First night in Piedmont. And what do we order w/ dinner? BEER. And not just any beer. Microbrew made by prisoners! (I’m not joking)

The Grand Poobah always brings tasty treats for his subjects. (From left to right: Fred Navarette, Carolyn Edgecomb, Craige Moore, Jonathan Moxey, Lauren Moxey)

You better hydrate.  You best have a gang of food in your belly.  Your mind must be focused and your palate on-point.  Cause you’re going to get slaughtered…with a smile on your face.

Hold on to your hats, craft beer geeks, because the hurricane-force winds have finally died down, and BrewYork #7 has gone down in the record books.  For those of you who are avid readers of Grapes & Grains (have I told you lately that I love you?), you may have seen the final bottle list from BrewYork #5; or even watched the frighteningly beautiful video footage of BrewYork #4.

But for all the new visitors, all you really need to know is that once a month, at a once-undisclosed location (but now at the cozy confines of New Jersey Brewing Company–thanks, Matt for the upgrade), we get it on.  It’s a right pissing contest of who can bring the rarer bottle, the tastier homebrew, the better brisket.  And the winner in all this?  Everyone.

This weekend was no exception.  Holy shit, the bottle list was insane.  Akin to looking into the sun during an eclipse.  Careful.   Look too hard and you’ll be blinded by the vortex of craft beer power.

Here’s a look–I advise numerous breaks to rest your eyes, take some breaths, say a few Rosarys and recenter:
(some of my favorites are in bold)

• Boulevard Brewing, Bourbon Barrel Quad
• Dogfish Head/Sierra Nevada, Life & Limb
• Surly, Smoke
• Flat Earth, Element 115
• Bell’s, 25th Anniversary Ale
• Summit, Imperial Pumpkin Porter
• New England Brewing Co., Imperial Stout Trooper 2010
  
• Cisco, Lady of the Woods
• Hopworks Urban Brewery, Rise Up Red
• Just Beer, Case of the IPA
• Homebrew: Pumpkin Ale
• Homebrew: Black Pepper Brown Ale
• Homebrew: IPA
• Berkshire Brewing Co., Lost Sailor IPA
• Rock Art Brewery, The Vermonster 100 IBU Ale
• Innis & Gunn, Lightly Oaked Blonde Ale
• Homebrew: Chocolate Milk Stout
• North Coast, Old Stock Cellar Reserve
• Weyerbacher, Riserva 2010
• New England Brewing Co., Ghandi Bot
• Cantillon, Lou Pepe Framboise 2007
• Boulder Brewing, Killer Penguin 2009
• Bell’s, Hopslam
• The Bruery, Old Richland
• Telegraph Brewing Co., White Ale
• Dogfish Head, Pangaea
• Fantome, Pissenlit
• Cigar City, Warmer Winter Winter Warmer 2009
  
• Cigar City, Improvisacion
• Brewdog/Mikkeller, I Hardcore You
• The Bruery, Saison Rue
• Dogfish Head/Stone/Victory, Saison du BUFF
  
  

  This ain't even the half of it...

• Flying Dog, Oak Aged Brett Gonzo
• Sam Adams, Triple Bock 1997
• Unibroue, Quelque Chose
• Sierra Nevada, Celebration 2001
• Brewdog/Stone, Bashah
• Bolero Snort, Wee Heifer’s Fruitcake
• Widmer Brothers, Barrel Aged Brrrbon
• Dogfish Head, Wrath of Pecant
• Founders, Nemesis
• Founders, Curmudgeon Ale
• Founders, KBS
• Sam Adams, Longshot Winners
• Terrapin, Wake & Bake
• Palmetto, Bocat
• Palmetto, Espresso Porter
• Moor, Peat Porter
• Moor, JJJ IPA
• Muskoka, Double Chocolate Cranberry Stout
• Lost Abbey, Judgment Day
• Avery, The Czar Russian Imperial Stout
• Odell Brewing Co, Woodcut No.4 Oak Aged Lager
• Cantillon, Kriek 100% Lambic
• Capt. Lawrence, Golden Delicious
• Goose Island, Vanilla Bourbon County Stout
• Surly, Coffee Bender
• Bellwether, King Baldwin Hard Cider
• Ithaca, Excelsior! Series Alphalpha
• Jolly Pumpkin, Noel De Calabaza
• Southern Tier, Series 3 Cuvée
• Dieu du Ciel!, Péché Mortel Imperial Coffee Stout
• Capt. Lawrence, Flaming Fury
• Brasserie à Vapeur, Vapeur de Bises
• Blue Point, Toxic Sludge
• Ommegang, Zuur
• Ten Dudes, Smoked Barleywine
• Ten Dudes, Cupcake Porter
• Ten Dudes, White Peach Sour Ale
• 

  ...and this? Mere child's play.

  Embrace the craft!

Take your filthy hands off my beer can!

Within the wine, beer and spirits world, passions run deep.  And so do the divisions.  Whether it is beer vs. wine, red vs. white, or vodka vs. bourbon, the warring camps of devotees are steadfast and thirsty for the other’s blood.  Whether it is double- vs. triple-distilled, screw cap vs. cork, or old world vs. new world, you’re going to get some pretty set opinions.  “A screw cap on my wine?  I ought a bust you in the lip and drown you in a vat of Yellow Tail Shiraz!”  Well, one of the most famous is the can vs bottle division, but the lines are being redrawn.  Change in the beer world is coming…. you afraid of the can?  Well, my friend, it may be time to look again.

So often the choices we make in what we drink tell us a lot about the person.  Like wearing an Armani suit, strutting around with a bottle of Sam Adams Utopia is an indicator of class, style and attitude.  I remember when just the sight of my bottles of microbrew was called out as being “fancy”, and I was regularly taunted by can-wielding upperclassmen.  And of course in this case, “fancy” meant arrogant, or high-falutant, like I was some sort of beer dandy or something.  Well, looks who laughing now, you Schlitz-drinkin d-bags…and no, you can’t have a bottle of my homebrew.  And now, the door has opened even further and we’re seeing the unthinkable:  microbrews in cans.  What the f?  A can?!  “But only swill comes out of a can”.  “Only those that care nothing about their beer would disgrace it with such a filthy vessel”, the naysayers rally.  And you’d be surprised just who is saying such things….

A few years ago, Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams) shocked the beer world with his blatant disregard of the can. In 2005, he released what he called the “Beer Drinkers Bill of Rights” to ensure better beer for one and all, and stated, “”Beer shall be offered in bottles, not cans, so that no brew is jeopardized with the taste of metal.”  Uproar ensued in the microbrew community, especially at my beloved Oskar Blues Brewery in Lyons, Colorado where they have taken can technology to new heights and are the pioneers in leading the movement away from the beloved bottle.

The evolution of the can is a fascinating one.  As recently as the 1930′s, tin cans could not hold beer without exploding.  And then came the advent of the liner.  Initially made of vinyl (and fancy polymers today), they sealed the can, and prevented all liquid contact with the metal.  Over the years, the technology has improved ten-fold and the fear of tainting our precious bevies with metal has become irrational.  In fact, its seeming more and more like the can is the perfect vessel for beer.

I was fortunate to meet Dale Katechis, the founder of Oskar Blues brewery a few years ago at Brewtopia.  There in the midst of all these breweries and their countless bottles was a table filled with cans.  Huh?  It seemed so strange.  Yet for Dale, it was a subtle war cry; a shot across the stern of the micro beer community.  Dale’s Pale Ale was not just a great beer, but also a new philosophy: the Can is King.  Backed by the belief in “less air, less light”, Dale was upbeat, passionate and grounded in his renegade ways.  And the beer? Unbelievable.  Featuring caramel toffee notes highlighted by fresh hops and an intoxicatingly smooth balance, it is delicious, and was deemed the Top Colorado Brewed Beer by the Rocky Mtn News in November, as well as the NY Times pick as the Best Pale Ale in America in 2005.

So fast-forward a few years, and cans are now popping up everywhere in the craft beer world.  Breweries like Butternuts in upstate New York, New Belgium in Ft Collins, Colorado, and most recently Sly Fox from Pennsylvania, to name a few, have begun canning.   They’re on the band wagon, and are espousing the advantages of the can:  better protection from light and air, easier storage and transport, as well as a quicker cooling time for your tailgate fiestas…So what does that mean for us, the beer drinkers?

Well, frankly, better beer.  Be it canned or bottled, brewers are testing and reinventing the ways we package our prized beverages.  Concerned with the freshness of their beer, every detail is being scrutinized  (and argued over).  But honestly, bottles aren’t going away.  The only thing that’s really changing?  You’re going to find some damn tasty microbrews in cans.  So embrace them, my friends.  Embrace them without shame.  The can will serve you well.

Founded:  1989
Production:  approx 60,000 barrels

(website)

It’s gotta go back to home for me.  Doesn’t it always?  Something about those early years of ANYTHING.  Your first stumbling in the dark with a girl’s brassier.  Your first, horrible taste of coffee leading to that next, almost palatable, strangely forbidden sip.  The rowdy fans slamming their cold cans of Bud together at the tailgate party as you sheepishly waddle by slightly scared for your young life.  What’s the fascination with these items, I thought?  Why do I see them all around me?  For me, New Belgium and Odell’s were like two pony-tailed, Swedish foreign exchange students skipping towards me in knee-high socks while holding hands and shouting my name in unison.  Who were these devilish beauties?  Why am I so viscerally charged by them?  And how do their socks stay up like that?

Odell’s 90 Shilling remains to this day one of my favorite beers of all time.  Have I had it in years?  No.  Would I recognize it in a blind taste test?  Probably not.  But just the sound of its strange name brings back memories of my days in high school…those formative years when we were stumbling awkwardly through our days, slowly developing our identities and learning to connect with (or rally against) the world.  Like the smell of burning wood which always skyrockets me back to the campsites of my youth, Odell’s beers transport me.  They were my litmus, my palate-trainers….I didn’t know it at the time, but 90 Shilling and Easy Street Wheat laid the foundation for all of my experiences to come.

So where did it all begin?  After moving to Fort Collins in the 1980′s to search out his destiny, Doug Odell followed his bliss and bought an old grain elevator built in 1915 with the plan of moving his homebrewing hobby into a full-time business.  Soon, he began to make his dreams a reality and Odell’s became the second microbrewery to open in the state of Colorado.  Employing what must have been a jury-rigged system that looked a lot like the Millenium Falcon’s engine room, they built a four-level, gravity-fed brew system which employed open fermentation tanks.  Whoa.  Now that’s a vision backed up by sheer tenacity.  And within five years, they couldn’t produce enough beer to meet the demand that the hippies, soccer moms and professionals alike began to be fascinated with.

And now, as I track their business practices and brewing experiments, they are still pushing the envelope.  They began creating barrel-aged beers in the summer of ’08, and use an ingenious five-barrel pilot system which gives their brewers the freedom to experiment with new recipes every couple of weeks.  Rock on, Odell’s.  And rock on Fort Collins.

Favorite brews:  90 Shilling, Easy Street Wheat, Cutthroat Porter

Founded:  1995
Production:  approx 35,000 barrels
(website)

Extreme.  Fire up the frickin taste buds, because these guys are doing some funky, bold beers.  Using such ingredients as fresh oysters, arctic cloudberries, green raisins, st johns wort, and beet sugar, they’re off to the races..and running like mad greyhounds.  Sound interesting?  How bout their Malt de Liquor; a bottle-conditioned malt liquor served in its very own brown paper bag.  Now that’s street-swilling in style.

They seem to be everywhere in the media at the moment, their classic fish-shaped icon appearing so much you’d think you’d popped your head in the aquarium, and they deserve to be.  The American Homebrewer’s Association has picked their 90-Minute Pale Ale as their top-voted beer two years in a row (and who ain’t gonna listen to the legions of home chemist/hop geeks/brew monks/flavor-craving-crowd of die-hards when they sound their collective horn).   Like all the other brewers in my top 5 list, founder Sam Calagione is passionate.  But his passion lies in pushing the limits of imagination and what’s possible to capture in liquid form.

I got it in my craw to make a Pumpkin Ale a couple of months back (“Praise the Gourd”), and did a lot of reading and tasting to get familiar with what’s out there.  I found a number of approaches to this style, some over-spiced messes that wiped the spit off your tongue, and many in which no pumpkin could even be detected.  I wanted pumpkin… and was happy when I got a solid backbone of gourdy goodness in my final beer (I baked fresh pumpkin sprinkled with brown sugar until caramelized and placed in a hop sack during the boil as opposed to with the malt extracts–believe it or not, a much-debated question of timing in the homebrew community).

Of all those I tasted during my ride down gourd lane however, I most dug the Dogfish Punkin Ale.  It was hearty, well-spiced and evocative of children wearing spit-filled rubber masks greedily running from door to door through the brisk Colorado air.  It brought me back to my childhood and the details you remember:  A chill in the air.  Strange cutouts of witch silhouettes in the windows.  Yards filled with thick spider webs capable of swallowing children whole.  I think you get the picture…  That power was what hooked me to Dogfish.  That “style”, and how it took you on a ride.  Their beers are rich and full of depth like dark Syrahs from the Northern Rhone–embodied with soul.

Favorite brews:  90 minute pale ale, Punkin Ale, Raison d’ Etre

Founded:  1979

Production: approx 680,000 barrels

(website)

No god-fearing microbrewer could ever not bow down in worship to Sierra Nevada.  It would be an outrage.  I would have to throw my shoes at you.  (I still think it would have been off the chain if Mr Bush caught one of the shoes, centered in on the thrower with his beady eyes, and threw it back like a Chinese throwing star…but no…instead, he flinched.  Anyway, back to Sierra).   Sierra Nevada is a forerunner in the field of microbrewing.  Practically THE forerunner in the field.

Along with Anchor Steam brewery in San Francisco, they broke new ground and shined a beacon of light into the dark night of “American Lagers” that had become ubiquitous since America’s post-Prohibition days.  They shook people up.  An underground following began, and people started to want more out of their grog.  They wanted an experience.  So, through a combination of renegade thinking and the tried-and-true techniques of the past, Sierra influenced a new wave of American brewing.

Starting from nothing, Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi cobbled a brewery together from dairy tanks, a soft-drink bottler, and equipment salvaged from defunct breweries before the term “microbrew” even existed.  And now, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is a three-time gold medal winner at the Great American Beer Festival (an annual gathering composed of louts and connoisseurs alike who descend on Denver in staggering numbers every year to guzzle or swirl their way through a ridiculous number of beers). It represents for me the solid choice you’ll find on A LOT of beer lists around the country.  When in doubt, you’ll oft hear a chirpy waitress list Sierra’s name in amongst the long list of mostly domestic swill you’ll find the country swimming in.

Their use of hops and ability to capture their essences in a myriad of styles give their beers a refreshing, vibrant undercurrent.  Sierra Nevada’s journey was hard-fought, but its insistence on quality ingredients and experimental craftsmanship paid off; their beers now enjoy a large, devoted following.  And rightfully so.

Favorite brews:  Pale Ale, Bigfoot Barleywine Style Ale, Harvest Wet Hop Ale

“What is this?” “Beer, my friend.  Beer”

Yes, its been known for ages. Just how long beermaking has been known is staggering to comprehend. Thousands of years. Where we are today, as brewers, is astonishing. Ancient styles, long-lost techniques, are being brushed-off and being thrust into the limelight. Microbrewers and craft specialists are a-flourish with all things Belgian, German, British, and Czech…oh, and don’t forget the Yankees. We, as Americans, have found our niche of brewing; a rag-tag group of upstarts gone wild has turned into big saga, with our country being filled with artisans and shrewd businessmen alike. Aflame with passion and a wealth of information, we are off and running. So, where did it all start? What is this beer in front of me, and what is its story?