Has anyone ever wondered what an I.P.A. (India Pale Ale) is?  I'm going to talk about Pale Ales first because an India Pale Ale is an amped up version of the former.  I've actually already given some good information on Pale Ales when we had Samuel Smith's Pale Ale (here is a link to that article and review).  Even though I've covered some of the bases before, let me just briefly define a Pale Ale. A Pale Ale is not pale at all.  The utilization of lighter grains as compared to those used in English Porters and Stouts helped to give this beer its name.  Some of this had to do with technological advance.  I've written some stuff on grains already, so I'm not going to cover it much here (I'm providing multiple links in the articles to cover some other questions you might have).  In addition to being lighter than other Ales of the time, the beer was also more hopped than a Porter or Stout might typically be.  Rolling Rock is not actually a good example of a Pale Ale (check out the Samuel Smith's that we have reviewed on here for a more classic example of this beer type). Well, Pale Ales were great for the homefront.  But what about people ...

As the title indicates, this article will cover more ground than just a single type of beer.  However, it will deal with a singular concept, namely, the role of hops and grains in English Ales.  There will be plenty of time to cover other Ale considerations in future articles.  The particular types of top-fermented Ale covered in this article will be "Normal" English Ales, Milds, Bitters, and Extra Special Bitters (E.S.B.s).  As I mentioned above, hops are the major consideration in the variance of these types of Ales.  I'm using "Normal" to designated an English Ale that cannot be further defined by another category of Ale (i.e., it is not a Bitter, Pale Ale, Irish Ale, India Pale Ale...you get the idea).  So, in some ways it is a catch-all phrase.  I suppose these "Normal" Ales have also been called "Pub Ales" (of course, Bitters can also be called by the same name).  Hobgoblin might be a good example of "just a normal English Ale."  If you see the simple terminology of English Ale or English Style Ale, you are probably dealing with a "Normal" English Ale.  A beer that is less hopped than a "Normal" Ale is often characterized as a "Mild Ale."  ...

Last night I drank this beer that I've not had for about 4 years.  I remembered really enjoying it at the time, especially with a friend and some Davidoff cigars.  It went excellently with those smokes. Samuel Adam's Chocolate Bock is considered one of their extreme beers, if you look at their website.  They have four "extreme" beers: Chocolate Bock, Millennium, Triple Bock and Utopias (the strongest and most expensive beer in the world).  While the Utopias and company are more extreme, this one is not so much extreme as it is extremely good.  The pour:  There was a fair amount of carbonation in the brew with fair head retention.  It had a deep brown color with touches of Crimson.  The beer looked almost as smooth in the glass as it did in the bottle.  By the way, the label on the bottle might be the most beautiful on earth.  It's pewter and almost rococo label speaks to its cocoa beauty inside.  The bottle and look of the beer is truly an achievement in of itself. The aroma of the beer was floral and simply popped.  Chocolate, roasted grains, and yeast were prevalent.  The taste of the beer is really the awesome part of the brew.  Since this Chocolate Bock is put on top of cocoa, it ...

Samuel Adams describes this beer as an Intense Hop experience.  I've had it once before and remember think that they were right.  Here is the deal; the Pilsners that Americans have become accustomed to drink are an emaciated version of the original.  The original version of the Pilsner is still made by Urquell, although it is not what it once was.  A delicious version of a good Pilsner is Jever.  What changed about Pilsners?  Well, Americans do not tend to like bitters in their food or drink.  So, numerous companies reduced the hop content to meet the demands of people's palates.  In some ways, Samuel Adams is responding to this phenomena by giving some intensity back to a Pilsner.  Don't expect a normal "Pilsner" when you drink this beer.  I won't go into it too much here but a Pilsner is actually in the Lager family of beers, so there is the freshness of a Lager with a hop intensity that is not normal for a lagered beer.  If you want to know more a beer styles, stay tuned to this site as we are about to launch a series on the subject.  Hope you try this with us.

Now that we are getting some people who really seem to be interested in our site, I thought I would write a series on various beer styles.  We will try to address topics like what is the difference between a Lager and an Ale?  Beyond this, we will also address categories within this types of beer.  We will talk about a Porters, Stouts, Marzens, Bocks, Lagers, Pilsners, Scotch Ales, Irish Ales, English Ales, Belgian Ales and far beyond this.  Beer styles are a veritable color spectrum of variety.  I'm expecting this to be about 20 or so articles that are informative yet concise.  The main thing that I'm hoping to accomplish is a building of knowledge without an inundation or too much info.  I'm also hoping that when we post a beer these articles can be used as a reference point to understand a particular beer better.  The more that we know about the characteristics and even history of a beer, the better we can understand a beer's particular characteristics.  So, buckle up for a beer thrill ride (this should be read in a quasi suspense movie voice-over inflection).  My dream for this series (and the site in general) is to make you a knowledgeable beer lover.  Cheers!

Previously, I alluded to the fact that I would write about Stout.  Well, here it is.  We just drank a Stout as our past beer, so let's have some info about it.  To understand Stout as a beer, it is necessary to understand a Porter.  For those who have not sipped a Porter...sip one!  It's a real treat. Porter beers florished in a time when it was harder to kiln (i.e., roast grains).  Most grains were roasted darker, so beers were darker (but that does not mean stronger in alcohol).  Depending on the source, Porters were named after a working class in England among whom the beer was popular.  Purportedly, Ralph Harwood was the one who invented the drink.  The drink was also known as three threads.  The "three threads" consisted of a new ale, an old ale, and a stale ale.  Given that the new ale was too harsh and the old (aged ale) was too expensive, Porter was a happy median.  But do not assume that this means that this was only a beer that appealed to the working man.  As a side note, maybe the Porter and not the Lager (or Pilsner) is truly the working man's beer.  Among those who thought Porter was the best style of beer was someone (I don't really ...

Now that we've had a few beers from other countries we mustn't forget the domestic situation.  Rogue is an American brewery from Oregon that has been brewing since the late 80s.  As the name implies, they attempt to be a rogue brewing outfit that pushes the normal limits.  Beers in their line-up include a chipotle beer, Dead Guy Ale, an imperial Pilsner and beyond.  Rogue has a nice array of beers from which to choose.  For the list of beers that they have, you can visit this link.  The brewery puts more information on their bottles than most breweries.  Their information includes alcohol level (measured in degrees plato), an ingredients list, beer notes, tasting notes and even pairing suggestions.  You can learn a lot about their beer when armed with this knowledge.  They even suggest putting this particular beer as the liquid in a float (that's right, a beer float).  I have done this with other stouts and had surprising results.  Here is the scoop (pun intended) on this beer.  It is an Oatmeal Stout, which is a variation in the Stout family...which is actually in the Porter family (more on this very soon).  Oatmeal is notoriously difficult to brew with since it gelatinizes.  This makes it hard to filter out ...

Hopefully there are more people drinking it "with us Friday."  A special thanks to you, Dave, for sticking to our "regiment."  Here are my impressions of the beer.  I started with the pour, which produced a rich light brown and creamy head.  What is nice about this is that the head stuck around.  I noticed that the carbonation bubbles were very fine in this beer.  Although the beer appeared to be brown, it had some gorgeous deep amber tones, which match the colorfully dark label on the beer.  It got on swimmingly with the glass (I actually drank it out of my Unibroue glass).  Next I smelled the beer.  Delicious.  There was a definite grapish/wine smell to the beer.  No doubt (the expression, not the group), the beer got this quality from the lees.  It also had a sweet, malty smell with little noticeable hops qualities.  There were tons of wine characteristics in this beer, not only in smell but also in taste.  The smell reminded me of ripe fruit (as the bottle suggests).  Pinpointing the fruit was not easy, but I caught cherry or strawberry.  (Unibroue actually makes a cherry driven ale called Chose.)  I suspect that the yeast helped promote ...

Per "DryGuy's" request, here is an article about N/A beers.  Usually, for me, the N/A stands for not applicable when it comes to non-alcoholic beers, but this was very applicable for many during prohibition.  As you might have guessed, N/A beers got their start during prohibition when alcoholic beers were banned in the USA.  One could obtain whiskey and other spirits via a doctor's prescription, but for all intents and purposes, alcohol was illegal.  Consequently (and tellingly), this caused organized crime to flourish in the U.S. (not a very good trade off in my opinion). Because of the ban on alcoholic beers, "near beer" was created.  A popular and pithy saying during prohibition was, "Near beer sold here."  However, where there was "near beer," there was always real alcohol for sale in close proximity.  For this reason, another popular slogan was created, "Near beer sold here, real beer sold real near here."  Near beer and other malt products were the brewery's way of trying to stay afloat during the era.  One more thing ought to be mentioned.  Prohibition also choked out many smaller breweries in the U.S.  This happened to such an extent that we Americans got used to the inferior beer ...

Having already written on the other three aspects of beer (water, grains, and yeast), I can now address the last: hops. Among beer ingredients, hops are really the most expendable. No matter how strange this sounds, the other three ingredients have always been necessary for making beer. The hop is more recent phenomenon. Although use of hops in beer can be found sporadically in the history of beer, it did not gain wide currency in beer until the 15th or 16th century A.D. Hops add bitterness and flavor to a beer, but how were beers bittered/flavored before their popularity? Gruit, anybody? Juniper, anyone? Various mixes of herbs and spices were used in beer to add bitterness or flavors. One ingredient that was used to bitter was Irish moss (guess where this was used). Even though this ingredient is still used, albeit for clarifying a beer, it is not used in the same bittering capacity as former times. So since the hop was king, what else did it do? Like grains, water, and yeast, hops can add various flavors to a beer. One primary use of hops for beer is to bitter. These are often added early in the brewing of a beer and the ...