japan is lager, but this is an ale. So? Bright (clear) but still porter brown, a lighter body than most porters, excellent roast flavors, mellow finish.

And just to add to the fun, there are three MORE "Japanese" beers worthy of your attention: Three beers made by Rogue Brewery of Newport, Oregon in partnership with a Japanese brewery--Red Fox Amber, White Crane Bitter, and Buckwheat Ale. The label artwork is silk-screened onto the bottles and are largely in Japanese, as these bottles were actually intended for the Japanese market. These 12-ounce bottles are no longer made, and these are some of THE last bottles available for retail sale anywhere. If you like the thought of a Japanese beer collectible (better than a "Beer-Chan" t-shirt by far!), here's your chance! (Fewer than a dozen bottles total as of Wednesday night!)

Mallard Fillmore on InBud

Okay, maybe a tad unfair..... but no more so than any of the stuff on McCain, so..........

Is this "dry-hopped" to you?

I'm hiding the identity of the subject of this discussion for now--I delayed publishing it in part to protect the possibly innocent, and perhaps in hopes of a more neutral assessment.

I was poured two cask-conditioned beer recently at a venue. One was advertised as dry-hopped.

The one on the right in the picture.

Yep. Those are fragments of pelletized hops in the glass.

Now, I hear a lot about sediment in beer now and then--people swearing by and at it. But what are we supposed to think about three-dimensional hop character of this nature? Have any of you ever seen it before? My personal guess is that a hop bag in the cask didn't do its job, or tore open, and/or the cask wasn't properly prepared or settled before the pouring.

Thoughts?

Beer and BBQ in Federal Hill

I was tipped off to a relatively new BBQ joint in South Baltimore, so far south on Light Street that it's practically underneath I-95. Importantly to us, Rub BBQ has three house beers sharing a mostly-Coors-based draft line-up: a bock-ish Red, an IPA, and a seasonal (a wheat as I type). In addition, the place features its own root beer and cream soda on draft, and also stocks a couple decent bourbons, as well as a loooong list of frozen drinks and cocktails.

The source of the house beers? Surprise: no other than the Dog Pub Brewery of Westminster, which seems to be finding a curious niche contracting house ales for more than just this place.

But how's the BBQ? I'm well-versed in Carolina and Virginia BBQ traditions, and am somewhat well-versed in Memphis and Texas versions as well. This place aims for the Texas style; my sandwiches were straight-up meats (chicken, turkey, beef brisket, or sausage) to which the patron can add mild, hot, or honey mustard sauces. I have a client who usually takes me to Red Hot & Blue for lunch if I'm working with him (it's an excuse for me to enjoy hearty meats when I'm married to a vegetarian that would starve at such places); Rub would easily satisfy a RH&B fan as long as he doesn't need to see music ephemera on the walls. It's a project of Michael Marx, the former owner of the Blue Agave Restaurant elsewhere in the area.

NOTE/EDIT: URL problems have temporarily (we hope) disrupted by what appears to be a trademark/URL/website problem between Rub Baltimore and a similarly named place in New York City. Stay tuned, or use your favorite Internet search engines.

Tough Luck, SAB/Miller!

From the Associated Press via Google:

MillerCoors LLC is ending testing of its trio of craft styles of top-seller Miller Lite so it can rethink the brand, the company told distributors this week.

The so-called Miller Lite Brewing Collection didn't perform as well as expected in test markets including Baltimore, Minneapolis and Charlotte, N.C., spokesman Julian Green said Thursday.

The company had high hopes for the brand, which tweaks Miller Lite into various styles of craft beers such as wheat, amber and blonde ale.

In April, it said testing was so strong it would release the collection of beers nationwide by September. But by mid-June it said the release would be delayed for more testing.

The collection aimed to latch onto the fast-paced growth of craft beers, which are rising faster than overall beer sales and also command higher prices.

More at the link.

Gee, who could have seen this coming?

Tom Cizauskas Leaving Clipper City

If you've been around the Baltimore beer scene for any length of time, you've run into Thomas "Tom" Cizauskas. He's a great and knowledgeable beer guy, whom I first ran into during a visit to the original Oxford Brewing Co. down in Linthicum (now I'm dating myself).

For the past four years he's been working for Clipper City Brewing Co. Well, he just announced in his blog that he's leaving as of August 1. No word on where he's going yet. And his blog will tell you why you've seen so little of him lately around here.

Stay tuned, and wish him luck.

Metropolitan Firkins at Max's next week

Folks, posting has been light here for a while and will be for a while further, thanks to a contract job, but I needed to dash this out, from an e-mail from Metropolitan's Bruce Dorsey:

"I am pleased to announce that a very special beer event will take place in support of Metropolitan staff next week courtesy of Max's On Broadway in Fells Point and Otter Creek Brewing, makers of excellent Otter Creek and Wolaver's ales.

Wednesday, July 30
Max's On Broadway, Fell's Point
Tapping of Wolaver's All-American 2 firkin to benefit Metropolitan Staff
5:00 pm till the firkin is kicked

As many of our regular customers know, last winter we invested in several of our own firkin kegs to enable us to keep Firkin Thursdays supplied with real, cask-conditioned ales during those times when brewery-owned firkins are not available in the market. As it happens, one of our firkins was recently filled and shipped back to Maryland, but, things being what they are for now, had no place to go before the beer inside would inevitably become stale due to its being completely natural and unpastuerized. And it really seemed like a horrible shame, since the beer inside was Wolaver's All-American 2 from Otter Creek, which has received rave reviews everywhere it's been tasted.

Then an amazing thing happened. Ken Hadley from Otter Creek Brewing was able to place our homeless firkin at Max's next Wednesday, and both Otter Creek and Max's have teamed up to generously donate a portion of the cask sales to our staff. In addition, Max's is also going to take a collection at the door for our staff on Saturday.

In recognition of this incredibly generous offer, I encourage everybody, but especially our Firkin Thursday regulars, to go to Max's next Wednesday and drain a few pints from the firkin. Let's show them that Federal Hill knows how to appreciate a wonderful firkin. In addition, if anyone is out in Fell's Point this Saturday, please stop by Max's for a drink or two. This has the potential to make a real difference for our staff. Thanks so much to the gang at Max's, Ken and Otter Creek."

See y'all there.

Great Beer of the Week

I love historic beer recipes. Ever since I first ran into Alan Eames' Flag Porter back in its original incarnation (brewed with yeast harvested from an 1845 shipwreck, as I recall), I've had a hankering for reproductions (well, with some modern liberties taken, usually) of vintage drink styles. Which, of course, in part explains my love for Fraoch Heather Ale and the other historical recipes of Bruce Williams and Williams Bros. Brewery.

This Gruit showed up at Max's for the Tuesday Night Beer Social. Comes from "Dr. Fritz Briem, Historic Signature Series"........

Quoting the label and the website for the beer's importers, B. United:

Before the German Reinheitsgebot, in 1516, beer was not explicitly brewed with water, malt, hops & yeast through In fact the Reinheitsgebot was as much a ban against certain substances & adjuncts as it was a government instruction to brewing beer. Until then it was common practice to use a variety of different spices & plants instead of hops to flavor and prolong the shelf life of the beer. Some of the adjuncts that were used even had anesthetic & toxic effects.

Grut beer has roots in many cultures and each culture had its own "special ingredients": Egyptians (Mandrake based), Native Americans (Corn based), Arabian Tribes, Gaulles, Germanic Tribes and the Vikings.

Grut beer became especially popular during the middle ages in Germany in the regions of Westphalia & Lower Saxony close to the borders of Belgium & Holland. During this time the ingredients for beer were very expensive, in particular hops.

This interpretation of a traditional Grut Bier is spiced with Lorbeer (Bay Leaves), Ingwer (Ginger), Kummel (Caraway), Anis (Anise), Rosemarin (Rosemarie) & Enzian (Gentian). It is brewed with water, wheat & barley malt, "pollinated wild hops" and fermented using top fermenting yeast bacteria (isolated from malt) at 18 °C (64°F).

The information on the style and ingredients at the B. United website goes on for NINE pages. The brewer/brewery/importer is also responsible for an "1809" Berliner Weisse.

My review? One of THE most refreshing and flavorful beers I've had in ages, perfect for summer at 4.6% abv. Beers like this are the reason that anytime anyone feels like quoting the "Reinheitsgebot" like the Gospel According to St. Gambrinus, I just want to kick his posterior out the door and to the curb.

Fire Hits Metropolitan

One of Baltimore’s more notable beer bars, the Metropolitan Coffeehouse and Wine Bar in Federal Hill, suffered a serious fire in the wee hours of July 6th. At approximately 3:30 a.m., an electrical fire hit the overhead lights between the bar and the kitchen.

“The fire marshal said it was either a defective light fixture or defective wiring to it,” said Bruce Dorsey, manager of the bar and restaurant. Structural damage was minimal thanks to rapid response by the Baltimore City Fire Department, but the heat was severe enough to melt a ceiling-mounted television and several shelves’ worth of plastic spice bottles, as well as pop the corks on many bottles of wine. Fortunately for beer aficionados, there was no discernible damage to the beer taps or beer inventory (although it’s likely that, upon reopening, there might be a special on Rauchbiers?).

At press time, insurance adjusters were still assessing the damage, but a preliminary guess was that the bar would be closed for two months for clean-up and repairs. Meanwhile, a planned monthly gathering of the Society for Preservation of Beers From the Wood scheduled for Metropolitan the following Thursday had to be hurriedly rescheduled. Fans of the establishment can follow its website at www.metrobalto.com or its MySpace site for rebuilding updates.